D’var Torah for Yom Kippur 5768

10 Tishri 5768
September 22, 2007

Warning and Promise in the Yom Kippur Haftarah Isaiah 57:14-58:14

by Marion Malcolm

It's an honor to be here, and to talk about the Haftarah from Isaiah. For me, this has long been one of the most motivational passages in the Bible. It's especially poignant for me today because my father died 19 years ago yesterday and my mother 12 years ago tomorrow. My parents of blessed memory not only introduced me to the prophets, but also showed me with their own everyday lives that it is possible to follow the mandates of this haftarah. I know it's also a passage that many TBI congregants take seriously and incorporate into their lives.

The message we heard from Isaiah this morning is not obscure or difficult to understand. It's just difficult to hold ourselves to the standard Isaiah sets forth.

As the portion begins, we hear the same message we heard in the story of Hannah at Rosh Hashanah. Hannah exults that "they who once had stumbled have grown strong…those once hungry are not hungry any more." Isaiah brings us God's message that the spirit of the lowly shall be revived and the heart of the depressed shall be restored. It's interesting to note that while Hannah speaks in physical terms about hunger, Isaiah talks about the emotional and psychological realm, about spirit and heart. In both portions, however, promise and warning are combined. Isaiah quotes God as saying that the wicked are like a troubled sea and cannot be at peace. I read that not as punishment from above, but as a psychological truth. Maybe none of us is utterly wicked, but when we aren't behaving according to our own highest standards, we find that we cannot be at peace. Hannah says that "those well-fed now hire themselves out for bread," and calls God the Power of Upheaval and the God of Change.

The Power of Upheaval! If we are among the comfortable, this is a disturbing concept of God! How will we not feel uneasy with the idea that the God of Israel profoundly and repeatedly inverts the social order? But we can't deny the relevance of these ancient passages to our own conditions. A Jewish guy from Hibbing, Minnesota wrote a song some years back, "The Times They Are a Changing" and predicted that those who are first will later be last. There's an immediacy to both the promise and the warnings.

There's also something very contemporary about a God who recognizes that people's intentions and behavior don't always match, that they yearn for knowledge and for nearness to God, yet continue oppressive practices. But it's very clear that the God of Israel doesn't value ritualistic fasting when it doesn't correspond to reformed behavior. "Behold, while you are fasting, you engage in business and your workers you continue to oppress…you fast in strife and quarrelling."

God asks rhetorically, "Is this the kind of fast I delight in?" The answer is unequivocal: "Is not the fast that I desire the unlocking of the chains of wickedness, the loosening of exploitation, the freeing of all those oppressed, the breaking of the yoke of servitude? Is it not the sharing of your bread with those who starve, the bringing of the wretched poor into your house, or clothing someone you see who is naked, and not hiding from your kin in their need?"

It's especially powerful to contend with this passage on a fast day. A genuine "fast" involves a sacrifice of one's time or comfort for the benefit of others. We each need to evaluate our own fasting by this measure.

Isaiah calls for two kinds of actions. One is not prioritized over the other. Both are important. One involves what we think of as charity: bread, housing, and clothing for the needy. Except for the problematic dictate to bring the wretched poor into our own homes, most of us do reasonably well with the rest of it. Members of this congregation have responded to the disaster of Katrina and the tragedy of Darfur, have cared for the families in the Interfaith Shelter program, and are quite willing to donate canned goods to Food for Lane County. The only tricky part is remembering to bring those cans with us as we go out the door.

But more than individual charity is demanded of us. Tzedakah also means another kind of action, the kind that involves working for social change, for social justice -- for "the loosening of exploitation, the freeing of all those oppressed, the breaking of the yoke of servitude." The freeing of all those oppressed? The freeing of all those oppressed! That's asking a lot. No one of us can accomplish this alone and the task will not be completed in our lifetimes. It will involve standing up against racism and homophobia, supporting immigrant rights, supporting worker's rights and more. Even acts of individual witness, while they may inspire others to action, will not be enough if the goal is dismantling oppression. Achieving social justice, or even moving towards it, will require the building of alliances, strategizing, organizing, collective action. It's bound to be disparaged by some as political rather than spiritual.

Political, spiritual, how do we understand these terms? When Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel participated with Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Selma, Alabama march in 1965 was his action political or spiritual? At first he said he couldn't get there without violating the Sabbath, but he consulted the teachings and determined that one could work on Shabbat to save lives. He said about being in the march, "I felt like my feet were praying." I met Rabbi Myron Kinberg of blessed memory in the streets of Eugene in 1978 as we both were supporting gay rights. I met Rabbi Yitzhak, then a self-termed "holy hippy," when he and his buddy, Aryeh Hirschfeld, now also a rabbi, came into the CALC office about 30 years ago, asking what they could do to help the Chilean people free themselves from the Pinochet dictatorship and offering their music to the cause.

It's a privilege to align ourselves with human liberation, with all that is best about humanity, and to engage with others in sustained, collective action.

What forms might this take here and now? It might mean active involvement with the American Civil Liberties Union or Basic Rights Oregon or Community Alliance of Lane County or the Eugene-Springfield Solidarity Network, or an organization of your choosing. Basic Rights Oregon is trying to fend off ballot measure attacks on the civil unions and anti-discrimination bills passed in the last legislative session. CALC is challenging a war that is exploiting our young people in the military, sending them to kill and be killed as they participate in oppressing the Iraqi people. The Eugene-Springfield Solidarity Network just put out a call to support two different sets of workers this coming week, through an informational picket with grocery employees who work at Safeway, Albertsons and Fred Meyer, and through a rally in support of Teamsters who work for Wildish. These neighbors of ours are struggling to keep their pensions and benefits with good union contracts at a time when the corporate thrust in labor negotiations is takeaways --- takeaways that seem to me just the reverse of the loosening of exploitation that Isaiah quotes God as desiring.

Many of us may feel uneasy about participating in a rally or walking on a picket line. Okay, but that doesn't absolve us of the responsibility to find some way to stand up for justice. There are lots of options. My daughter has been invited to a number of weddings lately, and she's decided that her wedding gifts to friends who have the privilege of getting legally married will be contributions to Basic Rights Oregon.

We can bring our own unique talents and aptitudes to the struggle for justice -- creative skills as visual artists or musicians or poets, legal training or technical abilities. Or we can simply write some letters, make some phone calls or help get out a mailing. But we can't expect that supporting social justice will always be comfortable. It means struggling against entrenched, institutionalized injustice. It's certain to meet with resistance. Our actions will be seen as controversial and some will shy away from us. When that happens, it will be time to remember how Hannah called God the Power of Upheaval and the God of Change. We'll need to remember that the God of Israel is a God who repeatedly inverts the social order. Because if we take this haftarah seriously, we'll understand that working for social justice is a mandate, not a mere suggestion.

There is good news, though. We'll never have to do this work alone, and our sisters and brothers will help us continue in the struggle.

And though fulfilling the mandate Isaiah puts before us seems demanding, even risky, a reward is promised us. The haftarah began with God's pledge to restore the heart of the depressed. How will that happen? We all want to feel that our passage through this lifetime somehow matters, and sometimes depression is a result of doubting that. From my own experience, I believe that when we live a life engaged with others and do our part towards a better world, we gain perspective. We are able to lift ourselves out of the mire of self-absorption, out of our isolation, our own personal anxieties. We are able to contribute to community and we can allow ourselves to be sustained by community. Even with terrible social problems and violence all around us, we aren't likely to be depressed when we choose to work for peace and justice. Those awful conditions are in our consciousness anyway, but in doing something about them we find hope, companionship and the conviction that we can make a difference. Rabbi Heschel encouraged us never to forget that, as he put it, in spite of all absurdities and frustrations and disappointments we can do our share to redeem the world.

Isaiah quotes God as promising that if we give of ourselves, our "light shall burst forth like the dawn, our waters of healing soon flourish again." That light that bursts forth will do more than illuminate our own paths; it will become a beacon for society as well. One of the most beautiful passages from the prophets now follows. It promises an abundant life:

If you banish oppression from your midst,
The menacing hand and tainted speech,
If you give of yourself to the hungry,
Fulfilling the needs of the poor --
Then shall your light shine in darkness
And your darkness shall be like the noon.
The Righteous One will guide you always,
Will satisfy your thirst in desert wastes
Will give your bones new life,
And you'll be like a well-watered garden,
Like a spring whose waters do not fail.

The haftarah concludes with directives about the Sabbath. To me, this says that the call for charity and a commitment to social justice aren't something to which we should pay attention only during High Holidays or other special times of the year, but rather every week, as part of our lives, as a way of life. The promise is that such a life will be full, abundant and joyous. I believe that promise.

I really do believe that promise. That was going to be the last sentence of my talk. But then I woke up yesterday morning with some pretty insistent questions for myself. If I don't read the Bible literally, which I certainly don't, and if I don't actually believe that God sits up in the heavens looking like one of the prophets of old, waggling his finger at us and speaking sternly in a booming voice, then why do I take the mandate to banish oppression so seriously? Why do I believe the promise so deeply? Why do I believe in the Power of Upheaval of whom Hannah spoke? Why do I believe in the well-watered garden?

And I found some answers as I thought about it. In part, I believe in the values this haftarah puts forward because I was raised by my parents with these values and, yes, old Isaiah definitely had something to do with that.

I think, too, that even if my concept of the Eternal is both more amorphous and more inclusive than the stern God with a long beard up in the heavens, I know, we all know, deeply and intuitively, that we are connected to one another, that we are part of a common humanity. And we know that when our sisters and brothers are suffering oppression, exploitation, hunger and poverty, that is quite simply wrong. And we know we ought to be doing something about it.

In my life, I had one of those experiences we call turning point experiences. It was June of 1961 and I was a senior at Cornell, only a week or two away from graduation. Just as exam week was about to begin, I came down with old-fashioned, eight-day measles and that landed me in the college infirmary. At that same exact time several graduate student friends of mine were among the first northern college students to join the southern freedom rides. That landed them in Parchman State Penitentiary in Jackson, Mississippi. As I lay in my infirmary bed with plenty of time to ponder, it came clear to me that my friends were in jail for values I claimed to hold, and that if I didn't live by my values, then those values were not really mine, and had no meaning. They were like the hypocritical fast in our haftarah. And so I made a commitment to myself to actually try to live by my values. I know better than anyone else that I certainly haven't always done that very well, but that moment did set the direction for my life. That decision is why I've spent my adult life working for justice and peace. And though it's definitely not reflected in my meager social security check, I've had a rich life, a wonderful life. My thirst has been satisfied in the desert wastes and, so far at least, my bones are still strong.

And if we think about the heroes of the last century who we most revere for their work to banish oppression from their midst --- Mahatma Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez to name a few --- they all had a luminous quality about them. Their light really did shine in the darkness, and that is why they were able to draw others into a movement for social justice.

One of my own personal heroes is Pete Seeger. I've gone to lots of his concerts and I made sure to take my kids to his concerts when they were young, even though it meant driving to Portland. He's a hero for me because of his unrelenting commitment to social justice, for which he definitely paid a price during the anti-communist crusades of the 50's. He's a hero for giving his voice and his banjo to the struggle. But he's also a hero for me because of his contagious joy and playfulness, the way he can be silly when he's singing for children, and the way he's gotten so many of us singing with him. He's been a spring who waters have not failed.

And I think that's because he long ago aligned himself with human liberation. And it really is a privilege and a joy to align ourselves with human liberation, with all that is best about humanity, and to engage with others in sustained, collective action for justice. I hope that is the lesson we can all take away from this haftarah reading. Thank you.