“Words that come from the heart go to the heart.”
As I write this, I have just returned home from St. Peter’s Church to commemorate the yahrzeit of Bill Corporon, Reat Underwood and Terri LaManno, murdered by an anti-Semite for being at Jewish locations one year ago today.
After singing “Let There Be Peace on Earth and let it begin with me...” the Mass ended with a song whose refrain was, “and they’ll know we are Christians by our love.”
I couldn’t help but notice the Jewish parallel. {mprestriction ids="1,3"}We have the mitzvah of sanctifying God’s name, kiddush ha-shem, which means committing acts so good that viewing them will bring people to God. It also means to be a martyr. Today both are true.
Real liturgy actualizes the inchoate within us, making it real so that we can act upon it. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote that a person who emerges from prayer untransformed has not truly prayed.
All of which brings us to the point: these murders need to transform our lives.
Many have already been touched. But the sparks that have ignited the kindling need more nurturing. “They’ll know we are Christians, they’ll know we are Jews, by our love.”
The Corporon, LaManno and Underwood families have been wrenched from their old lives to a different view of the world, one in which God can be sanctified in every moment in this world, no matter what else we are doing, by the love we express through our actions. What does that mean?
How do you live a life of constant examination, one in which in every moment we have the possibility to act according to our highest self? When the community gathered at the Jewish Community Center to walk as a single body to Church of the Resurrection, they defied hatred. I heard, in addition to the actual walking, everyone was exceedingly kind to each and every person there. It’s a ritual to rehearse how to behave every moment. That’s what liturgy does: liturgy rehearses and brings to fruition the best in ourselves so that we can go out into the world and by being our best selves transform the world. The walk is a ritual, a culmination, a prayer, as Heschel famously said at Selma, “I am praying with my feet.”
“They’ll know we are Jews, they’ll know we are Christians, by kiddush ha-shem, how we sanctify God’s name, by our love.” The best way to transform the world is through love; the only time you can do it is now; and the only person whose life you can guide is your own.
Rabbi Mark H. Levin is founding rabbi of Congregation Beth Torah.{/mprestriction}