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SERMON: Rabbinic Intern Rebecca Thau | Building a Sukkah of Truth
In this thought-provoking sermon, Rabbinic Intern Rebecca Thau explores the concept of truth within Judaism, particularly in the context of contemporary challenges such as misinformation and polarizat...
SERMON: Rabbinic Intern Rebecca Thau | Building a Sukkah of Truth
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Interactive Transcript
Speaker A
Welcome. You are listening to Central Synagogues Podcast featuring sermons, lectures and conversations from Manhattan's historic Central Synagogue. I'm Rabbi Angela Buchdahl. Each week we invite you to listen to messages of strength and hope given by our clergy on Shabbat or Jewish holidays. You can also listen to audio recordings of other programs and lectures given at Central by subscribing to this podcast on the platform of your choice. If you'd like to watch our livestream services or learn more about our congregation, I invite you to Visit us@centralsynagogue.org We hope you enjoy this week's sermon.
Speaker B
Is it true that the ancient Israelites lived in huts in the desert? Is the Torah true? Two different people who had never met each other independently asked me these questions over the summer, and at first I thought it was just a weird coincidence. And then I started to wonder why, of all the questions someone could ask about Judaism, why did these two people want to talk about truth? And then I realized we're living through a time when truth's value, truth's mere existence, is questioned more than ever. Swirling accusations of fake news and alternative facts make it difficult to distinguish honest reporting from partisan pandering, and politicians from different parties say such opposite things that it can feel impossible to discern what's really going on. And the preponderance of deep, fake AI generated material leads us to question what we see with our own eyes. Even as we wait with bated breath for news that we might finally be nearing the end of two years of war in the Middle east, many of us have felt confused and conflicted, unsure what to believe. As one Jerusalem based journalist recently asked, how are sane citizens in Israel or anywhere else supposed to know what's true and do the right thing? Our growing inability to distinguish fact from fiction feels disorienting and has real world consequences. I fear that this trend contributes to our intense polarization and perhaps even to recent political violence. So it makes sense that my conversation partners wanted to know what Judaism has to say about truth. This question feels more pressing than ever. It turns out Judaism cares a lot about truth, so much so that our rabbis compare truth to God. The Talmudic sage Rabbi Chanina teaches, God's signature is truth. Truth distinguishes God because truth is a lot like God. This comparison teaches us that truth is sacred, worth striving for, and difficult to discern. Multiple times a day, we Jews declare Shema Yisrael, hear O Israel, Adonai is our God. Adonai is one. If truth is like God, that means that truth is also one. But this doesn't mean that our tradition imagines the truth to be a clear, digestible, easy to agree upon entity. Quite to the contrary, Judaism's theory of truth is complex. Let's take Scripture as an example. One of our traditional Sukkot readings, the Book of Ecclesiastes, describes itself as Divrei emet, words of truth. And every time we bless the Torah like we will tomorrow morning, we call it Torat, the Torah of truth. But we know that Tanakh has some fanciful stories and internal inconsistencies. So what could we mean when we call it all true? For Bible scholar Benjamin Sommer, these snags in the text teach us that truth is something we strive for more than something we can possess. In other words, Scripture isn't true because it conveys one clearly digestible thing, but because it conveys the breadth of humanity's never ending interaction with the divine and our imperfect attempt to perceive and preserve those interactions. Summer's contemporary perspective builds off of traditional rabbinic techniques. Our sages gifted us a messy, multivocal interpretive tradition. Inventive stories called midrash, legal disputation known as Machloket commentaries and commentaries. On those commentaries, they believed in a range of possible interpretations. Because truth, like God, can be elusive, our attempts to discern truth might only get us a sliver of the way there. So we need lots of different approaches to advance towards that ultimate goal. And our rabbis teach that disagreeing in good faith brings us closer to perceiving the truth. A mosaic comprised of multiple interpretations is a truer picture than one vantage point alone. To be clear, though, our rabbis did not think that everything is relative where anything goes. Rather, they believed that hearing multiple unique interpretations helps us to see the truth of our texts and our world more fully. Yes, our rabbis disagreed and debated, but their differences were about how to interpret text, not about whether text existed. By first agreeing on a basic set of shared facts and then interpreting those facts in unique ways, our rabbis offer us a guidebook. Can we emulate their example? Can we keep striving for truth even as we acknowledge that we'll never fully grasp it or agree on how to interpret it? Our contemporary crisis of truth is bigger than any one of us can solve alone. But that doesn't mean that we're powerless. There are steps that we can take to honor and preserve truth in our everyday life. We can consult multiple news sources instead of jumping to conclusions or staying siloed in our preferred echo chamber. We can rely on scientific consensus instead of discounting expertise, we can take other people's opinions seriously instead of disregarding everyone who disagrees with us. We can go out of our way to verify what we see on social media instead of immediately reposting. And most crucially, we can remember that our religious tradition compels us to see truth as sacred and worth pursuing this Sukkot in addition to comparing truth to God, perhaps we can also compare truth to the sukkah itself. A sukkah is fragile, built from a couple of poles and some sparse tch over the top. This flimsy construction isn't a flaw, it's a crucial feature for a week. As we dwell in a physical structure that's vulnerable and easy to knock down, we develop a deep sense of humility towards the natural world. Now imagine if we saw truth in this way, too. Imagine if we honored truth's fragility, humble, humbly admitting that our perspectives are limited while sanctifying our obligation to build towards truth. Nonetheless, how might this outlook shift our mindset and actions? How might it strengthen us for this bewildering moment? May the physical Sukkot that we dwell in this week serve as a constant reminder to us that truth is holy, often elusive, and always worth striving for.
Speaker A
Thank you for listening to this edition of Central Synagogues podcast. Be sure to subscribe so you're in the loop on future episodes, and please follow us on social media or watch our livestream@centralsynagogue.org our Facebook page, or on national cable at the Jewish Broadcasting Service. Thanks again for joining us.
Speaker B
Sam.