Rabbi Steve Segar's Yom Kippur Message  5765
Recognizing and responding to our collective transgressions.

A little more than a week ago, when many of us who are here today, gathered together to observe the first day of our new sacred year, I had the honor of addressing this community. I chose to speak on the theme of hope, an idea and a feeling which I argued was at the core of what draws so many people into synagogues at this time of year. Today, I would like to follow up that discussion with another one that is closely related to it, though in a way that is not so obvious.

Many of us here are familiar, I imagine, with one of the classical teachings that grows out of the Yom Kippur liturgy, specifically the confessional texts of Ashamnu and Al chet. Both of these prayers, like the vast majority of the Jewish liturgy, are phrased in the plural rather than the singular form. As we say together in Hebrew on several occasions during the twenty-five or so hours of Yom Kippur, “We have acted wrongly, we have harmed others, we have wrought injustice, etc..” There are several questions that are typically asked about these texts: “ Why would we all need to recite a litany of transgressions, the vast majority of which, most of us have never committed, let alone committed in the past year? Doesn’t this practice in some way undermine the explicit intent of the season? Aren’t we supposed to get in touch with the ways in which we have individually missed the mark throughout the past year? And then figure out what actions and words are needed in response to those particular mistakes to move us closer to forgiveness and reconciliation?

These questions all qualify, in the language of Talmudic dialectics, as legitimate kooshiot, i.e., compelling objections that deserve a thoughtful response. And, there have been good attempts by various Jewish thinkers, over the course of the centuries, to come up with reasonable answers to it. One of these suggests that we recite these long lists of transgressions because one of them at least will hit home for each person in the room. In this way, no one is allowed to pass through these days under the delusion that they have committed no wrongs and need not worry about repentance and forgiveness. At the same time, their individual dignity is preserved because they are able to authentically confess their mistake under the protective cover of the communal recitation. This is an interesting and sensible response, though it does raise the question of why we would wait until the end of the Days of Awe to recite these litanies of confession, since by this time, it is nearly too late to do anything to redress issues that come to light.

There is another, completely different kind of answer to this theoretical objection that does not leave any other questions hanging as is the case with the first one. This second answer argues that it is through this communal confession that we implicitly take collective responsibility for the moral and spiritual state of our community.

This explanation to my mind makes better sense of the placement these texts have, being later, rather than earlier on in the repentance process. With this answer it is assumed that we have all individually done the work of t’shuvah as best we are able and these litanies then serve as culminating High Holy Day experiences that remind us of our responsibilities as members of a community, above and beyond our need to clean up the mistakes within our networks of personal relationships.

This notion of collective accountability for the well being of the community makes a fine distinction between the categories of guilt and responsibility. Clearly guilt is reserved for those individuals who either perpetrate harm directly or those who through their power and knowledge facilitate the perpetration of such harm by others. However, when we shift from guilt to responsibility a much larger circle of inclusion is created. In the words of a Reconstructionist colleague, Rabbi Caryn Broitman, “We are all implicated in the personal acts, good or bad of any individual in our community. Moreover, as part of a community, we are all implicated in the actions, good or bad, that our community as a whole has taken. The issue is not shame or guilt . . . the issue is responsibility, and that, is ultimately collective, for wrongs are perpetrated only with the consent of the many, even if that consent is passive.”

This philosophical interpretation of what is ostensibly a point of grammar in our high holy day prayer books does not emerge out of thin air. On the contrary, there is a significant amount of material throughout Jewish tradition that provide the foundation for making such a claim. Our people’s affirmation of this type of responsibility actually goes back to the biblical period and is manifested in our most ancient texts in a very literal and often, somewhat disturbing way.

The Torah comes down very clearly on questions of reward and punishment. In fact, a piece of the liturgy that many Jewish communities recite weekly during Shabbat services, the second paragraph of the Shema, excerpted from the book of Deuteronomy, declares boldly that if we follow God’s mitzvot, we will be rewarded with abundant rains, bountiful harvests and the strength to defeat our enemies, but that if we don’t the opposite effects will come to pass.

Now, while this a problematic passage on a variety of levels, what many people don’t realize is that the calibration for reward and punishment is done at the level of the group rather than the individual.

An example of this principle is found in the seventh chapter of the book of Joshua immediately following the story of the successful battle for Jericho. All of a sudden though, things start to go badly for the Israelite army, which is a clear sign to Joshua of God’s displeasure with them. And so, Joshua begins to methodically sort through each tribe and each family until he discovers a particular individual from the tribe of Judah who had taken some of the plunder from Jericho that was supposed to be completely off limits to the Israelites.

The biblical language is instructive in its description of this event: It doesn’t say so and so from the tribe of Judah committed a trespass. It says, the children of Israel committed a trespass and the anger of the Lord burned against the children of Israel as a result. There was only one guilty party in this case, yet all were held responsible. The story of Jonah, which is traditionally studied on Yom Kippur afternoon, contains another good example of this dynamic.

When Jonah tries to escape by ship from God’s demand that he go and prophesy to the city of Nineveh, God brings a great storm upon the ship, and the sailors go through a process of elimination before it becomes clear that it is because of Jonah’s behavior that they are all being afflicted.

There is another traditional text associated with Yom Kippur that deals with this issue of collective accountability from a different angle. We read just a few moments ago from the powerful and challenging fifty-eighth chapter of the book of Isaiah. Here, the prophet is clearly not speaking to an elite leadership group of priests or royalty, but to the entire people when he makes those radical demands in God’s name: for a society wide commitment to protect those who are most vulnerable; and for the same level of passion in the fight against oppression and injustice as is normally found in the pursuit of purity through ritual.

The ancient rabbis for their part continued to be very interested in and concerned with the nature and extent of responsibility that any given individual had for the well being of the collective. Some of their teachings have become veritable by-words in the contemporary Jewish world such as: “All of Israel is responsible for one another.” or If I am not for myself, who will be for me, but if I am only for myself what am I?” or “Do not separate yourself from the community.” But there exist many, many other teachings which are less well known, that grapple with this question at a level of greater specificity and complexity.

For example, from the Jerusalem Talmud we have the following text dealing with the realities of living in an ancient version of a multi-cultural society. It reads: In a city where there are both Jews and Gentiles, the collectors of charity collect from both Jews and Gentiles, and feed the poor of both communities, bury the members of both communities, comfort the mourners of both communities and restore the lost goods of both communities, for the sake of peace.” Or consider this next text from the Babylonian Talmud that, though a bit hyperbolic, grapples with the extent to which the tradition expects a person to get involved in a problematic situation. “Whoever can stop the people of his city from sinning, and does not, is held responsible for the sins of the people of his city. If he can stop the people of the whole world from sinning, and does not, he is held responsible for the sins of the people of the whole world.

Clearly, we have examples in these texts of the important place which our tradition assigned to the value of individuals being involved in helping to establish and maintain the welfare of the community at large. But what is left somewhat undefined are the exact boundaries which delineate the threshold of the community and thus the limits on the individual’s responsibility. Some of the texts sound like they are aimed strictly at the Jewish community while others explicitly extend beyond into the non-Jewish world. Some of the texts seem to invoke only local considerations, while others express concerns of a more global nature. Whatever else we may say about the meaning of these teachings, one thing that is certain is that the scale of the world in which they were generated was miniscule, both geographically and in terms of population, compared to the world we inhabit today.

And so the question is, are we capable of transposing this traditional spiritual imperative into the key of modern life? or has the scale of our world changed so drastically since these texts were written down, and is the level of pain and suffering so monumental in the world today that this way of thinking and acting is simply beyond our reach?

Even if we were all not already overtaxed with responsibilities to family and workplace, and even if we didn’t already have more than our own share of medical challenges and complex relationships to deal with, it would remain a daunting prospect. And yet, there is also clearly a price we pay in the currency of spirit, if we remain immobilized and unable to reach out into the world in some way. There is a part of us, at the core of what makes us human, that would, if we but let it, weep with sorrow and scream in rage and disbelief at what passes in our world for being the status quo.

Clearly there are some situations that are less within our control. There are terrorist attacks. There are natural disasters. But in our better moments we know that we live as part of a global community of nations and individuals whose collective behavior has called into question its right to be called human. We all know on a gut level that it is wrong for governments and companies in developed societies to obstruct the flow of medications that could help stem the tied of suffering and death from the global AIDS epidemic. We all know that it is wrong that tens of millions of people in this country and billions around the world go without the adequate healthcare that most in the West take for granted as a basic human right.

And we all know that is a crime that every minute in our world, there are 28 children who die of starvation and starvation related illnesses. If we dare to do the horrific math, we find that every year, our world endures a literal holocaust of 12 million children who perish unnecessarily. For all of these realities and for countless others which go unmentioned, we grapple as citizen’s of this world, with issues of accountability.

Given these overwhelmingly tragic challenges, the demand coming from our tradition that we take responsibility on some level for everything that transpires in our world can strike us as depressing at best, and at worst, sadistic. How can we possibly begin to take in and respond to the depth of pain and suffering? One of the key teachings of Reconstructionist Judaism is the importance of looking for Torah, for life wisdom, both within and beyond the Jewish tradition. In this spirit, I would like to share a perspective from the discipline of psychology that I believe can help us move forward as we wrestle with our engagement of issues on a global level.

This perspective comes from a psychologist and academic in the Boston area named Kaethe Weingarten. She has studied and written widely about the ways in which people deal with the experience of confronting violence and violation in their lives and in the world. She has coined the phrase “common shock” to describe the physical and affective states that develop in those who are repeatedly exposed, directly or indirectly, to instances of harm of any kind being done to anybody. While the classic categories in this area of research include victims of violent crime, military personnel who have served in combat situations and survivors of child abuse, Weingarten claims that all of us are susceptible to this syndrome. This is in no small measure due to the fact we are recipients of news reports that bring us, on a daily basis, accounts in often very graphic terms, of the wide range of human tragedies taking place in real time around the world.

In Weingarten’s terms, we are all witnesses, whether we like it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not, to some of the most horrific suffering humanity has ever known. Much of Professor Weingarten’s work revolves around helping people to move beyond the effects of common shock brought about by our role as witnesses. These effects can fall along a spectrum from a mild stress response, such as numbness or anger, to acute post traumatic stress disorder, not dissimilar from that experienced by actual victims of trauma and violence.

Professor Weingarten offers what may seem to some a counter-intuitive answer to the question of how we can mitigate the toxicity of common shock and reduce its effect on us. She argues that there are several different positions from which we can act as witnesses, and that there is one position in particular that is worth striving to attain. Not surprisingly, it is the person who can witness from a perspective of both awareness and empowerment that is in the best position to respond in a helpful way, to the situation that confronts them and to take steps that will reduce the likelihood of common shock setting in. She calls this stance 'compassionate witnessing'.

For Weingarten, awareness implies an understanding of the toxic nature of what we are witnessing and an ability to feel the impact of the witnessing act on our own bodies and psyches. Empowerment refers to the conviction that it is always possible to take some kind of positive action in response to witnessing an act of violence or violation.

In the professor’s own words, “there are enormous constraints upon compassionate witnessing, that can lead us to alienation or guilt, saying “oh well what can I do?” or “I feel so terrible about what I haven’t done and I’m immobilized.” But there is also a middle ground. Appreciating the complexities of witnessing is part of establishing that middle ground. This notion of a middle ground is consonant with another famous rabbinic teaching that reminds us that it is not our responsibility to handle it all, but neither are we free to absolve ourselves of playing some role in the process. Lo Alecha Hamlacha ligmor, ve lo ata ben horin lehibatel memenna.

What is most compelling to me about this model is that it offers both a diagnosis of the vague sense of unease that seems to be so ubiquitous in our world today as well as suggesting a direction for moving beyond it. A direction that coincides with the conviction in our tradition that we must not turn our backs on the collective no matter how enormous the challenge. Both Jewish tradition and this contemporary model say that the answer to our quandary lies somewhere in between looking out for number one and losing oneself in the vastness of the world’s problems.

All of this brings me back to my opening comment that today’s topic is closely but not obviously related to our conversation about hope from Rosh Hashanah. They are inherently tied together in that it is unfathomable to even imagine allowing ourselves to engage with these very difficult issues without some foundational assumption that movement is possible, not without struggle, not without frustration and not without failure, but possible nevertheless.

May we all, as we move more deeply into this new year, come to grips with the truth that we are, among other things, witnesses to the struggle and pain that is often prominent in our world and May we allow ourselves a little more space to attend to our physical and emotional responses as we absorb from our medium of choice the news of the day. And may we deepen, if even slightly, our willingness to grant a conscious place in our hearts, to our feelings of empathy and righteous indignation for our fellow human beings who are victims of an unjust world order all the while remembering that it is not our job to complete the task, rather it is to make sure that the task isn’t abandoned.

Shabbat Shalom, Chag Sameach and G’mar Hatimah Tovah!

Rabbi Steve