They say that you should not discuss religion and politics in polite company. As a rabbi, I spend a lot of time breaking that rule, and I will again today. Today our nation pauses to honor our veterans on this the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of the year. It is important to remember the sacrifices that they have made for us as Americans. We need to be grateful to them for being willing to put their lives on the line, for giving up time with their families, the milestone occasions and the little moments of day-to-day family life. Too many of our soldiers have paid the ultimate price, with their lives. Others have returned from the fronts with life long disabilities—physical and mental and are haunted by what they needed to do. We need to do more to support our returning veterans and their families.
It was only last week that our nation participated in one of those freedoms that our compatriots fight to protect. The right to free elections, to participate in democracy. Again our nation is polarized. Yet, the balance of power shifted—and it shifted peacefully. This doesn’t happen in all countries.
My mother, who died on election day two years ago and was proud to have cast an absentee ballot before her death had a favorite Biblical verse: “What does the Lord require of you? To do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8) She wasn’t alone in this. John Adams said, “The longer I live, the more I read, the more patiently I think, and the more anxiously I inquire, the less I seem to know…Do justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly [with your God]. This is enough.”
The verse seems simple enough— it was Micah’s attempt to explain the basic building blocks of Jewish life, of a good society. The Bible gives us glimpses of how that society should be built. The Puritans understood this when they set up Plimouth Plantation and signed the Mayflower Compact. They understood that it demands of us is to create a just society—one where we take care of the widow, the orphan and the stranger, where we pay the wages of a laborer, where we leave the corners of our field so that people who need can take, where we have balanced weights and scales and system of justice that doesn’t favor the rich or give deference to the poor. (Leviticus 19). We do these as acts of love and kindness. In fact what is demanded is a just and compassionate society.
The Bible even teaches us how to fight a war. Deuteronomy 20 enjoins us that when we do need to engage in war, we should not be afraid to fight, that we should excuse soldiers who have recently married or ones who have just built a house and not dedicated it or even ones who are just afraid or faint hearted. We should not cut down the fruit trees of our enemies. However, later on, we learn that the real goal is peace. The prophets had a vision of a world where swords will be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks and everyone could sit under their vines and fig trees and none would make them afraid. (Isaiah 2:4, Micah 4:3). These words are on the United Nations building in New York. Yehuda Amichai said “Don’t stop after beating the swords into plowshares, don’t stop!
Go on beating and make musical instruments out of them. Whoever wants to make war again will have to turn them into plowshares first.” Last week I attended a conference of Jewish professionals and lay leaders. In fulfillment of this idea, one of the exhibitors actually had beautiful artwork, menorahs and candlesticks made out of kassam missiles that have fallen in Israel, a modern beating of swords into plowshares.
Gates of Prayer, the prayer book of the Reform Jewish movement published in 1975 has the following reading about peace:
The young soldiers do not speak.
Nevertheless, they are heard in the still houses: who has not heard them?
They have a silence that speaks for them at night and when the clock counts.
They say: We are young. We have died. Remember us.
They say: We have done what we could but until it is finished it is not done.
They say: We have given our lives but until it is finished no one can know what our lives gave.
They say: Our deaths are not ours; they are yours: they will mean what you make them.
They say: Whether our lives and our deaths are for peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say; it is you who must say this.
They say: We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.
We were young. They say. We have died. Remember us. (page 692)
How we achieve this compassionate, just and peaceful society isn’t as simple as Micah, the Puritans, John Adams and my mother would have us believe. It takes work and intentionality. People disagree about how to get this done with limited resources, what the priorities should be. That debate is also important and guaranteed. I don’t think my mother would have been pleased with the current climate in American politics. The rhetoric is too harsh. The attitudes are of fear and greed, not of hope and change, not of promise and possibility.
Now the election is over, we pause to remember our veterans. The greatest tribute we can give them is to roll up our sleeves and work for the just and compassionate society, the vision of the world that the Puritans saw, where we can sit in our homes and none will make us afraid. Working towards these goals is how I will spend Veteran’s Day this year.
This sermon appeared in the Chelmsford Independent on November 11, 2010.