This was originally published on a now-inactive blog in 2011.
"The great shofar will be sounded and a still, thin sound will be heard." (Unetaneh Tokef)
It's 7:37 pm on September 21st. It is the 22nd day of Elul.
Today is a day of reckoning and repentance. It is a day for seeking forgiveness, and for opening our hearts. Today - this month - is about t'shuvah. About releasing our pain, about seeking healing in places of brokenness, about repairing relationships that have been fractured.
Elul is the spiritual preparation to get us ready for the High Holidays, when we are to be shaken and awoken to act righteously, to act for justice, and reminded of the consequences.
"I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that both you and your people may live." (Deut 30:19)
This passage of Torah is read during the High Holidays. It comes as Moses is about to lead the Israelite people to the promised land, and the people are reminded of the obligations they agreed to. They are reminded that they are in a covenantal relationship with G!d and each other, and that there are consequences to their actions, whatever they may be. To say that this piece of text resonates with me is something of an understatement. I have it tattooed on my wrist. Well, specifically I have u'vcharta b'chayim - therefore choose life - on the inside of my left wrist. For me, it represents the ethical framework by which I try to live my life. Choosing life is about choosing to act in the interest of growth, possibility, potential, abundance, and becoming. It is about what I see shining through the Torah - an obligation to act toward justice, to act with compassion, humility, and forgiveness.
So I've been thinking about that a lot this week - about obligation and ethics, about choosing healing in the face of brokenness.
And then on Monday, I read a sermon from a rabbi in Cleveland from Rosh Hashanah several years ago, in which he linked this passage from Deuteronomy to choosing gratitude. To choose life, he said, is to choose to recognize blessings and to be grateful. And through that gratitude, through acting upon that gratitude, our actions and relationships are transformed.
I have found gratitude in surprising places this week, and yet I feel overwhelmed by brokenness tonight.
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Tonight, two men with drastically different stories were scheduled for execution. Troy Davis was convicted based on eyewitness testimony in the 1989 murder of a police officer. Of those eyewitnesses, seven have recanted or contradicted their testimony, many citing police intimidation. One of the remaining two has been implicated as the actual killer, and has allegedly threatened one of the witnesses who claimed that he confessed the crime to her.
Troy Davis has been on my mind all day, and I feel sick to my stomach as I think about him strapped to a gurney, a needle in his arm, waiting and waiting and waiting for news. Will he be granted a stay, or will he be murdered by the state for a crime he likely did not commit? It's now 9:37, and his execution was scheduled for 7. There was a temporary hold put on his execution, and so we wait.
Waiting for forgiveness? Waiting for a spark of compassion in the halls of power? Waiting for justice?
In the face of injustice, where do we turn? How do we move from powerlessness to action? Under the shadow of violence, how do we choose life, choose forgiveness, choose gratitude?
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Tonight, Lawrence Russell Brewer was executed in Texas for the 1998 murder of James Byrd Jr. Byrd, a black man, was chained behind a truck and dragged for three miles by a group of white supremacists. When his body was found, it was so badly mutilated that it had to be identified by a fingerprint. His murder was gut wrenching and horrifying and speaks to the deeply ingrained racism upon which our country was built and continues to depend.
One of the men convicted in his death was executed tonight.
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11:08 EST. Troy Anthony Davis is executed by the state of Georgia. Zichrono livrocha. May his memory be a blessing.
For these things I weep | על–אלה אני בוכיה
(Eicha 1:16)
I have to dig, tonight, to find compassion and gratitude.
It is easy, in the case of Troy Davis, to condemn the death penalty. It is easy to see the wrong, to speak and act against it. It is easy to say that potentially innocent people should not be put to death by the state, that this is not what justice looks like. I think there are many of us for whom it would be much more difficult to say the same of Lawrence Russell Brewer.
But to do so, then, is all the more urgent. I put the tattoo of that piece of text on my left hand for a reason. As a right-handed person, my left side is weaker. So I put a reminder there, because in critical moments, applying our ethics is rarely about the easy, clear cut choices.
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During Elul, we are not simply expected to ask for forgiveness from the people we love and care about. There are not conditions on our reflection, responsibility, and repentance. It is not only the likable, upstanding, righteous person who deserves just, ethical, compassionate treatment. We are expected, during Elul, to do that kind of deep digging that allows us to summon both the courage and vulnerability it requires to ask forgiveness of those we may not like or care for; to demand of ourselves that people we find despicable be treated with compassion and justice. It is, perhaps, only through that kind of radical compassion that we can transform our world.
But what then of gratitude? What does it mean to choose blessing and gratitude when confronted with injustice of this magnitude? I can't right this injustice, tonight. There is no amount of ethical behavior that will bring back Troy Davis or make his death worth it.
Our choice, then, is to turn toward gratitude and hope, and away from pessimism and apathy. We can choose to let this defeat bury us in doubt, powerlessness, and stagnation. Or we can choose life. We can choose to move in the direction of possibility. We can resolve that the deep, sharp, penetrating pain of injustice pushes us to action, rather than turning us to despair.
We can choose, this Elul, to be open to vulnerability. We can choose to feel acutely, and on Rosh Hashanah, allow the call of the Shofar to shake us from ambivalence into our work for justice. We can notice blessings and be grateful, remembering their power to transform us and our relationships, and desperately savoring their sweetness in these moments of darkness.
We can let ourselves hear the still, thin sound in the call of the horn, and within it it's tenor find a new will and way to work for justice in the coming year.