Says our Prayerbook:

This is the day of God.
This is the day of Awe.
This is the day of decision.
This is the day of our atonement.

Think about it. Whether the Shofar of Rosh Hashanah or the dreidel and menorah of Chanukah, or the seder of Pesach, every holy day has its symbol or symbols. And on Yom Kippur, we, you and I, are its symbols.

Each of us, created in the very image of God, admittedly imperfect, but striving toward something better -- we are the symbol of this Day of Atonement. And so it is a day of profound soul searching, a day of asking pardon, and a day for finding the courage and the insight to begin anew. This is the ideal moment to give up these old excuses, and to go ahead and deliver on the promises we've been making to ourselves for so very long. Such is the nature of this sublimely sacred day of days!

Many years ago, Harry Emerson Fosdick, minister of New York's Riverside Church and surely one of the great American preachers of the 20^th century, was invited to speak at the University of Beirut. And people of all faiths jammed into the auditorium to hear what this renowned Christian preacher would have to say to them: Christians, Muslims, and Jews, they were all waiting in expectation. And when Dr. Fosdick stood up to speak, he said-

I have only one question to ask of each of you. What's your religion doing for your character?

We've been reflecting on the Prophets during these High Holy Days, and what "LIVING THE PROPHETABLE LIFE" means in this 21^st century. Well, Isaiah--perhaps our greatest prophet--born and raised in Jerusalem-- who, in 740 BCE, began to deliver the message that God placed in his heart and mind--Isaiah dramatically challenged his people to meaningfully address the evils of their day and society.

When Isaiah spoke, he was preaching to his fellow exiles, the many thousands who had been sent off to Babylon, and who then developed a hard- nosed social structure which encouraged the rich to exploit the poor. Of course, those upper class Jews still showed up to pray and fast on Yom Kippur, and they no doubt figured God would be sufficiently impressed. Isaiah's task was to inform these "Fortune Five Hundred sinners" that God saw through all of their public piety. Isaiah went on to distinguish religion from observance.

Isaiah's words ring out across the centuries as loud and clear as the day they were first articulated. His words are read in every synagogue on the face of the earth today. You heard them only minutes ago. What did he ask?

Is not this the fast I look for: to unlock the shackles of injustices, to undo the fetters of bondage, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every cruel chain? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and to bring the homeless poor into your house? When you see the naked, to clothe them, and never hide yourself from your kin?

Only to do three things--Assot Mishpat: Do Justly. And then what? Ahavat Chesed: Love Tenderly! And finally, Hatznay-ah Lechet eem Elohehcha--Walk humbly with your God.

Now, I'm going to save Micah's third requirement to address during the Memorial service later this afternoon. I want to address myself this morning to this issue of "Loving Tenderly."

Some things never change-- and human nature is one them. John Ruskin reminds us that

when a man is wrapped up in himself he makes a pretty small package.

One remembers how Rabbi Abraham J. Heschel once cautioned:

Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became oppressive. . . . When religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.

The first is to be kind.
The second is to be kind.
And the third is to be kind.

First Servant can't stand it, even though it is his master who is doing it. And he says to him, "I have served you well, and if ever I have served you well it is in this moment. Master, don't do this cruel and wicked thing."

His master pays him no heed, so First Servant draws his sword and aims it at his master's chest; but before he can drive it home, Regan, standing behind him, draws a sword and stabs First Servant so that he falls down dead.

Now this whole incident takes only eight lines in the play. The man's name is not even mentioned, and yet, says one astute critic,
"If it were life and not merely a play, and if we could choose the part to play, that is the part we should choose."

The part of this dear, good man who sees evil being done and simply can't stand it, who draws his sword, and in the act of so doing is struck down. "That," says the critic, "would be the part to play."

Would I have chosen to play that part?  Would you?  Or would we rather conform, preferring to do anything but rock the boat and call attention to ourselves.

I'll never forget watching a film documentary of Yale psychologist Dr. Stanley Milgram's experiments in human obedience to authority. The film was based on his book titled The Perils of Obedience. Its chilling conclusions continue to haunt me. Do you know about them?

Milgram's experiments were designed to test just how much pain an ordinary citizen would be willing to inflict upon another simply because they were ordered to do so by an experimental scientist. Does this ring a bell?

Here's how the experiment was structured. Two people come to a psychology laboratory to take part in a study of memory and learning. The experimental scientists designate one of them as "the teacher" and the other as "the learner." They explain to both that this is a study concerned with the effects of punishment on learning.

So the learner is taken to another room where his arms are strapped to prevent excessive movement and an electrode is attached to his wrist. He is told that he will be read lists of simple word pairs. He will be tested on his ability to remember the second word of a pair when he hears the first one again. However, whenever he makes an error, he will receive electric shocks of increasing intensity.

Ah, the real focus of the experiment is the teacher, and not the learner. After watching the learner being strapped into place, it is the teacher who is seated before an impressive shock generator. The instrument panel consists of 30 lever-switches set on a horizontal line. Each switch is clearly labeled with a voltage designation, ranging from a mere 15 volts to 450. Some of the switches have been labeled with signs reading "Slight shock," "Moderate shock," "Intense shock," "Danger," "Severe Shock." The very last and most potent switch is identified with the ominous sign reading, "XXX."

Remember that it is the teacher who is the genuinely naive subject and who has come to the lab in order to take part in a paid scientific experiment. The learner or the victim is actually an actor who is receiving no shock at all. The point is to ascertain just how far a person will proceed when ordered to inflict what he honestly believes to be increasing pain on a protesting and suffering victim.

You can bet that conflict arises when the "learner," supposedly receiving the shock, begins to indicate from behind the booth that he is experiencing discomfort. At 75 volts, he grunts, at 120 he complains loudly, at 150 he demands to be released from the experiment. At 285 volts his response becomes an agonized scream. And soon thereafter, he makes no sound whatsoever.

For the teacher, who is of course, the real focus point of the experiment, the situation quickly becomes one of gripping tension. It is not a game for him. The manifest suffering of the learner presses him to quit, to call the whole deal off, but every time he hesitates to administer the next shock, the experimenter orders him to continue with the experiment. Clearly then, in order to extricate himself from this hellish plight, the teacher must make an overt break with the source of authority.

Before embarking on these experiments, Dr. Milgram sought predictions as to their outcome from various strata of the community--psychiatrists, college students, middle-class adults, faculty members. And with a remarkable similarity, all of them predicted that only four percent perhaps would even reach the 300 volt level, and that in all likelihood only a pathological fringe of one in a thousand would administer the ultimate shock on the board.

Do you know of the forty subjects in the first experiment, 25 obeyed the orders right down to the very end? It was obvious that few subjects derived satisfaction from inflicting pain, but they did like the feeling they got from pleasing the experimenters. They were proud of doing a good job!

I know that these are sobering thoughts for Yom Kippur Day. But there isn't a better day to entertain them; to ponder our nature and to underscore our ability to rise above indifference, pettiness and mean spiritedness.

Such evil was not limited to the Inquisition or to the Nazis or to the Taliban and Osama bin Ladin. There is, as Hannah Arendt taught us, a banality of evil. Evil can be perpetrated by everyday folks ( dare I say it?) like you and me.

ave you read Yan Gross' new book, Neighbors? It's a heart breaking chronicle of how 1600 Jews were killed by their Christian neighbors in the Polish town of Yebvabne, just about sixty years ago. A handful of Gestapo and eleven German police watched as, within eight hours, these Polish residents enthusiastically rounded up their Jewish neighbors, men, women, and children, and herded them into a barn and set it on fire. Mr. Gross maintains that had this town not been occupied by the Germans, the Poles would not have conducted the slaughter on their own initiative. But given the directive to do so, the killing proceeded by willing participants.

In an editorial this summer on Yan Gross' book, columnist George Will concludes:

At bottom, the explanation is not in this or that national history but in humanity as it quickly becomes when severed from social restraint.

Following the horrendous terrorist attack upon thousands of innocent Americans, and the horrible loss of life from such sadistic acts, our nation rightfully desires to make the murderers pay. This raises, however, ethical dilemmas for us all, even as it does for our people in Israel following terrorist atrocities on their streets. Every instance which invites one to impart less than human worth to one' s sworn enemies in the wake of cruel and bloody acts of terrorism--such times represent occasions of sublime moral testing for any people, Jew or non-Jew. Do we live by our principles and moral grounding or do we simply reap vengeance?

Years ago Langston Hughes wrote:

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars,
I am the Red Man, driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek
and finding only the same ole stupid plan
of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

It has never been easy to live morally. We are buffeted by fierce emotions and we sometimes choose poorly. Especially now in America, in the shock, the pain, and continuing trauma of September 11th, it will be all the more complex and challenging to comport ourselves with unerring judgment and compassion.

A certain humility is called for. It is not inappropriate to ask ourselves what we might have done at Yebvabne sixty years ago. And, by the way, would you have stood up and said, "No way" when that scientist in the white lab coat insisted, "The experiment must continue"? There is no better day to ponder such questions.

The Talmud opens with what appears to be a deceptively routine question: "from which moment-on should a person recite their morning prayers?"  Now the ancient sages offer a variety of answers. One of them suggests it is time to say the morning prayers--

When it is light enough to distinguish between blue and white.

Rabbi Eliezer goes on to argue, No, when the daylight is strong enough for us to distinguish between blue and green. Rabbi Meir proposes that, before we recite the morning prayers, it must be light enough to distinguish between a wolf and a dog.

But the majority of scholars were in agreement when, at last, the suggestion was made that the time for morning prayers has come when one sees another person's face and recognizes them as their brother or their sister.

Micah's timeless prescription--"Assot Mishpat--Do Justly and Ahavat Chesed-Love Tenderly" assists us in recognizing our brother and sister; in finding the way to claim our humanity and our highest selves.

Yes--

This is the day of God
This is the day of Awe
This is the day of decision
This is the day of our atonement.