Three Voices Resound Throughout the World

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor
Rosh HaShanah – First Day – 5763
September 7th, 2002

-Intro-

I stand here acutely aware that by the secular calendar a year ago I was in ignorant bliss of an impending catastrophe. By the Jewish calendar I was already groping for words to express our horror and pain and somehow lift you and me from the depths to which we had plunged. It is now a year later by both countings. Since then the Pentagon has been repaired, the debris of the World Trade Center has been completely removed, as has the plane wreckage in Pennsylvania. Since then Ruby and I traveled to Israel with a mission from our Federation for a very special program for our community called Project 2K. After the other members returned home, we stayed in Israel for another two and a half weeks driving from the Golan in the north to Eilat in the south. Today I want to share my heart with you about both subjects. The essence of my message:

While there is certainly great evil in the world,

From which we are not immune,

While we most certainly live with certain fears and apprehensions,

And do not have a crystal ball that will reveal the future,

Our faith teaches us: We must live with hope.

Our faith teaches us: We must visit the State of Israel.

There have been so many junctures in our history that caused doubt and despair: the destruction of the Northern Israelite kingdom and the ten lost tribes; destruction of two Temples and a failed second revolt against Rome with resultant exiles; expulsion from Spain and many other countries; and, the Holocaust. If we ever had yielded to gloom and doom, we would have been destroyed and perished from the face of the earth.

For us, as Americans, as Jews, America, our safe haven,

And for many of us, the land of our birth, shall never be destroyed!

For us, as Jews, as Americans, the State of Israel shall not perish!

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I

A Rabbi in his sermon, delivered on September 22, 1941, cited the Talmudic tractate of Yoma 20b. His text was shared among Rabbis in preparation for our sermons this season. Unfortunately his name was omitted from the xerox. Its appropriateness struck me deeply. His Talmudic text is my vehicle for this sermon.

The Talmudic text:

Shalosh kolot holkin misof ha-olam v'ad sofo;
There are three voices or sounds that resound throughout the whole world 
From one end to the other;
The sound of Galgal Chamah,
the revolution of the sun;
The sound of Hamonah Shel Romi,
the tumultuous hosts of Rome;
And the sound of Neshamah b'sha-ah she-yotzah min ha-guf, 
The soul departing from the body of man.

II

The rabbinic authors wrote this text in poetic and mystic language to describe the plight of their world. They lived during the day of the Roman Empire, which had been begun to conquer and strangle the Mediterranean world. Its legions destroyed the land of Israel and the Temple, ransacked Jerusalem and carried away the Jews in chains as slaves. But Israel was not the end of Rome's road of plunder. It wanted to conquer the whole world and crush all peoples. The Rabbis described their abject dilemma by referring to these three sounds that reverberate throughout the world.

1) Kol Galgal Chamah: Ordinarily when the sun sets upon one part of the earth, it shines on another. But now the Rabbis beheld a complete Galgal Chamah – a universal setting of the sun. They articulated the terror of their world as the sound of the sun disappearing from all humanity, as a blackout of the world. The Rabbis understood that the threat and destruction by Rome was not just for Israel. It was a threat for the whole world. The author of the 1941 sermon referenced his remarks to the Nazi regime. And we understand the ancient text in reference to terrorism and radical Islam today. In all three situations the superficial and blind could say that all they wanted was the Jews. "Let the sun set on the Jews and it will continue to shine on us." And all three are wrong! We know from history that the rapacious Roman Empire did not stop with Eretz Yisrael. Their thirst went far beyond. The voices of appeasement before and in the early years of World War II had no trouble in joining Hitler in saying "give him the Jews, be done with them, and all will be well with us." Nazism was truly a blackout of humanity, blackness in destruction and murder, blackness in heartlessness. If unchecked it would have been the worst barbarism to conquer the whole world – misof ha-olam v'ad sof ha-olam. And the world today is wrong to think that September 11 th was aimed only at the United States and because of Israel. I remember the woman from Chesterfield County who called me late that morning and said, pleadingly, "If we give them back Israel, will they stop bombing us?" No! No! A thousand times "No!" The blackness of Galgal Chamah is beyond the United States and Israel. Europe, the United Nations, and the rest of the world have not read history, have not read our history.

The sound of Galgal Chamah, the revolution of the sun, holack misof ha-olam v'ad sofo, threatens from one end of the world to the other.

2) Kol Hamonah Shel Romi: The Jews of Eretz Yisrael experienced first hand the brutality and inhumanity of the Roman legions. The details of the Midrashim and laments composed in the Rabbinic period tear one's heart, how the mighty and ferocious Roman hordes destroyed people and land. Some of them became the heart of our Yom Kippur Martyrology service. The English lexicon is bereft of words to adequately portray both the horror of Roman barbarity, viciousness and savagery and that of the Nazis. And from the Holocaust we have pictures, too. I confess to having absolutely no understanding of how human beings can do these things. I have no understanding how they could fly the jets directly into buildings filled with thousands of men, women and children. I have no understanding how people can strap explosives around their bodies that will also tear them to shreds, and walk into a market place, a pizza shop and detonate. Ruby and I ate in Sbarro pizza shop twice and walked the Ben Yehuda Pedestrian Mall numerous times. Yet this is not contained to Israel and America. Hatred and inhumanity by the terrorists knows neither boundaries nor borders. Today hate the Jews and Americans. Tomorrow hate the world.

Kol Hamonah shel Romi stretches misof ha-olam v'ad sofo, from one end of the world to the other. No one is spared. No one is immune.

3) Kol Neshamah b'sha-ah she-yotzah min ha-guf, The soul departing from the body of man. The Rabbis of this Talmudic piece did not only hear the cries of our people slain and butchered as they defended the Temple, the Land and our people as they died. They heard the sound of the soul departing the universe. The avalanche of ruination and devastation was aimed at the destruction of the soul of humanity, not just of the Jewish people. The Talmud refers to the soul of our people dying for our land. The author of the WWII sermon referred to the souls of all peoples dying in a world war, from Bataan to Normandy, on every ocean and continent. I do not permit myself to think of what it must have been like to be on the planes, in the Pentagon or in the Towers. It is too terrifying. It is too horrible. Could I ever get it out of my mind? Would we not go mad from even the thought, even without experiencing it? The crumbling of the towers was more than of concrete and metal. The deafening, incomparable noise which no one of us will ever forget, never purge from our memory, was the sound of the neshamah, of the souls of the nearly three thousand people, k'she'yotzin min ha-guf, as they left the bodies. This sound is not contained to these places. It is the sound of those killed by suicide murders on buses, markets, at Hebrew University.

The sounds of the murdered also resounds, holkin misof ha-olam v'ad sofo, throughout the world.

Left to their devices, the doers of evil, the radical fundamentalists that only tolerate a world in their image, evil of any and every stripe will return this world to primordial chaos. And the Rabbis understood that potential.

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4)

But there is one more word in this Talmudic piece. V'yesh omrim, there are other rabbis who say, Af Ledah – there is another voice heard from one end of the world to another, the sound of birth. My first reaction to that statement was:"Are they crazy? How can they say that? How can anyone say such a thing?" Then we stop and think about our history. The Rabbis were right. After the first Temple we built the Second. After the second we built the Rabbinic Talmudic tradition. After Eretz Yisrael we built the Jewish communities of Babylonia, and so forth. All that was said about Galgal Chamah, Hamonai Romi and the Neshamah are true.

And yet, and yet, we give birth again. We build again.

From every darkness comes forth light.

Who would have thought of the rebirth of European Jewry, of Russian Jewry, after its destruction?

Who would have thought that people who survived the camps would ever make children to see the world?

Who would have thought that the Pentagon would be whole, the Pennsylvania field be planted, and someday in some design, there will be buildings standing on the World Trade Center plaza?

And who could have thought that there would ever be Medinat Yisrael, the State of Israel?

V'yesh omrim, there are other rabbis who say, Af Ledah, the sound of birth.

III

In the Torah God commands Abraham to stand up on the mountain and look north, south, east and west at the land of Canaan, for this would be the home of Abraham's children. Ruby and I did what God told Abraham to do and beginning with the mission which picked a region, Emek Chefer, to develop a deep personal relationship with the Richmond Jewish community, we looked at the land and its people.

We saw continual acts of birth.

We saw highways, buildings, museums, homes built during an ongoing war which has never stopped.

We saw the places that had been destroyed, and then the blood was cleaned from the stones, the broken glass swept up, and then rebuilt.

We saw many babies, many young children and many pregnant women. Despite all that they live under, the sound of birth is heard from one end of Israel to the other.

And we looked into our people's eyes and saw resoluteness, determination, and loneliness. They can and will deal with everything else. They will continue to build the country and populate it. But they can't imagine not having us.

Let me tell you a story.

The curator of Mt. Zion, traditional burial place of King David, located just outside the Old City Walls, instituted the custom of presenting a pressed flower to every pilgrim who ascended the mountain. When asked why he does not give a fresh flower, he related a story that goes back to the period when the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem.

When the Prince of Coucy was about to join the Crusaders on their way to wrest the Holy Land from the Moslems, he went to bid farewell to his friend, the Rabbi of Coucy. The Prince asked the Rabbi what he would like him to bring back from Jerusalem. "My friend," said the Rabbi, "please bring me some sign of life to comfort me in the knowledge that Jerusalem has not been left barren; a sign of vitality that will bolster my faith in the eventual regeneration of the Holy City and return of my people now dispersed throughout the world." The Prince promised to fulfill the Rabbi's request and departed.

Several years went by. Finally the Prince of Coucy returned home. He called on the Rabbi and handed him the promised gift. It was a wilted flower. "In all of Jerusalem I could not find anything with any life in it," explained the Prince. "The city has been plowed up; it is completely desolate and in ruins. On Mt. Zion I found this wilted flower. I tried to revive it with water, but to no avail. I brought it because it had at least a spark of life."

As the Rabbi took the withered flower into his trembling hands and pressed it to his lips, tears rolled down his cheeks. As soon as the tears touched the flower, miraculously the petals opened and flower blossomed forth. Amazed, the eyes of the Rabbi and the Prince widened. After a moment, the significance of this startling phenomenon dawned on the Prince. "You have brought the flower back to life."

I don't know which is the exact parallel to the flower in the story.

Is it is us? So many of American Jewry have traveled the world and never set foot in Jerusalem.

Is it the Israelis? Who yearn – not for our money – but to be touched and hugged and kissed by us!

Is it the Land? It is has been touched by blood but not by our feet and not by our lips!

Are we only supposed to put a drop of soil of eretz Yisrael in our caskets in our death, and not see it in our lifetime?

 

Use the metaphor, as you will.

Every one of us here needs to touch a flower of Israel to our lips -- in Israel.

Each of us needs to participate in the miracle of birth, not just of our children and grandchildren, but of Israel.

Each of us needs to walk the streets of Jerusalem, hold hands with Israelis, draw into our lungs its air, and participate in the eternity of the Jewish people.

Each of us needs to water a flower in Israel with our tears.

We need to do it for them, if not for us.

We need to do it for ourselves, if not for them.

To this purpose I announce that I will be leading a tour to Israel for our congregation next July. It will be a first for you and a first for me. I have already been long at work, even while I was in Israel. I am not blind or unenlightened about dangers. Ruby and I understood that very well. Like our ancestors throughout the generations we would be undaunted in our determination to see the miracle of creation and be present with our people. At the end of Yom Kippur and at the end of next Pesach's seder we will say: "L'shanah ha-bahah beYerushalayim. – Next year in Jerusalem."

That year is now.

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-Conclusion-

I pray many prayers day and night.

I pray for the peace of our country, peace from war and peace from fear.

I pray for peace for the world, that no people, no child shall dread the dawn or the night.

I pray for all people who live in the Middle East, not just for our own. That would betray the essence of what the Rabbis taught us and is our Jewish faith.

I pray that the situation will be better, much better very soon. Who knows?

I pray that there is one more voice to be heard

misof ha-olam v'ad sofo,

from one end of the earth to the other:"

Od Yavo Shalom Aleynu v'al kulam.

Yet will peace come upon us and everyone.

 

"L'shanah ha-bahah beYerushalayim. – This year in Jerusalem."

Amen.