Sermons & Stories

Tonight’s D’var Torah was inspired by a teaching from Rabbi Shai Held, the Rosh Yeshiva at Mechon Hadar – an egalitarian yeshiva in New York who I heard speak at the online CCAR Conference this past year.

Gut Yuntiv!

We are told clearly how to understand our place in the world in Genesis, chapter 1. It was revolutionary then and it remains revolutionary today.

In the ancient world, kings were more than just rulers. It was as if the god that people worshipped had appointed the king to rule. The king would be the intermediary between the god and the people - they were understood to be the image of the god in that society.

In a world where that was the norm, Genesis, chapter 1 offers a radically different world view. When God says, “Let us make man b’tzalmeinu – in our image,” the Torah rejects the basic foundations of ancient societies. It’s not just the king who is an image of God – it’s all of us. Rabbi Held put it this way, “We don’t have an image of God. We are an image of God.” If we take this seriously and it’s not just the king who’s an image of god, when Genesis claims that all people are created in God’s image, the Torah leads us to the understanding that we are all royalty! Every human being is a king or a queen!

This goes beyond the opening chapter of Genesis. Think about the covenant that God makes. In the ancient world, treaties and agreements were made between kings. The god would have spoken directly to the king. In Torah, God doesn’t do this. God doesn’t speak or make agreements exclusively with kings. God speaks to common people and makes a covenant with common people. The Torah envisions common people as royalty, which speaks to a dramatic democratization of society.

This doesn’t mean that the Torah is completely egalitarian and inclusive. That comes through more recent interpretation. It still would have made everyone in the ancient world sit up and take notice. Think about it – by making everyone royalty, it takes away the need to be ruled over. Based on such notions, the Bible warns us about all of the terrible things a king will do - how detrimental a king can be. The message comes through loud and clear – we don’t need a king.

We don’t need a king? How radical that would have been over twenty-five hundred years ago. We don’t even need a king to fulfill the traditional role of protecting the vulnerable in society. Psalm 72 teaches the ideal ruler will save people who are oppressed or abused and protect the weakest people in a society. In the Torah, that responsibility falls to all of humanity. We don’t turn to a king because it’s our job.

It’s our job to give the same dignity and honor that we would give to a Queen to every person we meet. Try to imagine the respect you would give the politician or activist or celebrity you most admire. The Afghan refugee deserves the same honor. The immigrant at our border deserves the same honor. The politician you hate deserves the same honor. The Uyghur oppressed in China, the Alzheimer’s patient in memory care, the military veteran struggling with PTSD, the child starving in Haiti, the child starving in the US – all of them are royalty. All of us are royalty.

And just as it’s our job to bring dignity to every individual, it’s our job to uphold our covenant. It’s our job to care for anyone who is unable to care for themselves. This is the foundation. When Rabbi Akiva argued that the greatest principle in the Torah was love your neighbor as yourself, Ben Azzai disagreed. He argued that it was Genesis 5:1, “This is the record of Adam’s line. When God created man, God made him in the likeness of God.”

That verse says more than we’re made in God’s likeness. Some commentators also point out that the Torah is teaching us that we are all descended from the same person. We are all descended from Adam. In the opening of Genesis, God creates every kind of vegetation and every kind of winged creature and every kind of sea creature and every kind of land creature – and only one human being. The Mishna stresses this point - only a single person was created in the beginning to help us understand that no one is greater than any other and to save a life is to save a world and to take a life is to destroy a world. In other words, the greatest principle in the Torah is that we are all created in God’s image and all of humanity is one family.

And when that’s a part of our orientation to the world, when it’s a part of our identity, it saves lives. Political scientist, Dr. Kristen Monroe studied ethics during the Holocaust. She found that rescuers of Jews, unlike so many bystanders or willing participants, shared that sense of connection between all human beings. One of the rescuers she interviewed explained that the ultimate goal of life is to help and alleviate the pain of others. Dr. Monroe summed up her findings that for rescuers, “All people are a part of the human race,” (Ethics in an Age of Terror and Genocide: Identity and Moral Choice, p. 317).

We are all one family. Hear this when we hear the Haftarah read tomorrow – where we are instructed to bring people who are struggling into our home and share our food and our clothing. Malbim, one of the great commentators of the 19^th century, writes that even if we share the shirt off our back – it’s like putting it on ourselves because all human beings are one flesh.

This is the greatest principle of the Torah. This is the foundation for all of Jewish ethics. This is how we understand our place in the world. And yet…

Millions of kings and queens die each year from hunger, even though we have plenty of food.

Around two million babies that were born, created in the image of God, died in 2019 due to poor neonatal conditions, even though the medical knowledge and resources exist.

We all deserve dignity and respect and honor. All our lives have infinite worth. And we find reasons to hate, reasons why they are not us, reasons not to get involved, reasons not to give, reasons that explain why that group deserves to end up on the bottom. We can always find reasons not to live up to this ideal.

If we can’t see what the Torah is telling us, al cheit shechatanu – for the sin we committed… Yom Kippur is the day to reorient ourselves – to reshape our identity. This is the day for teshuva – to turn back to God by recognizing that all human beings are the image of God. We won’t be able to heal our polarized world unless we can rediscover our awareness that we are connected to all of humanity. We are all royalty. We are all one family.   

This is our identity. This is how to see ourselves in the world. To live like this - how much pain could we alleviate? How many lives could we save?

That was the revolution we needed when the Torah was first written. And that’s the revolution that we need today.

G’mar Chatimah Tova! May we be sealed for a good year!