Re-Creation
Sermon
September 21, 200
Rabbi Anthony D. Holz
Life is neither simple, nor is it given to us on a silver platter. If our lives are to be purposeful and meaningful, we need first to understand the way things are. With a realistic view of ourselves and our world, come greater opportunities to build the kind of world we desire. This combination of realism with hopefulness is deeply rooted in our Jewish consciousness.
So we may note a phrase in the standard Jewish morning service: Mechadeish bechol yom tamid ma-aseh vereishit, “God renews daily the work of creation.” We have here a clear sense that God’s work of creation is never complete. Rather, time and again, over and over, God renews the process. The message conveyed by these liturgical words is that life, every aspect of our world, far from being complete, is always in the process of becoming.
The end of one Jewish year and the beginning of a new one, reminds us that life is such a process, a growth, an ongoing development, and there is still much for us to do.
On one hand, we know that there is much beauty and goodness and joy in the world. And on the other hand, we also know there is much that is messy and ugly and sad. Our tradition cherishes life in all its complexity. So it is no accident that in their ongoing celebration of life, Jews have often become leaders in art, music, literature and drama. For life is often wonderful and heart-warming.
And yet, over the centuries we Jews have also been repeatedly confronted with the sad and the brutal. The Holocaust and modern Israel’s struggles for acceptance are but recent painful events in a long and often sorrowful tale. However, we Jews have also repeatedly refused to give in to despair or passivity.
Knowing life with all its awesomeness and its awfulness, accepting the world as it is, it has been our long-standing tradition from biblical times to the present, to attempt to change our world, to modify it and improve it. Such ideas have stirred the greatest Jewish minds from Moses and great prophets such as Isaiah and Jeremiah through the middle ages with philosophers like Maimonides and Spinoza through Albert Einstein and great thinkers of our own time. Always there has been the urge to not merely accept life with all its ambiguities and its mixed messages, but especially to find ways to make things better. As we begin a new year, this is surely a message of hopefulness and cheer, the promise of a more peaceful and joyful future before us.
In the words of a great twentieth century rabbi, the advent of a New Year reminds us of our worthwhileness as human beings, “even of our individual worth and value, for it tells us of the imperfect that has potentialities of betterment, and therein is a glimpse of the glory that is and is to be!” As Americans and as Jews we can help build a better world for all.
As Americans living in an age of terrorism, we are having to learn how to balance security with the personal liberty that is so vital to the health of this great democracy. Working for equal justice and fairer opportunities for all, we continue to strive for “a more perfect union.” There is much to do.
As citizens of the world in an era of global warming, we have the task of confronting what Al Gore describes as “inconvenient truths” and changing our behavior so that our planet will be a nourishing home for all.
As Jews alive at a time when embattled modern Israel seeks to end more than sixty years of war, we who know the blessings of a diverse society can reach out as Jewish Americans to Muslim Americans to demonstrate alternatives to violence; in the words of Rabbi Eric Yoffie, to help “fight the fanatics” and “to prevent a political battle from being transformed into a holy war.” And we can actively support a two-state solution for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Again and again, it is clear that arbitrary and either/or kinds of thinking are destructive, while the live-and-let-live approach which affirms individual rights provides the basis for unfolding and ever more positive creativity.
And even here at KKBE, though we are all aware of congregational imperfections, we can use the tools of mutual acceptance and creative ingenuity to lessen our imperfections, and to add to the beauty and strength of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, this Holy Congregational House of God.
In Jewish legend, Rosh Hashanah is the anniversary of the day on which God began to create the world. This is surely a poetic way of saying that the great Beginning, that in fact any beginning is not a time of completion, but, rather a process of creation that continues today.
The book of Genesis tells us that God created the world in stages, day by day. We are told that God judged the work of each day to be “good,” and the work of the sixth day of creation to be “very good.” Nowhere in this narrative do we find the word “perfect.”
As people made in the image of the Divine, our task is surely to imitate the process ascribed to God, a process of making each day good, and gradually better, until we arrive at the sixth day and with it the promise of a great Sabbath. So may we find ourselves re-created, and renewed in spirit, in hope and in vision. As we all embark on the adventure of the year that lies before us, let us resolve to make this a truly good year, one that finds us more and ever more approaching a world that is better and finer and more meaningful than any which came before. Amen