Rosh HaShanah

***Lately, the formatting has been difficult in blogspot. I cannot seem to figure out how to get it right, save for retyping every sermon directly into the the blog. My apologies if it is difficult to read.***

L’Shana Tova! May this new year be a happy and healthy one for all of you, in your bodies, minds, and spirits. May it be a year of balance and harmony. The modern teachers of Musar, a Jewish ethical and cultural movement started in the 19th century by the Lithuanian rabbi Israel Salanter which teaches a collection of midot or traits to meditate on and hone in order to become a more well-rounded Jew, teach that balance and harmony is essential to the practice of Musar. For every midah or trait, there is a counterpoint. Most people do not hold these traits in balance, so if one is prone to arrogance, for example, they must practice the midah of humility or modesty. But if one is prone to excessive modesty or humility, they must practice the midah of confidence or conviction. It is essential to know which of these are one’s own personal strengths and weaknesses so that one may work to strengthen those that are weak and tame those that are excessive. This can, of course, be done at any time of year, but they do make for great New Year’s Resolutions or Rosh HaShanah vows.

In our Torah portion for Rosh HaShanah, God calls to Abraham, “Abraham, Abraham!” And Abraham responds, “Hineini” - “Here I am”. Abraham’s Hineini gets a lot of attention as the right response, that it is correct and morally good to step up to the plate and say, “Here I am,” when called, even if Abraham’s willingness to do what God asks in the follow up then draws some criticisms. In looking around for the wide usage for “Hineini,” I found a beautiful article published in The Forward in 2004 that was one woman’s moving tribute to her father who lived a “Hineini life”. He was always there for those call, willing to lend a hand, made sure his friends and family knew he was there for them, that he loved them. This sort of Hineini is a great example of the midah of humility. There’s no sense of self-importance in these responses. Just a declaration, “Here I am, what do you need?”

Recently, I was reading a book in which a Jewish character cries out to God the words, “Here I am,” but his usage was as an expression of yearning to be seen. It conjured up a few thoughts. The first was the memory of Barbra Streisand playing Fanny Brice and belting out at the conclusion of both “I’m the Greatest Star” and “Don’t Rain on My Parade” as she runs toward her thus-far-denied dreams (the stage, marriage) “Hey, Mr. [Zigfield/Arnstein - depending on the song], Here I Am!”

The second was that this sort of “Here I am” is the inverse of Abraham’s. It’s an expression of the midah of confidence, even in a moment of vulnerability. It requires a security of the knowledge in who one is and the strength to be able to raise one’s voice while being actively overlooked. To say, “Here I am. I exist and I have strengths and something to offer and I have needs that are not currently being attended to and I deserve to be seen and feel validated.” In our Haftarah, Hannah doesn’t quite say the words, “Here I am,” but whereas Abraham asserts his presence at God’s request, Hannah demands God’s attention to her presence. She embodies this midah of confidence too, even while she appears with all the visual representations of humility before God and before Eli the priest. She is confident in knowing what she wants and deserves, and asserts her rights before God. When Eli confronts her for supposedly being drunk, she maintains this quiet strength as she tells him she has had no alcohol and she is fervently praying for a child. Eli is put into the position of having to utilize his midah of humility to accept that he is in the wrong, even from his position of power, he must concede to the woman and bless her that her wish may be granted. Which, of course, it is. She calls, and in a wordless way, God responds, “Hineini” by answering her prayer.

Sometimes these calls are unanswered, or the answer is not quite what we thought it would be. Sometimes we call for someone, and they do not respond as Abraham did, “Here I am.” Sometimes we say, “Here I am, pay attention to this problem I’m having,” and no one does what God does for Hannah to validate the pain and create a solution. In our Yom Kippur Haftarah, we will see how Jonah tries to not be present when called, refusing to say, “Hineini”. In Leonard Cohen’s “You Want it Darker”, he seems to be expressing the pain of feeling ignored by God when he calls out, “Hineini, hineini, I’m ready, Lord.” The prophet Isaiah calls out “Here I am” to a God that does not call for him. Isaiah envisions God searching for a prophet and he pleads for God to choose him, saying “Hineni” in chapter 6 as the prophecy begins to unfold and repeating “Hineini” in chapter 65 as he recaps to the People of Israel how he got into this position. Both the prophets Leonard and Isaiah seem to be responding to what Cohen called “the critical moment that the emergency becomes articulate”, when it becomes clear that there is a need for them, even if the need isn’t directed particularly at them. And then both seem to suffer for it. Though Isaiah was certainly not among the most degraded prophets of the TaNaKh, the life of a prophet is never easy, and he lived through the most politically unstable time period of Ancient Israel. Cohen’s song expresses a sense of striving to meet the needs of the moment and feeling a painful lack of support from the Holy One. In a time when we no longer have prophets like Isaiah or Abraham, no visuals of God or direct conversations with the Divine, it can be easy to feel that emptiness. On these Days of Awe especially, when we stand before the Gates of Repentance and hope that our prayers are heard, that we are written in the Book of Life, some part of each of us is also crying that Hineini. Here I am! Take note of me! Hear not only my teshuvah, not only my willingness to serve as Abraham did, but see my whole self.” And where is God’s teshuvah, God’s answers to our pleas for mercy?

    Perhaps God feels just as distant from us as well. In Isaiah 52, God declares that while the People of Israel will be carried off into exile, their enemies mocking them and reviling the name of HaShem, God will ensure that the People of Israel at least remember The Holy One. God, too, declares, “Hineini.” God too wants to be seen and recognized. Much can be said about God’s existential loneliness, as the only One, but I think this story from the Talmud sums it up well, and leaves us with a bit of a happy ending for the topic. Berakhot 7a says:

“It was taught in a baraita that Rabbi Yishmael ben Elisha, the High Priest, said: Once, on Yom Kippur, I entered the innermost sanctum, the Holy of Holies, to offer incense, and in a vision I saw Akatriel Ya, the Lord of Hosts, one of the names of God expressing His ultimate authority, seated upon a high and exalted throne (see Isaiah 6).And He said to me: Yishmael, My son, bless Me.

I said to Him the prayer that God prays: “May it be Your will that Your mercy overcome Your anger,

and may Your mercy prevail over Your other attributes,

and may You act toward Your children with the attribute of mercy,

and may You enter before them beyond the letter of the law.”

The Holy One, Blessed be He, nodded His head and accepted the blessing…”

Thus we see that God too demands to be seen. And it is our job to see God, to acknowledge the Oneness of the universe. Whether in prayer, praise, meditation, or even in argument, it is our job as Jews to continue to engage with the Divine One as we each envision or experience Holiness.

    The longing to be seen is a human need. This then also requires for others to need to see. We all have our moments to fill each of these roles, to say, “Here I am, listen to me! See me! Help me! Comfort me!” and to say, “Here I am, I am listening, I see you, I will help and I will do what you ask.” Musar teaches the balance of realizing exactly how much space to occupy, when to expand and when to withdraw, when to give and when to take. It’s a difficult symmetry to strike. As I said, I don’t think it comes naturally to anyone, as we all lean more in one direction or the other, and have to learn to develop the opposite trait. But in doing so, it makes us stronger people. More able to care for ourselves and others. More able to contribute to our community, to commit to tikkun olam. Balance and harmony is the key to a healthy life, spiritually and physically - or, as Maimonides would say, everything in moderation!

    This new year, may you be like Abraham and may you be like Hannah. May you be present and accommodating, and may you insist that others do the same for you. And may you have a year of balance, harmony, health, and peace. Amen and Shana Tova.

Erev Rosh HaShanah

    Shana Tova! It is a new year, a time for introspection and fresh starts, and a time to rethink and renew our vows to make the world better. How will we brighten up the lives around us this year? How will we make our community strong, our world safer? How will we live up to our best expectations for ourselves, how will we be our truest selves?

    I’ve been thinking a lot this year, throughout the month of Elul and the on-ramp time to our season of Teshuvah, about the root of the word - to return. I thinkI care a lot about naming that true meaning of the word because it’s an important key to understanding the way Judaism speaks of sins and repentance. So I keep that in mind and I try to speak from that perspective of missteps and returning to center when I talk about sins and repentance, atoning and forgiving, at this time every year. But this year especially, the need for return to oneself felt very strong for me. It felt like a long year, to me at least. A lot of highs and lows, joys and sorrows, peace of mind and complex feelings of all sorts, and all this on a personal scale as well as on a national or even global scale. What would it take to return to the self? What self do we each need to return to?

    I am sure that for every person, there is a different time, a different self, a different place and mindset to which they would like to return, in which they felt they were most at home and in balance. But I suspect for most people, that time is somewhere in childhood. That’s not to say that when we speak of teshuvah, everyone is actively thinking about their childhoods and seeking to return to that sort of innocence as they absolve their sins. But it is to say that there is something eternally comforting about nostalgia and returning to the things that soothed us in our earliest memories. When the news cycle is full of bad news and everything looks bleak and full of heartbreak, there is nothing like a fairy tale and an escape into juvenility to help us recover the courage and faith to face the adult world.

I believe this to be why there have been so many attempts to recreate beloved childhood tales as live-action films for adults to view and relive their youth in a slightly updated way. It seems Disney plans to remake all of their classic cartoon musicals into live-action films, and now there’s even a gritty remake of the Nutcracker on the horizon, a story retold in ballet form almost every winter in almost every ballet company. Because these repetitions are comforting. They bring back memories of comfort, of a time when the world felt smaller and the soothing of a good story felt more immediate and complete.

    Recently, a favorite author from my adolescence announced that one of her books is being made into a movie for the first time. The author, Francesca Lia Block, adapted the screenplay herself and has been working for a long time to put together the perfect team to make her imagination come to life on the big screen. She now has that team, and production is set to begin. In response to this news, I’ve been rereading the series, “Dangerous Angels”. One of my favorite characters in the books is a young girl named Witch Baby who goes around asking the adults in her life, “What time are we upon, and where do I belong?” But they don’t seem to understand her question. She is the only character who seems to see the trauma in the world and need the sort of comforting that I as a child found from reading this book, but since the others don’t see the pain and don’t need that kind of comfort, they have trouble figuring out how to give it to her. So she has several adventures throughout the series where she tries to go out and find answers of her own, but as Dorothy says best in the Wizard of Oz, there’s no place like home, and Witch Baby eventually comes back to allow her family to comfort her in the way they do know how. At one point, she narrates that her heart feels like “a teacup covered with hairline cracks,” and describes sound it might make inside her if it shattered and jostled around in her chest. I found this imagery beautiful as a young girl, and every time I revisit this series I find that the writing transports me back to the time in my life when I read it for the first time. It reminds me of my earliest heartaches, the first time I overcame an emotional hardship, and the beginnings of building adult resiliency. It’s mostly subconscious, but rereading these books refreshes memories far beyond just the stories themselves, and they return me to a center I’m often not even fully aware of coming away from.

    When we make teshuvah, when we attempt to return to center, we are coming from some sort of brokenness, like Witch Baby’s. A loss of innocence, a place of hurt, a disillusionment. The rabbis taught that state of brokenness was a sign of real living, and that the teshuvah of a broken heart is the greatest gift to God. The Psalmist tells us, “The true sacrifices to God are a broken spirit, a broken and crushed heart.” The Prophet Micah tells us, “Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy; Though I am fallen, I shall arise; Though I sit in darkness, the LORD is a light unto me,” and the midrash on this expands, “If I hadn't fallen - I would not have gotten up. If I hadn't sit in the dark - I would not have light.” The brokenness and the darkness that we learn to see in the adult world is what allows for adult resiliency, for love, for learning how to fix the cracks in the world. Without those first moments of disenchantment, we would be unable to do the Tikkun Olam that we are commanded to. But getting from the point of hurt to the point of using that pain for good takes recentering, it takes remembering who we are and where we come from and it takes returning to that home and self.  

    The haftarah for the traditional second day of Rosh HaShanah contains what I find to be among the most haunting lines in all of the Tanakh: “Thus said the LORD: A cry is heard in Ramah— Wailing, bitter weeping— Rachel weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted For her children, who are gone.” The only matriarch not buried at Machpelah with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah, Rachel is the mother that calls us all home to her. In the haftarah she is wailing for the exiled Children of Israel, but perhaps she is also the maternal voice that whispers comfort to all of us when we reread or rewatch or relisten to the stories of our youth. She is calling us, who seem to have gone astray, back to our centers. She wants us to remember who we are, and where we belong. In some grand cosmic sense, that’s different for each person, but in a basic spiritual sense, right now, where we belong is here in shul on the High Holy Days, listening to the same tunes that our families have chanted this time every year for longer than any one of us can remember. If nothing else this High Holy Day season, I hope these memories of prayer soothe your soul and usher you into a new year of strength and surety.

    I believe strongly in the evocative power of childhood, of the need to return to a home with maternal comforts, to acknowledge the heartaches of adulthood but with nostalgia of youth. I see the power in these visits down Memory Lane, and although there may be those who can get stuck, trapped by the strength of that power, I find it also gives a great energy for those seeking to return to their proverbial center, in order to move forward in life toward an honest expression of the self. This Rosh HaShanah, may we find ways to return to that center, that comfort, that youthful starting place, in order to remember how to build strength, character, and goodness throughout the oncoming year.

Parashat Nitzavim - Patriot Shabbat

    Shabbat Shalom, and welcome to our honored guests. This week’s Torah portion, our weekly segment of scriptural reading, is Parashat Nitzavim, Deuteronomy 29:9-30:20. We are nearing the end of the Torah, the end of the wandering in the desert, and Moses has just a few more reminders to give to the Children of Israel before he dies and they enter the promised land. This is one of my favorite portions, and we read it on the last Shabbat before Rosh HaShanah every year, and then again at Yom Kippur in the Reform movement.

    It is a reminder of our ultimate equality, that we are all one under the One Who Unites Us All. Moses tells the people gathered before him that this heritage, this Law, this Earth, belongs to each of them equally and they should all have access to it, and not only to them, but to all of their children and their children’s children, and their children’s children’s children, and so on. The key to a good life is not in the heavens or across the sea or locked in some esoteric texts, but it is here before us, available to any who seek it.

    Yet, though Moses addresses the whole community and expresses this intended equality, Moses also knows that there will be those in the community with different relationships to the Torah and to the rest of the community. There will be scholars and religious leaders who may come to know it more intimately, and there will be tribal heads and secular leaders, judges and officials, whom the rest of the community will look to to set community norms. So when Moses addresses the whole community, he starts with these folks, the leaders, those he knows will have to set the example. Then he continues to name the men of Israel, those in their time were the teachers for their children. Then he names even the immigrant and visitor, those who may not quite be assimilated into the community yet, but are living peaceably among the People of Israel and are expected to follow the same rules. He names that this applies equally to those with prestigious jobs and those with manual labor jobs.

    The 16th century Italian Rabbi Sforno comments that the leaders enumerated at the top of the list are named as such because, “each one of these categories of people have the duty to teach the people (within the parameters of their special competence) how much better it is for them to accept Torah law than to defy it or neglect it.” They are in a unique position to embody the Divine Law, to live righteously so that others will see them and live by their example. It can be a strenuous mantel to carry, to always have to live up to others’ expectations and be the model citizen, but that is the responsibility leaders bear in exchange for the authority their titles lend them.

    Later in this portion, the Torah warns that those who think the expectations of God will not apply to them, will be sorely mistaken. The great Rashi, a 12th century French rabbi and our most prolific commentator on ancient Jewish texts, clarifies that this applies to one who thinks that he may have the authority to bless himself and avoid the curses promised in other parts of the Torah. Not only will such a person still be cursed, but will face every curse named in the Torah for the sin of arrogance to think the law does not apply to him. The Torah really wants to make sure we all understand - the blessings of the Torah are available to all, no matter how great or small one may seem in their own eyes or the eyes of the community; and the consequences of ignoring the Torah will apply to all, no matter how great or small one may seem in their own eyes or the eyes of the community. The rules are varied, and some may be specific to the Land of Israel or to the Jewish community, but the gist of the whole Torah can be summed up as a Golden Rule that I’m sure we all can agree upon: “That which is hateful to you, do not do unto others. That is the whole of the Torah. The rest is commentary; go and learn.”

    This Patriot’s Shabbat, we honor those who have done their best to live a model life for the citizens they serve. We thank you all for your service to our community and country, and wish you the best as you continue on in your journey. May we be blessed to live in a world where all are equal and everybody is able to and tries their hardest to live their best lives, and may we continue to work together to build a holy community among us all. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.