For audio - click here
"In God's Image: A Plea to be Seen" - Yom Kippur Sermon
This sermon, one of my all-time favorites, was delivered on Kol Nidre night, 2005, exactly 20 years ago. It was just a few weeks after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans and Israeli settlers were forced to evacuate Gaza under Prime Minister Sharon’s disengagement plan. Different times, but at the core, our human needs have not changed: To be loved, to be held, to be SEEN, to be remembered. If anything, those needs have become more urgent, as we’ve become less and less visible, to others, ourselves and, it seems, to God. I haven’t changed anything in the sermon, but have added a few links and photos. To get the full message, listen to it if you have the time. You may also want to check out the three other sermons from that High Holidays cycle, whose theme was journeying home. I hope you too will find that this sermon resonates now as much as it did for so many back then - if not more. And my best wishes for an easy - but substantive - fast (and successful road trip for the Red Sox…).
This evening, our journey home picks up at a place in Israel that I’ve spoken of often from this pulpit – the Absorption Center at Kibbutz Merhavya, which is located right near our sister city of Afula. Whenever I bring a group, we always go there and it has never failed to disappoint. This year the center has been particularly busy, taking in many of the thousands of Falash Mura, non-Jewish refugees from Ethiopia with Jewish ancestry. During their months at Merhavya, the children receive an intensive immersion into Hebrew language and modern Israeli culture. Judging from this year’s visit, these kids will adjust quite well, thank you. The kids in our group bonded with them immediately, even playing an impromptu soccer game. It is from visits such as ours that these children also gain their first exposure to many Western ideas that we take for granted – and when I say “exposure,” I mean it literally, because these children have a particular affinity for taking pictures.
Almost instinctively, they began clustering in front of us, begging to be photographed. “Titzalem Oti, Titzalem Oti” they cried, “Photograph me!” I’ve now been there four times over the past four years, while few of the immigrants stay at the center for more than a year or so. Yet every time I’ve been there the same thing has happened. It’s like there is some hidden secret passed down from group to group; as one group leaves, it whispers to the next, “When the Americans come, ask to be photographed. They love it.” Of course part of the reason the kids love it is they get to see themselves. Yes, these are children of the digital age, so as soon as the photo is taken, they ask you to turn the camera around so they can see the digital image. My own camera is ancient – I use real film – so when I took their picture and told them there was nothing to see on the back, they walked away. These are kids who had never seen a car for most of their lives, who likely walked for weeks in dangerous territory to reach their pick up point in Addis Ababa. But when it comes to cameras, only digital will do!
Our morning at Merhavya was profoundly moving, but in all honesty, every single moment in Israel is moving, so by the time we reached the final day of the trip, I wasn’t really thinking much about the Ethiopian children. Until we got to Yad L’Kashish.
Yad L’Kashish is one of Israel’s greatest miracles, an artist colony of elderly and infirmed; “Lifeline for the Old” it’s called, but it’s really a lifeline for the rest of us, reminding us how beautiful life can be when people are able to live in dignity in their senior years, reminding us of the light that can shine from human face, no matter what the age – and even without Botox – when that person is able to live productively.
Under the sign for Yad L’Kashish there is a Hebrew quote, from Psalm 71,
אַל-תַּשְׁלִיכֵנִי, לְעֵת זִקְנָה; כִּכְלוֹת כֹּחִי, אַל-תַּעַזְבֵנִי. Al tashlicheni le’et zikna Kichlot kochi al ta’azveni.”
“Do not cast me off in my old age; forsake me not when my strength falters.”
We hear this verse echoed in the first person plural in the Sh’ma Kolenu prayer on Yom Kippur.
After a brief introduction, the guide escorted us into one of the workshops. There an elderly woman sat right by the door. She looked like she was knitting, or cutting pieces of felt for of those wall hangings that they sell in their gift shop, (which is, by the way, the best place to buy Judaica in all of Israel). She was speaking a very basic Hebrew, since, like many of the people there, she was a recent immigrant from the former Soviet Union. But that made it easier to talk. She was demonstrating some of the secrets of her craft to Mara when I walked up, having snapped a few photos of the room, when suddenly she turned to me, gestured to my camera and said:
“Titzalem Oti.”
I took her picture, which is amazing, because I was in a state of utter shock. Whose voice was I hearing? Was it the old Russian woman or the tiny Ethiopian child? The kid, the kid – I could understand why the child wanted to be photographed, because it’s exciting to see yourself in this magic technological mirror, because it’s cool. But why this woman, who, at the other end of the lifecycle, would seemingly have had little use to be photographed by a stranger. But she said it again…
“Titzalem oti.” Remember me. Let my life be meaningful; my years of enslavement to the communists, my long journey of exodus, the miracle of my return, to a faith I never knew, to a land I’d never seen, and to a people who never forgot me.
My entire trip to Israel had been framed now, at the beginning and at its end, with the lingering mantra, at first playful and now haunting: “Titzalem oti.”
And what was going on in Gaza all that time? “Titzalem oti.” For all the real emotion that was on display there, the real sadness, the real love as well, for the way the Israeli army treated the settlers with patience and respect in what many called its finest hour, much of what went on in Gaza was a grand photo op. Titzalem oti.
When the press made it in to New Orleans, there was one constant refrain from the Katrina survivors, one that has been echoed again and again, in Baton Rouge and Houston and San Antonio and everywhere where there are the missing and missed.
“Take my picture. Please!” Pictures of the missing suddenly turned up on the news shows, as well as websites. And since most of the evacuated had to leave their pets behind, suddenly hundreds of photos of lost animals began to appear as well on sites such as Petfinder.com. (In retrospect, Katrina led to major improvements in the rescue of abandoned pets during natural emergencies). It was similar to the way the photos were posted downtown in New York after 9/11, or at DP camps following the Holocaust.
Titzalem Oti.
This year Yad Vashem opened up a new museum and a massive online database.
The museum is a visual masterpiece, with the historical narrative coming alive through multi media displays. At the end of the historical wing lies the Hall of Names, where the visitor stands suspended between two cones, one extending ten meters skywards, and the other cone excavated into the natural underground rock, its base filled with water. Visitors enter the Hall in the circular space between the two cones onto an elevated ring-shaped platform. From here they are able to view the upper cone, where a display features some 600 photographs of Holocaust victims; and their faces are reflected in the waters below. It is most moving to go from there right to the brightest and most photogenic sight in all the world, a vista of the bustling hills of modern Jerusalem. The city itself appears to be crying out, emerging from the darkness of the Shoah, “Titzalem Oti…”
Three million names are now on the Yad Vashem online database, many of them with pictures. You can get lost in this site, name after name, photo after photo. On the home page there is a quote from a young man named David Berger, who was shot in Vilna in July 1941 at the age of 19. Two years earlier his friend Elsa had made her way safely to Palestine. Berger corresponded with her, and in his last card he wrote, “I should like someone to remember that there once lived a person named David Berger.”
It reminded me of the beautiful elegy Dante’s Prayer, written by the Celtic songwriter Loreena McKinnitt:
Cast your eyes on the ocean
Cast your soul to the sea
When the dark night seems endless
Please remember me…Please remember me.
…Titzalem Oti…
Want to spend a depressing evening at home? Go online to one of the many confessional websites out there and read what people are confessing to, sites like notproud.com and grouphug.us. It’s a non-stop High Holidays, 24/7, and it is so, so sad. Most of the confessions can’t be read here. This one, however, went beyond disturbing:
“I am contemplating suicide, yet I can’t think of anything depressing in my life. Every time there is a knife around me, I imagine stabbing myself with it. Sometimes I even pick it up and begin the stabbing motion at my chest, but then I hesitate. I feel that if I die, it will be no big deal. Nothing in the world will change, because my life is insignificant and meaningless. I don’t know why thoughts of suicide keep coming into my head...”
This depressed person is screaming out for attention, for help, for love. And for more. That Russian woman indeed has left many samples of her creativity in the Yad L’Kashish giftshop. But it goes beyond that. We all want to be remembered. In the end, it’s not merely about the name or the photo or that footprint in the sand. We want our lives to have purpose, to leave a mark, to transcend the dust from which we came and to which we shall return.
The word to photograph, l’tzalem, contains within it the Hebrew word for image, “tzelem.” And the first chapter of Genesis informs us that all human beings are created b’tzelem elohim, in God’s image. So when we are asking “Titzalem oti,” we’re not merely asking to be photographed. We’re saying, “Imbue me with tzelem.” See my face for what it really is – a reflection of the divine image. See what is eternal in me. See in my face – and in my life – the dignity, the courage, the beauty, and the blessing, that all human beings deserve. “Titzalem oti. Love me, with a Godlike love.”
If I am depressed. Lift me up.
If I am young, help me to grow.
If I am old, don’t leave me behind.
If I am lost, take me home.
For in that camera’s lens is what we have been seeking all along. The hidden face of God.
We read in Psalm 13:
עַד-אָנָה יְהוָה, תִּשְׁכָּחֵנִי נֶצַח; עַד-אָנָה, תַּסְתִּיר אֶת-פָּנֶיךָ מִמֶּנִּי.
How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
We often fall into the same trap as the Psalmist, who if he lived today, would undoubtedly have logged on to Grouphug.us. We become detached and self centered, leading to the depression of disconnect. But in the prayer known as Ashrei, Psalm 145, we find the answer: “Karov Adonia l’chol Korav.” God is near to all who call out, who reach out, who recognize the divine in the Other.
“Titzalem oti.”
The word tzelem appears in the Psalms only in one place, Psalm 73, and it exposes us to the negative, literally, of this tzelem photo op. You’re likely unfamiliar with this Psalm, because, unlike the Ashrei, it isn’t found in the prayer book. But the psalms left out of the siddur – which so often deal with personal pain – are often the ones we can connect with most easily.
Psalm 73 begins with an astounding confession.
אַךְ טוֹב, לְיִשְׂרָאֵל אֱלֹהִים-- לבָרֵי לֵבָב.
ב וַאֲנִי--כִּמְעַט, נטוי (נָטָיוּ) רַגְלָי; כְּאַיִן, שפכה (שֻׁפְּכוּ) אֲשֻׁרָי.
Surely God is good to Israel, even to such as are pure in heart.
But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had nearly slipped.
For I was envious at the arrogant, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
Their eyes stand out with fatness: they have more than a heart could wish.
Behold, these [are] the ungodly, who prosper in the world; they increase [in] riches.”
This is one troubled guy; plagued with insane jealousy, and admitting it, jealous at the apparent lack of divine justice in a world where bad people prosper. But in the second half of the psalm the poet turns to himself and recognizes his own human weakness and wishes to restore his faith that close connection to God.
The turning point comes when he visits God’s sanctuary and suddenly recognizes that those who seem to be living so high off the hog are in fact suffering even more than he is. It is stated in a curious way in verse 20.
כַּחֲלוֹם מֵהָקִיץ-- אֲדֹנָי, בָּעִיר צַלְמָם תִּבְזֶה.
When You wake up, O Lord, You will despise their form (their tzelem) –
It’s not that God will suddenly hate those fat cats. Not at all; rather, God will despise their tzelem, their image, and from the word for despise, tivzeh, we get bizbooz - waste. What God despises is the wasted tzelem, the missed opportunity to use one’s godliness and God-given wealth for good. “Tzelem” cones from the word “tzel,” “shadow,” and these are people whose lives have amounted to being are a shadow of what they could be.
And we’re not really talking just about God here, because we are the ones taking the picture. It’s the psalmist himself, recognizing finally that he is created in the divine image, who looks around in the sanctuary, at all the people he had been so jealous of, and recognizes, at long last, that they are just like him, human beings with the same frailties and fears, and the same opportunities for godlike goodness, and that if he doesn’t stop obsessing about them and get off his own godlike butt and make his own life meaningful, he’ll have wasted his own tzelem as well – no he hadn’t seen this at all – he hadn’t gotten the full picture at all, for he had been looking merely at the negative.
The big question that we all face: Have we wasted our tzelem elohim?
The great philosopher Martin Buber also loved this Psalm and even read it at the funeral of his philosopher friend Franz Rosenzweig. Buber spoke often about the “eclipse of God,” how we feel when all seems lost, hopeless and out of control. Psalm 73 brings us back from the brink. The author returns with a purity of heart, a cleansed soul, and, in the end, an amazing image;
וַאֲנִי תָמִיד עִמָּךְ; אָחַזְתָּ, בְּיַד-יְמִינִי.
Nevertheless I am always with You, God as You hold my right hand.
Imagine the poet, feeling God is literally holding his hand; like mommy or daddy at the bus stop on the first day of school.
Close your eyes right now, and imagine your parent holding your hand. So safe. So protected. So valued. So cared for. THIS is the hand of God.
Howard Nemerov, the poet, wrote:
My child and I hold hands on the way to school,
And when I leave him at the first-grade door
He cries a little but is brave; he does
Let go. My selfish tears remind me how
I cried before that door a life ago.
I may have had a hard time letting go.
I don’t know about you, but whenever my kids leave for the first day at a new school, I take their picture.
And they don’t even have to say, “Titzalem Oti.”
God is sending us to a new school today. We look around us and realize, as the Psalmist did, that all those petty jealousies are only holding us back, keeping us from true contentment and honest love. In the end, our neighbors are no different from us: the same worries, the same guilt, the same fears, the same mortality, but also the same tzelem, the same spark of immortality.
At Yad Vashem there is a huge sculpture of a man embracing a group of children who were waiting not for a school bus, but for the train to Treblinka. The figure of Janus Korczak is considerably bigger than the figures of the children. Only his face and hands are visible, uniting the group with their embrace. The children are tall and skinny, their hands long and lifeless and their heads drooping. Before the Holocaust, Korczac was a famous educator in Warsaw, known for methods that could unlock the door to children’s souls. Although a very assimilated Jew at first, he certainly could see the image of God behind the face of the child.
During the war, he protected Jewish children in an orphanage. When the Nazis came to deport the children to Treblinka on August 5, 1942, Gentile friends arranged for Korczak to escape because of his fame. But he chose to go and die with the children. He said, “You do not leave sick children in the night,” he said. “And you do not leave them in a time like this.”
Michal Wroblewski, a teacher, was the last to see Korczak alive. He had been working on the other side of the ghetto wall--at a job Korczak had managed to find for him-- and returned to the ghetto orphanage late that afternoon to find everyone gone.
Misha later said:
“You know, everyone makes so much of Korczak’s last decision to go with the children to the train. But his whole life was made up of moral decisions. The decision to become a children’s doctor. The decision to give up medicine and his writing career to take care of poor orphans. The decision to go with the Jewish orphans into the ghetto. As for that last decision to go with the children to Treblinka, it was part of his nature. It was who he was. He wouldn’t understand why we are making so much of it today. “
We do not know what he said to reassure the children as they lined up, clutching their little flasks of water, their favorite books, their diaries and toys. He always said that one should never spring surprises on a child. Some have speculated that he told them they were going to their summer camp, Little Rose, but it seems probable that Korczak would not have lied to his children. Perhaps he suggested that the place where they were going might have pine and birch trees like the ones in their camp; and, surely, if there were trees, there would be birds and rabbits and squirrels. He then led the children on a long march through the streets of Warsaw, lined up in rows of four, holding hands, singing marching songs. There were many witnesses to Korczak’s march of the children. Yehoshua Perle later wrote an eyewitness account in his book, “The Destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto”:
“…A miracle occurred, two hundred pure souls, condemned to death, did not weep. Not one of them ran away. None tried to hide. Like stricken swallows they clung to their teacher and mentor, to their father and brother, Janusz Korczak.”
Like Hagar in last week’s Torah reading, whom God instructs, “Hahziki at yadech bo,” “Hold the child’s hand to strengthen his in yours,” his was the hand of God.”
The children walked quietly to the station in clean and meticulously cared for clothes. There were 194 children at the roll call, and Korczak held the hand of a child of five.
“I am always with You, God, as You hold my right hand.”
This was a man whose tzelem Elohim was not wasted, holding the child’s hand, being Godlike to the end.
We read in Psalm 118 – מִן-הַמֵּצַר, קָרָאתִי יָּהּ; עָנָנִי בַמֶּרְחָב יָהּ.
“Min hametzar karati yah, anani ba’merchavya, “From the narrow straits I called upon you, and you answered me with expansiveness.”
In the early 1900s, a Kibbutz, in all its idealism, took the word “expansiveness” from this Psalm as adopted it as its name. That Kibbutz was Golda Meir’s first home when she emigrated from America. And it is now the first home of those Ethiopian children: Merhavya.
Min hametzar karati yah, anani ba’merchavya
Take our narrowness, O God, our narrow minds, our constricted souls, choking for air, and expand us, fill us with purpose; answer us – in Merhavya!
The answer came in Merhavya. From a little child of the Falash Mura in Merhavya; and from an elderly Russian woman in Jerusalem; and from a settler and soldier bridging the divide and embracing in Gaza. And from the homeless and hopeless of Baton Rouge; and from David Berger and Janus Korczak and the rest of the six million. And from the Psalmist.
“Anani B’Merhavya.” The answer came to me in Merhavya:
“Titzalem Oti.”
Listen closely and you will hear it. You will hear it in the sound of the shofar and you will hear it in the sound of the breeze. You will hear it in the sound of Korczac muffling a child’s cry and you will hear it in the age-old chant of the Torah. You will hear God saying, “Titzalem Oti.”
Be like me.
Just as I welcomed Adam and Eve into the Garden, welcome all strangers in your midst.
Just as I dressed them before they set off on their way, you clothe the needy as well, with clothing drives and donations.
Just as I visited Abraham following his bris, you visit the sick, wherever they may be. Just as I found a bride for Isaac, you provide sustenance to young couples – and give them a break with synagogue dues too!
Just as I comforted Isaac when his mother died, you comfort the mourners, not just during shiva, but all the time, every morning at minyan when you help them to say kaddish.
Just I lifted up Joseph from the pit, you lift up the downtrodden and depressed, by lending a hand, or simply by greeting everyone with a smile.
Just as I rescued Israel from Egypt, you redeem captives.
Just as I fed Israel by giving them mannah in the wilderness, you feed the hungry with the bags you brought tonight, but much more is needed.
Just as I healed Miriam’s leprosy, you heal the sick with walkathons, with donations and with affordable medical care.
Just as I held your hand when you were in first grade, and just as Korczak held the hand of those children, you hold the hands of the young and innocent.
And just as I created you in the divine image, you must see my reflection in every creature on earth, in all humanity, wither reflected in the waters of Yad Vashem’s Hall of Names or in the mirror of your own bathroom.
Titzalem Oti – take MY picture! And let that picture be burned into your consciousness, into the consciousness of the world. Titzalem oti!
Remember me.
A story is told of a young child who is busy with pencils, pens and crayons, working endlessly on a drawing. His father comes up behind him and asks, “Son, what are you drawing?”
“I’m drawing a picture of God, Dad,” the child replied.
“Son, don’t you know that no one knows what God looks like?”
“Well,” he replies. “They will when I’m finished.”
Yes, but will they when we’re finished? When we’re finished inscribing ourselves into the scrapbook of life, affixing our likenesses into the photo album of purpose, will God’s image be there?
May God’s tzelem be there, for if it is, then, most certainly, ours will be too.
