Rabbi Ariana Silverman

Yom Kippur 5783 Sermon - “Power and Vulnerability”

When you are a pale-skinned Detroiter studying in Jerusalem in July, it is important to have lots of pockets. You may need to carry a smartphone and sunglasses and water and money and keys. And although, as I reminded you on Rosh Hashanah, you can carry all of the Jewish texts that you’re studying in your smartphone, I still liked to have them in print form, and have a notepad, and a pen. So this summer the Shalom Hartman Institute, a center for advanced Jewish studies, gave my cohort of rabbinic fellows a backpack with lots of pockets. 

And that was just for our physical and intellectual needs. Because there are also psychological and spiritual pockets. In Tales of The Hasidim Later Masters, Martin Buber relates this well known story of Rabbi Simcha Bunim, a Polish Hasidic rabbi at the turn of the 19th century:

Rabbi Bunim teaches: Every person should have two pockets. In one pocket should be a piece of paper saying: "I am only dust and ashes." (Genesis 18:27) When one is feeling too proud, reach into this pocket and take out this paper and read it. In the other pocket should be a piece of paper saying: "For my sake was the world created."(Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5) When one is feeling disheartened and lowly, reach into this pocket and take this paper out and read it.

This is good advice no matter where you are, but it is particularly true in Jerusalem. This summer at the Hartman Institute, the tension between power and vulnerability came up a lot. And I began to realize that if you want to talk about certain topics, especially with Jews, it is critical to know which piece of paper each person in the room has pulled out at that moment. You need to know if they are feeling powerful or vulnerable. So this morning I am not going to talk to you about certain topics, like the fraught politics of the Middle East, or what I think the current government of Israel should do or not do. 

But I am going to talk about what I have learned about power and vulnerability–in Israel and in the US–and the papers we each carry in our pockets, because it is particularly important on Yom Kippur. On Yom Kippur, we move away from our own sense of power in the world and say to God that we are only dust and ashes. And we mean it. Yom Kippur is often seen as our dress rehearsal for death. We refrain from eating and drinking and physical pleasures and we give our last confession–our vidui. Or as Rabbi David Ingber suggested in his sermon in 2020, perhaps it is the dress rehearsal immediately before death. On Yom Kippur we are acutely aware that we could actually die tomorrow. We are tremendously vulnerable.

And as Rabbi Ingber, and you, and I also recognize, this is a day of unthinkable power. We believe we have the capacity, through our t'shuvah and our prayer, to persuade God that we are truly worthy. We try to remind God that the world was created for our sake.

Yom Kippur is the day when we deeply acknowledge that we can be really vulnerable and very powerful at the same time.

The trouble is that we often live the rest of the year as though the Jews have to pick one, and whichever side is picked colors how we think Jews should always behave.

If you are Jewish, or spend enough time with Jews, there is demographic information that can generally predict whether you feel that the Jews are powerful or vulnerable, or to quote my Hartman colleague Rabbi Yael Splansky, whether the Jews are disproportionately blessed…or disproportionately oppressed.

Rabbi Splansky spoke in a sermon in 2019 about how people with each perspective are often sitting at a Shabbat table or seder together. Some, generally the older generation of Jews, are saying, “We are vulnerable and I am terrified about where it might lead.” And some, generally the younger generation of Jews, are saying “We are powerful and I’m terrified about where it might lead.” 

And part of why it is often generational is because if we have had experiences of  feeling profoundly vulnerable, it may be hard to recognize our own power. And if we experience our lives as ones of relative privilege, it can be hard to legitimize our vulnerability.

This summer some people spoke to me about the place they don’t live, feel scared to live, but still feel connected to. They think about what happened there in 1967. And sometimes they come to visit but aren’t sure how vulnerable they should feel. It is a place where I have lived for 12 years, where many of you live, and where many of this congregation’s children are being raised. Some white people who lived in the City of Detroit decades ago, and made the decision to leave, have expressed concern about whether being in Detroit now makes us vulnerable. Some have asked me, including at the block party this summer, if I feel safe living here. 

I usually just affirm that I do. But I often wish I had the time to delve deeper into the question, because it feels like the clash of two narratives. In one, Detroit is a place where many Jews, and particularly white Jews, felt vulnerable and made the choice to go to somewhere else where they and their families felt safer. Jews have always been vulnerable, and still are today. In the other narrative, Detroit is a place where Jews, and particularly white Jews, have always had power, whether they realized it or not, so Jews left this city out of racism and selfishness, using their perceived vulnerability as an excuse, ultimately to the detriment of others. In the first narrative, the past necessarily determines the future, and to think otherwise is to be blind to vulnerability. In the other, the present experience of privilege should inform our assessment of the past and our ability to judge others. And to think otherwise is to be blind to our own power.  

The challenge, of course, is both narratives not only reflect lived experiences, they both have Jewish moral claims. We are a people who have been commanded in Deuteronomy to choose life for ourselves and for our children (Deuteronomy 30:19). We are taught that we are allowed to prioritize our family over others (Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 34). We read in the Shulchan Aruch that we are allowed to do extraordinary things to save a life, and to err on the side of intervening even when it just appears that someone’s life is in danger (Shulchan Aruch Orach Chayim 329). And based on our historical experience, we may need to err on the side of caution. 

We are also a people commanded in Deuteronomy to pursue justice (Deuteronomy 16:20). We are told over 36 times in our Torah to love the stranger. Our Torah, and our observance of Passover remind us that our experience of slavery in Egpyt compels us to fight for the oppressed. And if Hillel tried to teach that a central tenet of our faith is to not do unto others what is hateful to us, why would a people who resented being abandoned by their neighbors in Europe, then go and abandon their neighbors in America?

But our textual tradition seems comfortable with the tension of the simultaneous truth of our vulnerability and the just exercise of our power. It is the proponents of each narrative that sometimes struggle to see that not only can both be right, but they can both be right in the same moment.

The Downtown Synagogue, and the Reconstructionist Congregation of Detroit, are proud of the fact that we stayed in the City. We were able to raise millions of dollars to  renovate a building that has and will serve as a home for people across lines of race, faith, and class. We are replacing our brick exterior with glass, expressing the powerful ability to welcome even more people. But…we are using ballistic glass. We are powerful and vulnerable at the same time. 

There is, of course, another place that people spoke to me about this summer.  Another place where Jews are both powerful and vulnerable but people often think they are only one or the other. We spoke about a place where some people here today live, but most of us don’t, and may even feel scared to live there, and yet may still feel connected to that place. And we talk about what happened there in 1967. And sometimes during our visits we are not sure how vulnerable we should feel.

Among the people I spoke to were my children. It can be very instructive to see Israel through the eyes of our children. My six year old son enjoys a lot of privilege in America. He is white and wealthy and male and yet he still wonders why there aren’t very many Jews in the world. We have not yet told my six year old about progroms or the Holocaust. His vulnerability lies in just feeling like an outsider. His first Shabbat in Jerusalem he was euphoric. “Look Mom!” he shouted, “There are so many boys wearing kippas like me walking down the street to the synagogue.” The fact that the buses didn’t run on Shabbat  blew his mind. And he marveled when he saw young children walking together without adults, sometimes late at night. It was as if he were in Disneyland.

But let me tell you something I have learned about Disneyland. When I was a kid and visited Disneyland with my family, we went on the “It’s a Small World After All” ride. You may know the one I’m talking about. You progress along a canal in little mechanical boats and symbolically visit different parts of the world with puppets singing on repeat about how connected we all are. It is supposed to be uplifting and remind us of unity. But on that fateful day the mechanics malfunctioned and the boats in front of us stopped. So then all the boats started bumping into each other…while the song was still going on. It apparently was not an easy fix so the staff needed to evacuate us. They opened one of the previously invisible emergency exits along the walls. Stepping through that wall was like crossing the line between privilege and vulnerability . Dumpsters were everywhere. And instead of smiling, singing puppets, or actors dressed in elaborate Disney princess costumes, there were people in work clothes who looked very tired. We were hustled back onto the sparkling sidewalks, but I learned very young that you can’t have a world of shiny cleanliness without some people taking out the trash. And if you put a wall between yourself and them, between your privilege and their vulnerability, you can keep singing about world peace without ever seeing them. 

Historically, Jews have often been put behind walls. But my children also asked me about the walls in Jerusalem. It was both very easy and very difficult to explain. I am not a big fan of putting people behind walls, no matter which side of the wall we are on. 

This summer I also spoke to lots of rabbis. My cohort in the Hartman Rabbinic Leadership Initiative consists of about 25 rabbis. But for part of the summer Hartman invites rabbis from around the world to come and learn with us. This summer it drew over 200. One of the presentations we heard was from Bashir Bashir, a professor who specializes in egalitarian binationalism and particularly how it might play out in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. He was, essentially, talking about tearing down walls. My colleagues and I listened as he outlined what it would look like to move away from the model of partition to a model of recognizing two distinct national groups that have parity, mutual recognition, and mutual equality. I am not going to explore the details of binationalism with you right now. I am going to share that what really amazed me was what drew the biggest reaction from my colleagues. At the end of Bashir Bashir’s interview with Donniel Hartman, when asked about the Law of Return, Bashir Bashir said that in his framework it would cease. That was when my colleagues began to murmur to each other. Donniel Hartman replied to Bashir Bashir that perhaps it was with that last answer that you lost them .

A future where there would be no need for a right of return was unimaginable. And here’s what’s crazy…and totally understandable.  In my follow-up conversations with some of my American colleagues, none of them said they were already planning to make aliyah. Many are quite comfortable in their homes and congregations. The Law of Return was not sacrosanct because they need it now. It is necessary for the hypothetical situation that something could go wrong for Jews in America. It is necessary for people who feel vulnerable, no matter how powerful they may be at the same time. 

Our Torah portion this morning begins with the reminder that God could strike us down dead. Acharei Mot, after the death, of Aaron’s sons, Aaron is given very specific instructions on how to perform rituals so God does not kill him, too. This parasha reflects the Levitical obsession with boundaries. As anthropologist Mary Douglas points out, there is an interlocking system of priestly boundaries. Enforcing one boundary upholds the others. And perhaps, if we uphold enough boundaries, if we enact enough rituals properly, particularly on the Day of Atonement, God won’t strike us down. 

The challenge today is that the highly specified priestly rituals are no longer being performed. We have attempted to replace some of them with liturgy and we may not be sure if we’re getting it right. But the innovation of our observance today is the commitment to not just trying to make things right with God, but also with one another. We try to do a lot of turning. Toward God and toward truly seeing each other, and what makes us each of us vulnerable. 

Tal Becker, who previously served as the senior policy advisor to Israel's Minister of Foreign Affairs and was a lead negotiator in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, also spoke to the rabbis at the Hartman Institute this summer. He didn’t speak about policy. Tal told a story of when his grandfather was a child. As a child his grandfather was walking in the streets, holding the hand of his father, Tal’s great-grandfather. A gang of antisemites approached them, and a child was forced to watch as his father was almost beaten to death for being a Jew. And so, when Tal was old enough, his grandfather told him that Tal must get vengeance for what the antisemites did. 

And then he was sent to be a negotiator in a dialogue between two traumatized peoples. Regardless of who suffered when, or on what scale, or because of what or whom, when two traumatized people sit in a room trying to discuss borders and capitals and sovereignty, they can get stuck. 

But Tal also told us of when he felt relieved of the burden to seek vengeance. When he was negotiating the Abraham Accords, he realized that he was seeing genuine warmth from other countries. What if his vengeance was not to survive…but to live?

What does it mean for us to live with the intense vulnerability we may feel and the tremendous power we possess? And to recognize that both may be present in the exact same moment? 

What would it look like if we could see the power and vulnerability of each other? And what would it look like if those of us who have been speaking only about vulnerability were able to see and acknowledge the simultaneous power and privilege that others are pointing out that we have? And if those of us who are speaking only about our power and privilege are able to see and acknowledge the simultaneous vulnerability that others feel and are trying to point out that we have, too?

Some of you were with us when Pastor Aramis Hinds and I discussed power and vulnerability in the Akeidah.  It is something that comes up a lot when two clergy in their 40s raising their kids in the City of Detroit–one who identifies as Black, and male, and Christian, and one who identifies as white, and female, and Jewish–try to uncover and explore our own power and vulnerability and make sense of what has happened in America, and in Detroit, and in our sacred texts, and even in this sacred space. 

As we sit here this morning, we are proud that we are in the City of Detroit and proud that we are working with our neighbors. But when Pastor Hinds and I were talking about planning for the Yamim Noraim, we decided we needed to have several security personnel.

Pastor Hinds and I, like each of you, are carrying a lot in our pockets. 

But it doesn’t need to weigh us down. I began with a teaching from Rabbi Simcha Bunim over 200 years ago about carrying our power and our vulnerability with us wherever we go. I will conclude with a teaching about being powerful and being vulnerable from Pastor Aramis Hinds this year:

“People who experience the most freedom, he said, are the ones who recognize that they can be both.”