THE DOUBLE NEW YEAR

A Sermon by
James Ishmael Ford

1 October 2000

One of my primary teachers about Judaism is the remarkable Reconstructionist theologian Arthur Waskow. I met him when serving in my first UU pulpit, back in Mequon, Wisconsin. I admirer the Reconstructionist movement, and personally feel some deep affinities with their attempt at reconciling intellectual and spiritual freedom with a conscious and profound respect for the traditions. So, it was pure frosting on the cake for me to learn that we, too, host a Reconstructionist congregation.

It was Waskow, in his book Seasons of Our Joy, who first put me onto the thought that the Jewish tradition actually has two New Years. He points out the first month of the ancient Jewish calendar is in fact Nisan, the month where Spring begins. Now, in the interest of clarity, I think it important to note how most Jewish thinkers appear to disagree with this. Mostly they hold clearly for Rosh Hashanah as the unambiguous New Year.

Still, in the Book of Exodus, God rather clearly declares of Nisan "This month shall be for you the head of months; it shall be for you the first of the months of the year." Frankly I really like this potential ambiguity. After all, Nisan, the spring New Year is also the time of Passover.

Arthur Waskow makes much of this, and it catches my imagination, as well. Here we find spring a powerful beginning as we consider our lives in the world. He writes "The spring month of Nisan is when the families of Jewish slaves in Egypt first saw themselves as the united Jewish people. It is the month of the beginning of their freedom, the month when God enters history and reshapes our tangible political and social life."

As Waskow concludes, Nisan, the spring New Year is about how people can reach for freedom in the world. In the world. This is a theme we Unitarian Universalists first are given by our Jewish forebearers and continues as a call from our contemporary spiritual teachers. Life must be noticed. The actual practical grounded must be noticed and honored and engaged. So, of course, there should be such a New Year when we stop and contemplate the possibilities of justice and freedom. I think this is true for Jewish tradition as well as for us as contemporary western religious liberals, as Unitarian Universalists.

But. In the great mystery of our human existence there is always that sacred hesitation, that noticing of another point, of another perspective. Here we find the possibility of wisdom trembling within our hearts when we hear the hesitations, the cautions. And so here is one of those points so possibly rich for us, a people primed for action.

Was kow observes how "for 2,000 years and more, the Jewish people have (in fact) celebrated the New Year half a year after the month of Nisan. Rosh Hashanah comes in the month of Tishri, which the Bible calls the seventh month. It is the month of early fall, of catching our breath after the dry hot winds of summer."

Even as we spoke of breath last week as the symbolic source of all we call spiritual, so Rosh Hashanah is about that other facet of our living. It is about our spirituality: about reflection, about renewal, about interiority, about healing. Waskow tells us, as Rosh Hashanah falls within the seventh month, "it echoes the seventh day, the Shabbos of rest and contemplation, of catching our breath after six days of hard work."

That said, I’ve recently found myself with a lot to reflect on. Last month I attended my first meeting of the Newton clergy association. There was one aspect of this gathering that was genuinely unique for me. I’ve never seen so many rabbis in one place. Until then I’d never experienced more than one or two rabbis at any clergy gathering. In fact in most parts of this country rabbis are just about as rare as are Unitarian Universalist ministers.

Because we are relatively uncommon, UU ministers and rabbis, folk within the larger orthodox Christian community frequently have trouble figuring out how to deal with us. Indeed, I remember being told of an event regarding my predecessor at the Chandler church, in the ministerial gathering of the suburban Phoenix clergy association that I had just joined.

Their big common activity was sponsoring an interfaith Thanksgiving service. As the story was told to me the principal speaker was picked on a rotation basis. Well, at some date the calendar had rolled around, and it became time for the Unitarian Universalist. Apparently the clergy were sitting at a large table discussing what for them was a new situation.

One of the ministers offered, "I don’t know. He’s not a Christian you understand. Frankly, I’m really not sure it’s appropriate to have him speak." Another of the clergy is said to have turned to his left, and asked, "Well, what do you think about that, rabbi?"

It seems the rabbi, the only rabbi in that clergy group, didn’t mind. And so my UU minister predecessor went on to give the talk. The point is that in many parts of the country, certainly in the parts from which I come, UUs and Jews are fairly rare birds. As such we’ve tended to pull together, and in this often discovering much good work for us to do together.

Here, in the suburbs of Boston, in this wonderful garden city of Newton, I find new tensions. Here where we are not just marginal groups of necessity pulling together, our differences become more apparent. And occasionally these differences bring us to the edge of conflict. There are two areas in particular of which I’ve quickly become aware as I’m settling into this wonderful community.

One is the fact that we UUs actively welcome interfaith couples. Indeed, we have a pamphlet addressing the subject in our inquirer’s racks. We here at FUSN are proud of the fact that we can maintain an interfaith tension. And more than that, by doing so, discover incredible wealth in the bringing together of peoples with different spiritual perspectives.

However, many in the mainstream Jewish culture are profoundly concerned about anything that might lead to assimilation. A legitimate concern. Any religious culture that exists as a minority needs to worry about assimilation. It can lead to the disappearance of a coherent Jewish community in this country.

Now related to that concern, are those ongoing conversations particularly within liberal religious communities about appropriation. Appropriation is the taking of a religious or cultural community’s rites by an outside community who use them for purposes other than they were intended. This is a difficult area where we find the challenge centers on the integrity of traditions. So hard questions are being asked about those who use traditions not their own.

Therefore we find challenges such as in the southwest were many UUs, among others, have incorporated the ceremonial Medicine Wheel, particularly within youth activities. And, quite similarly here in suburban Boston, I find reservations have been expressed about we UUs incorporating Jewish holidays into our corporate celebrations.

I think it absolutely necessary for us to not turn away from these tensions. It does us no good to have dead elephants lying around on the floor stinking up the place. It is critical for us, if we wish to follow our own authentic spirituality with its emphasis on living compassionately in the real world, to hear the concerns of others.

Now, by and large, we’re an a-historical people. So here today, as we draw that sacred breath, let me share some necessary history. During the reformation when Christendom was shaken to the foundations, and people began to ask the questions that would birth at least the idea of religious liberty among the peoples of the west, we find the first intimations of anti-trinitarianism and proto-unitarianism. People questioning the normative Christian understanding of the nature of God are truly our spiritual ancestors, as the Unitarian part of our denominational name forthrightly proclaims.

It is essential for us to know that many of these people, when the religious and secular authorities brought them to the bar, to try, to judge and then to execute them, the crime they frequently were tried for was and I quote "Judaising Christianity." Our spiritual ancestors at the very beginning were primarily concerned with how Christianity had deviated from its Jewish origins. Frequently they were trying to claim the pure religion of the rabbi Jesus.

Now we have since that time four hundred years ago followed our own evolution. Our modern religious faith is distinct and in many ways neither Jewish nor Christian, drawing as it does from those sources but also from so much more.

Nonetheless, there is a profound spiritual affinity that many, maybe most of us feel with Judaism in particular. I suggest Judaism is, in many ways, the taproot of our tradition. Of course there is also that "much more" to this. We are, obviously, look at this building, also the children of Christianity. Pagans are welcome here. We’ve even invited a liberal Buddhist to be our minister. And, I think ultimately, maybe more than anything else, we are heirs to the western Enlightenment with its joyous and extravagant claims of human dignity and particularly the free human mind.

But this is my point. Here in this gathering we can be many things. We can claim our Jewish heritage, we can claim our Christianity, we can be pagan and we can be Buddhist. And still, we can be Unitarian Universalists. What weaves us together, I suggest, is our faith in the possibilities of human consciousness and human action. We Unitarian Universalists are, for the most part, a rational people who discover our authentic depth within relationships.

So we need to be sensitive to the concerns of others. We need to share with concerns about assimilation, while at the same time holding for our own integrity. We need to hear when others object to our using their symbols, while acknowledging in some ways these symbols might be ours, too. Depth does not excuse us from hurt. Wisdom does not remove us from conflicting claims to justice. But the lessons I’ve gleaned on this way speak to the possibility of reconciliation and healing as we simply attend, and act with kindness.

So, this is how I try to address all this. In my constantly returning to reflections on certain Jewish observations like Rosh Hashanah, I try not to simply replicate the ceremonies. Certainly not on Sunday mornings. We have evolved our own ritual forms, based largely in our more recent Protestant history. So, today we have our own traditional service, including in it themes of our particular local history. But in my sermon I hope I’m exploring some possible lessons there might be for us as a liberal religious people, within a reflection on some of the themes we can find in Rosh Hashanah.

Today, with all the hesitations I’ve expressed, I feel a deep need to reflect just a little on our spiritual lives through the lens of Jewish wisdom. Truthfully, this can seem a daunting enterprise. In many ways we are much like those descendants of the Bal Shem Tov. We’ve forgotten so much, so much. But, I believe, as we authentically seek, like Old Turtle did, for the greatest things in our lives, it turns out we have enough to find what counts.

Certainly, one of the ways toward depth we discover we possess, are the stories we’ve been given by our Jewish teachers. Frequently these stories really do point the way for us. And so today in the season of Rosh Hashanah, I would like to reflect a little on how and where the Jewish traditions of wisdom might appropriately fit into our contemporary liberal spiritual lives.

This is how I see it, when Rosh Hashanah rolls around in the calendar I find myself called to reflect on some aspect of this time, this time so special to so many of us. Here in that catching of breath and reflecting on the shape of our lives, we find one

of the primary lessons for us, all of us.
Our Jewish teachers are right. We do need, at some point, at some regular point, to stop, to reassess, to contemplate, to weigh. Here the practical emerges in another manner, in paying attention to the pause, the necessary moment that allows all things their shape and integrity.

As we do this fully, it also leads us to ask for forgiveness. Acknowledging responsibility is terribly important. We all need our own personal truth commission, from time to time we need an audit of our lives. Of course this is terribly difficult. So, setting a regular time to do it can be invaluable. Now that incredible culmination within the cycle of Rosh Hashanah, is Yom Kippur. And we’re going to focus on that very important facet of this holy time with Cheryl Lloyd’s sermon next week.

Today I think we need simply to hold the wonder and the awe. And maybe remember a little of how we can authentically draw upon this Jewish tradition to do that. Soon the work of justice will be at hand. Soon we will need to attend to the calls of our children. Soon we will need to find those ways that we can act within our larger community that bring health and new possibility. Soon.

But, now, and here in this moment, we can draw a breath. Here in this moment we can see how we are given a new chance. Here as we allow ourselves to celebrate the astonishing gathering together that is our community, we can find the strength to go forward into the unknown.

There is much grace set upon the world. All we need do is attend, and then from that attention to act with care and love. What a lesson to glean! We are all connected. We all support one another.

What a joy!

Happy New Year!
And, amen.