אילנה פוס

There is something strange and beautiful about Yom Kippur. Year after year we say the same prayers, read the same portions from the Torah and haftorah, often see some of the same people we haven’t seen in a while. We started a New Year but there are many old and familiar things about it. Often we eat the same foods, find ourselves asking some of the same questions year after year. Have I really changed at all in the past year? Do I really believe what I am saying? Why in the world do we have to have musaf?
Several years ago I was in Ghana with the American Jewish World Service Rabbinic Student Delegation. On our last day we visited a Liberian refugee camp just outside of the capital Accra where people fleeing the civil war in Liberia have traveled to or been displaced to for nearly 20 years. While I am not sure exactly what I was expecting, what I found most shocking was how permanent the camp was. It might be better described as a city with ramshackle sheds, muddy roads, and several market areas. There was no access to clean water in the camp and as a result an informal camp wide water economy developed- those who had the money could spend it on gallon plastic bags of water trucked in from outside the camp by fellow residents. Less expensive was buying water from contaminated pumps inside the camp controlled by various clans. Those who could not even afford that gathered water from puddles or ditches around the camp. This of course was free. I spoke with several of the refugees who told me their stories and of their struggles for survival. As I walked around the camp and spoke with people there so many questions were running through my mind. How is it that something ostensibly under UN auspices be so derelict without basic necessities? How do people live like this? Many of the camp residents asked those questions. But while waiting for an answer they came up with their own coping mechanisms like the tiered water system. People have been waiting for years for the conflict to end, to regain statehood, or to be allowed to emigrate somewhere. Sitting and doing nothing to deal with the problem isn’t really an option, hence these practical and inadequate solutions.
There have been numerous articles and investigations done of this particular camp where researchers, advocates ask the questions that boggle the mind when in the presence of such intense poverty. Why isn’t there adequate access to water and healthcare? Why isn’t effective action being taken on a national and international level? I have never thought of the ability to ask questions as a privilege but when I met these people, I saw that it was. Those who live in the camp told me and other visitors might face retaliation if certain questions are asked. Aid workers and observers who come in from outside often can ask those questions because they don’t necessarily have to deal with the immediate consequences. The voices of the people who lived in the camp did not have the same resonance on the world stage as others with more power and influence.
We tend to think of Judaism as the religion that welcomes questions even if they do hold the tension of truth and consequences. The Passover seder is the famous example of an entire evening learning and retelling the story of the Exodus from Egypt through asking questions. On Rosh Hashanah we read from the portion where Isaac asks his father Abraham: Where is the lamb for the burnt offering? In the Jonah story that we will study this afternoon the sailors ask Jonah on the ship about his origins.
Behind these sorts of questions there are others that are unasked. Isaac probably wanted to ask his father: “What in the world are you doing?” The sailors wanted to ask Jonah: “why have you brought this terrible storm upon us?
When I was born my older brother asked my mother: “When are we going to find Ilana’s real parents?” My brother at age 3 probably wanted to know: are you still going to care about me? What will my family role be now that I am not an only child any more? Questions are seen as an essential part of growth as young children discover the world around them. Leaders like Isaac ask questions to draw attention to strange and troubling events. Advocates and activists ask people and power brokers to notice what is wrong and find and implement solutions
The penitential psalm, Psalm 27 found on page 95 in your machzor, begins with a question that I have had a hard time understanding. “The lord so my light and my help: whom shall I fear? The Meiri, a Catalonian rabbi from the middle ages suggests that David said this psalm prior to going into battle, a confidence booster as it were. David states the lord is my light and my help, whom shall I fear as a way of building confidence- there is no need to fear the enemies I am about to encounter because I am in God’s presence. This psalm is read every day in the month of Elul, through Rosh Hashanah and also today as our own spiritual battles begin and continue.
The psalmist asks rhetorical question, which is a somewhat unusual structure in a psalm. Ostensibly, psalms are directed towards God, but the questions asked rhetorically can also be directed inward. What is the role of God in my life? Am I making the right choices? What does the year ahead hold? Some of these questions might be able to be answered but others may not. Behind certain questions is a desire to know, others contain unspoken fears and others are used as catalysts for change. But the fear spoken of in the psalm, and the fear that is present behind many questions is often a fear not knowing, of asking something to which there is no clear answer.
This year has been one of asking questions in America. What went wrong with the economy? Should we have been asking questions about financial practices earlier? How will the nation recover? Whether it is the mortgage crises, the sudden insolvency of many investment companies or the threat of floods and wildfires people’s homes have become at risk. Home is not as safe as it once was. There is constant uncertainty be it physical or financial, and it makes people uneasy, nervous, and unsure of what the future holds. Many people wonder whether they can protect themselves, their families and the lives they have built over the past years. This entire housing and financial crisis continuing through Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur only increases anxiety. This apprehension is voiced in the unetanh tokef, the classic prayer of the High Holiday liturgy: “We proclaim the sanctity of this day, a day filled with awe and trembling.” The prayer continues asking “Who shall live and who shall die… who by sword and who by fire.” These days are called the Yamim Noraim. Yirah we see in the psalm, and Norah appears in the unetaneh tokeph. Yirah, Norah and noraim all are based in the same Hebrew root meaning fear or awe.
The psalmist response to this pressing fear by placing himself in a spiritual fortress, a house of God, so that he may dwell in the house of the Lord forever. But relying on God for protection is one response to their fear of impending attack it doesn’t actually deal with the thing or person causing the fear. Over the past few months I have been reading No Ordinary Time, a book by Doris Kearns Goodwin chronicling the Roosevelts and the home front during WWII. Franklin Roosevelt had to overcome both his own reluctance as well as most of Americas desire to remain isolationist when deciding to support the Allies. The US had not been attacked on its own soil so many people did not see value in lending battleships to Britain and turning over all of America’s industry to weapons and artillery production. Other people in his cabinet, particular his wife Eleanor, pushed FDR to get involved for the betterment of the world and as preventative measure. It was not enough to prepare only for a domestic attack- by helping the Allies; the US would by extension be protecting American soil.
Coming as it did as America was emerging from the Great Depression many people saw involvement in the war as a start to changing the culture of America domestically and internationally. Influencing what later became Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms speech, Eleanor wrote in her weekly syndicated column of her vision for better life in America after the war:
“Here is something to make us swell with pride… for it proves that our American conception of equality… is putting faith in the place it should be, in the strength and capacity of the average human being. Justice for all, security in certain living standards, a recognition of the dignity and right of an individual human being without regard to his race, creed, or color—these are the things for which vast numbers of our citizens will willingly sacrifice themselves” (In Goodwin 201).

Not long after Franklin Roosevelt gave his famous speech detailing the four freedoms- freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. Goodwin notes the obvious influence of Eleanor’s musings on Franklin’s famous speech. Eleanor emphasizes the importance of self-reliance but Franklin notes that in order for people to be able to do this they must have those essential freedoms. It is fear that can prevent people from acting, from asking questions and from taking part in what needs to be done.
Eleanor’s courage to ask for change and to see a greater vision of what America could be influenced FDR’s decision to further US involvement in WWII. The ability of asking the soul-searching questions- Does the world really have to be this way? Is America living up to its ideals? —Eleanor used her power, status and privilege to ask the questions necessary of an American spiritual reckoning. I don’t know if we can ever achieve that freedom from fear that FDR speaks of. We need both the strength and the courage to ask those inward questions and those outward ones. There can be a certain stasis with Yom Kippur- the familiarity is comforting but it might also encourage us to ask the question: The service is the same, but am I? Is God and my conception of God’s presence the same as it was last year? We look at our surroundings and wonder is this the best we can achieve. We must advocate for change in ourselves and change in the world around us. As we read in the liturgy-“repentance, prayer and deeds of kindness can remove the severity of the decree.” By noticing what needs improvement in ourselves and in the world around us we can continue the process of tshuva- answering, repentance.
There is a difference between a questions asked out of some underlying fear, as in when my brother asked when I was to be returned to my real parents- and the questions that you are afraid to ask because of what might happen, afraid of questions you don’t have the right to ask as I saw with the residents of the Liberian refugee camp. We must balance those fears- not being rash but not allowing the fear to overwhelm us. We must negotiate the delicate tension between fear- that might keep us from action and awe- realizing God’s power and the power God gives us to seek answers and justice in the world
As Eleanor Roosevelt said “Do one thing every day that scares you.” We, all of us who have chosen to come here today, have made a choice, one that may include elements of fear and awe in it for all sorts of different reasons. We live in a country and are part of a heritage where asking questions is permitted, encouraged and seen as essential in our roles as committed Jews and responsible Americans. Yet not everyone has that same privilege, neither the institutional acceptance of questions nor the safety of knowing that their voice is welcome and needed and will not be retaliated against. As we struggle with our own questions let us remember the fear and awe behind them. Let that fear be joined with compassion and love so that we may more fully commit ourselves to creating peace both within and outside our homes and communities. Through asking questions may we continue to pursue justice in our expanded universe of obligation, coming closer to a world where we achieve Roosevelt’s vision of freedom from fear. May the year ahead be full of personal and communal bravery, of true tshuva- repentance and answers to the questions we continue to ask.