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Synagogue Sermon

October 18, 1958

Additions to "Conformity" (1958)

Noach
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I believe that the first in this season’s series of Late Services is the appropriate time for a talk on “A Credo for the Pulpit,” a general outline of the aims of the Jewish pulpit in general, and this pulpit in particular. So often is the pulpit exploited for book-reviews, political orations, sociological observations, psychiatric advice and personal opinions, that a public airing of its functions, responsibilities and aims should be healthy for both Rabbi and Congregation.The pulpit, to my mind, must fulfill three basic functions: to teach, to preach, and to reach. These three do more than rhyme; they establish an inner rhythm, by which Rabbi and Congregation harmoniously rise to the service of G-d. The main function of the Rabbi has always been to teach. The pulpit was always geared more to the lecture than to the sermon. The principal object was to teach, to inform, to let the people enjoy the pulpit as an educational tool to open up for them new vistas, new understanding, new horizons that they never realized existed in Judaism.Study, in Judaism, is regarded as a form of Service or Worship. “Talmud Torah” was not only a way leading to the observance of G-d’s mitzvos, but in itself a mitzvoh of major importance. For generations after the destruction of the Temple and the beginning of exile, Jews studied, assiduously, the Laws of Temple Sacrifice and laws applicable only in time of national independence – because the study of Torah is in and of itself a sacred deed, whether practical at the moment or not. The word “mishnah,” indicating the great body of Oral Law, our Sages pointed out, spells “neshamah,” or “soul,” when its letters are rearranged. For study is itself a spiritual achievement of no mean proportions.Historically, that was the primary function of the drashah, the sermon. It followed the reading of the Torah and explained it. The Rabbi rose to his highest function when he was not only a shepherd guiding his flock, but a teacher instructing his studen…
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Almost two years ago, I stood before this congregation and apologized for allowing personal sentiments to color my remarks. That was the occasion of the Bar Mitzvah of my first son, Joshua. I now happily impose upon this patient congregation once again, and ask you to indulge me if a number of my comments turn out, in a manner purely unpremeditated and completely coincidental, to be inspired by and have some relevance to the Bar Mitzvah of my second son, Shalom. I hope that what I have to say will be at least of some passing interest to others as well. What can one say to a youngster being initiated into Jewish manhood? What advice can we give him about what it means to be a man, in an overcrowded, dirty, depressed urban society, in which violence and pessimism and depersonalization are accepted facts of life? – in which adults habitually grasp at the last straws of their vanishing youthfulness by retrogressing into adolescence and preferring to be boys rather than men? – in which Judaism and Jewishness are in drift and on the brink of chaos?IIThat to be a man is an achievement, is obvious from the first words of this morning’s sidra. Man, איש, is the Torah’s encomium for Noah even before it accords him the honorific titles of צדיק (righteous), תמים (whole), and את האלקים התהלך נח (Noah walked with God). Simply, and perhaps this was the greatest compliment, Noah was called an איש, a man. Obviously, the Torah is speaking about the moral and spiritual content of manhood in the sense of a mature adult, not of the official and conventional definition of the category of “man.” Halakhically, a child becomes a man at the age of 13 years and one day; the legal transition from minor to major is very abrupt. But, in the larger sense, what does it mean to be a man?IIIThe first thing has to do with the social, political, and intellectual climate of our times. We live on an overcrowded planet, in which the sophisticates and cognoscenti who speak in the name of Science teach us …
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