Kol Nidre Sermon, September 24, 2023
By Rabbi Mark Glickman

In one of the Talmud’s most famous stories, a non-Jewish man goes up to the great Rabbi Shammai and says, “Convert me to Judaism on the condition that you teach me the entire Torah while standing on one foot.” Shammai presumably muttered under his breath something to the effect of “I can’t teach you the whole Torah while standing on one foot,” and Shammai pushed him away with a builder’s tool that he was holding.

The non-Jew then approached Shammai’s colleague, Rabbi Hillel, and asked him the same question. “Convert me to Judaism on the condition that you teach me the entire Torah while standing on one foot.” Hillel’s response was different. Hillel converted the man, and then said,

“What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the entire Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study.”

Hillel’s response is as profound as it is simple. The Golden Rule – or at least Judaism’s version of it – is the Torah. And everything else – all the stories, the rituals, the social laws, and all the rest – is simply a commentary on this verse.

Many people who study this passage forget the second part of what Hillel said – the “go and study part” – but that part is just as important as the first part, because figuring out how to keep that Golden Rule can be very complicated.

Nonetheless, Hillel argued that the entire Torah can be boiled down to that single ethical principle, a principle that could easily be taught to a curious student while standing on one foot, and that Judaism’s essential teaching is all based on not doing to others what we wouldn’t want others to do to us.

Jump ahead 2000 years. My friend and colleague, Rabbi Marla Subeck-Spanjer, tells the story about how, as a young, single rabbi, she took a position at a small congregation in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Shortly after she arrived, she broke her ankle in several places and had to move around on crutches with her leg all bandaged up. One day, she went to a community meeting of some sort, where she got a name tag, saying “Hello, my name is Rabbi Subeck.” After the meeting, having forgotten to take off the name tag, she crutched her way into a store across the street from her temple to do an errand. As the then Rabbi Subeck stood at the counter, tottering on her one working foot and two crutches, the storekeeper, looked at her nametag and said, “Oh, you’re a rabbi? I’ve always wondered about Judaism. Tell me all about it.”

There she was, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, being asked to tell a non-Jew all there was to know about Judaism while standing on one foot. “The worst part about it,” she told me later, “was that there was nobody there I could laugh about it with!”

Laughter aside, the question that the non-Jewish interrogator from the Talmud posed to these hopping rabbis is an important one. What, when it comes right down to it, is Judaism all about? We know, of course, some of the tangential things that Judaism is all about. It’s about kugel and knishes, bagels and bialys, synagogues and federations, Shabbat and Yom Kippur, and other holidays too numerous to list. It’s about that indescribable connection we sometimes feel with other Jews. It’s about study and Tikkun Olam, wonderful music, and it’s about responding to every mention of Israel in the media with an impressed “Oh, wow,” a pained “Oy vey,” and usually some combination of the two. It’s about what in Yiddish we call Yiddishkeit – Jewishness – in all of its many and various dimensions.

But what is it essentially? What is it at its core? Hillel gave one answer, and it’s an important one. Tonight, I’d like to add a couple of other answers that other sages from our tradition provided, each with wisdom of its own.

One of those answers comes from the great Rabbi Akiva. To the best of our knowledge, Rabbi Akiva wasn’t ever approached by a non-Jew hopping on one foot and demanding answers about the Torah, but he did offer his own teaching on what he saw as Judaism’s core principle. The Midrash teaches us that Akiva said that the greatest principle of Torah is a simple, three-word teaching from Leviticus – the portion that we read on Yom Kippur: “V’ahahvta l’re’echa kamocha. Love your neighbor as yourself.”

It’s a simple phrase, but it too, like Hillel’s favorite, is rife with complexity. The Torah commands us to “love our neighbor.” How can God reasonably command us to love anything? God can command us to do all kinds of things, but to love? When my kids were little, I tried commanding them to love brussels sprouts. It didn’t get me very far at all. Later, I tried telling them to love the people whom I had chosen to be their spouses, and, to my dismay, I learned that things just don’t work like that anymore. Love is a feeling and feelings (if you’ll excuse the mixed metaphor) have minds of their own. Love doesn’t happen on command; it’s far more spontaneous than that.

Plus, the Torah says that we should love our neighbor as ourselves. That’s odd. The Torah could have just said “Love your neighbor” and called it good. But it added this “as yourself” part. What if I don’t love myself very much? Does that mean I can be a jerk to my neighbor? And what if I show love to myself by letting myself eat pancakes three meals a day? Does this mean I should constantly feed pancakes to my neighbor, too? Probably not.

I don’t know for sure what God really meant by this commandment, and I don’t know for sure why Akiva chose it as the Torah’s core principle. But I have a feeling that it had something to do with Judaism’s constant insistence that we look beyond ourselves. Judaism refuses to let us get stuck on what’s inside us, and instead always demands that we translate our inside feeling into outside action. In Judaism, it’s not good enough to think about lighting Shabbat candles, you actually have to light them. It’s not good enough to feel compassion for the suffering of other people, though that’s important. Our compassion only counts when we translate it into action – visiting the sick, sharing with the poor, helping the fallen stand up. Outside things.

Telling us to love our neighbors as ourselves, I think, is a command to take what we know on the inside and cast it outward. You know yourself pretty well (even though your spouse or your therapist might know you better), and, Sigmund Freud notwithstanding, on a day-to-day level, you’re probably pretty tuned in to who you are what you are, and why you do most of the things you do. It’s unlikely that anybody understands your complexity better than you do, and sensitivity to the fullness of one’s self is the beginning of love.

But loving yourself is only the beginning. Self-love only counts when we externalize it when we use it to propel us to love others who are beyond the boundaries of the self

You have dreams, and so do your neighbors. You struggle to find your way, so do your neighbors. You fall short sometimes – sometimes for a good reason, and always for some reason. The same is true of your neighbors. There are times when you feel joy, and times when you suffer, and times when you’re baffled, and times when you don’t want to think about any of it and just want to watch Netflix instead. The same is true of each and every human being. And as a human being, you are worthy of love even when you don’t think you merit it. So is everyone else. So love your neighbor, for just like you, they too are magnificent if flawed human beings.

So now we have two takes on what the most central teaching of our tradition is – one that calls upon us to treat our neighbors the way we want to be treated and another that calls upon us to love them. A third answer to this question comes from another of our ancient sages. In the very same Midrashic passage telling us what Akiva felt was the most important passage in the Torah, Akiva’s colleague, Ben Azzai, disagrees, and instead weighs in with his own suggestion.

Even greater than the command to love our neighbors as ourselves is a seemingly throwaway line from the beginning of the fifth chapter of Genesis: “This is the book of the generations of Adam.”

Whaaat? In the Torah, this line seems, as I said, like a throwaway – a simple introduction to the text’s account of Adam and Eve’s genealogy after Cain and Abel. But Ben Azzai sees this commandment as even more central, more important, more profound than the commandment to love our neighbors.

Why? Maybe it’s because this little line might be trying to tell us what the Torah, and what Judaism as a whole, is really about. Many people see the Torah as a story that is ultimately about Jews and Jews only. Ben Azzai seems to reject this perspective. Torah is a story for Jews, but it is the story. And for Jews, the story is the story of humanity – a story that includes us but is also much, much bigger. Torah is the story of the generations of Adam, the first human being; not of Abraham, the first Jew. And when we focus on our own story to the exclusion of the story of others, we betray the meaning of what it means to be a Jew. Being a Jew isn’t just about making sure Jews do well, Ben Azzai is saying, it’s about making sure we all do well. It’s about making sure that all children of Adam – Jews and non-Jews alike – come to be able to enjoy God’s blessings.

An Orthodox rabbi in a community where I used to live once refused to participate in a community-wide anti-hunger campaign, arguing that, the problem with the proposed campaign was that it aimed to feed all hungry people, not just Jews, and Jews need to worry about feeding our own hungry people first. To him I respond, “This is the book of the generations of Adam.”

Last February, a Palestinian gunman murdered two Israeli settlers in the West Bank town of Huwara. In response, hundreds of Israeli settlers attacked the town, burning up to 200 buildings to the ground and killing at least one Palestinian. Rather than criticizing the continued violence, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich argued that the village of Huwara needs to be wiped out. To him I respond, “This is the book of the generations of Adam.”

There are those who criticize Reform Judaism for having universalist concerns about the suffering of non-Jews as well as concerns about the suffering of Jews. Here, my response and the response of us all should be clear. “This is the book of the generations of Adam.”

Three ancient sages. Three suggestions as to what is Judaism’s most central teaching. Here, as in most places, these rabbis disagree with one another, and yet, somehow, their suggestions all seem to echo the same theme. Look beyond yourself. See the humanity of others. Treat people with kindness whenever you can, because you as a human being know how important it is.

I think that each of these rabbis in his own way was trying to teach this insight. They seem to be telling us that God is trying to get this point across. Yes, life is hard, but remember that it’s hard for others too, so be compassionate. Fight if you must, but never forget the humanity of your opponent, and always strive to make the world more humane.

Transcend yourself for something greater. Transcend yourself for a better world. Transcend yourself, so others can do the same. Transcend yourself, to make the world the way it can be.

What is Judaism? How can we boil it down to something we can teach while standing on one foot? Maybe this is it. Be kind. Be just. Look beyond yourself. For when you do, you can help make this world the way it’s supposed to be for us all. This, perhaps, is truly what Judaism is all about.

Shanah Tovah.

Rosh Hashanah Morning Sermon, September 16, 2023
By Rabbi Mark Glickman

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. Then God created matter of all kinds – the land and the seas, the plants and the animals, human beings, male and female, the sun and moon and stars to shine on them all. God put everything in its place, giving us room to grow, and the rest of the world space to teem with life and activity. Then God saw all that had been made and, behold, it was very good.

Then God took a break, and the rest…is history.

The Torah tells us that God put us into the world to have dominion over it – to enjoy it – but also to take care of it, to till and to tend this God-given garden called Earth. And the story of human history is, in many ways, the story of our increased ability to do the former, and our decreasing commitment to do the latter. We humans have become very adept in our ability to exploit the Earth. We build cities whose skylines grow taller by the year; we move ourselves and our stuff from place to place with a speed that would have been unimaginable to most human beings throughout history; we remove plants and minerals from the earth, creating toys and machines and enormous structures too numerous and too great to describe in words.

It’s amazing what we can do – we’ve responded to that divine call to rule the world with great success. But along the way, we seem to be forgetting that second command: to care for the Earth, to till the garden, and to tend it.

And if you doubt me, I present to you as evidence this past summer. Do you remember summertime this year? It was hot! It was really hot. And, as I remind my friends and family in the United States, it was hot even up here in Calgary, and this is where some people move to avoid the heat.

Of course, wasn’t just hot here. Worldwide, this was the hottest summer on record – ever! And with every tank of gas, our cars burn, and with every smokestack spewing pollutants into the air, and with every forest we cut down for fuel, paper, or housing, the problem gets worse. Indeed, there is widespread scientific consensus that the world is getting hotter, that the change is caused by people, and that if we don’t do something about it soon, it’s going to get worse, and the results will be utterly catastrophic.

As you know, there is a lot of science out there on the subject of climate change.  And while I’m certainly no scientist and I don’t want us to get lost in a sea of facts, a quick glance into the scientific literature here is important. Since preindustrial times, average global temperatures have risen by more than 2 degrees Celsius, and we’re on track toward a 6-degree temperature change by the end of the century. That means that the lovely 22-degree summer days that you remember from your childhood will be 28-degree days for our descendants.

And the results of such change are going to influence us all – they already have. At current rates of change, glaciers, and polar ice will melt, causing sea level rises bound to wipe out beachfront communities and low-lying island nations. Equatorial countries will become unlivable, and entire populations will be displaced as people need to move to higher and cooler places. Already, heat waves since the 1990s are estimated to have cost the global economy more than $21.7 trillion CDN. The warming climate is already wreaking havoc on animal populations, as many species find themselves living in surroundings for which their evolution has left them unprepared. Long Island Sound doesn’t have lobsters like it used to – the water is too hot for them. Similarly, Atlantic cod populations are moving north at a rate of 100 miles per decade. Tree populations are becoming uprooted, too, with white spruce moving north at a rate of 60 miles per decade. Sharks are moving further North, and you’ve probably seen the footage of starving polar bears looking for ice floes from which they can hunt for seals.

By far, the most lethal animal to us humans is the mosquito, and now disease-carrying mosquitos live in places that used to be too cold for them. That’s dangerous. By 2080, 5 billion people – sixty percent of all human beings – will live in areas where they can contract the illnesses that these insects spread. In Mexico, mosquito-borne viruses such as dengue fever, zika, and yellow fever used to only attack people who lived in the lowlands. Now, those viruses are moving into Mexico City, one of the largest metropolises in the world.

As the world heats up, air conditioners help a lot of us, but only those of us who can afford them. And, of course, any time we turn on the AC in our cars or in our homes, that machinery adds more pollutants to the air, and we only exacerbate the problem. And while AC units do a good job of cooling the homes of the wealthy, they also spit heat out into the environment. In leafy suburbs, that’s not much of a problem, at least not directly, but studies have shown that air conditioning actually increases outdoor temperatures in large cities for people who can’t afford their own units. Air conditioning, therefore, is simply a transfer of heat from the rich to the poor. It taxes our power systems, it leads to brown-outs and blackouts. Last year, Qatar air-conditioned its open-air stadiums for the 2022 World Cup. Shouldn’t that concern us?

And then there are the fires. I’ve seen this problem grow worse even during my short seven years here in Calgary. As our forests get hotter, they get drier, and when they get drier they become tinderboxes. Then, all it takes is a bolt of lightning or a stray spark, and they become infernos. Remember the Fort McMurray fire? When it happened, I hadn’t even arrived here yet, but I certainly heard about it in the States. It was devastating. Remember Lytton? It burned in minutes – two lives were lost, hundreds of homes turned to ash, and thousands of people had to flee. And there’s Maui, and there’s Australia, and there’s the smoke we saw here day after day after day during the summer. Each smoky view obliterating the sun and sky should remind us of the consequences of our environmental negligence.

I could continue in this vein, but you get the idea.

As your rabbi, I have a few things to say about this.

First, please, take science seriously. There are strong forces today and many, many dollars that are being devoted to minimizing the threat of climate change, and it is incumbent upon us all to see through the smoky smokescreens they create.

I say this not just as a political plea, but as a Jewish one. Our people has always been committed to the truth – to study, and learning. And through the ages, we’ve honored and respected experts. “The world stands on three things,” Rabban Gamliel said many centuries ago, “on justice, on truth, and on peace.” The Torah describes God as “gracious and abundant in love and truth.” And perhaps most explicitly, the Rabbis taught that “In an argument that’s for the sake of heaven, the desired end is truth.”

Let’s embrace that as we look at the current environmental catastrophe for what it is. Let’s never avoid this truth, even though it’s scary and troubling. Let’s be like the great 12th-century sage, Maimonides, who only moonlighted as a sage back then. His day job was as a physician – as a scientist. He was deeply pious, but when an uncomfortable scientific truth-challenged his religion, he didn’t reject that truth, he reconciled it with what he already knew. Scientific truth doesn’t threaten us, it enriches us. This has always been the Jewish way, and we dare not forget it now as the fires burn and the days grow hotter.

And here I need to add something that I say with great love for this wonderful community in which I live: I never thought I would have to say something like this. I never thought that I would have to plead with a community of educated, intelligent Jews to take science seriously. But here in Calgary, I have encountered many people – good people, intelligent people, articulate observers of the world, some of them Jews, some of them even members of our own congregation – who want to minimize the risk that climate change poses. They see such concerns as liberal hokum, woke overreactions, and left-wing political propaganda.

We can understand why. Oil and gas are important to us here in Alberta. They’re our bread and butter. We depend on it. Some people butter their bread with butter; we Albertans butter ours with tar sands. Some people – yes, some people here in this room – poo-poo the science because it’s hard to see these individual events as part of a bigger problem, or because of a general mistrust of institutions and experts that seems to be spreading these days. Such obliviousness is a luxury we can’t afford, and it’s also a betrayal of our Jewish commitment to truth and to tending the garden.

Second, let’s be ready for the fact that life is going to need to change for us. That change will be real, it will be significant, and it’s going to affect our daily lives. This situation calls upon us to engage in the sacred work of Tikkun Olam, repairing our broken world. But Tikkun, repair, doesn’t come easy. It is work for us human beings – hard work. We’re already seeing some of it. Cars are becoming more efficient, regulations are sometimes growing stronger. We recycle, we compost, and we protect our world where we can. Some people refrain from using disposable cutlery; others walk to work; still, others buy energy-efficient appliances. Here at Temple, if everything goes according to plan, we’ll soon be getting solar panels on our roof, and we’ll be one of the first religious institutions in Calgary to do so.  This should make us proud (and we should thank our Environment Committee for making this happen).

Each of these steps is wonderful and holy work, because these days, protecting our world is one of the most important mitzvot we can do. But of course, each of these steps is a drop in the bucket, and none is anywhere near enough given the changes that we need to make. Protecting our world now demands worldwide, systemic change. It would be great if Canada stopped polluting the air, but if, say, India and China continue doing so, we’ll eventually choke on the fumes ourselves.

Fixing this problem will demand dramatic changes to life as we know it – and that’s particularly true for those of us who enjoy the privileges of Western life. I don’t know what those changes going to look like. Maybe it will mean warmer homes in the summertime, maybe fewer airplane rides, maybe we’ll need to stop using disposable plates and bottles and cans. Maybe we’ll need to move away from sprawling suburbs and back into more energy-efficient cities. Whatever it is, be prepared for change – and be prepared for the kind of change that we’re going to feel.

However it ends up looking, we must remember that Tikkun Olam – fixing our world – is essentially an embrace of and an understanding of the need for change. Even and especially when it affects our own lives.

And finally, let’s remember the words of the Psalmist: “Those who sow in tears, will reap in joy.” These are hard and frightening times for us and for all humanity. They will demand work, and sacrifice from us all. But we dare not despair. There is growing awareness of what we need, and we must embrace our vision of a better world:  A world of human warmth rather than environmental heat. A world of peace, justice, and truth, rather than one of propaganda and lies. A world in which each human being can have domain over the world while also tilling and tending the garden.

That, my friends, will take work, but when we do it, this new year and every new year will be good and sweet not only for us but for all humanity.

Shanah Tovah.

Erev Rosh Hashanah Sermon, September 15, 2023
By Rabbi Mark Glickman

Tonight, here on the threshold of a new year, we have a lot to celebrate, but our world, as you know, is rife with conflict.  There is a war in Ukraine, agonizing political unrest in Israel, violence on our own streets here in Calgary, and growing discord wherever we turn.  Everything seems so difficult these days, everything is a battle. Will the fighting ever end?

I’m not sure that it will, but for some perspective on our current conflicts, I would like us to turn back to our history for a few minutes. And as we do, I’d like to introduce you tonight to two men, and a book. Maybe, as we meet these men, and take a look at the book, we can gain at least a little perspective.

The first man I’d like you to meet is a person named David Philipson.

David Philipson was the youngest of the very first group of four Reform rabbis ordained in the United States. Born to German parents in a small town in Indiana in 1862, in his early teens Philipson moved to Cincinnati, Ohio to attend high school and to become a student at the Hebrew Union College, the newly-created rabbinical seminary in that city.  In 1883, HUC ordained its first class of rabbis – four young men, the youngest of whom was Rabbi Philipson.

When Rabbi Philipson and his three classmates were ordained, there was a huge banquet held in Cincinnati to celebrate the event. The graduation banquet was a gala affair, and anyone who was anybody – both in American Jewry, and in the general non-Jewish Cincinnati community – attended it, fully decked out in their gilded age clothing: gowns, top hats, and black ties and tails, and all the rest.

That banquet is worthy of a sermon in and of itself, but in brief, you need to remember that these were the early days of Reform Judaism. Reform Judaism was instituting revolutionary changes in Jewish life. Many people in America and Western Europe embraced these changes, but there were some who were concerned that it was changing too much and too fast. And that’s why the banquet was so scandalous. We still have the menu from that dinner, and you can see here why it caused such a fuss.

The appetizer (if you can make it out): little neck clams. The next course: filet of beef with soft-shell crabs and shrimp salad. And so the dinner proceeded. Sure enough, according to Rabbi Philipson’s recollections from later in his life, the people who were concerned about the speed of change in this newfangled thing called Reform Judaism stood up, stormed out, and – wouldn’t you know it – went off and started Conservative Judaism. In a sense, Conservative Judaism was born at the celebration of the ordination of four young men as Reform rabbis, one of whom was David Philipson.

Rabbi Philipson’s first pulpit was in Baltimore, MD. He earned a doctorate at Johns Hopkins University and drew acclaim as a leader in interfaith relations. During his tenure in Baltimore, Philipson became a leader in the American Reform rabbinate and was instrumental in composing the first platform of the Reform movement – a document called the Pittsburgh Platform of Reform Judaism. This statement, approved by the Reform Rabbinate in 1885, described our founding fathers’ understanding of what Reform Judaism stands for. It suggests that science and history aren’t antagonistic to our religion, but rather that they contribute to it…which was at the time, a revolutionary idea. It says that only the moral laws of Judaism are binding upon us today, not the ritual ones. It rejects Zionism, suggesting that we’re no longer a nation, but a religious community. It dismisses the ideas of heaven, hell, and the afterlife as foreign to Judaism, and it says that practices such as keeping kosher or wearing distinctive clothing are “apt rather to obstruct than to further modern spiritual elevation.”

How Reform has changed since then! What these rabbis described in the Pittsburgh Platform is what we now call Classical Reform Judaism. It was the Judaism of cavernous temples, robed choirs, and elevated rabbinic oratory. It was majestic, uplifting, and inspiring, just as its adherents felt a modern religion should be. And Rabbi David Philipson was one of its greatest American architects.

After five years in Baltimore, Rabbi Philipson moved back to Cincinnati, where he became rabbi of Bene Israel, now called Rockdale Temple, serving at that congregation for 61 years, until his death in 1949. There, he continued his interfaith work, battled corruption in the local city government, and fought antisemitism wherever he could. He edited the Reform movement’s Union Prayerbook; he wrote a comprehensive history of the Reform movement, which was still in use as recently as my own stint in rabbinical school. And as vehement he was in his opposition to antisemitism, he was also an anti-Zionist. To him, Judaism was a religion; America was his nation. “No man,” he wrote, “can be a member of two nationalities.” In 1897, he and his allies issued a statement in response to the first Zionist Congress in Basel asserting that “America is our Zion,” not the land of Israel.

My uncle, Rabbi Robert Marx, studied with Rabbi Philipson shortly before Philipson’s death in the late 1940s and was able to get a few books from Philipson’s library after he died, and Philipson’s bookplate says it all.

It shows two flags – the American flag, and a Jewish flag. The American one is in front. It also shows two statues, one of Moses, and the other of George Washington. Moses is slightly behind that first American president, looking respectfully on him from the rear.

David Philipson wrote many books, taught at the Hebrew Union College, he served as president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. Not surprisingly, he was widely known as the “Dean of the American Rabbinate.”

The other man I’d like you to meet tonight was another giant of the 20th-century Reform rabbinate – Rabbi Stephen Wise.

Born in Budapest in 1874, Wise migrated to New York with his family as a child, but returned to Europe as a young man, receiving his rabbinic ordination and a doctorate in Vienna in 1893. He served a pulpit in New York and another in Portland Oregon before coming back to New York and founding “The Free Synagogue,” today known as the “Stephen Wise Free Synagogue.” (There were no dues; everyone paid what they could; don’t worry we’re not going to do that here.) For many years, the congregation didn’t have a building, and met instead for their weekly worship at – where else? – Carnegie Hall.

And from early on, Rabbi Stephen Wise was a colossus. In 1909, he became a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People – the NAACP. In 1915, he helped found the American Committee on Armenian Atrocities. He fought for the rights of coal miners during labor disputes in the 1920s, speaking out for the workers even though many mine owners those workers opposed belonged to his own congregation.

In the early 1940s, Wise was one of the first American Jewish leaders to become aware of Nazi atrocities against Jews and fought with all he had on behalf of European Jewry. He spoke widely to draw attention to their plight, he traveled to Washington DC frequently to meet at the White House with his “friend Franklin” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt – and advocate for American support on their behalf, and in 1942 Wise convened tens of thousands of people at a rally at Madison Square Gardens to draw attention to their cause.

Stephen Wise was a master orator, speaking in the stentorian tones of speakers trained to address audiences before the era of electronic amplification. Here, in one of the few films available of him, from a newsreel about the Kristallnacht pogrom in Germany in 1938, you can get a sense of what he was like.

And unlike David Philipson, Stephen Wise was an ardent Zionist. He was the president of the Zionist Organization of America, he was Chairman of the United Israel Appeal, he founded and was president of the World Jewish Congress, which supported Zionism however it could.

As I mentioned, early Reform was largely opposed to Zionism, but Wise fought with all his might for the Reform movement to support the creation of a Jewish state. And realizing that the Reform movement’s seminary in Cincinnati, the Hebrew Union College, taught rabbinic students from its anti-Zionist perspective, Wise went and started his own seminary – the Jewish Institute of Religion, in New York. Later, after Wise’s death, most Reform Jews embraced Zionism, and the two seminaries merged, adopting a new mouthful of a name befitting its history – The Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion.

Rabbi Stephen S. Wise died in 1949, and just a couple of months later, so did Rabbi David Philipson.

By this time, the State of Israel had come into being, and, as I said, the Reform Movement had overwhelmingly adopted it, ending up in favor of the Zionist perspective of Stephen Wise, and against the anti-Zionism of David Philipson.

And now for the book, I’d like to show you.

I bought it online several months ago. It’s called The Jew in English Fiction, it was published in 1889, and it was written by David Philipson. As I mentioned, Philipson wrote several books, but this one was his first. When it came out, he had just begun serving his congregation in Cincinnati, and he was 27 years old.

This particular copy bears the stamps of the library at the Hebrew Union College, of which he was one of the first ordinees, and where he taught rabbinic students later in his career.

It’s safe to say that in some ways this book is subtly imbued with anti-Zionist ferment. Its author was a lifelong anti-Zionist. Its owner, the Hebrew Union College, was, at the time of its publication and for a couple of decades afterward, an anti-Zionist institution. And its content describes the significance of Jewish life not in the land of Israel, but in England – particularly in British literature. The book doesn’t explicitly address the question of a Jewish state, but it does speak of the richness of diaspora Jewry, and you can almost feel the anti-Zionism oozing out from between its pages.

Examining the book further, however, you realize that the Hebrew Union College was probably its second owner, because, on the inside front cover, you can find the bookplate of its first owner. Who owned this book first? You can see it here:

Ex Libris (from the library of) Stephen S. Wise. This was Stephen Wise’s personal copy of The Jew in English Fiction.

Ideologically speaking, Stephen S. Wise and David Philipson were at each other’s throats over the Zionism issue for most of their careers. Philipson was practically part of the woodwork at HUC, and Wise went so far as to open a rival seminary. During the first decades of the 20^th century, as Zionism grew in strength, the arguments over the idea raged throughout our Reform movement…and these two titans were each at the helm of the opposing sides of the battle. It was a huge controversy. Philipson probably could have gotten a job at one of the big New York congregations, but a city as small as New York wouldn’t have been nearly big enough to hold these two giants!

In time, as we’ve noted, the controversy abated, and my guess is that after Wise’s death, and after the two seminaries merged, parts of his library were donated to HUC-JIR, and this volume eventually made its way to Cincinnati.

Given the nature of the argument and the size of the personalities of these two men, you would think that there would still be sparks flying from this little volume. If New York wasn’t big enough to hold them, how could this book be? But you know what? No sparks fly from these pages. Instead, the book just sits quietly on my shelf, snug and safe alongside hundreds of others. The arguments of yesteryear no longer rage between these two men – at least not like they did – and in fact, those controversies are now so quiet that it took me several minutes tonight even to describe what they disagreed about.

“That is why I have always felt such deep attachment to libraries,” Elie Wiesel writes.  “Here, within these walls, there is peace. The old quarrels subside…. All these writers and teachers, all these thinkers and lawmakers who engaged in disputations during their lifetime, now accept one another’s views with tolerance and serenity. Because of the books? Because of the silence. Here, words and silence are not in conflict—quite the contrary: they complete and enrich one another. Is it possible? In our tradition—it is.”

Our battles – they erupt with ferocity today, but later they grow quiet so quiet sometimes, that we need to remind ourselves what we were fighting about in the first place.

Remember your schoolyard fights from when you were a child? Many of them were over real hurts, and many – not all – seem almost quaint as we look back at them years afterward. The professional conflicts that we once fought so angrily? They have a way of calming down as they become distant memories. Not always, but often. Even divorced couples, who once fought with such untrammeled vengeance – over the years, the anger often subsides, leaving both parties able to be civil with one another. Even friendly.

My friends, in the year ahead, and in future years as well, you will certainly find yourself having an argument or two…and probably many more than that. And as important as these arguments might be, I invite you to look at them through the prism of this little book. In thirty years, or in fifty or one hundred, where will this conflict be then? What will the lasting effects of your argument be? I’m not saying that you should refrain from fighting – after all, in the days of Wise and Philipson, discussing the creation of a Jewish state was hugely important. I’m only suggesting a little humility – that you remember that however passionately you argue and however crucial your cause, someday, somehow, you and your opponents might end up snuggled together on the shelf of a rabbi in Calgary, Alberta.

The wars of yesterday become the skirmishes of today, and the skirmishes of today can become the fascinating footnotes of history tomorrow. Look what happened here. Two lions who once roared so loud now sit quietly together, and tonight we can learn from them both.

May this year be a year in which we all can transform memory into knowledge. Then it will be a good year, indeed.

Shanah Tovah.