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Click here. Rabbi Karp's Sermons ... Shabbat Evening Sermon 2006 THE TIP-OF-THE-OPINION-PAGE ICEBERG There is an elephant in the room. Some of us have seen it. Many may not even realize that it is there. But like all elephants in a room, we can’t ignore them so we might as well address them. This elephant has to do with some recent Opinion Page editorials and letters from the Quad City Times. Their topic: Christmas music in the public schools. I know that this can be a sensitive topic and that there are those in our congregation who would prefer that we just not address it but rather leave it alone and ignore it. Hunker down, keep silent, get through the season, and move on. But from where I sit, it isn’t that simple. From where I sit, we not only can’t do that but we have a responsibility not to do that; not to remain silent. It is a responsibility that we have not just to our fellow Jews, and especially our Jewish children, but to all the members and especially all the children of all the non-Christian faith communities, both local and national. We Jews have a particular responsibility in this matter because we Jews have found our voice in this society. We are established and we are, or should be, unafraid to assert ourselves and express our concerns. Most of the other non-Christian faith communities do not feel themselves as secure. It was with those concerns that Lisa Killinger, of the Islamic community, and I submitted to the Quad City Times a letter in response to a very disturbing editorial entitled "‘War on Christmas’ has no Quad-City front." If you did not read the original editorial, then let me just say that the reason it disturbed us so greatly was that its fundamental premise was that the reason that there was no "War on Christmas" in the Quad Cities was because profoundly religious Christmas music was being taught in schools throughout the community. As Lisa and I stated in our letter, we would have hoped that the reason that there was no "War on Christmas" in the Quad Cities would have been because there is a healthy respect for diversity in our community, including religious diversity, and not because our schools have been successful in imposing statements of Christian faith upon their non-Christian students through the lyrics of songs which they were required to sing. Now if one is a reader of the Quad City Times, but only reads the paper edition, then it would appear that our letter had evoked but a limited response: a second editorial about email comments received, and two published response letters. However what is not apparent to the reader of the paper edition of the Quad City Times is that what one reads in the paper itself is but the tip of the Opinion Page iceberg. For there is another aspect of the Times which is only read though its on-line edition. These are the on-line comments that every article and letter that they publish invites. And like an iceberg, the vast majority of responses are to be found here, below the surface of that paper that is delivered to our front doors daily, rather than above it. In this electronic format, lively discussion does take place. While it is very difficult to get a letter published in the paper itself, and all such letters are severely restricted in terms of both size and content, electronically, anyone can publish their sentiments with very light restrictions on what they say and no restrictions on how much they say. In has been in this electronic format that an enormous amount of discussion has taken place over Lisa Killinger’s and my letter, and the issues of Christmas in the public schools and separation of church and state in general. One of the letters in response to our letter alone received 341 comments. Together with the 88 comments to our original letter and the 28 comments to the most recent letter, that comes to a total of 457 comments. To put that into perspective, Melissa Coulter of the Quad City Times Opinion Page staff told me today that this topic - indeed that one letter alone - has received more comments than the news article that Isabel Bloom was moving their production to China. After Melissa Coulter’s editorial about the email, the Cantor went on line to check out those comments. I refrained, because to be quite frank, I did not want to put myself through that type of stress. Yet the Cantor encouraged me to read them because she felt it important because there were some really good comments along with some rather harsh ones. And they were growing. Every day they were growing. I held off for a while, but as you can imagine, eventually I caved in. I encourage all of you to go on line and read those comments, for it is those comments that is truly the elephant in the room. It won’t take you long to realize that those who commented are polarized over these issues. Obviously, there are those who consider Lisa and I, and especially me, the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Their comments range from, "Hey man, it’s only a song. What’s the big deal" to "This is a Christian country and if you don’t like it, why don’t you just leave and form a country of your own?" In fact there was one fellow who posted twice, asking "How can any rabbi who attacks church bells have any credibility?" That one threw me for a loop because I simply do not remember ever saying anything negative about church bells. In fact, I conducted a search on the Quad City Times web site for any article containing both "Karp" and "bells." I only came up with one. It was a letter co-authored by Rev. Charles Landon and myself, as co-chairs of the Quad Cities Anti Hate Coalition, written on September 19, 2001. In it we called for people of faith throughout the community to set aside Fridays as a day of prayer for peace, and for the churches to ring their bells as a call for peace. So go figure! And then there were those - many - who in their comments were supportive of what we had to say. These folks talked about the First Amendment to the Constitution; they spoke about how several of our nation’s founding fathers were Deists and not Christians; of how so many of the early Americans came to our shores, fleeing religious persecution in Europe; of the great diversity that exists in our country; and of how respecting that diversity makes us better Americans, not weaker Americans. Some of these commentators identified themselves as Jews, some as Muslims, many as Christians. Their diversity alone was heartening. Now I am not going to get into the various arguments that each side posed, not that I am not tempted. Indeed, I am sorely tempted. But truth be told, such a discussion is far more deserving of a far larger format than a brief Shabbat sermon. Rather, what I wish to draw your attention to is the number and polarization of these comments. This morning, Melissa Coulter was surprised that more Quad Citians were concerned about this topic than about Isabel Bloom and issues of economic development. I was not. There are too many in our community who don’t take the power and the impact of religion seriously. They, in some sort of stupor of pseudo-sophistication, refuse to recognize that there are many, many people who do. Religion is not just for the socially awkward or the fanatic fringe. Religion molds the lives of many serious and committed individuals. It is more important to more people than these Doubting Thomas’ could ever imagine. Perhaps it is this blindness to the influences of religion which has gotten our country into so much trouble around the world. Since we don’t take religion seriously, we refuse to take seriously those who do take it seriously, and in so doing, commit a serious failure in judgement. The point is that this flood of comments, on both, should serve as a wake up call that we need to do a better job of understanding the faith beliefs of our neighbors and to appreciate that for many, their faith beliefs mold their perspectives and the very way they interact with the world around them. Then there is the polarization. One of the things that disturbed me as I read these comments was that most of those who were writing them were basically talking at each other and not with each other. Rarely was it evident that one person’s comment enabled another person to see the matter in at least somewhat of a new light. For the most part, people came with their preconceived notions and were impervious to change. The battle lines were very clearly drawn. I fear that this is but a microcosm of what is happening in our society, and especially within communities of faith. There are the conservatives and there are the progressives, and very little ground in between. It has manifested itself in so many issues: the Terri Schaivo case, Ten Commandments displays, Intentional Design, gay marriage, abortion, and, of course, religious music in the public schools. Just recently, we witnessed a split in the Episcopalian Church over sexual orientation issues. That denomination will probably not be the last to experience such a divide. I suspect that within the next several years the American religious landscape will have shifted dramatically along such lines, and we Jews will not be immune. We already find ourselves caught in a tug of war between the evangelicals, who stand by our side in support of Israel but who oppose us on so many of these other issues - including the religious music one - and the mainline Protestants, who stand shoulder to shoulder with us on so many social issues, but who waver, at best, in their attitudes toward Israel. And each of those sides grab hold of us, shake us, and challenge us, "How can you in good conscience be friends with those guys?" The middle ground is rapidly disappearing, and with it, any real openness for dialogue and compromise. I wish that I could conclude these remarks with some insightful and constructive recommendations on how we can work to heal the rifts and bridge the gaps, but I cannot. All I can say is that we need to read those comments and strive to understand, at least to some degree, what those forces are that are taking hold in our society. For it is not just about what songs our children sing in public school. It is about what will be the fundamental nature of the American society. For only after we have achieved at least some understanding can we start to determine how we will choose to respond to our ever changing society. AMEN |
