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זָכְרֵֽנוּ לְחַיִּים, מֶֽלֶךְ חָפֵץ בַּחַיִּים, וְכָתְבֵֽנוּ בְּסֵֽפֶר הַחַיִּים, לְמַעַנְךָ אֱלֹהִים חַיִּים

Remember us for life,
O King who delights in life
And inscribe us in the book of life
For Your sake, O God of life.

I suppose the meaning of these words should be fairly straightforward.  It is often said - indeed I have often said - that Judaism is a religion of life.  But it really wasn’t until the last few years that I started to understand what that means.

I used to think that it meant that Judaism is focused not on some after-life, which is only tentatively and hesitatingly described in our tradition, but rather on the needs and the conduct of the living.  This is true enough.  But I have come to understand over time that Judaism’s focus on life goes a lot further than that. 

For instance, it has taken the dramatic decline of birth rates in the West - now well below replacement levels in most countries - for me to appreciate that Judaism is not just about the preservation, but also the perpetuation, indeed the increase of life.  פְּרוּ וּרְבוּ וּמִלְאוּ אֶת־הָאָרֶץ וְכִבְשֻׁהָ is the first instruction given to humanity: be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and master it.  And God promises Abraham סְפֹר הַכּוֹכָבִים אִם־תּוּכַל לִסְפֹּר count the stars, if you are able to count them, כֹּה יִהְיֶה זַרְעֶךָ so will be your offspring.  To be a religion of life is to believe in the goodness of life, and to create more of it - such that the world teems with life.

But it goes beyond that.  Our religion of life focuses on how people behave and not on what they believe.  Indeed, the Torah’s main focus is on prescribing behavior - not belief.

The book of Deuteronomy, which we are always finishing at this time of year, is explicit about this.  It is replete with verses linking obedience to God’s commandments - that is to say, our behavior - with a good and prosperous life.  In Chapter 4 we read “Observe (God’s) laws and commandments, which I enjoin upon you this day, that it may go well with you and your children after you, and that you may long remain in the land that Adonai your God is assigning you for all time.” (verse 40)  In the next chapter, in the repetition of the Ten Commandments, we are told “Honor your father and your mother, as Adonai your God has commanded you, that you may long endure, and that you may fare well, in the land that Adonai your God is assigning to you. (5:16)  In Chapter 22, in the midst of a series of commandments that touch on what we would view as ethical behavior in our day-to-day conduct we are told that, when collecting eggs from a nest, be sure to first shoo away the mother “in order that you may fare well and have a long life.” (verse 7)  I could go on citing verses such as these, but I think the message is clear: the Torah links a flourishing life with obedience to God’s commands.  That we are commanded is really all we are required to believe, and not any doctrine or dogma.

But there is an even deeper reason why the Torah attaches its focus on life to behavior rather than belief.  Put simply, it doesn’t trust us with belief.

To understand this, you have to look at the Torah’s most powerful and dramatic statement linking life with behavior.  As it happens, it comes in the Torah portion we just read this past Shabbat: 

See, I set before you this day life and prosperity, death and adversity.  For I command you this day to love Adonai your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments, His laws and His rules that you may thrive and increase, and that Adonai may bless you in the land that you are about to enter and possess. (30:15-16)

The closing words of this oration by Moses are stirringly beautiful, and I have quoted them in any number of sermons, Divrei Torah, and study sessions:

I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day: I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse.  Choose life that you and your offspring would live. (30:19)

As beautiful and powerful as these verses are, they are even more astonishing.  And they are so because they contain what might be Judaism’s most counter-intuitive, yet also most profound insight into human nature: when given a choice between life and death, human beings actually have to be commanded which one to choose.

What the Torah understands is that, when we move from the realm of behavior to that of belief, our capacity to screw things up is almost unlimited.  And it all comes down to this: we have an endless fascination with death, and that fascination will, over time, lead to a culture - not of life - but of death.  Consider, if you will, Moses’s repeated warnings to the Israelites not to follow in the ways of the Canaanite peoples they are about to conquer:

When you enter the land that Adonai your God is giving you, you shall not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations.  Let no one be found among you who consigns a son or daughter to the fire, or who is an augur, a soothsayer, a diviner, a sorcerer, one who casts spells or consults ghosts or familiar spirits, or inquires of the dead.  For anyone who does such things is abhorrent to Adonai, and it is because of these abhorrent things that Adonai your God is dispossessing them before you. (Deuteronomy 18:9-12)

This is, indeed, a continuous caution throughout the Torah and it is based on the idea that people will inexorably be drawn to the occult.  It’s the idea that, as terrified as we are of death, we are also dangerously fascinated by it.  

If it were true in Moses’s day, is it equally true of us?  Are we becoming a culture of death?  At the risk of committing augury, I am deeply troubled by what I see.  While the drop in fertility rates may not itself translate to a culture of death, it certainly seems to indicate a decline in the desire to be fruitful, to multiply, and to fill the earth.  

And while this troubles me, I am all the more bothered by the growing debate about physician assisted suicide.  I know many of you will be in favor of such laws, but notably, wherever they have been enacted, the number of people availing themselves of such services always far exceeds original estimates, and the conditions that qualify as valid reasons for ending one’s life are ever expanding.

Declining fertility rates and the debate over legalized suicide are each much larger topics that demand greater conversation in this community and beyond.  But for me, they are part of the backdrop to what I consider the most troubling sign that we are indeed becoming a culture of death.   I am speaking of  the world's reaction to Israel's war against what the writer and commentator Douglas Murray calls a death cult.  

I want to draw a very bright line here.  I am not talking tonight about those who wish to see the Palestinian people live safely and peacefully under some sort of self-rule.  Nor am I talking about those whose hearts go out to all the suffering in Gaza.  I will talk about that on Yom Kippur.

But tonight I am talking about those who either explicitly or tacitly embrace Hamas, for Hamas is a death cult.  Any governing body that intentionally integrates its military with its civilian population is a death cult.  Any military whose battlefield tactics include sexual assault, or whose fighters record and publicize their killings on social media is a death cult.  And any culture whose leaders proudly declare - as Hamas’s leaders have - that they love death more than we love life, is a death cult.

What troubles me so deeply is the fervor with which Hamas’s war has been embraced, particularly among the young, the educated and the influential.  We saw this in the immediate aftermath of October 7, when rallies and demonstrations broke out on college campuses and on city streets around the world, even as Israel was just beginning to bury its dead.  And we see it today in the passion this conflict continues to evoke among those who zealously chant “from the river to the sea,” even though many of them cannot identify either body of water. 

I look at all this passion and anger targeting a country I have visited so often and whose people I have grown to know and love and I am utterly dazed.  Israel is an imperfect country, but I know in my heart that the charges so vehemently leveled against it will not withstand even a moment of objective scrutiny.  So what is going on here?  I fear we are watching the emergence of a culture that has lost its way; a culture that the Torah warns us will forever be tempting us; a culture that has forgotten to choose life.

That is why the plea that tonight we began adding to our daily petitions - Remember us for life, O King who delights in life - is so powerful and so radical.  For in it, we not only pray for ourselves, we affirm  our sacred mission before the One who gave us life.  Teach the world to choose life.  And even when all the world says no, still, choose life.