Erev Rosh
Hashanah 5777
“What is the
Value of a Human Life?”
Rabbi Julie
Pelc Adler
We
stand on the cusp of a new year, 5777.
What
are we leaving behind in 5776?
What
is it we most need to hear tonight?
A
mentor of mine once suggested (mostly joking) that instead of a sermon, we
should leave 10-15 minutes of silence at this point in the service so that each
individual person could think about what message he or she most needed to hear.
Then they could give themselves the sermon they wanted and everyone
would be happy.
But
this half-joking suggestion also speaks to something much bigger, and actually
much more important.
Is
there one message that can speak to us all?
What
makes each of us unique? What serves as
a connection across and between us? Are
we each so different from one another so as to merit our own, individual sermon?
What
are the particulars of my story, my heart, my
pain, my joy? What challenges
have I alone faced precisely because there is no one like me in the whole
world?
What
sermon honors the reality that no one else in the world has experienced love,
loss, grief, and gratitude in precisely the way that I have?
And
yet - is there something in my story that connects me to everyone else?
-
Not just everyone else in this sanctuary, but everyone else
in the world?
-
What about my story is universal?
-
What can the particulars of my life say about the
human condition?
o About the times
in which we live?
o About the society,
the struggles, the successes of our time?
When
I think about the year that’s just passed, there is a theme to many of the
headlines that have graced the front pages of our newspapers. This theme raises a common question that I
believe must linger in our hearts and in our minds, especially as we approach a
new year. That question is: WHAT
IS THE VALUE OF A HUMAN LIFE?
This
to me seems to be a more important spiritual question than any
other. Yes: a spiritual question… not simply a political one. And it is also a particularly Jewish question.
As
we know, Jewish tradition teaches us that human life is valued above everything
else: to save a life, one can break other laws valued highly in the Torah - like
keeping Shabbat, observing Yom Kippur, and keeping kosher. The obligation to save a life is called pikuach nefesh. The phrase “pikuach nefesh” is derived from the Biblical verse, “neither shall
you stand by the blood of your neighbor[1]”
One
of the first things we learn in the Torah, just after people are created in the
first chapter of Genesis[2],
is that human beings are created in the image of God. This means that there is something special,
something sacred, something unique to each human life that is divine - that is
like God.
If
we are created in the divine image;
if we hold that truth to be self-evident, then where does it leave
us? And how does this jibe with the
social, economic, and political realities in which we exist today?
I
was fortunate enough to hear a podcast of On
Being with Krista Tippet wherein she talks with Ruby Sales, a civil rights
veteran and public theologian. Ruby
Sales was compelled at an early age to think personally about this question
when a seminary student named Jonathan Daniels leapt in between her (a 17 year
old girl at the time) and a bullet. He
was killed instantly.
And
so the question of whose life mattered became extraordinarily personal.
Ruby
Sales went on to found a nonprofit in Jonathan Daniel’s memory, called The
SpiritHouse Project. She, herself, also
went on to study theology and became a seminarian herself.
The
questions of justice, meaning, and the value of a human life have woven through
all the work she’s done since that day.
But
what about the rest of us? Most of us
have never been physically saved because someone else took a bullet in our
stead. How do we come to understand the
value in and meaning of a human life?
Listening
to Ruby Sales, I came to understand that her story - that part which is
particular to her, and also that part that asks a much more universal question,
points to the fact that there is a
spiritual crisis in America today.
We
have not learned - and we don’t know how to teach the next generation - how to
harmonize the “I” with the “we”. When do
we concern ourselves only with our own needs, our own safety, our own
well-being à and when do we expand our
circle of concern to include a larger group of people, people who are like us,
and people who are different.
For
the most part, in American culture, we are taught to focus on our own
lives. We believe that a person can get
ahead in life if only he works hard enough.
We all know the idiom, “it’s every man for himself”. The second half of this idiom, though, is
less often quoted. The full quote is “every
man for himself and the devil take the hindmost”.
The
second half of the phrase, extends the idiom to its logical conclusion,
something we’d often rather not consider.
Because if we only focus on ourselves and preserving our own individual
success, then what happens to those left behind?
Let the devil
take the hindmost - or, let the
devil take those we’ve left behind.
The
arch-enemy of the Jewish people is Amalek.
Throughout the Torah and later Jewish literature, Amalek appears as the
example of the worst kind of person. We
are told that Haman (the villain in the Purim story that we BOO when his name is mentioned) is a
descendent of Amalek. And what makes
Amalek so terrible?
We
are told that Amalek was the first of the tribes to war against the Israelites.
And when the people were leaving Egypt, Amalek attacked those lagging behind -
the weakest and most vulnerable in the community. The people in back were likely the elderly,
the smallest children, people with disabilities, and those who were injured.
And
so, in some ways, American culture (with its emphasis on individualism and
self-protectionism) encourages us to become like Amalek.
Most
of us - white, heterosexual, middle or upper-middle class people - have never
been forced to think about whose life matters, and whether one life (or lives)
matters more than another’s.
And
this particular question has become harder to answer since Biblical times. Today, we can choose to surround ourselves
with only people who look and think the way that we do.
Though
we may have instant access to global news and information, we only hear news
from the perspective we already share.
-
If we don’t like or support a certain viewpoint, we can
exclude those messages from our newsfeeds.
-
We’ve created for ourselves an insular and self-perpetuating
circle of like-ness. We only see and
interact with those people with whom we already agree.
-
How are we to ever meet the Other, to hear his or her story,
to find common links between ourselves and those whose lives look and sound so
different from our own?
-
How can we come to see that their lives matter too?
And,
to compound this, community does not exist where it once existed and so we have
fewer and fewer opportunities to come to know people who are different than we
are.
In
generations past, there were gathering places where people would come together
to talk and share stories. The coffee
break, the park bench, the waiting room, the people on the train or bus sitting
beside us.
But
now even in these public spaces, we don’t talk to one another anymore. We are not looking out or interacting with
the Other; we are looking down… at our phones.
We in the 21st century may be more technologically savvy and
industrialized than ever before, but we’ve never been so isolated. We can send text messages across the ocean in
a moment’s time, and never before have we as a society been so lost, so lonely.
This
isn’t just a secular challenge or a political one.
It’s
a deeply spiritual problem. And it
exists across racial, socio-economic, and religious lines. We don’t know the Other, and so we don’t come
to value his or her life.
The
Torah teaches us that we are required not just to know people who are different than we are - but we’re responsible
for one another. We are responsible for
taking care of the Other, protecting their rights, advocating for their safety,
even if we don’t like them or agree with them.
* * *
I
would argue that a connection to God and to a spiritual tradition can start to heal
the deep chasms in our world. A
spiritual mindset and a deep appreciation for all life can revolutionize the
way we interact with one another.
We
are taught over and over in our tradition to give the Other the benefit of the
doubt; that each life contains within it an entire world; that we must remember
that we, too, were once slaves in Egypt.
Learning
to care about and for the Other is embedded throughout our most sacred
teachings. We learn that each
and every life is of infinite value. And, perhaps even more powerful is
the notion that each life is connected to ours.
But
what does that really mean? How does it
translate into real world scenarios from the 21st century?
Believing
that each
of us - and our lives - matter has the potential to be a game-changer
in almost every arena in which we live and work.
It can change how we speak about people we don’t know or like;
it can change how we use social media and technology; it can literally help to
rescue our society from the consequences of some of its most deadly and
dangerous habits.
And
if, as we learn in Deuteronomy 6:7, to really teach it to our children, it can
quite literally save their lives.
Out there, our kids will enter a world
where
· Drug overdoses
kill more young people than do cars or guns.
· The perception
of invincibility that accompanies youth pulls our kids into friendships and
activities that can threaten their lives - both physically and emotionally.
· Bullying online
and in person remains a pervasive problem and, without a solid spiritual
foundation, can lead kids to think that the bully is right, that their lives
don’t matter.
· Plus, they can
be in danger from both law-makers and law-enforcement if they happen to be
black or latino - or have dark skin - or seem threatening to those with power.
And
it’s not just the kids who are at risk here.
· We all live in
a society where human beings seem disposable.
· Where what we
do and how hard we work means nothing if our employers decide our salaries are
too high, or the company decides to find cheaper labor, or younger laborers,
elsewhere.
· We, too, can
fall into believing that we don’t have infinite value - that we’re not young
enough, or thin enough, or tall enough, or strong enough to be of value.
· We believe that
we can - and will - be replaced
How
do we develop a theology and life practice that can sustain us in the 21st
century culture of utilitarianism
-
where we’ve been taught that we are only valuable because of what we do,
not who
we are?
I
believe we can begin by taking down some of the boundaries that separate us
from one another.
Whether
we live and work with closed doors or in
cubicles; whether we interact and communicate with even those with whom
we’re most intimate mainly by voice
message, text message, or email - we can start by reaching out.
Society
as we know it has destroyed intimacy and community as it used to be. Many of us worry that our kids won’t know how
to have a conversation - much less a relationship - without using text
messaging as a mediator.
Understanding
the profound value of human life and that each of us are created in the divine
image is to give our kids - and ourselves - the tools to live fully human lives.
To
be a person of faith - to teach hope even when darkness seems inevitable - is
to provide a possibility of refuge in what otherwise could seem like a
meaningless void. It is to give those
who feel that they don’t have a place in the world a message that they matter
- their lives matter and serve a purpose in this world, for all lives are
inter-connected.
-
What if each of our children walked away from his or her
childhood with an intrinsic understanding that his or her life and every other
life mattered?
-
What if they went off to the workplace, or to continue their
educations, knowing that no matter what happened in the public arena, God loved
them?
A
spiritual orientation and a religious foundation can make real the idea that each
life, each soul is sacred and important.
As
Ruby Sales teaches:
“Religion for
me was the ground I stood on, that positioned me to stand against the winds”
In
our world today, there is so very much wind threatening to drag us to the
ground. We feel financial pressure,
professional stress, familial expectations, and impossible standards of beauty
and success with which to measure ourselves.
And
in the political arena, our fears and doubts are exploited. Demonization is the rhetoric from both
sides: anger and vitriolic rage come
from the right and the left. We feel
displaced. We want so much to believe
the promises they offer because it’s hard to know what can save us from the
sense of hopelessness we feel.
We
are witnessing something now in the public sphere that we need to pay real
attention to.
And
what we need most is the public voice of theology to address the human
condition. It's the human condition that needs to be addressed, not just the
political positions, not just the candidates themselves.
We
need to talk about what it means to be human. To speak about the universal and the
particular with the same tongue. Because
when I talk about what it means to be me alongside that which can be
generalized to the human condition, that’s where we can come to find truth.
We
must speak about what it means to be connected to others, what it means to have
responsibilities to others besides ourselves and our immediate circles/families.
When
we ask this of ourselves, our friends, our acquaintances, and even (or
especially) the opposition, then we can begin to create healing in ourselves,
in our communities, and in the larger world.
May
it come to be so.
Shana
Tova.
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