Jews today are challenged to apply their experience and beliefs in defense of those suffering bullying, violence and legalized prejudice based on their sexual and gender identity
(Editor’s note: The following article is an abridged version of Rabbi Stock Spilker’s Kol Nidre sermon.)
By RABBI ADAM STOCK SPILKER
Kol Nidre is the sanctuary of the soul of the Jewish people. For centuries, despite continual profound persecution, this was the night that we could be open with our faith, true to our identity.
In 1935, Kol Nidre came less than a month after the Nuremberg Laws were passed in Germany, stripping Jews of their civil rights as German citizens. It was also eight days before marriage laws changed, which effectively ended legal marriage for Jews.
For that Kol Nidre, German Chief Rabbi Leo Baeck wrote a prayer to be read in synagogues throughout Germany, but he was arrested and the prayer banned by the Gestapo.
In part, Rabbi Baeck’s prayer stated: “We stand before our God…. [W]e, in indignation and abhorrence, express our contempt for the lies concerning us and the defamation of our religion and its testimonies. We have trust in our faith and in our future…. Who taught the world respect for [the human being], created in the image of God?”
We Jews have seen our share of discrimination, abject hatred and its horrific consequences. In 1935, discrimination became legal in Germany and, in contrast, Jews taught inclusion.
We know the pain of legal discrimination. We believe that each of us is created in the image of God, b’tzelem Elohim. Now in 2011 we are challenged to apply both our experience and our belief to members of our community who have endured hate speech, bullying and violence, and legal prejudice based not on their religion or ethnic background, but on their sexual or gender identity.
When the Nazis came for the Jews, they also came for the homosexuals, who were forced to wear a pink triangle. Many were arrested and many sent to the concentration camps, a fact only officially apologized for by Germany in 2002. There are significant differences between the unique Nazi hatred against the Jews and what homosexuals endured. I am not drawing equivalencies. But this is a part of the Nazi horror not always fully told.
Thank God we live in a different era, a free society, a time of openness and acceptance, where the idea of government-endorsed violence is anathema. And yet, take a moment to appreciate what a person has to endure who discovers — sometimes through personal torment — that their sexuality is not solely heterosexual or that their gender does not conform to societal norms.
There is the moment or moments of coming out; there are the explanations to family and friends and others with various reactions; and there is the experiencing of looks, teasing, outright bullying and sometimes violence.
We in Minnesota know this too well. Bullying in the Anoka-Hennepin school system has led to our community’s pain that some teens have taken their own lives. Just imagine how these students felt when the schools said that teachers could not address the LGBT issues that were the basis of the bullying. The legal case has gained national attention. These teens’ deaths are a moral stain, a signifier of our shortcomings. Kids have taken their own lives because of our society’s failure to prevent discrimination.
We well know that discrimination does not end at high school. If someone who is gay or lesbian decides to form a committed relationship, it is not recognized by the State of Minnesota. Despite however many years of being together or whether they have raised kids, there are at least 515 legal ways a same-sex couple does not have the rights that a heterosexual, married couple enjoys.
Judaism has not historically been in favor of homosexuality. The account of how one verse in the Torah was understood in its day and then over the millennia, and how views have changed authentically within segments of all streams of Judaism, including Orthodoxy, is a conversation for another day. It is an important conversation because it cuts to the heart of how religious understandings can change. It is the same change Rabbeinu Gershom recognized more than 1,000 years ago, when he officially banned polygamy in Judaism against the norms of Torah.
Our pursuit of justice is being put to the test here in Minnesota. This past summer, Mount Zion’s board of directors voted, after congregational input, to oppose the upcoming 2012 ballot initiative to amend our state constitution limiting marriage to being between a man and a woman.
There were many reasons for this board decision, but the consensus reason was that this is a matter of justice in line with our movement’s decisions over the decades. The national and state constitutions should, as they have done over our country’s history, enfranchise more and more classes of peoples — not the opposite.
Ten years ago there were just two states in America that had passed similar constitutional amendments by popular vote excluding same-sex unions. Today there are 29. North Carolina will vote on a similar measure next May before Minnesota votes next November. Of course, the vote will not give anyone additional rights. But by not making marriage a constitutional issue, it will allow the Legislature and judiciary to grant such rights in the future.
This is a time when once again America needs to hear a religious voice that values each person created in the image of God, which knows that homosexuality is not a sin and that life is too precious to abide intolerance and hatred.
I don’t only feel it; I know it. We are on the cresting wave of a new understanding of humanity, what it means to be in God’s image. Years ago, Rabbi Alexander Schindler, past president of the Reform Movement, poetically drew attention to the Star of David, the badge of our identity, in Hebrew the Magen David:
… [T]here is another meaning that we can attach to the Magen David. It is an interpretation that any Jewish child with a crayon can tell you: that the Star of David contains within it the triangle…. For those of us who have been willingly blind to the geometry of Jewish life, who would keep invisible the presence of the triangle within the Shield of David: it is time to complete the outline of our Jewish star.
May our Jewish stars be badges of honor. May they include the full geometry of human life in our midst. To paraphrase the words of Rabbi Baeck: On this Kol Nidre, may we be the ones who continue to teach the world respect for the human being, created in the image of God.
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Rabbi Adam Stock Spilker is the senior rabbi at Mt. Zion Temple in St. Paul. To read the full text of his Kol Nidre sermon, go to: www.mzion.org.
(American Jewish World, 12.9.11)
