Search for Meaning: "Circles of Concern," Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback's Rosh Hashanah 2022 Sermon

In the latest edition of his Search for Meaning podcast, Stephen Wise Temple Senior Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback delivers his 2022 (5783) Rosh Hashanah sermon, entitled, "Circles of Concern." You can view the full video here.

The full transcript of Rabbi Yoshi's Rosh Hashanah sermon is below:

At the end of the movie, "Schindler’s List," Yitzhak Shtern, played by Ben Kingsley, presents Oskar Schindler with a ring. On it, he explains, are engraved words from the Talmud that say: "Whoever saves one life saves the world entire."

Schindler, played by Liam Neeson, is clearly moved. As he reaches out to shake Shtern's hand, he says, "I could have got more out ... if I had just ..."

"No, no, no," Shtern says: "... There are 1,100 people who are alive because of you—look at them ... There will be generations because of what you did."

"I didn't do enough," Schindler says.

"You did so much," Shtern tells him.

The survivors whose lives Schindler saved really did give him a ring as a token of their appreciation. The gold was sourced from their fillings which they volunteered to the ring maker.

But the part about the inscription from the Talmud was the invention of the filmmakers and, if you know your Talmud, you might actually think that they got the quote wrong.

The original text that teaches that "whoever saves one life saves the world entire" comes from tractate Sanhedrin and the context is interesting and important.

It's part of the instructions a judge gives to witnesses in a capital case, warning them to be extra careful with their testimony since a person's life is literally at stake. To prove its point, the Talmud quotes a verse from the Bible, the one that describes the world's first murder—a fratricide—Cain killing his little brother Abel in jealousy and rage

In the story from the Torah, immediately after the murder, God says to Cain, "What have you done?!?! The blood of your brother cries out to me from the ground." (Gen. 4:10) The Rabbis notice though that the word "blood" in Hebrew is in the plural, literally, "the bloods of your brother - דְּמֵ֣י אָחִ֔יךָ." Why the plural? Because, the rabbis reason, Cain didn't just kill Abel. He killed all of Abel's potential descendants—generations that might have come to be had he lived.

And then the Talmud teaches: "Therefore the creation of all humanity began with just one individual soul—the first human—to teach you that whoever destroys one soul ..., destroys an entire world. And whoever saves one soul ... saves an entire world."

A person is an entire world because all humanity can descend from that one soul.

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