“Linking Our Arms and Crossing the Line Together”

Charlotte Housing Authority Scholarship Fund Annual Breakfast
Rabbi Judith Schindler - October 17, 2007

It was two years ago that I first learned about this amazing organization when I was invited to give the invocation at this annual breakfast. I was thrilled to learn that my friend Dr. Joan Parrot would be giving this year’s invocation. We are Friday Friends, which is program where two people from different communities get together every month to have lunch and build bridges of understanding. In the course of dining over recent months, we have learned that we are sisters in our passion for social justice.

Two years ago, when I came to that breakfast, the keynote speaker was Dick Vitale. Let me tell you, my husband was really impressed that I got to sit next to him and even more impressed with my signed copy of his book. “To my favorite rabbi,” Dicky V. wrote on the inside cover.

A sports commentator is quite the draw. You can therefore understand why both my husband and I were in surprised when they invited me this year, as a rabbi, not to give the invocation, but to deliver the keynote address. I’m sure you, too, were confused: a sports commentator and then two years later a Rabbi. You must have thought to yourself, “Rabbi – what is a Rabbi doing here?” But in Judaism, a rabbi is simply a teacher. And this morning we celebrate education and the doors of opportunity that it opens.

Two years ago, a sports commentator, today, a rabbi. To be honest, Jews and sports are not a strong combination. There are so few Jews who are famous in sports that, as kids, we learn their names at a fairly young age -- Mark Spitz, Sandy Koufax, Sid Luckman, the Jewish quarterback for the Chicago Bears.

Let me tell you a story I once heard about Sid Luckman. It was the first quarter of a big game and things were going exceedingly well. He completed his passes with little pressure from the defense. In the second quarter, things began to break down. Sid’s adrenaline was pumping as he was chased all over the field by enormous linebackers who would have liked nothing better than to separate his head from his shoulders. Suddenly a voice came out of the stands and said, “It’s o.k. Sidney, give them the ball. Your father and I will get you a new one.”

In our toughest times in life, there are voices that speak to us. Perhaps they are our parents’ voices. Perhaps they are our teachers’ voices or those of a sibling or friend. Today, through your generosity of time and resources, all of you are that voice, that gives our communities’ youth who are in public housing, the confidence they need and the resources they require to overcome the tremendous obstacles before them.

The inequities of our society are great. In our world, one billion people live without adequate shelter. And closer to home, in our own Mecklenburg County, 89,000 residents earn below the federal poverty line and likewise cannot afford adequate housing. Many can afford no housing at all -- as 5,000 individuals right here in our Queen City on any given night are homeless, among them are 2,000 of our Charlotte Mecklenburg school children. Through our presence here today, we help to right socioeconomic wrongs.

As you are well aware, each financial package that this Scholarship Fund awards changes not only one life, but many. A teaching from the Talmud, a great compilation of Jewish wisdom from the first five centuries of the Common Era, notes that a light for one is a light for one hundred. An education for one has the same ripple effect: it can bring positive change not only to the life of one student, but a college education can transform a family, it can create change in a neighborhood. The impact of an education can affect a community or inspire actions that heal our world.

It could be so easy for us to feel hopeless and helpless. When we fall asleep to the evening news or awake to the morning paper, a sense of despair could understandably overtake us. We could find ourselves asking: “With the enormity of the problems of our world - what can I, as one person, do?” We are continually witness to people who at every age and stage of life, are challenged by poverty and by pain.

One of my favorite poems by a woman named Ina Hughes highlights the harsh realities of our world. It is a prayer for all children -- for those who have enough and for those who want and for those who need. Hughes’ words bring home the reality of the nearly half million children in our state who are in poor.

She writes:

We pray for the children who put chocolate fingers everywhere, who like to be tickled, who stomp in puddles and ruin their new pants, who erase holes in math workbooks, and who can never find their shoes.

And we pray also for those who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire, who can’t bound down the street in a new pair of sneakers, who never “counted potatoes,” who are born in places that we would not be caught dead in and that they will be.

We pray for the children who give us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions, who hug us so tightly and who forget their lunch money, who squeeze toothpaste all over the sink, and who slurp their soup.

And we also pray for those who never get dessert, who have no favorite blanket to drag around behind them, who watch their parents suffer, who do not have any rooms to clean up, whose picture are on milk cartons instead of on dressers, and whose monsters are real.

We pray for children who spend all their allowance before Tuesday, who shove dirty clothes under the bed and never rinse out the tub, who don’t like to be kissed in front of the school bus, who squirm in church or temple and scream in the phone.

And we also pray for those whose nightmares occur in the daytime, who will eat anything, who aren’t spoiled by anybody, who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep, who live and move and have no being.

We pray for children who want to be carried and for those who must, for those we never give up on and for those who will grab the hand of anyone kind enough to offer it.

For all these children, we pray today, for they are all so precious.

But today, we not only pray, we act. Through our support of this outstanding organization, through our work towards endowing this fund so that one hundred college scholarships can be provided annually in perpetuity, we help to bring about that change in the world we want to see. We ensure that our youth in public housing can find that hand for which they reach.

I recently heard the story told of two boys who often got into trouble. The mother brought the younger boy to the church near their home to see if the priest could talk some sense into her son.

“Where is God?” The Priest began.

The little boy was silent.

Again the Priest asked, “Son, where is God?” The boy looked down giving an unknowing look.

And when the Priest asked a third time, “Son, where is God?” The boy jumped out of his seat, ran home and up the stairs to his brother’s room. He slammed the door and shouted in fear to his brother, “God is missing and they think we had something to do with it.”

Given the inequities of our world, there are many places, even in our city where God appears to be missing and you know what, we do have something to do with it.

In my mind, God needs us to be partners. We must be God’s hands, helping to lift up those who were not given the same educational opportunities that all of our community’s children deserve. And we must be God’s voice – protesting against the economic injustices of our city and country.

The book of Deuteronomy warns that there will be always be needy among us. But the Bible also tells us that it is our responsibility to respond to those economic disparities – to lift those who are in distress.

It could be so easy for us to feel hopeless and helpless – but that is not a choice we have.

Moses Maimonides, the twelfth century physician and scholar offers us guidance in responding to poverty through his ladder of justice. He taught that there are eight levels of giving charity – each one higher than the previous.

The lowest rung of the ladder is the person who gives unwillingly – who gives only because he is asked or coerced to. We move up the ladder as we give cheerfully, as we give as voluntarily, as we give as generously as we can and as is needed, as we give in way that maintains the dignity of the recipient, and as we give anonymously. Yet in order to reach the highest level of Maimonides’ golden ladder of charity, we must give a recipient the skills they need to provide for themselves. This morning, we have arrived at that highest level of charity – for, together, we are working to prevent poverty by providing a way out, by providing an education.

As Jews, we are not only a minority on the field of sports, but we are a minority on the field of religion. There are seven hundred houses of worship in our city and only four of them are synagogues. People are oftentimes concerned with our souls – whether or not, based on our belief system, we will get into heaven.

When I was growing up, my father would share with me and my four siblings a classic Jewish story of what heaven looked like. It was an Eastern European tale of a rabbi who was given the privilege of seeing heaven and hell before his death. He was taken first to Hell, where he was confronted with a huge banquet room with every type of delicacy. And all around the table people were sitting looking at the food...and wailing. The rabbi had never heard such a sad sound and he asked, "With the most delicious food, why do these people wail so bitterly?"

Yet as he entered the room, he saw the reason for their distress. Although each was confronted with this incredible sight before him, no one was able to taste a thing. Each person's arms were splinted so that the elbows could not bend. They could touch the food but could not eat it.

He was next shown Heaven, and to his surprise he was confronted with the identical scene he witnessed in Hell: the large banquet room, the elegant table, and the sumptuous foods. Once again, everyone's arms were splinted so the elbows could not bend. Here, however, there was no wailing, but rather an overwhelming and unmitigated joy. Whereas here, too, the people could not put the food into their own mouths, each picked up the food and fed it to another.

There are so many in our society who by virtue of their life’s circumstances cannot, metaphorically, feed themselves. It could be so easy for us to feel hopeless and helpless. But today, we are creating the heaven of this Chasidic tale by nourishing one another, by sharing our resources and our abundance, by sharing not only food at this breakfast, but the fare for education.

There are those in our society who erroneously think that heaven can be reached here on earth by racing far and fast before others. By out-earning their neighbors, by out-spending their neighbors, by climbing higher than everyone else on the ladder of what they call success.

The tallest mountain in our world is Mt. Everest. I cannot imagine that I will ever see its peak as my personal fitness goal is simply is to get in a workout more than twice a week. Last year, something inspirational happened near the peak of that world reknowned mountain and lifetime goal of so many climbers. Australian mountaineer Lincoln Hall reached the summit, but on the descent was overcome by altitude sickness. As he sat frozen in the snow, a number of other climbers passed him and left him, assuming he was dead. Climbers leave a body on the mountain for eternity; it is hard enough getting the living down the mountain

The next morning an American climber named Dan Mazur was on his way to the summit. He spotted Hall, delusional, frostbitten, having slipped off several layers of clothing, but alive. Mazur immediately abandoned his quest for the summit. He gave him oxygen, covered him with more clothing, and helped haul him down the mountain.

When asked how he could give up his summit quest, Mazur said, “How could you sleep a good sleep at night thinking you passed somebody who needed your help?”

And I ask all of you the same: “How could you sleep a good night’s sleep, thinking you passed somebody who needed you help?”

Well tonight, all of you can sleep. You can slumber more soundly knowing you helped to lift the burden of another. Contrary to what the consumer culture tries to sell us, life is not about climbing Mt. Everest alone. It is about taking others with us on life’s journey.

Two years ago, a sports commentator, and today, a Rabbi – you could not have two more different speakers. To be perfectly honest, I know very little about sports. When I want to use athletic metaphors to speak with more relevance to my parishioners, my husband has to help me out.

My favorite sports story is not that of Sid Luckman of the Chicago Bears but of an event that happened at a Special Olympics several years ago. And so it is with that story I close -- with a story of kids, who were born with challenges greater than most of us will ever know. It was the one hundred yard dash and the ten children, each with his or her own disability, lined up for the race. The gun was shot and the children began to run when only seconds later, one of the children stumbled and fell to the ground. Without a word, the nine others stopped in their tracks, turned back, and reached out to pick up that little boy. The ten children continued the race yet when they reached the finish line they stopped, linked arms and crossed over it together.

Let us likewise, as a community cross over the line together – the line of poverty – so that all of our citizens can have the basics they need – the shelter, the food, the education that is, I believe, their God given and their human right.

It could be so easy for us to feel hopeless and helpless. But this morning, we do the opposite – we give help and with give hope. Today we link our arms and work together to create success for all of our community’s children. Today we work together to create a Queen City, that will be worthy of the royal name it has been given.

Two years ago, a sports commentator, and today, a Rabbi – if the truth be told we both care about world of team sports – for the failure or success of this game that we are playing called life depends upon how well all of us play it together. My prayer this morning, is that all of our city’s children -- those in public housing, those in no housing, and those who have sufficient housing will indeed reach those summits for which they strive. Amen.