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| From the Baltimore Jewish Times, November 7, 1986 our resolutions--must be touched not only by dreams of what might be, but also by an awareness of how things are. The Biblical prophets teach of this ten- sion between dream and reality. They speak of swords changed to ploughshares, and spears to pruning hooks. But they also teach that ploughshares must sometimes become swords, and pruning hooks change to spears. [Joel] The challenge before us is to hold onto tomorrow's dreams, but to struggle with today's reality: to learn from faith that dreams must give plans and actions direction; but to learn from life that reality must give them foundation. The challenge is to hold onto world dreams, but not to live in dream worlds. Malka Resnicoff sports a reminder There is a story about a zookeeper who of her father's trip to Reykjavik. opened a cage where a lion and lamb were lying down together, true to the Biblical promise. After some days, a reporter pressed him for his secret. "It's easy," he Small Steps Toward Big Dreams Rabbi Arnold E. Resnicoff delivered the following sermon at his Yom Kippur service in Iceland, during the summit talks last month between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. For individuals and for peoples. Yom Kippur brings a message, a challenge, and a warning. The message is that we can change-- and, through our actions, we can affect and change the world. The challenge is that we must change; break free from the past, and build a better future. The warn- ing is that change will not be easy: the world is not perfect, and we cannot act as if it is. It is filled with the bad, along with the good. And so our goals--and |
| answered. "Every morning we put in a new lamb." We cannot make peace with the lions of the world, or the bears, if the price of that peace is sacrificing lamb after lamb: if the cost is abandoning nations threat- ened by aggression from other powers, or peoples deprived of freedoms and human rights within their own lands. We cannot think the world is so good that our strength no longer matters. And yet we must hope that nations see that terrible strength brings its own terrible danger. From Samson we learn that power which destroys an enemy may mean our own death, as well. "Mutual Assured destruction" is not just a modern idea. And so we must strive, as individuals and as nations, to be strong enough to keep our dreams, and brave enough to take those first small steps, so that the long and difficult journey might still re- main a possibility. It is appropriate--indeed, perhaps providential--that the US-USSR meeting was scheduled for these Jewish High Holy Days. For Jewish dreams are in the air, and the Jewish challenge of Yom Kippur is on our minds. May the prayers and dreams of Yom Kippur touch us all, so that we each might take some small step in our own lives: so that we make some contribution in the year ahead to goodness and right- eousness in our communities. And may our prayers and dreams touch world leaders, as well: so that, with no wishful thinking, their thinking might nevertheless be filled with wishes--and with vision: wishes for freedom; visions of peace. May the world remember Iceland as the place, and Yom Kippur as the time, when we took one small step toward the biggest dreams of all. |