We approach the end of the Yom Kippur service and these High Holy Days. This is the sixty-sixth year that I deliver a message on this Day of Atonement. Again, I remember: these years have seen many wars throughout the world, an attack directly against this country bringing down the world trade center, extraordinary development of technology, the ordination of female rabbis, and a host of other personal and national tragedies and blessings that we mourn and celebrate.  So, as I reflect on this life’s experience and attempt to see the present and the future through the lens of these many years, the Torah portion and the Haftarah portion help to provide profound meaning to that search.

We have read the nineteenth chapter of the book of Leviticus, known as the holiness code. It should be seen as a clear statement of who we are as the people of Israel. Atem Kedoshim, you are holy because I the lord your God am holy. The word kadosh means to be set aside for a purpose. The holiness code tells us that purpose.

You shall leave a portion of your field for the poor and for the ger, stranger. You shall be charitable to those who are in need and those who have not achieved citizenship in your community. You shall not steal and you shall not deceive – you shall not lie to one another and you shall not swear falsely. You shall not insult the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind. You shall not exploit your neighbor. You shall not do injustice in judgement. You shall not seek vengeance or bear a grudge. A ger, a stranger who dwells among you shall be like a citizen and you shall love that person as yourself, because you were strangers in the land of Egypt. Holiness is not just a feeling – it is action. It is refusing to exploit someone else’s weakness.

That is a synopsis of the holiness code. We read it because we believe we are bound to live by it. We also are the messengers to the world. These are the values by which all people should live.

Then we read the book of Jonah. God sends Jonah on a mission. He tells him to go to the city of Nineveh, a city where the people have forgotten the holiness code. It is a brutal place. Jonah is given the task of warning the people of impending doom if they do not change. Jonah does not want to be that savior. He tries to escape on a ship to Tarshish, but God creates a terrible storm. The sailors are confused, but they come to understand that Jonah is the cause of the devastating waves around them. They throw him overboard, a giant fish swallows Jonah and he survives for three days, eventually to be expelled onto shore. He must go to Nineveh. He does so and warns the people, but he does not want them to be saved. Jonah wants a world in which there are clear boundaries between those who are good and those who are evil. He does not believe in forgiveness. At the end of the book, the message is clear – be a messenger and change those who violate the values demanded of us. When they repent, welcome them into the world of caring and compassion and justice.

At no time during these many years of delivering a Yom Kippur message have I felt more sympathy for Jonah. He was angry that evil would be rewarded, that those who have lived their lives promoting only themselves would be forgiven. It was a task he did not want.

And yet – the prophets all have the same message – that we, the descendants of Abraham must speak out. Abraham challenged god at Sodom and Gemorrah – would god destroy the innocent with the guilty. Would this god act unjustly? Jacob wrestled with a being and his name became Israel – to struggle with God. We struggle because we see the evil in the world and we know that we have an obligation to be a messenger, but we like Jonah hesitate because those who are evil are not worth the trouble.

My message after these many years remains the same –we must confront those whose words, whose actions, whose lives represent a rejection of everything that the holiness code teaches. We see every day cruelty, dishonesty, corruption, revenge, the abuse of power, the destruction of our environment, lawlessness, theft, treating the stranger as someone sub-human, denying women the right to choose and all people the right define who they are, seeking to create a world where the few will control the many-a world where individual freedom and democracy is destroyed. Jonah was cynical – he did not believe that those who were evil would say al cheyt – for the sin we have committed. Jonah also was guilty. If he could not change them then he was obligated to make certain that they did not change him and to speak to those who were good that they would prevent that evil from destroying Nineveh and the world. We must not be guilty of having to say al cheyt for committing the sin of silence, or the sin of inaction. When Abraham walked with his son Isaac to the sacrificial altar, he saw hamakom from afar. The word makom means place, but it has been used in commentary to mean god. He saw holiness. Abraham believed there still was justice and compassion and honesty and welcoming the stranger and goodness in this world. He made certain at Sodom that it prevailed. This is our moment at Sodom. Let us too make certain that the evil that threatens this nation to which we arrived in 1654 and the nation born of our dreams in 1948, and that threatens life everywhere shall be abolished from this earth.

I have always loved Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

Let us all take that road where our voices are heard and our actions bear witness to the values we represent, that road where we never will need to say al cheyt for the sin of silence and inaction, that road to a better world, that road where we see hamakom, the goodness that we believe must prevail, that road that gives