בִּגְדֵיכֶ֔ם וְאַל לְבַבְכֶם֙ וְקִרְע֤וּ
Rend your
hearts, not your garments.
My name is David
Gruber. I am a rabbi, here in Collin
County. In this capacity,
I work primarily with interfaith couples and officiate their weddings. I also
serve as the Development and Communications Director for the Metro Dallas
Homeless Alliance (MDHA). The mission of MDHA is to lead the development of an
effective homeless response system that will make the experience of
homelessness, in Dallas and Collin Counties,
rare, brief and non-recurring.
I wanted to
sincerely thank you for the honor of speaking here tonight. Special thanks to
my friend, Ekram Haque, for inviting me.
Fasting is easy.
Let me repeat that, fasting is easy. Now, at this moment you might be saying to
yourself, justifiably, "What does this guy know? HE never observed
Ramadan!"
And, of course,
you are right. So allow me to clarify. Fasting alone is RELATIVELY easy.
"Relative to what," you might ask. Relative to true change, relative
to true spiritual growth.
This was an idea
that Maimonides, the great rabbi and philosopher, who also served as a
physician in the court of Salah a-Din, emphasizes, drawing on the works of
Aristotle. He explains that the most difficult things to change are not your
volitional actions, but your behavioral traits and characteristics, that lead
to many of your actions. Modern science backs this up, as scientists explain
that 40% of what we do in our day to day lives is pretty much automatic. We
don't think; we just do. And changing in this area of our lives, innate
behaviors and well established habits, is so hard, because it actually requires
rewiring of neuron pathways in our brains.
However, difficult
does not mean impossible, and difficult certainly does not mean, "don't
have to". If Ramadan teaches us anything, it teaches us that! And so, we
must embark on a journey of change and growth that is not easy. We must fix
faulty innate behaviors and bad well established habits. In short, in the words
of the prophet Joel, we must rend our hearts, not our clothes. And as the great
Quaker thinker, Parker Palmer, said, you should not be afraid to let your heart
break, because once it breaks, your heart becomes open. You understand that
spiritual growth is not something that happens in isolation in your heart, but
by becoming a better person to others through your now open heart.
When we allow
our heart to look out on the world, and take the world in, our heart cannot but
soften, but also be ashamed and grievous. Here are some random facts that
relate to poverty and homelessness, issues I work on everyday. We live in Collin County,
one of the wealthiest counties in the country. Just south of us in Dallas County,
though, 20% of the population lives below the poverty line. That is 435,000
people. Just let that sink in. In Dallas and Collin Counties
we count the homeless once a year. We found 3,810 homeless individuals, and we
know that is not everyone. Almost 4,000 people! Here in Plano last year, a homeless veteran received
a housing voucher, a document that says that Uncle Sam will pay the landlord
who rents him an apartment, anywhere within a 50 mile radius. Do you know how
many apartment complexes he had to go to before he found a landlord willing to
rent to him? 71. You heard correctly, 71.
What the prophet
Joel, what Parker Palmer, what Maimonides, what the practice of Ramadan all
call on us to do is to not accept this. They say to me, David, open your heart,
you can do better! Do not accept the status quo. They call on our society, open
your hearts, do not accept the way things are! You can do better. The richest
country on the face of this earth can alleviate poverty, end homelessness, and
make sure that everyone enjoys the bounties it has to offer. The call is out,
the message is clear. Let us hope we heed this call and listen to this message.
If we do, Inshallah, our community will be a better place.
