Here is a text version of Rabbi Schwartzs sermon from yesterday - Oy Vey - the Jewish Sigh - The human sigh is a cross cultural phenomenon. Regardless of where people come from, of what culture they are raised in, of what language they grow up speaking, they will sigh, and often when faced with similar circumstances. Think for a moment about when you sigh - when you are worried about something, tired, facing a difficult task - whatever it might be - these are the same reasons that people sigh around the globe. Scientists believe that the sigh is a kind of respiratory reset button. That is to say that because of whatever you might be worrying about, your breathing begins to get out of a regular rhythm, and the sigh is the body’s way of resetting the proper breathing pattern, of trying to force you, in a sense to calm down. It is, in effect, your own body telling you to take a deep breath, to calm down so that you can more effectively deal with whatever is making you upset. You might say that we Jews are sighing experts. In the course of our long history we have had cause, time and again, to look around us and to sigh, worried about the world and our place in it. We’ve even added our own particular punctuation to the human sigh, an exclusively Jewish expression - what is it? Oy! Our Yiddish way of sighing. Or the longer form of that expression, oy vey, or even oy vey ist mir, which means something like oh - woe is me! We use the term so often - our own particular Jewish form of the sigh - that photographer Penny Wolin once remarked that oy is not merely an ordinary word to Jews, but is an expression of an entire world view. How can we not sigh when the world is the way it is today? In the Torah there is no Hebrew word that means ‘sigh.’ There is a word that appears in some of the later biblical books - אנחה - that means something like sigh, and in fact is the word that means sigh in modern Hebrew. But the Torah itself doesn’t have the word. Instead, there is an expression that the rabbinic mind associates with the experience of sighing, of releasing a long breath of sadness, of trying to reset the breathing, to restore the heart to a normal beat, and that word is Eicha. Technically the word means what? ‘How.’ But the nuance of the word is much more than that - what it really means is how is this possible? How can this be? When you say the word - איכה - it evens sounds like a sigh. The rabbis, in the midrash, note that three of our greatest prophets - Moses, Isaiah, and Jeremiah - use the word eicha in a personal moment of despair. We might say these are the three great prophetic sighs of our tradition. Two of them - the sighs of Moses and Isaiah - we read this morning, Moses’ in the Torah portion, and Isaiah’s in the haftara. And the third sigh - Jeremiah’s - we will read Monday night from the book of Lamentations when we come together for Tisha B’av services. Moses’ sigh comes from the first verses of this morning’s Torah reading. We began reading the book of Deuteronomy today, for all intents and purposes a long final speech that Moses gives to the Israelites before he dies. At the beginning of the speech he gives a brief summary of the events that have happened to the nation as they wandered in the wilderness, and Moses at one point hints at how heavy the burden of leading the people was for him - איכה אשה לבדי he says - how can I do this by myself? This is a moment of personal despair for Moses, his remembering of the realization he had that he was not up to the task of leading the Israelites. He couldn’t do it by himself, he needed help and support. Moses’ sigh comes from a moment of recognizing his own personal limitations and flaws - he had tried his best, but even his best - even Moses’ best - wasn’t good enough. Isaiah’s sigh - his eicha - comes from this morning’s haftara. This haftara is the third haftara of rebuke, always read the Shabbat before Tisha B’av. It is the first chapter of Isaiah’s prophecy, and he lays out many of the themes that he will return to again and again - the people have mistaken ritual for true faith; they’ve lost their sense of morality, of what is truly right and wrong. And worst of all, they have betrayed the covenant between God and Israel. In his prophecy Isaiah uses the city of Jerusalem as a symbol of national failure, of the breakdown of community and common purpose. This is his sigh of despair - איכה היתה לזונה - how is it possible that the great city, the city that was filled with justice and righteousness, has fallen so low. The community - always the core of Jewish life, in Isaiah’s eyes, has failed. And then Jeremiah’s sigh. Jeremiah has long been understood as the author of Lamentations, the biblical book that describes in heart wrenching detail Jerusalem’s destruction. Jeremiah was a first hand witness to those events, and he begins his account of them with his own sigh of despair - Eicha - how is it possible that Jerusalem, once filled with people, once great among the nations, is become bereft and lonely. And I think Jeremiah’s cry of despair is not only about the lack of people in the once great city, but also, and perhaps even more so, about the lack of God’s presence. What he is really asking is this: eicha - how can it be that God has left Israel so alone, that God has turned away and refuses to look back? Over the last weeks we’ve done our fair share of sighing in the Jewish community. We look at Israel and worry about the rockets and the civilians who are in danger, about the soldiers who are fighting to make Israel safe and secure. We look at the Palestinians, their loss of life and the destruction in Gaza, and we sigh - eicha - how is it possible that this is what we have to do to live in peace and safety? And we look around the world, at the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe, at the way Israel is isolated, a lonely nation with few friends and supporters. Eicha - how is this possible? And we sigh. Like Moses, like Isaiah, like Jeremiah, like so many other Jews before us. Perhaps the key is in remembering that the sigh is a reset button. It allows us to release some of the worry, some of the sadness and despair and tension and confusion. And then to take another breath. A more measured breath, calmer, more determined, stronger, and ready to face the next challenge. Israel will sigh, she will ask, as we all have, eicha - how is all of this possible? But then she will move forward. And so will we. If Tisha B’av teaches us anything it is that despite the great difficulties and challenges that our people have faced over the years, we are still here. It teaches us that when a low point is reached, a high point will also come. So we will keep sighing. That is our nature. If not about Israel, than anti-Semitism. If not about anti-Semitism, than something else. But there is something else distinctive about the Jewish sigh besides oy vey - as we sigh, we also hope. may all of our hopes - for peace, for Israel, for a safer and better and more Godlike world - one day be fulfilled -
Posted on: Sun, 03 Aug 2014 12:24:31 +0000
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