Yom Kippur Sermon, 5768

by Rabbi Danny Rich

As we mark this day of Yom Kippur – the ‘Sabbath of Sabbaths’: the most important day in the Jewish year – it is right and proper for us to ask ourselves what an earth are we doing here.

That, after all, is the major purpose of Yom Kippur: to examine what motivates us – for better or worse- and to reflect deeply on that which enables us year after year, and despite our best intentions, to miss opportunities, to disappoint ourselves, to hurt those we love most, and to be indifferent to the needs of others.  Yom Kippur perhaps more than any other day forces us not only to consider the type of person we are –and equally could become- but for many of us it confronts us with the real dilemmas of human existence: what, if any, is our relationship with God (even if it is serial but occasional); what is the purpose of our lives, and does anything we do today or tomorrow have more than a momentary impact.

Well with an agenda such as this I face the danger of emptying shuls rather than filling them but lest you feel you cannot walk out in the presence of a guest preacher –and the Chief Executive at that- there is a powerful and articulate breakdown recovery service waiting to rescue you.  In easy reach and with constant access to the media is a squad of best selling advocates of atheism including one of Britain’s greatest minds, that of Richard Dawkins, and one of Britain’s most articulate and humorous commentators, Christopher Hitchens.  Dawkins’s The God Delusion and Hitchens’s God is not Great are the best known pair of a number of works which seek to offer atheism in the place of unpleasant religion.  Dawkins appears to be the more scientific of the two, proposing that religion (unlike science in his view) is irrational in the sense that it accepts truths in the absence of logic and evidence and that, therefore, by its very nature religion will inevitably lead to acts of extreme violence.  Equally pessimistic is Hitchens with a litany of wrongs –and I agree with him that the people and the events are thoroughly nasty and unpleasant – done by human beings in the name of religion.

So the choice appears to be a stark but simple one: stop being deluded by the unscientific claims of religion, keep far away from the pernicious religions which poison everything –and you will save your shul fee into the bargain!  But just before you do so, let me spend a quarter of an hour or so making a few comments on the views of Dawkins and Hitchens but more importantly articulating what I think religion –but particularly Liberal Judaism- has to offer the twenty first century man or woman.

I must confess my difficulty with both Dawkins and Hichens is their sophistry, by which I mean their absence of any balance about religion, their use of an argument to meet an opening objective which has no regard for any evidence which runs counter to the proposition.  Although Dawkins does conceive of ‘mild religion’ and ‘extreme religion’ he asserts that both lead to the same end.  He cautions,

I do everything in my power to warn people against faith itself,

not just against so called ‘extremist’ faith.  The teachings of

‘moderate’ religion, though not extremist in themselves, are

an open invitation to extremism.

Hitchens argues similarly.  For Hitchens religion is fundamentalist; belief is absolute; and religion is to be judged by the ranting and immoralities of its most extreme followers.

I am going to suggest that this picture of religion by avowed atheists, Dawkins and Hitchens, is as blinkered, fundamentalist and judgemental as the very extremes of religion and its adherents which Dawkins and Hitchens (rightly in my view) set out to attack.  It wrongly portrays religion in terms of only its most extreme, at its most marginal –even if it often appears that militant, uncompromising, intolerant and certainty schools of faith will overwhelm the decent, pluralist, liberal voices in the same camp.

It is hardly original to suggest that foolish, ignorant and malevolent people can motivate or be motivated to behave in an unpleasant manner in the name of religion.  The Hebrew Bible itself is replete with incidents that connect religion and violence.  The fourth chapter of the Book of Genesis tells of the first act of recorded worship, sacrifices offered by Cain and Abel which results in murder although it is out of this legend that the religious teaching ‘I am my brother’s keeper’ arises.  I doubt there is a religious tradition, on behalf of which a demented or mistaken follower has not done wrong in the name of that tradition, often contrary to the prevailing principles of that faith.  It is, however, equally true –and here I do think Dawkins and Hitchens are disingenuous- that many men and women are inspired by religious teachings not only to carry out acts of kindness but also to create impressive literature, moving music and beautiful art.  Even more pertinently some of the greatest scientific heroes were men with a religious commitment.  Isaac Newton, for example, discovered gravity but believed it to be divinely inspired and Joseph Priestley who identified the structure of oxygen was a man of religious conviction too.

It is also regrettably true that men and women are capable of violence without the benefit of a religious cause, and it is certainly possible to argue that just as an individual may be inspired to do evil in a moment of misguided religious fervour so might (s)he be restrained from such conduct by the teachings of the same religion.  Whether a person with or without the benefit of religion is more or less likely to involve themselves in acts of violence might be worthy of a joint study by theologians, psychologists and sociologists.

Nevertheless the proposition that because some adherents of religion commit acts of destruction in its name means religion per say is extremist and must be resisted has two problems.  First, individuals carry out acts of violence in the name of love, of politics, of country, of loyalty, of numerous ideas, aspirations and institutions.  The fact that they do so may not invalidate love, politics, patriotism or loyalty as evil in themselves.  Second, science itself (which is counterpoised to religion, at least for Dawkins) is not without its demented adherents and practitioners.  The scientist who split the atom enabled others to create and drop the nuclear bomb and now allows President Ahmadinejad to threaten Iran’s neighbours, and geneticists will certainly enable humanity to combat debilitating diseases but it may also allow others to seek to create a ‘super race’.  Scientific endeavour and scientists bring much good to the world but also the potential for evil but that is no reason to condemn science, and whilst the religious search and theologians may motivate acts of justice but also ones of great injustice that is similarly no reason to condemn religion.

The more I read of Dawkins and Hitchens the more I fear that they share much with the very fundamentalist and extreme purveyors of religion through whom they have sought to characterise and condemn religion in general.  Three attributes come to the fore: certainty, pessimism and an inability to acknowledge any merit in the other or to really appreciate that that which they wish to oppose might have something to contribute to the picture which is more complex than they had first hoped.  The work of Dawkins and Hitchens mirrors religious fundamentalism in the sense that there is no alternative other than the deeply held extreme position of themselves, that much of humanity is so deeply flawed that only a radical transformation –whether it be to or from religion- will ‘cleanse’ human society, and that certainty, whether of the scientific or religious type, is the correct path.

For me, friends, it is the ability to be humble about one’s own knowledge and to be open to the truths of others, it is an optimistic view of humankind, and it is the desirability of living with doubt which attract me to liberal religious expression and to Liberal Judaism in particular.  In the remaining few minutes let me try to explain.

I am often asked why it is that I am a Liberal Jew.  Part of it, of course, is associated with the chance event of being born into a committed Liberal Jewish family, with the privilege of access to teachers of the calibre of Rabbis John Rayner, David Goldberg and Julia Neuberger, with the fortune of a good secular education, with the luck of two decades of service to Kingston Liberal Synagogue and now at the institution of Liberal Judaism itself, but perhaps I am such because all my studies and experiences have reinforced the unity of two simple views: that Liberal Judaism best explains the purpose of my life and my relationship with God, and, at the same time, Liberal Judaism permits me to acknowledge that what others believe may be as true for them as Liberal Judaism is for me and, whether it is expressed in the language of synagogue, church, mosque, gudwara, temple or in a secular vocabulary, the real measure is how a person conducts his or her life.  The whole truth may not be known to any individual and what is of prime importance is whether or not a deed can be described as ‘loving’ of another human being.

The supplementary question is often an attempt to glean a little detail.  “What specific teaching of Judaism is most attractive to you?” “What Judaism teaches about good and evil conduct.” Of the many explanations –religious and secular- the idea that each human being is born with two inclinations (the yetzer tov, the good one and the yetzer hara, the selfish one), that the bias and intention is in favour of the yetzer tov but that the yetzer hara is necessary, that evil conduct arises when the balances goes askew, that teshuvah (including recognition by the wrongdoer, reparation to the aggrieved and a sincere desire not to repeat) is available seems to be the best explanation for so many reasons in answer to the eternal human quest to understand why we behave as we do.  The teaching of the two inclinations and teshuvah is, above all, an optimistic but realistic view of human nature.  It recognises inherent human decency; it acknowledges failure occasional and repeated; and it offers hope to the bereft soul.  Human imperfection does not require a radical transformation; it merely demands of us to respond to our overwhelming essence.

Alongside the humility to promulgate our truth and recognise the truth of others and an optimistic view of human nature, I suggest we need one other thing: a little doubt.

I have a healthy suspicion of the saintly but what most impressed me about the late Mother Teresa, the Albanian nun who worked among the poor of Calcutta, was the revelation that in her letters which have only become widely known recently and after her death, she spoke of her doubts, even when she herself was close to death.  Of a confidant she asked “Where is my faith?  Even deep down there is nothing but emptiness and darkness…”

Dawkins in his work not only fails to express any doubts of his own but, in his desire to characterise religion through the actions of extremists, he seems unaware that religion can be faith with doubt.  Believers who live with doubt – and what is Israel if not a people who in Jacob’s time struggled with the physical manifestation of God and in our time perhaps with the idea of God at all – believers who live with doubt are perhaps not only capable of seeing the value of the beliefs of others (including atheists) but they may be less likely to engage in acts of extreme violence.  They acknowledge that they are on a journey, the end part of which may be unknown.

In conclusion that is what Yom Kippur is about for me.  Religious extremists and extreme atheists are certain about their own rightness and pessimistic about humanity.  Adherents of liberal expressions of religion can acknowledge the complexity of truth and that that truth may be manifest in a plurality of expressions; they are optimistic about the potential of human beings, and they may be uncertain about both the terminus and the stages of the journey of life.

Similarly Yom Kippur is a day of great complexity; it is also a day which begins with doubt; but above all it is a day of optimism because, in spite of all my many failings and of the length and difficulty of the task of teshuvah, there is a possibility to put the past behind me, to forgive and to be forgiven, and to start again.  What else can the Midrashist mean when it is written:

The Holy One, ever to be praised, says to Israel: Open

                     for me one gate of repentance by as little as the point

                     of a needle, and I will open for you gates wide enough

                     for carriages and coaches to pass through.

Rabbi Danny Rich

Chief Executive, Liberal Judaism