The June issue of Smithsonian Magazine had an article about Graham Greene, the prolific author of such novels as The End of the Affair, The Quiet American, Our Man in Havana, Travels with My Aunt, and The Tenth Man. Greene was a notorious adulterer and an active Catholic. These two things don't necessarily go together, but in Greene's case they did. The article says that "in April, 1950, Greene wrote…that he had gone to confession and told the priest everything. The priest had replied that if he wished absolution, he must stop seeing (his lover) and go back to his wife. 'I'm sorry,' Greene had replied. 'I'm afraid I must find another confessor.'"

    The author of this article did his research on Greene at Georgetown University, a Catholic institution, which houses Greene's letters to his mistress. The author writes, "I had expected to feel some irony as I read the letters, an irony rooted in the fact that someone who flouted so many tenets of Catholicism should ultimately have his letters preserved in a Catholic university. Instead, I found myself understanding why Georgetown paid a reported $150,000 for the letters when (Greene's adulterous lover's) heirs put them up for sale in 1990. Though he failed in many ways to meet the standards of his faith, Greene never committed the transgression of taking it lightly. He might not always have been a good Catholic, but he was always a serious Catholic." End Quote.

    What an epitaph—"He might not always have been a good Catholic, but he was always a serious Catholic." I knew right then and there I had the idea for a High Holy Day sermon. I knew I had to teach you all how to be serious Catholics! No, serious Presbyterians!

    But "seriously," folks, the topic for this evening is how to give everyone in this room a chance to earn that as an epitaph: "He (or she) might not always have been a good Jew, but he or she was always a serious Jew."

    I believe that the rabbi of the Temple in which I grew up may well be rolling over in his grave if he could hear me say this. The most important thing to a Liberal Jew when I was growing up, way back in the middle of the last millennium, was to be a good person, a moral person. To even in the least way suggest that it might be OK for someone to concentrate on Jewish ritual activity while stealing, murdering, and committing adultery would have been anathema. "He (or she) might not always have been a good Jew, but he or she was always a serious Jew?" What kind of insanity is this?" my rabbi would have demanded to know.

    What, you think a Jew should rob a bank with one hand and light Sabbath candles with the other? This makes sense to you?

     No, rabbi, I would answer him if he were still alive. Rabbi, I start with the assumption that you did your job very well, and taught us all to be good and moral people, socially concerned over those who cannot speak for or defend themselves against the predations of evil, morally outraged at the existence of evil, and dedicated in tzedakah and in deed to do Tikkun Olam, bringing justice and mercy, redemption and correction to the world. But rabbi, in your day you took it for granted that Jews would live Jewish lives with other Jews in Jewish communities, and would join Jewish organizations, Temples, synagogues, and Jewish social justice organizations. Rabbi, I can't take that for granted any more.

    Part of why I can't take that for granted, rabbi, is that you did your job so well. You taught me and my peers that the most important thing was to be a good person, and that Jewish rituals were not important, in the scheme of things. You said it didn't matter what we did or didn't do as Jews, and we took you seriously!

    You and your fellow rabbis decided that Hebrew was not important for us to use in services, which meant that it was not important to learn Hebrew, so we did not. You decided that only rabbis and the cantors would lead services, that you would not have a need for laypeople to actually lead any ritual from the bimah, er, excuse me, the altar. So we did not learn anything about leading a service. You said that mitzvot were no longer commands, but suggestions, among which we could, if we wished, pick and choose, but you gave us no reason to choose any of them, any reason to take anything Jewish seriously, and so we did not.

    Rabbi, the problem of my generation is that Jews no longer take ourselves seriously as Jews. We are not serious Jews. Our epitaphs could read, "So and so might always have been a good person, but he or she was not a serious Jew."

    And if we, Rabbi, are not serious about being Jews, what are we going to pass on to our children? They have fewer role models of Jews who take themselves seriously to learn from than we did. It will only be by the accident of adolescent rebellion against our values that they will take Judaism seriously.

    Rabbi, this is so important to liberal and Reform Jews today that I want to quote you from an article in this winter's Reform Jewish Quarterly:

    " The communal expectations that kept traditional Judaism strong for millennia included restrictions on dress and food, communal insularity, and halakhic observance. Reform Judaism transferred these aspects of Jewish life from the realm of mandatory practice to that of autonomous choice, and did not replace them with other mandatory practices. Thus, as a by-product of Reform philosophy, a key institutional feature of of Jewish life was removed. Reform synagogues have struggled with apathy precisely because there are no obligations associated with membership...

    When communal expectations exist, only committed Jews who are excited about Jewish involvement are willing to fulfill them. Uncommitted Jews, reluctant to devote additional time to Jewish life, look elsewhere for religious affiliation. Therefore, a group that imposes such expectations will have a high level of commitment and enthusiasm among its members. These members benefit spiritually, not only because of their personal dedication, but also because they are surrounded by other cominitted people. This creates a virtuous cycle: as individuals increase their participation they get more out of participating, and the community becomes stronger and more attractive to other highly committed people. Further, the vibrancy of such a community may inspire those who were less committed to increase their involvement.

    Thus, while it is set in motion by the establishment of communal expectations which might deter some people from participating in the short term, the virtuous cycle may ultimately create greater inclusion, energy, and commitment…" End quote. (The Binds That Tie, by Ethan Bueno de Mesquita, CCAR Journal: A Reform Jewish Quarterly, Winter, 2002)

    The founders of this congregation wanted to create a place where people take their Jewish lives seriously. They tried to create a community of like-minded people. And many people followed their lead into the congregation. And to a large extent, they succeded. There are so many in our congregation who take themselves and their Judaism and Jewish life seriously. So if you are one of them, you know who you are, and you know that what I am about to say I am saying to everyone else.

    Because it's not all serious Judaism here at Etz Chayim. At least one family told me that they left the congregation because their children were the only one in their class at Shorashim, our religious school, who spoke up about doing anything at home to welcome in Shabbat, though they knew there were some families in their childrens' classes who did celebrate Shabbat. This family figured that if they were spending the money and the time to put their children in a Jewish environment, they wanted that Jewish environment to be actively Jewish. They looked to their fellow congregants to be a help to them in bringing up their children with a sense that their Jewish peers were also involved, at least on the family level, with being seriously Jewish. When no one in their kids' classes would even admit to doing things for Shabbat, they left.

    Another family asked me why they should bother to try to bring their children to High Holy Days services when fellow congregants who are their friends will be sending their kids to school tomorrow, on Yom Kippur. It is difficult for everyone to make these decisions, but one of the reasons people join a congregation is to find common ground with other Jews, Jews who take themselves seriously as Jews, in making those hard choices to do Jewish things.

    In this vein, several other families took the harder road of having their children go to services on Rosh haShanah instead of going to their team's first soccer game last week. And another student had the chutzpah to leave his middle school football practice early in order to study with me for his bar mitzvah. When these people told their coaches where they were going, the coaches understood. They knew they were dealing with serious Jews who took themselves seriously.

    And at the first meeting of the Bar/t mitzvah family class, as the parents were discussing wonderful (carrot, not stick) strategies for inducing their daughters and sons to come with them to services, one family said, "We don't try to get THEM to go. We just say, WE'RE going." That is, they model the behavior they wish their kids to follow in.

    These families are serious Jews—that is, they take themselves seriously as Jews. I am here this evening to make a case for all of us being serious Jews. And I will try to suggest what a serious Jew could be.

    I can tell you now, a serious Jew is not a Jew who never smiles. Serious Jews are just Jews who take themselves seriously as Jews, who make Jewish statements based on things they have learned because they pay attention to these things, and who do Jewish things by themselves, at home, and in the community, because they want to, even if they never learned how to as a child.

    Let me start with a quote by Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain: "Non-Jews respect Jews who respect Judaism; non-Jews are embarrassed by Jews who are embarrassed by Judaism." (said at the Orthodox Union West Coast convention in Los Angeles, 1998) To paraphrase, people take people seriously if they take themselves seriously. People are embarrassed by people who are embarrassed to be themselves.

    An example of this is an anecdote about Sammy Davis, Jr., a black actor, raised as a Christian, who chose to become a Jew. In an "Celebrity Jews in the News" (by Nate Bloom, in the Northern California Jewish Bulletin, 9/13/02, page 31), it says, "Sammy took his Jewishness seriously. In 1959 he refused to work on Yom Kippur during the filming of Porgy and Bess. The film's director appealed to studio head Samuel Goldwyn, who phoned Sammy and demanded an explanation. As a Jew, Sammy asserted, he couldn't work on the holiest day of the Jewish year. After a moment of silence, Goldwyn, himself Jewish, said, 'Bless you'—and suspended production for the Holy Day."

    Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen To Good People, among his many good self-help works, adds this to the definition of a serious Jew. He writes, if "you have learned something about Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Judaism, let me share with you …that all these labels and divisions are meaningless and obsolete. There are only two kinds of Jews—serious Jews and non-serious Jews. Serious Jews try to do what Jews have always done… to pattern their lives on the insights of Judaism, whether in a Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox idiom, while to the non-serious Jew, it doesn’t matter what style of synagogue service he stays home from or which definition of mitzvah he ignores….

    Kushner continues, "After a lecture…I invited questions from the audience. One woman raised her hand, identifying herself as a Jew who tried to be a good and honest person, a helpful neighbor, and a supporter of Israel, but said that she did not live a religious Jewish life. She asked me, half seriously, half challenging, "Do you really believe that G0d will like me better if I kept kosher?"

    He answered her that "The question is not how many of the hundreds of mitzvot you choose to follow. The question is whether you are interested in doing what Jews have always done, recapturing the feeling of standing at Sinai, bringing holiness into your life by sanctifying even its ordinary moments, especially its ordinary moments." (To Life! By Rabbi Harold Kushner (pages 83-86), Little Brown and Company, 1993)

    Kushner makes the point that being a serious Jew is to sanctify ordinary moments. I think that is a good way to find meaning in being a Jew, and is certainly a wonderful way to Judaism's spiritual path. However, I am not sure it is the best one for most people to start from. I think that taking yourself seriously may be better for some others. Holy is hard. Spiritual may be scary. But taking ourselves seriously is something we can all understand.

    But let me take the spiritual road just for a second. Last year, George Harrison died, zichrono livrachah, may his memory be a blessing. George was the most "spiritual" of the Beatles, and many of his songs have religious messages. Though they are usually couched in Christian or Hindu terms, they speak to me as a Jew, a serious Jew, as well. This is a part of one especially spiritual song from the album Sergeant Pepper, called Within You Without You:

Try to realize it's all within yourself

no one else can make you change

And to see you're really only very small

and life flows on within you and without you

We were talking

about the love that's gone so cold

and the people who gain the world

and lose their soul

They don't know, they can't see

Are you one of them

When you've seen beyond yourself

then you may find

peace of mind is waiting there

And the time will come

when you see we're all one