Five-year old Emma was sitting on her grandfather’s lap as he read her a bedtime story.  From time to time, Emma would take her eyes off the book and reach up to touch his wrinkled cheek, tracing the deep furrows.  On occasion, she would take her hand and place it on her own cheek, feeling the smooth, unbroken skin.

 

Finally Emma spoke up, "Grandpa, did God make you?"

 

"Yes, darling," he answered, "God made me a long time ago."

 

"Oh," she paused, "Grandpa, did God make me too?"

 

"Yes, indeed, sweetheart," he said, "God made you just a little while ago."

 

Feeling his wrinkled cheek and then her own again, Emma observed, "God’s getting better at it, isn’t he?"

* * * * *

 

Indeed, another year has past since we last gathered together. How do we measure a year? We could count new wrinkles. Or, as the composer of Rent, Jonathan Larson, suggested: we could count “Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes.” Why not measure it in pounds gained or lost, a la Jenny Craig. Or in Net Asset Value, says Lehman Brothers.

 

Alas, these measures are illusory at best; at worst, they are utterly misleading. Wrinkles melt in the face of Botox; Jonathan Larson died from an undiagnosed aortic aneurysm the night before Rent was to premiere; dieters tend to gain back every pound they lose and then some; and Net Asset Value? After today’s stock market reports, let’s not even discuss it.

 

* * * * *

 

Botox aside, let’s not abandon the wrinkle. The wrinkle has nothing to do with measuring whether God has “gotten better at it” or not; instead, the wrinkle poses the timely question: “after another year of living, are we getting better at it?” And in what ways do we still need to improve?

 

Now those are High Holy Day questions. And our wrinkles may, in fact, be the place to begin to formulate an answer. Wrinkles, it should be noted, take an artifact of decrepitude and transform it into a proud badge of experience, a sign of wisdom. In so doing, wrinkles suggest that imperfection has an upside, that brokenness should not be undervalued. If we are serious about repenting – doing teshuvah – recognizing our brokenness is where we have to start.

 

* * * * *

 

We don’t enter the world in a broken state. As Jews, we believe that we arrive a tabula rasa, a clean slate. On the first day of creation, God creates light - va’yar Elohim et ha-Or Ki Tov - and God saw that the light was Good. The Torah mentions that God found practically every aspect of creation to be good – land and sky, vegetation and trees, sea creatures and birds, save for one: Human Beings. On the question of people, God is silent.

 

From this single omission, Judaism makes a statement about the nature of, and reason for, our existence. We are unlike the rest of creation. We have free will to choose right or wrong. Our choices, our actions, will determine whether we are judged good, or not.

 

If it is our nature as human beings to have free will, then why were we created? An answer comes from the Kabbalists, the mystics who lived in 16^th century Israel on a remote mountaintop called Tzefat. Their leader, Isaac Luria, taught a creation story quite different than the one found in Genesis. Luria’s story begins as God realizes that since God fills all time and space, God will have to contract, to create a space, in which to create the world. God then pours sparks of light into clay containers. But something goes wrong. The containers are imperfect and shatter. The shards of broken pottery fall to earth, along with the newly liberated sparks of divine light. Creation gives way to calamity, as the world’s building blocks lie shattered and broken across the landscape. The role of human beings, Luria concluded, was to do tikkun Olam, to fix the broken world by picking up the broken shards of pottery and liberating the divine sparks of light underneath.

 

The idea of brokenness is where we start on the High Holy Days. We live in multiple worlds; each is fundamentally broken; each requires tikkun. Over these High Holy Days, I plan to talk about these different tikkunim. We’ll start from the outside in; tonight we’ll discuss Tikkun Olam, mending our broken world. By the time we’ve reached Sukkot, we’ll have touched upon Tikkun HaAm, bringing healing to the Jewish people, Tikkun HaKehillah, bringing healing to our synagogue community, and Tikkun HaNefesh, healing our own individual souls. The presumption that each of us has an essential role in bringing healing to the world is so strong that if you or I didn’t have a specific role, there wouldn’t have been a reason for us to be born. On the Birthday of the world, Rosh HaShanah, we search AS

 

 

for waysfor ways to do tikkun, to bring healing to the world.

 

The same story creation story that gave rise to a mystical image of shattered vessels provides us the basis for a Jewish ethic of social responsibility. Indeed, the Jewish passion for Social Justice is founded on Jewish values that emerge in the first days of creation:

 

Kavod Habriot: human dignity.  Created in the image of God, we have an inherent right to be treated with respect.  Linked by our shared destiny, we have an obligation to treat others with compassion. We need both to receive and to bestow kavod to feel fully human.

 

Tikun Olam: perfecting this imperfect world.  The Jewish belief that we have a role in completing creation which we fulfill by recognizing injustice and suffering and doing what we can to correct it. 

 

Tzedakah: doing acts of justice, not out of a sense of charity, or noblesse oblige, but because justice demands it.  Tzedakah is the Jewish assertion that we are responsible for our neighbors’ welfare, for ameliorating their suffering, and restoring them to a life of human dignity.  Tzedakah speaks to our role in feeding the poor, clothing the naked, protecting those least able to protect themselves.

 

With the values of Kavod, Tikun Olam, and Tzedakah, our ancestors proclaimed war on poverty and injustice; they exhorted us, in Isaiah’s words, “to undo the bonds of oppression ... and share our bread with the hungry.” They commanded us, “to do justice and love mercy; to let justice flow like water and righteousness as a mighty stream.

 

With Mitzvot like "Al ta'amod al dam re'echa: Do not stand by idly while your neighbor bleeds," they asserted that we are our brothers' keeper, and further, that we are charged with the responsibility to assist all who are in need. They insisted that we should have empathy for, and are obligated to, the strangers in our midst, for "(we) were strangers in the land of Egypt."

 

* * * * *

 

Tikkun Olam is founded on the proposition that our obligation to our fellow human being is universal, that to love Judaism is to love humanity. That is basic Jewish theology. The God of Israel is global, not tribal. The traditional formula for our liturgy reads "Blessed are Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe." Melach ha-olam. We are the custodians of the world and its inhabitants.

 

The righteous indignation of the Jewish prophets was not restricted to Jews or Judaism. The Prophet’s call to repentance was not for Israel alone. In Judaism, the defense of human dignity never was, or is, for Jews only.

 

When we open the bible we learn that the first Jew, Abraham, first defended not Jews, but the pagan citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah and confronted God: "Shall the judge of all the world not do justice?" Abraham spoke to God in passionate defense of the people of Sodom, none of whom were Jews.

 

On Yom Kippur, we read that the prophet Jonah was sent to prophesy to the people of Nineveh, none of whom were Jews. They repented for their transgressions, and God repented for his punishment.

 

The prophet Amos addressed God’s concern not only for Israel, but for the people in Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, and Moab.

 

Do you love your people or humanity? We reject the premise.

 

To be a Jew is to love humanity. To love God is to love God’s creation. On Rosh HaShanah, we do not celebrate the birth of any of our Jewish patriarchs — Not Abraham nor Moses. Our High Holy Day calendar does not celebrate the birth of a Jewish messiah, or the accomplishments of any of its Jewish prophets. The Jewish calendar is calculated not as 2006 C.E. or 6th Century B.C.E. but commemorates the birth of the universe and of all humanity.

 

In the beginning, God created Adam. Adam had no race, no ethnicity and no creed. When the sages ask "from what continent? From what corners of the earth — south, west, east or north — and from what color earth was Adam formed? They reply, "Adam was formed from every corner of the earth and out of black, white, red and yellow dust."

 

On this Rosh HaShanah we inaugurate a congregation wide theme of Tikun Olam and a series of opportunities to learn and to act. In November, we will host a very special scholar in residence, Danny Seigel, the weekend of November thirteenth through fifteenth. One of the most influential Jewish teachers of the last fifty years, Danny has been referred to as "The Pied Piper of Tzedakah".

 

After visiting Israel, Danny created the Ziv Tzedakah Fund in 1981. Judaism teaches that anyone on a Mitzvah mission will be saved from harm, and so, on each trip, Danny followed this age-old custom and asked friends and relatives for a dollar or two to give away to Tzedakah upon his arrival in the Holy Land. Once in Israel, Danny went in search of “the Good People”, ordinary Israelis who were working tirelessly and simply trying to make the world a better place.

Within a short time, he came to know some of Israel’s true mitzvah heroes. Like Hadassah Levi, who made her life’s work the rescue of abandoned Down Syndrome babies from hospitals; and Myriam Mendilow, who found Jerusalem’s poor, elderly residents on the streets of the city and gave them respect and new purpose in her program, Yad L’Kashish (Lifeline for the Old), and Uri Lupolianski, a young teacher who started Israel’s now famous medical equipment lending program, Yad Sarah, in his living room (and is currently the mayor of Jerusalem).

Returning from each trip, Danny wrote his donors a one-page report that described all of the places he had distributed their Tzedakah money. From that first $955 Danny collected and gave away, Ziv has grown to an organization that as of 2004 had completed its 32nd year of operation and distributed more than $9,900,000.

            The Sunday following the weekend of Danny’s visit, we will get to work. Our social action committee, building on the work of its past chairs, Charlie and Karen Schudson, is now led by Idy Goodman and Tom St. John. After months of deliberation, the committee decided to initiate a year long partnership with the Social Development Commission, or SDC. Created during the Johnson administration, the SDC is a community action agency focused on poverty. It oversees Head Start, Adult Education, Asset Building, Residential services, youth programs, Senior companions, and energy assistance, among other programs.

On Sunday, November 23^rd, Sinai congregants will be assisting at SDC’s Familty shelter. One of only two emergency family shelters in Milwaukee, it is always full, which means up to 20 families, or 70 individuals. Last year 188 families and 346 individuals found shelter there. This year, there have already been 128 families or 388 individuals. The shelter is open 24/7 seven days a week. Who lives there? When you visit a shelter, you realize that the line between self sufficiency and homelessness is so thin it’s practically an illusion. There are people who were evicted because they couldn’t afford their rent or mortgage payments because of losing a job or illness. There are people who need shelter because their landlord didn’t keep his building up to code, or because the landlord had a financial incentive to change his residents. Sometimes a family conflict has made it necessary to leave; sometimes a fire has made the home unlivable and destroyed every material possession.

            The family shelter works to enable families to attain sustainable housing through employment, finding appropriate funds, like those through Wisconsin Works. In addition, the SDC provides classes for adults, including how to interview; how to make a household budget; how to be a successful parent, among others.

            On Sunday November 23^rd, we will visit the family shelter to do some painting and light carpentry, and some more manageable projects for younger children. Located at 38^th and Mitchell, the SDC is a safe place to visit. Our Yom Tikkun on the 23^rd will be the first of a number of ongoing efforts Sinai will engage in to assist the SDC strengthen its programmatic capacity as well as its physical infrastructure.

            In addition to the Yom Tikkun, we are involved in the SDC’s ongoing effort to create what are called Casey’s Kits. Casey is a staff member at the SDC who identified the need each shelter resident has for personal toiletries, such as soap, shampoo, razors, toothbrushes, and the like. At Sinai, we’ll be collecting toiletries in a collection box in the entrance to the foyer. If you travel, especially, please set aside those travel size toiletries.

            To fight hunger in Milwaukee, we are again collecting non-perishable food items. As you leave tonight, ushers will be distributing grocery bags with a flyer explaining what we are looking for, where it’s going, and how to participate. Please take one and return it full before Yom Kippur. 

            You hopefully have heard about Sinai’s involvement in providing solar ovens for families in Darfur. This is a concrete way to help alleviate suffering on the other side of the globe. A solar cooker will enable a woman preparing dinner not to search for wood outside the camp, where she is defenseless against rape and murder. Second, the ovens are creating an economy in the refugee camps. People construct the ovens out of cardboard and aluminum foil. Others repair them when they begin to fall apart. The Solar cooker project has been designed with economic sustainability in mind, and it will be a true life saver.

            Closer to home, Sinai’s 7^th and 8^th graders will be focusing on Tikkun Olam this year, spending nearly half their time in the field engaged in social action work and the other half debriefing and planning for upcoming visits.

            As you can see, Tikkun Olam has moved to the congregation’s front burner. We are moving with passion and purpose. Yes, the brokenness of the world seems inexhaustible; confronting it head on can be dispiriting. Our ancestors felt the same way. That’s why the Talmud’s Rabbi Tarfon taught: Lo Alecha Hamlacha ligmor, it is not your job to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from starting it.

            In this season of self evaluation, heshbon Hanefesh, may we come to appreciate our wrinkles and count them valued friends; as signs of our age and experience, and yes, occasionally our wisdom;

 

May the opportunities we have to serve others and heal the brokenness in the world raise our spirits up high; and may the example of mitzvah heroes like Danny Seigel continue to inspire us.

And may we, through acts of Tikkun Olam, hasten the day when all the world will become partners with you O God, in bringing healing to every corner of the globe.

 

Ken Yehi Ratzon

May it be God’s will.

 

Ken Yehi Rtzoneinu

May it be Our will.

 

Amen.