This is the last calendar day of the Judaic calendar year
5769. Tonight, at sunsets around the world Jews will gather in synagogues and
around dinner tables to mark the change and to examine their lives in the hope
of change.
Change. A word we heard a lot of in the last year. We have
the quadrennial change of presidents (or administrations) this year. And it has
been a momentous societal change that has also brought up stiff resistance. The
election of an African-American president has lanced the boil of racism in our
country, and all the pus is spilling out. The poisonous thinking and beliefs
held by many has become a daily part of the public lack of discourse. It took
no less a moral force than former president Carter to name the elephant in the
room. And today House speaker Pelosi talked about the violence that is born
when this kind of talk is not merely condoned, but whipped up, by media clowns
whose only responsibility is to their ratings.
Since the vast majority of these people are Christians,
their communal review is generally around the secular new year. But I think of
the words in the first blessing said every morning during the Shaharit service:
“day after day You renew Creation.”
The celebration of the new year could be at any moment in
any season. We have the communal celebrations of tradition that come down to us
based on seasonal and agricultural reasons. Based on the position of the sun in
relation to our orbit around it. The Jewish new year usually falls close to the
autumn equinox. The Western secular new year falls close to the winter
solstice. Both are moments of transition in our relationship to the light of
day. Both remind us that time moves forward, that darkness falls and that light
returns, in nature and for our planet at least. But clearly we can chose any
time of the day or night, and any date on the calendar to review our lives.
As a (Buddhist) Jew, at this time of year I usually find
myself in a synagogue reciting a prayer that takes responsibility — the
communal confession of the Ashamnu and the Al Het. The prayer is not: “I lie, I
steal…” but “We lie, we steal….” It is said with the understanding that as a
community we are responsible for our words and our actions.
In my community, one of the phrases we say is “We are
zealots for bad causes.” And we are all guilty of this at times. 
This is certainly a time when the entire country would do
well to do some self-examination. Here though is the rub. True zealots don’t do
this kind of self-examination. And this is the trap Jay Michaelson has fallen
into in his recent essay in the Forward on losing his love for Israel.
Jay says that it is “exhausting to maintain my
ambivalence.” Zealots don’t face
this kind of exhaustion. Their monomaniacal dedication to their cause energizes
them around a single “truth.” But because Jay sees the multiple truths, and the
insane zealots on the Israeli side, he loses his resolve.
I understand completely. But this is what happened to Hamlet.
When faced with the opportunity to act, his doubts caused him to lose his
resolve. And instead of avenging his father and killing his uncle cleanly,
everyone ends up dead. As Arjuna stand before his cousins about to go to war
with them, and has his doubts, understanding the full horror and moral
ambiguity of the situation, Krishna schools him on taking action
whole-heartedly.
I am not pretending that I am able to do this. I just
recognize the peril of ambivalence.
I have seen how in our support for good causes we have come
to mirror the faults of those we oppose. You can see this in Keith Olbermann,
who is as guilty of simplification and manipulation of the facts as many on the
right, he just happens to be on the side I agree with — I still find him
annoying. And more tragically, we can see it in the way Israel betrays it's ideals by slowly becoming what it was founded in reaction against. But at the same time, to come back to the subject of the president
and the racism spilling out across America, this is where I lose my patience
with Obama. So it looks like he just stands there and takes the punches while
the wing-nut right goes to town. He talks of bipartisanship in a city where one
party has the knives out for him. It isn’t easy to do that. It is insanely
reasonable (there’s a phrase for you). It’s, pardon the expression, Christian.
It’s how he was able to go the Islamic nations and speak to
their issues in ways anyone rarely speaks out (or can in their societies
without fear of imprisonment or worse). And how he was able to tell Israel off
on the subject of the settlements.
It’s how he was able to go to the black churches and say he
supports lgbt rights while at the same time pushing back on the lgbt community,
and pushing our buttons by embracing so-called religious figures we see as
divisive if not simply outright hateful.
The thing that seems to give Obama his strength is just his
ability to hold the tensions and see the ambiguities. He isn’t ambivalent in
the face of these things. Psychologist Arnold Mindell has made a career of
studying the ability to stand in this position and gain strength from it. He
calls it Worldwork.
It’s a way of finding strength in admitting and opening to
the individual and community failures, and committing listening deeply to the
other. Listening to what’s under some of the insane words: the fears that
aren’t spoken because they are more threatening, and speaking to them.
I won’t say Obama is a master of this at all. He enrages me
much of the time, and disappoints me. And I worry that his insanely reasonable
attitude will lose the next election. But at the same time, I have to admire
his unwavering commitment to staying open. He said it in his recent speech to
Congress when he offered to work with others who were willing to constructively
work together even it meant compromise and conflict. He doesn’t shy from that.
But he did say that he would move ahead without them if they weren’t willing to
do the work.
He is the adult in the room. I don’t know what his spiritual
path is. He spent time in a madrasah in Indonesia. He joined a church in
Chicago. Like me, he may well be a boundary crosser. And I don’t know what his
process of review and self-examination is. What I do know is that now is the
time we in my traditional faith community spends in examination of ourselves as
a community and individuals.
I don’t have all the answers. I don’t have many of them. But
I won’t let my misgivings over the real problems in Israel let me waver in my
defense of it in the face of insane zealotry — both from within and without.
Both against the haredi attacking the lgbt community and the surrounding
countries attacking Israel’s right to exist.
And in the meantime, I’ll spend the next ten days doing some
of the spiritual 
work of the season, examining my intention, words and actions.
But I have found the best season to do this work is always now. As the 10th
step of the 12 step tradition suggests: continue to take personal inventory,
and when wrong, promptly admit it.
I'm sure I've offended many with this. Well, that assumes many have read this, and have even read this far, and I know better. This is part of my own writing out of my internal struggle with these issues, in the hope that I can act with equanimity if not zealous certainty. I hope this challenges you to do your work. I welcome your comments, and of course...
May you all have a new year that is both sweet and free of
high fructose corn syrup.
