Who Is A Hero?

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor
Kol Nidrei
September 26th, 2001

 

In chapter four of Pirkey Avot, Ethics of the Fathers, Ben Zoma is quoted as asking: "Who is wise? Who is rich? Who is honored? And, who is strong – who is a hero?" The wise learns from everybody. The rich are happy with their portion. The honored honors others. The hero is the master of his yetzer, his instincts.

Tonight I want to talk about heroes.

What do you think when you hear the word "heroes"? Maybe that is unfair. I needed to ask that question before September eleventh. I have had fun talking about baseball players. Who is a hero? Barry Bonds questing after the home run title? Michael Vick from Virginia Tech, now playing on the Falcons? Michael Jordan, who soared through the air and keeps rumors alive of a return to the NBA? Is it the race car driver that can go around the track the fastest and earn the most Nascar points? Is it Shawn Green of the Los Angeles Dodgers because, being Jewish, he will sit out Yom Kippur? Is it a president, who previously was the object of every joke with the letter "w"?

Who is a hero for us?

Who is a hero for our children?

What do they have to do?

Do they have to be known at all?

This sermon is devoted to heroes. Their presence in the world gives us the merit by which our world is permitted to survive. Maybe we can learn to be heroes, too.

There is a fascinating passage in the Talmud which says the following: "Lo pachot alma mitlatin v'shitah tzadikay" – "The world must not have less thirty-six righteous people in each generation" – "dimkabley ahpey shechinah bechol darah" – "who welcome the presence of God each day of their lives." The Talmud says that without these thirty-six people the world could not exist. Since the thirty is represented by the Hebrew letter Lamed and six is represented by the Hebrew letter Vov, together pronounced Lamed-Vov, this group became know as Lamed-vovnicks. Without them, the world would collapse. We have to examine the Talmudic dictum.

What does it mean to "welcome the Shechinah?"

Why does the Talmud use the word "Shechinah" for God's presence instead of some other word?

To answer the second question first: The Hebrew language does not have gender neutral words; they are either masculine or feminine. The word "Shechinah" is feminine in declension, and thus used as a metaphor for God's aspects of mothering, nurturing and protecting. The Rabbis created an image of God based on that of a mother bird, which hovers over the nest of her young, her fluttering wings protecting the nestlings from attack, from the weather, from falling branches. The Rabbis imagined God protecting us just as the mother bird protected her young. So the Rabbis spoke of us being protected "tachat kanfay haShechinah" – "under the wings of the Shechinah."

I can't give the history of this usage of this metaphor for God, but it gained frequent usage. In the liturgy God is called "Shocayn Ad" – "the One who dwells forever." It is a comforting and protecting image. The mother bird couldn't eliminatepredators from the world, nor change the weather, nor trim the tree of broken branches. But she could spread her wings and interpose her body between those threats to her babies' existence and protect them. I think that the Rabbis saw that imagery applicable to God. Allowing the world to go its way, because there was no alternative, the Rabbis pictured God as spreading His, in the metaphor, Her wings over us to protect us. This is the meaning of the word Shechinah.

Now to answer the first question : What does it mean to "welcome the Shechinah?"

The Lamed-vovnick is the person who makes this sheltering presence present in the world daily. How do they do that? Some might answer that they do it by praying, by invoking God's name in prayer at each moment, saying one hundred blessings each day, by living with quiet piety. Maybe that is what some Lamed-vovnicks do. Since we are not supposed to know them as such in their lifetimes, maybe there have been some among us. Some might answer that the Lamed-vovnick is distinguished by acts of gemilut chasadim, loving-kindness. Was Jules Jacobson a Lamed-vovnick with his sweetness and gentility and welcoming presence to all who entered this sanctuary? Was Jules Mintzer who said to me "You always have to be able to laugh"? I have remarked in some eulogies that certain people struck me as possibly being Lamed-vovnicks, something I dared not say to them in their lifetimes. That is the rule of being a Lamed-Vovnick.

Judaism uses the term hero – gibbor – very selectively. None of the patriarchs, not Moses, Joshua, David or Solomon is called a gibbor, no matter what they did in the lives. It is applied most usually to God, as the One who did heroic acts that we mortals could not imitate: create the world; resurrect the dead; influence nature. It is very hard to be a gibbor, to be a real hero, a term I link with being a Lamed-vovnick.

Yet clearly the passage in Pirkey Avot indicates that it is possible for human beings to be gibborim. We do it by conquering our instincts. What do they mean? If we are prone to criticize, restrain ourselves, and praise instead. If we are prone to think "finders keepers…" bring it to the lost and found. If we are prone to run after money we should stop and smell the roses and embrace our families. While we have a yetzer hatov, we have good instincts, this passage in Pirkey Avot is referring to the yetzer harah, which is not necessarily bad, but is that elemental component which is detrimental, least desired in our complexion.

I believe that we can see in Judaism an understanding that there are levels of being a gibbor, of being a hero. Thehighest level is when we are mekadesh haShem, by our behavior we sanctify God's name in public, we make the Shechinah evident in the world. There have been terrible times in our history that people, like Rabbi Akivah, were mekadesh haShem, as he died saying Shema Yisrael when the Romans burned him to death at the stake. That was repeated many times in our history. But we can be mekadesh haShem when we help elderly people up and down stairs, when necessary. We can do it by showing respect to people of different colors, creeds, ethnicities and religions. We make God manifest in the world when we conduct ourselves with exemplary behavior, when we do what we didn't have to do. We don't have to die to be a hero, even if it is a small "h" and the deed is otherwise unknown. Before God all these little deeds weigh heavily, we believe.

We live at a time of many heroes, whose names mean nothing to us. Before these weeks you would not have recognized the word pronounced "Fidney" standing for the Fire Department of New York. You and I left behind ideas of the fire department in our youth. Maybe we had play trucks that were fire engines or plastic red hats. We heard stories about sliding down the poles and there were funny scenes in movies about hook and ladders. Maybe some of us view "Third Watch" on television. For most of us, our parents told us to go to college. They didn't say, "Become a fireman." While I don't think that that will change in the foreseeable future, we do have an image to hold up before ourselves and our children about who is a hero.

Here is a Jewish definition of a gibbor: A hero, a gibbor, is a person who conquers and controls his instinct and does heroic acts that take the highest amount of courage and bravery. Instead of running away and thinking only about him/herself, the hero conquers the instinct for self-survival and runs forward on behalf of others. By doing so they are mekadesh haShem, they make God's presence present in the world. They try to bring God's sheltering presence into the world.

The men and women of FDNY were heroes because they knew there was extreme danger, even if they couldn't imagine that the Twin Towers would collapse. In the face of extreme danger they imitated God and tried to spread sheltering wings, like the image of the mother bird over her young, to be "mikabley ahpey shechinah bechol darah"- "to welcome the presence of God each day of their lives," even if it cost them their own.

In the telling of the many tales of that day, other stories of true heroes have come to fore, people who were unknown before and will be unknown again, who gained nothing for their valor, but added a drop of redemption to a day of destruction.

When I was interviewed for Style magazine that Wednesday, the discussion turned towards our daughter Yonina, who, while learning for two bachelor degrees, also became an EMT with higher certification. I tried to stay calm that Tuesday rationally telling myself that she couldn't have gotten downtown so fast. She eventually has served near ground zero as medical support to those there, amidst the pictures you and I have only seen from the distance. She and others didn't have to do it. We are far away. She could have stayed far away. I told her on the phone and I told her before she returned to New York after Rosh HaShanah, for what she did and didn't have to, for what she had seen and didn't have to, for selflessness, that she was my hero, a name and a face others will never know, never be on TV or in the newspaper. She and they serve heroically, to save our world, to make God manifest, to spread sheltering wings to protect the broken and shattered.

In a Book into which only God writes and from which God reads I believe, be'emunah shelemah, with complete faith, each deed of gevurah, of heroism, the deeds of each gibbor, each hero, is indelibly inscribed. On that day, and days since, our world most assuredly would have collapsed if not for these many times thirty-six, many more Lamed-vovnicks had not existed in our world.

This poem, whose author is not known to me, captures the essence:

We turn mere man to paper God, 
And humbly kneel at man-made shrine, 
And rush like sheep, to meekly plod, 
Unquestioning, a well marked line.

We bound our great by narrow bands 
And choose them by their fame and power, 
Or by their store of gold or lands, 
Or by some deed that matched the hour.

But those we toasted yesterday – 
We pass them by unrecognized, 
Their statues turned by common clay, 
Their autographs no longer prized.

Each man holds greatness in his hands, 
Like God, he turns the night to day, 
And cleaves the seas to raise dry land, 
And helps the blind to find their way.

This hour calls for us not only to recognize true heroes, not by name but by deed, and to pay homage to them, as is the just and righteous thing to do. This hour calls for us to be heroes by little deeds, every day, and uphold that image before ourselves, before our children, and before each other.

Ruby told me that she heard something on TV or radio that goes like this. A child attended a memorial service for those killed on that Tuesday. She heard in the language of the service that those who died would be lifted up in God's hands. The girl turned to her parent and asked: "Does God have enough hands?"

You and I, in the quiet and the commonplace, to friend and stranger, Jew and Gentile, young and old, we are God's hands. In that way, we are "m'kabley ahpey shechinah bechol darah" – "welcome the presence of God each day of our lives in this broken world."

Let us make an oath this solemn night, a neder, which will never be disavowed:

Let us be God's hands in the world.

Amen.