Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Legacy To Us

Le-shana tova tikatevu - a sweet new year to everyone.

And thank you to all the beautiful leyners and those who led the service and blessed the Torah and all of you who contributed in so many ways.

I also want to add my thanks to Adria Benjamin and the beautiful string quartet who payed Samachti on our first evening to add such gorgeous music. And thirty minutes before each service, you can hear that string quartet and sometimes a quintet with piano and it's all music from our social justice concerts. That music has sustained so much of us and filled our souls as we fight for social justice in the streets and the ballot box, and in these prayer services and community, and that nourishes us and builds our Even HaShtiya, our foundation stone. Think about everything that nourishes you as strengthening your Even HaShtiya. We believe the foundation stone is that on which the earth and world is sustained, and each of us needs a foundation stone of our own on which we imagine we are being held and bolstered and strengthened. Keep thinking: how strong is my foundation stone today? Who and what do I need to give me something of great love and beauty? Sometimes it will be glorious music, sometimes it will be a gorgeous walk in the part, a visit to an art museum, or a phone call, or a Zoom with a friend.

As we move through our time, imagine, we have to strengthen the foundation stone of the earth, which is strengthened by us each strengthening our individual stones. As you imagine this, imagine that your foundation stone is connected to everyone else's foundation stone, which is connected to the foundation stone on which the earth depends.

We are told that every act we do matters, and the things we do, which we call aveirot or chataim, sins or things that miss that mark, are things the drain the holiness from the universe, that take away from the beauty and power of the world which we have been given and in which we live, and God has given us the opportunity for a full life. Everything we do - small and big - that drains the holiness of the universe is what we called a cheit or aveira, and everything we do that adds to the light of the world is a mitzvah. Every moment of every day we have options; are we draining from the holiness or adding to it?

I believe deeply in the concept that each of us has a job to do in improving the world in which we live. The word Tikkun Olam has gotten bandied about so much I fear it's become a bit hackneyed. But the idea behind it is that each of us is a partner with the one who has created the world itself, and today we celebrate the creation of the world. We are partners with God. The world has been shattered and along with God, we put the shards back together. That's the Tikkun we talk about.

But I believe that comes in two deep ways:

One is fighting the ugliness of the world. Fighting the things that are unjust, cruel, and evil.

The other is equally as important, which is creating beauty.

We must do both. We have to eradicate injustice and increase justice.

That's our challenge as human beings. How do we fight against the decreasing of holiness on the one side, and constantly increase holiness on the other?

We are told that every single one of us has that power. As weak as we feel in one moment, we are taught the story of having a petek, a piece of paper in each pocket. On one, it says "for you this world was created." Can you imagine believing that? And in the other pocket, it says, "for you have come from dust, and to dust you will return." And depending on where you are spiritually, you need one petek or the other a little bit more. Sometimes we feel a little too strong and have a grandiose sense of ourselves, and we have to be reminded, as we say in Unetaneh Tokef, that we are mortal.

And on the other hand, sometimes we have to be reminded, because we feel so crushed and so small, that we need to remember that "for you, the world itself was created."

Rabbi Moskowitz, one of our clergy and scholar in residence at CBST has been teaching everyday during Elul from Rambam's Hilchot Teshuvah, the laws of Teshuvah, as the foundational process of what it means to go through the process of transformation and repentance.

One of his teachings that I found meaningful is that we are taught to be like God, to imitate God. And what does God create on the first day in the middle of tohu va-vohu, in the middle of complete chaos, the first thing God creates is light. And from that we learn, we have to imitate God. That we, davka when we are in the midst of chaos, our job is to be the creator of light. Light is the first step to reducing chaos and creating the world as we want to see it.

Can you believe you can do that?

So many of us, when we experience chaos in the world in which we live --

The chaos of the earth itself being full of hurricanes and fires and tornadoes and the terrible reaction of climate change - there's the chaos of that.

The chaos of the political world in which we live today, in which the leaders and leadership of this country - not just one person - are full of lies and cruelty.

The chaos of our economic uncertainty - not knowing if there will be a possibility of a good job or the ability to feed our families or take care of those we love.

The chaos of a health crisis in which we don't know that someone's kiss or handshake could kill us.

We live in the middle of chaos and so many of us feel despair. I take this teaching to heart: our job in times of chaos is to create light. If you are confused, think about what you can do to put light to the world. You can't solve the biggest problems on your own, but you can put out and put forth more light to the world.

The other teaching he offered, which I love very much, is that when things are hard and difficult and there is so much evil to confront, and our people have been victims of terrible evil for generations of history, it's a little bit like we are offered the opportunity to strengthen our muscles against the resistance of the evil. Just like we increase our physical muscles by increasing the weight we lift - if we only lift the same degree of weight, our muscles will not get stronger - but if we increase the weight to lift, our muscles will get stronger - and so too, spiritually. As our lift is harder, and as the lift itself to live each day is harder, we are given the opportunity to strengthen our muscles of love and hope and optimism and courage.

So, every time is feels hard to get out of bed and face another day, imagine it as an opportunity. You can strengthen your muscles today.

In today's parashah, we read the story of the unimaginable: a father who loves a child being told his to kill his son to show his love for God. I will leave aside how we feel about that, but let's zoom out to 30,000 feet and focus on a father facing a child's death, a child's deep suffering.

We are told Abraham takes Isaac up to Har HaMoriah. What is Har HaMoriah? That is the location of the Even HaShtiya, the foundation stone. We are taught that the foundation stone itself is the stone on which that sacrifice is to take place.

But what happens, instead of Abraham sacrificing his son, as he thought he was supposed to do in order to be a righteous person? Abraham had this profound ability to change his mind - to understand he needed to look at the world differently. That, no, God was not asking him to sacrifice his son. And he looked up, just the way Hagar looked up yesterday in our reading in the middle of despair and she saw water, an option she never imagined existed before. Abraham looks up and sees the ram, and when he sees that ram, he understands there is an option he had not even thought of yet.

That ram, by the way, is one of the reasons we sound the shofar on Rosh Hashanah. On Rosh Hashanah, we hear the sound of the shofar itself to remind ourself that if we have no found the solution to the crisis in which we find ourselves - maybe that's because we have not looked up enough. Maybe we haven't looked inside enough. Maybe we have't been creative enough. Maybe we haven't thought deeply enough. Maybe we haven't considered something yet which is yet to be found.

And when that thing is found, when that thought emerges, when we are not crushed by what we assumed was the way the world was constructed and are open to being creative an thoughtful and full of light, there will be solutions we could not have thought of. And our job is to remain hopeful and imagine a world which is not yet in existence. To not give up or give in.

Friday night, as we were in the middle of our services, word came to us that one of the heroes of our generation - one of the greatest of our generation - died. The first Jewish woman on the Supreme court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I want to offer a few thoughts about her and her life as we think about what the shofar teaches us.

So much is being written and said about Justice Ginsburg. I want to offer a few words of my own and what some others have said.

First of all, how meaningful that Justice was her title in the world. She had in her chamber in the Supreme Court the hanging that said "Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof," "Justice, justice you shall pursue." Now, for those of us who feel complete despair for she has died, let us remember a little of who she was.

First of all, she loved opera. She loved beauty in the world. She wasn't only focused on the fights she had to embody and engage in. She also loved art and music. She said, "most of the time I go to sleep, I think about legal problems, but when I go to the opera, I am just lost in it." The one time I had an opportunity to hear Ruth Bader Ginsburg speak was at the Glimmerglass Music Festival in upstate New York. For the last nine summers, Ruth Bader Ginsburg would be at that music festival - she was close friends of Francesca Zambello, the art director and music director of the festival - and every year she would give a lecture at the music festival on opera and the law. And it was a fabulous experience - her combining of humor and genius - lectures exploring legal aspects of various operas.

She said that she loved the story of Fidelio. She appreciate what Beethoven wanted in the story of Leonore who disguises herself as a man to rescue her husband from prison. She related to it as a woman and as a feminist. Francesca Zambello wrote about the justice in an article that:

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was profoundly affected by her family's experience in Eastern Europe and being the descendant of Eastern European immigrants. She understood the message and morals of the Shoah, the Holocaust, and what it meant to be an American as a result, and for sure what it meant to be a Jew.

In a piece in response to the Holocaust, she wrote:

Abigail Pogrebin interviewed Ruth Bader Ginsburg for her musical, "Stars of David," which we have a little bit of a connection to - one of the greatest experiences of my entire life is being a lyric of a different song of that musical. It was one of the greatest accomplishments of my life.

But the song Abigail wrote the lyrics of which Ruth Bader Ginsburg approved and enjoyed were based on a story Ruth Bader Ginsburg told: She grew up as an educated Jew in an Orthodox family. At age 17, her mother died, and when the shiva minyan gathered, she was not allowed to say Mourner's Kaddish. And the song lyrics are as follows in Ruth's words:

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's legal accomplishments are well-known and will be discussed in the days to come in great number. That when she graduated the top of her loss with very few women, she was unable to get a law job. She continued to fight for the job to work as a lawyer, and then to fight for the right to change law when she saw them to be unfair or unjust.

Can you imagine if she imagine if she had said then, "I give up," or "I give in," or "the lift is too heavy; I don't have the muscles for it." She was asked about her reaction to the Supreme Court and the fact that her opinions were often in the minority in recent days.

She said:

"I'm dejected, but only momentarily when I can't get the fifth vote for something that I think is very important. But then you go onto the next challenge and you give it your all. You know that these important issues aren't going to go away. They're going to come back again and again and again. There will be another time, another day.

Ginsburg urged all of us to fight for the things we care about, and millions and millions of us have heard her in her lifetime. She became an icon, as we all know. But she always said, "try and get people to agree with you, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you."

Ruth Bader Ginsburg understood the power of being in a minority, whether it was a political minority, a legal minority, or as a Jew. She would often write dissents that have become epic and have become so well-known and quoted all over the place. But how did she understand that position, that dissent?

She wrote:

We, in her memory, must not give up or give in. We must learn from her. We must understand that our job is not to see an impact this minute, or this day.

And right now, I want to speak to all those who are American born in the congregation today, because we American born typically have a deep flaw that immigrants or those not in our country don't share - we want a Hollywood ending, a movie that's two hours long at the longest, and by the end of the story, everything is wrapped up in a neat bow. We want fast food, fast gratification, an fast solutions to many difficult problems.

I know that many of us don't share that, but it's an American disease. We want stuff quick. We want satisfaction fast. It doesn't happen that way, I hate to tell us all an remind us.

In Ruth Bader Ginsburg's memory, our job is remember what the shofar taught us in the time of Abraham. It takes hard work to look around, to do the long-term fight for the right thing, to find solutions that are not obvious at first. No one can do everything, but everyone can do something.

I know these times are tough and people feel so much fear and anxiety and a sense of despair. Think about the people who are our heroes, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg. We have only changed the laws in this country to the degree that we have because she did not give up when she could have. Our job is to continue in that way. If we want to honor her memory, we have to keep up the fight, and we have to love art and create space for beauty, and appreciate whatever it is that gives you a sense of the holiness of the world, whether it's opera or bluegrass music or museums, or walks in Riverside Park, or a cup of delicious tea.

Our job is to fight the ugly and the evil, and to create beauty, also.

I am so proud and deeply moved by this community who understands that. That our job is to create culture, art, and beauty no matter how hard it gets. And to be in the streets at the ballot box and doing everything we can to change things.