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.

Korach Had a Point - Parashat Korach 5773

To listen to a recording of tonight's sermon, please click here. Shabbat Shalom!

Perspective and Trust - Shlach L'cha 5773

(To listen to the sermon as it was delivered, please click here.)

I always feel bad for the dentist. The dentist gets a bum rap. No one looks forward to a visit to the dentist. No one gets excited or circles it on their calendar, or has a countdown to their semi-annual checkup. “Yay, I get a new toothbrush today!” “Woo-hoo, it’s time for my twice-a-year guilt trip about not flossing!” “Oh, how I love the sound of plaque being scraped from my teeth!” (Said no one.) Not that anyone really gets pumped for a visit to the doctor, either, but we all know: the dentist is in a different category of dread altogether.

And yet, as I had the unique pleasure of visiting Dr. Lana Goldman of Gentle Dental Associates in Park Slope earlier this week, I had a couple of mini-revelations.

As this was my first visit to Gentle Dental, I of course had to fill out the preliminary paperwork. You get through the obvious stuff, you give the person at the desk your cards for photocopying, etc. Then you get to the part with the fairly exhaustive list of ailments, conditions, behavioral tendencies. For some of these types of lists, they just want you to check the ones that apply to you. Other times, like this one, you have to answer each one of them, yes or no. Annoying? Perhaps. But I have to admit, I’m glad that they made me. And I’ll tell you why:

Perspective.

Let me explain.

We love to complain. Don’t we. We love to whine about all the stuff we have to do, all the stuff that’s going wrong, all the stuff that seems like obstacles delaying or preventing some sense of rest or happiness or sense of achievement. But then I was forced to look at every single variation following the words, “Do you have or have you had…” any of a dizzying number of diseases, syndromes, and chronic conditions. Aside from a very slight case of asthma that almost never really bothers me, and laughing at myself as I checked “rheumatoid arthritis,” as I have the knees of an 80-year-old man, I was only too thrilled to check off “no” for absolutely everything else. And then there was more internal laughing, coupled by a shaking of the head, as I thought about all of the silly things with which we are constantly pre-occupied. The shutdown of the subway cause it’s raining, or cause it’s not raining, or cause there’s too many people, or cause there’s not enough people. The internet at work going down so you can’t get something done. How my DVR likes to…just when…right…middle of a sentence. Even things a whole lot bigger than that. Like two years ago, as I drove into the city for our special Shabbat Unplugged over on the way Upper West Side and got into a car accident that was completely my fault. In my profuse apologies to the woman whose car I sideswiped, she said, “You know what? It’s really fine. It’s just a car. I have a son who’s been through a battle with cancer. You’re okay, I’m okay. This is not a big deal.”

Perspective. That was the first of my mini-revelations in the waiting room at Gentle Dental.

The second is trust. I don’t think we’re aware of just how much trust we place—and, by necessity, have to place—in the hands of people in our lives, people whom, most of the time, are virtually completely unknown to us. We trust the barista at Starbucks not just to make our drink to our liking, but also that the ingredients and machines used to make it are safe for us. We trust that our teachers, our camp counselors growing up, our co-workers, our political, religious, spiritual leaders, are who they say they are, that their credentials, their experience, their resumes, are accurate. We trust that our physicians and caretakers are telling us the truth with what they see in our charts, our x-rays and MRI’s, that they really do have our best interests at heart.

And then you think about your dentist, who stands over your open mouth a half-hour or more, using all kinds of instruments and tools and gunk, and that weird thing that sucks the saliva out of your mouth as your teeth are cleaned. At one point, for some phase of my cleaning, she needed me to close my eyes. And I did. Cause, what else am I gonna do? And as I closed my eyes for what felt like a pretty long time, I became acutely aware of the enormous trust I was placing, quite literally, in the hands of this little Ukrainian Jewish woman, whom I had met for the first time just minutes before.
So if all that is true—and I’m certain it is—how much trust is needed throughout every single day of our lives just to function, just to get by, then how much the more so with the relationships in our lives of a much greater intensity and intimacy, those with our family and our friends. We live in a world where trust is all-too-often seen as weakness, a scourge to be avoided, perceived as something that should appear on lists like on the medical forms, and then proudly checked “no.” I saw a shirt just yesterday that said, in enormous letters, “Don’t Trust Anyone,” with a picture of an AK-47 just underneath the words. That, unfortunately, is where all too many of us are at. Trust, in and of itself, simply cannot be trusted.

Maybe that works for the mob boss on TV, the CSI detective in her interrogations, the CIA operative undercover in a foreign country. But it definitely doesn’t work for us. No way. Not if we want to live meaningful, purposeful, enriched, full, beautiful lives. While our trust should be earned and carefully, thoughtfully given, never lightly tossed about, we have to realize that trust is at the very core of what makes life worth living. It’s how we truly, deeply connect with others, how we see and maximize the beauty of the world and the life bestowed upon us for who knows how long. Yes, we’ve all gotten burned, our trust betrayed—in love, in friendship, in school or in work. Yes, we’ve all felt the pointed sting, the mixture of anger, sadness and foolishness coursing through every part of us. But the answer can’t be to shut it off, to make trust a commodity we can no longer afford, to bury it for good, out of the reach of others, for fear of getting hurt again. It can’t be. Because if we do, that anger, that sadness, that foolishness will only grow and grow quickly, until we find ourselves utterly alone, hating the world and everyone in it. Because love without trust is a three-legged chair. And even the mob boss, even the detective, even the undercover operative, have to trust someone at some point.

Perspective and trust. They’re at the core of our lives, and at the core of this week’s Torah portion, Shlach L’cha, where Moses is commanded to send 12 spies—one from each tribe—into the land of Israel to see what it’s like, what grows there, and who the current inhabitants are. All twelve agree that that land “indeed flows with milk and honey, [and is] an exceedingly good land.” But ten of the twelve are afraid, doubtful of their ability, even with God’s help, to come into possession of the land sworn to them. And they spread that fear, that doubt, among the Israelites, like a virus of despair, until the people once again revolt against Moses’ leadership. Only Caleb and Joshua are return with words of positivity and faith, that perhaps it is a daunting task after all, but that with God and with each other, it can and will happen. Only Caleb and Joshua have the perspective to zoom out, to look down the road and see the bigger picture. And only Caleb and Joshua have the trust, the faith—in God and in their fellow human beings—to know that, as we read in our liturgy earlier, “the only we to get from here to there is by joining hands, marching together.”

So I pray, on this Shabbat, that we will be like Joshua and Caleb. I pray that we can have a healthy perspective in our lives; to not sweat the small stuff, at least not any more than we need to; to know in our hearts what really matters in life, what really imbues it with meaning and value, are our relationships with our loved ones. And to know, to appreciate, that what lies at the core of any and every single meaningful relationship in our lives, every single connection through which we see the beauty of God’s world and our lives, is trust.

AMEN.                           

B'har, Nachshon, & Jason Collins

To hear my sermon from Friday, May 3rd, please click the link below:

https://www.myrecordbox.com/s/recording/5161/b70d45882a99f09080ac86de5a1518ea

Fighting the Darkness - T'tzaveh 5773

“Darkness falls across the land
The midnight hour is close at hand
Creatures crawl in search of blood
To terrorize y'alls neighborhood
And whosoever shall be found
Without the soul for getting down
Must stand and face the hounds of hell
And rot inside a corpse's shell
The foulest stench is in the air
The funk of forty thousand years
And grizzly ghouls from every tomb
Are closing in to seal your doom
And though you fight to stay alive
Your body starts to shiver
For no mere mortal can resist
The evil of the thriller.”

Darkness. It is paralyzing, fearful, terrifying. We can’t see, we can’t be seen. We are at our most vulnerable, unprotected. It’s the basis of our horror movies, our campfire ghost stories, our haunted houses.

It is no wonder, then, that darkness is a plague upon Egypt. And if we see the Ten Plagues as a progression in intensity and terror, the fact that it’s the ninth of ten speaks volumes about us and our fears. The text says that this plague didn’t include the Jews, that though “people could not see on another, and for three days no one could move about, all the Israelites enjoyed light in their dwellings.”

But many of our sages and commentators beg to differ. They say the darkness did include the Jews. But the difference between them was how they handled it. For the Egyptians, we read in the text, lo kamu ish mitachtav, literally nobody even got off their tushes to help each other. They were paralyzed and just sat still, defeated, waiting for the light to return. The Israelites, on the other hand, probably just as scared as the Egyptians, struggled through the darkness to check on each other, to see if their families and friends and neighbors were okay. And so the light they enjoyed, say the commentators, was more existential, that, though the darkness was just the same, they did the best they could to get through it.

Darkness. It is scary stuff, in every sense of the word—metaphorically, figuratively, literally. And as we sit here, in the thick of a cold, bitter winter, we know that this is the darkest time of year. 
So too is it a dark time for the Israelites at this point in our Torah. But theirs is a spiritual darkness, the hangover of doubt following the triumphant leaving of Egypt, the victory over their oppressors at the Sea of Reeds. So now, in their spiritual wilderness, our ancestors are getting the very detailed instructions for building the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary, so that God may dwell with them wherever they may go.

Along comes Parashat T’tzaveh, and the very first verse of the portion is this: “Command the Israelites to bring you clear oil of beaten olives lama’or, l’ha’alot ner tamid.”

This is a special moment for us as the Jewish people, because this is where the concept of the ner tamid comes from. This is why virtually every sanctuary ever no matter where it sits, no matter which direction it faces, they all have an Eternal Light.

But while we all love and appreciate the custom of ner tamid, the single light representing constant hope and, for some of us, the unwavering Presence of God, it is most probably a mistranslation. It is not an Eternal Flame (sorry, Bangles fans), but really a light to be kindled regularly.

I point that out not to burst your ner tamid bubble or to be the wet blanket to your eternal flame. But I think there’s a pretty big distinction there, and it’s important that we take note of it. Because, see, kindled regularly” rather than “eternal light” acknowledges what we all know to be true. Lights are going to go out—in our hearts, our souls, our spirits. Over the course of our lives, no matter how cheerful, optimistic, happy-go-lucky we may be in general, there is no way to avoid it, there will be darkness. So when the darkness comes, there are two questions to ask ourselves:

The first one is: what do we do in the darkness? Do we feel sorry for ourselves, do we mope? Do we endlessly lament what could’ve been, what should’ve been? Do we spend our time being angry at the darkness, blaming ourselves or pointing the finger all around at anyone but ourselves as the cause? Do we sit on our butts like the Egyptians and wait for someone, something else to dig us out?  Or do we turn inward to find light, to work on ourselves, to better ourselves, to reach for the light within and beyond ourselves to make our world brighter?

The second question is: how? How do we rekindle the flame? How do we get out of this darkness? Where does the spark come from? To whom, to what do we turn to get the lights back on, to get back on our feet and start moving forward again?

Perhaps a clue to answers to both is B'tzal'el. B’tzal’el is, simply put, the man. He is singled out by God to be chief architect, designer, jeweler, mason, you name it, for the Mishkan. He is essentially the Bob Vila of the Tabernacle.

And the verse that introduces us to him says the following: Va’amale oto ruach Elohim b’chochmah, uvit’vunah, uv’da’at, uv’chol m’lachah, usually translated in a context of being the skilled specialist he apparently is, that God “has endowed him with a divine spirit of skill, ability, and knowledge in every kind of craft.” A more literal translation, which I prefer here, says this: God “has filled him with the spirit of God, with wisdom, understanding, knowledge, as well as physical labor.”

God has filled him with this, whatever it is, so that this divine spirit, this gift of God he possesses does not ever desert him, even in the most difficult moments. And what is it? What is that wisdom, that understanding, that knowledge?

Maybe the secret is in his very name: B’tzalel. If we look closely at his name, and we break up into parts, his name says the following: B’tzal, “in the shadows,” El, “God is there.”

And God is that light we seek; the light that will carry us through the hardest moments, the ones we think and fear will never end. It’s in the arms of a needed embrace from a loved one. It’s in the warm eyes, the listening ears of a friend. It’s in the voice that says “I’m sorry you’re going through this. But I know you. I love you.  And I know you’re going to be okay.”

It’s there, in the shadows. But only if we make ourselves open to it. Only if we allow ourselves to be scared, to be vulnerable, and to share it, call it out and name it. And only then can we move forward into the light. After all, as the great poet Leonard Cohen once wrote, “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. That’s how the light gets in.”

My friends, on this Shabbat I pray that the moments of darkness in our lives are few and far between, that our days be filled with light and joy. But when those moments come, as inevitably they will, when darkness encircles us and our hope begins to drain away, may we find strength in ourselves to face our fears and our vulnerabilities head-on; strength in each other, in the love and sympathy and support that we simply cannot live without. And may we know, through that strength, even in the darkest depths of sadness and despair, b’tzal-el, even in the shadows, there is God.

AMEN.  

The Dirtiest Word - Yitro 5773

I’m warning you now. I’m going to begin tonight with a dirty word. It may shock you. It may upset you. It’s upset many a person throughout time. But I’m going to say it anyway. You ready? You sure? Okay. Here goes:
   
God.
  
There, I said it. God. You all thought I was going to utter some nasty four-letter word, didn’t you. I may not be the brightest bulb. But I’m not that stupid.
  
And yet, for some of us—perhaps many of us—that three-letter word, “God,” is actually quite a bit more disturbing than any of those curse words. And what I want to know is: why? Why is it that we can talk about anything we want in today’s society—anything: money, sex, drugs, violence, people’s private lives and innermost secrets and intimate details that somehow appear daily on the front page of every newspaper we see—why is everything fair game for discussion except God?

And why am I thinking about God so much this week? I could answer the question glibly, saying that, well, it’s my job to think about God. And while that is definitely true for myself to the point of being obvious, even as I say that aloud, I know that I have many, many colleagues who feel the same way about that dirty G-word, men and women in this holy work who wouldn’t broach the topic, publicly or privately, with a ten-foot pole.

Beyond that, however, there are a couple of reasons that God is especially in the front of my mind this week. One is that a few of you over the past couple of weeks have shared with me the January 6th op-ed from the Times entitled “The Blessings of Atheism,” with the tagline reading something to the effect of, “We atheists need to stand up for what we believe.”
  
Now, I must confess. The idea of atheists standing up for what they believe made me laugh at first. It smacked of self-contradiction, like the scene from Stranger Than Fiction, where Will Ferrell’s IRS agent is questioning Maggie Gyllenhaal. After explaining to him the detailed rationale for paying most, but not all of her taxes, the following conversation takes place:

“Miss Pascal, what you're describing is anarchy. Are you an anarchist?”
“You mean, am I a member of...”
“An anarchist group, yes.”
“Anarchists have a group?”
“I believe so, sure.”
“They assemble?”
“I don't know.”
At which point she leans in close to him and says:
“Wouldn't that completely defeat the purpose?”

So you’ll forgive me if that’s what came to mind when seeing the topic of atheists standing for what they believe. But I am very glad I read the piece. For one thing, I found myself in surprise agreement at the frustration felt upon hearing the phrase, “I’m spiritual, but not religious,” of which author Susan Jacoby says, “[when] translated from psychobabble, can mean just about anything.” True that, as they say. I don’t know if I’ll ever be sure as to what that means.

But I was greatly agitated by her central thesis, which was, essentially, this: that atheism is the best way for people to focus on and emphasize the here-and-now, because affiliating with a faith group and, particularly, believing in God, somehow precludes us from doing so. Her assumption is that those who believe in a higher power also necessarily believe in an afterlife, and as such, are not adequately attentive to what’s going on in front of our eyes, specifically in response to the grieving, the bereft in our community. And while that may be true for many of our Christian brothers and sisters, my friends, it is not true for us. While it may deeply upset her, as it does me, to endure such hollow, ultimately meaningless and useless explanations as their loved one “being in a better place,” or how “God must have His reasons” or “somehow needed him or her in Heaven” to those who have suffered through tragic loss, her logic is flawed. It’s flawed because hers is a blanket statement, a generalization that does not apply equally across the board. The truth is everything she espouses in this piece—to be here, to be now, to focus on the only life we know for sure, especially in comforting the mourners in our midst—is completely, 100% consistent with Judaism and Jewish teaching. The Sages of our tradition, detailed as they were, almost to a flaw, were incredibly vague on notions of Olam Ha-ba, the World to Come. And, in my opinion, this is no accident. Even these men, certain as they were in their convictions on virtually everything, were okay with their uncertainty here. There is no dogma about life after death, about heaven or hell or purgatory, no tenets to which every Jew must subscribe, no company line or stock answer to recite. They’re vague because, at the end of the day, who really knows? They didn’t. And at least they knew they didn’t.

This week we read Parashat Yitro, famous, of course, for Aseret Ha-Dibrot, the Ten Commandments, the first of which is simply this: “I the Eternal am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage.”

Doesn’t seem like much of a commandment, does it? Okay, fine. So it could be helpful to realize that a better translation of Aseret Ha-Dibrot would be “The Ten Utterances,” as this first one seems more a statement than a commandment. Or maybe it is a commandment. Maybe it’s a statement of the given, tacitly understood as what we are all to believe.

Or maybe it’s this, one of my favorite phrases, taken from a not-so-G-rated scene in the 2000 film Boiler Room:

Act as if.

It’s true, no one knows for sure either way. I know that with my experiences, the way I’ve come to see my life and the world over time, that it might come a bit easier for me than for others, and that I’m as convinced as I think a person can be that there is, in fact, a God. But I don’t know. No one does. And that statement is just as true for both sides of the timeless debate, and everything in between. We just don’t know. And who would dare to be so arrogant as to say that they did? That’s why the word “atheist” bothers me, in all honesty. How can anyone truly know, with perfect infallibility, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that there is no God, that God for sure does not exist?

The truth is, whether we consider ourselves believers or not, we’re all agnostic. We may, at best, think we have it figured out for ourselves in a way that makes sense to us, in whatever direction that may be. But we all have doubts. And as my teacher Dr. Kravitz used to say, “Out of certainty comes doubt, but out of doubt only comes certainty.”
  
Act as if.

And for us, that means act as if there’s a God. Act as if there’s a Being who created the universe and everything, everyone in it. Act as if there is a spark of that God in every living thing, in every human being. Act as if there may be some kind of World to Come, some heavenly reward for our good deeds here, but know in your heart that you don’t know for sure, and that, ultimately, it’s irrelevant. Because to be a Jew who believes in God means that we are all the more focused on this life, this world, the only one we know for sure, and the people that make this one life something special, something sacred.

Act as if there’s a God. And maybe, just maybe, our lives will be that much more meaningful in the end.

AMEN.