Editor’s Note: Rabbi Greenstein originally gave this sermon on the first day of Rosh Hashanah 5778 (Sept 2017).

Hag Same`ah! Shanah Tovah! – A Good Year to everyone!

 “So a rabbi walks into a synagogue…” You know, there is a certain similarity between a delivering a sermon and doing a stand-up routine. The pressure is on. Who knows how the material will go over? And both the comic and the rabbi strive to establish an instant sense of shared intimacy with the crowd, though they may not know most of the people in the room.

Anyway, here goes.

An artist of my generation, Richard Prince, is known for his dark, sardonic sensibility and his wry manipulation of popular imagery. He often takes the common stuff of our culture and parlays it into work that is grabbed up by high end galleries and collectors. One of his series was called Jokes. He took cheap jokes from magazines and books and turned them into paintings that hang in museums and private collections. Perhaps that is his best joke of all.

Anyway, I recall one such work and it can serve as my introductory joke for today. You see a man sitting on an examination table and a physician stands before him. The caption is: “I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that you have three months to live. The good news is that I am having an affair with my receptionist.”

Dark.

The joke blithely acknowledges the split between our self-regard and our concern for others. It coldly impales us on a sharp point – that our capacity for empathy seems so stunted as compared to our infinite capacity for self-centered living. We are meant to laugh at the incongruous asymmetry between the doctor’s perfunctory recognition that his patient’s impending death is “bad news” for his patient, and his oblivious attitude that his private affair could possibly be greeted by that patient as “good news.”

For those of us who see this as a successful joke, the message is strong stuff.

Are we capable of caring for each other? Must our caring for others be at the expense of – in contrast to – our caring for ourselves? Where can we find joy in the midst of ever-present pain and suffering? To find some joy, must it be seized furtively? And what good is it if we cannot share it? And with whom can we imagine such sharing?

And is it outrageous, or outrageously funny, that our greatest and deepest problems can be cut down and simplified into a little, silly cartoon? Or that we are able to take this disposable frivolity and blow it up into an artwork fetching tens of thousands of dollars?

You know, thinking about standup reminds me of a great rabbinic story. It is about how one rabbi met the challenge of having to do rabbinic standup.

There were once two preeminent sages among the Jewish people. They lived a little over 2000 years ago in the land of Israel. They were named Shammai and Hillel. Shammai was known for his severity and his temper. Hillel was known for his easygoing understanding. “Our Rabbis taught: A man should always be gentle like Hillel, and not impatient like Shammai.” (BTShabbat 30b)

Once “it happened that a certain gentile came before Shammai and said to him, ‘Make me a convert to Judaism, on condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot.’” Shammai was infuriated by this person’s arrogant disrespect. Out of nowhere, with no work on his part, this person judged the Torah, whose treasures surpass all wealth and whose depths exceed those of the deepest oceans, as capable of being boiled down into a one-liner, a tweet. “Rabbi, teach me the whole Torah, but keep it short.” Without saying a word, Shammai pushed him out of his presence with a stick.

Then the man went to see Hillel. And he made the same conditional offer:  “I am ready to convert on the condition that you explain the whole Torah to me while I stand on one foot.” Hillel did not reach for a stick. He looked straight at him and said, “’What is hateful to you, don’t do to someone else’: that is the whole Torah. All the rest is the commentary for that; zil g’mor – go and learn.”

That person converted, and later he would say, “Hillel’s humble gentleness drew me under the wings of the Shekhinah, the Divine Presence.” (BTShabbat 31a)

This seems to be a very simple story, but it allows us to uncover more and more layers as we ponder it. Hillel’s response was brilliant. But our convert did not say that Hillel’s “brilliance” drew him under the wings of Shekhinah. It was his gentle humility. How is that? Clearly Hillel practiced what he preached. No one likes to be yelled at and he did not yell at his interlocutor. He would not have wanted someone to attack him for a question he might ask, however ill-advised. So he did not attack the questioner. He would not wish for someone to ascribe some superior knowledge of his own motivations and tell him what he “really meant” by what he said. So he took the question at face value and answered it.

In part, this is where we find Hillel’s gentle humility, in his relinquishing the position of superiority that we all love to assume, the superior position of knowing and understanding the other person’s thoughts better than they do. And yet, he challenged his questioner to face this standard: How would you like it if, out of the blue, someone dared you to sum up your own most precious and deeply felt values in a sound-byte, take it or leave it? If you would not like to be subjected to this kind of query, then why do you do it to me?

And, of course, we do not know what was motivating this questioner. Why, after he was chased away by Shammai, did he feel compelled to ask the same question again? Was he simply a crank, a pest? Why would he need to know the entire Torah in such a truncated way? Was he sincere? What was he seeking? We do not know and Hillel did not know. He was accepting of the question, but without surrendering his own sense of respect, respect for himself or respect for the Torah.

Hillel gave the man a measured response, one that he apparently had thought through already and had at-the-ready. But how is this adage to be considered an adequate distillation of the entire Torah?

Hillel’s response was brilliant. He took a classic verse from the Torah, “You shall love your fellow as yourself,” (Lev. 19:18) and translated it into the Aramaic vernacular and into a formulation that combines action with emotion rather than focusing on emotion alone, and that turns a pious positive statement into a practical negatively stated guideline: “Don’t do anything to others that you would dislike having done to you.” He took our ingrained sense of entitlement, our self-centered perspective on life, and recruited it to become a vehicle for ethical relationships. We know what we like and what we don’t like. We know how we wish others to act toward us, speak to us, regard us. And Hillel accepts all that and, with gentle humility, simply says, “Good. Use that knowledge and sensitivity when you interact with someone else. Forget the empathy for a moment. Just don’t do anything to anyone else if you wouldn’t like it done to you.”

How is this the essence of the Torah? Hillel teaches us that our most personal, self-centered core is not to be denied or squashed. But it is meant to give us a reliable tool to live in relationship with others. We are meant to take our self-awareness and our self-care and gently, humbly, apply it to making other people feel fully human.

What if we actually applied Hillel’s law to our lives? What if we applied this dictum not only to our one-to-one interactions, but also to our collective selves, to our societal and political opinions, attitudes and actions? We don’t like to be stereotyped; why should we stereotype others? We don’t like to be blamed collectively for the crimes of individuals who are part of our group; why should we insist on tarring whole groups, religions and societies with a broad brush? We don’t believe that anyone needs to step on us in order to feel good about themselves; so why should we engage in belittling others in order to feel better about ourselves? We don’t want to be deprived of health care; why should we deprive anyone else? We wouldn’t want our own families torn apart; why should we wish to destroy other families? We wouldn’t want to be barred from voting; why should we make it hard or impossible for others to vote? We wouldn’t want our drinking water polluted; why should we allow other people’s water to be polluted? We would not want to be shot down in the streets; why do we allow others to be shot down?

This simple sounding maxim of Hillel’s is actually a profoundly radical ethical commandment. But, still, if this is meant to encapsulate the entire Torah, then what about all the other aspects of the Torah? What does this have to do with Shabbat, with prayer, with kashrut or holidays? While there are many today who would love to reduce the valid parts of the Torah to ethics alone, that wasn’t what Hillel believed. To use an image from a well known book, we also put God on our guest list. During these Days of Awe we remind ourselves that every ethical failing we may be guilty of is not only a sin against another person, but is  also a sin against God. And we are told that, if we wish to ask God to forgive us, we must first make our victim whole by repaying  what we have taken and apologizing for any hurt inflicted. But then we must ask God to forgive us, as well. So all ethical sins are also sins against God.

What Hillel teaches is that the reverse is also true. Every sin against God in the purely ritual or religious realm, is also an ethical sin, a breaking of the rules of a relationship. Our relationship with God is to be seen as an ethical one, as well. We should not treat God in a manner that we do not like to be treated ourselves. We don’t like to be ignored; we should not ignore God. We don’t like to be treated disrespectfully; we should not act that way toward God.

Hillel teaches us to step from our self-regard and to see relationship as foundational to everything we do. How we can apply this concept to our lives requires continuous study. “I have taught you the Torah while you stood on only one leg,” says Hillel. “Now, go and learn”

I recently heard about a champion wrestler named Anthony Robles. He was born with only one-leg. Through incredible courage and hard work, suffering many losses and failures along the way, he eventually became his high school wrestling champion, then state champion, then college conference champion and, finally, in 2011, the NCAA National Wresting Champion. I was amazed to listen to his story. And then I was amazed to hear that, just moments after he won that national championship, the comment boards on the news sites lit up with a vehement thread complaining that his victory was illegitimate – because, didn’t we see that since he had only one leg he actually had an unfair advantage! Such sentiments could only be imagined, and then publicized, by people without a shred of Hillel’s perspective. Mr. Robles, with gentle humility, responded to his attackers that we all have strengths and weaknesses. The question is how much we are willing to work to utilize our strengths and overcome our weaknesses.

As we gather together for these few moments on this New Year, I recall my opening joke: I have both good news and bad news to share. The good news is that we are here. We are still alive and well enough and committed enough to show up today to observe the Jewish New Year, if only on one foot. The bad news is – also – that we are all alive today. Bad news because that means we have no excuse that can free us from facing the formidable crises that threaten to overwhelm us daily. We can try to face them on our own, or we can reach out and form relationships, here at Shomrei and between Shomrei and other individuals and groups.

“I have taught you the Torah while you stood on only one leg,” said Hillel, as he looked over the inquisitive stranger. “But, “ he said, “fairly or not, you have two legs. So go, walk along and learn. Do not be satisfied with a shorthand lesson in Torah. You are capable of more than that.”

May this year be a time for going on great walks, walking and learning and doing together.

Shanah Tovah!
Rabbi Greenstein

Image:  “one foot” by Rosmarie Voegtli is licensed under CC BY 2.0