Redemption: The Connections Between Us
Redemption: The Connections Between Us
Kol Nidrei Eve Sermon 5787
Rabbi Sam Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha, Tucson, AZ
What invisible threads connect us to other people? What are the unseen synapses that link human beings together in the great fabric of creation, that allow us to supersede our lonely, isolated individuality and realize we are part of something much greater? Most of the time in our lives we don’t even know that these connections exist. But there are moments and events when these nexuses, these unnoticed, hidden strands become visible. Only then are we likely to become aware of the way our own lives are part of a more complicated system in this cosmos, and understand that we are truly connected to others, and the universe, in a deep and powerful way.
We can call our becoming aware of this a tale of redemption. The Hebrew word for that, Ge’ulah, is part of our Jewish prayer vocabulary in every evening and morning service, the Mi Chamocha, in which we remember our salvation from destruction at the shore of the Sea in Moses’ time. That represented redemption from violent death. But I think ge’ulah, redemption, to us can mean something quite different. Redemption truly is those moments of knowing that we are connected to everyone and everything, and so to God. In fact, maybe that very connection is God. So, this then is one story about redemption.
My friends, many of you are no doubt fans of the Tucson Festival of Books, but if you aren’t yet, you should be. It’s quite an event. It’s one of the major book festivals in the country, ranked third in the US. Every spring hundreds of authors and over a hundred thousand readers gather at the University of Arizona to hear from writers and to talk about and buy books. It was launched some years ago by former congregants and friends, Bill and Brenda Viner, and it’s run now by Abra McAndrew Friedman, a member of Beit Simcha, and it’s a lot of fun and an incredible experience. The Book of Ecclesiastes says:
עֲשׂוֹת סְפָרִים הַרְבֵּה אֵין קֵץ “of the making of books there is no end,” and the Tucson Book Festival certainly demonstrates the truth of that.
There are many events at the Festival, including plenty of author’s panels, in which a group of writers—typically three or four—talk about their books, and take questions from a moderator and the audience. Each of these panels has the moderator start the questioning, and over the years, I have been asked to moderate Festival of Books sessions a number times, usually for a subject related to religion or Judaism or ethics, or another topic I am supposed to know something about. I have moderated Festival of Books sessions on books about paradise, and the afterlife, and on books that dealt with contemporary ethical issues; often the authors were Jewish, which is no great surprise. I love books and reading and good writing, and writers are always enthusiastic and articulate about their own works. Plus, I have the advantage of having interviewed hundreds of authors over the 24 years of the Too Jewish radio show and podcast, and I actually read the books before the session, which the authors are genuinely grateful for.
Our Beit Simcha member, Lori Riegel Roman is on one of the Festival of Books’ committees, and I was asked to moderate a session about books focused on redemption, famous people who managed to rise from challenges to achieve some sort of redemption. When Lori asked me to moderate the panel, she mentioned I was the right choice since two of the books were about musicians—I know something about music—and two had connections to Los Angeles, where I grew up, and all three involved redemptive arcs, which seems quite Jewish; plus, the authors were all Jewish. At least that was the original panel. But then, one of the authors withdrew shortly before the festival. That meant it would be panel of just two books.
To be honest, I hadn’t paid too much attention to the books or the panel until a few weeks before the festival—I have this day job, you see, as a rabbi—and so when I turned to the books, I realized they formed a most unusual pairing. Both books were about music and were written by Jewish authors; that much was true. The first was about Brian Wilson, of the Beach Boys, and was written by an author named David Leaf. It turned out that Arlene Leaf, an active member of Beit Simcha since our beginnings, is his cousin. Well and good; I know the Beach Boys’ music—growing up in Southern California you couldn’t help but know it—and was familiar with his story, which indeed combined great success, creative musical genius, a mental breakdown, and a return from the abyss. The second book, I was pleased to discover, was written by a former top baseball writer for Sports Illustrated, a Jewish guy named Jeff Pearlman whose stories I read in the magazine for years. He’s written a number of books about sports, including the book Showtime which the popular HBO series Winning Time about the Los Angeles Lakers was based on. But this book was a departure for him. It was not about sports. It was about music, alright: rap music. It was a biography of Tupac Shakur.
Now I know a lot about Jewish music, and Broadway musicals, folk music, and classic rock; a decent amount about classical music, opera, Gilbert and Sullivan, jazz and madrigals, some country music, and New Wave and popular music through, oh, 1990. I know some reggae, and heck, barbershop quartets and Civil War music. I even know pop music from the mid-2000s up until today, because by then I had kids old enough to bring me up to date, and the teenagers in our congregation like to share what they listen to nowadays.
But I don’t know anything about rap music, not at all. I might know less about hip-hop. My introduction to rap music came abruptly in rabbinic school in Jerusalem in 1991 when I brought along about 50 CDs—remember CDs?—and a portable sound system, and my younger classmates were briefly thrilled—until they realized that I hadn’t brought the rap and hip hop music that was their pop music of choice. I know nothing about rap. While I had heard of Tupac Shakur and knew he died young and violently, that was pretty much the extent of my knowledge of him.
In my capacity of moderator, I emailed the two authors, noting the panel probably included two books on the whitest American musician of all time, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, and the blackest American musician of all time, Tupac Shakur. Jeff Pearlman, a very funny guy, emailed back, writing:
“I can say, with 100-percent certainty, of all the panels I've been on that involve discussing Tupac and Brian Wilson with an Arizona-based rabbi, I believe this will be best.” How could it not be?
For those who don’t know—I was certainly among them—Tupac Shakur was a hugely influential rapper, sometimes cited as the greatest ever, and a crucial figure in the development of hip hop. His success was meteoric, including number one hits and albums—he has sold 75 million of them—and although his entire career lasted just 7 years before he was killed, he recorded an incredible amount of music, and made several films as well. To prepare for this odd task, I opened Jeff Pearlman’s book and started to read.
And almost immediately I was struck by an extraordinary story he told.
When Tupac Shakur was starting out in music and acting, just 19 years old, he was cast in his first film in a small role. There’s a lot of down time on a film set, and one day he was reading the newspaper and saw a very rough story about a 12 year-old girl, Brenda, living in public housing who had been raped by a cousin, impregnated, and never told her fractured family about it. This 12 year-old girl had given birth at home, alone, and, not knowing what else to do, had thrown the baby down a trash chute into a dumpster. The baby was recovered by a custodian who heard cries coming from a plastic trash bag just before he was going to compact it, and he saved the baby boy. After he read the story, Tupac told a co-star, Omar Epps, that he needed a minute; he went into his actor’s trailer and wrote a song in twenty minutes called, “Brenda’s Got a Baby.” It went onto his first album, and became a hit, and a favorite of Tupac Shakur’s.
In the nearly 25 years since that story came out, the song was written, no one had followed up on what happened to the baby that 12 year-old Brenda discarded in her desperation. Pearlman decided to find out, and contacted an old friend, Michelle, an ace researcher. They didn’t know the name of the baby, or anything else about him, except the date he was recovered. Yet somehow this researcher found a phone number. Pearlman contacted the number, and it turned out that he had found the right man, who lived in Las Vegas. He was a nice young man named Devon Hodge, who said, “You found the right guy. I’m the baby who was thrown down the trash heap.”
What happened was that the saved baby boy was put up for adoption and raised by a good couple. Devon Hodge always wanted to know more about his origins. When he found this out, he sent his DNA to one of the $100 genetic services out there, and discovered he had a huge extended family. These relatives told him he was the baby that inspired Tupac Shakur’s song, “Brenda’s got a baby.” And he was reunited with his larger, extended family; he went to a big family reunion back east, and even took a photo standing next to the trash dumpster he was rescued from.
But he still never had met or been connected with his mother. So, Pearlman went back to his wizard-like researcher, and she found the mother. The researcher, Michelle, called the woman, and said, “Did you have a baby back in 2001?” And the woman started screaming, and crying: “Do you know where my son is? Do you know where my son is? I’ve been looking for him for years. I live in Newark, New Jersey, but I’m away from home at a concert.” The researcher said, “Where’s the concert?” And the mother answered, “It’s in Las Vegas.” And the researcher said, “Your son lives in Las Vegas.” And so that night, in Las Vegas, Devon Hodge met his mother for the first time; it turned out that she had given him his first name at the hospital after he, and she, were rescued by police, and the adopted family kept it. It was an amazing reunion, filled with crying and hugs and emotions most of us cannot imagine. A miraculous reconnection. All because of a song.
Look, Tupac Shakur lived a talented, chaotic, short life. But that his song brought this mother and child together, in a positive and extraordinary way, is amazing.
There is an odd temporal connection here; you may have heard that Tupac Shakur’s killer was, in fact, finally convicted of murder this month some 30 years after the death.
So why am I telling you all this? Am I now suddenly an afficionado of rap or hip-hop music? Do I want you all to become fans of Tupac’s music? Is it because Pearlman called his book, using a quote from Tupac, “Only God Can Judge Me,” and it’s Yom Kippur, when we are all, by Jewish tradition, judged by God?
It is an incredible story, of course, improbable—and, in its own way redemptive, which was the excuse for that book session in the first place. Tupac was shot to death in a period when rap music and hip hop were identified closely with gang violence, when gangsta rap often spread misogyny and glorified bloodshed. Yet this early song somehow brought about a remarkable reunion, years later. This extraordinary true story about unlikely family reunion reminds me of three Jewish parallels, imperfect but evocative.
The first is the story of our great patriarch Joseph in the Torah. If you recall, Joseph of amazing dreamcoat fame, was thrown down into a kind of garbage pit himself, by his own brothers, before being sold into slavery in Egypt. His father, Jacob, was led to believe that his favorite son was dead. He spent the next 20 years mourning his lost son. And then, against all odds, two decades later, Jacob discovers that his son is not only alive, but the most powerful leader in Egypt. Their reunion is quite amazing in Genesis: there is crying, and tears, and hugs, and incredibly powerful emotion. Ultimately, this reunion, of the entire family of Jacob, literally the children of Israel, is the basis for the formation of the Jewish people. It too, is a miraculous moment of true redemption.
There are also many extraordinary reunion stories from the time of the Shoah, the Holocaust, of parents who believed their children were dead, of children who believed their parents were dead, of husbands and wives separated by the Nazis who somehow survived and managed to find each other: in DP camps in Europe, on returning to their destroyed hometowns, in Israel, in America. One of the most remarkable of these true stories was a family of 10 Hungarian Jewish siblings—close to Jacob’s 12 sons in number-- the Katz family, 9 of whom improbably survived the camps, all of whom thought the others were dead, only to be reunited after the war. Their parents and one sibling were murdered by the Germans. Yet against all odds the remaining 9 survived and went on to live successful, full lives.
One day after the end of World War II, one of the surviving brothers, Moshe Katz, who had begun a new life, saw two filthy, gaunt-looking men, sitting on the front steps of his apartment in Budapest. Altruistically, he offered these concentration camp survivors some nourishment. One man pointed to the other and asked if Katz recognized him. Moshe did not, at first; it turned out that he had been unknowingly offering food to his own brother...
A final Jewish parallel story, of sorts. This past year, one redemptive event should have had greater resonance than it apparently has. Last October, just after the end of the Jewish fall holiday season of 5786, the final 20 Israeli hostages, held by the Palestinian terrorists of Hamas for two full years, were released, and came home. The reunion for these hostages was long in coming, and their experiences since October 7th, 2023, can only have caused massive personal trauma. And yet, against all the odds, they were finally brought home and reunited with their families and their country. 251 Israelis were taken hostage on that terrible day; 85 ultimately died, either that day, and their bodies were taken into Gaza, or over the two years that followed.
But over those two years, 166 were saved from captivity, and reunited, in a fulfillment of pidyon shevuyim, the mitzvah of redeeming captives. If you have watched the emotional scenes of reunion, of the sense that the entire nation of Israel, all 10 million people, breathed fully again for the first time in two years. This was more than a simple redemption of captives. It was a redemption for the entire country. The return of the last hostages to Israel was, in its own way, a miraculous national redemption.
Many things went wrong this past Jewish calendar year; war in Iran and Lebanon; settler violence in the West Bank; antisemitic attacks in England, Australia, Michigan, indeed, seemingly everywhere; the normalization of antisemitism on the political left and the political right. It is easy to feel that we are in a truly bad time.
But the truth is that these moments of incredible connection are there; they are always there. If we choose to look, if we work to see the semi-invisible lines that link us all together, we can find these moments of extraordinary redemption. Because they are truly just a reminder that we are all connected, always; that God is not necessarily in the great and overwhelming experience of revelation or transcendence, but in the many moments of connection that can show us how we are all, truly, part of a greater whole.
It’s true: often we can only become aware of our interconnectedness, our redemptive possibility, through extraordinary events. Maybe we have to see a baby saved and reunited with his mother years later through a song; maybe we have to see a family saved from its own failures and raised up; maybe we have to see salvation from destruction, and redemption from captivity before we can know that there is more in this world than just us, that there are forces at work that save, and redeem, and sanctify.
But I can promise: if you look deeply enough, on Yom Kippur, but also on an ordinary day, you will find those connections. You will find your own moments of true redemption.
Over this festival of Atonement, over this long day of Teshuvah, may you each find those connections. And so experience true redemption.