Rabbi's Messages

on Monday, 23 September 2013.

RABBI STREIFFER'S SERMON FOR EREV YOM KIPPUR 5774

The great Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev was never late for shul.  Other people might waltz into the sanctuary at a quarter past. Other rabbis might stand around and schmooze. Not Levi Yitzhak.

But on this Yom Kippur evening, something was different.  The congregation was growing impatient as the rabbi sat on the bima and waited….and waited….and waited, long after the fast had begun.

“What is he waiting for,” people started to whisper. “Why won’t he begin the Kol Nidrei?”  The whispers turned to murmurs and the murmurs grew louder. And finally, the rabbi rose in his place and began to explain himself.

“There is one among us,” he began, “who is unlearned. Who never had the chance to study and cannot recite the prayers. As I entered the sanctuary this evening, I overheard this one praying to God, apologizing for his ignorance, whispering to the Holy One the only Hebrew he knew: “Alef… Beit…. Gimmel…. Dalet…. Hei…..”

“And so you see,” the rabbi continued, “I’ve been waiting because God has been busy; busy putting all of those letters together into the words of the Kol Nidrei.”

And with that, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev ascended the lectern and began to chant the service.[1]

Yom Kippur is a day full of letters. The letters of the prayers pour out of our mouths. The alphabet of our sins tears at our souls. In a way, each of us is like the unnamed person in the story: Our hearts are filled with longings and regrets, dreams and goals, but we so often don’t know how to put them into words.

And so, when we stand on this day to bear our hearts and our souls to God, we can only hope that God will help us to make sense to what is found there. That God will help us to piece together the letters, so that we can begin the hard work of teshuvah – of repentance.

That is, of course, the reason that we come to the synagogue on this Day of Atonement: to examine ourselves and our lives, to find ways to do better and to be better. And it’s not easy. Real repentance is, by definition, very hard to do. It requires a concerted effort on our part not only today but every day. It requires an acknowledgment that tikkun hanefesh – repairing our souls – is an ongoing process, a journey that never ends.

The great Spanish cellist Pablo Casals did a famous interview toward the end of his life, in which he revealed at the age of 95 that he still practiced his cello 3 hours a day. The young reporter grilled him, “Mr. Casals, you are 95 years old and you are one of the greatest cellists ever to live. Why do you still need to practice all of those hours?”

Casals answered simply, “Because I think I’m making progress.”[2]

Even the greatest of all musicians needs to work on his craft.
Even the most righteous of all people need to work toward being their best.

At this time of year, we all have work to do. No matter who we are or what we’ve done, each of us is, in a sense, a construction zone right now. During the High Holy Days, we are called upon to recognize that the letters in our hearts have not yet been formed into words. That the goals in our minds have not yet been brought to fruition. That each one of us is a work in progress.

A work in progress. This is not an idea that is unique to the High Holy Days. In fact, it is one of the most basic tenets of Reform Judaism. And we talk about it all the time.

Our movement’s Statement of Principles, written a decade ago, declares that:

We are committed to the ongoing study of the whole array of mitzvot and to the fulfillment of those that address us.[3]

In other words, Reform Judaism is built on the idea that we should always be learning and choosing, learning and choosing. We should always be examining our lives, examining our spiritual needs, and our Judaism should be in constant evolution. The way that we practiced Judaism five years ago may look nothing like the way we practice today. And what we do today need not determine what we will do five years from now.

One of the best exemplars of this kind of thinking was the great German Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig, who lived about 100 years ago. Rosenzweig grew up in a secular home, and so he spent his adult life discovering the beauty and the meaning of Jewish tradition, one mitzvah at a time.  He was once asked whether it was his custom put on t’fillin, the leather boxes that are traditionally placed on the forehead and arm as part of daily prayers.  His answer – his brilliant answer – was “Not yet.”

Not yet, he said. I have not yet arrived at a place where I feel myself commanded or compelled to engage in that practice. Not yet. But someday, I might.[4]

As Reform Jews, we ought to live “Not Yet” Judaism – always having our eyes open for the ways that Jewish practice and tradition can enrich our lives, can bring us closer to God, can bring us closer to our own religious and moral ideals. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re always evolving toward being more traditional. Thoughtful Jewish decision-making can take our practice in all different directions.

In fact, in my own house, we’ve made a choice in recent years to do something that is less traditional, because we believe that it better fulfills our Jewish values. In our kosher kitchen, we’ve tried wherever possible to replace hechshered meat (with the signature of an Orthodox rabbi) with free range or organic or ocal products, regardless of hechsher. And we do so out of the Jewish value of caring for the earth and for animals and for ourselves.

Now before you go home and say, “The Rabbi told me not to keep kosher anymore,” it’s important for me to say first that this is our own family’s decision, and second that our family does still keep kosher. The separate dishes are still there; the meat and dairy are still separate. But our kashrut looks different than it used to. Our kashrut is an ongoing work in progress that has evolved as our understanding of our Jewish values has evolved. If I give this sermon again in ten years, I would hope that it will have evolved again.

Reform Jewish life is a journey of learning and choosing and learning and choosing. The author Rodger Kamenetz, jokes in one of his books: “If I were to define myself denominationally, I'd say I'm an under-constructionist - and I wear a yellow hard hat yarmulke.”

Now, the truth is that while we’re supposed to wear our hard-hat kippah all year long, it is especially at this time of year that we spend time thinking about our lives and our choices. The High Holy Days give us the opportunity to meditate on our flaws and our faults. What have we done poorly this year? Whom have we hurt? When have we shown our arrogance and selfishness?

It doesn’t get much more depressing than that, does it? Ten days focused on everything that’s wrong with us. Ten days to beat ourselves down for everything we’ve messed up this year. But we know that the High Holy Days are not depressing and they are not intended to beat us down. No, as we said ten days ago, they actually lift us up – by reminding us that our flaws are human, that our sins are choices, and that no matter what we did last year, our choices today still matter.

Rabbi Simcha Bunim, the Chassidic master, was once sitting at the Shabbat table with his disciples, and he decided to ask one of his famous philosophical questions: “How can we tell that a sin we have committed has been pardoned?”

The students deliberated with one another and they began to give answers:
You can tell because you go to heaven.
You can tell because you feel a weight lifted off your shoulders.
But the rabbi wasn’t pleased with any of the answers. “No, no, no,” he said. “We can tell that we have been pardoned by the fact that we no longer commit that sin.”[5]

Even our earliest rabbis recognized that we ought to measure our teshuvah – our repentance - not by some lofty expectation of divine forgiveness. Rather, we should measure it by our own actions here on earth. By the tangible progress that we see ourselves making this year toward the goal of becoming our better selves.  

This evening we began our service with the Kol Nidrei. Its words are haunting and powerful : Kol Nidrei v’esari v’charamei… May all of my vows and oaths and promises be forgiven should I be honestly unable to keep them. Kol Nidrei is a legal formula, and it begs God to forgive what we are not able to fulfill. It is the deepest and most powerful recognition of our human frailty.

But you might not know that the Kol Nidrei we chant is not exactly what our ancestors once chanted. It was changed – a thousand years ago. A tiny change in language that made a huge difference. Where the prayer once referred to the vows that we were unable to keep last year, it was altered to refer instead to our future promises – those made miyom kippurim zeh ad yom kippurim haba – from this Yom Kippur until the next.

This little change is very important. The tradition is making a conscious choice to focus forward rather than backward. To focus on the inevitability of the mistakes that we will make during the coming year, rather than on those that we already made.

When we look backward, when we dwell on what cannot be changed, then our focus is on the damage that we have done. But when we use these High Holy Days to look ahead, we can focus instead on the opportunities for growth, on the better people that we would like to become, on the work in progress that is our soul.

Am I the best version of myself? No.

Am I living up to my own expectations? Not yet; but this year I will get a little closer.

A little closer is all that any of us can hope for in a year.  Being a work in progress requires a great deal of patience. Anyone who’s tried to drive east on Highway 7 in the last 2 years knows just how frustrating a construction zone can be. How long things can take. How easy it is to get stuck. Our spiritual construction zone is like that also. If the High Holy Days are difficult, it is because they require us to have not only the honesty to see our flaws, but also the patience to set goals and work toward them.

We often remark that this Jewish New Year season has very little in common with the secular New Year. Rather than partying, we fast. Rather than celebrating, we spend time in solemn reflection. But what the two New Years do have in common is the idea of making resolutions for ourselves, setting goals for doing better. And we know how difficult that can be.

This past January, Forbes Magazine printed an article that reveals that only 8% of all New Year’s resolutions are actually kept. I don’t know where they got their statistics, but it doesn’t sound so far from the truth that 92% of us fail every year to lose the weight, or exercise more, or spend more time with family, or whatever it is we have in mind. Every year – and for Jews twice a year – we make resolutions to become better people. And every year, on the following New Year, we make them all over again.

But the truth is that it’s not a bad thing for us to be setting the same goals for ourselves every year, as long as in the interim we can take a few steps toward reaching them.

The midrash tells a story about a king and a prince – a father and son – who had a falling out, and so the son went out into the world to wander. Over time, he moved farther and farther from his father, until at some point he no longer remembered the reason he had left. So the son decided to return. He sent word to the king, “Father, I would like to return to you, but I cannot make the entire journey. It is too difficult, and you are too far away.” And his father answered: “My son, come to me now in small steps. If you can make the journey toward me, then I will meet you halfway.”

Now is the time of year when God says to us: Take small steps, and I will meet you halfway.  According to the Chassidim, that’s exactly why we call God Avinu Malkeinu – because like a loving parent, God holds our hand at first, and moves slowly back, and expects us to take steps in the right direction.[6]

Steps. Just steps.  It’s the difference between swinging for the rafters, or going for the base hit. It’s the difference between shooting for the end zone every time, or trying to make the first down. It’s the difference between declaring  “This year, I will spend more time with family” and making a plan for one family dinner a week. It’s the difference between expecting ourselves to be perfect, and willing ourselves to do better.

The broadcast journalist Edwin Bliss once said, "The pursuit of excellence is gratifying and healthy. The pursuit of perfection is frustrating, neurotic, and a terrible waste of time."

The thing about being a work in progress is that you never stop being one. If we were to solve all of our problems this year, then what would we have left to do next Yom Kippur?

So let us spend this coming year not trying to be perfect, but trying to do better. Let us spend this year taking baby steps toward our goals, inching our way toward the life that we would like to be living, so that next year at this same time, we can look back and say “I know I still have work to do, but I think I’m making progress.”

A renowned rabbi was was cleaning out a dresser drawer shortly after his retirement from the pulpit, and he found 5 eggs and a thousand dollars. What a strange thing, he thought. And so he asked his wife what it was all about.

She replied that over the years, she had used this system to keep track of his sermons. She had saved one egg for every bad sermon.Hmm, thought the rabbi. Five eggs in all those years. Not bad. But what about the thousand dollars?  “Oh that,” replied his wife. Every time I got a dozen eggs, I sold them.[7]

What is life if not a journey – from failure to failure – of baby steps forward? What is life if not a work in progress?

At the end of this day – this long, exhausting day – we will return to our homes with our slates wiped clean, with our buckets emptied. May we fill them, bit by bit this year, with the goodness that is inside of us, with the blessing that surround us, with the letters that spell out the hopes and dreams in our hearts.

Kol Nidrei v’esarei – May all of our vows, all our oaths and promises and obligations, find their way to God. May they become the road map by which we work to better ourselves this year.

May we take steps – positive, attainable steps – toward becoming better versions of ourselves.  And when we fail – and we will fail – may we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and do it all over again.

Amen.

[1] Based on “One Letter at a Time, “ from Epstein, Lawrence, A Treasury of Jewish Inspirational Stories, Jason Aronson Inc, 1993. Page 88.
[2] Dr. Maxwell Maltz, quoted in Bits & Pieces, June 24, 1993, p. 12
[3] A Statement of Principles for Reform Judaism. Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1999.
[4] An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thinkers, Alan T. Levenson, page 93, 2006, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Lanham, MD.
[5] Buber, Tales of the Hasidim, Later Masters, page 253
[6] Based on Gates of Repentance p. 231 #10.
[7] http://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/a-work-in-progress-darrin-hunt-sermon-on-growth-in-christ-102809.asp