Is Compassion a Possibility?
Yom Kippur 5784/2023
The longest road in the world is the Pan American Highway, 30,000 miles of road stretching from Alaska to Argentina, which is in fact not quite complete. Just at the point where Central America meets South America, at the border of Panama and Colombia, there is a gap of 66 miles, known as the Darien Gap. 66 miles of impenetrable jungle, torrential rivers, and impassable mountains. There are no roads through the Darien Gap, and it is uninhabited, except for five indigenous tribes, and scattered outposts of paramilitary groups and drug cartels. There is a trail to hike on foot, but it is extremely dangerous. Heavy rains and flash floods are frequent, venomous snakes are everywhere, law enforcement and medical support are non-existent, rapes and robberies are common, and a broken leg can be fatal. For these reasons, the Darien Gap has served until now as a natural barrier preventing nearly all migration from South America to North America.
That began to change in 2021, when in one year 130,000 desperate human beings walked that trail, most of them Haitians, fleeing the devastation of their country. Then in 2022, 250,000 men, women and children made the journey, most of them escaping from the tragedy of Venezuela. And already this year 360,000 people have hiked the trail across the Darien Gap. Many of them wearing shorts and flip flops and carrying their possessions in plastic bags, and their babies in their arms. Now they are from all over the world. Venezuela and Ecuador and Peru, but also Afghanistan, Africa, and China. Right now, on an average day, over 1,300 desperate women, men and children start that trail into the Darien Gap. When asked by a reporter how and why they would take their small children on such a perilous journey, a mother explained “we are doing this BECAUSE of our children.”
What is happening? It is a perfect storm. The devastating worldwide pandemic. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine causing a huge spike in grain and oil prices. Climate change, and violence in many parts of the world are factors. But also the internet, through which anyone in the world with a smartphone can learn exactly how others have made the journey, and also be seduced by evil, unscrupulous merchants offering promises of guides and services along the way. In fact, a booming local economy has grown up in the small town in Colombia which serves as the jumping off point, bringing millions of dollars to the local government and to the drug cartel that actually rules the region. And the political mess in Washington and the lack of clear and consistent immigration policy in this country. For all these reasons, hundreds of thousands of new migrants are on the move, facing hardships we cannot begin to imagine, all with one dream. A new home, a new beginning, a new life.
We are only beginning to feel the impact of this new, immense pressure building at our southern border. Most economists say that in the long run, these new, young, smart and hungry immigrants will be a great thing for American cities and for the United States as a nation. But in the short term, the impacts are about to be overwhelming.
Tonight I have no intention of discussing national immigration policy. We should educate ourselves, and get involved politically if we have the time, interest and ability. But tonight and tomorrow is Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish year. A day for going deep, into our past, and into our own souls. A day for seeking the presence of God. What do the children, the women and men risking death right now in the terrifying jungle of the Darien Gap have to do with us tonight on Yom Kippur?
Tomorrow we will hear from two very different prophets, Isaiah in the morning and Jonah in the afternoon. Isaiah and Jonah both lived about 2,500 years ago, but you could not find two more different human beings. The ultimate concern of both readings is, at the end of the day, compassion. But they take us down two very different pathways. Tonight I will suggest that we need both of these prophets if we are to emerge from this holy day better prepared for the human beings who are trying to stay safe tonight, out in the jungle, walking toward us as we speak.
We begin with Isaiah, the great disturber and comforter of his generation, and of all later Jewish generations. His community is gathered for a day of fasting and repentence. Very possibly an ancient Yom Kippur. He says “they think that they are seeking God” and he hears them say: “nothing is happening. Why are we fasting and God has not heard?”
Isaiah lets loose with a series of questions that turns their Judaism on its head. The prophet is speaking, but the voice is God’s: Hachazeh yiheyeh tzom evchareihu? Is this the fast I desire? Is this what I want? At first, his questions make no sense.
“Is this what I want? A day to afflict your soul?” His community must have replied: “yes! That’s exactly what it says in the Torah! On this day you shall afflict your souls.” And he continues: “Bending the head like a reed? Wearing sackcloth and ashes?” To which they must have responded “yes! That’s what we have been taught! You are describing Yom Kippur!”
Isaiah catches everyone by surprise by declaring: “Is not THIS the fast I choose: To send the oppressed free!” And he goes on: “Yes, today you are not supposed to eat. But I don’t care about YOUR hunger. I want you to share your bread with the really hungry! And yes, today is about vulnerability. But not YOUR vulnerability; I want you to take the truly vulnerable into your home!
If we can do those things, then Isaiah, the messenger of God, offers us a vision of redemption and healing. It is an extraordinary, uplifting, exalting vision. Of all the voices we will hear tonight and tomorrow, Isaiah’s…which is one of the very oldest… feels the most fresh, the most relevant, the most important for us to hear:
“Cry out!” he says, against the brokenness of our world, and reach out, to feed, to clothe, provide shelter. And says Isaiah “AL TITALEM. Do not hide yourself.” Don’t be afraid of the pain that comes with empathy. Isaiah knew our tendency to hide under a cloak of invisibility. To protect ourself from the sadness, the psychic pain. Al titalem. Do not hide.
Isaiah says: open yourself to it; it won’t hurt you. You can open your heart to all of the suffering in the world, Isaiah promises, and your heart will not stop beating. In fact, the well-springs, the underground waters of your life will burst open and will flow out in a completely new way. And your world, your family, your community will become a well-irrigated garden.
To be clear, Isaiah’s message is not a rational argument. The voice of the prophet is passion, not reason. It is all emotion. Open your eyes and your hearts. Feel the pain and feel the hunger. Reach out with empathy and generosity. You will not die. In fact, it will bring the Presence of God into your life.
It is an extravagant and uplifting promise: Organize your life around compassion and it will bring the presence of God into your midst. Just to hear Isaiah, and to imagine his promise awakens our longing, and a belief that it is possible. Just one question remains unanswered: At the end of Yom Kippur, tomorrow evening, what will be different? If we listen to Isaiah and allow him to ignite our imagination, we may be inspired….but the work still remains before us. Will we follow through? And while we are asking questions, what is actually required of us? A complete transformation of our life? We are after all only human, busy, often tired, usually over-extended….if we do just a little bit, what difference will that make?
That question—what difference does Yom Kippur make, what real difference can we make, is the question posed by Jonah tomorrow afternoon. A very different prophet, an utterly different story. He could not be more different from Isaiah.
Whereas Isaiah called the people of his community to open themselves, and their homes, to the poor and the brokenhearted, Jonah’s journey begins with the impulse to flee, to sleep, to descend to the deepest, quietest place, the hold of the boat. Even in the belly of the whale Jonah is safe, and has returned to his mother’s womb. After he is vomited up onto the shore by the great fish, Jonah goes, reluctantly, and speaks to the people of Nineveh. Somehow, he is extraordinarily effective. We are told that the huge city of Nineveh, which it takes three days to walk across, the people of that great city turned back from their evil way. And because they did, God changed His mind and did not destroy the city after all. And if the story ended there, it would be a fine Yom Kippur tale of repentence and a happy ending.
But instead the story becomes complicated. The people’s repentence means nothing to Jonah. He gets angry. Enraged. Vayera el Yonah ra’ah gedolah. It was a tremendous evil to Jonah. He says to God: “This is exactly what I knew would happen. Take my life. I would rather die than live.” And God replies: hahetev khara lach? “Is it good for you, your anger?”
Jonah is full of anger and bitter resentment, and a desire to die.
He is a frightening prophet. Why are we even reading him on Yom Kippur? He flees from God, from life, from people. Why do we need him here? He represents the devastating possibility that none of this, nothing we are doing here will actually make any difference at all.
This I think is exactly why we read Jonah on Yom Kippur. He is the great prophet of pessimism. He is the voice in our society, and even more importantly, the voice in our own heads, that deep down does not believe in Isaiah’s vision. Jonah does not believe that change is possible. He does not believe that Yom Kippur can make any difference. Before we can reach the end of this day, we have to hear and to find an answer to this skeptical, pessimistic voice in our own heads.
Why is Jonah so angry? He meets marvelous people and creatures and plants along his journey who reach out to him, and try to help him, to save him. The captain of the ship is wonderful, the sailors (all of whom are non-Jews by the way) are good human beings who would do anything other than throw him into the sea, the people of Nineveh and their king (who say “who knows? Maybe it will help!), the whale, the gourd plant, they all help him on his way…and nothing changes his mind. When God changes His mind, Jonah is enraged. His anger is seething.
Why is he so angry? And why do we listen to his anger in the middle of YK afternoon, as we are getting more and more hungry, and tired, worn out? Let’s read to the end of the story. Jonah goes out to the east of the city and builds a sukkah and sits in the shade. A vine grows up and covers the sukkah and…for the first (and only) time in the whole book, Jonah enjoys an immense happiness. Simcha gedolah. He is supremely happy. Then a worm comes and eats the vine, which dies, and the sun beats down on Jonah and he almost passes out and he begs, again, to die. God replies with his earlier question: “Is it good for you, your anger for the plant?” Jonah replies, “Anger is good for me, unto death.”
My hunch is that Jonah is angry because he is scared. He is tired and pessimistic, and he is frightened. Scared to open his heart. Scared to hope. Scared to love.
Jonah’s heat-exhausted, sun-struck, bitter anger brings forth from God a final word, the last verse of the book. God’s last word is a question: “If this is the way you feel about the plant, for which you did nothing, should I not care about this huge city, of 120,000 people….and many animals?”
We come to the end of Yom Kippur, hungry, exhausted, worn out. A little like Jonah with the sun beating down on him. And alongside Jonah, we hear God asking us this simple, mysterious question: could compassion be a possibility?
As we prepare as a nation for an overwhelming migration crisis, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of desperate human beings, arriving at our borders in search of food, of safety, of home, God is asking us a question: “is compassion possible?”
It’s not an argument. Not a demand. Just a question. “Are you open to the possibility of compassion?” And if the answer is “yes, maybe”….then having heard and confronted Jonah’s pessimism, we can go back to Isaiah’s mountaintop and end the day with Isaiah’s vision: “Share your bread with the hungry. Bring the brokenhearted into your home. Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will arise quickly. Then when you call, God will answer; when you cry out, God will say “Hineni.” “Here I am.”
Gmar chatimah tova.