“Easter and Passover: Our Religious Legacies and Our Own Legacies”

Myers Park Baptist Church March 26, 2006
Rabbi Judith Schindler
 

I am honored to be here this morning. The partnership that my congregation, Temple Beth El, has with your church is extremely important to me. Your Pastor, Dr. Shoemaker, is a true colleague and friend, a person on whom I can rely with complete trust. Whenever we come together as congregations in dialogue, I am inspired by your wisdom and warmed by your friendship.

This past January, following our dialogue on the Dead Sea Scrolls, I became aware of another level of our congregations’ deep connection one to the other. As I walked to my car on that chilly winter night, an older congregant explained to me that Temple Beth Shalom, a part of our congregation that broke off from Beth El in 1970 and rejoined in 1986, met in this very building for one year.

As a congregation we have prayed here, we have studied here, we have even made our home here. Though this is my first time preaching from this awe-filled pulpit, I feel a strong bond.

Not only have our two communities shared sacred space, but we share sacred time. The present season is sacred in both of our traditions. For you, as Christians, this is your time of lent -- a period of deep self-reflection leading to the death and resurrection of Jesus. And for us, as Jews, these are days leading to our widely celebrated holiday of Passover.

In researching the notion of Lent and its expression in the Baptist community, I found a quote that stated that “in 1912, all Baptists gave up the same thing for lent, they gave up lent.”

While most of you might not fast or deny yourselves during this season, I do know that it is an important time of your faith. Forty days of reflecting on your most fundamental religious narrative. Forty day that mirror Jesus’ time of contemplation in the wilderness.

In Judaism, 40 is also an important number.

Forty is a number of purification. The forty day flood of Noah’s generation, washed the earth from its corruption.

Forty is number of days in which one can attain the deepest level of spirituality… for in forty days atop Mt. Sinai, Moses learn the laws of God.

According to the Talmud, forty is the age at which one attains wisdom. After our forty-year trek as an Israelite people through the desert, we were finally ready to enter the Promised Land.

Hence, it is with anticipation that I look forward to my own fortieth birthday this summer. For hopefully I will have made it through the wilderness of young adulthood and will have attained that wisdom my tradition promises.

As congregations we are so deeply connected because we share so much.

We share common pasts. We share sacred numbers. We share common books of sacred Scripture. And we share this common season in which we celebrate the sacred narratives of our faiths.

The narrative you tell this season -- of the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus is central to Christianity.

And the narrative we tell of Passover and the story of our liberation from slavery is central to Judaism. Thirty six times we are told in the Torah to remember that we were slaves in Egypt. Our retelling of our journey from slavery to freedom should move us to create a society of equality, equity and self-determination for all.

The telling of Jesus’ death and resurrection motivates your life and fills it with meaning. And the Exodus from Egypt motivates mine.

Core narratives emanate not only from our sacred texts but from our sacred lives. Not only the lives of Jesus or Moses, but each our own lives have valuable lessons to teach. Our own stories can transmit a legacy to those who will follow us.

My grandfather left me a rich legacy. Even though he died nine years before my birth, I still learned so much from the narratives of his life – the stories I was always told about who he was.

My grandfather taught me the beauty of song. He was a poet, a writer, an activist, a thinker… a compassionate soul, who would do anything and everything for those around him. In the early 1930’s in Germany, where he lived, he was unafraid to speak out against the Nazis, writing regularly for an underground newspaper.

There is a Yiddish folk saying which says that death does not take the time to knock on the door. Sometimes our loved ones are stolen from this world and all to soon. That was the case with my grandfather. He died at the age of 65.

While I never felt the warmth of his embrace or witnessed the love that was reflected in his eyes, I knew him through the stories of his life and through the poems that he wrote.

He taught my father to write and my father taught me. My cherished library is a combination of my grandfather’s books intermingled with my father’s books, intermingled with my own.

The message of this talk is quite simple… the stories of our lives, the lessons we have learned and the narratives and values that are most important to us can indeed, be transmitted to our children and grandchildren, even if we are stolen from this world long before our time.

Now my grandfather was a poet, he had a way with words. But one need not be a poet to leave a legacy for future generations. For we have in Judaism what is called an ethical will – simple words that come from the heart and which capture life’s lessons -- words that we yearn to have passed down from one generation to the next.

Now most people understand the importance of materially preparing the next generation for their absence. Reluctantly they draw up their legal wills – paying their debts and dividing their possessions. But the Jewish tradition teaches that a material legacy is not enough – ordinarily we think only of our physical belongings. But there is something further we can and ought to share with future generations: the lessons of our lives, our values and our fundamental beliefs.

There was a story in the paper several years back of a Japanese airplane crash. The pilot struggled to keep the plane aloft despite technical difficulties. It took thirty minutes for the plane to crash to the ground.

Imagine what it must have been like to be on that plane.

In the midst of the rubble were found many notes scribbled during those last frightening minutes. On these papers were notes to loved ones: words of farewell, expressions of love, sketches of valuable lessons the victims learned from their lives.

Human beings, it appears, have a fundamental need to leave behind a message of who they are and what their lives stood for.

Both our faiths have been aware of that need since ancient times. Before Jacob died, he gathered his children around him to bless them, and to tell them how they should live their lives after he is gone. Moses, in a similar fashion gathers the Israelites before his death, instructing them on the paths they should follow when he is no longer there to lead them.

Jesus, also shares with those who surrounded him the insights he gained from his life of healing and of teaching, from his life of suffering and of faith.

Throughout the centuries, religious scholars, artists, scientists and parents alike have prepared for their day of death not only by writing a material will but by writing what Judaism calls an ethical will. Those slips of paper written by the passengers on that Japanese plane were the beginnings of such wills.

An ethical will is a letter from a parent to child, from one relative or friend to another, or even from a dying child to parents summing up the lessons that have been learned in life.

Ethical wills can be in any form: some lines of poetry, a simple note, words on a page, that children or loved ones can one day hold as a tender record of wisdom. Such a will can pave the way for our loved ones when we are no longer there to usher them through the chaotic path of life.

Some of you may have received an ethical will not knowing how to label it.

Arthur Ashe, the great tennis professional, left his daughter whose name is Camera, an ethical will – a letter that he wrote to her when she was only four years old.

He tells her that she should learn at least two languages and master at least two sports.

He tells her that it is important to have money, but it is also important that money not have her. He also wrote, “You must not let your skin color hold you back and you must not let your skin color push you forward.”

He ends his letter saying: “Don’t be angry with me if I am not there in person when you need me. Don’t feel sorry for me that I am gone. When we were together I loved you deeply and you gave me such happiness. Camera, wherever I am, when you feel sick at heart and weary of life or when you stumble and fall and feel that you cannot get up again think of me -- I will be watching and smiling and cheering you on.”

In an ethical will the writer leaves to their heirs simple words and teachings that will echo in their minds long after they are gone. Ethical wills provide offspring with a text to which they can hold fast when they confront those painful moments that come to every life.

We always assume that there is plenty of time… that at some later moment we will be able to stop and express to those whom we love that which is most important to us.

Yet as the Yiddush folk saying tells us… we may not have the luxury of time… some of us unfortunately might be robbed of the tomorrows we so rightfully deserve. We may be robbed of seeing our grandchildren and great grandchildren being born into this world and growing up before our eyes.

This season of lent is an ideal to write a letter to your children, your spouses or loved ones, something that they can have and hold just in case… to hear those words that perhaps you didn’t have the time to say, or to utter as eloquently and as clearly as you would have liked.

In writing such a will you can ask yourselves:
What are the important lessons that you have to teach?
What do you value about your faith?
And what religious values and observances would you want your children to transmit to their children?
What are your favorite possessions and what are the stories behind them explaining why they are so precious to you?
What are the mistakes you regret and the successes in which you rejoice?
For what would you like to ask for forgiveness and for what would you like to forgive?

My grandmother did not leave me an ethical will, though I do remember her words of wisdom to her 7 grandchildren and 5 great grandchildren at her 90th birthday party.

We asked her, “Omi, after 90 years of life, what advice do you have for us?
And she responded, “Never use credit. Always pay in cash.”

Of course, her words of counsel came too late for most of us.

When she died, I did receive several items from her and my grandfather. First a Shabbat lamp, which would hold special candles that would light up the house through the Sabbath evening. There were no stories that came with this lamp, though I wish there had been.

And I also received from them numerous books, which now represent my most valued possession. There is one book that I particularly love, called Sefer Ha-aggadah – the Book of Legends. For in the margins of the book are the penciled notes of both my grandmother and my grandfather. That is part of their legacy to me.

We all need something to ground us, to connect us to the past, and to guide us.

This story is told that in 1947, when the partition plan for Palestine was first proposed, David Ben Gurion asked a respected colleague, Yitzhak Tabenkin for his opinion. Tabenkin insisted that before giving his answer, he would need to consult the two people with whom he always spoke concern difficult decisions about the Jewish State.

“Who are these two people?” Ben Gurion asked.

Tabenkin responded, “My grandfather who is no longer living, and my grandchild who has yet to be born.”

Our difficult decisions are best made when we consider the wisdom of both, those who came before us, and the foundation we are laying for those who will follow.

Each generation will face struggles. But our burdens are made lighter when we have the words of those who came before us to show us the way: the words of our sacred teachers and the words of our sacred texts.

Beyond our communal narratives, each of you has your personal narrative to share. And so I challenge you during this reflective season of lent to sit down and tell your story, to write your legacy, your ethical will, your scribbled notes, and your teachings and most importantly your loving words to your friends, to your children, to your future grandchildren and to your family. Words that perhaps they will never need, but if they do, they will have them as a loving guide forever.

May our personal stories and the stories of our people be told from generation to generation. Amen.