Rabbi Tracee Rosen
Congregation Kol Ami, Salt Lake City, Utah
Erev Rosh Hashanah 5768
(c) 2007, Rabbi Tracee Rosen. All rights reserved.
A brief pop culture quiz:
If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you may not be one of the millions of readers of the seven Harry Potter series of books, which was just completed this summer after ten years of publication in the United States. The series, which sold over 325 million copies worldwide, and has been translated into 65 languages, is single-handedly credited with creating a resurgence of reading among the pre-teen and teenage crowds. Five of the books have been released on film, all in the 50 highest grossing movies of all times. The author, JK (Joanne) Rowling is the first author to ever become a billionaire from book sales, with some estimates that she may now be more wealthy than the Queen of England.
The publication of the seventh and final book in the series was so eagerly anticipated that bookstores all across the world stayed open all night on July 21 to give their customers first crack at the novels. Keren and I were in Hawaii that weekend, so I didn't pre-order it. But on Sunday, July 22, I made sure we had found a bookstore on Maui, and had a copy in hand by the end of the day, and by that Tuesday evening had finished my first read-through of the book.
For those who aren't familiar with the books or the movies, here is some brief background, without giving away too much for those who are still planning on reading them:
Harry Potter and his friends inhabit a fantasy world based in England of the early 1980s, where there exists a class of people who possess abilities to do magic, in addition to the rest of us non-magical types, who are known as Muggles. At the beginning of the series, Harry, an orphan, is rescued from the cruel household of his aunt, uncle, and cousin, and at the age of 11 is told that he is a wizard, and is to begin his magic education at a special boarding school, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He discovers that his parents were both killed fighting an evil wizard who called himself Lord Voldemort, and that while Harry had unexpectedly survived the same attack on his life, he was left with a scar shaped like a lightening bolt on his forehead.
Harry makes his way to Hogwarts, befriending two other first-year students who all end up together in the same dormitory. The first is Ron Weasley, a young man whose entire family is deeply involved in Wizard society, and Hermione Granger, a young woman who was born to non-magical Muggle parents, but who demonstrated early magical abilities. The three friends subsequently embark on seven years' worth of adventures - enduring the trials of a magic education at a British boarding school, and at the same time encountering and conquering various aspects of evil, as slowly Lord Voldemort resurrects himself from near-death to once again try to destroy the young Harry who becomes his nemesis. They are assisted along the way by a number of adults, including the headmaster of Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore, and Harry's godfather, Sirius Black.
As the most popular fiction series in history, much has been written alternately about either the influences of Satanism and witchcraft in the books, and subsequently other authors have explored in great detail the Christian themes which abound in the books. Both of which might lead one to ask, "Why would a rabbi talk about Harry Potter on Rosh Hashanah?"
It actually turns out that many of my colleagues are planning to do so, and I believe the reason is clear. Harry Potter, at its core, is great myth, and like other really great myths, we can learn profound truths about our own lives from reading the stories, even fictional stories, of others. For that reason, at its core, Harry Potter is a very Jewish experience.
I'm not just talking about the most obvious Jewish reference in the series: the unforgivable killing curse used by Voldemort to kill Harry's parents among others is Avada Kedavra - a clear adaptation of another generally well-known magical incantation, Abracadabra, which comes to us from medieval Kabbalistic literature. Abra Kedavra is Aramaic for I will create as I have spoken (emulating, by the way, the process of divine creation as described in the beginning of Genesis). Avada Kedavra is Aramaic for the opposite - I will destroy as I have said - or the ultimate killing curse.
To me, the series contains Jewish lessons for these days of awe in four different ways:
I.First, in the final book especially, we find major themes of teshuvah, repentance. A major theme of the series is that of human accountability for our own actions. In the first book, Dumbledore tells Harry, "It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." At any point in their lives, people can choose to change, and in Rowling's world, we see characters who we thought of as unredeemably awful, demonstrate profound changes for the better by the end of the series.
In the first five books, Harry has a hate-hate relationship with his only first cousin, a large brutish lout named Dudley Dursley. Dudley never misses and opportunity to torture Harry and to get Harry in trouble with the aunt and uncle who are Harry's guardians. Yet, after Harry saves Dudley from an attack by wicked creatures in Book 5, Dudley's behavior toward Harry changes profoundly by the final book.
One of the characters who seems to be Harry's nemesis throughout the series, a man named Severus Snape, has pretty much everyone convinced that he is actually working for the forces of evil. Yet, for some reason, Dumbledore claims to trust him. The true story of Snape's background and motivations for his actions are withheld from Harry and from us until nearly the end of the final book, when we learn the lesson that the rabbis taught in Pirkey Avot, the Ethics of our Sages, when they taught, "al tadin et chavercha ad she-tagia limkomo, don't judge your companion until you have stood in his or her place."
The prospect of repentance is available to everyone, even the most evil character in the series, Lord Voldemort. It turns out that Voldemort has attempted to become immortal by creating items called horcruxes, which contain a portion of his soul. As long as the horcrux survives, even if Voldemort is killed, he's not irreversibly dead. The horcrux can only be created by the act of murdering another human being. Each time a person creates a horcrux, it creates a ripping in his soul, leaving what remains very unstable.
In a scene in Book 7, Hermione informs Harry and Ron about the process of creating horcruxes.
Later, in their final confrontation, Harry remembers Hermione's words, and offers Voldemort a chance to change. Harry says, "Before you try to kill me, I'd advise you to think about what you have done...Think, and try for some remorse...It's your one last chance," said Harry, "it's all you've got left...I've seen what you'll be otherwise... Be a man... try ... Try for some remorse..."
In the Unetaneh tokef prayer of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we read, "You desire not the sinner's death, but that he return from his path and live." Harry offers Voldemort the same choice, and I'll leave it up to you to read and see what happens.
II.A second theme in the books which I find particularly relevant to our community is the issue of the purity of bloodlines. Clearly written as a cautionary tale, not only against the idea of Aryan supremacy, but also against more universal notion of racism in general, we see a recurring theme in the books. The bad guys tend to flout their pure-blood lineage, and deliberately put down those who are half-bloods, that is who have one wizard parent and one ordinary muggle parent. These pure-bloods are especially cruel to those were born to totally non-magical parents. Those people are referred to by the derogatory term, mudblood, and are ultimately subject to discrimination and violence, when the supporters of Voldemort begin to gain power.
And yet, throughout the books, we see that genetics seems to play no role in people's characters or abilities. Some of the brightest, most talented, and most worthy of the characters were either muggle-born, like Harry's deceased mother and his friend Hermione, or half-bloods, like Harry himself, and it turns out, like Voldemort, too.
The lesson for us is clear. Societies, including the Jewish community, have much to gain by being open and welcoming of diversity, a lesson we know very well, here at Kol Ami. We are blessed by so many families in our midst who have chosen Judaism for their families, even though that was not their faith tradition of origin. We have many children being raised by a single Jewish parent, and we are grateful to generosity of spirit of the many non-Jewish spouses and partners who create Jewish homes and raise Jewish kids.
III.Third is that the primary driving force that motivates Harry through each book is a desire to know and understand the stories which create their identities.
Harry is orphaned at the age of one year. He has no direct memories of his parents, and subsequently expends much effort throughout the series to learn about his past: who his parents were, how they met each other, who their friends and enemies were, what motivated them in life, what their hopes and dreams were for him.
This is a universal truth. Our identities are shaped by the stories we tell of our own origins, and the meaning we give to them. In fact the meaning we give is often more important than the historical factuality of the tale. In Keren's family, the story is told that the family name on her father's side was originally Slaterovich. According to family tradition, when great-grandpa Bill was in line at Ellis Island, he was standing behind a fellow named Goldberg. When he reached the immigration desk, and they asked him his name, he replied, "Slaterovich," to which the officer replied, "You be Goldberg, too." Now my friends at the Jewish Genealogical Society tell me this story is pure myth, that name changes happened before people got to Ellis Island, but it's a funny thing, the family kept the name Goldberg, they didn't go back to Slaterovich, and I think part of the meaning of the story is that in America, everybody got a new start.
As Jews, most of whom immigrated to this country within the last 120 years; most of us have our own family's immigration tales. These are the stories of how our ancestors came here with nothing, found some kind of gainful employment, and worked their way up from poverty to be able to bring the rest of their family to America, and to provide a better life for their kids and their families.
But our foundational stories are not just the life stories of the ancestors we personally knew. Just last week, a gentleman in the process of conversion, told me a story of telling off his mother-in-law, when she scolded one son for being bossy to his younger brother. "Quit being a little Nazi," she said. "Mom", he told her, "it's not okay to call my son by the name of the people who were the cause of such horrible persecution to my kids' ancestry." I was surprised by his comment, and I was proud. We both knew full well that nowhere in his children's lineage are there direct descendants of holocaust survivors. None of their great-grandparents were even Jewish. Yet, their father claimed that ancestry for them, and he was right. Our connection to our foundational stories give us our moral and spiritual ancestry just as much as our DNA gives us our physical inheritance.
Think about it. Every year on the fourth Thursday of November, we gather together in great family clans, and as Americans, we recite one of our great foundational stories: Our ancestors, searching for religious freedom, braved terrible odds and came to these shores many years ago, and after a difficult first year here, joined together with those natives were already living here to share in the bounty of the land and to give thanks to God for their ability to survive (now, we don't really focus on the parts where we infected those same natives with non-indigenous diseases, stole their land, and forced them onto reservations). It doesn't really matter that in this entire room, there probably isn't more than one family which can actually trace their family tree back to the pilgrims. Because for that brief moment before the turkey, we are all spiritually the descendants of the pilgrims, and we can all claim the good parts of that heritage proudly.
We do the same thing when we gather together as a Jewish community, be it weekly on Shabbat or now at the High Holy Days. We refer to God as God of our ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah, not because we know factually that we are descended from these individuals, or even necessarily that these are historical figures. We claim the right as descendants, whether we were born Jewish or we chose that heritage for ourselves, because the life lessons they left as their legacy, together with the stories of their faults and human weaknesses, teach us in profound ways what it means to be human, and how to aspire to living good and godly lives.
By retelling our stories and passing those lessons down to the next generation, we create tangible memories and meanings that survive our own lifetimes.
IV.Finally, for me, as an adopted child, and for many of us, who are first generation transplants to this Zion of the West, Salt Lake City, for those who have chosen this Jewish path even if they weren't born in to it, and to those who were born to it, but continue to choose it despite all the other choices available in modern times, the most Jewish message of all in the Harry Potter series is that right here and right now in our generation, it is our choices that are truly creating our identities, our families, and the stories that will remain for future generations to tell.
Just as Harry ultimately finds his own identity through the help of the friends he chooses early on, so too do we choose our friends, our community, and the meaning that we assign to them help us create our own stories and forge our identities.
Tonight, as we recall the early foundational stories of humanity and the Jewish people, we remind ourselves that it is both the stories that we tell, the memories we pass on, and the actions that those stories inspire, that help us realize our full potential, as Jews, and as human beings. As Albus Dumbledore reminded Harry, "It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."