Rabbi Barbara Penzner of Boston (Jewish)

Inspired by the Inauguration 2009 Sermons and Orations Project of the Library of Congress’s American Folklife Center, the Globe invited local clergy to e-mail the texts of inauguration-related sermons and prayers for posting here on the Articles of Faith religion blog. You can find all of the submissions by clicking on the Inauguration Sermons category in the blog’s right rail.

A sermon by Rabbi Barbara Penzner of Temple Hillel B’nai Torah, a Reconstructionist congregation in West Roxbury:

"At the end of our service, our prayers always conclude with Aleinu. At the end of every service, every day, we say aleinu, which means “it is up to us.” So often our heads are already out the door, thinking about food or where we should be, or what our children are doing. That’s a shame, since everything we have said and prayed and contemplate during the course of any service culminates with the message contained in Aleinu. And if we were praying with attention, with kavanah, we would discover a central truth about Judaism awaiting us there:

“All dwellers on earth would recognize and understand that every knee bends before You, every tongue vows loyalty. To You, Holy One, they would all submit, and to your Honored Presence they would all give devotion, and everyone would take on the mantle of your sovereignty.”

Our ultimate goal, as individuals and as a people, is to live in a world where divine rule extends far and wide and where faith and devotion govern our actions. Yet the image is not one of unanimity or uniformity, but one of unity. God is one and unique but not simple, not unitary. What makes this prayer visionary is the recognition that just as God’s unity embraces All, all life, all creation, all that is good and all that is evil, it is by definition as vast and varied as one can imagine. In the end, Aleinu says, we may not all speak the same language or even call God by the same name, but we will respect the manifold voices of our common humanity. Every time we walk out the doors of our place of worship, we should be filled with that wondrous vision, and emboldened to bring it to life.

It is that joy in the teeming multitudes of our country that I felt standing in Grant Park on Election night. As we crowded into the outdoor arena, I recalled marches I had attended on the Mall in Washington. And I thought about the most legendary march of all, the 1963 March on Washington (which I did not attend). It is that vision that was the undercurrent to Martin Luther King’s compelling “I Have a Dream” speech. It is that awesome purpose that nurtures Barack Obama, the next president of the United States. It is that power that will help transform American society, whether through grand policies or in the small corners of our lives.

This election and this inauguration have already engraved themselves in American history. The first African-American president of the country that only fifty years ago held back black citizens from basic rights, that one hundred and fifty years ago enslaved our black brothers and sisters, is a redemptive event. This election has brought healing to places in our country that, until November 4, felt bleak and full of despair, indeed to people who did not feel they were truly part of the United States of America. But if his race were the only factor, we all know that Barack Obama would not have been elected this year. I would like to share with you what gives me hope for our country above and beyond the act of faith that so many Americans took when they marked their ballots in November.

Barack Obama’s campaign repeated two slogans: “change we can believe in” and “yes we can.” As the Talmud says, “the rest is commentary, go and study.” In other words, these two rallying cries represent the essence of what President Obama means to me.

Even before the financial crisis, the American people were ready for a change. For eight years, since the chaotic election of 2000, I have been weighed down by a sense of futility and despair. I had written an appeal to President Bush in November 2000, asking him to speak to the American people and to reassure us that he would be president of all the people, not only those who voted for him. I never received that reassurance. Instead, at every turn it seemed that the president moved farther and farther away from the American people, from the constitution and from the rule of law. Especially after 9/11 and the onset of the Iraq War, as power became more concentrated in the executive office, and Congress passed the Patriot Act, wiretapping of American citizens was instituted, and the Attorney General flouted the law, I longed for a return to the basic principles of our democracy. This new administration promises a renewed commitment to the constitution as the supreme law of the land. President-elect Obama, once a professor of constitutional law, has already demonstrated a rigorous approach to ethics and good governance. That is a change we can believe in.

Barack Obama’s faith as a Christian is inspiring without being dogmatic. With this new president, faith is a foundation for governance, not a building to imprison government. I have read his life story, Dreams from My Father and seen how the details of his life--growing up in Indonesia and Hawaii, living with his mother and grandparents from the Midwest, working with the poorest of the poor in Chicago and visiting their churches, and then traveling to Kenya to explore his roots — have planted in Barack Obama’s bones respect for different paths to God. I am moved by the role faith plays as the compass of his convictions and the source of his spiritual center. When I heard candidate Obama address a group of rabbis prior to the High Holy Days, I was touched by his deep understanding of the meaning of repentance and reflection and its importance to us as Jews. For Obama, faith should not be used to divide us, but it can unite the American people. That is a change we can believe in.

In addition to his faith, Barack Obama relies on reason. As he deals with decisions that touch every aspect of our lives, science and reason will be the foundations for inquiry and analysis of problems and their solutions. Though he is not a scientist, Barack Obama respects the information science has to offer and will restore that voice to decision-making, from stem-cell research to climate change. Our next president does not depend on one voice alone, not his own, not the voice of any one trusted advisor, not the voice of his Creator. He listens, he analyzes, he reflects. He is a seeker of knowledge, a pursuer of truth. And a leader with intelligence will inspire us and our children to open our minds and to pursue learning as well. That is change we can believe in.

Finally, as a Jew, I am grateful that this new president wants to make the Middle East a priority on day one, as he announced on Thursday. Without constant and vigorous attention to the crisis between Israel and the Palestinians during the past administration, war and hostility have been the default. As we have watched the rockets flying over southern Israel and the bombs dropped on Gaza, as we have prayed for an end to violence, the American voice has been weak and ineffective. I look forward to the new president’s renewed commitment to diplomacy with cautious optimism.

My dreams may be messianic, but the change that I describe is within our reach. I do not expect the nightmare of our failing economy to end on January 21. I do not anticipate platoons of troops streaming home from Iraq by February. However, if the age of the Messiah were upon us, it would not be heralded by one man alone. It is up to us to transform our world into the vision in our prayers, as the Aleinu says, “to repair the world through the power of God’s rule.” The second most important message of Barack Obama’s campaign and the single most important reason for his victory is his call, “Yes we can.”

In today’s Torah reading, we read how Moses’ greatest fear was that he would go tell the Israelites that God had sent him, and they would answer, “says who?” Moses could not take the people out of Egypt unless they were willing to pick up their feet and go. A leader cannot lead without followers. And what makes Obama’s leadership style so dramatically different from previous presidents, is that, in addition to being Commander-in-Chief, he will be the “Organizer-in-Chief.”

The Obama campaign did more than get an African-American with a funny name elected president. It created a movement. In cities and small towns, on the internet and in campaign offices, young people who had never voted and older people who had given up, all followed the mantra “yes we can.” And they believed it. And they did it. We did it. Yes we did.

And we will continue to work together, because the problems we face are not the fault or the responsibility of government alone. And the solutions will not come from some official on high. Barack Obama learned this as an organizer on the streets of Chicago, through months of frustration and rejection, and days of exhilaration over each small victory. His mentor, Saul Alinsky, read the Bible like an organizer’s manual, and Moses was his favorite role model. What did Moses do? He gave the people hope. He gave them courage. He inspired them to take their lives into their own hands: to put the blood on their doorposts, to share their meal with their neighbors, to pick up in the middle of the night with only a little dough on their backs, and to cross the Red Sea with Pharaoh at their heels. Moses did not enter the Promised Land; the People of Israel did.

Our country has been through a desolate time, a time of doubt and despair. We have wandered in the wilderness for too long. Now is the time to cast off our tendency to cynicism. Now is the time to trust in rigorous inquiry. Now is the time to act with whole hearts and open minds. Why do I believe in Barack Obama? Because he reminded me to believe in myself, and to believe in the citizens of the United States of America, and to believe in the vision we pray for every day. As we declare at the end of our service “aleinu--it is up to us.” May we be up to the task ahead."