I am always looking for new professional opportunities. Noting the proliferation of personal trainers and personal coaches, I decided that I should hang out a shingle and declare myself to be an anxiety coach--counseling the seemingly endless number of Americans, Jews prominently among them, about their growing anxieties about life. Believe me, this is a growth industry.
Here is an example of the kind of work I have recently been doing. The organization that I head, PANIM, brings over a thousand Jewish teens through DC each year from all over the country. These past two years we have had our hands full with cancellations. I have taken to enumerating them like the plagues of the Pesach Seder. Iam up to seven. [think wine goblet]: 9/11, anthrax, fear of flying, the Beltway sniper, code orange terrorist alerts, snow, and finally, Dwight Watson, the guy in the pond on the Mall with nothing but a bunch of fertilizer in his tractor!
I swear, different individuals or whole communities canceled their plans to come to Washington for each of these reasons. It was hard for me to understand. It got me wondering whether this was a case of Jewish anxiety gone wild. I concluded that while Jewish anxiety was definitely a contributing factor, it pointed even more significantly to the emergence in America of what I call “a culture of fear”.
Let me share two items to allow us to reflect a moment on this culture of fear.
Item #1: This past year the W. Post ran a story that put American’s fear of terrorism into perspective. It told us that we had a 1/7000 chance of dying in an auto accident in the coming year; yet we continue to drive. We have a 1/600 chance of dying from cancer, yet we still take few precautions against carcinogens. We have a 1/400 chance of dying from heart disease, yet most Americans remain overweight and few have any regular exercise regimen to reduce the risk of heart attack. In contrast, even if there were one plane hijacked per month over American skies--an unlikely possibility--the chance that any one of us would be on that flight is 1/540,000. And yet Americans have made more adjustments to their flying habits than any of the other precautions that would be of far greater benefit to them.
Item #2: Almost exactly a year ago, a professional colleague came to my office on what happened to be, Sept. 11, 2002, one year after the tragedy. He was a bit late and apologized, saying that he needed to take some extra time with his grade school children to run them through a drill of what they should do in the event of a terrorist attack. He had done it with them before but that day, our government’s homeland security office had issued a higher level of warning about the possibility of an anniversary attack.
I asked myself: is my friend overreacting or am I underreacting?
There is an old joke (you know its old when it starts out, “a son sends his mother a telegram).” So let’s update it: A son sends his mom an email saying: “start worrying; letter to follow).”
Roger Cukerman, the president of the CRIF, the organized Jewish community in France made headlines when he gave a speech in which he said that for the first time in the history of Europe there was virulent anti-semitism originating from three separate and distinct ideological camps: from the Reds (the Communists), the Browns (the fascists) and the Greens (the environmentalists and forces of anti-globalization).
As if we were not already wearing down our worry beads from the Jewish angle, we also have what to worry about as Americans. Whatever you think about the wisdom of our invasion of Iraq, America is now paying a price for its unilateralism in the international community and our soldiers in Iraq are increasingly at risk. Even fans of this administration doubt whether our invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have slowed the spread of militant Islamic terrorism. Israel’s experience on this front has been a painful lesson, with ten new terrorists emerging for every one that is killed.
Indeed, it seems inescapable that the clash of civilizations that has been brewing for over a decade, but which America only started to take seriously as a result of the tragedy of 9/11, will be with us for a long time to come. To the extent that Islamic extremism portrays their crusade in religious and theological terms, Jews, Israel and America are all part of, what is considered, the great Satan.
By this time, those of you who did not walk into this service with more anxiety than is warranted are also freaking out. That is, of course, not my intention. Full disclosure: I am not an expert on terrorism; I am not a security expert; and I don’t have powers of seeing the future. I am just a rabbi and teacher who knows a little bit about Judaism.
So here goes. Religion is in the business of helping people cope, helping them make sense of tragedy, loss... and of fear. And we live today, increasingly, in a culture of fear. How do we deal with it?
These are the realities of the last two years that have given rise to the culture of fear and to which we have fallen victim.
The W. Post piece reveals how irrational much of this behavior is yet we engage in it because if feels like we must somehow respond.
Yet I have to believe that if a Biblical prophet were to walk among us today, he or she would bellow: “do not put your trust in alarm systems, concrete barricades or duct tape; instead put your faith in God.” It is one way of getting centered on what really needs to happen. Our instincts drive us to do something as a way to avoid feeling helpless against potential dangers that we have no ability to predict. But, I submit, in the frenzy to “do something, anything!” we have succumbed to the culture of fear.
It is our government’s job to fight and protect us from security threats; it is our job as Jews to fight the culture of fear.
The Hasidic master, Reb Nachman of Bratzlav gave us the teaching: Kol ha-olam kulo, gesher tzar meod, vehaikar, lo lefached. “ The world is a narrow bridge and, the key thing is, never to be afraid.” What an exquisite metaphor for life! We are perched on this narrow bridge, with all kinds of danger on either side—failure, illness, death—and it can paralyze us from moving forward out of fear that we might fall off, to the right or to the left. Yet, we are taught, “do not be afraid; move forward; live.”
History has taught the Jewish people that there are times when, in the face of adversity, we are called upon to stand up and be counted. During WWII too few Jews of the west stood up and the result was horrific. During the 1970’s and 80’s, many took the lesson of the Holocaust to heart, and tens of thousands of Jews stood tall in the struggle to free Soviet Jews. Close to a million former Soviet Jews now live in freedom as a result.
It was precisely to raise consciousness in this community about standing up in the face of adversity that, last year from this bimah, I urged you to join me in a Solidarity Mission to Israel in February when everyone else was staying away. And I am so proud that close to 40 Adat Shalom members did just that. I’d like to ask those people to stand up now and be counted. I applaud your act of solidarity and your courage.
I want to put this opportunity in front of you again this year. If someone told you that if you would take a week out of your life and go on a trip that will forever change the way you understand yourself as a Jew, as an American and as a human being--enriching and deepening all of those identities in a way that you could never imagine--I expect that many of you would at least consider it. That is precisely what a solidarity trip to Israel at this time will mean for you. Just ask one of the people who stood up a moment ago.
But it goes even further than that. At a time when most of the world is challenging the legitimacy of Zionism and the right of Jewish collective existence, it is incumbent upon us to respond, not only with our voices, but with our feet, by visiting Israel in solidarity with those who insure the survival of the Jewish homeland. There is no greater mitzvah for a Jew during these troubling times. This is one of those times when history will record who among us had the courage to stand up and be counted. That is why I am urging you to join me on another mission to Israel this coming December to stand in solidarity with our sisters and brothers in Israel at this time. Now is the time to stand up and be counted. I’d like to ask those who are prepared to consider a trip to Israel during the next year to stand up and be counted.
We can learn so much from Israel and Israelis. If any people on earth have good cause to be fearful, it is Israelis. Yet to be there is to understand what it means to live with faith and hope. People still get on public buses every day, shop in crowded street markets for fruits and vegetables, sit in cafes on the streets of Tel-Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. The Israelis are not naive. They are not being careless. They are not stupid. They are making a statement to the terrorists, the same sentiment that I heard Prime Minister Ariel Sharon give in a speech to the 32nd World Zionist Congress that I was privileged to attend last year: “we are not going anywhere. This is our home.”
Last year, during the height of the intifadah and the wave of suicide bombings, my cousin, Rabbi Yona Pearl who lives in New York, took his two children, Ayelet, age 10 and Eitan, age 8 to Israel on an impulse. He planned it in a matter of weeks. Having grown up in Israel himself, he felt that there was something he had to do as a father for his children. In Israel, Yona methodically visited some dozen sites of terrorist bombings. In each place, he made his children aware of what had happened there and then told them that that was precisely the reason that they were there. The days of Jews running away in fear are over. Israel is our land. We must not be afraid. My cousin Yona was teaching his children a fundamental lesson of Judaism, of life: Do not ever live in fear.
In a similar spirit, this past year, four out of five members of my family traveled to Israel. Sandy on a November Solidarity Mission, Joel in December with a program called Ambassadors for Tolerance, I, in February. Just a few weeks ago, our eldest son, Danny, left to spend a full year in Israel on Young Judaea’s Year Course. Were we afraid? Of course. But I also believe with every fiber of my being that we are teaching our children how not to live in fear.
Psalm 23, a piece of the liturgy for funeral services reads: Even as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will have no fear. God is with me.
I return to my imagined Biblical prophet. Do not make the mistake of the ancient Israelites. Do not mock him. Your instincts tell you to run around buying duct tape, installing some surveillance cameras, keeping your kids close, locking your doors. But our tradition teaches us: This is no way to live. Reb Nachman teaches in another of his discourses, “work hard to turn your worry into joy. If you are rich in wisdom and understanding, so too will you be rich in faith and trust.”
The text helps me make the point that this sermon is not just about Israel. It is about how we live our lives. Imagine what your life would look like if you overcame the things in life that you feared the most--fear of failure, fear of not having enough money, fear of death, fear of the dentist--you can make your own list. That is part of what this season is all about. To cast off the demons in our minds and replace it with faith.
On the political side, to surrender to the politically driven culture of fear all around us is to give the enemy a victory before the full battle is even waged. On the personal side, to live our lives in fear of anything else robs us of enjoying life to its fullest. Jews are people of faith. We are people of hope. We are a people whose national anthem is Hatikvah, “the hope.” We must not surrender to a culture of fear.
Finally, this is Rosh Hashana. It is a season of hope, of new possibilities. Let us show the way to other Americans; let us show our children how to live.
Kol ha-olam kulo, gesher tzar meod, vehaikar, lo lefached. The world, indeed is a narrow bridge. But the key thing is, never to be afraid.