Yom Kippur 2014
This has been a painful year. A sometimes frightening, sometimes overwhelming year. A difficult year to be a rational optimist, which is what I like to consider myself. This has been a year of enemies, some with names we have never heard of before, names like ISIS, Boko Haram, Khorasan. On the continuum of hope and despair, this has perhaps been a year with more despair than we have experienced in a long while. And not only for Jews. For people of color in the United States, for example, and for their allies who believe in the American vision of justice, it has been a year of outrage, fear, and at times despair.
As I said on Rosh Hashanah: When it feels as if the Dark Side is rising around the world, when it feels as if hatred and violence and cruel injustices are oozing up through every crack of human nature…. The question arises: What can one person do?
What can one person do?
Today I would like to share with you a wisdom teaching from the early rabbinic master Hillel, which provides a framework for answering this question. It also contains within it a comprehensive blueprint for living a moral life.
This has been a painful year. A sometimes frightening, sometimes overwhelming year. A difficult year to be a rational optimist, which is what I like to consider myself. This has been a year of enemies, some with names we have never heard of before, names like ISIS, Boko Haram, Khorasan. On the continuum of hope and despair, this has perhaps been a year with more despair than we have experienced in a long while. And not only for Jews. For people of color in the United States, for example, and for their allies who believe in the American vision of justice, it has been a year of outrage, fear, and at times despair.
As I said on Rosh Hashanah: When it feels as if the Dark Side is rising around the world, when it feels as if hatred and violence and cruel injustices are oozing up through every crack of human nature…. The question arises: What can one person do?
What can one person do?
Today I would like to share with you a wisdom teaching from the early rabbinic master Hillel, which provides a framework for answering this question. It also contains within it a comprehensive blueprint for living a moral life.