YOM KIPPUR: Building Stronger Bridges

Atoning and Moving Forward

   Originally delivered as a Yom Kippur sermon in 1997, shortly after the occurrence of the events described here., this post can also be found in "Baseballs, Basketballs, and Matzah Balls: What Sports Can Teach Us About the Jewish Holidays ... and Vice Versa" by Rabbi Mitchell Smith (available on Amazon) 

On the evening of July 14, 1997, I made my way through the Tel Aviv rush hour traffic to Israel's National Stadium to attend the opening ceremonies of the 15^th Maccabiah Games. Along with 50,000 others, I came to watch the opening night pageantry saluting these games, a Jewish Olympics fusing athletic competition with the spirit of Israel, Zionism and the Jewish people. The ceremony was colorful and moving, a well-crafted if sometimes kitschy amalgam of old newsreels, choreographed numbers on the field, and narration commemorating the centennial of the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland and recounting the achievements of Zionism’s first 100 years.

As we watched footage of David Ben Gurion proclaiming in 1948 the establishment of the Jewish State, soldiers making their way to the Western Wall in 1967 marking the capture of the Old City of Jerusalem during the Six Day War, and images of Yitzhak Rabin shaking Yassir Arafat’s hand on the White House Lawn in 1993, all around me in the stadium cell phones began to ring. From the pieces of conversation that I was able to hear, I gathered that something terrible had happened. A few moments later an announcement was made bringing the ceremony to a sudden end and, foregoing the customary entrance into the stadium of each country’s delegation, all in attendance were ushered out.

Half an hour later, at the nearby home of friends, I learned from the TV coverage that the bridge which was to carry the delegations from the staging area toward the stadium itself had collapsed, toppling about 100 members of the Australian contingent into the Yarkon, a small river running through that neighborhood on its way to the Mediterranean. There were numerous injuries incurred in the fall, and two athletes were confirmed dead that first evening. Two others would subsequently be added to their ranks, and it was later learned that the deaths were caused not by the fall, but by the ingestion of untreated sewage that was in the Yarkon.

As this tragedy cast its pall over the entire Maccabiah Games, the following day was declared a day of mourning, and all competitions were cancelled. What would have otherwise been a time of wonderful opportunities to compete and excel became instead an occasion notably bereft of any excelling, a time for learning something about human nature and missed opportunities for “manning up.”

First to come were the unending condemnations of the decision to have gone on with the opening night ceremonies for some period of time once it had become known that the bridge had collapsed. As it turned out, key Maccabiah officials and dignitaries had already been informed of the events well in advance of the actual announcement to the public. Then-president Ezer Weizman, seated in the VIP section, was quick to claim that he was not the one opting to proceed with the ceremony, and anyway, no one knew at the time the extent of the calamity.  (Not true, it was later learned, but irrelevant in any event.)

“LIKE THE ORCHESTRA OF THE TITANIC, PLAYING AS THE SHIP WENT DOWN” read the very large headline the next day on the front page of the Israeli daily paper Ma’ariv. Televised coverage of proceedings in the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, showed one politician after another ascending the speaker’s podium to criticize that decision, and since talk is cheap, it seemed like a good time for all the parties (Israel has some two dozen political parties!) to get into the act. Even Arab members of the Knesset took the Maccabiah folks to task as they, too, were not to be denied their chance to be heard.      

The “talk fest” continued the following evening at the memorial service for the fallen Australian athletes, when then-mayor of Jerusalem Ehud Olmert declared that “the Games should go on – in the Maccabean spirit – for this is what the fallen athletes would have wanted.” What the dead athletes would probably have wanted, I thought to myself, would be to see the responsible parties held accountable for their negligence which resulted in the stupid and needless loss of lives. How much easier, though, to just keep talking, to toss out empty phrases like “the Maccabean spirit,” and to point an accusatory finger at somebody else.

The engineer who designed the bridge blamed the construction company for shoddy workmanship. The construction company officials claimed that they merely built the bridge according to the specifications they were given, inadequate as they might be to the task of carrying thousands of people. The Maccabiah organizing committee put the blame onto the event-planning firm which they had hired to erect the bridge. The bridge, it turned out, was built without the necessary permits, and local officials of the Ramat Gan municipality were also implicated. It seems that orders called for a bridge that was needed for only two hours. Supposedly the engineer had stipulated that no more than 100 people be allowed on the bridge at a time, surely an unrealistic, not to mention irresponsible, specification for an event of such magnitude.

It was reported in the press that the Maccabiah organizers had awarded the contract for the bridge’s construction to the event-planning firm because their bid of 90,000 shekels, (about $30,000 at the time) was so much lower than the 300,000 shekel estimate submitted by the Israeli Defense Forces. Since the army does not operate on a for-profit basis, the organizers should have been suspicious of a competing bid for a bridge to carry 5,000 people over the Yarkon that came in so much lower, but it appears that the pressures of meeting a budget prevailed, even though it resulted in the loss of lives.

The Australian delegation, mourning the loss of four team members and debating whether or not to stay on at the Games, was furious to hear that financial considerations had taken precedence over human safety. “Who cares if they went on with the ceremony or not?” asked one Australian athlete with whom I spoke. “What does it matter if they went ahead with dancing and the fireworks? The whole subject is irrelevant. The only question that really matters is how this tragedy was allowed to happen in the first place.” And yet, continuing to debate the matter of the ceremony as if it had any consequence, Israelis filled the airwaves with the sounds of their own self-importance. It called to mind the verse in Genesis after Cain had killed his brother Abel, and God says to him, “Hark! Your brother’s blood cries out to me.” The blood of dead athletes cried out, but none of the officials or dignitaries involved seemed to be listening as they were all too busy talking.

On the bus back to the hotel following the memorial program, the Australian basketball coach remarked, “Tell me why everyone here keeps saying, ‘It’s not my fault’? When is someone going to come forward and admit to at least a part of the responsibility in this?”­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

            Rabbi Hillel taught: In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man.                                    

  The fact that no one accepted any responsibility, but elected to pass the buck, caused me to think of the prayer which we recite on Yom Kippur, the Ashamnu confessional, in which we own up to our shortcomings. It is instructive that this confessional prayer, like so much of the Yom Kippur liturgy, is worded in the plural – we have transgressed, we have betrayed, etc., acknowledging our standing as a community before the Almighty rather than removing ourselves from the circle of responsibility. Even more to the point is the paragraph immediately preceding the Ashamnu, recited as we prepare to rise and confess our sins, in which we proclaim the following:

Our God and God of our ancestors, may our prayer reach You and may You heed our supplication. For we are neither so arrogant or stubborn as to say before You … “We are righteous and have not sinned, for indeed we have sinned.” (italics mine)

Several people were dead because of negligence. Nothing could change that. But some good could have come out of this tragic episode if someone (anyone!) had stepped forward to accept even a portion of the responsibility. What a remarkable thing it would have been, in true service to a society championing decency and in tribute to the fallen athletes, if someone, from President Weizman to the engineer to the Maccabiah organizers, would have risen to the occasion and admitted to making a mistake, instead of each one worrying only about securing his own political well-being. Would this not have been a more genuine and meaningful show of respect to the fallen athletes than a dozen memorials or two dozen speeches?

How welcome it would have been if Israel’s rabbinic leaders, entrusted (presumably) with the spiritual well-being of the country, would have come forward and said something of moral substance about the need, or even the benefit, of acknowledging when we have erred, rather than devoting their energies to ritual policing and using their positions (as many have done) for political entrenchment.*

There are many ways that we can shirk our responsibility, by denying that we messed up, by passing the buck, by rationalizing our behavior. We may find it easier to play the victim, to find excuses. But on Yom Kippur, we are reminded that our actions have consequences, and we are asked to “man up.” And while the fasting and prayers of Yom Kippur can bring about reconciliation with God, our tradition instructs us that only by reaching out in genuine regret to those we have wronged can we begin to amend our relations with one another.

On Yom Kippur we pray for forgiveness, and seek a clean slate. What a wonderful thing to be forgiven, to be offered another chance. In his book How Good Do We Have to Be? Rabbi Harold Kushner writes:

In ancient Israel in Biblical times, religion not only defined what was right and what was wrong … it also gave people something to do when they felt burdened by a sense of falling short of the mark and disappointing God. They would bring a sacrifice, a sin-offering, to God’s altar. Its purpose was not to “balance the books” with one good deed to offset every bad one, nor was it to bribe God to overlook their offense. Its purpose was to acquaint the donor with his or her better nature, to let him say to himself, “I know that I am not perfect … I am not a bad person.  I am a person who often does bad things, but more often does good things. And if that’s good enough for God, it should be good enough for me.” And the sages tell us that in all of Jerusalem there was no happier person than the man or woman who brought his sin-offering to God’s altar and walked away feeling forgiven.

     But we cannot find forgiveness until first we have acknowledged our shortcomings. The irony is that there is really no shame in admitting our failings, but rather a show of tremendous courage and character. We are not expected to be perfect, as the very name of this day attests. The word kippur comes from an ancient Near Eastern root k-p-r which means to cover over, not in the sense of sweeping things under the rug, but as in the growth of new tissue over a wound, covering over the scarred area. Just as nature has a process for healing and new growth, so do we have a spiritual process for doing the same.

Rabbi Hama ben Hanina taught: Great is repentance for it brings healing to the world.                    

Even in times of tragedy, times of confusion and chaos, times of weariness, or perhaps at those times most of all, we can find the capacity to admit we have strayed from the path of honor, and the courage to rectify our mistakes.

“Hear our voice, O Lord,” we recite in prayer on this day. But of no less importance is that we hear, too, by pausing to take stock of ourselves, by pausing from our activities and our posturing and our struggling to simply hear our own voice.

“Return us to You, O Lord, and we shall return. Renew our days as of old.” Yom Kippur offers us an opportunity to find the wisdom, the courage, and the call within to acknowledge our own shortcomings and take responsibility for our actions, so that we may renew our lives and bring strength and blessing to ourselves and one another. It is a time to commit ourselves to building stronger bridges, so that we may walk on them proudly and honorably in the coming year and always.