It has been a tradition of our congregation for Divrei Torah to be apolitical. That's what I tell people who I work with to prepare Divrei Torah, and that's a guideline that I follow as well. I'm not sure what the history of this convention is, but it's probably a good one. We want this time slot in our week to be devoted to spiritual matters so that the shul can be an island of peace and serenity in the midst of our otherwise very busy, stressed out lives. We want to connect on Shabbat and Yom Tov with our ancient tradition, not debate the ephemeral controversies of the day. And so those of you who come to Narayever on Shabbat on a regular basis have no way of knowing how I feel about tax credits for private schools, how I feel about solving the homelessness problem, or gun control, missile defense, capital punishment, stem cell research, Northern Ireland, trade with China, or any of the other issues that my rabbinic colleagues sermonize on regularly. You don't even know my views on the Mideast conflict other than the fact that I am for peace (and who among us on right or left isn't?) and you know this only on the basis of the very general and vaguely worded prayers for peace that I utter from time to time.

As it happens, I am a news junkie, and am quite familiar with and passionately concerned about many of these issues. I get up early every morning in order to make sure I have enough time to devour the daily paper, I indulge in the New York Times on Sunday, and subscribe to The Jerusalem Report and The New Republic. What little time I spend in front of the television is almost exclusively devoted to the news. But I don't bring this passion and interest in current affairs with me into these sacred walls on our sacred days; I go along with the determination to keep the inevitably divisive issues of politics at bay at a time and place when we are aiming to feel a sense of unity and community with each other, and I bring instead other passions to our Shabbatot and Yom Tovim together -- passions for Torah and for tradition and for community and for faith and for all the eternal verities that have sustained our people through many turbulent generations.

This Rosh Hashanah, however, I need to break down that wall. In light of what has transpired in Israel over the last year, in Durban in the last month, and of course in the US last week, I have come to realize that the ripple effects of the tidal wave have reached our little shul on Brunswick Avenue, and we cannot pretend otherwise by not mentioning what is on all our minds. Celebrate Rosh Hashanah we will, and we must. Our people has survived in large part due to its steely determination to continue marking and celebrating the rhythms of the Jewish year even in the midst of very traumatic times. But what has happened outside cannot be ignored here. This year I can't just leave you with another interesting interpretation of the Torah reading or a prayer or another perspective on repentance, as uplifting as those might be. Our little island of peace and serenity is going to have to be disturbed this Rosh Hashanah, as so much else in our lives has been disturbed by the extraordinary events going on in the world around us. The danger of course is that the moment I open my mouth about current events, unless it's a platitude, I'm inevitably going to offend someone -- especially at this time, when feelings are so raw and passions are so inflamed. My purpose is not to do political commentary here but rather to delve, both today and tomorrow, into some of the spiritual questions which these tragic events give rise to. Nevertheless, a political approach might emerge from my remarks with which some will disagree. My only hope is that those of you who do take exception to this approach understand that I am submitting my thoughts to you very humbly, as an initial groping toward a response to horrific and unspeakable events which have confounded much greater minds than my own, and with the hope that the conversation amongst ourselves as a shul community will take place in an atmosphere of mutual respect.

I begin though with a book, one which must seem very far away from the subject at hand. Some of you may have read it -- The Jew in the Lotus, by Rodger Kamanetz. It's a journalistic account of a trip taken by a delegation of Jewish leaders to visit the Dalai Lama at his headquarters in Indian exile. The goal of the mission was to dialogue with the Dalai Lama about cultural and spiritual survival in exile, a challenge with which we Jews have clearly had a lot of experience. The Jews went on the mission thinking that they would teach the Dalai Lama, leader of a people in exile, something about how we Jews managed to keep our identity intact through 2,000 years of exile.

But just as teachers often find that they learn as much from their students, as they impart to their students, so too did this diverse Jewish delegation discover that in giving the Dalai Lama a crash course in Diaspora survival techniques, they learned a great deal as well. There was something refreshingly unladen about dialoguing with a religion other than one of our daughter religions - Christianity or Islam. Something nice about introducing yourself to someone with whom you share little or no common past, no grudges, no long and well-rehearsed family history, no baggage. I imagine it as something akin to unburdening yourself to a stranger you meet on a train. It feels safe. And so the Jewish delegation was able to learn about Buddhism in a relatively unpressured way, and able as well to learn some things about themselves from the way they responded to the Dalai Lama's unencumbered questions.

In light of the events of the last year and of course of last week, I'd like to talk with you this morning about one Buddhist teaching in particular which the Jewish delegation encountered on its visit. It's a teaching that raises a number of important Rosh Hashanah questions for us, even as it provokes us to think about who we are and how we relate to the people and the world around us in the midst of crisis. The teaching has to do with anger, and it says "being angry at someone is like stabbing yourself through the stomach in order to hurt someone behind you with the tip of your sword."

What is this teaching intended to convey? I'm no expert in Buddhism (and if you are I welcome your corrections) but as I read it, anger in this maxim is seen as being much more destructive of the angry person than it is of the object of the anger. Anger eats you up, in your gut. The conclusion I assume we're meant to reach is that anger is something we should try to overcome, or to "let go of" in the common parlance.

One of the responses which people have had to the events of this last week, as well as to the events in Durban and over the last year in Israel, has been anger - even rage. And so I wanted to spend some time with you this morning reflecting on the Jewish stance toward anger. Do we as Jews share the Buddhist approach? If not, should we? That Buddhist teaching clearly struck a chord in me, although ultimately a discordant one. At first, it sounded so wise, and it seemed such an appropriate message for yontif, when we are urged to forgive, to overcome our grudges, and to start the New Year fresh. The New Year gives us an opportunity to transcend the past, to say that what was, is not necessarily the way things have to be. Anger does not have to last forever; we really can let it go. This sounds great, because there is so much self-destructive anger abroad in our world, the suicide bomber being only the most obvious and literal example. Wouldn't the world be better off if it adopted the Buddhist approach as epitomized in that quote?

Perhaps. But then I started to think some more about this approach to anger. And I asked myself, is it Jewish? To look at the Torah at least, there seems to be a very different attitude toward anger. Vayihar Af Hashem, "And the Lord's nostrils flaired" - in the idiom of the Tanach this means God was furious, enraged, usually at us, and this phrase is repeated time and again. If God is our model, how can we understand God's anger in the Torah? At this time of year especially, God is often portrayed as being angry with us over our conduct in the previous year, and more than prepared to judge us for it. How do we experience being on the receiving end of God's wrath? If we accept the Buddhist teaching, it would seem that God is only hurting Godself by being angry at us, and our awe of God's greatness, and God's wisdom is inevitably diminished. Indeed many Christian polemicists have criticized the God of the Hebrew Bible over the generations as being a God of anger and vengeance, which they then contrast unfavorably to the God of the New Testament and to Jesus who are characterized by love and forgiveness. How can we relate to the anger in our Torah in light of the Christian critique and the Buddhist teaching? Is embarassment the only response?

Or can we derive a message from God's anger? It's a very important question in these angry days we live in, when fateful decisions of life and death for millions will be made by people often very influenced by their anger. I think we can begin to respond by looking at the whole premise of the illegitimacy of anger. Is our anger always as misguided and foolhardy and self-destructive as the sword-quote seems to suggest? After all, might there not be a legitimate place for anger in the panoply of human emotions? And in fact, shouldn't the Dalai Lama of all people be feeling it?

The Dalai Lama is the leader of a people who have suffered tremendously under decades of Chinese occupation, and it's worth taking a moment in the midst of our own fresh and raw experience of suffering and victimhood to reflect on the suffering of others. An estimated 1.2 million Tibetans dead. The teaching of Buddhism forbidden. Monks and nuns singled out for public humiliation and torture. Ancient temples used for granaries and monasteries for machine shops. A massive influx of Chinese settlers designed to dilute the Tibetan claim on the Land. Shouldn't the Dalai Lama be just a little bit angry?

He claims not. The Dalai Lama preaches non-violence in the struggle against the Chinese and works hard to quell more militant feelings among some of his younger followers. He sounds like a truly noble guy, a worthy recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (unlike some others who have gotten that award in recent years). But, and this should come as no surprise to you, he's no Jew.

For anger does have its place at the table, according to our tradition. It's not at the head of the table, and perhaps when Moshiach comes it'll cede its place altogether. But in the meantime it's there, accepted as legitimately human -- and legitimately divine -- but (and here's the key) needing to be molded and shaped into something that does more than stab yourself through the stomach.

Our legitimate anger has no shortage of targets. Who can contemplate the tremendous devastation and loss of life in New York and Washington last week, and not feel anger as at least one part of our range of emotions? The perpetrators were evil men, who have wantonly destroyed thousands of innocent lives. Who wouldn't feel anger or rage at these hateful and hate-filled people? And this coming on the heels of the racism conference in Durban where, out of all the countries on the face of the earth, our little Israel - which is not perfect by any means but whose human rights record is stellar compared to so many of the countries which sit in judgement on it - where our Israel was singled out for such opprobrium? For many of us, our anger for this year is directed also at one of the Dalai Lama's fellow Peace Prize laureates, Yasir Arafat. People in the Jewish community have expressed many different emotions to me about this year's terrible events in Israel. Sadness, disappointment, despair - all there for sure. But in the mix there was also felt a great deal of anger and betrayal. Over promises unkept. Hypocrisy exposed. Hopes dashed. Offers of compromise utterly rejected. So many lives, on his side and ours, needlessly and cruelly lost. A way of life, founded on the feeling of safety and security that most of us, at least until last week, took for granted, utterly transformed by the lurking terror of the suicide bomber. Yes we've got a lot to be angry about this year, and I don't know that it's so self-destructive to acknowledge it, or that our job is necessarily to transcend it.

And so we get angry. And normally mild-mannered, peace-loving people think up new and different ways to exact revenge, conjuring up innovative strategies for retaliation. And it's not only about terrorism. Though what we've seen in the newspapers and on TV this year since the onset of the intifada in Israel and culminating of course in last week's tragedy in the States has been very public and very dramatic, each of us has his or her own, more private, relationships of anger. Whether it's our parents, for smothering us with love or not giving us enough of it, our spouses, for not living up to our ideal vision of romantic love, our children, for not being the naches machines we had thought we programmed them to be, our colleagues, for not pulling their weight, our Jewish community, for not being everything we need it to be. Our Jewish tradition, for being (at its worst) patriarchal, homophobic, and xenophobic. God, for not organizing the world in the way we would have organized it, as a place where the righteous are rewarded and the wicked automatically punished, but rather setting up the world as a random place where anything can happen to anyone, and whether we live or die seems to depend not on whether we've been good or bad, but rather on whether we caught the subway down to the World Trade Center last Tuesday or missed it, or whether we decided to go for pizza or falafel that day in Jerusalem -- because the divine gift of free will has been granted to us, and unfortunately, to our enemies as well. Free will to choose good, or as we have seen so horribly this week and this year, evil.

Yes, it seems as if these days this anger business can be a full time occupation, and for many people it is. Which brings us full circle back to the wisdom of the Buddhist teaching. Is that really the way we're meant to live our lives? Being angry all the time? Let's accept for a moment that everyone we're angry at really deserves it. Certainly last week's terrorists do. Still, where does our anger get us? If we respond out of anger, won't it ultimately hurt us more than it hurts them?

We seem to find ourselves then stuck with two equally untenable, even inhuman positions. One -- the total renunciation of anger. The other - a life consumed by anger. Can we negotiate a path between these two extremes? I believe we can, but it'll be messy and it'll lack the clarity which is the major virtue of extreme positions.

I'd like to share two stories with you - one Hasidic, and the other from the Gemara, both of which are I think instructive in this regard. The Hasidic story concerns a tailor who, on Yom Kippur eve, had a chat with God. Ribono Shel Olam, he said, Master of the Universe, here is the list I have scrupulously kept of all of my offenses against You in the course of the last year. They are considerable, I admit. But here, Ribono Shel Olam, is the list I've been keeping of all the afflictions and distresses and losses You've put us through this year. And you know what? If a proper bookkeeping be made, it's pretty clear that I've been sinned against by You this year more than I've sinned. But this is Yom Kippur eve, when we are obliged to forgive one another. So I forgive You all, and You too will forgive us as well, the sins we have sinned against You.

In the Gemara account, the rabbis portray the prophet Jeremiah, who witnessed the destruction of the First Temple, as refusing to ascribe to God the attriburte "nora" as in the phrase from the Amidah Ha-El Ha-Gadol Ha-Gibor ve-ha-nora. The Great Mighty and Awesome God. If God is so awesome and terrifying, they imagine Jeremiah asking, where was God as the Temple was being destroyed? Why didn't God intervene to defend the people Israel? (Yoma 69b). It's a radical notion, if you think about it, that we can feel anger at God over the fate that has befallen us, and even act on that anger by changing the liturgy in a prayer - one no less important than the Amidah itself! This is not the much maligned Reform movement changing the liturgy in response to contemporary circumstances; this is the prophet Jeremiah himself, at least as the rabbis imagine him.

Both the tailor in the Hasidic story, and Jeremiah in the Gemara, feel anger against God over terrible and tragic misfortunes. As men of faith, they held God responsible for these tragedies which they experienced or witnessed. In both stories, the anger is given expression and validated. But the key is that in both the anger is channeled into a path that is productive for the person feeling the anger. In these examples, the anger is channeled ritually in such a way that the basic relationship with God is preserved just as God preserves the Divine Covenant with us out of love despite God's anger over our many lapses.

We have been sinned against, no doubt, by God and by our fellows, and that is angering. The question is, can we find a way to channel this anger in such a way that it does more than destroy ourselves? Of course, not everything can be solved through forgiveness and "letting go." It sounds great not to stab yourself with a sword, but if someone else is stabbing you you're still dead. We can be angry at that person and can go to the ends of the earth to stop them from hurting us ever again. If this requires military action, in my opinion so be it. Evil must be countered. But as our leaders and our society debates our response, we should always remember that stopping these madmen is always the goal, not blind rage or revenge for its own sake -- because it's the latter that winds up becoming the sword we pierce ourselves with.

Someday, may it be sooner rather than later, New York will rebuild, and this intifada will lose its steam. I just have to believe that. In the meantime, we and our leaders will have to decide what to do with our justifiable anger over what has taken place. Can some of our anger be transformed into channels that will help improve the lot of the impoverished and helpless in the Middle East? Can some of our anger be channeled into the courage necessary for Israel to make the accommodations necessary for a deal, when there is finally someone to deal with on the other side? It's clearly going to take a long time to get there. My prayer is that, despite all the tremendous provocations, we will be ready when the time is right to do what needs to be done, to not let anger or the thirst for vengeance have sole sway over our decisions, so that we will avoid stabbing ourselves with our own sword, or stabbing the wrong people such as innocent Muslim Canadians who are as horrified by these atrocities as we are.

And we must also be prepared to recognize that there is anger on the other side as well, anger that we should try to analyze even if it cannot justify the tactics or the strategies which have been used in its name. Recognizing the anger of our opponent does not mean we are drawing moral equivalencies between us and them; it's just accepting an unavoidable and perhaps uncomfortable fact that may just help us to deal with him better, and to channel our own anger in a way that does more good than harm.

I don't know if the Dalai Lama is pursuing the right course for his people by eschewing violence. Maybe he is. He certainly is an inspiring model in many ways. I'm glad though that it was Ben Gurion and not he who led the Yishuv in 1948, because otherwise I'm quite sure we wouldn't have a state today. History will look back with 20/20 hindsight at the Dalai Lama, at Ben Gurion, and certainly at us at this extraordinary turning point in human history. It will look back and judge what we did with our anger at this very difficult time, at how well we negotiated the treacherous path between rage and appeasement, at how accurately and constructively we pointed the powerful sword at our disposal. It will know whether the decisions we make today will make our lives better and safer, or far more dangerous than even now. We don't have the advantage of hindsight though; all we've got is the present, and whatever lessons we can derive from our past. And on this faulty basis, we've each got to make our judgements, as do our leaders, and trust at this time of year in God's mercy and compassion, forgiveness and help.

And so the world outside has entered our little cloister here on Brunswick Avenue, unavoidably I'm afraid, on this holy day. But it's not all that's here, and I hope that the connections between individuals and tradition, the connections between individuals and community, the connections between individuals and God which characterize every Rosh Hashanah will help keep some of the horror outside at bay, as we usher in New Year 5762 as we always do, to the melody of ancient chants, the sweet taste of apples and honey, and the sounds of the shofar.

I wish you and yours a shanah tovah - a good, healthy, safe new year.

Rabbi Edward Elkin RH Day Two 5762 Sept. 19, 2001

The 16th century Spanish historiographer Solomon ibn Verga wrote his work Shevet Yehudah during the 1520's, during the period following the expulsion from Spain. He himself had gone from Spain to Lisbon in 1492, but even there was compelled to live for a time as a Converso, a Jewish convert to Christianity. Finally, he left for Italy where he was able to reflect on his experiences and that of his people from the destruction of the Second Temple until his own day.

One of the stories he recounts about the period of the Spanish Expulsion concerns a certain ship carrying exiles from Spain which was struck with a plague. The ship's owner cast the passengers off onto uninhabited terrain. Most died there of hunger; only a few found the strength to proceed on foot in search of civilization.

Among the survivors was a certain Jew who struggled on with his wife and two sons. The wife, who was not accustomed to arduous physical exertion, fainted and perished, leaving her husband with the two boys. Soon the three of them also fainted from hunger, and when the father awoke he found his two sons dead.

In agony, he rose to his feet and cried, "Ribono shel Olam, Master of the Universe, You go to great lengths to force me to abandon my faith. Know for a certainty that in the face of the dwellers of heaven, a Jew I am, and a Jew I shall remain - despite all your efforts. All that You have inflicted on me in the past, or will bring upon me in the future, is of no avail." Then he gathered dirt and grasses, covered the boys, and went off in search of a settlement.

Yesterday I spoke with you about anger, and I reflected with you about anger's legitimate role in the range of human emotions. I spoke about God's anger at the people for not living up to the terms of the covenant, and about the people's anger at God for not defending them in their time of need. I spoke about the anger we feel at people who are close to us who have let us down, and I spoke about the anger we feel at the terrorists who have robbed us of our dream of an Israel at peace, and a North America safe and secure, through their unrelenting hatred and violence.

This morning I want to reflect with you about a different human response, one which we could feel the father in the Solomon ibn Verga account struggling against. I speak now of despair. The father in that tragic story overcame what would have been a very natural tendency to give up given his horrific losses and his desperate circumstances. One gets the feeling that had he given in to hopelessness, he never would have had the strength to put one foot in front of the other and survive. His determination davka to survive, to maintain his will to live despite everything that had been thrown at him -- this is what makes the story so inspirational.

When I have spoken with people about their feelings about what happened in the US this week, and what has been transpiring in Israel over the last year, I often hear anger. But perhaps more often, I hear despair and hopelessness, a feeling that there is no way out. That terrorists bent on suicide have an edge which we can never defend against or overcome, that we'll never feel safe again, that the situation of Israel will never be good. The cycle of retaliations has fed this despair; every time one side or the other commits another act of violence, we just wait then for the other shoe to drop. We know that the retaliation will come, and the way out feels ever more remote. It is a feeling of being trapped in a locked cage with one's mortal enemy with no way out. Many of us have lived with this feeling for a long time regarding the Middle East conflict; we may be about to encounter it as well in the American-led war on terrorism. When we think of something that we think might "work", its efficacy as a solution is almost immediately debunked, and so our hope of finding a solution grows dimmer and dimmer. I recently heard the story of a woman who misplaced her cell phone. Her friend observed her frantically turning her house upside down looking in every nook and cranny, and asked her about her search. "I've looked everywhere," she said, "except in the vest pocket of my green jacket." The friend responded with the obvious question, "Why don't you look in that pocket?" And the woman said with panic in her voice, "Because, what if it's not there?"

This is the fear we face as we consider Israel's options. What if we've run out of options? What if, contrary to the assurances of both right and left over the years, there is no military solution nor is there a diplomatic solution? Can we take the chance that if we really investigate the situation thoroughly and rationally, we will succumb utterly to despair? Or can we muster the determination which that father in the Solomon ibn Verga story managed to muster, the determination davka to retain our hope that peace is possible? His very life was directly at stake. Ours may be too. But for sure, our faith in the ability of human beings to transcend conflict, the ability of people to work things out on the basis of compromise, the ability of people to act on the basis of a rational calculation of their interests instead of on the basis of emotion and anger and revenge, that is certainly at stake for us. Even those who have decided that they have lost their faith in God may still have retained the faith that people can change for the better. But even that faith is now in peril, especially in light of last week's terror on North American shores. How do we stave off cynicism and despair? I propose that our High Holy Days perhaps can help us here.

The entire basis for Rosh Hashanah and the Ten Days of Repentance is the premise that people can change for the better. Underlying all the talk about sin on these holidays is a radiant optimism that through some pretty simple acts we can effect positive change in our lives. Tshuvah, tefilah, utzedakah maavirin et roa he-gezerah. After we read in the Unetaneh Tokef about all the awful calamities which threaten us in the coming year if we are inscribed in the wrong book - who will die by stoning and who by strangling, who by earthquake and who by plague - immediately following this overwhelmingly fearsome reading our liturgists give us one simple statement that radically undermines everything that came before it: repentance, prayer, and charity temper the severity of the decree. We can have an impact on our own fate, there is a way out!

The prospect for positive change is a basic tenet of our Jewish faith, yet how do we access that faith in a year like the one we're just concluding? For it wasn't just terrorism that sorely tested our faith this past year, although clearly the horrific events at the very end of 5761 are what's most on our minds at this time. This year also saw Buddhist statues being toppled in Afghanistan as an affront to the faith, while women in that sad country were denied the right to education, healthcare, or even work; we saw the unravelling of the Good Friday accord in Northern Ireland, with the image of those Catholic schoolgirls being taunted and harassed as they walked to school bringing home to us the now obvious truth that hatred is alive and well in that sorry land despite the political agreements made or unmade by leaders; we saw the AIDS epidemic continue to explode in Africa and Asia decimating whole populations; we saw an accord to slow global warming fatally undermined by countries unwilling to make some sacrifices today to insure a better tomorrow; we saw Zionism=racism, which we had thought was finally dead and buried, resurrected in the ugliest possible way at the UN Racism Conference in Durban. We can legitimately ask, where in 5761 was there room for hope, for faith in human progress?

More personally, of course, on Rosh Hashanah we need to reflect on areas of change in our own lives. If we look back to Rosh Hashanah 5761 and think about all the things we wished would be different in a year's time, how have we done? Have we brought healing to those relationships among our family and friends which are broken? Have we followed up with deed the commitments we made in thought -- to dedicate ourselves more to Jewish learning or to Jewish observance or to Jewish community? Have we participated in some kind of social justice activity to benefit those in need? Have we broken some of those old habits which get us into so much trouble, or are we still stuck in the same ruts? These are critical Rosh Hashanah questions which we need to ask and answer honestly. Again, the answers could potentially lead us down the road to despair if we allow ourselves to become so weighed down with the baggage of our past failures that we start to think of failure as inevitable. But that would be missing the point. For as Arthur Waskow points out, what is old and inevitable about us is true, but what is new and fresh and open about us is also true. We can change for the better - this is the Rosh Hashanah message, and so can the world around us, all appearances sometimes to the contrary.

The week after Yom Kippur we're going to be celebrating Sukkot. It's a wonderful holiday, so different in mood from the Yamim Noraim that I hope you'll come out and celebrate with us and feel the flow of the Jewish holiday cycle. Traditionally the book of Kohelet is read on Sukkot, Eccleciastes. It's a surprising choice for such a joyous holiday because the mood of Kohelet could not be more despairing. The refrain that we hear again and again in Kohelet is Ein Hadash Tahat HaShamesh - there is nothing new under the sun. If there's ever something that you think is new, that you think represents change and progress, don't be fooled. There is nothing new. We don't advance. We just spin our wheels and try to make the best of it.

The extraordinary thing about Kohelet, though, is that it made it into the Bible at all. Even into the rabbinic period, we hear evidence of debates among the rabbis over whether it should be part of the canon, and it's easy to see why. Its theology is so different from the rest of the Tanach. The notion that nothing ever changes, that everything is always going to be the way it is now, that notion is the antithesis of everything the Torah and the prophets teach us. A slave people can go free. Idolaters can come to believe in the one true God. A nation of sinners can repent and earn God's blessing once again. These are the tenets of mainstream biblical theology. So what is Kohelet doing in the Bible? Well come out to our study session on Kohelet on the Shabbat during Sukkot, and we'll have a chance to talk about it. For now, think about the way in which one text with a different viewpoint can put a whole worldview into relief, can highlight by its very minority status what the majority viewpoint is. The Jewish tradition, sans Kohelet, believes that no matter what has happened to us, if we but put one foot in front of the other like the father in the Solomon ibn Verga story, and hold onto our faith and our hope, we can survive and thrive and change for the better.

Let me point to three areas from which I think we can derive some hope, that can perhaps help us to safeguard our optimism during these very challenging times. The first has to do with the tremendous response of people worldwide to last week's terrible tragedy. However confounded we are by the diabolical nature of the murderers who committed this atrocity, we may take some comfort from the tremendous acts of tzedakah which emerged from its aftermath. As Rabbi David Saperstein has noted, last Tuesday morning, evil won; inhumanity succeeded. But since those terrible moments, we have witnessed a remarkable outpouring of human kindness, as if instinctively we have sought to insist that evil's victory was to be limited; that we would not permit inhumanity to prevail. We believe, deeply and stubbornly, that goodness and kindness are more powerful than cruelty. We will need to maintain this spirit through the challenging times ahead, especially as we consider those rendered most vulnerable by these events. But the fact that so much kindness and generosity and compassion emerged - in the US, here in Canada, and in countries around the world - reveals, as Lincoln put it, "the better angels of our nature."

We have donated blood, comforted the frightened, driven more courteously, waited more patiently, offered thanks - or commiseration - more emphatically, striven for a higher level of menschlichkeit. We have reached out in new ways to complete strangers who we sense are grieving, who are as bewildered and fearful and grief-stricken as ourselves. And perhaps our efforts will register and make a difference not only in the grand balance sheet on high, but also in the here and now as they help us to stave off the hopelessness and despair we often feel in the face of unspeakable and seemingly intractable evil.

On one level it seems strange to talk about anything but the recent tragedy which is so much on our minds, yet I think it's important to do so, and to begin getting some kind of perspective on the fullness of our experience. So I'd like to shift our focus to two other areas which should mitigate any tendency we might have to despair. The first is the area of Jewish-Christian relations. Our shul's Adult Education Committee has prepared a series of programs for 5762 on this topic, and I hope you'll want to come out and participate in some or all of them. The truth is that if we look at our time and compare it to Solomon ibn Verga's time, Jewish-Christian relations have changed dramatically for the better. It's not as if they're perfect; this year a notable setback was the refusal of the Vatican to fully open its archives for research by a committee of scholars looking into the actions of Pope Pius during the Shoah. And there are still pockets of Christian anti-Semitism, and there are still Christian fundamentalists who aspire to convert the whole lot of us. And there are other points of friction as well. But expulsions and inquisitions are things of the past in Jewish-Christian relations, and thank God for that. Our ancestors could not in their wildest imagination have dreamt of the level of freedom and tolerance with which we live as Jews beside our Christian neighbours, of the kind of collaborative and mutually respectful relationship which we as a shul are building with our neighbours up the street at Trinity-St. Paul's. Can we push our imaginations to conceive of a similar evolution in our relationship with the Muslims of the world? Hard to imagine I know, especially this year, but is it so much harder to believe than it would have been for Solomon ibn Verga to believe that a rabbi and a minister can go to lunch together to plan joint programs for their congregations, as I did with Rev. Llewellyn of Trinity-St. Paul's a couple of weeks back? Our yearlong series of programs will explore many different facets of this long and complicated relationship, and I hope you'll want to be a part of it.

Finally, I'd like to talk about our shul's tzedakah fund as an example of progress. On the one hand, this would seem like a strange example because we give the funds raised at the Yom Kippur appeal to such causes as Jewish Family and Child Services subsidies for indigent Jews downtown, or to a Counselling Center for abused women in Israel. In this sense, the tzedakah fund reminds us of how much work we have yet to do to improve our world. You'll hear more about it on Kol Nidre, and I hope you'll be generous when the time comes. So in what way is this fund an example of progress? Well I think that what this fund testifies to is our continuing belief that despite the enormity of the problems we face, we don't just throw up our hands and say there's nothing that little ol' me can do about them. When you write your check for the tzedakah fund you are testifying to your faith that that act in its small way can somehow make things better, can help in its small way to heal the world. Our system of tzedakah is rooted in this notion. It is a mitzvah - not a good deed, but a commandment - to retain our faith in the betterment of this world and its inhabitants, and in our ability to personally participate and contribute to that betterment. In the face of mass atrocity, our own deeds can seem pretty insignificant, but they are not. We can make the world a better place, and we can also make our own lives better - we can unfreeze those congealed negative relationships in our lives, we can redouble our commitment to do more for the community, we can over time see evidence that we have changed and grown as a society.

Our own congregation changed and grew this year - we grew from the experience of committing together to the major undertaking of the renovation, from the experience of being away from our space for 6 months, and from coming home again to our beautiful new-old shul, newly confident in the strength of our community and its vibrant future. So, despite everything you read in the papers or see on the news, I ask you this Rosh Hashanah not to give in to despair. How long will it take for Israelis and Palestinians to break out of their cycle of violence? I don't know. How long will it take for the governments of the West to conduct its war against terrorism in the aftermath of last week's horror? I don't know. We may be in for a long period of violence in our world has ve-halila. But my faith tells me that at the end of this tunnel there is light. I retain the faith that one day Israel will have the opportunity at last to develop as a sovereign Jewish country without the continuing existential threat from the outside. I retain the faith that one day we in North America will be able to look back on September 11, 2001 as a particularly horrible chapter in our past, from the vantage point of a much brighter and more secure present.

Am I na•ve? Maybe. But if so I don't want to lose my naivete, because it is that faith in a brighter future that has kept our people going through the destruction of two Temples, the Crusades, the Expulsion from Spain, of course the Shoah, and so many other tribulations over the centuries. It is that faith in a brighter future that has helped so many individuals I have encountered over the years - people in the depths of illness or emotional crisis - to muster the strength to go on.

This is religion at its best. It is religion helping us not to avoid problems, not to withdraw from the world in the vain hope that we can, by our aloofness, make this very messy world go away. And it is not passive acceptance of the evil we encounter daily. Rather it is religion cajoling us to engage in the world because that is our calling, and continue to fight to make it a better place by putting one foot in front of the other no matter how discouraged we may feel, and keeping our eyes on the prize. It is religion holding out the faith in a better world which some call moshiachzeiten, a time that will come about through some ineffable combination of human action and divine hesed. This is what our tradition can do for us at difficult times, if we but open our hearts to it and take it seriously.

So let's take the risk of looking in that vest pocket. If the cell phone is there, great. If not, we'll have to be patient, but one day we will talk on the cell phone again. One day we will feel safe again. One day we'll be able to go to Israel without fear and rejoice in its amazing accomplishments. The knife doesn't always have to fall, as we learned in this morning's Akedah reading. Disaster can be averted. A better future does await, but we've got to keep putting one foot in front of the other and not give in to despair.

I'd like to close with a poem by Annie Johnson Flint, who uses the image of the children of Israel at the shore of the Red Sea, with Pharaoh's chariots in hot pursuit, as the quintessential moment of despair overcome: (Please excuse the masculine God language)

At the Place of the Sea

Have you come to the Red Sea place in your life
Where in spite of all you can do,
There is no way out, there is no way back,
There is no other way but through?
Then wait on the Lord, with a trust serene,
Till the night of your fear is gone;
He will send the winds,
He will heap the floods,
When He says to your soul, "Go on!"
And His hand shall lead you through, clear through,
Ere the watery walls roll down;
No wave can touch you, no foe can smite,
No mightiest sea can drown.
The tossing billows may rear their crests,
Their foam at your feet may break,
But over their bed you shall walk dry-shod
In the path that your Lord shall make.
In the morning watch, 'neath the lifted cloud,
You shall see but the Lord alone,
When He leads You forth from the place of the sea,
To a land that you have not known;
And your fears shall pass as your foes have passed
You shall no more be afraid;
You shall sing His praise in a better place,
In a place that His hand hath made.