Sermon by Rabbi Denise L. Eger, December 19, 2005

Shabbat Shalom

Have you heard that Bill O’Reilly and others have declared that there is a War on Christmas? They contend that the de-christianizing of the Christmas season is a frontal, organized attack on their religion and American Values. So no more Happy Holidays—or Season’s Greetings - only Merry Christmas. And the Christian Right Wing—even excoriated President Bush whose White House Christmas Card said Happy Holidays and quoted a verse from the book of Psalms rather than Christian Scriptures!

This time of year is difficult for us Jews. And especially when Chanukah and Christmas coincide as they do this year on the same day. So the first Candle will be on the Night of Christmas. It is I think difficult because Christmas is so pervasive. You can’t escape it. The music in the stores and the ever-present decorations make it all Noel all the time.
For some of you this might present no problem at all. In fact I imagine for some of you this is more “fun” or “Festive”. Under the heading of the more reasons to celebrate, the better. Let’s face it –we Jews with our “sorry little” dreidles can never compete with the giant lush pine-scented Christmas trees, jolly Santas, and stockings stuffed so cozily on the mantel. Well eight nights of drippy wax candles, and a few fried latkes that aren’t so good for your heart—can’t compete with yule logs, egg nog with brandy, candy canes, and gingerbread houses under those trees with cute little lion-l trains chugging through the miniature towns.
For some of us—the onslaught of Christmas means that it is a constant reminder of our otherness. That we Jews—no matter how much we try will never really be fully a part of the majority culture.
And yet, for others of us Chanukah is an amazing season of miracles. A reminder that a few dedicated souls can and do make a difference. That just as the Maccabees fought injustice and hatred we too can be inspired to do the same. So this season has an important message for us as well. A different message than Christmas –but an important and inspiring message for us Jews. And particularly important in the face of this attack. Because the story of Chanukah challenged those who would keep us from practicing our religion. And indeed that is a part of what is happening here today.
At the heart of this newest “Faux” debate about an attack on Christmas is I am afraid an older threat. Especially as Chanukah and 12 days of Christmas overlap this year. Certain Christians in this country have taken to playing the victim. As if somehow this was ancient Rome and they were still being thrown to the lions in the Coliseum, rather than the majority culture. But the truth is that Christianity in America still looms largest. This is truly a false war—and a false claim that they are under attack. What is happening however is that as America has become even more diverse—it is hard for the majority culture to make room at their holiday table. Some just don’t like to share. As the media and technology have opened up the world and our American world to many different ways of thinking and being—the monolithic worldview that once held sway over all – That December is Christmas Season-- must share space now with other traditions and other holidays. And so we are seeing and hearing a bit of a backlash and a lot of whining.
To me it seems that the threat of who killed Jesus is lurking just behind their questions. The threat of Anti-Semitism is hanging on to the periphery in their pounding about “the Holiday Season.” Let me explain why.
When John Gibson and Bill O’Reilly say they want everyone to be wished Merry Christmas and that this is the Christmas Season not the holiday season—They are really saying that Christmas should take precedent. As you and I know Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus—the savior to the Christians. And they would say the world. Christians view his birth as a good and holy thing and presumably John Gibson and Bill O’Reilly view this as a good thing. So when they wish me—a Jew –or you a Jew, “Merry Christmas”—are they merely sharing their joy of the season with me? Or is there a bit of a presumption that I too should celebrate the birth of the Messiah—or their messiah?
And thus behind their declaration is the idea that because I do not celebrate the birth of their Messiah—they want to suggest that somehow I am responsible for the downfall of our America. For they blame this “War on Christmas” on those who would do in America and American values. Because in their worldview of majority rules, Christian values are synonymous with American values. Now often they try to amend those to say Judeo-Christian values but the truth is when it comes to Christmas—we Jews have no stake in the discussion. So when we Jews—who demand our equal share of the American pie, and indeed are entitled to it—are not explicitly painted as a threat although that is indeed the implication behind their words.
The John Gibson’s of Fox News—don’t explicitly name Jews—they talk about the threat from secular humanists. They talk about atheists. But lets be clear –they mean everyone who doesn’t believe like they do and celebrate the birth of their Messiah—and that includes us.
But the truth is the real culprit is the Almighty Dollar. The real beef that O’Reilley and Gibson should have is with corporate America who has turned the Christmas Season/Holiday Season into a buying frenzy—and gift giving addiction. This is the real perpetrator among us. The drive to buy more, and give gifts to everyone for simply doing their job fuels this frenzy of Consumerism. I am no Scrooge but it seems to me that most of the attack on Christmas comes not from other communities that celebrate or want to acknowledge their holy days and holidays but from the corporations who tie their financial well being into a push for year end profits. The attack on Christmas comes from corporate greed which is the antithesis of religious values of sharing with others.
If we kept the focus on this season on all of our religious ideals –rather than the monetary ones—all of us would have a happier and indeed, healthier season.
My Christian family and friends I have no problem with. I wish them a Merry Christmas and have even been known to toast them with a drop of egg nog myself. But I do so fully knowing that I respect their religious celebration as they do mine. They don’t try to force me to follow their belief system nor I force them to follow theirs.
This time of year has always been a time of holidays that focus on light in the midst of darkness—certainly that is one of the messages of Chanukah- The Festival of Lights. This too is the message of Winter Solistice celebration and Diwali—the Hindu celebration of Light, and is a component of Kawaanza as well. Christmas too calls upon the birth of Jesus as the Light of the world.
If Bill and John and others would merely stop and focus on bringing light into the world rather than hype and hate—indeed it would be a happier, merrier time for us all.

Happy Holidays—to you and yours.
Shabbat Shalom.

Sermon by Rabbi Denise L. Eger, December 12, 2005

First let me wish Yuji and Chuck a hearty Mazal tov on behalf of our whole Temple community. By choosing Judaism you strengthen the Jewish people. And we are grateful. When 6,000,000 of our people were murdered during World War II, our ability to survive as a people has been perilously threatened. Even as our birth rate plummets, those of you who are Jews by choice, help to increase our ranks and help to insure the survival of our people, our traditions, our values and ethics.

Tonight I want to talk about our values and ethics and particularly in light of the fact that San Quentin Death Row inmate Stanley Tookie Williams is scheduled to die by lethal injection on December 13 at 12:01 am. Unless our Governor grants him clemency and commutes his sentence to life in prison, Williams will die. As you may know Stanley Williams, now age 51 is the founder of the notorious street gang –the Crips. In 1979 Williams was arrested and charged with four murders committed during two separate robberies. He was eventually convicted of the murders of Albert Lewis Owens, a Whittier convenience store clerk in one incident; and, in the other, Tsai-Shai Yang, Yen-I Yang and Yee Chen Lin — a husband and wife and their adult daughter, owners of a Los Angeles motel. All were gunned down, execution style, in cold blood.
Williams always claimed that he did not commit these crimes. But no doubt as co-founder of the Crips gang, dedicated to murder and mayhem Williams must have been involved in something illegal.
To this day Williams continues to contend that he did not commit these crimes. He has appealed his case up through the system all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States. Protesting that his trial was unfairly moved from Los Angeles to Torrance where there were hardly any blacks in the jury pool, protesting that the D.A. used racist language to denigrate him in court, he was convicted of an all white jury. Finally in October of this year the Supreme Court of the U.S. rejected his appeal even though 9 of the 24 U.S. ninth district judges wrote an impassioned dissent and said the court should have ordered a new hearing into whether the prosecutor violated Williams' right to racially neutral jury selection by removing African Americans from the jury that convicted him.
"If our judicial system is to inspire a sense of confidence among the populace, we must not, we cannot permit trials to proceed in the face of blatant, race-based jury selection practices,'' said Judge Johnnie Rawlinson, writing for the dissenters. But the request for a new hearing before an 11-judge panel failed to gain a majority vote among the Appeals court's 24 active judges. On October 11, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Williams’ appeal to investigate the racism and discrimination at the heart of his case, as well as Williams’ innocence issues. This denial established as “case law” for the entire nation the right of prosecutors to exclude jurors on the basis of race and to denigrate minority defendants in front of white juries.
But more than the usual protestations of convicted killers that they didn’t do the crime, are there reasons the Governor Schwartzenegger ought to grant his request of clemency? What does Judaism say about the death penalty and what ought our society to do?
No doubt Williams was a bad guy. But during these years in prison he has gone through what seems to be an authentic and genuine transformation. Williams has apologized for creating the Crips gang, publicly quit and distanced himself them. We have all heard the stories of other gang members who have tried to extricate themselves from gangs only to have retribution brought to the individual and their families by murder. For Williams, even though he was in jail, the Crips gang could have reached its hands beyond the walls of San Quentin to silence him. And so Williams had no reason to distance himself and disavow his gang activities if he hadn’t truly repudiated them. Williams wrote, “I pray that one day my apology will be accepted. I also pray that your suffering, caused by gang violence, will soon come to an end as more gang members wake up and stop hurting themselves and others. I vow to spend the rest of my life working toward solutions.”
And that is indeed what Tookie Williams has done from behind bars. He has written extensively on the dangers of gangs. He wrote nine children’s books aimed at keeping kids out of gangs. One written in the year 2001, “Life in Prison” received an award from the American Library Association. He has recorded anti-gang public service announcements and started an Internet project that encourages gangs to keep the street peace and stop fighting one another. He wrote “Protocol for Peace,” a model agreement to end gang feuds, and last year, the Crips and the Bloods in Newark, N.J., signed it, ushering in a truce that has remained in effect. He has even been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize twice, for his work on getting gangs and gang members to turn around their lives.
This sentiment was supported by a deputy mayor of Newark, who, in a letter supporting clemency, cited a dramatic reduction in gang-related crime in his city following the signing of what is referred to as “Tookie’s Protocol for Peace.”
This is no death bed conversion. This is the work of a man dedicated to undoing what he perpetrated. This is the work of a man who is trying to make teshuvah, repentance for his acts against society and yes, against God.
Nevertheless, you might say-even for all his acts of true repentance, Williams has had a trial and appeals all the way through the system. These were heinous crimes And now he must pay for the crimes that he has been found guilty of with his life. And no doubt the families of the victims have been waiting a very long time to see justice done. And it is true that the death penalty is legal in our country.
But Jewishly what do our values say? What is the Jewish approach to this situation?
It is true that the Bible in the book of Exodus states, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” This has always been the justification for the death penalty. A life in exchange for the murder of others. And we have many instances in the Torah, 36,where the death penalty is prescribed. From violating the Sabbath to the rebellious son, stoning and being put to death as a punishment for one’s crimes is definitely part of our received tradition.
But this is not the whole Jewish story. We do not rely only upon the Torah in deciding Jewish law. We have an inherited tradition that includes the commentary of the Rabbis, the Talmud, and custom.
And the rabbis of the Talmud looked at this law differently. They were as concerned with the idea about whether the state should have blood on its own hands as we are today in the debate in our society over the death penalty. The rabbis couldn’t erase the death penalty from the Torah but what they did was basically ensure that no one could actually be put to death by the government for their crimes. They erected walls and fences that even the most brilliant prosecutor could not climb. The laws as interpreted in the Talmud say the a court that puts even one person to death in 70 years is seen as a harsh court. “The Sanhedrin (supreme court) that puts to death one person in seven years is termed tyrannical. Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah says, One person in seventy years. Rabbi Tarffon and Rabbi Akiba say, if we had been in the Sanhedrin, no one would have ever been put to death. Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel says, they would have thereby increased the shedders of blood in Israel (Mishnah Makkot 1:10)."
They require two eyewitness to a murder but not only that the witnesses had to have warned the murderer prior to the murder that if he carried out the crime he would be executed and he had to affirm this back to them!
Jewish tradition and Jewish law—even from the strictest Halakhic perspective distanced itself from the death penalty and Judaism can be said not to favor the death penalty. In fact all the major movements of Judaism call for the abolition of the death penalty and/or a moratorium
Does that mean that Tookie Williams should go free?
According to Jewish tradition no.
As Rabbi Elliot Dorff, professor of philosophy at the University of Judaism, who has spoken at Kol Ami before, stated in an LA Times article (November 19, 2005) “To be restored, he said, one has to admit to something wrong. "The fact that he denies he is guilty frankly is a problem from the point of view of trying to apply the [Jewish] laws of t'shuvah" — restoration or turning from wrong to right — "to this case." Nonetheless, Dorff said Williams' good acts since he was imprisoned would be reason to substitute life imprisonment for death.
The rabbis of the Mishnah teach us that if you destroy a life you destroy the whole world but if you save a life you have saved the whole world. Certainly Williams’ acts of repentance and work to save the lives of children from the effects of gangs are helping save many worlds. Putting him to death does not restore the lives of the murdered four that he was convicted of killing. Putting Williams to death ensures that many who through his continued efforts would break free of gang life, will also die, caught-up in a life of crime and murder.
There are many other issues in this death penalty discussion. How do you ensure completely that the death penalty is fairly applied and that innocent people are not put to death? This was a concern for the rabbis of the Talmud as well. Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5 stresses the importance of presenting completely accurate testimony in capital cases, for any mistakes or falsehoods could result in the shedding of innocent blood. If any perjury were to cause an execution, "the blood of the accused and his unborn offspring stain the perjurer forever."
We had cases in recent months in Georgia, Missouri and Illinois that acknowledged that someone was wrongly put to death. And our own U.S. Supreme Court recognized that the death penalty has been unfairly applied to more people of color than to whites. Our Jewish law teaches too that there must be one law of the land—the same for citizens and resident aliens.
Three years ago our Board of Trustees passed a resolution after careful congregational study calling upon our state and our governor to enact a death penalty moratorium that would suspend all executions until the matter of inequalities in the system could be addressed here in California. We have been since joined by 100’s of congregation’s in California who have passed similar resolutions. But so far the executions in California continue.
I along with 90 other rabbis have signed on to petition to this governor to grant Williams clemency. That does not mean he goes free. It simply means that his sentence of death will be commuted to a sentence of life imprisonment. He will pay for the crime of which he was convicted but we the citizens of the state of California will not have blood on our hands. It means that he will still be behind bars for all of his life but his work to save the lives of young people can continue.
And to me that seems the greater good for society.
Ken yehi ratzon - so may it be God’s will.