Ten years ago, the Phillip Morris Company conducted a study on the negative affects of smoking on the budget of the Czech Republic. The study boldly concluded that the Czech government saved one billion Czech Kroner from reduced health care costs, savings on pensions, and housing for the elderly, because of the early mortality of smokers. Smokers, though they needed extra health care early on were dead within a short time, never reaching an age when they would need their social security, long term medical care, and housing subsidies. Therefore, Phillip Morris proudly touted that cigarette taxes far exceeded the need for the extra costs of smoking by 5 Billion Czech Republic Kroner. Cigarette taxes one could conclude were unnecessarily high and lowering them would encourage more smokers and more savings… from early death.
Not surprisingly, the study blew up in Phillip Morris’s face. Newspapers around the world headlined the story with “Smoking Cuts Elderly Costs, and Elderly.” The company, taken by surprise by the subsequent firestorm, backtracked and released a statement of contrition that they “understood the outrage that has been expressed and we sincerely regret this extraordinarily unfortunate incident.”
Not much regret there…What were they thinking?
I have heard a number of spectacular apologies in my life. Governor George Wallace in the late 70’s for his wicked racist ways. The country of Spain apologizing in 1992 for the expulsion of the Jews in 1492. The Vatican’s reversal on Gallileo for being wrong about the sun, their contrition to the Jews for the Pope’s collusion during the Holocaust, and the apology to everyone else for the enabling of sexually abusive priests. Congress, on behalf of the United States in 1988, expressing regret for the internment of American citizens of Japanese ancestry in WWII, and in 2009 a resolution apologizing for slavery. These apologies were pretty game changing. But the last year or two or three have produced a bumper crop of personal shame and humiliation. Elliott Spitzer, Don Imus, Mark Sanford, Tiger Woods, David Letterman, the president of Toyota, Mel Gibson, John Edwards, Arnold Schwartnegger, Governor MacDonald, Anthony Weiner and Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Have I forgotten anyone major? Did I miss anyone this week? Can anyone think of a major woman who has apologized publically? (Paris Hilton was suggested)
So why the outpouring recently of men behaving badly and apologizing for it? And taking two, three and four shots at getting it right after denials, half truths, partial stories, equivocation of responsibility and then finally the full Monty confession of the rich, famous, and highly placed politician. Baruch HaShem, the genre has advanced enough to eliminate the stoic supportive wife, standing closely behind the offender. As soon as the last “thank you very much for your attention” passes the lips of the delinquent, the media begins its attacks with accusations that the mea culpas are staged, inadequate, insincere.
Enter: Perfect Apology.com. A website tailored specifically to helping you create and deliver the perfect apology for the right situation including suggestions for flowers, chocolates, a ball printed with the words, “so sorry. I’ve been a slime ball” or naming the offended after a celestial star. There is an apology board, an apology blog and complete instructions for executing the perfect apology that must include certain elements. Perfect Apology must have studied Maimonides. For our very own 12th century genius has given us this very same outline in his classic work The Mishneh Torah, the chapter Hichos Teshuvah.
We are fascinated and obsessed with the repentance, or lack there of, of the rich and famous but what about us regular people? We who need not go in front of microphones and cameras. Where are our skills these days? As Liberal Jews we may be terribly out of practice since our liturgy has all but eliminated the confessional prayers.
Except for these few days of the Yamim Noraim, The High and Holy Days, we no longer come for daily prayers where an adequate space is allowed for pleas for mercy in the Shemoneh esrai, the standing prayer. “Return us to Your Torah and draw us to Your service. In complete repentance, restore us to Your Presence. Baruch Atah Adonai, Who welcomes repentance. And forgive us for we have sinned, pardon us for we have transgressed, for You pardon and forgive. Baruch atah Adonai, abounding in forgiveness. Everyday except Shabbat that is recited.
We have long ago given up Tachanun, prayers of supplication, said on weekdays when our traditional Jews rest their arm on the chair in front of them, put their head on their arm and pour their heart out, begging forgiveness. Merciful and gracious Gd, I have sinned before You, O Lrd, who is full of compassion, have mercy on me and accept my supplications. Oh Lrd punish me not in Your anger, chastise me not in Your wrath, have pity on me, for I languish, heal me, for my health is shaken, my soul severely troubled. Deliver me.
And there is nothing so moving as being at the Western Wall in Jerusalem and seeing the emotion, the weeping of both men and women in sorrow and remorse, leaning against the giant stones of the remnant of the Temple, wailing in all manner of languages to the unseen Gd who feels remarkably close.
We rarely teach our children the bedtime Shema, that scans the day for bad behavior and asks the Almighty to clear it. Here’s an adaptation By Ellen Dannin on Ritual Well.com.
Here, poised between waking and sleep, I give up strife and contention. Help me forgive those who have wounded me today and those I have failed to forgive for past hurts. May they too have a night of rest and restoration. I release myself from the bonds of grudges and envy and my body from stress and contraction. I close my eyes, trusting in your forgiveness where I have fallen short today.
And rarely am I called to the deathbed in time for our final vidui, confession, yes we have one, before the end. Author of Life and Death I turn to You in trust. Although I pray for life and health I know I am mortal. If my life must soon come to an end, let me die in peace. If only my hands were clean and my heart pure! I confess that I have committed sins and left much undone. Yet I know also the good I have done or tried to do. May my acts of goodness give meaning to my life and may my errors be forgiven.
We have many opportunities throughout the year. Not just at Rosh Hashanah, for forgiveness and repentance, but sadly we are badly out of practice.
“I mean, what’s the point of all that self-flagellation,” You might ask, “It’s primitive. Sin is so medieval. Besides I have a therapist. Isn’t that enough?
OK, don’t call them sins! Whether you call them missteps, character flaws or spiritual failings, our Jewish tradition teaches that the pathway home to our true nature is called teshuvah. We translate it as repentance but it actually comes from the Hebrew root shuv, which means to turn and return. We all have a source of wholeness, of shalem, integrity to which we can return, a place we can call our ethical home where everyone knows our name and our name enables us to remember who we truly are. Teshuvah is so fundamental that the Talmud insisted that forgiveness was one of a few things Gd created before the Eternal created us; so essential to this creation was teshuvah, say the Sages, that without it the world could not stand.
Every major Jewish scholar suggests that without the regular work of teshuvah we may be morally, ethically, spiritually, physically, positively, absolutely, undeniably and reliably dead as the Wicked Witch of the West. With the work of teshuvah as a part of our journey we can return to the home of our soul’s true nature.
In the familiar children’s story by Frank Baum and movie with Judy Garland, a young sickly girl named Dorothy is transported by a tornado far away from her drab home in Kansas to a brightly colored Land called Oz. Come along with me and Dorothy this Yamim Noraim. We’ll travel down the Yellow Brick Road with her companions Intelligence, Emotion and Courage on their journey of teshuvah to meet “The Wizard,” in a place called Oz which in Hebrew means strength, יתןלעמועזאדוני . They are each in search of a character trait they believe they lack and which prevents them from being whole.
We’ll meet the brainless Scarecrow tomorrow morning, the heartless Tin Man Friday morning and the Cowardly Lion on Yom Kippur morning. I’ll complete the cycle at Neilah with Dorothy and Toto’s homegoing. “Each year the shofar calls us to awake, awaken our inner yearning to be whole, Shalem. We look eagerly for a clear and visible yellow brick road, we yearn for a wizard, a teacher, a guru, or rabbi to guide our way only to realize we have the power we seek, the oz within, if we bother to look deeply.”[1] I can point the way but I cannot do the work for you. Teshuvah, turning, is an action, a physical act of inward work to outwardly turn away from a non-productive path. Let’s explore that map together over these next ten days. I invite you to put in the effort in order to redeem the reward at the end of the rainbow.
A Hasidic story from Nahman of Bratslav begins with 7 beggars. The scene is a memory competition regarding the Garden of Eden. The contestants vie to see who has the earliest memory. The first one remembers “the argument between Adam and Eve.” Another remembers, “When they cut the apple from the branch.” Another beggar remembers “ the first fruit began to form.“ Still another remembers, “The taste before it enters the fruit” finally the last beggar says, “I was yet a child but I was there too. I remember all these events. I also remember nothing”. And the others answered, “Ahhh, that is indeed an older memory than all. Remembering nothing is the oldest memory and the closest one to Gd.”
One thing we all have in common is a brain. Remember, Zachor, is a fundamental concept in our Jewish life. We tell stories, we exchange recipes, commemorate Yarzheits, we caption photos with words, words, words. We are after all, the people of the book. We are obsessed with words. We collect them, pile them up and then pour them in our brain. And in today’s world we are pouring in stuff faster and faster than ever, at an exhausting rate. We are in the midst of an information explosion. We collect information until it becomes an idol in itself.
Words and Memory are the currency we share with one another, with our community, with civilization. And we are slaves to them. The house piles up with books and magazines not read, letters not written, notices that go unnoticed, Facebook entries unopened. But what becomes of us if we lose that currency? Where do we go as we lose our memories? We have been losing our minds since we were thirty according to neurobiologists. And we are terrified of admitting it.
Nora Efron in her new book I Remember Nothing, swears she remembers almost nothing of her remarkable and eventful life. You remember Nora Efron.. Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail, When Harry met Sally…She writes, “At first I championed technology, even wrote screenplays about it. …now I believe that almost anything new has been put on earth in order to make me feel bad about my dwindling memory. At this moment some things I’m refusing to know anything about include: The Former Soviet Republics, the Kardashians, twitter, all the Housewives, Survivors, American Idols, and Bachelors, every drink invented since the Cosmopolitan especially the drink made with crushed mint leaves, you know the one. I am going to Google the name of that drink. Be right back…. The Mojito.”
Thank God for Google. (Put glasses on head)It allows us to pretend we remember what the movie we saw yesterday was about. But this is bread and butter stuff. “Honey, where are my glasses?” “On your head, dear!” We have a modern curse to challenge us. Alzheimers is the new plague, the HIV of the mind, mysterious plaques and tangles that drill holes in our head like a bank robber drilling into the vault and stealing our mind, depleting our memories and undoing all our hard work. Our discs are full or empty, we can’t be sure. How can we possibly survive in a world that requires us to remember multiple user names and passwords and my gawd the parking lots are so huge. Never mind where are my keys but where is the bloody car?
NEVER MIND…
I began last night talking about The Wizard of OzAnd the journey, Dorothy, a sickly and frustrated teenager takes, when her house is blown off its foundation by a tornado to a colorful, dreamy land where she follows a yellow brick road to find her way back home. It’s a coming of age story certainly. I watched it incessantly as a teenager not realizing that consciously. But it was Estelle Frankel in her book Sacred Therapy that drew my attention to Dorothy’s spiritual journey down the Yellow Brick Road with companions seeking first wisdom, then compassion and finally courage on her way to return home. It’s an unabashed midrash on the four steps of teshuvah laid out by Maimonides in the 12th century 800years ago. Her first encounter is with the Scarecrow, who desperately desires a brain. This character, with a head full of straw, seems the most level-headed of the quartet that will assemble and it gradually becomes clear that the fabulous four, Scarecrow, Tin Man, Lion, Dorothy (and Toto too) all possess the strength, Oz, within, that they need. But all of them will need to overcome obstacles and consult with the Wizard.
Teshuvah, which we understand in English as repentance, is a turning away from a course out of sync with our values, but it may also be translated as “a response.” We must first with our intellect respond to the uneasiness that something is wrong, out of kilter, not working in our life. If we refuse to respond, if our logic is skewed and we stuff the thought down, pretending it is not there, we can end up in a state of moral confusion and it is possible to take our most treacherous steps, make our most grievous mistakes.
A recent University of Waterloo study discovered that women actually do apologize more than men. (We knew this all along) but for very different reasons than we thought. It seems, according to the study, that women have a much lower tolerance for what they think one ought to apologize. Men and women apologize about the same amount of time, 80% of the times they think they have done something that needs an apology. But men think something needs an apology about half the time that women do. Women’s brains are making constant course adjustments. Men are making sudden U-turns, in the middle of traffic.
One of the men who participated in the study said, “Half the time we don’t know what we are apologizing for. We just want to keep the peace.”
In our Torah text today, Abraham is in an incredible bind. Imagine the scene: a 90 year old wife with, a what? 25 year old competitor in the house. He’s 100! He can’t remember where he parked the camel! He just wants to keep the peace. “I’ll do whatever Sara wants.” And let’s move on. But moving on leads to abandoning his first son, Ishmael, and threatening to kill his second. Both sons are dangerously close to death at the hands of their father . Abraham experiences an undeniably moral and spiritual death. Where before he argued the case for the innocent in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, now he remains silent. He chooses to keep shalom bayit with Sara whilst nearly killing his hopes and dreams.
How instinctive to act that way, and then to suffer when he thought he was doing what she said. Sadly he listens to Sara’s words not her voice. He acts obediently but can’t hear her anguish, pain, jealousy and rage or even his own. How many times has a thought risen here (point to head) and we push it down with words of excuse, blame, and explanation? We must listen not just to our words but to the voice of our own soul, the tone, the tension, the color. It is the difference we teach our children between our outside voice, the strident, here I am voice and the inside voice, the quiet who am I voice. Many are not hard of hearing but hard of listening even to our own selves. Listening attentively to the inner voice takes practice and discipline and being here in the now.
And there are no people more in the now than a 3 year old, a Buddhist monk and a person with Alzheimers. What is so striking about hanging out with someone with memory loss is how present they can be in the current moment. Like a three year old. And how when I give up on the idea that this person in front of me is in competition with the one I knew a few years before, I can relax. And what is remarkable about this brain is that the last things to go are songs and prayers. Lighting candles, singing veshamru, oyfen pripentchik or Tony Bennett. It doesn’t seem to matter. Liturgy, lyrics and music seem to stick like glue to the grey matter of the mind. And though they remember As Time Goes By, they remember nothing. Not even my name. A visit like this brings me squarely in the present, they and I are who we are now and I can enter that world for a moment and yes, pull up a chair next to them and stare out at Gd in the red cars going by, too. Oh look, another red car.
Time is pretty meaningless. Except lunch and dinner time. Is it dinner time yet? Did I just have lunch? George Carlin used to say “Gd invented time just so everything doesn’t happen all at once.” And like the 7th beggar, being in that sublime calm of I remember almost nothing, my mind drifts to a divine memory of that moment so long ago in a garden when we remembered everything from one end of time to the other, and we remembered nothing.
Goldie and Stanley are rocking on the front porch and Goldie turns to Stanley and says, “Stanley, do you believe in the hereafter?” Stanley says, “Of course I believe in the hereafter! Every time I go into the kitchen I say to myself, ‘Stanley, what the heck are you here after?’”
For most muscles the best way to exercise them is to go to the gym and lift weights. But for this muscle (point to brain) sometimes the best exercise is not Sudoku, it is not talking, but silent thought. That’s why there is always space for silent prayer and contemplation here . An iPod free zone. And what begins as a solitary search within our self, in this skull, will emanate out to sanctify our world.[1] It is here that we begin owning our past yet distancing ourselves from it. It is here we begin the first level of teshuvah, admission. We admit the thought into our consciousness. And we admit that something is awry. “I am responsible, yet that ‘I’ is not the ‘I’ I want to be now.” That thought, that intelligence, that recognition of faltering, missing the mark, admission of guilt, must rise to a level of consciousness, our level of conscienceness, before we can begin to walk down the road to teshuvah, to response, to return.
“Before my teacher came to me,” writes Helen Keller in her biography, “I did not know that I am.” That teacher is here inside the brain. And before we have our last memory, the memory of nothing, of no thing, the memory that is the closet to Gd, I’m afraid we have to deal with the memory of the first fight. The memory of the first bite of the apple. Memories of our missed opportunities for forgiveness.
This is the first step of teshuvah, repentance. Re-membering. Putting it all together while we still have the chance.
I could wile away the hours Conferrin' with the flowers Consultin' with the rain And my head I'd be scratchin' While my thoughts were busy hatchin' If I only had a brain
I'd unravel any riddle For any individ'le In trouble or in pain
(Dorothy) With the thoughts you'd be thinkin' You could be another Lincoln If you only had a brain
(Scarecrow) Oh, I would tell you why The ocean's near the shore I could think of things I never thunk before And then I'd sit and think some more.
I would not be just a nuffin' My head all full of stuffin' My heart all full of pain. I would dance and be merry Life would be a ding-a-derry If I only had a brain
[1]Repentance: The Meaning and Practice of Teshuvah, Louis E. Newman
Rosh Hashanah Day 2
Rosh Hashanah Second Day
Rabbi Assi and Rabbi Haniniah were walking from Tiberias to Jerusalem, a three day journey. The first day they came to a River. A woman stood by the river, a frightened look upon her face, afraid to cross. Rabbi Assi said, “Would you like to get across?” “Yes,” she answered, “very much, my family is across the river but I am afraid of the water.” “May I carry you across?” he asked. “That would be most kind,” she answered. Rabbi Assi lifted the woman onto his shoulders and carried her across the river followed by his colleague Rabbi Hananiah. Rav Assi put her down, she thanked him profusely and the two men continued their journey on to Jerusalem, silently. When they arrived in the Holy city, Rav Hananiah turned to Rav Assi and said, “I cannot believe you carried that woman across the river. You know we are not allowed to touch women other than our own wives.” Rav Assi replied, “My Friend, Hananiah, Your burden is great, and I am sorry for you, for I have put the woman down at the river but you, you have been carrying her to Jerusalem all the way from there.”
What burdens do we carry into this sanctuary this year? What regrets are we shouldering? What doubts do we suffer about our world? What effect do these have on our spirit?
Perhaps the burden is national. Two and a half weeks ago we commemorated the 10th anniversary of 9/11, the day when our enemies imagined that they could take our nation down in the flames of several of our key buildings. I remember when five years ago I first heard Brooke Gladstone, the radio news commentator, remark that it has been five years OF 9/11 meaning that the burden we bore of keeping our people safe changed our lives forever. Three years ago at this time of year the news of the collapse of some of our financial institutions was a shock and the repercussions of the downturn are felt in our backyard and around the world still and for the foreseeable future.
Perhaps the burden is communal. Our community suffers from the blight and fear of empty stores, unemployment, and foreclosure like the rest of the country. We at BST have recently come through some contentious times that had brought this congregation to a precarious position financially and spiritually. This year we have succeeded in solving or at least lightening some of our burden with the effort, sacrifice and devotion of so many of you here today. But the burden continues and creative solutions must be renewed every year.
Perhaps our burden is familial. Maybe your family is experiencing poor health, mental illness, dementia. An accident may have occurred, unemployment or foreclosure, the loss of a loved one or the disappearance of property. You may be experiencing challenges in child rearing, elder care, estrangement, divorce. The oys of life. There may be problems with difficult answers, multiple answers to choose from, or no answers. There may be a time bomb waiting to explode, triggered by a cell phone call, a poorly worded email, a letter that maybe should never have been mailed. How has it affected your life, weighed down your spirit, infected your work and the joy of living?
Each year at Rosh Hashanah we read in the Torah the Akedah, the sacrifice of Isaac. It’s a special portion, it’s out of order, it’s not the only time we read it. The question always arises, “Why do we read this portion about Abraham almost sacrificing his son on Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, the birthday of the world?” Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to read Bereshit as we will do in a couple weeks at Simhat Torah or the great moment at Sinai when we are reborn from slavery? Or better yet, the expulsion from Eden when sin is invented or the conflict and redemption in forgiveness between Esau and Jacob or Joseph and his brothers? Wouldn’t these be more appropriate for Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the days of tesuvah, of repentance and turning our ways around?
Believe me there are thousands of pages written and thousands of reasons proposed to try to explain and understand the choice of this parasha, the Akedah, for this holiday. The burning question about this portion has always been “How could Abraham even think of killing his son Isaac, his only son with Sarah?” And not only that, how could Abraham defend the people of Sodom and Gomorrah yet not defend his son, Isaac?
We read yesterday the story of Hagar and Ishmael, which comes immediately before the Binding of Isaac. It is a horrifying story of how Abraham and Sarah throw Hagar and Ishmael out of the house into the desert to die but they are saved by God. Why would we read that story on Rosh Hashanah?
Our forefather Abraham is said by our Sages to have been confronted by ten difficult trials in his life. They include: 1) Abraham’s exile from his family and homeland 2) The famine in Canaan 3) The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah 4) The war with the four kings 5) His marriage to Hagar after having despaired that Sarah would ever give birth 6) The commandment of circumcision 7) The abduction of Sarah by a Pharoah and Abimelech 8) Driving away Hagar 9) Driving away Hagar with Ishmael 10) The binding of Isaac on the altar.
Abraham is a man with a heart that has been broken multiple times starting from the moment he was commanded to leave his family and home in Iraq to journey to a land he did not know. Like the Tin Man that Dorothy and the Scarecrow meet along the Yellow Brick Road, Abraham’s metaphorical life and limbs are cut off by loss and calamity. He loses his hometown, his homeland, his family of origin, his livelihood and sustenance, he suffers under war, he even loses a small but significant piece of himself, he loses his wives Sara and Hagar and his sons Ishmael and Isaac whose lives are saved but who become estranged from their father. Only Job has suffered more in our sacred scripture.
His heart is broken over and over and becomes hardened, his shoulders weighed down from the curses that have befallen him on the journey to a blessing Gd has promised him. “Hearts,” the Wizard of Oz tells the Tin Man, “will never be practical until they are unbreakable.” Abraham, too, could use a new heart, his compassion is spent. He will do anything to keep the peace in the household. But still how could he sacrifice his own son, Isaac?
And then I thought of the story of Rav Assi and Hananiah and the woman at the river. And I went back to thinking about Abraham’s silent three-day walk to Mt. Moriah. Abraham may walk with his son Isaac but he is carrying Hagar all the way. When God asks him to sacrifice Isaac, he has the guilt of mistreating Hagar on his shoulders. He said nothing in her defense and he stoically took her out to the desert to die with his son Ishmael. He is so blinded by the guilt of throwing Hagar and Ishmael out that he carries his other son, Isaac, to the brink of slaughter. He is on auto-pilot. He cannot imagine doing anything else. He cannot imagine an alternative solution. He offered a creative argument about Gd’s plan to destroy Sodom and Gemorrah but to no avail. He has no more words to argue with God. And so he lumbers for three days, silently with his son Isaac, to Mt Moriah, all the while shouldering his concubine, Hagar, and their son Ishmael just as Rav Hananiah carried the woman all the way from the river to Jerusalem though he did not even touch her.
Perhaps Abraham leaves his fate in the hands of God because he feels his actions towards Hagar are so sinful that he deserves whatever punishment Gd will mete out. With such a burden to bear Abraham is blind to the ram in the thicket that is to stand in place of Isaac as sacrifice. Gd must show him. Gd must open his eyes. Gd must show him that through the ram, repentance is possible. It is the ram’s horn that symbolizes for us today that repentance and forgiveness is always a possibility. And it is the ram’s horn that gets us right here in the heart, that reminds us that the second level of teshuvah is feeling remorse. It is one thing to recognize our sins intellectually, allow them to rise to consciousness and conscienceness, but we must also feel them, feel the pain they may have caused and sincerely know that regret and be willing to act upon that remorse. For if we do not act on our shame it will sit in our heart and harden just as the sin of kicking out Hagar weighed on Abraham so heavily he became capable of doing immeasurably more harm to his family and himself.
For if some how you can pack up your sorrows,
And give them all to me
You could lose them
I know how to use them
Give them all to me. (Richard and Mimi Farina)
The gates of mercy are wide open this week. Gd, says the Zohar, is strolling out in the field, looking at the leaves changing, waiting for you. Now is the moment to find forgiveness, for someone, for yourself. Now is the time to begin to lift those weights of guilt and shame and regret off our weary shoulders. You know the word “shoulders” starts with the word should. Now is the time to take an account of the heartaches and headaches that get in the way of our ability to imagine a better world, a better nation, a better congregation, a more peaceful, loving family. How can we expect to allow our imagination to flourish if we are stooped over in regret? How can we think out side of the box when we are crouched in a corner of it in fear?
Usually for security we ask you to leave your baggage in the car. But I ask you to bring in your burdens and lift them up with the support of our congregation. Lift up your trials and listen, shema, for that answer which is inside you, in order to lose those burdens that keep you from moving forward in your life.
“The One who scattered Israel will gather them and guard them as a shepherd guards the flock,” sings Jeremiah. “They shall fare like a watered garden. They shall never languish again. Then shall we dance, women and men, young and old alike. I will turn their mourning into joy. I will comfort them and cheer them in their grief. And My people shall enjoy My full bounty, declares the Eternal.”
Now is the time to ask Gd to make good on that covenant.
Shanah Tova
Yom Kippur morning
Yom Kippur Morning5772
October 8, 2011
Once upon a time, a young mother talked to her daughter about going to a sleep-away camp for the first time. “Now that you are six you are eligible to go, just like your brother.” The little girl answered, “I’m afraid to go, mommy.” Concerned about being too pushy for her own agenda, the mother said quickly, “OK, you don’t have to go. We can revisit this next year.” The daughter stood up straight and replied, (hands on hips)“Mom, just because I’m afraid, doesn’t mean I don’t want to do it.” Just because I’m afraid, doesn’t mean I don’t want to do it.
The journey along the brick road we each choose may have many new and unexplored places, forks in the road, or detours. New camp, new school, more school, new job, blind date, falling in love, popping the question, walking down the aisle. Just because I’m afraid, doesn’t mean I don’t want to do it. Going away to college, Junior year abroad, singing, dancing or speaking in public, Peace Corps, Americorps, taking a trip to Israel, running for office. Just because I’m afraid, doesn’t mean I don’t want to do it. Phone my mother, talk to my brother, invite my cousin, retire, don’t retire, challenge my spouse, leave home, leave town, change my name. J b I a, d m I d, w t d i. Just because I’m afraid, doesn’t mean I don’t want to do it.
And the corollary. Just because I chose to do something doesn’t mean I won’t be afraid, nauseous, exhausted, angry, crazed, broke, ecstatic, depressed or any number of states of emotion in the process.
At Rosh Hashanah we traveled through the levels of teshuvah, of turning away from the unproductive path, starting with our intellect, the brain of the Scarecrow to our emotions, the heart of the Tin Man and now on this awesome day, this Yom Kippur morning we go to our core, the roar of the lion. We go where are stomachs are empty and growling. We go to our guts, our kishkes.
Courage! What makes a King out of a slave? Courage! What makes the flag on the mast to wave? Courage! What makes the elephant charge his tusk, in the misty mist or the dusky dusk? What makes the muskrat guard his musk? Courage! What makes the sphinx the seventh wonder? Courage! What makes the dawn come up like thunder? Courage! What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the "ape" in apricot? What have they got that I ain't got? (Raise hands to congregation for answer) Courage!
And perhaps that is the metaphor for why we fast today, to see what we are made of. To test our mettle, grit, pluck, resolve. In the dramatic movie “Three Kings” with George Clooney, a small group of adventurous American soldiers embark on a journey that enables them to rise to a heroic challenge that drastically changes their lives. Major Archie Gates, played by George Clooney, says to the young private Conrad Vig, before they go into battle: You're scared, right? Conrad Vig: Maybe. Clooney replies: The way it works is, you do the thing you're freakin scared of, and you get the courage AFTER you do it, not before you do it. Vig: That's a stupid way to work. It should be the other way around. Clooney: I know. But that's the way it works.
That seems to be the way courage works.
Pilot "Sully" Sullenberger said the moments after both engines of US Airways Flight 1549 stalled, he felt "the worst sickening, pit-of-your-stomach, falling-through-the-floor feeling" he's ever had. With a checklist and a life of experience flying, he landed the plane with 155 crew and passengers smoothly on the Hudson River. He didn’t feel like a hero while it was happening. He felt gut wrenching scared. But he had to do it. Just because I’m afraid, doesn’t mean I don’t want to do it.
Speaking of gut wrenching fear, I can draw back the curtain and tell you thatevery rabbi in the world has been waiting to write their Yom Kippur sermon until after the vote at the UN, the Unilateral Declaration of Independence for a Palestinian State. But of course the vote has been stalled. Talk about a sickening feeling in the pit of your stomach with nothing to go on for Yom Kippur sermon. Nothing to react to. Bubkes. The opinions around our dining room table ranged from the Palestinian Declaration of Independence will be a failure whether it passes or not all the way to it’s a game changer and will provide much needed movement on both sides, fiber.
And what does this rabbi think? All of the above. But don’t judge by me. The Huffington Post’s Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, author of You Don't Have To Be Wrong For Me To Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism, quoting an article I wrote about Reverend Hashmel Turner concluded I was 100%right but only 50% of the time. Pretty good odds, eh? 100%, 50% of the time.
Remember, I am a scholar on Judaism. On politics, nation building, Security and defense you’ll have to ask someone else. And they are likely to be 100% correct 50% of the time, if they are lucky.
But of one thing I can be sure that whether we are living with or without a State of Palestine, we will be living in a State of Uncertainty for a long time. As Jews we have lived in the State of Uncertainty often and at great length. And it keeps us on our toes, vibrant, alive. It keeps our blood flowing.
Rabbi David Hartman, Rosh Yeshiva of the Hartman Shalom Center, wrote in 1997 "In Israel, intense ideological passions surface daily and confront one another in the public arena ... Major governmental decisions are influenced by the different Jewish dreams that inspired our national rebirth. Messianic religious visions collide with a socialist secular understanding of the significance of the Jewish state. This is what results from Jews feeling at home. … We prayed to be reunited with our scattered brethren without realizing how different we had become from one another. Our sense of unity currently results more from the enemies who seek to destroy us than from an internal consensus as to how we believe the Jewish people should live in the modern world.
And just last week Rabbi Donniel Hartman, son of David Hartman and his successor wrote, “Whether a reality is avoidable or not is one question. What you do about it is a second. We seem content with expending our efforts to ignore the inevitability of Palestinian statehood and to [convene] Jewish assemblies in which we talk to ourselves and bemoan the injustice. It is time to reawaken the consciousness of sovereignty and lead. It is time to declare that Palestinian statehood is also an Israeli interest as long as it can be accompanied by peace and security. “Uncertainty,” he concludes, “is no excuse for passivity, but the impetus for action.”
Just because we are afraid, doesn’t mean we don’t want to do it.
Israel and America are stuck in our diversity of opinion. And that is not a bad thing, to hear each other out. But we need to get moving soon. The clock is ticking on our shelf life. There are a lot of things that are souring in our country today; Transportation, education, health care, telecommunications (can you hear me now? can you hear me now?). We know it up here (brain) and here (heart) but we seem loath to admit it here in our guts.
Last year the Commonwealth Fund,[1]conducted a study that ranked America dead last of seven allied countries, Germany, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Netherlands, Canada in quality, access, efficiency, and equity of health care and the quality of our health. But we pay twice as much for this poor quality.
This year, the Washington DC metropolitan area just won the esteemed title of Worst Traffic in the Country, yeah! with an average of 74 hours per year sitting in traffic. Three days per year sitting in traffic. Three days you get to listen to all Things Considered, talk to your grandchildren on your cell phone, or do your nails. You could listen to War and Peace in that time. I checked on Amazon, it’s 70 hours on audio CD, I checked while I was stuck in traffic.
A survey by the Advancement Project[2], indicated that because of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), a startling growth has occurred in what is often described as the “School-to-Prison Pipeline” – the use of educational policies and practices that have the effect of pushing students out of schools toward the criminal justice systems; a costly and destructive and unexpected result of the new educational policy.
50 million Americans are now living in poverty. One in five children live under the poverty line. Is that possible in America?
And how many times a week do you have a dropped call, a crashed computer, a lurking infected email, annoying sales calls, or a phone call from your credit card company for some sort of hacking?
And Oh Gawd, Steve Jobs passed away.
W.L. Bateman, a Life coach, teaches, if you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep on getting what you’ve always got, a take on Einstein’s famous quote; insanity is defined by doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Change is tough. Change needs courage, leadership, guts, exhaustion. You cannot have a dark night of the soul and get a good night’s sleep. We are living in a very vibrant time. We are all living, working, eating, playing, studying and even going to the toilet with each other, something we didn’t do 50 years ago. You who lived under Jim Crow know what I mean. And we have to talk to each other and have to listen to each other but because of our tremendous diversity, which is so beautiful like a coral reef, and wanting everyone to have a seat at the table. It’s paralyzing! We are stuck! Stuck! Without the courage to move forward, without deadlines we are stuck in the status quo. “Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent.” Steve Job’s said that at the Stanford Commencement.
Where do we get this courage to move on? We’re going to have to find it here in our kishkas where the deep and powerful roar originates. Leon Wei/zel/tier, said in 1997, when Bill Clinton was president “the President is selling hope when he should be selling courage, which is hope toughened, hope disabused.” These words could not be truer today.
Kol ode balevav P'nimah -Nefesh Yehudi homiyah Ulfa'atey mizrach kadimah, Ayin l'tzion tzofiyah.Ode lo avdah tikvatenu, Hatikvah bat shnot alpayim:L'hiyot am chofshi b'artzenu - Eretz Tzion v'Yerushalayim.
As long as the Jewish spirit is yearning deep in the heart,With eyes turned toward the East, looking toward Zion,Then our hope - the two-thousand-year-old hope - will not be lost:To be a free people in our land,The land of Zion and Jerusalem.
Israelis not only have hope, not only a yearning for a home, they have the necessity to fight for it and then the courage follows. Hope toughened, hope disabused. We look to them as a model because we as a nation are aging, America grows tired. They have the advantage of youth, of a young, vibrant country on the edge of so many frontiers, who can say: Just because I’m afraid doesn’t mean I don’t want to do it.
It takes courage to pursue the new, it takes courage to leave behind the old, it takes courage to pick up the phone not knowing what awaits at the other end. But you won’t know you have it until you do something. Courage is an act, not a thought. The third level of teshuvah, of turning, of repentance is the courage to apologize and make restitution. These are not internal considerations, These are external acts. We confess publicly and communally here but we have to walk out that door tonight after the break fast and do something. If we have not been changed by these 20 hours of prayer and study, by 25 hours of fasting, we have not been listening to our guts.
Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook in the last century taught, “Every sin causes a special anxiety on the spirit that can only be erased by repentance, that transforms the anxiety itself into inner security and courage.” That’s why we do this ten-day introspection. And I don’t really care whether you believe in the G-d stuff or the sin bit. We do this accounting of our lives, this purging of our mistakes to regain our inner security and courage.
I don’t think anyone here, no matter how hard you try, how much you read, how much you listen to TV news, follow blogs, shmogs and pollywogs will have an answer for Israel. But you can have an answer for yourself. We need to prepare ourselves here for uncertainty, just as we all need to do that in the last quarter of our lives, so we can be strong for each other, for our Temple, our neighbors, our country, our Israel and all the others who desire freedom or we are going to lose it ourselves. Wouldst Gd bless us, as Rav Kook says, with inner security and courage.
It takes more than hope, more than wishful thinking. It takes resolve and the courage to think outside of the box. Take off our green glasses and see the world for what it is, chaotic, uncertain and magnificent. It takes a journey with the sensibilities of a teenage girl, with all the possibilities and danger that identity holds, down a Yellow Brick Road with Intelligence, with Compassion, with Courage to say to a Wizard who is all mirrors and no power, an emperor without clothes, a humbug, “I am no longer paralyzed by the past nor fearful of the future.” Today, today I will undertake the thing I could have done or should have done and now will do through courage.
כלכםהיומנצביםאתם
ישראל איש כל ושטריכם זקניכם שבטיכם רשיכם אלהיכם יהוהלפני
You stand this day, all of you, before the Lord your Gd, your Temple President, your Board members, your committee heads, your teachers and principals, the Temple Administrator, your elders and founders, all the men and women and children of Beth Sholom Temple, even the stranger, the furniture shlepper and the lightbulb changer, to renew the covenant. I, The Eternal, make this covenant not with you alone but with those who are standing here this day and those who are not with us this day.
How powerful that is. This is a room filled with the sense of both awe and dread, history and hope. It is a privilege to be in a room with such honored guests and walk that journey through the community of Oz, a congregation full of strength and courage, hope and promise, perseverance and self determination. I am honored to serve you as your Rabbi.
Debra Anker on Cello Somewhere Over the Rainbow
[1] A private foundation concerned with health care improvement in the U.S.
[2] A coalition since 1998 of Civil rights Lawyers from LA and Washington DC
Neilah
Neilah Yom Kippur
Here we are. Sun is setting. Gates are closing. We’re tired and hungry and we want to go home. And that’s just the point. We’re tired of the status quo, we’re hungry for a new way, thirsty for innovative solutions and we want to go home. We’ve traveled a Yellow Brick Road with a teenage girl, a brainless Scarecrow, a heartless Tin Man and a Scaredy Cat Lion. And Toto too. Each of them thinks they lack what they most want, but each found that they have the Oz within. Frank Baum writes the Scarecrow as level headed and wise, the Tin Man as too compassionate to kill a mouse, and the Lion as perfectly loveable and wise enough to escape in time. And Dorothy is a teen beyond her years.
Dorothy wants to go home. With the help of Glinda, the Good Witch, and a pair of dynamite shoes she’s been wearing all along, but nobody told her, Dorothy does go back to Kansas, wiser, more caring and braver, having worked through her teenage angst. She clicks her heels together and wakes up in her bed surrounded by those who love her. In our fourth level of teshuvah, going home means vowing to never return to the same misbehavior again, even given the same temptations. You can’t take a short cut on this one. You have to go through admission, remorse, restitution and apology, in order to feel that sense of inner security and grounding. In order to re-establish shalem, order, balance, wholeness within. Wouldst we could do a little Oseh Shalom dance, click our heels together and go to a place where we feel totally at home, totally ourselves, totally at peace, a place of no fear.
But it requires doing the challenging work of teshuvah. It always surprises me that Dorothy returns from a techni-colored Land of Oz back to a sepia-colored Kansas but in spite of that she still finds her happiness there. In our uber techni-color world sepia films, black and white photos, old vinyl record albums now seem warm and rich and beautiful. And so too, sometimes an old fashioned call, visit for tea or hand-written letter can start a deep conversation that can wipe away decades of guilt, fear and sleepless nights.
Why do we spend all this time in teshuvah, focusing on guilt and forgiveness? Reb Tzadok suggests that our wounds and deficits can lead us to our own unique path of redemption. Estelle Frankel writes, “Yom Kippur is a time when each of us gather up the broken pieces of our lives, as the ancient Israelites gathered up the broken pieces of the first tablets of the Ten Commandments and we try to reestablish a sense of wholeness and coherence both as individual people and as a community. Despite whatever has been broken or shattered through our own mistakes or fate itself, Yom Kippur, the day of at-one-ment, gives us a chance to heal and be whole once more.”[1]
Rav Simha Bunem of Przhka, in our Jewish literature, tells the Oz story in a slightly different way.
The Treasure Within Us
There once was a poor Jew living in Kracow named Rabbi Eisik, the son of Rabbi Yekel. After many years of great poverty, Rabbi Eisik had a dream in which he was told to go to Prague and dig under the bridge leading to the king’s palace. There, he was told, he would find a large treasure. At first he ignored the dream, thinking it was simple wish fulfillment. But after the dream repeated itself for the third time, Rabbi Eisik set out for Prague. When he reached the palace, he discovered that the bridge at its entrance was heavily guarded both day and night. Afraid to start digging in front of the guards, Rabbi Eisik simply waited and watched. The captain of the guards, who had noticed him, finally asked what he was doing there, and so Rabbi Eisik told him about his dream. In response the guard began to laugh and said, “And so to please the dream, you poor fellow wore out your shoes to come here! As for having faith in dreams, if I had it, I should have had to get going when a dream once told me to go to Krakow and dig for treasure under the stove in the room of a Jew, Eisik, son of Yekel, that was the name! Eisik, son of Yekel! I can just imagine what it would be like, how I should have to try every house over there, where one half of the Jews are named Eisik, and the other half Yekel! When Rabbi Eisik heard this, he turned around and went home and dug under his own stove, and there he found the treasure that had all along been waiting for him. [2]
This week I asked you all to think of something that you yearn for in the New Year. Take a moment and pause and think about that yearning. During the break fast you may want to walk down the hall and look at our Yellow Brick Road of Stickies made up of the yearnings of all the members of the congregation.
We’ll finish up our prayers in a short time and then have a bite to eat. After all this praying, thinking, eating and yearning for something new in the New Year, click your heels together and go back to you residence and see if you can find the treasure hiding under your very own home, perhaps under the kitchen table.
May you have a New Year, sweet and full of adventure and may you find that treasure not at the end of the rainbow, but in your own back yard.
