Look on page 70 of the Machzor, to the Viduy, the Confession of the Congregation for Yom Kippur. It begins in earnest with an alphabetic acrostic short confession, the Ashamnu. The Ashamnu goes from the Alef in Ashamnu to the three last words that begin with a Tav: Ti'avnu, Ta'inu, Ti'itanu, which is the Hebrew equivalent of from A to Z. The translations we are using come from Richard Levy's Hillel Machzor, On Wings of Awe, and Richard "translated" it in an English acrostic as well.

One short historical note: Rabbi Richard Levy was the Hillel Director at UCLA, then became the LA Regional Hillel Director, and, by default, the Western Regional Hillel Director. Etz Chayim's first regular rabbi, Dan Dorfman, was also a Hillel Director in LA and helped Richard Levy write the Hillel Machzor. Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann, currently the Rabbi for Stanford University, also helped put this translation together. So you see it was a cozy bunch of people with local connections. Rabbi Levy is currently the director of the Hebrew Union College, that is, Reform, Rabbinical program in Los Angeles, and he was the first west coast rabbi, and first Hillel director, to become President of the Reform Rabbinical Organization.

To return to the subject at hand: on page 70 of the Machzor the paragraph of confession begins with Acted and ends with Zeal. What, you don't have anything after Yes when we should have cried.? Well, that was my mistake in our first version of the Machzor. The layout program would hide extra text that was too long for the text box, and the box would get smaller if it got moved to a more cramped place. So there are a few of those mistakes in the first version of our Machzor. We fixed most of those errors in a corrected version this year, but due to the extra cost, we did not replace all of the Machzorim, as we expect to make a totally new version, which would be like our Shabbat and Weekday prayerbooks. If you come to services early tomorrow, you can pick up a corrected copy, version 2.5 in the wire binding. In any case, if you do not have this last line of this paragraph, it goes like this: we have said Yes when we should have cried out no; we have lacked the Zeal to struggle for our convictions through unrewarding months and years.

In the morning version, on page 92 goes from Arrogance to Zeal. Richard Levy's "translations" are not really translations, but a creative Engish alphabetic list of our mistakes. In both lists we have Xenophobia and Zeal for X and Z. It is hard to find sins that begin with X, unless it is indulging in things that are XXXX rated. Another Z might be "paying Zero attention to the suffering all around us." If you would like to write an acrostic of sins for our next Machzor, I would love to see it. Email it to me. We could turn it into an Alphabetical Matrix of Human Mistakes, and add it to the next version of the Machzor.

Let's return to the Ashamnu. This is one of the best known of the songs specific to Yom Kippur, but still not all of us know it. I did not learn it as a child in my Reform Temple. As all the singing was done by my Temple choir, I don't remember ever knowing it before I went off to college and actually participated in Hillel High Holy Day services. So my memories of it began as an adult. Here is how the Ashamnu sounds:

Ashamnu, bagadnu, gazalnu, dibarnu dofi, he'evinu, v'hirsha'nu, zadnu, chamasnu, tafalnu shaker, ya'atznu ra, kizavnu, latznu, maradnu, ni'atznu, sararnu, avinu, pashanu, tzararnu, kishinu oref, rashanu, shichatnu, ti'avnu, ta'inu, ti'ta'nu.

I have always been struck by how much the first word, Ashamnu, which means, "We have been guilty," actually sounds like "We are ashamed." No matter how we translate it, or how we interpret it, it always sounds like "We are ashamed" to me. I say, WE are ashamed, because the whole confession is written in the plural, as if to say that even if I, personally, have not done this this past year, nonetheless, there were Jews who did do each of these during the past year. That means that we as a people are not perfect, and need to marshal the humility to recognize that fact when comparing our people to other peoples.

Still, when I chant Ashamnu, I actually think I am saying, "I am ashamed." I am ashamed of me. I am ashamed that I am not better than I am. I make so darn many mistakes. I could be better. I don't need to go into details. Ashamnu!

So I rewrote the English of the Ashamnu, or, at least, the beginning of the English of the Ashamnu so that we can chant it. It goes like this:

Ashamnu I'm ashamed of myself.

Ashamnu I'm ashamed of us.

Ashamnu I'm ashamed of us all.

Ashamnu I'm ashamed.

I've already told you that I'm ashamed of myself. Who are us, and us all? I'm ashamed of us. means us, I'm ashamed of us as a congregation. We could be better. We could be more generous. We could be less focused on the importance of paying for what we do, and more focused on our moral and spiritual growth. We could be giving more Tzedakah. I saw some of the bags of canned goods outside tonight on my way in, and I never see the entirety of the gifts, but I do know that we all could have put another can in the bag. Some of us forgot to bring a bag tonight. Don't bring it tomorrow, repeat, do not bring it tomorrow. There will be no one to take it away. Instead, there is a barrel for the Ecumenical Hunger Project in the foyer of our congregational home. Bring it there, before Shabbat services, before the Sukkot picnic a week from Friday night. Bring it before going to a meeting or a class, or just when you are in the neighborhood. Remember, we are not far from the corner of San Antonio Road and California Ave, where, Albertsons, Milk Pail, Safeway, Trader Joe's, and Wholesale Produce are. (In the spirit of the Ashamnu I listed those stores in an alphabetical acrostic.)

I am ashamed of us. To the extent that we do not model our values to each other, values of spirituality and generosity, and to the extent that we engage in being critical of each other in person, behind each other's back, and by that engine of flame throwing, that is, email, I am ashamed of us. Ashamnu!

I'm ashamed of myself.

I'm ashamed of us.

I'm ashamed of us all.

Who are us all? We all are our city, our county, our state, our nation, our homeland of Israel, our western, developed, rich world that has a growing underclass, and growing gaps between the salaries of the rich and of the poor, of the CEO's and of the entry level jobs. How we as American and Israeli societies feel that it is OK for a quarter of our populations not to have health care, or that it is OK for the old and the disabled to be further impoverished by cutting social services while lowering taxes on the highest brackets,I am ashamed of us all. How can we think this way?

When I was in High School I learned this French phrase, and please pardon my poor Franais: "Apres moi le deluge," meaning, "After me, the Flood." Which means, as an idiom, "after I live it up all my life, I couldn't care less what happens to you."

"Apres moi le deluge," After our Flood this year, in New Orleans, in St Bernard Parish, and along the Gulf Coast, it is even harder to hear that phrase. I am sorry, but as long as so many of us in this country and in Israel live below the poverty line and it is not a national priority to do anything about it, I am ashamed. Ashamnu!

One of the things I am most ashamed of is the way there seems to be no shame in our society anymore. G0d forbid someone should own up to a mistake in politics, or in business. If one were to actually apologize for committing an error, such person might be penalized by a public that would rather be lulled into fantasies of self justification, than actually confront a mistake and a need for change. G0d forbid.

As I was writing this talk, President Bush had just appeared on television to say that the Katrina mess had been a mess at every level of government, and to the extent that it involved the Federal Government, he was the one responsible, because he was in charge. Well, no matter what you feel about his motivations and political calculations for making that statement, I felt it was a breath of fresh air in a Washington climate of never accepting that mistakes are made by one's own side, ever, for any reason. Bravo Mr. Bush. May that example spread to others who similarly SNAFU.

Mark Purdy, a sports columnist in the SJ Mercury News, wrote an article about new Stanford Football Coach Walt Harris, in which he described how Harris had been greedy for points, which had left his team hanging on to a narrow victory over Navy. The particulars of the football game are irrelevant. What was important was that Coach Harris admitted he had made a mistake. Purdy wrote, "(Coach Harris) not only passes when you expect him to run, and runs when you expect him to pass, he also apologizes when you expect him to be stubborn and defensive." To sportswriter Purdy, having an honest sports figure was a rare commodity. Of course, it was easier for Coach Harris to be candid, because, after all, his team did win. That was something he did not do again until last week!

Still, this would be a good epitaph for any of us: "he apologizes when you expect him-like everybody else-to be stubborn and defensive."

Greedy for touchdowns. Greed, desire, lust. Whatever you call it, it is that tenth commandment, coveting, mixed with laziness and inattention that leads us to err so much. This is why, I think, the Ashamnu prayer ends with lust leading to error. Oh, you don't see that? That is because our translations are not translations, they are riffs on the idea of the Ashamnu. The last three words of the Ashamnu, in Hebrew, are: ti'avnu, ta'inu, ti'ita'nu. They mean, our appetite (te'avon) got the better of us (ti'avnu), so we were wrong (ta'inu), I mean, we were really, really wrong (ti'ta'nu). The three T-words in a row emphasize that the list could have been three times as long. They also intimate that the we, or G0d, are not ready to end our confession. And still another inference can be drawn from them: that all three are related.

That is, ti'avnu, we were led by our appetite, so ta'inu, we messed up, and, being stubborn and defensive, ti'ta'nu, we really messed up. As they said about Nixon, it's not just the break-in, it's the cover-up. If we lie about the mess up, and, without shame, stubbornly defend it, that is worse than-you should all pardon the expression-the "Original Sin" itself.

Ashamnu. Be ashamed. Own up to our response-ability. Responsibility is merely the merger of these two words: response and ability. We have the ability to respond appropriately, with shame, to our own mess ups. Part of our response-ability is to respond with shame when we mess up. Shame is a good thing. Hiding our shame turns us into idol worshippers, that is, people who worship the idol of ourselves as perfect.

Ashamnu I'm ashamed of myself.

I'm ashamed of us.

I'm ashamed of us all.

I'm ashamed.

We start the Viduy, the Confession, with Ashamnu. The confession goes nowhere unless we start by being ashamed. Aren't you ashamed that the homeless and the hungry roam up and down our streets while we eat good? Aren't you ashamed that health care is a matter of what company you work for instead of what country you live in? Aren't you ashamed that California spends less per school pupil than Arkansas? Aren't you ashamed that we dicker over what the minimum wage should be for people who could not get by on even double what it is, especially since minimum wage jobs don't come with health care? Aren't you ashamed that the children of unwed teenage parents grow up poor, unhealthy, uneducated, and in fear of their lives because of the chaotic places they are forced to live? Don't you feel just a little ashamed that maybe you are scamming the system because you inherited the universe you inhabit from middle class parents who valued education and who pushed you to succeed and stay in school?

Everything else we will read in the confession starts from Ashamnu, shame. We are ashamed, and it is a shame to us, to each of us, and to all of us, that these ills have not been addressed, or that we have given up addressing them, or that we have successfully insulated ourselves from caring about them any more.

The reason that Yom Kippur comes after the summer is that on summer vacation we try to get away from caring so much, try to forget how unfair the world is, and how our inaction leads to more inequality. How this country can lecture the rest of the world on the benefits of democracy after Katrina exposed our dirty secrets, I don't know. That was a fitting end of summer delusions, summer vacations, summer fantasies.

It's Yom Kippur, people, and it's time to get back to work. First be ashamed. Be very ashamed. Ashamnu.