This I Believe - 4/9/54

A more patient person than I might have read every last one of my father's sermons, completely categorized and prioritized them before making a selection of them available for public consumption. I have been reading these archives for almost nine months. That is pretty much as long as I am willing to have them gestate. As much as I yearn to pull together a precisely edited and comprehensive sampling of his thousands of pages of sermons, I am compelled to start, as we sometimes say at the office, "flying the plane while I am still building it!" The hazard here is that perhaps the selection and arrangement of these posts may not be optimal. I say that not as an apology, but as a bit of context to this first post which offers not his first sermon, nor his last, but one from the very middle of his career.

This is a compelling essay. What draws me to post it first, perhaps more than anything else, is one line that in a way summarizes the entire collection of sermons.

It might be good if all of us sat down and tried to write out

in a few hundred words just what it is that we believe.

The following sermon came in the midst of the hysterical period of anti-Communist accusations and investigations instigated by Senator Joseph McCarthy. It was a period when speaking one’s mind could result in severe consequences. Edward R. Murrow, the renown broadcast journalist distinguished himself, not only for confronting McCarthy and exposing his demagogic tactics, but also for celebrating free expression via a radio series and subsequent book, This I Believe. Rabbi Sidney Ballon was unafraid of stating his beliefs.

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The most important job a person has to do is to run his own life. Everyone of us is constantly making conscious or unconscious decisions as to what we are to do with our time and our talents, what shall be our relationship with our family and with other peoples, how much of our energies shall we devote to selfish pursuits or to the good of greater numbers. Some people make these decisions as the result of serious thinking and planning. Other people merely drift into what amounts to a decision as a rudderless boat is carried by the wind and tide. The decisions we make—or fail to make—depend entirely upon what the moral and spiritual standards are that we have set for ourselves, what are our aims in life, what are our beliefs, and by this we mean not the things we merely we pay lip service, but what we really feel deep down in our hearts.

I wonder how many of us know exactly what we believe? In the rush and struggle of our modern life very few of us take time to sit quietly and meditate about a philosophy of life for ourselves. We live in an age of fears. And added to the fears that were brought to our attention by our President[i] a few evenings ago—communism, the atom bomb, war, unemployment and so on—added to these is perhaps the fear of ourselves. We are constantly running away from ourselves as if we were afraid of the conclusions that we come to if we paused for any length of time to take stock. This is an age of pleasure seeking. We are a generation of escapists.  The majority of us do not care to look at our own lives or life in general from a long-range point of view. We grasp primarily at only what the moment will bring us. We drink unprecedented amounts of alcohol. We form great crowds to look at sports spectacles. Dollars go into pleasure seeking which we would not dream of using for substantial causes. It takes an immediate and acute crisis to sober us up and carry us above our selfish thoughts.

It is precisely because our times are so materialistic and life so confused and hectic that people ought to take inventory of themselves.  The happiness and moral strength of ourselves as individuals, of our families, and our nation depend on knowing what we believe and on our being able to believe in values that will lift us up and give us a sense of security and commitment to noble purposes.

It was to help people with this important need that Edward Murrow began his radio series, This I Believe. Murrow’s courageous indictment of Senator McCarthy[ii] is not the only noteworthy broadcasting achievement to his credit. This I Believe was also a contribution that had the public benefit in mind. A number of people who were known to be successful in their chosen profession and in their adjustment to the problems of life were invited by Murrow to appear on a five minute program and give their personal philosophy and to lay down the rules by which they direct their own lives. One hundred of these personal philosophies have also been gathered in book form, which some of you may have seen, and make interesting reading, and if we ponder over them can perhaps help us think through for ourselves the question of what we believe.

The manner of reaction of different people to the topic This I Believe will quite naturally be varied, but it is interesting to note how often similar thoughts are reflected in this collection. One such thought that many of us ought to ponder on is the comparative unimportance of material wealth in achieving peace of mind. Listen to what Alexander Bloch has to say. Bloch is a conductor of a symphony orchestra. His parents had not approved of a musical career for him. For that and economic reasons he was compelled to enter upon a business career and was quite successful. He might have been a well-to-do person had he stayed in business. But his love of music dominated him and he finally gave up his business position and embarked on a musical career. To his family and friends the thought of giving up a good position for a chance at music seemed a little short of insane, but if so he says,

Or read the thought of Elmer Bobst who was honorary chairman of the American Cancer society. He speaks of a number of his acquaintances who gather in a well-known golf club frequently and he says,

If material prosperity were the chief requisites for happiness, then each one should have been happy. Yet it seemed to me something important was missing else there would not have been the constant effort to escape the realities of life through Scotch and soda. They knew, each one of them, that their productivity had ceased. When a fruit tree ceases to bear fruit it is dying, and it is even so with man.

Another thought which some of these selected men share, is the feeling that we are not victims of chance and circumstances but that we ourselves share in the fashioning of our own destiny, in building our own happiness. “Nothing that can happen to you is half so important as the way in which you meet it” is the sentiment of a professor of anthropology.

Are you envious of other people’s talents? Then listen to Mauritz Melchior, who says that,

Talent in a person is indeed a touch of God’s finger, yet any artist must work hard and a human being can do a lot himself to shape his life.

Do physical handicaps disturb us? Then what of the quiet confidence of Helen Keller who feels that:

Fate has its master in the faith of those who surmount it, and limitation has its limits for those who, though disillusioned, live greatly. True faith is not a fruit of security. It is the ability to blend moral fragility with the inner strength of the spirit. It does not shift with the changing shades of ones thought.

And do the blows of life overwhelm us? Then hearken to Dr. Nelson Glueck’s[iii] discovery in a thunderstorm. Once on a bicycle trip when he so much wanted good weather a heavy rain fell. He was disturbed until he became aware that in the midst of the storm there were colors and contours of the landscape that appeared totally different from their appearance in the bright light, but out of which he also could draw beauty and inspiration. And he says it helped him realize that,

There is no sense in attempting to flee from circumstances and conditions which cannot be avoided, but which [one] might bravely meet and frequently mend and often turn to good account.

And yet another belief often mentioned is the faith in a power higher than ourselves which works through the world. This faith can come in many ways. Dr Robert McIver of Columbia University finds it in the wonder of all.

We learn more and more about things. We learn about the atom and about energy. But we do not learn about causes. We do not know about first things and we can only wonder about last things. The wonder is in me, and encompasses me, and lies forever beyond—and knowing no name for it, I call it God.

A physician, Dr. Edmund Brasset of Rhode Island, sees God in the mechanism of the human body.

It is the most ingeniously contrived mechanism on earth, a masterpiece of architectural design, a marvel of efficiency, but for all man’s knowledge of it today, he has just scratched the surface, and there is a non-mechanical and non-material element in it that we cannot see and cannot begin to understand, but it is there and raises man to dignity above the brute.

And Professor Harry Overstreet once stopped at a collector’s shop where stones and minerals of many kinds were on display. He was taken into a small room where there were some ordinary looking rocks, which he would not have given a second thought, but the man closed the door and that the room was in darkness and turned on an ultraviolet lamp. And suddenly brilliant colors of indescribable beauty were before his eyes. Similarly he feels that as he looks upon the universe and walks among his fellow human beings,

Hidden realities are all about us, and we simply do not see all that there is to be seen before our eyes whether in the physical or the human world. And when we become aware that there are glories of life still hidden from us, we walk humbly before the Great Unknown.

How to find the switch that will give us the hidden meanings of life is the major problem that confronts us all. How to cultivate the patience that we need to solve this problem, how to conquer the arrogance of human beings who feel that only what they can see immediately before them with their limited and finite senses is truth that can be relied upon and is worth having. Many of us pay lip service to the type of ideals which we have just described, but the tragedy of our times is that we do not really feel them or believe in them deeply enough so that our lives are influenced. It is not that we disbelieve. Our problem is that we neither disbelieve nor believe. We are drifting and are not being moved by moral compulsions.

It might be good if all of us sat down and tried to write out in a few hundred words just what it is that we believe. The very expression of our thoughts would do us good. And if we found the writing difficult I would suggest a few moments of heartfelt worship, a few glimpses of the majesty of nature, a few acts of kindness done for others, a few reflections of the good things of life we take for granted, a few moments of study of the resources that lie at our disposal in the Jewish heritage that has been given us.

The rabbis once said, “All is in the hands of God except the fear of God—that man must obtain for himself.”[iv] Believing is not something that will merely happen to us. Belief must be searched for and acquired. We must be willing to do the things which lead to belief, to make the effort on our own part. And if we would make such an effort we would be rewarded by the joy that comes when we can say with conviction, “This I believe!”

Nassau Community Temple

West Hempstead NY

4/9/54

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[i] April 7, 1954 President Dwight D. Eisenhower coined one of the most famous Cold War phrases when he suggested the fall of French Indochina to the communists could create a "domino" effect in Southeast Asia. The so-called "domino theory" dominated U.S. thinking about Vietnam for the next decade.

[ii] Edward R. Murrow’s weekly television show, See It Now, focused on a number of controversial issues in the 1950s, but it is best remembered as the show that criticized McCarthyism and the Red Scare, contributing if not leading to the political downfall of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Murrow used excerpts from McCarthy's own speeches and proclamations to criticize the senator and point out episodes where he had contradicted himself.

[iii] Dr. Nelson Glueck, eminent Biblical archeologist and president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

[iv] Rabbi Chanina explained: "Everything is in the hands of Heaven except the fear of Heaven." Babylonian Talmud, Niddah 1 6b 5.