Challenging Echo Chambers

We respond to a scary disruption at a synagogue by naming the deeper sickness underneath it: a society that cannot talk face to face. We explore Jewish stories and teachings that show how to learn across difference, disagree with respect, and bring more light into a divided world.

Transcript

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Gospel Reading And Opening

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Holy gospel according to Matthew. Glory to you, O Lord. Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre in Sidon. And just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, Have mercy on me, Lord, son of David. My daughter is tormented by a demon. But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us. Jesus answered, I was sent only to the house, to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But she came and knelt before him, saying, Lord, help me. Jesus answered, It's not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs. She said, Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table. And Jesus answered, Her woman, great is your faith. Let it be done for you as you wish. And her daughter was healed from that moment.

Welcome And Shared Worship

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Once again, Rabbi Jason Bonner. It's nice to be here with you. Thank you so much for hosting me. Thank you, Pastor Beck, for uh welcoming me so graciously. I also want to say thanks to Pastor Anderson for inviting me originally, and also thanks to you for understanding that your pastor needs to recharge every once in a while. And it's it's truly a gift that you, your congregation, are giving to him to let him re-energize, recharge, and I'm sure that the blessings that he will come back with will be blessings shared by all of you. I want to begin by saying that I am a proud graduate of Muhlenberg College. And uh and so it was Pastor Anderson who told me that I guess it's right across the street where Henry Melchior Muhlenberg once upon a time led the Capitol campaign for a roof on this church. Uh I think, you know, across the street, not this one, as far as I know, because this happened hundreds of years ago. Uh, but uh truly it is a special honor to be able to uh you know be and speaking where once upon a time he did, uh, and the college and his name certainly gave me uh a lot of um you know a lot of good tools to get to where I am. So I'm very, very grateful to you. Um there were many beautiful readings this morning from the Hebrew Bible, from the New Testament, and I was putting all of this together to think about what thread I can go through and share from the Jewish perspective.

A Synagogue Disruption And Fear

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And then life happened. And uh this Friday night, for those of you who do not know, unfortunately at Central Synagogue, one of the flagship reform synagogues in America, uh there was a large disruption. Someone came in and knocked over a bunch of property. The Sabbath candles that had just been lit were knocked over. When a guard apprehended the person making this disruption and disturbance, he unfortunately attacked a congregant and a woman in her 60s was punched in the face, and the security guard who was trying to apprehend this man was headbutted in the face. It is a scary, scary time for our world, and I will tell you that the Jewish people all over the world are ailing as well. It is not an easy time, and when I thought about this person who went in and did this, I realized that this is more than just hate. This is more than just someone trying to do something terrible. I think it is a symptom of our society. It's a symptom of not being able to talk to one another. It's a symptom of being totally siloed by our screens and by our algorithms and by the ways we choose to get our information. And instead of speaking face to face with people, there are many, more and more, it is a growing problem, who prefer to turn towards acts of violence instead of having a conversation face to face.

The Chelm Story About Assumptions

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It's for that reason that I tell you this morning, I want to begin with a story. Some of you have heard me tell it before. It is a story of the wise men of Chelm, this proverbial city of Jewish folklore. Um, the store the city of Chelm, it is actually a name of an actual town, although this city is fictional, and the wise men of this city, as you will know in a moment, are anything but that. The wise men of Chelm, once upon a time, see beyond the gates of their city, and they see a well-dressed man in the most beautiful suit and carrying the most expensive and gorgeous briefcase, and these wise men do what wise men do, and they judge a book by its cover. Look at that well-dressed man. He must be a rabbi, which I say, thank you very much. But the people of Chalm said clearly, look at how he's dressed. He must be a scholar, he must be wise beyond his years. Quickly, let's go and greet him and bring him in. He has wisdom to share. And so the wise men of Chalm rush out to him, and they say to this man, Rabbi, Rabbi, please come and join us in our town. We must have you over. We will give you the finest food, we will give you the most wonderful accommodations, and we want you to teach us this coming Friday night. What the wise men of Chelm did not know, but I will share with you, is that this man was actually a person who had fallen on hard times. He had no formal education. He was living in a town far away where they said, We wish we could keep you longer, but we cannot. What we can do for you is give you the finest suit and the finest briefcase, but we must send you on your way. And so this person with no formal education is now offered to be the scholar in residence in the town of Chelm to speak in the great synagogue of this town. And so the person says, Sounds good. I'll do it. So they bring him in. They spend the week giving him the most lavish meals, they give him the most wonderful haircut by the finest barber in town, and it comes time for the Sabbath, and all the people gather in the synagogue and they say, Please, rabbi, share your wisdom with us. And so this person with no formal education gets up and he thinks about delicious food and he thinks about the wonderful accommodations he has, and he says, People of Chalm, are you prepared to hear the things that I am about to tell you? And they say, No, Rabbi, no, we're not. Please, please tell us your wisdom. Well, if you don't know, if you're not prepared, how am I to tell you my wonderful wisdom? Come back next week and I'll tell you all I have to say. The wise people of Chelm said, Oh, well, of course, Rabbi, this is our fault. We're so sorry. We've given you the finest of accommodations, but we have not studied one bit. Yes, yes, next Sabbath will be the time where we will gather and gain all of your wisdom. And so, this man with no formal education has just earned himself yet another week, the finest meals, the finest accommodations. Comes time for Sabbath once again, and this time the man gets up to the lectern and he thinks about how delicious the food has been all week, how the accommodations have been so incredible, how he's really starting to develop friendships in the community. He can't leave just yet. People of Chalm, are you ready to hear all of the wisdom I have to share with you? Yes, Rabbi, we've studied all week. We know everything about this week's portion of Torah. We are ready to accept your wisdom. Well, people of Chalm, if you've studied everything, you don't need to know it from me. You have the wisdom already. Come back next Sabbath and I will tell you all there is to know. Finally, a week goes by, and the man knows the gig is up. He's not really sure what to say, and he's thinking about what he might do. How is he going to really confess that it's been a ruse this whole time? There's really nothing that he has to say. He gets up in front of the congregation on the Sabbath and says, People of Chalm, are you ready to hear the wisdom that I have to share? And the people of Chalm unwittingly taught everyone in the room, including the person at the lectern, a really powerful lesson. Yes, Rabbi, yes, this week we figured it out. Half of us have studied what you are going to say this week, and half of us have not. Now we're ready for you. And the rabbi says, wonderful. Those of you who know, please turn to those of you who don't know and teach your wisdom. With that, the man knew the gig was up, and he left town never to be seen again. But the lesson remains that we must learn from each other.

Chavruta And Learning With A Partner

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We are too siloed. We are very much in our own space, our own headspace, our own way of thinking. We create echo chambers for ourselves, not only with algorithms, but also with who we choose to spend our time with. It's so important for us, so, so important to find people who disagree every once in a while. There is a word in Aramaic, it is chavruta, which is connected to the Hebrew word chaver. It means friend. A chhevruta, though, is more than a friend, it is a study partner. The ancient rabbis determined that it is not okay to study a sacred text alone. Because if I do, the only thing I am seeing is the sacred text through my lens. The ancient rabbis said you must study at least with one other partner so that when you look up from the text, you see another person, you see another perspective. You are aware that you have biases, and you are aware that the other person across from you does as well. That is the way not only to study sacred text, but it is what we must do in our world to understand that we are seeing the same events so differently. We are understanding our world and processing our world in such radically different ways that it is causing huge problems for us. When we talk about friends, we think about friends, what we do is we think about the people we get along with, the people who agree with what we're saying. And that is also something the ancient rabbis of the Talmud warn against. They talk about the most famous Khevruta partnership of all time, and it's between Rabbi Yochanan and Raish Lakish, the second-century rabbis who have studied everything together, but the story ends in tragedy. Because Rabbi Jochanan does something that is so egregious, so offensive, that it literally kills his Khevruta partner. What he did was he embarrassed him in public. And that in itself is such an essential point. The ancient rabbis say whether this story happened exactly like this or not, we don't know, but that to publicly embarrass someone, to humiliate someone, is so offensive, so horrible, that one friend killed the other one just from doing that. I think every

Public Shame And Keyboard Warfare

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person needs to hear that before they become the keyboard warriors they are and start clicking online. How often do we see reading the comment section of anything is a horrific thing. There is so much public embarrassment, so much vitriol that goes across from one comment to the next. But when this Kheruta partner loses his friend, what happens is that he says, all the students come and try and give him a new partner, and he says, none of these are good for me because they all are just agreeing with me. All of these Kheruta partners, they come to me and all they're doing is studying and saying, Yes, Rabbi Yochanan, you're right. You're oh, that's a great point. That's an excellent point. And Rabbi Yochanan would lament, where are you, Raishla Kish? Where are you, my Kheruta? When I would bring 24 points, he would bring 24 counterpoints. It's a reminder that friendship is not always about agreeing, it is about the disagreement, but doing so in a respectful and kind way. We need this to move forward together as a society. We must be able to agree on certain things, disagree on other things, and I hope, I hope that we always do so with kindness and respect and humility. And this is why I am so grateful to all of you. Because it's what's happening right now. The way that we do this is what Pastor Anderson has done and what Pastor Beck is doing now. We are sharing space. We are looking at one another in the eyes, in 3D, as I like to say, especially after a day of Zoom meetings. We're actually getting together. If we build relationship, if we build trust, then we can move together towards truth. Not always agreeing with one another, not always just affirming what the other one is saying, but understanding that we have to move forward together. That would be the perfect bow to tie on this sermon. Yes, we'll all get along, we'll all agree with each other, sometimes we'll disagree, and we'll all move forward, and maybe we'll all agree in the end. No, that's not what I'm saying. There are some disagreements that we can't get over, and frankly, I don't know how we're going to get there with everyone

The Hard Work Of Pluralism

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in our world. There is a clip that I have, it's a really special one, or I wish I had. I saw once and I wish I cut it out and put it on my wall. It was a building that said a conference for pluralists, and underneath, for pluralists only. This gets really hard when I'm telling us, right, and and I, as I mentioned in the last time I at the 8:30 service, uh, Beth Orr and Upper Dublin Lutheran, we we play well in the sandbox together. We have a lot of shared values, shared ideas about this. It gets a lot harder. It gets a lot harder when people come in and say, I'm right and you're wrong. This way is the way. It gets really difficult. So instead of saying it'll all be fine, I want to say that this is actually the leap of faith that I am trying to take, and I think we all need to in our own ways. That I'm not sure it's going to yield amazing results, but what we need to do is double down on relationship and on friendship, even when we disagree. I will leave

Hanukkah Candles And Growing Light

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you with this one image. It is one that has inspired me for a very long time. There were two houses of learning in ancient Israel, the house of Hillel and the house of Shemai. And they disagreed pretty much on everything. And one of their most famous disagreements came around the December time, the time of the holiday of Hanukkah. Hanukkah commemorates a miracle of the Maccabees having oil that they thought would last for one day, and that oil, the greatest amount of it, burned less and less and less and less, but it stayed lit for eight days until the Amazon package arrived for more. I'm just kidding. It's the modern version of it. It would make sense, therefore, and the teaching of the house of Shami is that on the first night of Hanukkah you light eight candles, and on the second night of Hanukkah you light seven, and then six and five and four and three and two and one. But if you've ever celebrated Hanukkah yourself or been with someone who has, you know that that's not how the Jewish people do it. Because the house of Hillel said the exact opposite: that it's December, it's dark out, this is a holiday that celebrates light, we must increase our light. We must bring more light into the world. And so on the first night of Hanukkah, we light one candle, and on the second night, two, all the way up to eight. So who won? Hillel won. It's how Jews across the world celebrate Hanukkah. But what I want to hold on to in this moment of division in our country and in our world is that once upon a time there would be someone walking down the street in Jerusalem. And let's say it was on the third night of Hanukkah. And in one side of the alley, I could imagine that person turning and seeing a Hanukkah menorah lit with three candles. And I could see them going another twenty steps and turning to the right, and there is a window with a Hanukkah menorah displaying six candles. This is what it means to live in disagreement, but in harmony together. And I hope that that image can

Closing Blessing And Thanks

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lead us toward a time of more peace, of more progress, not because we all think the same way, but because, God willing, we'll all be able to understand that we are different, but we have much more that unites us and divides us. Thank you so much for the honor of speaking here today.