By Rabbi Gordon Geller
Temple Emeth Shalom

Rabbi Gordon Geller

This summer our vacation - one of largely enjoying the beach delights at the shore - was uniquely enlivened and certainly enlightened by being "home alone" with our nachesdic, young granddaughters. Their understandably apprehensive parents had driven back to Washington D.C. bereft of the kids, ages 3 and 5, for the very first time. Thank God, the Geller clan is rapidly increasing. Numbers 6 and 7 ayneklac are holiday gifts arriving at Rosh Hashana and Chanukah, respectively, this year. So when they all assemble for "Pesach Seder by the sea" we will have 7 under 6 - a veritable Jewish Romper Room.

One of several unexpected lessons I learned from this summer's delightful, cross-generational experience (the Sages maintain that one should learn from "all the teachers" we encounter - meaning everyone, but especially "from out of the mouth of babes") is that "nobody" is a very real though often uninvited and troublesome visitor. Consequently, if a coloring book was torn up, or crayons broken, or milk just happened to spill, or room after room of scattered toys can't ever seem to be picked up, by some strange coincidence "nobody" almost always gets the blame.

And since these youthful insights occurred immediately prior to the on-rushing High Holiday season, I began to conjecture about the universal tendency - and double-edged usefulness - of transferring blame. Doesn't this strike close to home in that Jewish tradition repeatedly allows for the plural "nobody" to be the object of our own ritualized recitation of wrong doing, i.e. "Ashamnu," "we have sinned." Even though you and I both know that teshuvah, "repentance," should always be up close and personal.

Bringing to mind, for example, the quaint yet highly individualized "teshuvah"- custom of a small-town congregation, I once shepherded, at the beginning of my rabbinate. Family members would eagerly, publicly and none too quietly point out one another during the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur "Ashamnu" sin-recitals. "Grudges - that's you Harold; greed - who else, Sylvia; grumpiness - gottcha Frank."

Although this kind of highly identifiable, projected repentance was risky business, to be sure, today's opposite passing-the-buck to an invisible "they" or "nobody" ("yenem" in Yiddish) will also and inevitably lead to more serious consequences. Such as ignoring pressing social needs or even corruption in our communities by invoking the smug assurance that it's not really my concern. Rather, "they" - usually politicians and police - ought to do something about this mess.

Unfortunately, that "nobody," essentially a lack of individual dedication and commitment, comes back to haunt us. Sooner or later, the headlines typically scream of "shocking betrayal of the public trust" by the likes of elected officials and even rabbis accused of bribe taking, money laundering, or black marketing of transplant organs. Likewise, the same "nobody" blame-game disguise holds true for the simultaneous and sensational demise of Michael Jackson whose personal abuse of cosmetic surgery and prescription drugs has been defensively attributed to society's collective, misplaced culture of obsession with fame and celebrity.

The latter illustration being a pernicious rationalization best refuted by the conservative critic George Will. This prominent writer convincingly argued that, instead of depending on great Presidential plans and grand governmental initiatives, what our country needs most today is individuals who do what they know they ought to do. Which is surely this rabbi's High Holy Day vision of how to build an ethical and belongingsynagogue community one responsible Jew at a time. Faithfully yours.