High Holy Day Sermons 5770/2009
Rabbi James Prosnit |
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz |
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Our Search for Wholeness The day that begins this evening is known by many names. Not only Rosh Hashanah — the head of the year, but also Yom Harat Olam — the Birthday of the year as according to tradition it was 5770 years ago that God spoke, creation began and the first humans appeared with all their glory and all their foibles. In English we refer to these as the High Holy Days indicating a more modern elevation of them as the most significant in the Jewish calendar. The days when many find their way home to the synagogue. I frequently wonder why that is. Cynics give all sorts of explanations: habit, guilt, to be seen, to honor parents living or dead. But I think it goes well beyond those types of things. Conformity, filial expectations and social pressures are not sufficiently strong in this day and age to warrant such expeditions to the synagogue. What is it that really brings us together in this collective act of returning? I believe every year, but all the more so this year when things were so difficult for so many we know and love, ourselves included; that there is a deep spiritual need to unite the fragments of our lives. These days are a chance to sigh—individually and collectively and to pray for a better year ahead. There is great wisdom in Jewish tradition providing the time and place for such an annual spiritual checkup. These days are about us and God and our desire to be included in this expansive seasonal embrace. But of course showing up is not the entire story. Woody Allen may have suggested that 90% of life or success is just showing up. And while in some cases there may well be truth to that wisdom, and fodder for another sermon, when it comes to deriving merit from these Holy Days I’m afraid just being here is not the whole story. Returning in Hebrew is shuvah, the root of the word teshuvah/repentance. Our prayer book is called Sharey Teshuvah, The Gates of Repentance and provides a road map for this journey of self scrutiny and account taking. A process that rarely comes easily and for some may well be a difficult task. Words like sin, repentance, redemption sound so old fashioned. We may wonder if they are still relevant to our lives today? But, sometimes when you put a face on a traditional concept like teshuvah you begin to see it a new light. And that is what happened late this summer and why I choose to address the topic tonight. I thought a lot about the words repentance and redemption and their importance over the last few weeks when watching and reading and thinking about the life of Teddy Kennedy. The Lion of the Senate has been lionized in tribute after tribute and many in my generation and of my political beliefs will miss him mightily. Still we need to be honest about his story and for this sermon on teshuvah we know that we cannot ignore an imperfect life, especially the well known events that took place at Chappaquiddick 40 years ago. What does one have to do to atone; and is it possible to be redeemed from ones personal actions and inaction that led to such tragedy. The Medieval Jewish scholar Maimonides offered the following case about repentance for mistakes that are impossible to repair. If you commit a wrong against someone, and that person dies before you can repent, you are not automatically absolved. Instead, you are to go to his grave. Then you confess what you did wrong, you pay his heirs to try to make up for the mistake and you try to live a life of greater nobility. Ted Kennedy Jr. hinted at this and more in his eulogy. “He was not perfect; far from it. But my father believed in redemption and he never surrendered. Never stopped trying to right wrongs, be they the results of his own failings or of ours.” Doris Kearns Goodwin quoted Hemingway in saying “Everyone is broken by life. But afterward, many are strong in the broken places.” And she said of Ted Kennedy, “he had absorbed his broken places.” A letter was read at the private burial service at Arlington, that the dying Ted Kennedy had asked President Obama to give to Pope Benedict when the president visited the pope earlier this spring. In the letter, Kennedy humbly asked the pope to pray for him as his health was declining and he was preparing for “the next passage of life.” It read, “I know that I have been an imperfect human being, but with the help of my faith I have tried to right my path.” A man with serious personal flaws, from America’s royal family. A man who had experienced pain and tragedy in his life, who had been the greatest political lightning rod of his time, and who, nonetheless, became the most accomplished successful senator of our time. In the tributes from people on both sides of the political aisle we were reminded not only of all the ambitious legislation he sponsored, but of the small acts of compassion and concern he learned to show for the well known and common folk alike. Mark Ambinder in the most recent issue of the Atlanticwrites an article interestingly entitled the Jewish Redemption of Ted Kennedy. He suggests that in Judaism redemption comes through work, work, work. As opposed to Christianity where redemption is spiritual and comes through Divine grace. And so as we ask “did Kennedy’s latter years make up for his serious, harmful transgression,” Ambinder suggests that how one answers that question may tell more about ones theology than ones politics. Judaism teaches redemption does come, but only after the hard work of teshuvah. And while I believe no one here this evening carries a Kennedyesque skeleton in his or her closet, I dare say there are mistakes and failures that we need to examine. Tonight as we seek wholeness in a holy setting there is for us as well the encouragement to do the work to make things right. A midrash contrasts the sin of Adam to the sin of Cain. The former ate forbidden fruit and was cast out of the garden. The latter murdered his brother and while forced to wander was protected by God. How could eating fruit be worse than murder? The answer: Cain repented. Adam blamed Eve. In the midrash Adam asks Cain, “How did your case go?” Cain said, “I repented and received clemency.” On hearing this Adam beat himself and cried out, “So great is the power of repentance and I did not know!” The rabbinic rules for teshuvah, are clear and have the following steps: feel sincere remorse, admit the mistake, undo as much damage as possible and resolve never to commit the wrongdoing again. We are taught, the gates of repentance are always open, but at this season they beckon most widely. And we’re taught that no sin is so light it may be overlooked; no sin is so heavy that it may not be repented of. In a year when we ponder the lives ruined by Bernard Madoff, we may question that latter teaching and feel that for some there are limits to teshuvah. But for most everyone else the gates are open. Time for a classic Rosh Hashanah story: Three people come before a great Torah sage just prior to the High Holy Days to discuss repentance. The first was man weighed down by a great wrong that he had committed. His conscience ached, he had no rest because of the burden he carried. The second person came to discuss three actions of selfishness and carelessness that had caused people she loved great pain in the year gone by. She was weighed down not by scandalous behavior but by significant breaches of faith that troubled her. And the third came in with no memorable, juicy wrong doing to turn to, but obviously a number of places where he did not live up to the best that was within him. Looking back there were many places where he missed the mark and where he sensed a gap between who he was and who in his highest moments he most thought he should be. The sage suggested to the first man that just after the Rosh Hashanah service he should go and find the largest boulder he could carry, bring it to the sanctuary and leave it before the ark. The wrong doer felt this was a most strange instruction but proceeded to follow the rabbi’s order. The woman with three acts of considerable indiscretion was instructed similarly, but she was told to bring three large stones to the sanctuary and place them before the ark. And as you might guess the last man in our story was told to fill a sack with small pebbles so that it weighed a great deal and he too was to place them before the ark. Each did as directed and were then instructed to return the afternoon just prior to Yom Kippur, shortly before the Kol Nidre chant. When that day arrived the rabbi met each person and said, now here is what you are to do. I want you to take what you brought and put them back one by one in the exact spot where they came form. Each went to comply with the instruction. The man with the largest boulder, the gravest sin finished his task easily. He knew exactly what he had to do and where it belonged. The woman remembered quickly her three misdeeds and found the spots from which the stones had come. But as the sun was setting and the Kol Nidre was about to be chanted the third man had not completed his task. He was still weighed down by the burden of all his minor sins because he could not remember where to restore them, where to go to make amends. The sage concluded that sometimes it is easier to remove the burden from one whose conscience weighs heaviest upon him. The sinner who turns in sincere repentance receives forgiveness. But to the one who held all the little errors and had paid scant attention to the site of his misdeeds the burdens still remained. Since most of us are like the third person, we should not minimize the weight of the small stones we carry. And that is why this need for repentance remains a need for all of us and is not an outdated, or foreign idea or there for only the biggest sinners in our midst. Our missing the mark may not have dominated our lives, led to sleepless nights, although for some I know it has, but it did prevent us from being as whole, as complete as we know we could be. There were acts of callousness, insensitivity and prejudice. There were petty arguments and foolish displays of excessive pride. Could I not have been more pious, more generous, kinder and less stubborn, more accepting and less judgmental, more refined and less gossipy, more concerned, more involved and less indifferent, more charitable and less selfish. More forgiving. As I review the year – I sure know that I could have been all of the above. Times when I certainly could have been more responsive to someone in need, quicker with a phone call, better with my follow up; less snarky to a colleague; more present and attentive at home –even when I was at home. Teshuvah does not happen all at once. It happens in increments. “I’m sorry,” is not defeat but the first step toward returning some of the stones. Of course I can hear an objection. What is the purpose of teshuvah if we know that next year many of us will likely be back here in the same place, some sitting in the very same seats, with many of the same foibles and failings. And here the answer is clear. Like the third person in the story, unless we keep our sins under control the weight may destroy us. Crash diets rarely work, but regular reminders of the importance of eating right and staying fit go along way to improved health. These Holy Days do not seek to turn us into saints, but they do point the way to a more noble path. So, these Days of Awe have relevance for us. Ten days to gather stones and return them to the spot from which they came. Ten days to take the weight off our shoulders, to make amends and to change some of the ways we act and react. Even modified behaviors have far reaching results. These days are not about the scandals and missteps in someone else’s life. They are about our life and our search for wholeness. The days that begin tonight and continue to Yom Kippur are the highest and holiest in the year. They have life affirming possibilities if we have the courage to face our baser instincts, confront our failures, do some good, and turn in repentance so that we all may walk humbly with our God. |
Looking for the Face of God This will be the twentieth time that I have had the opportunity to speak form this pulpit on Rosh Hashanah and to consider the story of Abraham with many of you. That has been a unique and special privilege, not only due to the power of the story, but due to the sanctity and special nature of this community. At certain points during the past two decades I have held Abraham up as a model of commitment and faith, while at other times I have expressed great discomfort at his actions especially as revealed in the Akeida, the story of the binding of Isaac. I’ve called him Avraham Avinu, Abraham our father, as our tradition has, and seen in his life the search for God, land and sacred instruction that has been the foundation of the Jewish people’s identity and survival. But I’ve also seen him as the ultimate example of blind faith and fanaticism that is especially unnerving and that has at too many times given religion a bad name. Of course to do him justice we have to move beyond the Akeida. Else where in the text Abraham appears as the model of citizenship. He freely and willingly let’s his nephew Lot have first choice of land when pastures become sparing. He sits in the opening of his tent to ensure hospitality for any strangers who might be walking by. He has the chutzpah to bargain with God but in so doing he intervenes and tries valiantly to save even the lawless cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, if only ten righteous folks can be found in their midst. He banishes Hagar and Ishmael to preserve the Jewish lineage, but he mourns and grieves his doing so. He smashes idols, journeys to a new land and triumphs again and again over adversity ever growing in compassion and faith. In fact it is because Abraham is a righteous yet passionate man that the midrash suggests he is selected by God to receive the Divine call. In Abraham we see that religious faith can teach both passion and civility. Perhaps it is at Mount Moriah, the site of our story this morning where that becomes most clear to him. Do not stretch out your hand against the lad do not do anything to him the angel cries out. Abraham this new religion you are beginning is life affirming, it requires that you see the face of God not only in the mirror, but in the face of your son. And even beyond that. God’s face is in the face of your neighbor and yes, even in the face of the stranger. This radical new faith required that he and that we his descendents not encounter our fellow citizens with suspicion or hostility; we must encounter them with the realization that they are as fully remarkable as we are and we must be willing to make certain sacrifices for the sake of living together. After all the stranger we meet on the street or the opponent we hear in a debate is as entitled to our respect and sense of awe – as the people we love most in the world. Admittedly that is a hard place to get to. So much of our culture and possibly even our human nature moves us in other directions. But to love our neighbor as our self, remains the central teaching. At this season it is a lofty, yet powerful goal to imagine. My desire this morning is to show that passion and civility are not mutually exclusive. But sadly, that has certainly not been the case in the headlines. Ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel protest a parking lot being open on Shabbat and hurl gross epithets in the face of young Israeli soldiers. “Nazi” they yell at young men who serve in an army that does not require them, the “hareidi” ultras to do the same. “Whore” they scream at the woman soldier who when not on duty in Jerusalem serves guard on the borders that protect all citizens. “Goy” they call the Ethiopian Jewish sergeant who proudly wears the uniform of the nation that absorbed his family a generation ago. All this because the new mayor of Jerusalem wants to make a parking lot near the old city accessible to tourists and secular citizens on Shabbat. Closer to home, name calling at town meetings across this land seemed part of the summer sport and continued even on to the floor of congress. Designed to air perspectives mostly on health care such forums disintegrated into numerous displays of nastiness. While some who spoke up had questions and concerns about costs, government bureaucracy, quality of care others, used their air time to proclaim we want our America back. Thinly veiled racism at a leader who no longer looked liked they. And of course the names to use, if you really wanted to get in someone’s face -- Nazi, fascist, Hitler. As Jews we don’t take those names lightly and bristle at such analogies. They conjure up images of Gestapo tactics used by the real Gestapo who was so good at dehumanization and euphemisms to give cover to their real intent. We saw how the ability to turn someone with whom you disagree into Hitler helped pave the way for violent response as we witnessed the murder of Dr. George Tiller. Shot down in the vestibule of his church while ushering one Sunday morning.. Dr. Tiller had become the hitlerian image for anti choice, pro life (the irony) zealots in the abortion debate. But this morning my concern is not the secular-religious divide in Israel, the health care debate here at home or defending a woman’s right to choice. Of course I’m concerned about Israel and I have strong opinions on health care and choice -- most of you in fact could probably guess on which side of each issue I stand – but I’d rather focus my remarks today on the broader issue of civility. The summer’s unruliness may have caught our attention but they’ve triggered broader questions across the culture about the cause of such rudeness and what appears to be little interest in listening to someone with a different point of view. Today’s politics flourish on divisions. Interest groups raise funds most easily when they demonize the other side and play up the most extreme views of the opposition. The media revels in controversy and thrives on giving voice to the most shrill and most strident. Sound bite politics prevail and the sound bites tend to be the most acerbic, polarizing and least edifying and those who show the most passion are portrayed as those with the most truth. Now not every act of political passion and protest leads to excessive and inappropriate displays of intolerance. Throughout American history numerous examples exist where dissent and protest have led to a more perfect union. But for every tea party historic as well as contemporary, when legitimate criticism reined there have also been examples of ugliness and violence. French statesman Georges Clemenceau a century ago referred to the United States as the only nation in history which “has miraculously gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.” Overstating the case for sure, but also capturing some of the concern that we have become a less civil union, more insular, more divided, less hospitable, less mannered and less interested in the welfare of others. Figuring out when that began and what the cause is n’er impossible. I’m sure that from time in memoriam every older generation has bemoaned the lack of civility, etiquette and manners of those that came after. But one interesting view suggests we look for clues in our changing systems of transportation. In the mid nineteenth century guidebooks were written to encourage proper behavior on the new emerging form of travel, known as the railroad For the first time in human history horseback was not the fastest way to get from one place to another. Everybody wanted to go someplace and everyone wanted to ride, but only the very rich could afford to sit in a car alone. So “how to” books were published to teach people how to ride together. In one such book, Isaac Peeples writes, “whispering, loud talking, immoderate laughing and singing should not be indulged by any passenger. Passengers should not gaze at one another in an embarrassing way.” Passengers had to learn that there was an obligation to be accommodating and to treat each other well. Sacrificing certain personal space for the greater good made the ride tolerable and taught basic rules of civility. (discussed in Civility, by Stephen L. Carter p.4 ff, Perseus Books) But today we have learned again to ride alone in our automobiles. We have the illusion that sacrifices are no longer necessary. We care less and less about our fellow citizens because we no longer sit next to them or see them as our fellow passengers. We see them as obstacles and competitors. I do not believe in capital punishment, but I am willing to make exceptions for those on the Merritt Parkway who do not move right when everyone else does and who insist on passing the long line of already merged traffic for a last second cut in. I do not see the face of God in those drivers. But how inappropriate to show my intolerance in a sermon on tolerance. What the automobile did to further loosen civility in the last century, I’m afraid has been replicated in this century by another technological advancement, the internet. Today we not only travel alone, but we communicate with a degree of anonymity and speed that does little to foster real human contact and reflective thoughtful exchanges. True, social networking has enabled us to be in touch with far flung acquaintances. It has allowed us to know the simple goings on in the lives of more people than we could have possible imagined, but the pace of communications, the short cutting of true feelings and the expectation of the immediacy of response has led to many reactions without thinking and quick capital letter offense. The letter that we decided not to send after re-reading it the next morning has turned into the immediacy of the send button and the instantaneous gossip of reply to all. Of course I could go on with other breaches of etiquette these days that infuriate. Incessant cell phone chatter when we do ride the rails. Overstuffed carry on bins when we take to the sky. The ubiquitous curse words that are now commonplace not only among teenagers but adults as well and the ugly displays of celebrity entitlement witnessed on the tennis court or at award ceremonies. But civility is not just the willingness to limit our behavior and do no harm; it is an affirmative duty to do good. Random acts of care or chesed that the Talmud considers even more noble than acts of charity, because charity is with one’s money and chesed is with the whole person, directed to rich and poor, neighbor and stranger alike. Yale Law professor Stephen Carter says civility has three parts: generosity, even when it is costly; trust, even when there is a risk and sacrifice for strangers, not just for people we happen to know. Carter an African American tells the story of his family’s move to a lily white neighborhood in Washington DC in 1966. A racially charged time to be sure, he recalls himself as a young boy sitting on the front step of his grand new house in the grand new lonely white neighborhood watching the moving truck unload the furniture, certain that his parents have made a terrible mistake by the move. He’s mindful of all he had heard of how white people treated black people, and writes, “All at once, a white woman arriving home from work at the house across the street turned and smiles with obvious delight and waved and called out in a booming voice I would come to love, welcome! She bustled into her house only to emerge minutes later with a huge tray of cream cheese and jelly sandwiches, simultaneously feeding and greeting the children of a family she had never met –and a black family at that- with nothing to gain for herself except perhaps the knowledge that she had done the right thing. She was generous when nobody forced her to be, she was trusting when there was no reason to. He concludes by suggesting of such risks is true civility constructed. Her name he remembers years and year later, Sara Kestenbaum who with one small act made a special contribution to civility by mirroring Abraham and providing cream cheese and jelly sandwiches to strangers.. (Civility, p. 60 ff) How easy to welcome a neighbor, drive with a bit more care, limiting cell phone usage and the number of carry on bags. Admittedly small acts of sacrifice, trust and risk, but they are certainly within our power and they signal our willingness to discipline our desires and rise above individualism for the sake of the group. Jewish tradition encourages this and gives us another glimpse in its instructions on permissible prayers. We’re told we can pray for the safety and security of our home and family until we hear the fire alarm. Then it becomes unacceptable to pray “please God let it not be my home, let it be someone else’s.” We even limit our prayers as an act of civility to our neighbors. But of course a true civil society goes deeper than such basic acts of simple decency. Civility also requires conceding the humanity and basic goodwill of my fellow citizens even when I disagree with them. Last night I spoke about Ted Kennedy and focused on him as an example for this season of repentance. One of the oft reasons why he became a senator beloved from both sides of the aisle and political divide was his ability to see the humanity in the other. “Republicans love this country as much as I,” was the premise with which he began every debate and the counsel he gave to young law makers. How basic, but how rare in the current political climate. All too often we enter dialogue with our opponents by listening with our mouths rather than with our ears. That is we listen for flaws awaiting our chance to refute the ideas of the other. We do not listen to this living, breathing specimen of God’s creation with any sense of awe; we do not even listen with respect. We begin our listening with the certainty that our opponents have it all wrong. Confrontational listening is the norm on cable news and those in your face TV shows, it became ugly in some community forums and I’m afraid it exists in too many work places and homes as well. It signals others that they are not worthy of our respect. When we engage in civil listening we treat people as equals even if we dislike their views and we enter into conversation with knowledge of the possibility that they are right and we are wrong. And even if in the end we are certain that we are right and they are not, then civility enables us to forgive them the error of their views. A lovely story called the Rabbi's Gift tells of monastery with decaying vitality and aging cantankerous monks that existed in a village next to a small synagogue. The abbot of the monastery decided to see if the rabbi had any suggestions as to how to re-ignite the spirit of the place. The rabbi replied, "I have no advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you." As the story goes, "the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah. And on the off off chance that each monk himself might be the Messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect. As a result the aura of the place was reborn and the monastery once again began to thrive. A simple story that tells such a compelling truth: How we judge and treat the people around us, on a simple day to day level, not only determines our relationship with them but affects the very quality of life in our community. Our small worlds can be transformed when we look at another human being and understand: this person has merit and worth. So this morning, this season the message is to be part of the solution not the problem. Civility after all may not be part of our human nature. We may not be wired to listen to opposing views, to move beyond the needs of the self. Our instincts may be more combative polarizing and clannish. But that’s not the core message of our sacred teachings and that’s no way for a society to function. What Abraham came to learn and to teach, Judaism came to call derekh eretz, literally the way of the world, but an expression that has come to mean common decency, civility of action and the ability to see the Divine in all of God’s creations. I began my words this morning with the recollection that these are the 20th High Holy Days that I’ve stood on this pulpit. I haven’t just gotten bald I’ve gone grey at the Temple. Just look at the photos in our wonderful archival display in the lobby and you’ll see what I mean. When you begin at a new congregation you’re never certain that it’s going to work out and that it will be one’s career placement. I tell my sons that I know many good rabbis who have never found that congregational fit. They cannot assume that their journey in the rabbinate will be as uncomplicated as their fathers. But I also tell them that it is the civility of the place and the passion of their ideals that will go along way in making them as blessed as I have been. That tone of discussion insures that when issues arise they are in the main about how best to create a shared vision not how to divide up turf; they’re about ideas not egos. Such controversies are for the sake of heaven, they raise us up as a community they build us as a congregation. It is small wonder that for the better part of a half century you have had two rabbis; two cantors and two educators; a pre school director and family educator with tenures longer than any one except for two members of our wonderful office staff. It is not complacency, it is the civility of the place and the qualities of the people that make that happen and make both professionals and laity wish to continue to work to build the kind of community of which we all are justly proud. In a year where incivility has reined, how good it is to be here this morning – may we spread that feeling to the other lives we touch as we pray for a good and satisfying, sacred and civil new year.
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From Dust to Dust and Heart to Heart Twenty years ago this very day, I watched my father shuffle out of the sanctuary in the middle of Yom Kippur services. With mind and body failing he moved slowly on my mother’s arm unable to sit and unable to focus. I watched him as I read the prayers –who shall live and who shall die, how many will pass on and how many will come to be, and I knew that it would be the last time he would see his son lead a Holy Day Service. Blessedly by Chanukah he would die. I say blessedly for several reasons. Blessedly he had caring physicians who diagnosed and explained so sensitively to us the progression of the mysterious illness that he had contracted. Blessedly that these doctors and nurses treated him to a point and then insured his death would be as pain free and peaceful as possible. Blessedly that he lingered as a shadow of his former self for only a matter of months from onset to end. Blessedly that although care was expensive he had decent insurance and the nursing care he needed did not financially break my mother, my sister and me. And blessedly at his death I came to know that he was in a better place. Nothing that I have said should imply that his death was not devastating to all who knew him and loved him. Of course I would have liked to have a father for years more than I did. I would have loved for him to see his grandsons all six of them grow up to be the men that they are. I think regularly about all the good things that he has missed out on in the last twenty years. But I also know that there is wisdom to the words of out prayer book – some shall pass on and some shall come to be and while tzedakah, teshuvah and tefillah may temper judgments harsh decree it sure doesn’t prevent it. Death is inevitable. Death is part of life. I think we Americans feel scandalized by it. We feel that not only do we have a right to quality health care; we have a right to be healthy. And not only do we have a right to be healthy; by all rights we shouldn’t die. I exaggerate of course, but as I have watched the summer’s health care debate disintegrate as it has – I think there is so much need for us to do better not only in providing affordable healthcare, but in providing compassionate dying care. Now let me say clearly I am not in favor of death panels. I am not in favor of any form of active euthanasia, and I am in awe and inspired by how many people – how some of you, battle serious illness and withstand aggressive treatments to sustain the precious life that this is. But I am also in favor of allowing the terminally ill to die with as much dignity as they can muster and as unafraid as possible. There is no better sports broadcaster than Dodger announcer Vin Scully. In one famous exchange someone said to Scully that a particular player was on the disabled list and listed “day to day.” Scully responded –aren’t we all; aren’t we all. The ancients understood that better than we. They did not assume that human beings were entitled to good health. Illness was accepted as inevitable, a fact of life. For them health was a gift, a sign of God’s unfathomable healing power. This may explain why in former times, doctors were revered and viewed as almost divine messengers. And while some doctors today may see themselves that way, I fear it is more part of their hubris than their theology. Physicians in times gone by were the bearers of God’s gift of healing. Jews who aspired to the medical profession did so because the study of sacred texts and healing went hand in hand. The 12th scholar and physician Moses Maimonides is certainly the most famous. Piety went with the science of the day. They prayed as part of the daily Amidah, “Heal us Lord and we shall be healed; save us and we shall be saved; grant us a perfect healing from all our infirmities. Baruch atah adonai rofeh haholim --Blessed is the Lord healer of the sick.” Today, instead of that being part of our core belief, some wonder how we can say that prayer when some we love are ill. If God is truly all powerful and a healer should we not expect to be healthy? Since that is quite obviously not the case, then God must have nothing to do with the matter. But pre modern folks who knew more sick people than you or I nevertheless could utter those words with conviction. Because not everybody was sick and because some who were ill recovered, they believed that God is indeed a healer and a savior and should therefore be glorified. The facts are the same – the presumptions are different. We take health to be the norm and sickness an aberration; they assumed sickness to be common and health the exception. They praised God for the health they had; we blame God for the health we do not have. They saw old age as a gift and venerated those who received it; we see it as a curse and spare no expense in trying to hide our increasing vulnerabilities. Whereas they praised God for having been kept alive Blessed are you Adonai our God, she hech eyanu ve kiy manu vehigiyanu -- for having kept us alive, preserved us and brought us to this day, we tend to blame or bargain with God when life is threatened and keep quiet when life is good. We often ask, Why me when we are in pain, but seldom when we are comfortable and happy. None of this of course means that I am advocating a return to pre modernity. We welcome advances in medicine with enthusiasm – they have brought much freedom from pain and a considerably longer life span. But such marvelous science and medicine has also produced its share of consequences. We expect doctors to make us better, putting tremendous pressure on our physicians when they can’t and leading not only to law suits, but to the view that death is an option and an enemy that must be defeated. This attitude leads to the billions and billions of dollars spent as a society even in the last months of someone’s life when little or nothing can be done. How much better to allocate more resources to ease a person into death and provide quality palliative care? Now let me say here that there is much debate within Jewish tradition on what I just said. Some would disagree mightily and insist that life is always preferable to death. They say, it is inappropriate for anyone to determine at what point the quality of a certain life fails to meet desirable standards and ought not to be sustained. Even the life of a moribund person, known in Hebrew as a goses, is to be preserved as long as possible. A goses was likened to a “flickering candle” and some sources said such a person must not be moved for fear of snuffing out the candle of life. But other sources have a different view. In a Talmudic story Rabbi Judah president of the Sanhedrin and editor of the Mishnah lay dying. His students kept a prayer vigil and their prayers it was said kept him alive. Seeing what a painful, difficult time he was having, however, his housekeeper prayed for an end to his suffering. She smashed a jug on the floor which startled the students and for a moment caused them to stop their prayers. In that instant Rabbi Judah died. The Talmudic story records no objection to the actions of the hand maid and quite the contrary seems to imply that the students themselves were at fault. They should have paid more attention to the needs and condition of Rabbi Judah and stopped their prayers so that he could be relieved of his pain in death. Later codes go so further: not only may one desist from praying for a person’s recovery, but they explicitly permit one to pray that God speedily take the life of a dying person and relieve their suffering. All this becomes more real in our time when machines and medications can keep bodies functioning longer and longer. I have had a number of conversations with some of you and I know many others who have very personal stories about struggling with what best to do or not do for loved ones. The challenge it seems to me is to find that line between hastening a death and delaying or prolonging dying. The former we cannot do; the latter we need not deter as long as we administer to the needs of the dying with pain medication and with our presence. Admittedly this line is not always easy to find and can lead to excruciating decisions. Ventilators, feeding tubes even something far less intrusive like an antibiotic to relieve the pneumonia in someone who is critically ill, do we withhold that and enable people to be embraced by what they used to call – the physicians friend. So helpful, is knowing the desires of the people we love. That’s why counseling about end of life issues so demagogued in the health care debate as death panels is so important. We need to talk to our family and our physicians about our wishes –and while we know such wishes may change depending on our situations and diagnoses, it is our participation in that conversation, when we are able, that is so crucial and so helpful. A study by the Archives of Internal Medicine showed that such discussions between doctors and patients not only can decrease costs by about 35%, they can improve the quality of life at the end, enabling more people to die at home as most of us wish and most of us do not get to do. When my father’s brain could no longer remind him how to swallow it was clear to us that any further actions on our part would have just delayed his dying. His living will and advanced directives made us certain that we were doing what he had let us know was in his best interests. New York city pastor and preacher, Forest Church who died just this past week in a final sermon to his congregation wrote, “The act of releasing a loved one from all further obligation as he lies dying – to tell him it’s all right, that he is safe that we love him and he can go now – is life’s most perfect gift, the final expression of unconditional love. We let go for dear life” And when my father’s death came one more thing happened to reassure me that we had done the right thing in allowing him to die. I saw him leave his body. In the final moments of his life, before I suspect doctors would have called him clinically dead, I witnessed a physical release of his essence from what had been the prison of his body. Such a gift reassured me that at the cemetery when we interred that body in the ground, he was not there, he was somewhere else. Since that time I have had a profound belief in a continuation of life after this life. I am grateful that Jewish tradition does not try and define what or where that life is, but I am at ease with the idea that after our deaths there is not nothing. I would not presume to say what afterlife institution awaits us on the other side—immortality of the soul, the next world, resurrection, reincarnation, rebirth, heaven, hell, Kabbalistic mansions – but I believe so strongly that there’s more than just life as we know it. It is being able to embrace that belief that can mitigate the fear of dying and generate hope, allowing us to know that our loved ones are in a safe place. Those who teach that Judaism has no belief in life after death are wrong. To say so not only misrepresents our tradition but it make dying harder and mourning more difficult. Voltaire once said, “It would be no more surprising to be born twice than to be born once.” None of this should diminish the preciousness of each and every breath and endorse the idea that we should give up on life to get to what awaits us sooner. That is clearly not the Jewish way. When a healthy person dies in an accident or after an acute illness we not only recognize the tragedy of death, but we gag when someone suggests that they are in a better place. But when someone sick who cannot be cured dies, we can say that death is a “haven for the weary and a relief to the sorely afflicted.” And as the prayer continues, “there is no pain in death only the pain of the living as they recall shared love and they themselves fear to do die.” Little that I say tonight can ease the fear of death or soften the pain of losing some one we love, but to see death as part of life does enable us to understand that we are part of a bigger picture. Rabbi Irwin Kula writes, Life isn’t about beginnings and endings; it’s an endless cycle of unfolding and evolution. Like a wave crashing against the shore, we return to the ocean of all that is. And because death is a reality and life is precious – we know that we cannot squander any moments of our lives. That after all is the central teaching of this sacred night when much of the imagery is a rehearsal of our deaths. We recite viddui -- confessionals, the only other time in which these special prayers are recited are as a confessional on one’s death bed. Some orthodox Jews, not unlike the rabbis and cantor and you who are wearing tallitot dress in kittles or shroud like white and others wear no leather, traditional signs of mourning. Just before the Kol Nidre was chanted we watched as the scrolls were taken out of the aron kodesh, the holy ark. Without scrolls our aron kodesh is not kodesh it loses its holiness; it is just an aron, a closet or better, the Hebrew word for casket. And so as we face our symbolic casket we ask release from unfulfilled vows; one cannot fulfill a vow if one is not alive. We fast completely, neither food nor water, partially as a day of self denial, but more symbolic than that. When you’re dead there’s no need to eat. The rituals of this day make us confront our mortality and at the end of the long day tomorrow can be transformative, like a near death experience. Not only does this day prepare us for the ultimate and inevitable it inspires us to make the changes necessary to live each of our days with nobility and with purpose. When death or dying come calling either in reality or as a rehearsal, like this day it makes us alert to life’s fragility and reawakens us to life’s preciousness reflected in the wisdom of Kohelet “to everything there is a season, a time for every experience under heaven … a time to be born and a time die. -- from dust to dust and heart to heart.
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Messages of Consolation One dark evening, a man was searching under a lamppost in his neighborhood for his keys. Another man was passing by and stopped to ask if he could be of assistance. ‘What are you looking for?’ ‘Can I help?’, he asked. ‘Sure, thanks, I’d really appreciate that’, the first man replied. And so the two of them continued to search the ground under and around the lamppost. After a little while of fruitless searching, the one who stopped to help asked the first man, ‘So where exactly did you drop these keys?’ The man lifted his head and pointed ‘Over there, in that dark corner against the wall’. Incredulous, his assistant responded, ‘So why on earth are we looking over here?!’ The first man replied, ‘Well, this is where the light was to help me see while I search!’. We laugh at the foolishness of the man in the story, searching for his keys. But those of us who regularly find ourselves misplacing our keys, our glasses, our mobile phones… perhaps there is a little, slightly embarrassed voice within that is right now saying ‘no, I can relate to that!’. Have you noticed how we always find what we are looking for in the last place that we look… think about that for a moment… But this isn’t a sermon about how to find your keys – and so let me do teshuvah right now and apologize to those of you who thought I might be offering some really useful advice on that topic. This is a sermon about light and dark, where we look for things, and where we find them. Today is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Today is also the end of a seven week period in the Jewish calendar - the period of time between Tisha B’Av and Rosh Hashanah. Tisha B’Av is a fast day in the middle of the summer – a date that has been largely ignored in the Reform movement because its prime association is with the destruction of the first two temples. Historically, Reform Judaism has been rather ambivalent about that date, because we were rather pleased to see the end of sacrificial temple-based Judaism and the beginning of rabbinic, prayer and ritual-based Judaism. In fact, some in the classical Reform era even advocated turning Tisha B’Av into a celebration day. But, historically, Tisha B’Av was never literally just about the end of the Temple in Jerusalem. It came to mark all of the devastating and life-changing moments of Jewish history, such as the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290 and from Spain in 1492. Tisha B’Av isn’t a fun holiday. The experience of loss and uncertainty that it asks us to immerse ourselves in for a day is one of those dark places that we don’t really want to be. But the Jewish calendar is designed in such a way that, in the course of a year, we are taken on a journey through the full gamut of human feeling and experience. Because, even if we are not in a place in our lives this year when we are acutely feeling that particular emotion, someone in our community is. Someone in our community needs to know that our faith tradition recognizes that this experience – even the dark and painful experiences – are part of our spiritual journey through life too. Someone in our community needs to hear, ‘God is in this place, even though right now I might not know it.’ This year, many here, and many others in our larger local community, have found themselves feeling darkness encroaching on their lives; have found themselves in an uncomfortable and uncertain place. This year we certainly can’t go into the New Year without thinking about the new economic realities of our world, our country, out state, our city and our own finances. The problems have become too wide spread for anyone to go unaffected. We may not have been aware of it, but embedded in the rhythm of the Jewish year is an immediate response to the loss and uncertainty of the emotional field surrounding Tisha B’Av – the period of time leading up to Rosh Hashanah are called the seven weeks of consolation. This year, many of us find ourselves seeking human and spiritual support - What will be our ‘seven weeks of consolation’ as we enter a New Year? Traditionally, on each Shabbat of the seven weeks there is a special haftarah reading – an excerpt from the prophetic writings of the book of Isaiah. What is interesting, and seems to me to be particularly relevant to the times we live in today, is the predominant message and tone of these passages of consolation. Consolation, as defined by the ancient wisdom of our faith tradition, looks quite different from the normative understanding of that term that we most often find in the contemporary culture of our times. How does the larger society often convey consolation – I think this poem, by Wislawa Szymborska, captures the sentiment well: Consolation Darwin. True or not, Scanning in his mind so many times and places, Hence the indispensable TRANSLATED BY CLARE CAVANAGH AND STANISLAW BARANCZAK How often are words of consolation heard ‘there, there, it will all be ok.’ ‘Just wait and see – it’ll all turn out for the best.’ ‘You’ll get through this, and things will go back to the way they were.’ If you’ve been through a life-changing experience, you’ll know how hollow these words are when others try to console us. And how do we console ourselves? One response to dark, challenging or painful times in our lives is distraction and avoidance. We don’t want to fish around in the dark for the lost keys … we think that if we head for the brightest, shiniest places, somehow we’ll find what we are missing there. And we want to know that everything will return to exactly how it was before. There are two problems with this theory – one is that, like the man in the story, we are unlikely to find the key if we are not willing to look into the darkness where we lost it. The other is that we are often misguided and confused about what really constitutes a source of light in our lives. We feel empty – we spend money on unnecessary commodities that cannot fill the void; we feel disconnected, and we blame others, pushing them further away; we jump from one experience to another, seeking spirituality and meaningful connections, but never staying long enough for anything to truly take hold. So, one of the big questions that I have, looking at our society and our community, is how willing are we to look into the darkness? In the midst of economic losses, uncertainties, fears, and struggles, are there some valuable keys to be found? Will some of those keys, perhaps, unlock the doors that lead to new priorities, a more balanced life, a more caring society, less material greed, more modest and sustainable goals for the lifestyles we lead, more time spent on trying to create an authentic community that will be there to support us all when we are in need? Or are we busily occupying ourselves with ways to avoid what we have convinced ourselves is a temporary discomfort, waiting for the bad times to pass, when we can go back to business as usual? Are we hanging out under the lamppost, engaged in superficial activities that, like Darwin, keep our minds off what is really missing in our lives, because its just a bit too dark and uncomfortable to look where the shadows are? When we look at the chapters of Isaiah that are read over the seven weeks of consolation, we do find messages that tell us that this too shall pass, that we will rise again. But we also find a different kind of message of consolation. God asks us, in a section that we will read again on Yom Kippur, ‘Why do you spend money for what is not bread, your earnings for what does not satisfy?... Incline your ear and come to Me; Hearken, and you shall be revived (ch. 55). We are called upon to embrace justice and return to a God-centered life. Prophetic consolation does not simply say that it’ll all be better soon and we can return to business as usual. We are reminded of the warning messages of the haftarot in the 3 weeks leading up to Tisha B’Av – warning us of the perils that face a society that is only interested in the acquisition of the wealth, ignoring those living in poverty, those without access to communal institutions that will enable them to live in dignity and health. The prophetic message of consolation is one that uses our experience of the darkness to encourage us to seek out the keys that truly unlock the entrances to a better life and a better world. |
Hagar, Yishmael and the Angel —
Finding God in the Messiness of Life Rabbi Rachel Gurevitzdddd Rosh Hashanah 2nd Day 5770 This morning our Torah reading was from Bereishit – the creation of the world. The Reform movement in the USA chose this reading for communities that came together for a second day of Rosh Hashanah because of an ancient association between Rosh Hashanah and the birth of the world – a symbolic way of reflecting on new beginnings and new potential. Coming after yesterday’s Torah reading, the Binding of Isaac, it might come as a relief to some; there’s a lot less angst involved in telling of the creation of the world. However, if you were in a Reform synagogue in the UK, you’d be reading a different part of the Torah today – a text that was read in Orthodox and Conservative communities yesterday: Genesis 21, coming immediately before the Binding of Isaac story, contains the story of Isaac’s birth, Sarah’s concerns about Hagar and Ishmael, and their banishment from Abraham’s home into the wilderness. Both chapters of Genesis – both stories – are extremely challenging. In one, the almost-sacrificing of a son and, in the other, the banishment of a wife and child to die of thirst in the desert. Why are these the stories we read on Rosh Hashanah? If the fashion world has the TV show, ‘What not to wear’, it feels like the Jewish faith has the Rosh Hashanah screening of ‘What not to do’! However, on closer examination, I find the story of Hagar and Ishmael told in chapter 21 to be even richer in possibility and meaning for this season than the binding of Isaac. I miss the opportunity to return to it at Rosh Hashanah. Last year, we explored the story at our pre-High Holyday Women’s Retreat with the theme of communication or, rather, lack of communication, as conveyed at multiple junctures in this story, in mind. This morning I’d like to take this opportunity to explore this story with you, with a different theme in mind – finding God in the messiness of life. To do that, I need to begin with some reflections on God, and share with you some personal theology. Because I find that talking about God in the philosophical abstract only gets us so far; to have a meaningful conversation about God in our lives, we need to be able to articulate how we experience God in our lives. I came to the path of being a rabbi because of some profound spiritual experiences. As a result, in the years leading up to entering rabbinical school, the years in rabbinical school, and since, contemplating the nature of God, the nature of my faith, and my experience of God in my life and in our world, has always been central to me. As a rabbi, I have been asked on many occasions about my belief in God. One of the first times that I will never forget was when visiting a congregant in hospital in my student pulpit in Florida during her dying days. Before she asked her question of me, she prefaced it by telling me that another rabbi, several decades earlier, had shared with her his doubt of God’s existence. When a person is dying, it’s not the time to start spouting Jewish philosophy. The question is really, ‘Am I going to God?’ ‘Is it safe to let go?’. I feel able to say with the certitude of my faith, based on my understanding of the most powerful spiritual experiences of my own life, ‘yes.’ While my certitude in God’s existence and presence is clear, the nature of my belief has shifted over these past 15 years or so. When I first came to the US, I spent 9 months at a Jewish retreat center and, during that year, participated in many several-days-long silent meditation retreats. In the stillest moments of meditation I experienced something that I would describe as ‘the ground of all being’. While we live our lives, most of the time, with the noise and static of our world, God is always present as the foundation for all existence – we just have to be still enough and clear away the distractions of daily life enough to experience it. And so, for a while, I thought that was the only way that I could feel God’s presence. I think that both of these experiences are real, and I would still identify them as major moments of God-awareness for me. But, as I have gotten older, I realize that to limit God-experiences to just these kinds of moments is restrictive and, therefore, does not jive with my personal theology. The God-idea that I hold is that there is no place where God is not. And if my personal theology is to stand up to experience then, while our awareness of God, and even our faith in God, may wax and wane, God’s presence is constant. For some individuals, like myself, a particular kind of practice or experience might help us sense that Presence, whether that be meditation, ecstatic chant, social action, building and sustaining a community, raising children, volunteering in a hospital or nursing home, or hiking on a mountain, and so we find ourselves yearning for more of those experiences because God is most felt by us at those times. And by the way, I do believe that all of those things can be a part of our spirituality and the energy and sensation that we feel when engaged in these ways – a feeling that is beyond language to convey – is a God-experience. So how does all of this connect to the story of Hagar and Ishmael? Hagar is the first biblical character to be visited by an angel in the form of a malach – a messenger of God, where that term is actually used. It happened before she gave birth to Yishmael, when she ran away from the home of Avram and Sara because of Sara’s harsh treatment of her when she became pregnant. In the story traditionally read on Rosh Hashanah, she will again encounter a messenger of God; this time after having been banished from the home with her son, after Sarah is concerned that Yishmael might come to challenge Yitzhak as the inheritor of the birthright; Sarah is asserting herself as no.1 wife of Abraham and protecting her son’s future. We may find her behavior appalling, although given the tribal culture of the times, her concerns are not unreasonable. But what we find in this story is that we do not only experience God in the calmest or most joyful moments in our lives. God shows up when life gets messy. If there is no place where God is not, then we can find God in the most distressing times of our lives, in the most rupturing fault lines that disrupt our world and, like Hagar, experiencing God’s presence in those moments can provide us with the well of spiritual waters that can give us the hope that this too will pass, that we are not alone, that God is with us even through the valley of the deepest darkness. While we usually regard earthquakes with fear, understandably, for the planet itself, the release of energy and the new landforms that result are just a part of the planet’s history – it is something that just happens. Some of the most spectacular landscapes have been created by the movement of these fault lines. For Hagar and Ishmael, banishment to the wilderness and the fear of dying in the desert was as if to be caught in the most terrifying earthquake of their lives. Such an earthquake could have been truly destructive, and they could have been lost. In the text, Hagar puts down her child some distance from her because she doesn’t want to watch him die. She cries, but her tears are those of hopelessness. She has given up. The text tells us that God responds to cries of the boy – his cries are cries for help. We do not cry out for help, from God or from other people, if we have lost faith that anyone will come to our aid. Our cry for help is to be heard and seen – so that a response becomes possible. Out of Yishmael’s cry, a new landscape emerges. A well of water appears for Hagar and Yishmael. He will go on to become a great nation, and will prosper – a future that, in all likelihood, would never have been possible as the son of a slave-woman in the house of Abraham and Sarah. Like the earth that readjusts and is transformed when there is movement across the fault lines, so when we reach a Fault Line in our lives, a shift in perception must take place and we must re-align or re-adjust accordingly. Experiencing the transition can be painful and messy. It can be challenging in ways that we would prefer, if we had a choice, not to deal with. But a Fault Line contains within it the potential for some kind of energized God awareness, and we are no longer quite the person we were previously. It can transform our lives. We all experience Fault Lines along our life journeys. That’s just how life is. Some have already been addressed with a response. Others remain long buried, left to smart under the surface. Sometimes, we can even get stuck in a Fault line…. We don’t know yet who we are transitioning into. To get through this transition requires a bit of work - Teshuva work. How so? If we merely translate Teshuva as Repentance, it doesn’t work. Rav Kook explains that Teshuva is the force which pushes the whole world forward, advancing towards an improved reality. Teshuva requires doing a thorough accounting … identifying, acknowledging…It requires weeding out … It requires letting go … of things, of unfinished business, so that the journey can continue on the other side of the Fault Line. In the book of Kings, Elijah experiences God not in the wind, not in the earthquake, not in the fire, but in the still small voice. Likewise, I do not wish to be misunderstood this morning – I do not believe in a God that willfully creates the earthquakes of our lives in order that we should come to know God. Rather, like the geological nature of our planet, the earthquakes are going to happen. But that is not the time to turn away from God. Do not misinterpret the challenging times of your life as the absence of God’s presence. There is no place where God is not – but we must let God in, for in the experience of that Presence, and in the strength that comes with faith, teshuvah, transformation, and renewal become possible. |
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Messages from God, by Rabbi Karen Kedar If you believe that this is nonsense, Messages from God are everywhere. On the second day of Rosh Hashanah I shared some of my personal theology with the community present, illustrating, through the story of the banishment of Hagar and Ishmael in the wilderness – one of the traditional texts of Rosh Hashanah – how God shows up in the messiness of life. A number of people that morning thanked me for talking about God. Not just as a piece of the message, but putting God, and my own beliefs about God, front and center. A Synagogue 3000 report, published back in March of this year, found from a survey that 78% of the Jews surveyed wished that Rabbis would talk more about God. Why? Why does faith matter? Why does any of this matter? Not just believing in God, but that we come together as a community of faith to explore, reflect upon, and practice our faith. Why do we do that? What difference does it make to the lives we live? There are many different answers to these questions. And, in many ways, our being part of a community of faith is our way of recognizing these questions, and exploring the answers together. My answers may not be your answers. I struggled enormously with the sermon that I wanted to give today. I want to talk about faith. Faith, as distinct from belief. There are many different beliefs, even within Judaism - about the nature of God, what we believe about the origins and the meaning of the Torah, what we believe about the role of the rituals and traditions of Judaism. These are the specifics. But I want to talk about something much more fundamental. I want to talk about the power of living a life in which God is experienced and present, in the variety of ways that people try to express that. I want to talk about the importance and the power of sharing and exploring these experiences in the context of an authentic faith community as the vessel that is an integral and essential part of how we make meaning of life’s journeys. The importance of these things cannot be intellectually argued, proved, or rationalized. For every statement I might try to make about faith, an opposing one could be just as easily offered. Rabbi David Wolpe, in his book, ‘Why Faith Matters’ tries to make the case, arguing against the recent spate of books that argue against the existence of God. Ultimately, I think that he fails to make the case. Not because his points don’t ring true – he shares some wonderful insights about faith in God, and the beauty of being part of a faith community. He fails, because one cannot ‘win’ the debate. Faith is lived, faith is experienced. We know it when we have it, and we treasure it. If we feel that we have been let down by God, let down by a community of faith, or have felt no pressing need to engage with questions of meaning and existence through the lens of faith, I cannot make any argument that will convince you this morning. But I can encourage you to open yourself to the possibility of a new experience. I can tell you that, when what blocks our path to faith are the limited God ideas of others, or the terrible things that some people do in the name of religion, or ritual practices that we find difficult to engage with, all of these things point to the limitations of the human being. They do not prove the foolishness of faith. The heritage of the Jewish people is many things, but one of the things that we find within it is that, from the time of our biblical ancestors, our people lived with a faith in God’s presence. It guided and inspired them, giving them hope in some of the darkest moments. And when God could not console us, our rage could be directed at God and that, at least, was something. This morning, I’d like to share some stories and reflections with you about the experience of living with faith in God. First, some thoughts from Rabbi Albert Lewis, in conversation with Mitch Albom:
This is a story retold by Mitch Albom, in his latest book that is released tomorrow, ‘have a little faith.’ I was a sent a pre-publication copy about two weeks ago and it was, literally, a God-send. You see, Mitch Albom isn’t a rabbi. And he’s not trying to convince anyone about anything. But eight years ago he was asked by Rabbi Albert Lewis, his childhood rabbi from New Jersey to, when the time came, write and deliver his eulogy. So Mitch spent the next eight years, until the rabbi’s passing, making regular visits, so that he could truly get to know the man he’d been asked to write about. And this book is simply a recording of his reflections – what happened when he spent time observing a man who, unlike himself, had lived his whole life with faith. You’ll know the name, Mitch Albom, perhaps most from the book he wrote a few years back, ‘Tuesdays with Morrie.’ In ‘Have a Little Faith’, Mitch reflects:
Do Rabbis ever curse God? Even when one doesn’t believe in the kind of God that is interfering and making choices that affect our lives, there are times when faith isn’t about praise, but about crying out in pain. Rabbi Albert Lewis certainly had cause – one of his daughters died from an asthma attack when she was 4 years old:
Rabbi David Wolpe tells us: ‘Faith is not a proposition but an orientation to the universe’. In ‘Why Faith Matters’, he reflects:
Mitch Albom, as he listens to the testimony of his Rabbi, Albert Lewis, and also that of a Detroit minister, Henry Covington, who he got to know over the same time period, recognizes that a faith orientation to the universe has faded from his own life, not because of his beliefs, but because of a lack of engagement, and his absence from the kind of community within which our eyes can be opened, our hearts moved, and we can explore life’s meaning through the lens of faith.
And yet, over the eight years that Mitch got to know Albert Lewis, he began to reflect more deeply:
Rabbi David Wolpe and I share something in common, aside from our titles. In his late teens and early twenties, he had rejected religion. He is the son of a Rabbi. The rational world of the philosophers called to him as something he could believe in, and he distanced himself from Judaism. I also was distanced from Judaism throughout most of my teens, because I had allowed a particular kind of Judaism to utterly define and control the gates to a faith experience and, rejecting Orthodox Judaism as a path that I could not relate to, I rejected a faith orientation to the world. I needed guides to help me find my way back in. They came via a community of Reform Jewish students that I met when I began university, and Reform rabbis that I got to meet for the very first time. They came via a congregation that was welcoming and encouraging, and a chavurah community that opened up deeply spiritual paths into Judaism for me. These experiences opened my eyes and my heart to faith again. But, as time went on, the experience of feeling God’s presence in how I understood my life unfolding, demanded a response in the choices that I made that were frightening. For several years I pushed them away. Rabbi Wolpe shared an insight in ‘Why Faith Matters’ that helps to explain this:
For me, I felt compelled to live a life that was true to who I really was. I left a life of academia because I realized that, for me, I was using that kind of work to close off an emotional and creative side of my soul that I was afraid to let loose. I remember that one of the most powerful prayers I ever uttered was to ask that God would be there to catch me as I took what felt like the most enormous and terrifying leap of my life, followed my heart, and entered into what, eight years later, is an ongoing relationship with the love of my life – my soul mate. I am not saying that God led me to Suri. But my faith that God was present with me, and calling me to live a life that was true to my essence, gave me the courage to take that enormous step. So, yes, living a life of faith can have consequences. For Henry Covington, the Detroit minister that Mitch Albom met, running a homeless shelter and church for the most deprived and broken people of the city, with no money to pay the bills, and a hole in the roof of the church, faith was what kept him dedicated to serving these people, who had little but faith to give them hope of a brighter tomorrow. Henry Covington was working in such difficult circumstances yet, for him, this was his brighter tomorrow, having transformed a life of violence, crime, and drugs because faith awakened the God-spark in his soul and called him to choose differently. And many of the people who attend his church have been saved, literally, by their minister and the support of his remarkable faith community. So, faith in God is not a proposition – it is an orientation to the universe. The nature of our faith, and where it takes us, is deeply personal. But being authentically connected to and part of a community of faith provides a holy vessel within which our journey is less lonely, takes on deeper meaning, and helps us to find God’s presence in the context of human relationship. As he continued his conversations with Rabbi Lewis, Mitch Albom reflects:
Mitch got it. You can’t explain to someone why they should belong to a congregation, why they should be part of a community of faith, with a list. While a congregation like ours offers so many programs, activities, and sub-groups to cover many different interests, these are simply the vessels. Like a flute, CHaLiL, in Hebrew – a hollow tube of metal by outward appearance, the vessel itself is CHoL – ordinary. But when you blow air into the flute – Ruach, which is wind, but also means Holy Spirit and Soul, beautiful music is made. This is what makes the vessel of a community of faith into a Kehilah Kedoshah – a holy community. Its about what we put in, and what we give to each other. The receiving only comes when each of us authentically takes our place to help create this holy community. Rabbi Lewis tells Mitch:
Hearing that ‘ah-ha’ when someone uncovers a life-lesson in the midst of our Saturday morning Torah study group; when a member of our women’s Rosh Hodesh group is hugged by another when she’s shared some of the burden she has been carrying inside; when a parent cries in front of a community of congregants and others friends after their child has completed the rituals of their bar or bat mitzvah; when you hear the release of laughter in a room packed with adults and children, enjoying their fellow congregants and their clergy perform another year’s Purim Shpiel; receiving a note from someone who thought they were all alone, overwhelmed by the delivery of meals and calls they have received from the caring committee; animated and engaged debate coming from our meeting room on a Thursday lunchtime as a group of retirees passionately discuss the week’s news; the loving support and joy experienced by the group of adults who, at all stages of life, take their first nerve-wracking steps to learn how to read Hebrew; the energy of 37 eighth graders in one room, being together and discussing Jewish identity and Jewish ethics together because this is a place that they can call home; a group of teenagers who organize programs and run BIFTY – choosing to spend a night a week in the synagogue, because they are creating a vibrant Jewish community of their own; being surrounded by people who have known you for 30 years, or people who have known you for 6 months, because you are in mourning and they are here to make a shiva call; engaging not in the ‘small talk’ of a country club evening, but the ‘big talk’ of faith in your life in an adult education class, a spirituality program, or over Friday night dinner after Shabbat services, debating the sermon you heard that evening …. I’ve barely scratched the surface. These are just a handful of the vessels of holiness to be found in this congregation. This is the happiness that Rabbi Lewis was talking about. This is where one can find evidence of God’s presence in the context of a holy community. This is why faith matters, and why really being a part of this community can be one of the most fulfilling of experiences. This is your invitation – let us, all of us, this community, your clergy, your friends, help to make this congregational vessel a place where faith is lived and experienced; where all who are seekers can find their way home. When Mitch Albom was visiting Rabbi Albert Lewis, each time he would notice among the files on the shelves of his office, one labeled ‘God.’ Only after Rabbi Lewis’ death, after the promised eulogy had been written and delivered, did Mitch return to the Rabbi’s office:
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