Your Inheritance

Three things never before attempted in a rabbinic address: First, about a month ago I was given a message by God to deliver to you people. Most of the time (just as a heads up!) if someone starts a talk that way, you want to institutionalize and medicate them. But in this case it really was a message from God for you. Two, it is show-and-tell time, and I have something that I brought for show-and-tell. Three, I intend to protect your inheritance, so I am glad you have assembled for this talk today, where we can explore prudent forms of investment to be able to protect what you have.

The third, first: protecting your inheritance

I am blessed with many, many wonderful friends. I am not simply counting the people that I actually know, although I value them, too. I am not counting the thousands of people on Facebook, who seem to enjoy being friends with someone who would walk past them on the street and have absolutely no idea who they are. I love every one of them as though they were my own. I am talking about this really wonderful woman in Korea whose husband died and she has two million dollars that she would like to share with me, because she recognized in me - get this - a brother in Christ. All I need to do is email her my bank account information, and she will take care of all the details. She will arrange the transfer of funds from her husband's account (he should rest in peace) to mine. Who has friends like that? I have some internet friends who are surgeons. They have offered to sculpt body parts that the last time I looked I didn't even possess. Friends everywhere! My favorites are the friends who invite me to come to meetings, at no expense, at which they will help me take care of my inheritance. I decided, dear reader, that you may not have the kind of wonderful friends that I do, and so I would be that friend to you.

This leads me to God talking to me.

God and I have been talking to each other now for several decades. I actually met God my sophomore year at college. Don't get confused; God was not actually admitted to university. I am not even sure God could get into a college these days! But I met God at college my sophomore year and we instantly hit it off. It was love almost at first sight. I know this because I met God and I met Elana the same semester, and it was pretty much the same feeling (although not quite so many benefits with God as there were with Elana).

Now Comes the Show-and-Tell From God

One thing you should know about my friendship with God is that, while on the whole God is fairly easy going, jovial and pleasant company, sometimes God's excessively literal. I'll articulate a need for something from God and God takes the request a bit too concretely. A couple of weeks ago I was doing what most rabbis were doing, which was panicking about the sermons for the Holy Days. The difference between mediocre rabbis and truly great rabbis, is how long can you hold off the panic before you do anything about it. The greater the rabbi, the longer they just live with the impending sense of doom and tension before they actually sit down to do something. At some point the tension level got so high that God must have decided to take matters into God's own hands, and to do something about it. At the time, I was in the superb Ostrow Library of American Jewish University where they have this row of old books which they have determined are of no possible use for anyone anymore. Consequently the librarians line them up to give them away for free. Over the years I have discovered hidden treasures among those old books. But here comes the show-and-tell, folks. I have to tell you about this particular find because God sent it for you.

Picture this: I am rummaging through this shelf of old books, and I stumble across an old, brittle copy of Rambam's Moreh Nevukhim (The Guide of the Perplexed). The pages are so yellow that it is risky to even open it. Now Rambam is my homie. I love Rambam. Not just because he had rice at Pesach; not just because he didn't serve the meal after a wedding until after 9:30 or 10:00 o'clock at night, long after all the Ashkenazim have gone home. I love the Rambam because he asks the really big questions about the world. Rambam didn't ask constricted self-interested questions. He asked broadly universal questions and clarified humanitarian themes, "What does it mean to be human?" "How does the universe work?" "What are we supposed to be doing with our time here?" Then he mustered the Torah and the resources of Judaism's sages to answer those significant big questions.

Rambam and I are very close, so I thought this book would be a great addition to my library. It is a venerable edition in Hebrew with Hebrew commentary. A nice book to keep on my desk at work, but it's real significance still eluded me. I didn't yet know that God had sent me this book to share it with you.

Still standing in the library I opened up the book and, inside the front cover, I notice there's a bookmark: "from the library of Esther and David Lieber." Some of you may not know who Esther and David Lieber are in my life or in the life of our community, or in the development of Judaism at large, and I will rectify that deficiency now. Rabbi Dr. David Lieber was the first full-time President of the then-University of Judaism (what is now American Jewish University). But before he was President of the UJ, he was the Rabbi at Sinai Temple, and he remained a life-long member of the congregation. Every year at the High Holy Days he would be sitting toward the right center of the Main Sanctuary, toward the back of the room. Anyone who knew David Lieber can attest to his unique, wonderful smile. The man simply loved everybody, and he loved from a place of real integrity and purity, deep in his heart. Lest you ever doubt that there was a Tzaddik (a saint) who walked these halls, I am telling you, Dr. Lieber, alav ha-shalom, was a Tzaddik by any standard; a truly righteous, sweet man. Turns out, even though he didn't serve rice during Pesach, and even though he would be one of the ones who would go home before the mustard lamb would get served at a Persian wedding, he is one of my homeboys, too.

So a book from the Rambam and from David Lieber - how great is that?!? I knew I wanted to keep the book, especially when I looked up on the facing inside page and saw that Dr. Lieber had signed the book and dated it April 28, 1942: Come back with me in time to the presentation of this little blue book: David Lieber is a young rabbinical student in New York City. The upper right corner of the page bears a note in his meticulous, tiny script: Jewish Theological Seminary, Morgenlander Prize. Now, I know what a Jewish Theological Seminary is, but I do not know what a Morgenlander Prize is, but I can guess. I surmise that it was a prize bestowed upon a promising rabbinical student to encourage him in his studies. In 1942, young David Lieber was awarded this book of the Rambam, to say, "Good job little Davey. Persist in your studies and you might amount to something some day."

Inspiring as that message is, as treasured as the book is, it's still not why I'm asking you to focus on it at such length. Here is why I think it so significant and where God's heavy-handedness comes in.

I'm flipping through this treasure of a book for no reason in particular (It's just one of my quirks - I'm always looking for something enlightening just around the bend), and I find a small file card with a handwritten note in David Lieber's handwriting. (Said the Lord, 'David, your student Brad needs a sermon for Yom Kippur.' Rabbi David said, 'Okay, God, I'll take care of it.') Unbeknownst to the young David Lieber, the hidden reason why he wrote this note and stuck it inside this little blue book is because one day I would be in a panic about what I was going to tell you today, and David Lieber would deliver me a sermon to present to you almost seventy years later!

Here's the sermon.

David Lieber's note card reads: Faith that the forces making for good in the world, God, are the natural direction for which the world tends in spite of apparent setbacks. This is a message from the other side, dear reader! Pay attention! Faith that the forces making for good in the world, God, are the natural direction toward which the world tends in spite of apparent setbacks. Let me explicate what my teacher, Dr. Lieber, meant by those words. God has created a universe in such a way that goodness naturally rises to the top. The universe, if left to its own devices, will produce goodness, righteousness, decency, all by itself. What interferes with that propensity to goodness is our evil inclinations, our pettiness, our creation of suffering for others, our aligning as warring camps that attack each other and harm each other. One of the lessons I taught my children when they were little is that when you enter a swimming pool, you don't have to fight to stay on the surface of the water. The water wants you to be at the top, and the water will buoy you if you let it. You just have to stop fighting the water's natural tendency to lift. Similarly, Dr. Lieber is telling us is that we live in a universe in which goodness is the natural condition, and we call that natural goodness - God. But, he says, there are apparent setbacks. I don't need to tell you what they are. You can make your own list of awful things that really happen and that are devastating: loved ones who are taken away from us; natural and social disasters that we cannot control, and we cannot yet prevent. These losses are real and the suffering is deep. But Dr. Lieber tells us that they are apparent setbacks, and that the natural inclination of the universe is towards justice, towards freedom, towards goodness.

He offers a second insight: Social evil is something to be overcome. It is neither chance nor a reason for frustration. Hear what he's telling you (and it's vintage David Lieber). It is: Don't give up; don't lose hope. When bad things happen we are not supposed to become passive; we are not supposed to lay back and say, 'oh well, this was meant to be.' We are supposed to fight the undesired outcome with every insight we can muster, every last ounce of strength. When a loved one is sick, we provide the best possible medical care we can find for them. When someone under our care needs our help, we do not take no for an answer. We surround them with love and caring. When people need to be nurtured, we make it our job to do it. When injustice is evident, and we can oppose the harm, it is our obligation to stop it. We ourselves embody and mobilize the 'natural goodness' that is at the core of the universe.

Thank you Dr. Lieber. Thank you, God. But that is still not what I want to talk about.

What I want to talk about was my first reaction when God handed me this book with Dr. Lieber's notes in it. I thought - this is a precious possession. I will cherish this, the rest of my life: one of my favorite Jewish philosophers, from one of my favorite teachers and rabbis. I will treasure this legacy, forever. Then I started to think, we all have precious treasures that we have been given by people we love. So I want to invite you to reflect on what's in your own home, in your own heart, enriching your own life:

• I want you to think about that wonderful gift you were given by a loved one, by perhaps a spouse who is not with us anymore. I want you to think about the gift your mom or your dad gave you, or something they cherished that they bequeathed you. When you took that object you knew that it was so filled with their love that you can't help but pick it up and feel their love as if it were right now, right here - this moment.

• I want you to think about those special letters you filed away from friends, from parents, children, grandchildren, how when you received them, they illumined your soul and ignited your smile.

• I want you to think about someone you are especially connected to right now, and how they are doing something amazing in the world: Going to preschool for the first time; heading off to college for the first time; coping with a difficult period in their life, and somehow being able to still be their best selves, surpassing their own previous limits. Think about the inspiration it gives you to reflect upon what they are doing in the world.

• I want you to think that when the Rambam wrote this book, and when David Lieber was given it, there was no independent democratic Jewish State in the Land of Israel. Yet we live in a time when I can send my daughter after high school to spend a semester in a vibrant, dynamic secular city called Tel Aviv. And then I can also give her the gift of a semester to study and live in a vibrant, ancient religious center called Yerushalayim, which for my grandparents was just a word in a prayer book.

We have so many inheritances, such a rich yerushah, such an abundant heritage!

And that leads me to my third point.

If you were to place someone in a room and pack that room with gold, yet you blindfold that person so she didn't know the riches that were around her, even if she were to own the gold, it is as if it does not exist. So my words are not about cataloging what we possess. Life is about mindfulness. Life is about remembering, about cherishing what is ours, because we are Jews; because we live in freedom; because we live in an age in which Medinat Yisrael exists and continues to struggle with its own shortcomings to make itself better fit its own ideals; because we live in a free country where we can gather in open communities; because we are surrounded by each other and the love we, each of us, bring to our lives; because of generations of people who have gone before us, who have prepared for us this rich and wonderful path of life. We are so rich it almost hurts to think about it. And I am not here referring to the kind of riches that my friend in Korea would like to email me. I am referring to a wealth abiding and wondrous.

Jewish prayers often start with "Eloheinu, ve-Eloheinu Avoteinu, Our God, and God of our ancestors." "Elohei Avraham, Elohei Yitzhak Ve-Elohei Ya'akov, Elohei Sara, Elohei Rifka, Elohei Rachel ve-Leah. God of our mothers and our fathers have gone before us." What might it mean to really savor that the universe is as Dr. Lieber just taught us, naturally inclined to good because of our Bubbies and our Zadies, our Sabas and our Savtas, those who have gone before us, who nurtured our heritage, and when we needed it, nurtured us. We are swimming on the rich sea of their love and it lifts us up; it buoys us to the surface. I will confess to you that sometimes in my prayers, I change the traditional words and I pray to Elohei Shira and Elohei Ya'akov - to the God of my daughter Shira and the God of my son, Jacob, because they have been around long enough that they are now part of my inheritance, too. They have given me so many gifts: My son's resilience and his great sense of humor; his deep and piercing wisdom; his enthusiasm and his energy; my daughter's refusal to be anyone but herself; her zest for life, her desire to go out into the world and know that the worlds is hers to conquer. There are so many blessings that I have been given, not only by those who came before me but by those who are coming after me. That stream, too, constitutes a rich inheritance. In a few days we will recite Yizkor - Hazkarat Neshamot, the Memorial prayers for the deceased. This service - recited at Yom Kippur and each of the Pilgrim Festivals, offers a recurrent chance to reflect on just how interwoven we are with our people, with our loved ones who are in our hearts but not in this room. But before we do that, I want us just to take a minute, right here, now, wherever you may be. I want you to close your eyes for a minute and feel all the love of all the people who have made your life what it is today. The ones you know; the ones you haven't met yet but you know are coming; the ones who were part of your life and still part of your heart; the ones who devoted their lives' work to make your life possible, though you never met them, either.

I want you to think with your eyes closed of our brothers and sisters of the House of Israel all over the world, scattered in cities, in rural areas, in Buenos Aires, in Morocco, in Tunisia, in Israel, in Europe, in Asia, in Africa. I want you to feel their fellowship, and your oneness with them.

And then I want you to think about the One who makes it all possible. Our tradition tells us we have really one rabbeinu(our teacher) and that one rabbeinu is not you or your Rabbi, not me and not even Rabbi Lieber. That rabbeinu is, God, the Ribbono Shel Olam. The One whose breath you breathe, the One whose life-force gives you life; the One whose will to goodness and survival and care you have the opportunity to channel. And as we emerge from these prayers and this day, I bless us all that we are truly children of the One, always walking in the world knowing that we are held, that we are loved, and that we are invited to be someone else's inheritance.

Shalom.