Weekly D'var Torah

Many, many years ago when I was a Jew-froed college kid in Minnesota, I was busking with my old guitar on campus and met up with one of the many Evangelical youth ministers, who -- hearing me singing in Hebrew -- wanted to talk about God.

Not wanting to have a long, drawn-out showdown with a missionary, I stated flatly that I didn’t believe in God, that I was angry at God, that I was in rebellion against the whole idea of God and the failures of faith to address the crises of humanity. Did I mean it? To a degree, yes, but as we Jews all know, our relationship with HaShem is complicated...so rather than opening the window to a nuanced and complex inner experience, I just gave the youth minister the shorthand version, hoping to resolve things quickly.

But the minister saw through the ruse immediately. He smiled and said, “But you are haunted by God. You are infused with God -- God speaks powerfully through you.” Then we each went our separate ways in the cool Minneapolis spring night.

Reflecting on that brief exchange, over the years, I have thought that irrespective of our individual beliefs or lack of same, we Jews don’t just have a message -- we ARE a message. “You are My witnesses,” HaShem tells us through Prophet Isaiah. What is the message we embody?

That is too deep a question for any answer...but it seems to me that whatever it is, somehow we are a statement of faith, of eternal optimism. A people who have come through all that history, and the worst that humanity had to throw at us, and found a way to rise up time after time, not for selfishness and self-aggrandizement, but to bless the world in every human endeavor. I don’t think that it’s an accident that the CEO of Pfizer and the Chief Scientist of Moderna -- both the first companies to develop a vaccine -- are Jews, motivated by the search for healing truth.

To appropriate philosopher Marshall McLuhen’s proclamation about television: the media is the message, then whatever we as individual Jews believe or practice of our ancient faith, we are the message that HaShem has not given up on the world, that the still small Voice calling us to a higher life is still murmuring its gentle, challenging song in every human heart.
    
I am convinced more and more, from sixty years of life on this planet, that that message is the one that most needs to be heard by despairing, struggling, divided humanity.

The word Jew, Yehudi, literally means “proclaimer.” With every fiber of my being I abjure every child of Israel in this world to embrace that destiny, that message, to be that message. Many years ago now, I put to music words from King David’s Book of Psalms, which I shared at an interfaith Thanksgiving gathering. I haven’t looked at the song for a long time, but now that I have, it seems to me to express that message, at least as I understand it.

So -- truly, brothers and sisters of Beit Yisrael, let us give thanks to HaShem for the hope, love and strength implanted like a golden seed in our heart. Let us give thanks to HaShem, for we know somehow in our kishkes that HaShem is there waiting for us, encouraging us, supporting us through all the great trials of the times. Perhaps some call this the “self-actualization drive” or the placebo response or evolutionary imperative -- but we all know that whatever veil HaShem is concealed in, the light of pure life, pure being, shines through us. Let us give thanks.

Here is the song. Anything good about it is due to Yonatan’s fine recording -- its deficiencies are mine alone... Happy, Happy Thanksgiving!

Much love, Rabbi Rudin