Failed Foundations and Second Chances
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All the while, these same idealists, as they thought grand and progressive ideas, were also strip mining the resources from the earth and deforesting half the state. They slaughtered and drove out the Native American population, and the poorer folk who were able to buy land for the first time and be included in government were almost exclusively white males. The luster of the beginnings of the state begins to dim a bit when put into the context of what was happening at the time, and perhaps further still as we look at Wisconsin today and see what has become of the idealism that led Wisconsin to be the birthplace of both the Republican party and the Progressive movement.
One hundred years almost to the day after the founding of the state of Wisconsin, another state, almost as important, was brought into the world: the modern State of Israel. Like the Badger State, the State of Israel was brought to life full of idealist notions about labor, religion, what it means to be a people, and how a country can live within the community of nations. Unfortunately, Israel too has struggled at times to keep the promise of its beginnings alive. Israel has done amazing things and continues to be an inspiration. Yet it also has missed the mark and has failed to live up to a few of the ideals of its founders and its greatest supporters.
Two articles appeared this past week, on the same day, both poignantly disappointing. One was in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporting on the delay in a federal appeals court ruling on the legality of Wisconsin’s strict voter ID laws. The other told us that the Israel Ministry of the Interior announced that it would not recognize members of the Abuyadaya as Jews. The Abuyadaya are a community of Jews in Uganda who all converted years ago. However, because the rabbis who performed their conversions were from the Conservative movement, including some of our own mentors and teachers and friends, the misrad ha-panim decided not to recognize the Abuyadaya as Jews. It saddens me that a US state which was one of the first to put forth the idea of African American suffrage is now at the forefront of the move to restrict that right to vote today. And a nation built off the backs of immigrants and of a religion which says the messiah will come from the line of a convert, now says “but not these people,” they aren’t Jews. They aren’t real Jews because the rabbis that converted them had the JTS symbol on their talleisim.
It is hard to state publicly that two of the most important entities in my life are failing me and, in my opinion, failing their foundations. The next question is: what do we do when this happens? Because it happens to us all the time, both as individuals and groups. As individuals we often find ourselves having taken a wrong turn and in need of a correction. And at times the groups that we love may let us down or do wrong in our eyes. What are our options in these moments? Do we stay connected to these institutions or do we abandon them? Perhaps in some cases we can leave. I now have a New York State driver’s license, not a Wisconsin one. New York is where I live, this is where I vote, and I could live the rest of my life without a thought for my home state, although I don’t see that happening. But when it comes to the State of Israel, this is simply impossible. I could never abandon my love for Israel or my concern for its wellbeing and its soul. I will defend it and engage with it so long as I draw breath. So how can I handle the disappointment I feel?
We could abandon the principles. We could say, the Wisconsin Idea was great for 1848, and Zionist principles were fine in 1948, but they’re just not realistic today; those values, those methods are not the way we should be doing things now. The Wisconsin Idea, as wonderful as it may have been, is now done. We could do that. Or we could say it is time to roll up our sleeves and try harder. Perhaps that is the best course if we do not want to leave behind some of our founding ideals, because this dilemma of feeling off course will happen whether you are from America’s Dairyland or not. There are, I imagine, groups to which each of us belong that we are worried about. We may be worried about the direction in which they are going, what they may become and how our involvement, or lack thereof, reflects on us.
It is not yet Yom Kippur, but the message of teshuvah and repentance rings true as that is what we are talking about here for individuals and for our communities. We may at times wonder, “how did I get to be where I am today?” The discrepancy between where one is and where one wants to be can be a cause of great anxiety. The idea of how to get from where I am to where I wish I were is a question with which we all struggle. We would like to think that it is always possible to return, to get back on track, but at the same time I wonder if it is possible to be so far gone that return is impossible.
There is a third founding that has an anniversary this week. I am not sure how many thousands of years ago it was, but it’s in our Torah portion. We are finishing up the dedication of the mishkan, the portable tent of meeting in the wilderness. In this moment, the Israelites are full of promise! The princes of the community have brought their gifts. The amazing menorah is ready to be lit. We are building the foundations of a structure that will house the Lord on Earth and facilitate our relationship with Heaven. What could be more idealistic than that?
And yet, the people are – once again – complaining. Life was better in Egypt! We are tired of eating manna and need meat! There is trouble and slander among the leaders as Miriam and Aaron are punished for insulting Moses. We know that this beginning as well will not live up to its ideals. The mishkan and the Temple that will replace it will be destroyed, the people exiled, and the lofty goals laid out in the Torah not entirely realized, at least not yet.
This all seems perhaps a little dire, and it is, but there is one piece of the parashah I want to focus on before we go. In our parashah we are told about the Pesah offering. We are also told that a group of Israelites tell Moses that they were impure or on a long journey during Passover and were unable to make the Pesah sacrifice. What should they do? Moses gets on the red phone with God. He returns and says God told him these Israelites shall offer the sacrifice in the second month, on the fourteenth day of the month, at twilight. They shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. (Numbers 9:11) This is the custom of Pesah sheni, the second Passover offering – a second chance given to people who couldn’t offer the lamb the first time around.
Pesah sheni is an amazing rule! It expresses an essential tenet of Judaism: There is always a second chance! This is teshuvah and all that we discuss on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the ability to make another go of it. However, the Torah continues: If a person who is ritually clean and not on a journey refrains from offering the Passover sacrifice, that person shall be cut off from their kin, for they did not present the Lord’s offering at its set time; that person shall bear their guilt. (9:13) The twelfth-century commentator Bekhor Shor says this means that if you were ritually impure or unavoidably absent, then you can take the redo on the sacrifice, but if you were there and simply couldn’t be bothered to offer the sacrifice, if you forgot, or you were home watching a movie – if you had the opportunity to do it and decided not to for whatever reason, then you do not get to offer the Pesah sheni.
In Pesah sheni the Torah is trying to balance a fundamental tension we see throughout our religion: we want to say that there is always an option for teshuvah, always an option to repent, but we also must believe that our intentions matter and that there are real consequences to our actions. We can’t allow ourselves or our groups to sin intentionally and bank on the chance of repentance.
Another commentator, a thirteenth-century rabbi known as Hizkuni, points out something about the language used in these passages. When the Torah says, “you decided not to give the Passover offering,” it literally says, “you ceased from the Passover offering.” The word used is v’hadlu, from the root hadal, which means “to stop.” It is used in a few places in the Torah, and Hizkuni points out that it is used in the scene of the Tower of Babel. God confuses the language of the people building a tower to heaven, and with this added difficulty, v’hadlu, they ceased building. (Genesis 11:8) But there is another word for stopping that is used in the Torah. We are doing it right now. When God finishes creating the heavens and earth, God stops, and the word used there is shavat, Shabbat. Hizkuni says these two words indicate two different kinds of stopping. Hadal is used when one thinks one is totally done, one has no intention of ever moving on. They builders never believed they would return to constructing the tower. One has stopped and thinks they are never going to offer the Pesah offering. Then there is Shabbat; this is when one intends to return and continue building. God rested on Shabbat knowing full well that come Sunday, God would return and continue improving the world, and this would happen again and again. That kind of stopping – taking a rest or a pause with awareness of more work left to do – that person gets a Pesah sheni; they get a second chance at their goal.
When we stop and think we are done, then there is no chance of redemption. But as long as we stop with the knowledge that we are going to continue to build: we are going to revisit that state constitution and see if we can get make it better, we are going to keep building the land of Israel, we are going to continue fighting for inclusivity. If we fight to remain on the path toward who we want to be no matter how far away from it we may be right now, then we have all the chances in the world at redemption.
And so as we enter into this 170th year of the state of Wisconsin, the seventieth year of the State of Israel and the anniversary of the founding of the mishkan, we remind ourselves that wherever we are right now is not the end of the journey. None of us, please God, have hadal. None of us has stopped and thought, well I am just perfect the way that I am, the world is great and I am done, Shabbat shalom. None of us is here to say that today. We are all currently in a moment of Shabbat, a rest before we go back out into the world, roll up our sleeves, and whatever entities we are a part of – our state, our government, our parties, our religion, or ourselves – we will continue the work of improving all of it.