Beginnings matter. That’s why we celebrate them. The rituals and readings we recite on this sacred day tell us something fundamental about what it all means: about G-d, about life, about ourselves. So when we take a close look at today’s Torah reading, chosen by the rabbis as precisely what we needed to hear today, we have to be surprised. What a sordid tale! First, we celebrate with Sarah and Abraham as the child of their life-long love is born. It’s a beautiful story of promise, expectation, and fulfillment. Now that’s a lovely way to start the year. And if the story stopped there, our new year’s message would have all the power of a fairy tale: “and they all lived happily ever after.”

Which they don’t, neither in the Torah nor in real life. The story continues with the terrible tale of Hagar and Ishmael, driven from Abraham’s home at Sarah’s bidding. This part of the reading is in fact twice as long as the story of Isaac’s birth.

Why? Because the rabbis of old wanted to remind us that when we talk about life, one third is about hope, but the other two thirds are about choices. Hard choices. And one thing is clear. The story of Hagar and Ishmael is a story of hard choices.

The back story, if you recall, is that Sarah, being childless, had offered her handmaiden Hagar to Abraham, so that he would father children through her. That’s not just a hard choice. That’s a brutal choice. It’s almost too painful to imagine what was going on in Sarah’s mind. Was it a superstitious belief that Hagar’s pregnancy would  stimulate Sarah’s own? Was it as desperate attempt to keep Abraham loyal to her—by sanctioning his infidelity? Was it a profound sacrifice to bring joy to the man she loved? We do not know. What we do know is that Sarah made the difficult choices that had to be made.

And so, too, in the continuation of the story in today’s parasha. Sarah demands that Hagar and Ishmael be expelled. She’s got her reasons, to be sure. She wanted to protect her beloved son Isaac, and she felt that Ishmael would be a horrible influence. But such cruelty! Such harshness! The rabbis explain that in the long run, it’s all about the child, but still. There is a special level of parenting hell for those who have to tell their child that there are certain people they aren’t allowed to hang with. Or date. Or marry. Talk about tough choices.

But again, one thing is clear. There was no evasion. There was no equivocation. There was no “kicking the can down the road.” Something had to be done, right then, right there, And Sarah–Sarah our mother—was prepared to take the heat for it. The wounds must have cut incredibly deep, and the scars never completely healed. Nobody walked away happy, not even Sarah. The solution to the problem was an imperfect one, with reverberations that echo into our own time. But a choice had to be made, if our Jewish identity was to be protected, and the fledgling Jewish mission in the world continued. Thank G-d Sarah had the courage and wisdom to make that choice. And Abraham—in another tough choice, supported by direct divine intervention—agreed to hear her and respect her wishes.

One could only imagine what would happen if Sarah and Abraham faced their dilemma today. As heads of a multinational concern, they would have an entire PR staff. Focus groups. Cost benefit analyses. Spin handlers. Pollsters. And then a decision to wait, followed by apologies that Sarah’s words were taken out of context, timed perfectly for the beginning of the weekend news cycle when interest and media attention are lowest. Every trick in the inside-the-beltway playbook.

Had it been that way, we wouldn’t be sitting in this room.
They had tough choices to make. Today, so do we. I would like to touch on just  three current topics where we need some serious decision making: Immigration, the environment, and wage stagnation. These are pressing issues that can’t be kicked down the road, unless we are prepared to accept catastrophic consequences. And make no mistake—for every day we wait, the consequences will become that much more catastrophic.

On the topic of immigration, let me tell you a story. I had a great-aunt, a little old lady from the Old Country, named Mrs. Forman. I don’t even remember her first name. I’m not sure if I ever knew it. She was simply Mrs. Forman. Now, Mrs. Forman’s son, my Uncle Lou, had become a prominent NY attorney, representing people like Jack Dempsey.

Mrs. Forman spoke barely a word of English. Living on the Lower East side, she didn’t need to. But she wanted desperately to become a citizen, because she loved America so much. So my Uncle Lou got together with a judge he was close to, and arranged a naturalization ceremony for Mrs. Forman. She was terrified, but determined. There she was, standing before the judge, all 4 feet 11 inches of her—she was 4 feet 11 inches in all directions. So the judge said, “Mrs. Forman, I want to ask you an important question. Who was the first President of the United States. And standing proudly—all 4 feet and 11 inches of her—Mrs. Forman firmly declared, “Avraham Linkolen!” to which the judge, after a few moments of extremely pregnant silence, responded, “Very good, Mrs. Forman. Thank you. Now please raise your right hand…”

And that’s how Mrs. Forman became an American citizen.

It’s a delicious story, isn’t it? Doesn’t it capture that whole generation, loving America in mamaloshen, doing everything they could to make sure their kids made it in America?

So let me ask you a question. Would you laugh just as hard, and identify just as much, if the story were not about Mrs. Forman but instead about Mrs. Garcia? And if the mamaloshen were Spanish?  Or would you instead say that Mrs. Garcia and her son Luis were murderers and rapists, stealing American jobs, refusing to learn English, using their underhanded ways to cheat the system?

Would you say they were not real Americans?

We used to call people who said that about us anti-Semites. And it wasn’t as if they had nothing to complain about. Few people remember it today, but 100 years ago, a majority of the pimps and prostitutes in America were Jews. So what? Anti-Semites were still anti-Semites, and we screamed to high heaven when the sins of the few were used to besmirch the character of the many.

So what do we call people who attack Hispanic people the way we were attacked?  Unfortunately, we call some of them presidential candidates. And unfortunately, we call others of them….us.

And for this, we must do teshuvah.

There’s a train that comes up from Mexico. They call it el tren de la muerte, the train of death, or sometimes simply La Bestia, “the Beast”. It is the modern version of the trans-Atlantic steerage so familiar to us from the stories of our ancestors. The people who ride the train of death—hundreds of thousands of them—are trying to come to America. They are plagued by criminal gangs. Almost all will be robbed, most of the women raped. And still they come.

They make a brutal choice. Why? Because they are seeking a better life for their children. How can we, of all people, say no to them?

What if Mrs. Forman were on that train? Or Sarah our mother?

I won’t pretend, as a rabbi, that I know how to solve the problem. I’m sure at the end of the day there will be some combination of enhanced border security, improved work visas and jobs programs, aid to countries in South and Central America, and legalization. But that’s not the point. The point is that we have to remind the people in a position to make the hard choices of the biblical truth that those human beings struggling to enter our country are—like us—created in the image of G-d.. We need to tell the politicians and bureaucrats to get out of their sandbox and start doing their jobs.
The same is true as regards the environment. Here is a true story, one of those you just can’t make up. It’s one of those “if I’m lying I’m dying” stories. Wyoming is a state covered with industrial farms and huge cattle ranches. One ranch is almost three times the size of Middlesex County. The runoff of pesticides, fertilizers, and animal waste is absolutely staggering. So the Wyoming legislature recently took a crucial step toward dealing with the problem. They made it illegal—wait for it—for any one to take water samples to test how high the pollution levels were. In fact, even taking a picture of the water is now illegal if you intend to give it to someone like the EPA.

Presumably, the law will eventually be struck down as a violation of the First Amendment. Until then, the ranchers and farmers who bought off the legislature will continue to graze their cattle by streams contaminated with E. coli.

We all have heard the classic Yiddish-English expression, “Better you shouldn’t know….” But who knew they speak Yiddish in Wyoming? Or in Idaho and Utah which have similar “hear no evil, speak no evil” laws against people who investigate cruelty to animals?

The arrogance in this is as breathtaking as the stupidity. But even worse examples are out there. Shell Oil had to call off its exploration activities in the Arctic Sea because their drilling rig was threatened by an iceberg 10 times the size of Manhattan. But they’re back at it now. The chutzpah involved in thinking that they can conquer forces like that is truly monumental. And the tragedy is that if we made the right choices we could address these problems with common sense conservation, renewables, and smart applications of modern technologies.  The Israelis just invented a way to fully charge an electric car in 5 minutes. We got this, if we would only use our brains and make the tough choices.

It may not be clear to the ranchers in Wyoming, or to the guys up on the oil platforms, but the water at their feet is the same water that courses through our veins, and the veins of our children. They claim private property rights, as if the polluted streams or the oil soaked birds stop at invisible ownership boundaries, as if local concerns don’t have global impact.

Think about California. It produces half the fruits, vegetables, and nuts in the country. Now, because of the drought, much of that is gone. Which is a big deal if you’re one of those people who likes to eat. But in the middle of this drought, the percentage of acreage going to the most water-thirsty crops—like almonds and alfalfa—has doubled. And the biggest federal subsidies are going to support California’s cotton crop, perhaps the thirstiest of all crops.

Growing cotton during a drought. Makes perfect sense, no?

Your tax dollars at work.

Somebody is making some really stupid choices, and we have to tell them to stop.

We need to remind them that this world was intended to be a garden, and we are its tenders, not its plunderers.
As groundwater disappears, and food prices rise, we all suffer for it. The working poor most of all.  Which leads me to my final topic: wages. The Torah makes the point that workers should be paid fairly and promptly. But for a long time they haven’t been, and increasingly, they aren’t. I don’t have to remind you of the scandal here in New Jersey concerning unfunded pensions, the governor stiffing teachers by 2 and a half billion dollars and then bragging about balancing the budget for his campaign. And all this in our name.

But this is merely a symptom of a much larger problem. Since 1973, worker productivity in this country has nearly doubled, as have corporate profits. But hourly wages have increased by less than 10%, while CEO wages have increased 1000%. Consider this: in 1978, the highest paid CEO in the country earned all of $2 million. Today, the highest paid CEO gets $285 million.That’s a quarter of a billion with a “B” dollars.  If you don’t think this is a problem, you can’t be paying attention.

Let me hasten to point out that I am not suggesting that we should do income redistribution, that we should take from the rich and give to the poor. There is evidence that such policies really don’t work. But neither does taking from the poor and giving to the rich. What I am suggesting is that at the very moment when wealth is being created, part of what should fairly go to workers—precisely for being so productive—is being taken from them and redistributed in the wrong direction.

Wealth is being generated all the time. We have a choice about what to do with it. We always do. We can continue doing what we have been doing, see an ever smaller group of people control an ever larger part of our economy and, perhaps, our political process; or we can insist that methods must be found  not to redistribute but to share more equitably that newly generated wealth.

Please do not misunderstand. I have nothing against rich people making more money. In fact, I want rich people to make more money. In fact, I want to be a rich person making more money. Who doesn’t? But this doesn’t have to be a zero sum game. There are all sorts of things we can do to improve the situation for all of us. One would be encouraging investment in “the commons”—the schools, the roads, the electronic infrastructure, all of the things that bind all of us, rich and poor, together. Another would be to realize that western civilization will not crumble around us if a janitor earns $15/hr. And a third would be to realize that the solutions to our problems are to be found neither in businesses pursuing the shortest of short term interests, nor in individuals seeking to “milk the system” for every crumb that could be eked out of a bloated government bureaucracy. Keeping it simple, we all have a tough choice to make: to pull our own weight and to share fairly—a perfect reflection of Torah values.
What kind of world are we leaving for our children?

Apparently, a world where they won’t get paid very well, where all they can eat is cotton, and where racism and patriotism are easily confused.

Not a pretty picture. And it could be made worse. Much worse.

I could easily add the issues of human trafficking and slavery—can you believe it, slavery in the 21st century?! And women’s rights—every time they pass a new law in Texas, I cringe and go hug my daughter. And then there’s the hollowing of education, the substitution of identity politics for serious thought, and of historical amnesia for historical analysis. And, of course, insane drug policies that are as ineffective now as Prohibition was in the 20’s—but with even worse unintended consequences. And more and more.

And to this point, I have only spoken of broad social issues. I haven’t even begun to address the more personal questions. What are the “cans” in your life that you’ve been kicking down the road? What are those choices that you have been postponing well past the point of urgency? If today means anything, it means that G-d is offering you a choice to move forward. It may be a tough choice—if it really matters, then it definitely will be a tough choice, otherwise you would have made it already–but at least it’s a choice you have.

Just do it.

I learned a lot about choices a few weeks ago at the USY and Kadimah encampment I had the privilege and pleasure of attending. Most exciting for me was the idea that our kids—and I’m happy to say there were more kids from our congregation than from anywhere else in our area—were learning each day about values and boundaries and choices. Above all, about choices.

Among my fellow teachers was an outstanding young leader named Matt Fieldman.  Keeping a long story short, he spearheaded the establishment of a gourmet restaurant manned entirely by former criminals and one celebrity chef. The program has graduated 100 convicts, and not one of them has been reincarcerated. This, when the national recidivism rate is 60%

If we make smart and courageous choices, it’s amazing what we can do.

But what fascinated me even more than the happy ending was the beginning of the story. Matt met a guy at a football game. A few weeks later, he happened to meet him again at the best restaurant in Cleveland, where he turned out to be the manager. And a few weeks later, Matt chanced upon him yet again, this time in a library. The guy was trying to figure out where he could get grants to help him open this restaurant for training convicts he had been dreaming about. And Matt—a professional fundraiser—had a choice to make. He could have just said, “Well, good luck pal,” and gotten on with his business. But something inside him said, ”No. You can’t walk away from this.”

Call it what you want—luck, conscience, a hunch. I call it G-d—something made Matt decide to help. And because of that choice, the lives of hundreds of people, and their families, and their community, improved immeasurably.

So far, at least, they all did live happily ever after.

G-d gave him a choice, and it changed the world.

Hashem is giving us choices all the time. And the choices we make can change the world. But all too often, we don’t hear G-d telling us about it. And more often still, we forget that we’re even supposed to be looking for it. The message of today’s Torah reading is that the quality of our lives during the year ahead will be a reflection of the choices we make. Especially the choices we Jews make.

Because Jews are supposed to care. Think of the concept of tikkun olam, the repair of the world. It may seem bizarre that his little fraction of the world’s population actually imagines that it will change the world, but guess what? We’re right.

You know how when you need something done in your house, somebody’s got a guy?

Well, as far as the world is concerned, we’re “the guy”.!!!

We Jews, we’re “the guy”!

Ever since Abraham, we’ve been the guy.

And we’ve got the Torah values to prove it. You want to talk about immigrants? In the Torah, concern for the stranger is commanded 36 times—it’s the most repeated mitzvah. Environment? Bal tashchit—a direct prohibition on wanton destruction of the environment or of anything else, plus Shabbat, the most elaborate ecological ritual on the planet today. Wage stagnation? Judaism considers it a crime against G-d not to pay workers their promised wages, and on time.  (Take that, Chris Christie!)

When you drive around in the South, you often come across billboards with a picture of the Bible on them, and a message that says, “When all else fails, read the instructions!” And your initial reaction is often, “How quaint.” Or perhaps “How naïve.” Or maybe, “How primitive.” But when the congressional approval rating is stuck at 15%,–that’s one five percent– that is failure. It’s time for us to choose to follow the instructions, and to make real sure our so-called leaders do so as well.

May the choices we make in the year to come reflect our deepest values, our respect for all people, our concern for our planet, our sense of decency and fairness. May they be choices that our children will be able to appreciate and honor. Above all, may they be choices, like those of Sarah our mother, that secure the future for us and for the Jewish people everywhere. Ken yehi ratzon.

Amen.