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 18th, 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.
