Click on the images below to listen to the sermon on the Torah From Boca podcast and the video on Vimeo
All my life, I held firm to my values as a Jew and as an American, vowing never to do this one thing. It goes against everything I believe in and even defied what my parents taught me as a child.
I’ve even wrote sermons about it—strong sermons. But this year, after much consideration, I’ve done the unthinkable. I’m embracing something new, something that once felt totally out of character. Yes, friends, this year…I celebrated Halloween.
Don’t worry, I’m not a pagan, we’re still on the same team; I just took my daughter trick or treating, that’s it! My conversion to trick or treating relates to another big day coming up - election day, this Tuesday. So let me explain a little bit about why I made this change, and my history with Halloween.
Growing up as a child of immigrants, I have no memories of going trick or treating with my parents, or dressing up in costumes except on Purim, but we did give candy out to trick or treaters. When I was a teen, I went trick or treating so I could be like everyone else, but I experienced more tricks than treats, so that was it.
For years in our house in Boca, we allowed the kids to dress up, and give out candy, But our third child, and only daughter, wasn’t having it, and she began persuading us year after year. Like any transgression, I dabbled first. I will take you around the block once, but that’s it. This year, I put the costume on for the first time, and took part in the hallowed tradition of walking your children around your neighborhood begging your neighbors for candy.
But, it wasn’t just Layla that brought me to change my ‘practice’. I learned something through trick and treating with Layla during these years leading up to 2024. Instead of just driving to our homes, we made eye contact with our neighbors, and they talked to us; not only that, they welcomed our children with smiles when they came knocking on their day asking for things.
If we were all dressed differently, you would think that you’re in some idealized 1950’s version of America; where kids were out in the streets at all hours, parents watching all of the children regardless of their background, and smiling when they come to their door to ‘borrow’ sweets.
It’s a weird day of civic unity with candy corn and skeletons. That’s the treat part. I guess election day used to be that, at least that’s what I remember. But that’s why I was machmir (the Hebrew term for following Jewish religious law strictly) about Halloween this year; because I wanted to see the smiles before what may happen in the coming weeks.
So yes, there is this big day coming up on Tuesday, and like Halloween, is is not a public holiday, but it’s a holiday that we all know: Election Day.
Disclaimer here: I will not be endorsing or talking about either candidate. Not only that, I will not be hinting at any candidates. For example, over the high holidays, when I was speaking about Sarah’s fertility issues, I was not hinting at IVF. If you want to know who I voted for, talk to me at Kiddish. Today, I’m talking about us, Americans, and how the election affects us.
In this week’s parashah, we read the short story that is known throughout the world: the story of the Tower of Babel. There’s an interesting connection to the first part of the parashah, the story of Noah and the destruction of most of humanity, and the tower of Babel. In Hebrew, the deluge that destroys humanity is called the Mabul מבּול and the word, בבל. God destroys the world during the Mabul, but promises that God will never again destroy humanity. God, however, does not promise that no one will destroy humanity. In this respect, God gives us the power over our own species fate.
The Tower of Babel story begins in Genesis 11:4, when we read about the Tower’s purpose:
וַיֹּאמְרוּ הָבָה נִבְנֶה־לָּנוּ עִיר וּמִגְדָּל וְרֹאשׁוֹ בַשָּׁמַיִם וְנַעֲשֶׂה־לָּנוּ שֵׁם פֶּן־נָפוּץ עַל־פְּנֵי כל־הָאָרֶץ׃
And they said, “Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered all over the world.”
The surface reading of the text is that the people wanted to come together to build a tower higher than any of them could have built as individuals, and that God prevented the power of human unity by confusing their speech. But, the story is much more profound once we dig deeper.
Was the building of this tower a sin, and if so, what was the sin? Surely God who could create and destroy the earth wouldn’t be scared of humans building a tower to reach the heavens. The rabbis of the midrash tell a different side of the story.
There was someone in charge of this building project: an Emperor named Nimrod. Nimrod, the grandson of Noah, is introduced as the first man of might (a gibor or hero) on earth. According to the Midrash, he was a mighty hunter, he was gifted the clothes that Adam and Eve wore in the garden of Eden, and he developed a following.
With the tool of intelligence which led to new technology, Nimrod changes the intention of the tower. The rabbis say that Nimrod did this all to promote idolatry, the worship of other gods, but there are no other gods mentioned in this story.
I propose that the gods are actually us, human beings, and he was at the center of us all. He was meant to be the god.
During the construction of the Tower, Nimrod perpetuated the idea that bricks were more important than people. The Midrash (Pirkei D’Rabbi Eliezer 24) teaches that when a man fell down and died, no one really paid attention, but if one brick fell down, they would sit and weep and say: Oy to us, when will another one be hauled up to take its place.”
Bricks over people was arguably his greatest sin.
Our tower of Babel is the internet, but it’s in already in the cloud, and it stretches across the entire world. It was built to unite us, which was the original intention of the Tower. It was meant to connect us to people, but instead it isolated us from them. Many of us fell into the danger of thinking that we were each Nimrod. We are the most important thing in the universe, and the world revolves around us because in a sense that is what the virtual experience is. It is intoxicating, and it leads us to think that we are each one of us Nimrod. Our opinion matters more than anyone else’s because it’s our world.
Bricks can be made out of different things though, they evolve. The bricks of today are the 1 and 0s of binary that made the code that make up our digital world. They are neutral until we set them in the right order.
The division of the internet has clearly left the virtual world and has come into the real world. I was talking with a Pastor recently who said that his congregants will not talk about politics because they don’t want to know how their friend at church voted because they can never look at them the same again - this goes on both sides, for both candidates.
When have we seen this much political violence and hatred before in America? When did people become avatars? Is it Halloween every day in America?
My job isn’t to tell you who to vote for, and who not to vote for, but I am here to teach you that there is more to life than politics, and its more than hearing how great your side and your candidate is.
The Akeidat Yitzhak, a Hassidic commentator, said that the sin of the generation of the Tower of Babel was that they wasted the gift they had of being united by one common language but sharing the same ideas became unanimously convinced that the aim of their existence was a political society. Their sin was not in trying to achieve this but in regarding it as an end rather than a means to a still greater end-spiritual well–being.”
We are more than the political masks we wear. It took a holiday where we wear silly masks for me to be reminded that deep down, this country is made up of people love kids and candy, and want to live together. We have been led astray by a tower that wants to reduce us to bricks rather than the souls that we are. We must want a better life for ourselves and our fellow citizens, or else, why are we engaging in this grand American experiment?
I believe that voting is not just a nice thing to do; it’s a mitzvah, a sacred obligation to have a voice in the society we call home. But, as Jews, we also have an obligation to use our voices on election day and after to safeguard the dignity of our fellow man.
Our neighbors are not bricks, or numbers, they are people.
Ultimately, my Halloween experience, of seeing each other beyond our labels, our opinions, and our ‘avatars’, has prepared me for life beyond election day. We are commanded to love our neighbors, and we cannot do that by reducing them to a single vote or belief or by seeing them as numbers or bricks in a grand structure. We are each more than that.
On Tuesday, as we cast our ballots, let us honor the dignity of each voice—ours and our neighbors. Our tradition calls us to use our voices to shape our world and elevate it, reminding us to treat one another as the divine creations we all are.
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