September 3, 2022
Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,
Parshat Shoftim
September 3, 2022 — 7 Elul 5782
Get Better
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
What is true for our Torah portion this morning is also true for every human being who has ever lived, including all of us here today. Also true for our country. What we all have in common is complexity: our Torah, our nation, each of us, contains multitudes.
Charlie spoke with a wisdom beyond his years about the complexity in our parsha. The same parsha which begins with “Justice, justice shall you pursue” also commands genocide in God’s name. Also commands, in God’s name, “You may take as your booty the women, the children, the livestock, and everything in the town—all its spoil—and enjoy the use of the spoil of your enemy, which the Lord your God gives you.” We wrestle with Charlie’s question, how can the same portion that is emphatically concerned about justice in Deuteronomy 16 also command what we now know to be war crimes in Deuteronomy 20? The Torah contains multitudes.
But isn’t that true for us all? We can be generous and ungenerous, forgiving and unforgiving, gentle and cruel. We can be present and not present, responsive and not responsive, caring and not caring, depending on the day, depending on the context. All of us contain multitudes.
Isn’t that also true of our beloved country? Here are two narratives that are both true.
America is the greatest country in the history of the world, and nothing proves that more than the fate of American Jews. Just this week we laid to rest a wonderful man at the age of 95. He was born in Poland in 1927 to parents who never learned to speak English. He came to Canada on a boat from Poland with his mother when he was but a small child. He grew up in a tenement in Canada without running water. As a child he knew real poverty, real hunger, real vulnerability. But as an adult he immigrated to America, he lived the American dream, he knew professional success, he attained financial security, and he lived to see his children and grandchildren attend excellent universities, become successful professionals, and thrive as human beings, as Jews, as the next generation building their own families. He loves this country. His narrative is true. His pride in our country is true.
And so too is the narrative true embodied by the great Bill Russell, the Celtics legendary center who passed away this summer. He was born in Monroe, Louisiana, in 1934, and what he remembers most about his childhood is the pain of deep racism. As his New York Times obituary shared, he remembered a police officer who threatened to arrest his mother, Katie, because she was wearing a stylish outfit like the kind worn by white women. He remembered the gas-station attendant who refused to provide service to his father. And the racism Bill Russell personally experienced was not limited to the south and was not limited to the 30s and 40s. As is well known, in the 1960s, when the Celtics played in southern towns, restaurants would only seat the white Celtics players. Remarkably, shockingly, the white Celtics players would eat at those restaurants without their black teammates, a sin for which Bob Cousy would later apologize. As is also well know, infamously so, after Russell led the Celtics to yet another championship, his house in Reading was vandalized and sprayed with racial epithets and other obscenities.
The narrative of the Jewish man born in Poland and in poverty who thrives in America and who sees his children and grandchildren thrive is true.
And the narrative of Bill Russell of searing racism in the south and in the north, in our own town, is also true. And if it could happen to Bill Russell, the greatest athlete of his generation, one of the greatest athletes of all time, one can appreciate the critique of systemic racism in our country in books such as Caste by Isabel Wilkerson. Our nation, like our Torah contains, multitudes.
What do we do about all these multitudes? How do we respond to this complexity? I want to offer a two-word answer, a teaching that emerges from this season, and a story that embodies both.
The two-word answer is get better. We need to get better as human beings. If we are both generous and not generous, how do we get more generous more of the time? If we are both cruel and kind, how do we get more kind more of the time? If we are both indifferent and engaged, how to we get more engaged more of the time?
The same imperative applies to our nation. The first line of the Constitution provides: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union…” Our Israeli teacher and friend, Micah Goodman, is fond of pointing out that the Constitution does not say a perfect Union, but rather a more perfect Union, better than yesterday. Our Constitution’s first line invites our nation to get better.
It is Elul, the month before the holidays. Where do we need to get better? What is the opportunity for growing in our own lives? And how do we get better? We can get some wisdom from one of the iconic rituals of this season.
Every weekday morning during Elul, we blow the shofar, the basic three notes. Tekiah. Shevarim. Teruah. Tekiah is long and strong and proud. Shevarim, which literally means broken, is three broken smaller sounds. Teruah, the staccato like cry, are nine short blows representing tears we cry because of our brokenness. These three notes embody our complexity, personally and nationally. We are long and strong and proud. True. We are also broken. True. We also shed tears for our brokenness. Again, true. But how does it end? With a tekiah gedola. We make the long sound even longer, the strong sound even stronger, the proud sound even prouder, because we have worked our way through the brokenness and the tears to get to the other side. The pain you feel? Don’t waste it. Redeem it by somehow using it to inspire you to get better.
Which leads us back to Bill Russell. He was clearly the greatest basketball player of his generation. In his 13 years as a Celtic, he led the team to championships in 11 of those years. If you do the math, his team won the championship 85% of his time in the NBA. That is unheard of and unrivalled in any sport, before or since. His election to the Hall of Fame was a no brainer.
But it is what happened next that is so instructive. How did he turn his shevarim and teruah into a tekiah gedola? How did he redeem the brokenness and the tears of the racism he knew only too well? He refused to attend his induction ceremony into the Hall of Fame until the Hall of Fame, and the NBA more generally, began to take a lead in increasing racial justice in our country. He insisted that the first black basketball players who played for the NBA, pioneers at the time, be inducted as well. Attention must be paid to their courage. The Hall of Fame did indeed induct those pioneering first black NBA players, and when it inducted Bill Russell a second time, this time as coach—he is the only person ever to be inducted twice, once as a player, once as a coach—he attended the second induction ceremony. He did a similar move with the Boston Celtics. When the team retired his number the first time, he refused to attend as a protest for the ongoing racism in our city. But 30 years after he retired, the team did a 30-year anniversary of his last championship, and the team retired again his famous number 6, and this time, in 1999, he attended. Why? Because the event raised funds for the National Mentoring Partnership, which helps support at-risk children. Shevarim teruah tekiah gedola. Pain which leads to a more just society is redeemed.
For Bill Russell, for each of us, for our nation, for our Torah, the reality of complexity is only the beginning of the conversation. What do we do about it? How do we get better? How do we move from brokenness and tears to a better us and a better world? The ball is in your hands. Shabbat shalom.