Yom Kippur 5771 D'var Torah - Rabbi Tirzah Firestone

  The Kotzker Rebbe was once asked: Where does God dwell? He answered: God dwells wherever we let God in.”  

But how do we let God in? How do we let God in when everything in the culture around us screams at us: Don’t be a sucker. Don’t be a fool, You’ll get taken! Even our Jewish culture shouts: Use your head. Protect yourself, protect your interests. Some things will never change. Some people will never change. Don’t be a dreamer:   Tonight without much oratory or fanfare, I would like to tell you three stories that have affected me deeply.  Each one is about a person from a different culture who went counter culture, who went against the grain to forgive rather than to hate; to open their heart rather than to close down. These stories are not easy for the mind, I warn you. But they speak to the freedom which our hearts aspire to. So I invite you to listen from there.

The first story is taken from the reports of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, a body established after the abolition of Apartheid to bring its violence to light and to give both victims and perpetrators a chance to be heard.  The commission maintained, wisely, that there was a liberation in telling ones story and having ones story be heard. The  Commission brought an elderly black woman face to face with a white man, Mr Van de  Broek, who had confessed to the torture and murder of her husband and son. The old woman had been made to witness her husband’s death. His last words had been: Father, forgive them. One of the members of the Commission turned to her and asked: How do you believe justice should be done to this man who has inflicted such suffering on you and so brutally destroyed your family?

The old woman replied: I want three things. I want first: to be taken to the place where my husband’s body was burned so that I can gather up the dust and give his remains a decent burial. She stopped, collected herself and then went on. My husband and my son were my only family. Therefore, my second desire is that Mr Van de Broek become my son. I would like for him to come twice a month to the ghetto and spend a day with me so that I can pour out whatever love I have still remaining within me. And finally, I want a third thing. I would like Mr Van de Broek to know that I offer him my forgiveness…This was also the wish of my husband. And so, I would kindly ask that someone come to my side and lead me across the courtroom so that I can take Mr van de Broek in my arms and let him know that he is truly forgiven. (I imagine there were gasps of incredulity at that last request.) But the courtroom assistants came and helped the old black woman across the room. By the time she made it over to him, however, Mr Van de Broek had fainted. Perhaps he would have fared better if the woman had flailed in fury or called for his execution. But to unconditionally forgive him in this way, and reclaim him into the human family, and into her own family, that was more than he could receive.

Somehow this amazing woman, a devout Christian, had done the deep inner work of forgiveness. She was able to draw on a mysterious inner experience of God as all embracing Mercy.  This is of course what we Jews intend to invoke when we sing throughout the HHs: the 13 Midot.

Now, you might be sitting there, dismissing this story out of hand, as moving but unrealistic; or having marginal relevance to your life, or maybe you are saying to yourself: a Christian can pull something like that off, but never a Jew. (I confess that that was my own response.) But then I learned about Yitzchok Frankenthal, an Orthodox Jew from Bnei Brak, a successful business man, whose 19 year old son Arik was returning home from his army base on a weekend pass.  Waiting at an intersection before Shabbat, a car pulled over and the driver offered Arik a ride. Too late did he realize that he was being abducted by Hamas terrorists. Arik never returned. Frankenthal’s life crashed the day the Tzahal sergeants came to his door with the news.

But his heartbreak and anger took him to an unexpected place. In his grief, Frankenthal pored through decades of old Israeli newspapers to find names of other parents whose children had been killed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After calling many of them together the first time, Mr. F. liquidated his business, and used the assets to establish an organization for grieving parents around the country who had lost children to terrorism on both sides, Israeli and Palestinian -  called the Parents’ Circle: Family Forum. He dedicated the now famous circle to the memory of his son Arik and to the healing and reconciliation between the two sides.  Hundreds of Israeli and Arab parents and family members now cross the checkpoints regularly to sit and grieve together, and more: to travel throughout Israel and Palestine and around the world, to make the case for the common humanity that we share.

Yitzchok Frankenthal takes a lot of flack from fellow Israelis. How can you forgive your own son’s murderers? he is asked. Are you out of your mind to stop hating those animals who abduct and shoot our young? But while Y.Frankenthal has no illusions about Hamas; clear that it is a dark and violent party taking orders from Syria and Iran, he nevertheless speaks not with hatred but with understanding, even compassion for those who killed his son.  One morning, in Bnei Brak,  just before Arik’s memorial Mr Frankenthal went to shul. He tells this story: When I finished praying, a man came to me and said, "Are you Frankenthal?" I didn't reply. He started yelling at me and said, "you insect, you abhorrence, you are not welcome here!" …I went back to pray and again he came over to me and yelled, "I told you to leave!" People listened and I silently said, I forgive you - I forgive you - I forgive you, and resumed praying. When I finished I left, bleeding inside because of the depths of hatred.” Hatred on the part of his own people who had recriminated him for forgiving his enemies.  

Third story:           It was a cool but sunny December day in 2008. Dr Izzeldin Abuelaish took his eight children to the beach for the simple pleasures of paddling in the Mediterranean and playing in the sand. Two months earlier, the children's mother had died from acute leukaemia, and Abuelaish was comforted now to see his 3 older daughters laughing and chatting as they wrote their names in the wet sand:   Five weeks later though, a second tragedy: those same three girls, aged 13, 15 and 21, were killed, and another daughter, was seriously injured, when an Israeli shell was fired at their home during the brief but bloody war in Gaza in 2008-9 Another niece also died; a fifth girl, another niece, suffered terrible injuries.  

You may have heard of this story. It’s been all over the world. Dr. Abuelaish is a famous obstetrician and has spent years working in Israeli hospitals where, he says, patients are always surprised to find a Palestinian doctor delivering Jewish babies.   He was at home when the onslaught on Gaza began, on 27 December that year. There was a "symphony of weapons, shelling" around our home in northern Gaza, Everyone's nerves and emotions were constantly on edge, “ he says.   Then, on 16 January, a shell struck the house. He ran to the room that had been hit. "I saw my girls drowning in a pool of blood," "I saw their body parts… all over the room" A second shell followed.   Desperate for medical assistance, he called his friend Shlomi Eldar, a presenter on Channel 10 in Israel. His cries for help in a mixture of Hebrew and Arabic were broadcast live throughout Israel. Within an hour, with the help of his Israeli friends, his injured daughter and niece were evacuated from Gaza.   The entire country heard his cry on open air.  Then Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, also heard the broadcast. Two days later he announced the ceasefire.  

Many in his situation would have descended into a dark, lonely pit of grief and bitterness. But mysteriously, since that time, Dr. Abuelaish has rebuilt a life for himself and his surviving five children, and has written a powerful book called:   I Shall Not Hate –already translated in 13 languages,– and soon into Hebrew. Why the title? "I'm against any violence. Violence and the military approach proved its failings decades ago and that will never, ever change. But how is it possible, he is asked, that you do not feel hatred after what has happened to you?. "There is a difference between anger and hate, he explains. “Anger is acute but transient; hate is a poison, a fire which burns you from the inside. We need to be angry, but direct (our anger) in a positive way."  

Abuelaish thinks back to the day on the beach. "Two weeks before the war came, [the girls] wrote their names in the sand. Where are their names now? Written in stone on their tombs. But I tell you one day their names will be written in metal and stone at schools and medical institutions dedicated to their memory. Words are stronger than bullets. We have to offer a message of hope to those who believe in hate and revenge."   "The wound and the pain have not disappeared, but suffering is part of the process of forgiveness. …first and foremost (forgiveness) for myself, in order to shake off the hatred and the rage, and hope for a better path,"   "Many people, including those in my close circle, wondered how I could write these things after what I had been through. They asked about the meaning of the conciliatory tone. I tell them that the wound and the pain still exist. The feeling that you are angry and going to explode still exists, but I say that we must take action to change things and not base ourselves on rage and despair."   "Everything is possible in life, even peace. The only thing that is impossible is to bring my wife and daughters back. "I swore to God that one day I will meet my daughters and tell them their blood was not wasted," he says.  

These stories have moved me so deeply, and while I know that I myself am miles from this sort of forbearance, these heroic people open up a possibility in my own heart.  And then the questions come: What right do we have to forgive when it was others’ lives that were lost? Shouldn’t we hold on to our grievances to  honor the victims? Doesn’t our wrath make a statementto the world that we are strong, and will not tolerate abuse?   But I’ve begun to realize that Forgiving doesn't mean that we accept what was perpetrated against us. Forgiveness doesn't mean that we forget what was done. Forgiveness doesn't justify the action. Nor does it lessen the injustice. But it does mean that we open our hearts. That we restrain our animal instinct to take revenge. That against all our innate and cultural training, we choose a different course.

One might think that forgiveness is weak, that it invites the one who hurt us to hurt us again. But I think it is the strongest act a human being can commit.   While most of us have not endured what these three people have endured, I would bet that each of us here tonight does harbor our own heartbreaks. And everyone here, including me, I am sure has at some point closed their hearts off to someone in their lives, written someone off, emotionally cut ties with someone who has hurt or dishonored us.    Forgiveness does not mean making friends. Forgivenss means freeing ourselves of our bitterness, dissolving the past once and for all so it doesn’t control us. It must happen in the ripeness of time. IT cannot be forced prematurely. What we have gone through must be grieved and railed at and memorialized and discussed and learned from. But there is a moment, unique to each of us when we know that the  river of our past must be crossed or our past will define us forever. Andsome quadrant of our heart will be forever closed.

Personally, after years of alienation and pain with my brother, I am choosing this year to forgive him, for all the unanswered letters, for hanging up on me when I call, forgive him for not forgiving me. Who is it in your life? for whom forgiveness and resolution needs to be offered.           

And what about us as a people? Can we even imagine what it would look like, for example, if Americans forgave the twisted perpetrators of 9/11? Not forgot, nor condoned, Gd forbid, but  allowed the pain to rise up, the shock and dishonor to be expressed straightforwardly, not through acts of war but through our human outrage and heartbreak? That we take all precautions to preclude further violence, of course, but that we heal our trauma so that we can  finally forgive this horror and move on. Perhaps then the uproar over the Cordoba Muslim Community Center 5 blocks from Ground Zero would be less of an issue.  And our collective antipathy for Islam and innocent Muslims would be abated?           

And what about us as Jews? Given that it is YK I trust you will forgive me for what I am saying tonight…  Our tribe, so ancient and weathered. We have been through so much. But sometimes I think we hold on to our suffering, to what has been perpetrated against us. We allow it to be our identity, our cause celebre, rather than moving on to doing great things in the world. Can we take the strength of tonight’s 3 stories and imagine for one moment uttering the unspeakable words -Forgiveness and Germans- in the same sentence? It makes one tremble. How dare I even insinuate? One fears that lightening will strike us down here and now, to imply that it is time to forgive, not to forget or to be naïve, but to deeply receive the apology of the German people, just as we receive their monetary reparations. I speak as a child of a family who was 3/4 wiped out; and as the daughter of a man who liberated the camps and saw the unspeakable. But the Holocaust is over. We must rise up from the ashes.  

Friends: The Sages teach that right now, is Eit Ratzon, a time of grace, a time when the gates of forgiveness are more open than at any other time. This is the season, when our karmic burdens are most easily dissolved, when we get a “matching grant” of divine assistance for any effort we make to let go of our past. The question is: how far are we willing to go to let God in? This YK may each one of us find within our heart a door that is ready to be opened and courageously open it.  And as we open our own gates of compassion, freeing ourselves from the burdens of our past, may we also move the needle forward for the evolution of our people, toward healing the past and moving toward our own true greatness.    
   

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