What are the three most difficult tasks in life to perform? When asked this question, the late Winston Churchill answered as follows:
1. To climb a high wall which is leaning toward you.
2. To kiss a girl who is leaning away from you.
3. To speak before a group on a subject which they know more about than I.
The noted newspaper syndicated columnist, Sydney Harris, brings another perspective in his response to that question. He said that the three most difficult tasks in life are neither physical feats nor are they intellectual achievements. Rather they are moral acts:
1. To return love for hate.
2. To include the excluded.
3. To say, "I was wrong."
I. RETURNING LOVE FOR HATE
Let us talk about returning love for hate. There are numerous situations in life which arouse our hatred. Some of the targets of our animosity are our former partner who cheated us in a business deal, our husband or wife who left us for another man or woman, our colleague who insulted us at a public gathering, or our ex-employer who fired us from our job. The harsh word, the thoughtless act, the insensitive criticism all of these fuel our hatred.
And yet, we seem to resist trying to resolve the problem that is generating our hostility. We would rather hate than forgive. There are those moments when we like to sit and nurse our wounds. We delight in playing the part of the martyr. We love to titillate ourselves with self-pitying words.
The late Rabbi Leo Baeck once observed that "so many people go through life filling the storerooms of their lives with the odds and ends of a grudge here, a jealousy there, a pettiness, a selfishness . . ."
When we are offended, our sense of justice demands that the one who hurt us should be punished. We are determined to strike back at the one who harmed us. We believe that these wrongs deserve retribution, just as our Biblical ancestors believed when they said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."
Yet, to wallow in our hatred will only do us further harm. We think that holding a grudge against someone who wronged us will make us feel better. Yet, in reality, keeping a grudge can debilitate us. It can produce unending anxiety within us. It can make us miserable. Pent up feelings of hatred create all kinds of psychosomatic problems. They can cause ulcers and heart attacks. Hatred is poisonous.
It saps our creativity. It enervates us, because keeping a grudge alive consumes all of our energy. Grudge-bearing is like a psychic carcinoma. It robs us of our peace of mind.
Also, a grudge deprives us of our personal freedom. There is a story told about Elizabeth Kenny, or as she is sometimes known, Sister Kenny. She was the famous Australian nurse who originated a widely used method of treating polio. Sister Kenny was once asked by a friend how she managed to stay so constantly cheerful. The friend said to her: "I suppose you were just born, calm and smiling."
Sister Kenny laughed and said: "Oh, no. As a girl, I often lost my temper. But one day, when I became angry at a friend over some trivial matter, my mother gave me advice that I stored in my mind and called upon for guidance ever since. My mother said, 'Elizabeth, any one who angers you, conquers you.' "
What a brilliant insight! We lose our liberty to the one we hate. The grudge becomes an obsession, torturing and tormenting us. It controls us rather than our controlling it.
So much for the agony and devastation that hatred brings to the one who hates. But what about its effect on others? Grudge-bearing engenders violence. With our hatred, we can hurt others. Note the enmity of the Arab nations against Israel and the bloodshed and the terrorism that this animosity has caused.
On the other hand, consider the hatred of the rabid Jewish nationalists in Israel. They want to take revenge on the Arabs they despise by expelling them from Israel and by harassing them.
How un-Jewish is their reaction! Judaism does not advance a philosophy of "turning the other cheek." It does not advocate lying down to get stepped on. Yet Judaism's teachers suggest healthier strategies for dealing with our hostilities and animosities. They recognized that if we cultivate our anger, we could become like savages. Judaism does not condone confronting violence with violence for this reason. It prescribes ways to tame and curb our passions. The ancient Rabbis discontinued carrying out the literal meaning of the Biblical mandate: "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," for example.
They also strongly discouraged the death penalty. They knew that one of the unspoken purposes of capital punishment is to express revenge against those whom society hates because of their crime. In fact, the Rabbis said that any court that executes a criminal as infrequently as once every seventy years is to be labeled cruel and inhumane. Thank God, with all the horror that Arab aggression has wreaked upon Israel, Israel has imposed the death penalty only once in its history. Following a two-year trial, in 1962, Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann was hanged on Israel's gallows.
Some years ago, three Arab teenagers from a West Bank village murdered two Israeli teachers from Afula. Their bodies were found in a cave about twelve miles from the school where they taught. Even before the three Arab teenagers were apprehended by the police, hundreds of Israelis went on an anti-Arab rampage in Afula shouting, "Death to the terrorists! Death to the Arabs!" Yet, the Israeli Cabinet, following historic precedent, did not approve of the execution of these three Arab teenagers. They did apply a series of harsh security measures on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. However, they did not give in to the demands to impose the death penalty on convicted murderers.
Abraham Lincoln unknowingly discovered a very Jewish way of dealing with hostilities. One day, one of his young aides questioned Lincoln after a visitor had left the White House. He asked: "Mr. President, I just don't understand. This man is your mortal enemy. Yet you treat him with such patience and even kindness. If I were in your position, I would destroy him!" President Lincoln responded, "I do destroy my enemies, when I convert them into friends."
Lincoln echoed the sentiments of the ancient Rabbis when they asked the question: "Who is the greatest of all heroes? The one who can turn an enemy into a friend." (Avot de Rabbi Natan.)
There is a story about a young French boy, immediately after World War II. When he was eight years old, he learned that he was not Catholic. He was originally Jewish, but had been placed with a French Christian family to save his life when his parents were deported to the death camps. His original family name was not Coyot, which it had been for as long as he could remember. It was Goldberg. Therefore, he grew up very confused about his identity.
He was tortured with all kinds of hostilities. He was angry at his birth parents for giving him away. Yet at times he felt guilty for having survived while they went to their deaths. As a teen, he hated the Jewish part of himself. He believed that Jews were weak and unpopular and thus were victimized. He developed a very unusual symptom out of this hatred. His right hand became painfully swollen. No physician was able to cure it, much less treat it or even explain it.
He was obsessed with becoming a success. He became prominent in banking and international finance. Yet, these triumphs never filled the emptiness inside of him, because of his self-identity problems.
One year, he was assigned to live in Bolivia. There he was to manage a branch of the French banking network which employed him. He learned that living openly as a celebrity in Bolivia was Klaus Barbie, the notorious Nazi commander in France, who had sent Goldberg's parents to Auschwitz. Goldberg decided that he was going to avenge his parents ' death by killing Barbie.
He purchased a gun. In spite of the pain in his hand, he taught himself to shoot with accuracy. One day, he pretended to be a reporter and interviewed Barbie to make sure that there was no mistake. A week later, he sat on a park bench with his gun loaded and in his pocket. Barbie was sitting just a few yards away with his back to him. He suddenly realized, at that moment, that he could fulfill his plan of taking vengeance on Barbie. He reached into his pocket for the gun but decided that he could not pull the trigger. Even though this man was a Nazi war criminal, he could not shoot this unarmed, pathetic human being in the back.
He returned to his room. He imagined that he would feel that he had disgraced himself by his spineless and cowardly behavior. But such was not the case. Indeed, he felt very calm and serene and soon realized why.
He did kill a Nazi that day, but not the one that he had intended to kill. He killed the Nazi in himself, the part of him that hated Jews and was embarrassed by alleged Jewish weakness. He obliterated that part of himself that was so hostile that it wanted to shoot, kill, and destroy in order to solve his own problems.
If he had killed Barbie, he would have become a murderer, a man of violence and revenge. By not killing him, he destroyed the demon in himself. He became a proud and affirmative Jew, and his right hand no longer hurt him.
His story teaches us a historic Jewish message. We must not return hate for hate nor violence for violence. Revenge will not terminate our ill-will. It will fortify our anger even more. When someone hurts us, we need to realize that we cannot change the past. What is done is done. We must now look to today and tomorrow. By affirming the fact that the past cannot be altered, we are not condoning evil. We are merely putting the offense in perspective.
In his marvelous book, Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don't Deserve, Louis Smedes advises that the most effective way of curing our hurts and our grudges is through forgiveness. Forgiveness means letting go of the past. We may want to get back at those who harmed us, but even if we do, we will never be satisfied.
There are so many we need to forgive. Some are very hard to forgive. We need to forgive our parents, living or dead, who might have done some cruel, insensitive thing to us --sometimes knowingly, at other times, unwittingly.
We need to forgive God, whom we might have blamed for a catastrophe in our life. God does not cause our tragedies. God merely placed us in an imperfect world where sorrow is inevitable. But even if God were responsible, what purpose would our anger serve except to prevent us from moving ahead with our lives? Our parents and God are just a small part of the long list of those with whom we are still determined to even the score.
Hatred becomes a habit that is hard to uproot. Yet, we have to work at breaking it with the discipline of forgiveness. Slowly, but surely, the hatred will dissipate and we can go forward as fully functioning human beings. We can totally release the past through forgiveness. We can then return love for hate.
Our life is brief and finite. Why allow it to become a collection of hurts and grudges? A wise author offers us this penetrating counsel in forgiving those who have done us wrong:
In the very depths of your soul, dig a grave.
Let it be as some forgotten spot to which no path leads;
And there, in the eternal silence, bury the wrongs which you have suffered.
Your heart will feel as if a load has fallen from it.
Let us unburden ourselves of the hurts, the slights, the snubs and the grievances that cluttered up our lives until now.
II. INCLUDING THE EXCLUDED
There is a story about two young Hasidic rabbis, Zusya and Elimelech, who walked to a city in Eastern Europe called Ludmer. when visiting in Ludmer, they always spent the night in the home of a poor, devout man. Years later, Zusya and Elimelech became renowned scholars and their reputations had spread all over the country.
They came to Ludmer again, but now it was in a carriage, not on foot. The wealthiest man in that little town previously had nothing to do with these two rabbis. Now, the instant they arrived, he rushed out to meet them.
The rich man begged the rabbis to stay in his house. The rabbis sharply retorted: "Sir, nothing has changed in us to make you respect us more than before. What is new with us is just the horses and the carriage. Take them for your guests; but let us stay with our old host, as usual."
This tale illustrates what the columnist Sydney Harris calls one of the three most difficult tasks in life to perform: to include the excluded. Only when these two rabbis became famous did that wealthy man want to host them.
Look at the number of ways that we fail to include the excluded. Sometimes we do so deliberately. We choose our friends from a certain neighborhood, from a certain socio-economic stratum, and from a certain kind of background. Outside of that tight little circle of friends, we tend not to socialize with anyone else.
Adolescents have the most difficulty of all in including the excluded. There is always the "in" crowd, who regard the outsiders as nerds, dorks, or geeks. These are the ones an earlier generation called "squares." Some of us never outgrow our adolescent tendencies in classifying other people.
But often our failure to include the excluded is less deliberate. It is done mindlessly. We will hold holiday dinners on Shabbat, on Passover, and on Thanksgiving but will not consider inviting anyone who otherwise would have no place to eat.
Newcomers enter our synagogues and churches and we do not welcome them, say "hello" to them, or invite them to our homes. Those of us who have belonged to our congregations for many years complain we don't know anyone any more. Yet, by virtue of our long-term association, we are really the welcoming group. It is our responsibility to extend ourselves to the newcomers in our midst.
We often forget the widow, after the death of her husband, when we are planning a social celebration. Similarly do we treat the divorced or any single person, for that matter. We perpetuate the Noah's Ark syndrome of "two by two." Our synagogues and churches, as community institutions, could do much more to include the excluded. A few throughout our land provide a night shelter in their social halls for the homeless. The rest fear that these street people may contaminate their sacred property.
Why do we act this way? Because we cannot identify easily with the plight of the excluded. Some of us have not suffered enough to feel the ache of those who are hurting. Teenagers usually deride, rather than act compassionately toward, those who are different. They laugh at their peers who are clumsy and unathletic, overweight, or handicapped. Because of a very limited experience with suffering, most adolescents cannot easily empathize.
But there are others of us who have severely suffered. Yet we have not integrated the lessons of those bitter experiences. Instead of growing more compassionate, sensitive, and understanding, the conquest of our suffering has made us more overbearing and arrogant toward those in a similar predicament.
We know of those who have struggled with obesity for many years. Finally they lose the weight. They then view others who are still overweight condescendingly: “I was able to drop my pounds with sheer willpower and fierce self-discipline. So can you.”
We know of the millionaires whose parents were penniless. Their fierce ambition and drive gained them great affluence. Yet they sneer at those who are still poor with the thought: “My family was destitute. Yet I was able to pull myself up by the bootstraps.?
This superior attitude, incidentally, is often reflected in our disdain for the welfare system and for those minority groups we call “shiftless and lazy.” We often overlook the fact that many who receive welfare benefits are handicapped and disabled. They come from a background in which learning and achievement are foreign and alien.
Though we have suffered, we forget the complexity of circumstances that can lead others into these devastating and paralyzing situations. We fail to recall our own past suffering. One Rabbinic commentator astutely observed that the Hebrew expression for God’s patience with us, erekh opayim, is in the plural. Why in the plural? To show that God is patient with two opposite groups: not only with the sinners, but also with the virtuous people, because virtue can often lead to self-righteousness.
There is yet another reason why we have difficulty in including the excluded. At heart, many of us are very competitive people. We want to be special, different, and unique. We want to think of ourselves as superior to others. On very subtle, almost unconscious, levels, we are competing without even realizing it. We compare ourselves to others in almost everything that we do. We secretly delight when we succeed in an area where another has failed. We never want to admit the possibility of being the same as another person, of giving up that element of advantage, of acknowledging we are as weak and deficient as the next person. But this competitiveness becomes illusory.
There is a tale about a man who once made a feast and invited many people from the community. Among them was a rabbi of great distinction. The rabbi was a noted scholar and teacher, but a very modest and uncompetitive person who did not seek honors.
In working out the seating arrangements, the host wanted to seat the rabbi at the head of the table, as was proper and customary. Instead, the rabbi chose a place among the poor at the foot of the table near the door.
This was quite an embarrassing moment for the host. However, the host was an understanding person. When he saw the rabbi take a seat among the poor, he seated his other distinguished guests near him and said: "My friends, wherever this rabbi sits is the head of the table." This rabbi, who included the excluded, is worthy of emulation. By associating with the poor, he gains our profound admiration.
Whom are we really fooling? Let us never forget that, in spite of our acceptance in America, we Jews, historically, have been the excluded of society. The constant refrain in our Torah is: "Remember that you were once slaves in Egypt." Never forget that we are descended from a band of lowly serfs who were beaten, oppressed and degraded. We were abused not just once in Egypt, but countless times throughout our people's history. This admonition echoes again and again whenever we gather to pray or to study.
Therefore, on Passover, as we begin the Seder, we say: "Let all who are hungry come and eat with us." This is not to be an empty ritual formula. We invite the poor and the needy to join us at our table, because, not too long ago, we were the poor, the homeless, the downtrodden of the world, who had nothing to eat. Thus we should know the heart of the hungry.
On the joyous holiday of Sukkot, traditional Jews engage in a charming practice called Ushpizin. When a traditional Jew eats in his sukkah, he symbolically invites seven Biblical guests to join him: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joseph, Aaron, and David. In order for these noted ancestors to be properly honored, the sukkah dweller must also ask poor Jews of his community to join him.
Therefore, on his Sukkot guest list should be two groups: these seven notables of antiquity and some poorJews of our present day. In fact, tradition warns us that if we do not ask poor Jews to sit at our table, these seven Biblical heroes will angrily leave the sukkah. They will condemn us for our miserliness and our reluctance to share ourselves and our blessings.
With all of our competitiveness and our desire to be a little better than others, if we are honest with ourselves, we will realize that all of us are vulnerable; all of us can lose our money, power and fame in an instant. The Stock Market Crash of 1929 graphically taught us that today's tycoon can become tomorrow's pauper. The ravages of age will some day rob this year's beauty queen of her glamour. Nothing good is necessarily permanent. We are all frail, mortal creatures, more alike than we would like to admit. No one of us has solid ground under our feet.
A century ago, a devastating famine had brought great misery to Russia. A beggar had become weak and emaciated and almost starved to death. He approached the novelist Leo Tolstoy and asked him for assistance. Tolstoy searched his pockets for money, but discovered that he didn't have even as much as a single coin.
However, he took the beggar's worn hands between his own and said: "Don't be angry with me, my brother. I have nothing with me." The thin-lined face of the beggar suddenly brightened, as if from some inner light. The beggar whispered in reply: "But, sir, you called me 'brother' that was the greatest gift that you could give me."
Interestingly, on at least two occasions, our Torah speaks about the poor and hungry by calling him "your brother." (Lev. 25:25 and Deut. 15:7) The excluded need our companionship and our compassion, because they are our brothers and sisters. We cannot really be compassionate unless we are willing to admit that our life, basically, is the same as the life of the one who suffers. The attitude we should assume is: "There, but for the grace of God, go I."
Thus, let us look for ways to include within our circle of concern and care those who have been shoved aside, rejected and abandoned; those who are lonely and hungry; those whose life's problems have overwhelmed them.
Sometimes profound wisdom is found not only in the great literary classics of the world. It can also be discovered in words of intuitive and insightful simple folk. An aged grandmother, who never attended school, once gave her granddaughter a slip of paper with all the advice she would ever need to lead a good life.
What she wrote is valuable for all of us: "Wash what is dirty. Water what is dry. Heal what is wounded. Warm what is cold. Guide what goes offthe road. And love people who are the least lovable, because they need it most."
III. SAYING: "I WAS WRONG"
One of the most famous television characters of the 1970s was Archie Bunker. Archie Bunker had the audacity to express the prejudices, the bigotry, the hang-ups, and the bugaboos that many in Middle America feel, but hesitate to voice. He sounded off on a variety of pet peeves, like the "Commies," theJews, and the Blacks. Archie was not a particularly well-educated person, but he stated every opinion with great authority. Someone once said, very astutely, that Archie Bunker was seldom right, but never in doubt. He was not one who could easily admit: "I was wrong."
In this respect, Archie Bunker is not different from many of us. I can well understand why Sydney Harris, the newspaper columnist, maintains that one of the three most difficult tasks in life is to say: "I was wrong."
We can see the resistance to admitting wrongdoing in so many different contexts. Parents get exasperated when trying to get their child to confess to doing something wrong only to be confronted by: "I didn't do it." Or take an extreme case. The Nazis, from Nurenberg until now, have never admitted that their torturing and killing millions of Jews was wrong. They have insisted that they were only following orders.
This attitude of not owning up to one's misdeeds is reinforced by a definition of love in a popular movie and book known as Love Story. That famous line occurs twice in the book: "Love means never having to say you're sorry." The author of Love Story, Erich Segal, is a Yale professor and a rabbi's son. He should have known better. One of the most unhealthy and unproductive ways to live and to love is to avoid saying, "I am sorry." In commenting on that line from Love Story, Rabbi Sidney Greenberg observed that it "is both bad theology and incredibly bad human relations."
To have a full, enjoyable, and wholesome life, we need to admit that we were wrong, both for our own well-being and for our interaction with others. If we deny our misdeeds, we will be tormented with guilt and anxiety. Alfred Korzybski understood that psychic agony will torture us when he said: "God may forgive your sins, but your nervous system won't."
In fact, the whole basis of Yom Kippur is the confession of errors and mistakes and sins. In Judaism, there are three ways to be absolved of sin: fasting, praying, and admitting we were wrong and then asking forgiveness. Often we forget the last of these. No matter how fervently and stringently we fast or how passionately or ardently we pray, if we don't say, with sincerity, to the one we have offended: "I am sorry that I hurt you. I was unkind. I was cruel," we cannot begin our New Year with a clean slate and feel unburdened of guilt.
In fact, the Rabbis of our tradition make a startling observation. They say that one who does wrong, admits the error, promises never to repeat the wrongdoing, and carries out that promise is far superior to one who has never done anything wrong. They understood how we recoil from seeing any failing in ourselves. We have strong defenses protecting our self-image and preventing us from getting in touch with our darker sides.
Not only do we want to appear perfect to ourselves; we also want to appear perfect to others. We think that it will deflate our ego to admit to someone that we did something wrong. It will injure our pride. Yet, precisely the opposite happens. By admitting wrongdoing, we gain stature, not lose it. We become bigger people in our own eyes and in the eyes of others.
In fact, people who appear too perfect, those who are physically beautiful and personally and professionally successful in all they do, often threaten the rest of us. When a person like this admits a problem or a fault, we feel relief and gain an instant kinship with that person.
In May 1985, President Ronald Reagan visited the German military cemetery at Bitburg as an act of reconciliation with the German people. The previous Friday night, I expressed the hope, in my sermon, that he would admit that the decision was wrong and would revise his itinerary in Germany.
At the time when he planned the trip, his aides gave him faulty information. They did not tell him that forty-seven members of the S.S. were interred in the Bitburg cemetery. The S.S. were not poor, naive, innocent German soldiers who were drafted into the German army against their will. The S.S. were Hitler's elite. They voluntarily and willingly pledged allegiance to Hitler and enthusiastically carried out all of his inhumane, bestial, and diabolical plans.
I am aware of the pressure that German Chancellor Helmuth Kohl was exerting on President Reagan. Yet President Reagan would have gained great respect by acknowledging the mistake he had made and changing his plans to honor the German people in a more sensitive way.
The effectiveness of Alcoholics Anonymous is based on the insistence that participants face up to their error and admit it. Only then can they move in a new, positive direction without chemical dependence. One cured victim of alcoholism through the AA program stated it this way:
My continuing recovery from alcoholism is based on the program of rigorous honesty outlined in AA. I found it absolutely brutal to look at the truth about myself shown in a written moral inventory. When I admitted these things, the results were unbelievable. It was one of the most difficult things I've ever done in life, but it brought me the freedom and release I never thought possible .... This self-knowledge and spiritual awakening allowed me to be completelyopen with others, and I became privileged to watch the miracle that happened to be repeated in others . . .
Admitting that we have done wrong is part of acknowledging that we are human beings, and not God. Part of being human is making mistakes. Goethe once said:
No longer loving, no longer erring?
As good as being dead and buried.
Yet, even the Biblical authors see God's admitting to making a mistake on a number of occasions. For example, God had wanted to wipe out everything and everybody in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for their vile wickedness. Abraham believed that God's plan was unjust and told God so. With impressive negotiating skill, Abraham argued that there might be a few good people in those cities. Why should they die in their innocence because their cities were wicked? Abraham successfully persuaded God to reconsider. God agreed that if ten good people could be found, God would not destroy the cities for the sake of the ten. This was one of many times God altered such plans.
In another place in the Bible, we find the expression: "And the Lord renounced the punishment He had planned to bring upon His people." (Exodus 32:14) God, as perceived by Scripture, essentially admitted that this plan of punishment was wrong and unjustified. God thus "changed His mind," so to speak.
Is not Reform Judaism based on the courage to say: "I was wrong"? The greatest strength of Reform Judaism is its ability to criticize itself. In earlier years, we Reform Jews tried to make Judaism blend into the American scene as much as possible. We abandoned many of the practices that set us apart, like the lighting of Sabbath candles and the Kiddush, the blowing of the shofar, and the breaking of a glass at a wedding. Today, we realize the mistake of stripping Judaism of all those historic practices. We had robbed Judaism of much of its color and drama. We are now carefully reevaluating many of the customs that we once rejected.
Our former approach is no longer relevant. At one time, we wanted to make American Reform Judaism more American. Today, we want to make it more Jewish. However, it is possible that, in later generations, our Reform successors will criticize our present approach. They may modify, or even abandon, many of the traditional forms and customs that we have restored.
In this connection, we think of a great jurist, Joseph M. Proskauer, who lived to the age of ninety-four. He was an eminent champion of human rights. When he died, the obituary writer of The New York Times noted that he, like many Reform Jews, was once a non-Zionist. After World War II, he realized that his position was untenable. He began to work diligently for the creation and the recognition of the State of Israel.
Proskauer had the courage to say "I was wrong" about his earlier rejection of Zionism. Many others who once held membership in the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism have subsequently dropped their membership. They have, since that time, understood the need to support a safe and secure Israel.
In December 1977, one of our Temple members, writing in a Temple Bulletin column, described the time that she was a Christmas-tree Jew. For as long as she could remember, her family always had a brightly lit Christmas tree in the center of the living room. Her Christian neighbors began to ask: "Why are you Jews celebrating our holiday?"
She answered in a very ecumenical way: "Christmas, to us, is not a religious holiday. We love the spirit of gift-giving and the idea of peace on earth. These are universal ideals, not Christian ones." Yet, down deep, she knew that her answer didn't ring true. Soon, every December, she began to feel a strange sensation in the pit of her stomach. She realized that no matter how much she rationalized, she was an outsider to the Christmas experience.
She then began to see the hypocrisy of Jews celebrating Christmas. She started to buy smaller and smaller trees. She set them in the corner rather than in a prominent place in her home. Then she began to decorate the tree close to December 25, and to take it down on December 26. Finally, she gave up the tree altogether. As Christmas lost importance, her Jewish pride began to swell.
She concluded her story by writing that she has no longer had a stomach ache in December. She does enjoy entering a Christian home to see the bright lights and the tinsel. But it is their tree, just as Christmas is their holiday. We Jews do not need to steal symbols from another religion. Judaism, in the winter season, is better enjoyed by Hanukkah lights.
She performed a courageous act. After years of loving Christmas trees and the glitter and gaiety of that holiday, she finally admitted that, for her as a Jew, the observance of Christmas was wrong.
In this connection, we commend the action of the Lutheran World Federation that met at Stockholm with a Jewish group in 1983. They gathered to commemorate Martin Luther's 500th birthday. Martin Luther, in his later years, had become a vicious anti-Semite. This prestigious Lutheran organization was determined to repudiate what they called, "the sins of Luther's anti-Jewish remarks . . . and his violent verbal attacks against the Jews."
How courageous it was for the adherents of a religion to be willing to acknowledge that the teachings of their founder were not only erroneous; they were also harmful and dangerous, because many of Luther's anti-Jewish teachings conditioned German minds for Hitler. We commend the Lutheran World Federation for its brave admission of collective wrongdoing.
Thus let us face up to the mistakes, the errors, and the wrongdoing for which we are responsible over these years. Let us break down our resistance and admit them to ourselves and to others.
There is a story told about the late Dr. Israel Bettan, professor of Midrash at Hebrew Union College. On the first day of the semester, he gave a lengthy explanation of a particular selection from the Midrash. He argued that the author of the Midrash was preaching against seeking converts to Judaism.
At the end of the semester, Dr. Bettan reviewed this same Midrash and gave the opposite interpretation. He proved conclusively and beyond any doubt that the author insisted that Judaism should seek converts.
One of the students questioned Dr. Bettan about his radical change of understanding this passage. He said: "Dr. Bettan, didn't you tell us earlier that the author was against seeking converts to Judaism? Now today you say that he advocates proselytizing."
Dr. Bettan shrugged off the criticism with the remark, "Look how much I've grown since then!" Dr. Bettan made this comment in jest, but it contains a wonderful lesson for all of us. By reexamining ideas that are no longer valid, by admitting that our former positions are incorrect, by saying "I was wrong," we will find ourselves growing and evolving into more wholesome human beings.
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