Holy Light - D'var Torah - Yom Kippur Afternoon - October 9, 2019

When I was a student rabbi in Illinois from 1978 to 1981, the area where I served encompassed Dixon, Illinois, where President Ronald Reagan had lived from age 10 until he attended college.   Some of the my congregants had spoken to people in the area who remembered “Dutch Reagan” in his younger years.   The first eight years of my rabbinate corresponded to the time of the Reagan presidency. This afternoon, I won’t list my disagreements with that president.  I did once hear President Reagan say that people who are not Christian are free to live in “our country.”   I should, however, say that I appreciated his administration’s efforts to work towards freedom for Soviet Jews.  Furthermore, I marveled at and deeply appreciated President Reagan’s touching eulogy for the Challenger shuttle astronauts in 1986.

     Jon Meacham, in his book THE SOUL OF AMERICA, cited President Reagan’s farewell address in January, 1989, as featuring one of the most significant expressions of a vision for our country.    Meacham commented:  “Reagan addressed himself to America’s generosity of spirit in his evocation of John Winthrop’s “city upon a hill”—an image, in a sign of some consistency of thought among those who have led the nation, that John Kennedy had cited in his 1961 speech to the Massachusetts legislature as he prepared to leave for his inauguration in Washington. “I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life,” Reagan said, “but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it.” He went on:  “In my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it, and see it still….And she’s still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.”

    President Reagan was suggesting that our country can and should be a place of light.   One of the most important biblical prescriptions for bringing light to a community is contained in this afternoon’s Torah reading.    You can read the verses as I chant the Hebrew, but here are the principles that emerge from Leviticus Chapter 19:

·      Show respect to your parents.

·      Keep the Sabbath as a day to rest and restore yourselves for the coming week.

·      Do not worship material things or people, making them idols that seem to have limitless power.  Worship God.

·      Designate some of what you grow or some of what you own to be given to the poor and the stranger.

·      Don’t steal.

·      Don’t deal with each other based on lies or deceit.

·      Don’t commit fraud or robbery.

·      Pay your workers on time.

·      Do not insult people who cannot hear you or put obstacles before people who cannot see what you are doing. 

·      Judge people fairly, and do not be swayed one way or another by their station in society.

·      Don’t gossip and don’t create supposed facts that you know are not true.

·      Don’t stand by when people around you are physically attacked or murdered when they did nothing to deserve to be the victims of violence.

·      Don’t harbor feelings of hatred or disdain for people you know, deep and negative emotions that could fester and find expression in an explosive and non-productive diatribe.   Find a way to share your insights and feelings with and about others constructively and without animosity.

·      Don’t take revenge.

·      Don’t bear grudges, even if others might do that to you.

·      Love your neighbor as yourself, for he or she is a creation of God, just like you.

·      Respect your elders.

·      Because you were strangers in Egypt, treat the strangers among you as if they were citizens like you.

·      Be honest in all of your dealings in business.

        It shouldn’t be so hard to fulfill these commandments.   We can if we approach people with a generosity of spirit and humility.   I believe that it is these principles from the book of Leviticus that can make any congregation, community or country a “city upon a hill,” a place that exemplifies the best of the human capacity for compassion, partnership, and love.   

    May these words that direct us to be holy as God is holy be etched upon our minds and hearts every day, so that we can shine light in the darkness, combat despair with undying hope, and turn conflict into cooperation and peace.