Looking Back - Parashat Vayera 5774

(To listen to this sermon as it was delivered from notes at Temple Shaaray Tefila's monthly Shabbat Unplugged service for 20's & 30's, please click here.)

Who Are You Wearing? - Yom Kippur 5774

(AUDIO: To hear this sermon as it was delivered at Temple Shaaray Tefila, please click here.)

5773. Maybe we’ll call it the Year of the Pope. After all, as Benedict XVI stepped down citing failing health, and Francis was elected, for the first time in history, the Catholic world has a Pope Emeritus. Such unfamiliar territory was this, that even the choice of that title wasn’t easy. And yet, perhaps lost in the shuffle of this strange situation and the 24-hour news-cycle world in which we live, was the fact that this was a pretty radical move by the Catholic Church. Though not usually known for pursuing courses of action not considered safe or conservative, the cardinals’ choice of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the new Pontiff, the face of 1.2 billion believers, was nothing short of revolutionary. Why? Because Pope Francis is the first Jesuit pope ever, the first pope from the Americas, and the first pope from the Southern Hemisphere. Only somewhat less of a big deal is the fact of his being the first pope ever on Twitter, with handles in at least nine languages. (In English it’s @pontifex, if you’re curious.) So yes, the ascension of this man to pope, the donning of the illustrious white robes and skullcap, is a pretty big deal, no matter which faith you may practice or abstain from.

Now I’ll bet you didn’t expect the rabbi to begin his Yom Kippur sermon by talking about the Pope. But there’s another reason I’m calling this past year the Year of the Pope. And that is because of Olivia Pope. Olivia Pope is, of course, the central character in ABC's smash political drama Scandal, a strong-willed and decisive power player in the convoluted and interwoven world of our nation's capital. Played by the illustrious Kerry Washington, Pope makes a living out of leveraging her contacts and relationships to solve problems for Washington's elite, but meticulous in choosing which cases she and her firm of "gladiators in suits" will take on. You see, the image in her mind, and one that continually shows up in the characters' dialogue, is of "wearing the white hat," hearkening back to the old Westerns where the good and bad guys were distinguished to the viewing audience by the white or black hat they wore. So it is no coincidence that Shonda Rhimes' lead character, with the last name Pope, would aspire to be the constant savior and heroine, to always don the symbolic white hat.

And while she may not have as many accounts or followers as Francis, this Pope--or, rather, the actress who portrays her--is also on Twitter. And ABC is smart. In this day and age of Tivo and DVR, where we need a solid reason to endure the hardship of commercials and watch a show live, they tried something out, and it's working. They've got all of the show's cast live-tweeting the episodes--commenting, retweeting, responding to the quotes, observations, and predictions of regular Joe Shmo's like you and me, during both the East and West Coast broadcasts. It's fun and interactive, and from the network's standpoint, it makes it that much more likely that I'll pay a sliver of attention to one of their paid advertisements. And somehow, some way, there's always, without a doubt, a thread asking @KerryWashington:

"Who are you wearing?"

Not "what" are you wearing. Who. We NEED to know. Is it Vera Wang? Is it Oscar De La Renta? Could it be Versace or Louis Vuitton? No no. It must be Christian Dior. Or perhaps Alexander McQueen. But please, for the love of God, just tell us who you're wearing!  

Clothing. In Hebrew b'gadim. Ever since Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden and ran to hide their newly-discovered nakedness with fig leaves, we have been obsessed with the clothes we wear. And while it is true that clothing, along with food and shelter, make up the three most basic needs of human beings, we know all too well that our fascination goes far beyond any concept of necessity. Now we watch the Oscars, the Golden Globes, the Grammys not to see who will win Best Actress or Best Director or Artist of the Year, but to see who will win the night in fashion and make the tabloids' Best Dressed lists. Indeed there are a number of us who actually turn the channel once the can't-miss red carpet specials are over because, after all, watching to see how the rich and famous arrive and who they're wearing is the best part of the evening. Isn't it? 

Personally, beyond the surface level of "that's a beautiful dress" or "what on earth is she wearing?," I really couldn't care less who the designer is. But I am, if you will, fascinated by our fascination with b'gadim, with clothing, as I think it speaks volumes about who we really are, both as individuals and as a society.

Just a few moments ago, we chanted the famous alphabetic acrostic of sins we have all committed as a community. Together we bear the collective responsibility in the first-person plural, where each confession ends with the Hebrew suffix "nu." The aleph is ashamnu, essentially the topic sentence: we are guilty, we have sinned. The bet? The bet is bagadnu, a phrase perhaps best translated as "we have been treacherous,” or, as rendered by our new machzor, “we have betrayed." And the root of bagadnu and b'gadim, clothing, are exactly the same: bet-gimmel-dalet. Right in alphabetical order, almost an acrostic within the acrostic. And this, my friends, is no accident, no mere coincidence. We are traitors and deceivers--all of us. The clothing we wear, both literally and figuratively, the coverings not just for our bodies but our souls as well, belies who we really are underneath our skin, amidst our flesh and bones, at our very core. 

Our tradition knows this all too well. It begins with Jacob, the man who would become Israel, the one for whom our people is named! We read of his mother Rebekah’s plot to disguise him as his brother Esau, fooling his near-blind father Isaac to receive the innermost blessing meant for his older twin. I’m always struck by what he says to her, his very first response after she divulges her devious plan. What does he say? He says, “But my brother Esau is a hairy man and I am smooth-skinned. If my father touches me, I shall appear to him a trickster and bring upon myself a curse, not a blessing.” In other words: “But Mom, I’ll get busted!” No moral reservations, no voice of reason, no angel on his shoulder saying maybe this isn’t a very nice thing to do. Nope. “I’m down, Mom,” Jacob is saying. “But if we’re going to do this, I can’t get caught.”

And so he goes into Isaac, draped in animal skins, aiming to convince his father that he is really Esau, in the end receiving the prophetic blessing of his father’s heart. Was Isaac really duped, an addled old man struggling to beat back senility? Or did he know that the one standing before him was a sheep in wolf’s clothing? The text is such that we’ll never really know with any certainty. But we do know that Jacob is very much the “trickster” he didn’t want his father to discover.  What is beyond any doubt is that with beged, the clothing, hu bagad, he was treacherous. 

And it continues with Joseph, the man who gets more airtime in the Torah than anyone other than Moses. We know the story: of the of the k’tonet ha-passim, the amazing technicolor dreamcoat—perhaps by Missoni—a gift from his father that both marked him as Jacob’s favorite and painted a target on his back for his brothers. We know how they threw him in a pit, sold him into slavery, dipped the coat in goat’s blood, and showed it to their father as proof of Joseph’s supposed demise. But the begged bagad, the clothing betrayed him.

And so it is with us. Every day, we wake up, and we put on our costumes. A shirt and tie, a pants suit for some; medical scrubs, cargo pants, utility belts for others; full uniforms for the men and women looking out for our safety and security. And yet, when the workday ends, when we’re home and off the clock, so to speak, the first thing we do is take off the costume, changing into something more comfortable or whatever it is we really want to wear. And I wonder: is that an authentic expression of our diverse personalities, where both represent parts of a greater whole?  Or is one of them the real us, the other a put-on, a glorified game of make-believe the world expects us to play?

And yet, we know the confession of bagadnu, that we have betrayed, goes deeper than just b’gadim, the clothing we wear. It’s the treachery, the deception we practice every day, trying to convince others we’re something we’re not. It’s the acting, the role-playing, the long con we’ve committed to so deeply that there’s no escape. Is it any wonder, then, that we use expressions like “fleecing” and “pulling the wool over their eyes”? Is it any wonder that so many of the most popular TV shows in recent memory—Mad Men, Dexter, Breaking Bad, The Americans, to name just a few—center around characters living, it seems, multiple lives? Ever since Tony Soprano visited colleges with his daughter, if not before, we have been captivated by the best of the duplicitous, either unaware or in denial of the mirror they hold up in front of our very faces. You remember it? How Tony is late to pick Meadow up from Bates because he’s just taken out a mob informant in the Witness Protection Program—a turncoat, if you will—with words in his ear about taking an oath, about how “the hustle never ends.” You remember how Tony, sitting on a bench during her interview at Bowdoin, looks up to see a quote from Nathaniel Hawthorne, the school’s most famous alum, that, frankly, says it all—of the show, yes; but even more so, about us:   

“No man can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.”

Maybe we’re like Tony with our never-ending hustle. Maybe we’re like Jacob, carrying on a charade, portraying an alter-ego for some ill-gotten gain, thinking only of ourselves and how to avoid being caught. Maybe we play up our titles, exploit our spheres of influence, tucked away in an ivory tower. Maybe we drape ourselves in the false security blanket of the internet, mistaking it for a cloak of invisibility, hiding behind blogs, Facebook pages, Twitter handles, Instagramming pictures of everything, everyone, but the photographer himself.

But today, Yom Kippur, is the day it all catches up with us. Today is the day we stand figuratively naked before God and our community, stripped of all pretense and posture, hitting our hearts, confessing ashamnu, we have sinned, bagadnu, we have betrayed. Today we are judged for what we’ve really done, what we’ve really said, who we really are. We say to God, “As the shepherd examines the flock, causing each sheep to pass beneath the staff, so do You collect and consider, record and recount every soul, setting the bounds of every creature’s life, and decreeing its destiny.” We say to God, “You will remember everything that has been forgotten, and You will open the book of memories. What is written there proclaims itself, for it bears the signature of every human being.” Reflecting on this, Rabbi Maggie Wenig wrote, “Our lives are an open book. Nothing remains a secret. Secrets have a way of seeping through the cracks and bubbling to the surface. It is only a matter of time before we find ourselves exposed, as naked as the day we were born. Lies, half truths, obfuscations ultimately fail to convince. Better we should live our lives assuming that all our deeds, phone calls, e-mails, text messages, and financial transactions are known, recorded, remembered, and on permanent display in the Library of Conscience.”

Perhaps the Library of Conscience is where Joseph spent his time in the pit his brothers threw him into. Perhaps he had a few hours without food or drink, just like we do today, to contemplate who he really was, and who he wanted to be, now stripped of his outer garb. Perhaps he realized in that moment that sometimes the clothes don’t make the man, that the “dazzling coat of many colors” was not an accurate reflection of the person underneath it.

Sold  into slavery, the handsome young Joseph rises to the highest post in the household of Potiphar, officer to Pharaoh, where he quickly becomes the object of obsession for Potiphar’s wife. She propositions him, again and again, to lie with him, to which he never accedes. And yet, despite his steadfast refusals, it is once again a piece of clothing that gets Joseph in trouble. Wriggling away from one such attempt, Joseph leaves his robe in her hand, which she uses to accuse Joseph of exactly what she did to him. And why is it that Joseph won’t give in to her adulterous demands? He says to her, V’eich e’eseh ha-ra’ah hag’dolah hazot, “How then could I do this great evil,” v’chatati lElohim, “and thus sin against God?”

You see, for Joseph, the sin is not so much against Potiphar, his master, though it is most certainly that. Much more importantly, it is, as he sees it, a sin against God. Even if no earthly creature is watching, even if he could get away with it without another soul ever knowing, he would know it. And God would too. Here, though the beged bagad, the clothing betrays his intent, here we have the opposite of what he went through before. Stripped of his clothing, he stands literally and figuratively naked, knowing, no matter the consequence of her false allegations, that he had done right, in the eyes of God, and of himself.  

And then it all comes full circle. Joseph’s brothers come to Egypt to buy food during the famine, completely unaware that it’s him they’re pleading to. His clothing, his hair, his appearance have changed beyond anything they knew of him. Unable to bear it any longer, Joseph sends everyone else away from the room. As he reveals himself to his brothers, they quickly realize that the reason he was unrecognizable to them wasn’t as much about his physical appearance as it was about the man underneath the high Egyptian fashion—a man who had reconciled the gap between who he really was and how he portrayed himself; a man ultimately changed for the better. Underneath the clothing and all of the outward changes Joseph had made, here, standing before the very people who had wronged him so grievously, was a man who had learned to be his authentic and best self. Here stood a man who had looked in the mirror, had confronted himself with honesty and integrity, a man who had earned the status of wearing, if only figuratively, the famed white hat of the hero.

Adonai our God, so too may it be for us. On this Yom Kippur, as we look back on the year that was, and look ahead to the year yet to be, may we stand before You honestly, truthfully confessing bagadnu, our betrayal—of each other, of ourselves, of You. May we have the courage to confront our faces in the mirror, to gaze beyond our clothing, beyond our outward appearance, and into the depths of our souls, to see what’s really there, and to fix what is broken. And may we, in learning from our mistakes, in the ultimate work-in-progress of our lives, come ever nearer to what You intended us to be—the best, the truest, the most authentic versions of ourselves we can possibly be.          

AMEN.

The Scariest Night - Erev Yom Kippur 5774

(AUDIO: To hear this sermon as it was delivered at Temple Shaaray Tefila, please click here.) 

Well, this is it. The scariest night of the year. Welcome. We thank you for bravely leaving your homes, walking these streets and avenues, to be with us tonight. Because it's an important night, probably the most important of the year. But, as I said, it's also the scariest.

Why? Because it's Friday the 13th. In the Gregorian year 2013, no less.

What, you thought I was talking about Erev Yom Kippur? Oh yeah. That too.

You laugh. But it's real. It's called friggatriskaidekaphobia--"frigga" for the Norse God for whom "Friday" is named, and "triskaideka" for "thirteen." Besides, "friggatriskaidekaphobia" is just fun to say. And while I'm convinced--being a fairly rational person and all--that Friday the 13th is not, objectively speaking, a day of bad luck, the fear of it being so, the perception that it is so, is very, very real. According to the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in North Carolina--yes, there really is such a place--somewhere between 17 and 21 million Americans are affected by making it into the most feared date on the calendar, costing businesses an estimated $800 million in business lost.

Let that sink in.

What's perhaps most bizarre about friggatriskaidekaphobia is that no one really knows where this most debilitating of fears comes from. The vague consensus suggests that, at some point in time, separate superstitions about the number 13 and that particular day of the week fused together. The idea that 13 is unlucky probably stems from different cultural references to 12 as a number of completion--months in the year, signs of the Zodiac, tribes of Israel, gods of Olympus, apostles of Jesus, successors to Muhammad in Shia Islam, and so on. If 12 is completion, then 13 just messes all that up, doesn't it. And Friday has been considered bad luck at least since The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer's famous work, composed, of course, in the 1300's.

Somehow it continues to play out today, in avoiding black cats and walking under ladders and not having a 13th floor in Manhattan apartment and office buildings.

But I don't buy it. I'm not only not scared of 13, I actually consider it good luck. My parents were married on the 13th of June in 1972. The first home I ever lived in was on 13 Redwood Drive. I went to Colgate University, founded, according to legend, by 13 men with 13 dollars, 13 prayers, and 13 articles, where I did hockey play-by-play on Channel 13, and sang in one of the oldest acapella groups in the country, the Colgate 13. And I've got news for folks living on the so-called 14th floor of these buildings: you can label it however you like, it's still the 13th floor.

Fear. We live in it, we're surrounded by it. It motivates so much of what we do, even more what we don't do. And the truth is, whether or not we're willing to admit it, we are fascinated by it. How else to explain the film franchise of Friday the 13th, consisting of twelve different movies over a period just shy of 30 years, to say nothing of Saw, Nightmare on Elm Street, Final Destination, and my new favorite title, "You're Next."

On the one hand, I get it. To be able to sit in the theater, watching perhaps our worst fears played out on the big screen means that, at least in that moment, it's not happening to us. We can tap into that terror for a couple of hours, but then the lights come up and we're afforded the luxury of filing towards the exit signs, unscathed and unharmed. It is a roller coaster for our psyche, a safe and controlled chance to experience the steepest climbs and most precipitous of drops, with harnesses to protect us during the ride. When the car comes to a complete stop, the harnesses are lifted, and we can exit down the ramp to enjoy the rest of our day in the amusement park of our lives.

On the other hand, I don't do horror films. I just can't handle them. Maybe it's because I already see that the world, beautiful in so many ways so much of the time, can also be quite the frightening place. Maybe I don't need another reminder of what we already know to be true--that our lives can change and, yes, end, in an instant, masked figure at the door or no. Maybe, to put it simply, I'm scared enough as it is.

We've seen it this past year in our world, haven't we. Our deepest, darkest fears played out before our eyes, on the evening news instead of on the movie screen. We saw it last December in Newtown, Connecticut, where a man stormed into an elementary school with an arsenal of weapons and singlehandedly ripped the lives of six educators and 20 first-grade students from this world. We saw it in April, when two young men who didn't seem as angry at the world as they apparently were detonated two bombs by the finish line of the Boston Marathon, instantly turning a day of celebration and triumph of the human body and spirit into one of panic, suffering, and mourning. When I see the pictures of those whose lives were taken so abruptly, so violently at the hands of other human beings, my heart breaks all over again, running over the brim with tears. When I think about the futures of those children that will never be, when I hear the choked-up words of the moms and dads now living—everyday and for the rest of their lives—the worst nightmare of every parent, I don't ever need to see a scary movie. Their faces, their tears, are more than haunting enough.

While most of us, I’m sure, will remember where we were that day, that week of the Boston attacks, it is that Thursday night, April 18^th, that I will never forget for the rest of my life. Still reeling from the emotional punch to the gut, still trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to hold it together with each emerging detail of the attack and the victims, Tali and I had learned that very day that, God willing, we’ll be blessed with another child come December. Tears of joy, infinite words of thanks and praise to God for answering our prayers once again, now mingled with those of sadness and loss. And I wondered, as I know many expecting parents do, into what kind of a world would we be bringing this child? Certainly we would do everything within our power to surround him or her with love and support and security. But what if the ugliness of the world, the hatred, the bitterness, somehow seeped through, poisoning a foundation of happiness like a virus? What if, God forbid, Tali or I died young, leaving our children without parents? Or what if, God forbid a million times over, something were to happen to our children? All of this running through my mind, terrifying me, as I sat glued to the news, waiting to hear if the security guard shot in trying to apprehend the remaining suspect survived, hoping to hear that they had finally caught up with him and arrested him. He didn’t. They didn’t. And I couldn’t sleep. The truth is, I didn’t want to. I guess I felt a little guilty, having been blessed with the gift of a life, while others mourned the loss of it, torn from them in an instant by the hands of the bitter and the angry. It was then, in the throes of sleeplessness, of a mind and a heart filled to overflowing, that Jonah, our 3-year-old, came out of his room crying. It seems he had a bad dream or heard something outside. I don't know. Whatever the case, he needed his Abba. But I don’t think as much as I needed him. As my sweet little boy fell asleep in my arms, I wondered who was really comforting whom in that moment, and smiled and thanked God above as I realized it was both of us comforting the other, an island of safety, if only for a moment, from what frightens us to our very core.

That, my friends, is what we are doing here together on this Kol Nidre night. It is the scariest night on the Jewish calendar, the night where our tradition forces us to confront our deepest fear, namely, our mortality. It is terrifying beyond words, in its finality, in its certitude. We will all die. Beyond any shadow of a doubt. Comedian Chris Rock had a bit from a few years back called “A Horoscope For Everyone,” including such prognostications as, “Aquarius: you’re gonna die. Capricorn: you’re gonna die. Gemini: You’re gonna die twice.” And it’s funny because it’s true. There is no getting around it, no way to avoid our own death, and virtually no way to know when it will happen. And yet, even knowing that to be true, do we really know it? Do we really live like it?

I’m not so sure that we do. Of course, of all the things in the list of “Easier Said Than Done,” the cliché we know all too well of living each day like it’s your last has got to be at the top. How can we truly come face to face with our mortality, with the mingled terror of knowing it will come, but knowing nothing of when, or how, or what that ultimately means for us, if anything at all?

It reminds me of the scene in one of my favorite films, Stranger Than Fiction. Will Ferrell’s Harold Crick has discovered that he is the main character in a book still being written by an author played by Emma Thompson. Shortly after he’s told that his demise is soon to come, we find him sitting with his friend Dave, in which the following conversation takes place:

“Dave, can I ask you a somewhat abstract, purely hypothetical question?”

“Mmmhmm.”

“If you knew you were gonna die, possibly soon, what would you do?”

“I don’t know. Am I the richest man in the world?”

“No, you’re you.”

“Do I have a superpower?”

 “No, you’re you.”

“I know I’m me. But do I have a superpower?”

“No, why would you have a superpower?”

“I don’t know, you said it was hypothetical.”

“Fine, yes, you’re really good at math.”

“That’s not a power, that’s a skill.”

“Okay, you’re good at math and you’re invisible. And you know you’re gonna die.” “Okay, okay…That’s easy, I’d go to space camp.”

“Space camp?”

“Yeah, it’s in Alabama, it’s where kids go to learn how to become astronauts. I’ve always wanted to go since I was 9.”

(pause)

“You’re invisible, and you’d go to space camp?”

“I didn’t pick invisible, you picked invisible.”

“Aren’t you too old to go to space camp?”

“You’re never too old to go to space camp, dude.”

I love this. I love this for a few reasons, most especially because of how the topic is broached. His question, he claims, is “somewhat abstract” and “purely hypothetical.” And what is it? What’s the question? “If you knew you were gonna die, possibly soon, what would you do?” Well guess what, folks? That question is neither “somewhat abstract” nor anywhere near “purely hypothetical.” This isn’t “what would you do if you won the Powerball?” This isn’t the classic “If you were stranded on a desert island, what three things would you want with you?” or “who would you want to be there with you?” This is absolutely true. In a world, in our lives, where everything is always changing and unknown, this is essentially the only thing we know for sure: If you knew you were going to die…check….possibly soon…check…what would you do?... 

Perhaps the crux of the problem lies in the first clause: “If you knew.” Sigmund Freud, in all of his brilliance, is somehow both helpful and unhelpful on the topic, having written the following: “We cannot, indeed, imagine our own death. Whenever we do so, we find that we survive ourselves as spectators. The school of psychoanalysis could thus assert that, at bottom, no one believes in his own death. Which amounts to saying: in the unconscious, everyone of us is convinced of his immortality.”

And yet, turning to the words of our tradition may help us in this most difficult of tasks. Tomorrow morning, for the second time in ten days, the cantor and our choir will sing the haunting words of Un’taneh Tokef, the screenplay of the scary movie we call the High Holy Days. It is, to put it bluntly, a laundry list of just some of the ways our lives may, God forbid, come to an end in the year to come. Who by fire, who by water. Who by sword, who by beast. Who by strangling, who by stoning. Though we anxiously wish to speed through these words that put us at the greatest of unease, the melody forces us to meditate on each one, sometimes each syllable, until we reach the conclusion: “But repentance, prayer, and charity temper judgment’s severe decree.” I was reminded in Daniel’s dvar Torah last week that the word for “temper,” ma’avirin, also means to change or to alter. Death is most definitely a severe decree. But perhaps worse than death, a decree somehow even more severe, is allowing the fear of it to overtake us, making it the object of our obsession, dragging us ever downward, until we question if we’re really living at all? If we’re engaged in repentance, prayer, and charity—our tradition’s take on what we call making the most of every day given to us—then the meaning of our lives, the impact we make on the world around us, is forever altered for the better. That’s what we’re really doing here for much of these 25 hours together. Our prayers, our fasting, our beating our chests—they’re not to obtain some sort of insurance policy or reprieve or “Get Out of Jail Free” card. They’re to grab us by the shoulders, by the heart and soul, to scare us, though not quite to death, and shake us into new and improved and versions of ourselves. All of it is meant to look us square in the eye and say to us, like Andy in Shawshank Redemption, “I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really: Get busy living, or get busy dying.”   

And then we will hear chanted the words of Parashat Nitzavim, the most important part of Moses’ farewell speech to the Israelites. Condemned to die on Mount Nebo, overlooking the Promised Land he led them to, yet will never set foot in, he renews the Covenant on God’s behalf “both with those standing with us this day…and with those who are not with us here this day.” Who is not with us here this day? Both those who came before us and those who will come after us. Here Moses is standing before the entire Israelite people, holding not only the Covenant before their eyes, but a picture of their mortality as well.

Then Moses gets personal. In one of my favorite passages in all of Torah, Moses says to the people, “Surely this Instruction which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach. It is not in the heavens that you should say, ‘Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it? Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get it for us and impart it to us that we may observe it?’ No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it.”

Our own Ben Janowski shared with me last summer his own midrash on these powerful words, which I think is brilliant. Ben suggests that “It is not in the heavens” refers to Moses’ climbing Mount Sinai—twice—to receive God’s Commandments and bring them down to us. “Neither is it beyond the sea” recalls the splitting of the Sea of Reeds, how God caused the waters to stand up like walls through the outstretched arm and staff of Moses. He is in essence saying to them, “I have done what I came here to do. I have given all I can with my life. Now is my time to go. But fear not, my people, for you don’t need me anymore.”     

Cue sunset. Enter Yom Kippur. The day that calls upon us, shrieking like a siren, stopping us dead in our tracks, so to speak. It’s the day that forces us to zoom out and take the long view, to realize that the end of the film of our lives is inevitable, even if, we pray, not imminent. It’s what our Torah calls Shabbat shabbaton, “the Sabbath to end all Sabbaths.” With just these two words, our tradition makes it clear that what Shabbat is to the week, Yom Kippur is to the year, yes, even to the rest of our lives—a moment to pause and reflect on what has been, to learn from all we’ve done and said and experienced, before moving forward to what will be. With those two words, the fragility of our lives, the certainty of our death, and the urgent need to confront them both, is thrown in our faces.

So the question is: what are we going to do about it? Will we ignore it, reject it, defiantly pushing off the confrontation in hopes that procrastination and denial will somehow buy us more time? Will we let it become a blindfold, keeping us from seeing the world and each other, from connecting to and experiencing all of the beauty life has put before us? Or will we pick it up, take it off of our faces, away from our eyes, and raise it over our heads as a flag, choosing to live every day, until whenever our end comes, armed with the wisdom of this truth, that our lives are a precious, yet temporary gift ultimately returned to the Source?

“If you knew you were going to die, possibly soon, what would you do?”

What would you do?

AMEN.   

Outdone - Rosh HaShanah 5774

(AUDIO: To listen to this sermon as it was delivered at Temple Shaaray Tefila, please click here.)

When my brother and I were kids, we used to do radio shows in our basement. (Hey, we were suburban.) From bar mitzvah gifts and elsewhere, Adam had actually put together some decent studio equipment, considering his age and it being the early 90’s--a microphone, a CD player, and a double tape deck so we could use our cassettes and still record everything. Whether these radio shows were just the two of us, or one of us with a friend, we tried to make it a real experience, even though we knew no one would ever listen to it. That meant song introductions, sports updates, pretending to be special guests, and even bringing in a speaker phone so we could call in from the other line to win imaginary trivia contests. And, of course, what radio show would be complete without commercials? For those we used the real thing, a collection of old radio and TV spots for different products called Tee Vee Tunes. One of the ads we liked to use was for Ken-L-Ration, and I’m sure some of you know still remember it. It goes like this:

“My dog’s better than your dog, my dog’s better than yours. My dog’s better cause he gets Ken-L-Ration, my dog’s better than yours.”

The next verse is the same, hammering home the point with further assertions that my dog is faster, and smarter, than your dog. And we know why.

Every so often this catchy little jingle will pop into my head. And I find myself smiling and laughing at the memories made in our little basement studio in Yardley, Pennsylvania. But the laughter and the smile fade, as I realize what so often triggers that childhood flashback. It’s that never-ending competition of our lives, and it seems like it’s everywhere we look.

You’ve seen it, haven’t you? The ads on TV? One of my favorites is for Burlington Coat Factory, where a child’s birthday picnic is turned into a battleground of the self-satisfied. “Her outfit looks great,” the woman says, “but I saw it at the department store for $96.” Cool Mom responds, “I got one just like that for $38 at Burlington.” But that’s not enough. Not anymore. 20 years ago, maybe. But not today. And so she continues, “and this outfit for my husband, and play clothes for the twins.” Enough, right? We got the point now, right? Wrong. “I saved so much, I got backups,” and flashes those backups pretty much right in the other woman’s face. The kicker? The slogan: “Brag about it.” “Brag about it.” That’s the slogan. And doesn’t that about sum it up perfectly. (Watch the ad here.)

How about these flash-mob wedding proposals, custom-made to get a million hits on Youtube? Cause there has to be a story, right? Can’t just take a girl out to a fancy dinner and get down on a knee anymore. Now there has to be an intricate plot, a ruse of sorts, with many moving parts and several people in on it. It has to be public, and it has to be big. And why? Because the bigger it is, the more it must mean. I’m not saying a proposal shouldn’t be thought out, planned, and done right. It should. But there’s something very wrong when we confuse the magnitude of the production for the depth of feeling. And the worst part, I think, is that we fall for it. In reading the story of one of these crazy proposals, I saw the testimony of a parent, who had shared the tale with his daughters and told them, flat out, that this was the kind of thing they deserved to have one day, that anything less would not be acceptable for his little girls.

How about Sam’s bar mitzvah? You saw this, right? Almost 900,000 people have. Bar mitzvah kid wants to have his moment and be announced formally as he comes into the party? That’s fine. Want to have him enter to his own number? Okay. It’s his moment. But hiring an entire troupe of professional dancers to do a special number? Spelling out his name on the stage with 15-foot electronic letters? Lowering a humongous cake from the ceiling and having him appear from within to join the routine? It’s so far over the top, you can’t even see the top from there. And don’t forget, as the note below the clip tells us, to change your viewing quality to HD, if desired. Wouldn’t want to miss that. And yet, once again, we eat it up with a spoon; Good Morning America brings Sam, and his dancers, to Times Square to re-enact the whole thing, and extend his 15 minutes. After all, it was the number one trending video at the time. When I think about how much those 2 and a half minutes must have cost, never mind the rest of the affair, and all the good places that money could have gone instead, I’m left shaking my head.  

It used to be about having the nicest home, the priciest car, the latest technology, the coolest gadgets and gizmos. It used to be about “keeping up with the Joneses,” about “he who dies with the most toys wins.” Now it’s about outdoing, outperforming, outlasting, outsmarting, out-everything everyone. It’s no longer about the Joneses; it’s about the Joneses, the Goldsteins, the Hanrahans, the Patels, the Changs, the Schafers, and the McManuses. And keeping up with them? Why, to be an also-ran? Forget about it. That won’t do. Not anymore. Now Charlie Sheen is our unlikely prophet, where everything is about winning, and winning big. Now it’s about being so far ahead of them that they’re all left in the dust. But not too far ahead. Because, if no one’s around, who’s going to hear us when we “brag about it”?

Winning. It’s why, I think, we love sports. However each game is scored, it is quantifiable, measurable, and when there’s a winner, there’s a number, a statistic to point to, that proves the outcome, and is written into the record books. To be 1^st place, the champion atop the medal stand, the king of the hill hoisting a trophy, looking down below upon rivals gleefully crushed along the way—this is the ultimate quest of the athlete. And for some, when that quest becomes a holy grail, there is literally nothing—no laws, no morals, no ethics—that will stand in their way. We saw it this past year with Lance Armstrong and Alex Rodriguez and Jewish former-hero Ryan Braun, all for whom it wasn’t enough just to cheat and then to lie about it; it was taken to a whole other level with angry accusations and even threats to those who challenged their credibility. 

But it certainly doesn’t end with sports. We drive like it too, don’t we. Doesn’t matter where we’re going or how much time we have to get there, we’ve got to be first. We pretend we’re NASCAR drivers, weaving in and out of lanes without as much as a look, forget using turn signals. We either don’t know or don’t care about the danger we constantly put ourselves and our loved ones in. When we’re stuck in traffic, when a lane is closed, when letting someone in or, God forbid, an alternate merge, won’t make a 5-second difference, we gun it, scratching and clawing to claim, if but for a moment, those precious few inches of road. Cause letting someone get there first, that would be losing. And in the immortal words of Ricky Bobby’s dad in Talladega Nights, “If you’re not first, you’re last.”

Quality, it seems, is dead. We’ve sacrificed it at the altar of “bigger, faster, stronger,” with a choir singing “My dog’s better than your dog” in the background. Quantity is everything. Less isn’t more, the car commercial reminds us. More is more. And, really, how can you argue with that?

Abraham didn’t.

Every year on Rosh HaShanah we hear the haunting tale of Akedat Yitzchak, the binding and near-sacrifice of his son, Isaac. It is terrifying for anyone to hear, all the more so for parents. And every year, we find ourselves angry all over again, dumbfounded to the point of incredulity: how could a God—our God—actually desire this of Abraham? How could Abraham even consider going through with it? How is it possible that the founder of our faith came within inches, knife raised in the air, of cutting his son’s throat? Suddenly all of his deeds and attributes—his bravery in leaving his homeland, the rescue of his nephew Lot; the hospitality shown to guests who turn out to be angels, the sheer chutzpah of challenging and bargaining with God for the souls of those in Sodom and Gomorrah—all of it seems to fade from the picture when the camera’s focus is on a man ready to take his own son’s life.

For us, calling this text “difficult” is an understatement of, well, biblical proportions. It shakes us in every fiber of our being. It cuts to the very essence of what it means to be a human being. If this is a test of God, we say, surely Abraham failed. Surely a man who dares talk back to God regarding the lives of strangers in Sodom and Gomorrah, yet who utters not a sound, nor bats an eyelash to this outlandish demand, has come up terribly short.

But for our sages, the rabbis and scholars of our tradition, this is as simple as it gets: Abraham is The Man. Such a loyal, devoted servant of God is he that there is absolutely nothing he wouldn’t do for God. Nothing. Even if it meant offering Isaac as a sacrifice. Even more than this sheer exaltation, some of our sages are, in fact, jealous of Abraham! Would that they could be so deeply loved by God to have had that asked of them! How, they wonder, could anyone be as fortunate as Abraham, to have received such a level of providence? “How easy it is for you,” they would say to us, “to sit and wag your fingers at him! You should be so lucky!”

And so I wonder: what if Abraham was so obsessed with being the best, the wisest, the closest to God that no request was too large or too small to enhance that image? What if there was nothing that could keep him from figuratively shouting from the mountaintops as he did, “My God’s better than your God!” What if the Binding of Isaac is a red flag of warning melodramatically waved in our faces each Rosh HaShanah? What if it’s the ultimate cautionary tale, almost satirical in its hyperbole, asking us, “Do you see what happens when we make winning—being the greatest, the biggest, the best—into the worst kind of idol?” What if this is the real reason why we read it twice a year? What if we’re not as far removed from Abraham as we like to think we are, after all?

Well, then, we've got to turn it around. And we've got to turn it back.

Many of you know that t'shuvah, usually translated as "repentance," has "turning" and "returning" at its Hebrew root. And the shofar is very simply the alarm clock for our souls. So on this Rosh HaShanah, this turning of the new year, let us be moved to turn away from the pettiness, the competition for competition's sake, the obsession with "anything you can do I can do better." Let us turn away from these vainest of pursuits, because they satisfy nothing, and couldn't be further from what makes our lives worth living. Let the blasts of the shofar wake us up to what truly matters, to push the reset button on our perspective and our priorities.

How? Cheshbon hanefesh. Cheshbon hanefesh means "accounting of the soul." It's what we're supposed to be doing this time of year, taking stock of where and who we've been this past year, who we want to be in the year to come. Now, the word "cheshbon" in modern Hebrew means the bill or the check, so that at the end of a meal in an Israeli restaurant, you would say "Cheshbon, b'vakashah," "Check, please."

Well, today, on Rosh HaShanah, we get the bill, the cheshbon, for the year. It is the ultimate performance evaluation, only this time the job is our lives, and the boss is, well, The Boss. And this work of cheshbon hanefesh, of the accounting of our souls, requires us to be honest with ourselves: what am I really doing with my days, with my hours? More importantly, why? Am I spending 20 hours a day in my office or at home with my kids because there is some societal voice whispering in my ear that "that's what a GOOD lawyer/doctor/manager/agent/parent should do"? Is it to satisfy the needs or appease the criticism of others that we have projected upon ourselves, keeping a tally of real or imagined "billable hours"? Are we sacrificing the quality of our lives for quantity, risking the resentment of others and, worse, ourselves, in trying to be who we aren’t? Or do we do what we do because we love it, because it is meaningful, satisfying, and fulfilling, for ourselves and those around us? Are we striving towards reaching our highest potential, aiming to achieve our own personal goals, or those we feel others have set for us?

When we confront these questions honestly, re-calibrating our lives, we can begin t’shuvah, the turning--or returning--to our most authentic, and best selves. This is what Maslow meant when he put the idea of self-actualization at the top of his hierarchy of human development. It means satisfying, if not transcending entirely, our deficiency needs. It means pursuing a value in the world beyond merely ourselves. It means being more concerned with what we're really doing, who we really are, than trying to be what we think society wants us to be. And it means moving from conformity, from trying to fulfill the expectations of others, to autonomy, where we do what we do because it fills our lives with meaning, with purpose, and, ultimately, with happiness and contentment.

The sacrifice of quality over quantity isn’t yet complete. Even as we’ve raised the knife, like Abraham, ready to strike, there is still the opportunity to intervene, to prevent it from taking place. There’s still a moment left to stop the loop of Annie Oakley from the speakers singing, “Anything you can do, I can do better.” There’s still the chance to take it all back, to turn away from being the best by comparison, and turn toward the best versions of ourselves, the most fulfilled, most purposeful people we can be. That chance is called cheshbon hanefesh, a true accounting of our souls. That opportunity is called the rest of our lives. And it can start today. Right here, right now. But only if we’re ready to pay the bill when it comes.

AMEN.