April 17, 2022
Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,
Pesach Day II
April 17, 2022 — 16 Nisan 5782
What is the Relationship, If Any, Between the Words We Say,
the Deeds We Do, and the World We Live In?
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
Now that we have finished both seders this year, I have a question: What is the relationship, if any, between the words we say at the seder, the deeds we do at the seder, or that we commit to do, and the world we live in? Does our living a Jewish life, the prayer, the rituals, the community building, in what way, if at all, does that Jewish living affect the world? Will the two seders we just had affect the world, or will they only affect how we feel going through the world?
To approach that question, let me share with you some spiritual struggle I have been going through the last month: namely, a prayer that I had wanted to say since February 24, that I said twice a day every day for several weeks with conviction, that I continued to say after I lost that conviction, I said it with ambivalence and doubt as to whether it was worth saying at all, and then I stopped saying it altogether. And in fact, in most of the services where it had been said, the morning and evening daily minyan, we stopped saying it altogether. I am talking about the Prayer for Peace, in the red siddur, p. 75.
May we see the day when war and bloodshed cease, when a great peace will
embrace the whole world. Then nation will not threaten nation, and mankind
will not again know war. For all who live on earth shall realize we have not
come into being to hate or to destroy. We have come into being to praise, to
labor, and to love.
Compassionate God, bless the leaders of all nations with the power of compassion.
Fulfill the promise conveyed in Scripture…: “Let love and justice flow like a mighty
stream. Let peace fill the earth as the waters fill the sea.” And let us say: Amen.
What a beautiful prayer. Who could argue with its words? Who could argue with its aspiration to live in a world where love and justice flowed like a mighty stream? I understand very well why we started saying this prayer twice a day after Russia invaded Ukraine.
And I equally understand why we stopped saying this prayer, why I stopped saying this prayer. And the obvious reason is that reality makes a mockery of this prayer. We say these lofty words, and Russian bombs level a theatre or a train station, where innocents are hiding out or trying to flee the war zone. We pray that we have not come into being to hate or to destroy, and Russia bombs an apartment complex, killing untold numbers of civilians. We pray that mankind will not again know war, and we see every day on every screen men, women and children murdered by war. And it’s getting worse: the new Russian General now overseeing the war effort is known as the Butcher. His stock in trade is indifference to life. His selling point is his cruel disregard for any notions of a just war. He was the Butcher in Syria. Now he is the Butcher in Ukraine.
Every day we would pray these lofty words, and face a world where the exact opposite of these lofty words was the reality. It made our prayers feel irrelevant. It made our prayers feel impotent. It made what we do in the Gann Chapel feel utterly disconnected from the real world.
Saying these words was helpful to us in the moment, it made us feel better, but our words had zero impact on the world, so why say them?
Is this posture kosher? Is it okay to stop saying words of prayer that are belied by reality?
In the tractate Berakhot, the Talmud counsels us not to offer what it calls tefilat shav, a prayer that is offered in vain. We get two examples. One, if a woman is pregnant, one cannot pray for the gender of the child, that is tefilat shav, a prayer offered in vain, because the gender is what it is. Similarly, and hauntingly evocative for what is happening in Ukraine every day, shamah kol tzevachah ba’ir, if one hears the sound of screaming, of violence, in the city, one is not supposed to pray: yehi ratzon sheloh t’hei b’toch beiti, May it be your will that this screaming is not taking place within my house. The critique is not that this prayer is selfish; after all the person saying these words hopes that it is somebody else’s house that is getting ransacked. Rather, the Talmud says don’t say it because it is tefilat shav, a prayer offered in vain. If the violence is emanating from your house, it is emanating from your house, and your words of prayer will not change that. It just is. Prayers cannot change what just is, and we demean the project of prayer when we pray to change reality that cannot be changed.
Which means that we are on solid ground for not continuing to offer this prayer for peace in the face of a world where this prayer for peace is flagrantly and floridly violated every day.
But if that’s the case, we now have bigger problems than this particular prayer. After all, the core Jewish prayer, at the end of every amidah, is: oseh shalom bimromav hu yaaseh shalom aleinu val kol Yisrael val kosh yoshvei tevel v’imru amen. May the One who makes peace in the heavens make peace among the Jewish people and all of humanity, and let us say, Amen.
Are we to stop saying that prayer as well because it is flagrantly and floridly violated every day?
But the question does not only go to the question of the prayers we say, or do not say. We have a deeper question. If our problem with offering the daily prayer for peace is that it makes us feel better in the moment, but does not change the world, can’t that critique be offered to lots of things we do in Jewish life all the time, including the seders we just had? If all that happened in the seders was that we felt better, we got a booster shot of joy, blessing, love, family and friends, but none of that stops the Russian army, and none of that translates immediately into a changed world, how do we evaluate the worthiness of our seders– and of all the other mitzvot we do that do not show a linear direct impact on a changed world?
There has to be another worthy reason for saying the prayers we say, and for doing the rituals we do, other than they change the world. We can find the answer from the streets of a town called Carnegie, Pennsylvania, outside Pittsburgh.
On the same street in Carnegie, there are two churches that have been side by side for more than a hundred years. One is named St. Peter & St. Paul Ukranian Orthodox Church, and its neighbor is Holy Virgin Russian Orthodox Church. A Ukrainian Church. A Russian Church. Next door neighbors for more than a century. And then the war breaks out.
The pastor of the Russian church, Father George York, immediately hangs a poster that says: “We are united in prayer for the peace of Ukraine.”
The pastor of the Ukrainian church, Father John Charest, reminds his people that there is no basis to hate Russia or Russians. He says, “It’s not Russia invading. It’s Putin.”
The two pastors, and their churches, come together in prayer. They pray for peace. And members of both churches gather resources, diapers, food and medical supplies to be shipped to the people of Ukraine.
An additional reason that we pray for peace, and that we do a Passover seder, is to bring moral clarity to who we are. So that we don’t get swept up in the rage. So that we remind ourselves of our ideals—like peace and justice and respect for human dignity—in a world where precisely those ideals are being undermined every day.
What is the relationship between the words we say, the deeds we do, and the world we live in? Moral clarity. In a world gone mad, our prayers and our rituals help us not lose ourselves. Our seders are abundantly worthy if they help us think about the world as it is, the world as it should be, and the work we might do to bridge that painful gap. Shabbat shalom.