Rosh HaShanah Morning 5782: If Not Now, When?

 A Version of this sermon was delivered on Rosh HaShanah Morning 5782 at Temple B'nai Torah - A Reform Congregation in Wantagh, NY.

            Like many of you, I’m sure, when I was growing up, my family would go out for Chinese fairly regularly.  At least once every couple of weeks, if not more often, we’d all pile into the car and make our way, excited at the prospect of kung pao chicken and using chopsticks.  Every few years, the Chinese restaurant of choice would change, as we discovered new favorites.  What never changed, though, was what happened at the end of the meal.  With the check, without fail, arrived a plate with fortune cookies, small, folded, crispy, thin cookies with a vaguely positive or philosophical message written on them.  “A chance meeting opens new doors to success and friendship.”  Or, “Patience is bitter, but its fruit sweet.”  Or, “It is now and in this world, that we must live.” 

Over the years, lucky numbers and Chinese translation made their way onto these small slips of paper, too, and novelty fortune cookies were sold at the candy store where I worked in high school.  At the restaurants, there was usually one cookie per person, but on those occasions when we’d get extra, if we didn’t like the fortune the cookie offered, we’d take another, hoping for better luck.  I once got one that said, no joke, “Everyone agrees you are the best.”  I didn’t open another fortune for a year…

            Now, I don’t want to burst anyone’s bubble, but fortune cookies aren’t actually Chinese.  At best, historians can determine, they are Japanese in origin and date to probably the middle of the 19^th century.[1]  The fortunes are meant to be fun, not prophetic.  I mean, who would live their life based on advice on small slips of paper?

            Reb Simcha Bunim,[2] a 19^th-century Polish Chassidic rabbi, advises that we all walk around with two small slips of paper, one each in our two side pockets.  On one slip of paper is to be written: “The world was created for me alone.”  On the second slip of paper is to be written: “I am but dust and ashes.”  Why carry around these two conflicting pieces of advice?

According to Simcha Bunim, “When feeling lowly and depressed, discouraged or disconsolate, one should reach into the right pocket and, there, find the words: “The world was created for me.”  This message comes from the Mishnah, the Jewish law code of the second and third centuries.  The phrase is found in a discussion about the creation of humanity.  The Rabbis debate the meaning of Adam being created alone, asking what meaning there is in Adam’s singularness.  At the end of the discussion, the text advises that “since all humanity descends from one person, each and every person is obligated to say: The world was created for me, as one person can be the source of all humanity, and recognize the significance of his actions.”[3]

            On the other hand, according to Rabbi Bunim, “when feeling high and mighty one should reach into the left pocket, and find the words: “I am but dust and ashes.”  This pocket-phrase is of much earlier origin, coming from the mouth of Abraham during his debate and negotiation with God at Sodom and Gomorrah.  Abraham presses God not to destroy an entire town, for perhaps there are 50 righteous people, and it is not just to kill them because of the sins of others.  As God agrees to Abraham’s terms, Abraham senses an opening and responds in seeming humility: “וַיַּ֥עַן אַבְרָהָ֖ם וַיֹּאמַ֑ר הִנֵּה־נָ֤א הוֹאַ֙לְתִּי֙ לְדַבֵּ֣ר אֶל־אֲדֹנָ֔י וְאָנֹכִ֖י עָפָ֥ר וָאֵֽפֶר׃  Abraham spoke up, saying, “Here I venture to speak to my Lord, I who am but dust and ashes.”[4]  After this genuflective statement, Abraham asks God if God is really firm on that 50 people number.  The negotiation continues and God’s final offer is that if there are ten righteous souls, God won’t destroy Sodom. 

            Abraham’s tactic of humility in his conversation with God comes at a moment when the Torah tells us that God chooses Abraham for favor.  Abraham has already been selected to begin the covenantal relationship with the Eternal.  This moment is different. God asks Themself: “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?”[5]  In this moment, the Torah describes God’s internal monologue.  God decides that it’s not a good idea to keep Abraham in the dark, and so God chooses to inform Abraham because of their special relationship. 

In this moment of divine selection, in this moment of communion with God, Abraham’s head could have swelled.  He could have seen himself as more than just in the image of the divine, but as somewhat divine himself.  After all, it’s not just that he listens to God, God listens to him!  Instead, Abraham defaults to humility.  Simcha Bunim wants us to remember that even in those moments when we think that everyone agrees we’re the best, even when it feels like God is shining on us uniquely, we are to remember our patriarch and recognize that we are but dust and ashes.

            This is an important way to live life, to be sure.  Both of these phrases have to do with our relationship with God, what we call ben adam lemakom.  The world was created for me alone; created by God, for me.  I am but dust and ashes, only here and with a soul because God breathes it into me pure every day.  These slips of paper in our pockets are about how we see ourselves in relationship with the cosmos. 

These Days of Awe remind us that as much as we are here at services in the service of repairing our relationship with God, the harder work, and probably more meaningful work, is to repair our relationships with each other, what we call ben adam lechavero.  And so, while Simcha Bunim has a point, this coming year, as we move through this complicated, damaged world, perhaps we change the slips of paper in our pockets, the way we regularly require novel fortune cookie wisdom.  Let’s put those two slips of paper in the geniza and find something new.  Or to paraphrase Rav Kook, perhaps we take something old and make it new again.  I want to direct us back toward the sagely proverbial advice of the great Rabbi Hillel.

The details of Hillel’s life are sparse.  What we know of him is mostly based on his teachings which survive in rabbinic literature and the stories in that literature that open very small windows on that world.

Hillel is well known for the following advice found in Pirke Avot: “אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי. וּכְשֶׁאֲנִי לְעַצְמִי, מָה אֲנִי. וְאִם לֹא עַכְשָׁיו, אֵימָתָי: If I am not for myself, who is for me?  And, if I am for my own self alone, what am I?  And if not now, when?”[6]  He is so well known, in fact, that this very statement has been found in fortune cookies, and not just at the kosher places!

Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz calls this teaching the raison d’être of Judaism, the reason for being.  He explains that, “Hillel reminds us that it is challenging to find the proper balance between religious self-preservation and self-sacrifice.”[7]

Self-preservation and self-sacrifice.  With this understanding, Hillel’s words from 2,000 years ago ring true in our ears today.  Self-preservation in the face of a seemingly unending pandemic.  Self-preservation as we made difficult choices.  Self-sacrifice in order to protect ourselves, our families, our neighbors, and our communities.  Self-sacrifice as we kept ourselves at social distance, as we cancelled gatherings, holidays, weddings, High Holy Day plans… again…

If I am not for myself, who is for me?  And, if I am for my own self alone, what am I? And if not now, when?  These statements are meant to be understood and lived in tandem.  They are offered as a set.  Three legs of a stool that, when lived out, hold up society.

If I am not for myself, who is for me?  Hillel begins his advice with a recognition that the self has worth.  He reminds us that sometimes we have to put ourselves first, because we may not be able to rely on others.  We have to make decisions that further our lives.  We put on our own oxygen masks first.  Self-preservation.

And, if I am for myself alone, what am I?  Ultimately, we also know that if our own needs are not met, then we cannot be there for others.  But once we’ve seen to ourselves, we must look out for others.  We are followers of Torah, guided by its principles, called to witness the covenant with the Eternal God, whose refrain over and over is to care for the vulnerable, the orphaned, the widowed, the stranger, the marginalized, the oppressed, the immunocompromised, in our midst.  If we take care of only ourselves, Hillel asks, are we a part of society?  If we take care of only ourselves, and we fail to take into account the wellbeing of the community, are we living Jewishly?

When we fall victim to rampant individualism, what are we?  When we spend more time looking into the phones in our palms than the faces of others next to us, what are we?  If we fail to act on climate change and leave a less inhabitable world for our children, what are we?  If we continue to sell weapons of war and don’t work to protect our schools, our malls, our theaters, our concerts, our houses of worship, from them, what are we?!  If we take a woman’s autonomy of body away from her, what are we?  If we fight against simple, proven, life-saving policies, like vaccines and masks, what are we?

And if not now, when!?  We have to live both of these statements now, in the present, meaning at all times.  Because if we choose not to, self-preservation and self-sacrifice are out of balance. 

This notion that we have to live in a way that balances self-preservation and self-sacrifice is discussed philosophically in ideas of the social contract.  But as Jews, we don’t speak in contracts, we speak in covenants.  Hillel’s statement is a societal covenant. 

And so is his other most famous teaching.  The story goes that once a Roman soldier came to convert, on condition that the rabbi would teach him all he needed to know while he stood on one foot.  Addressing himself first to Shammai, the legionnaire made his request and was promptly pushed aside.  The Roman went next to Hillel who calmly responded, as he stood on one foot: “What is hateful to you, do not do to another.  That is the whole Torah, the rest is commentary.”[8]  Hillel reformulates language from Leviticus, language which we read at Yom Kippur afternoon, from the centerpiece of the Torah, the Holiness Code, in which God commands us to be holy as God is holy.  In that Holiness Code, God commands us: V’ahavta lereacha kamcha, Love your neighbor as yourself!”[9]  In order to love your neighbor properly, you must also love yourself. For if you hate yourself, then you’ll hate your neighbor too. Love yourself, but not only yourself, and only then can you ALSO go beyond yourself to love the other.

V’ahavta lereacha kamcha, Love your neighbor as yourself, is a command of God.  It is also a sacred responsibility.  God invites us to be in covenant with God, and commands us to be in covenant with each other.  Our relationships, our community, our society require sacred responsibility for each other, especially in difficult times like this pandemic.  This responsibility is required not just when times are tough, though, like after a natural disaster, but always!  If we neglect these responsibilities for too long, if we focus only on ourselves, we may find ourselves in the position of Abraham desperately seeking 10 righteous among our community.  It was a lack of concern for the other, a lack of a sense of sacred responsibility for the other, and for the vulnerable, which the midrash points to as among the egregious sins of Sodom, which cause God to condemn that city.

God calls us to be in covenant with each other.  And this morning’s Torah reading, a stark and complicated one, but one which bears out the dual covenants that these days ask us to reaffirm.  God calls Abraham to the mountain to sacrifice his son, Isaac.  God is testing Abraham, the Torah reminds us.  God is affirming that Abraham is a willing participant in the divine Brit, the covenant.  God wants us to believe and follow God’s ways, and in return we are blessed by God.  Abraham has to prove his belief, and so he does.  Abraham is to sacrifice of his family in order to preserve the blessing of God.

After a back and forth, perhaps hoping God might change Their mind, Abraham takes his son up the mountain.  He is ready to sacrifice that which is most precious to him for his covenant with God.  And then, as had been planned all along, God stops him.  And in so doing, God teaches all of us that there is no covenant with God when we don’t care about the lives of others.  There is no covenant with God when we sacrifice our future.  

There is no covenant with God when there is no covenant with others.

Why doesn’t Hillel just tell us these statements?  Take care of yourself.  Take care of others.  Do it now.  Hillel’s are not the only questions in all of Pirke Avot, but they are the only advice framed as such.  Why does he phrase them in the form of a question?  The Rabbi in me wants to answer that a question is always better because it leads to more discussion and more wisdom.  The teacher in me knows that helping others come to a conclusion can lead to enduring learning.  I would guess that even without educational theory, Hillel understood this intrinsically.

Hillel understood human nature.  When he reframed Leviticus for that Roman soldier, he put it in the negative: Don’t do what is hateful to you.  Why?  Because he understood that sometimes stopping a bad action is easier to do than starting a good one.  These High Holy Days take us to task with regard to God.  Hillel knew that in order to truly live out the covenant we have with others, we have to take ourselves to task.  We have to ask ourselves these questions over and over because we are always changing, even though we know the answers stay the same,.  We have to ask ourselves over and over because in so doing, we have the opportunity to constantly adjust our actions.  We have the chance to turn, for teshuvah, always, because we’re always checking.

If I am not for myself, who is for me?  And, if I am for my own self alone, what am I? Put these statements in your pockets.  Speak of them when you walk on the way.  Think of them when you lie down and you rise up.  Because in doing so, we recommit to the covenant we have with each other, the covenant which God commands us to forge.

If not now, when? 

Shanah Tovah.

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[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/16/travel/16iht-fortune.9260526.html

[2] Based on Buber’s Tales of the Chassidim, and other sources

[3] Mishnah Sanhedrin 3:7, including comment from Rashi on BT Sanh. 37a

[4] Gen. 18:27

[5] Gen. 18:17-19

[6] Mishnah Avot 1:14

[7] Yanklowitz, Rabbi Shmuly., Pirke Avot a Social Justice Commentary.  CCAR Press 2018

[8] BT Shabbat 31a

[9] Lev. 19:18

Erev Rosh HaShanah 5782: Olam Chesed Nibaneh

 A version of this sermon was delivered on Erev Rosh HaShanah 5782 at Temple B'nai Torah - A Reform Congregation in Wantagh, NY.

            You may have missed the headlines, but this past May, Europe was in crisis, and on the brink of collapse.  No, I’m not talking about Brexit, or the effects of the COVID pandemic.  I’m not even talking about the voting at the Eurovision song contest this year.  No.  Earlier this May, in a brazen act, a farmer moved a large stone some 7.5 feet, out of the way of his tractor.[1] 

            Now, you might be wondering, what could be so brazen about moving a stone?  Even a large stone?  Aren’t farmers allowed to do that?  Shouldn’t he be allowed to keep his tractor and equipment safe?  Well, this farmer lives in the town of Erquelinnes, Belgium, which shares a border with the French town of Bousignies-sur-Roc.  When this farmer moved that large stone out of his way, what he didn’t realize is that the stone had been placed there deliberately and with purpose.  Not by God, but by a border commission in 1819, tasked with dividing up Europe in the aftermath of Napoleon’s loss at Waterloo four years earlier in 1815.  I imagine some of us are thinking back to High School history courses when we last might have heard these names.  When the Belgian farmer moved that stone, he moved the border 7.5 feet, making Belgium bigger by 7.5 feet and France smaller by 7.5 feet, though I’m sure they measured in meters.  And he did this all by moving a stone out of the way of his tractor. 

            Quite the accomplishment for a small-town farmer: creating an unintentional international incident, that if it couldn’t be resolved amicably, would necessitate the formation of a border commission, the likes of which hasn’t been convened since 1930!  Quite the chain of events unleashed by an innocent desire a man had to properly farm his land. 

            The farmer obviously had no idea what his simple action might lead to.  He had no sense that by just doing his work, going about his day, he might create such a firestorm.  Not all our actions have such earth-changing consequences, but this season of our New Year and these Days of Awe ask us to consider our actions, all of them, big and small, and their ramifications, big and small. 

What do we create when we act?  What might we destroy? 

This is the question that weighs on our souls on these days that bring us to the border between heaven and earth.  We cannot move the border between earth and heaven, but our tradition makes clear that we do have an effect on the heavens.  These hours spent in our houses of worship, pleading before and praising God, remind us all that our actions not only affect those around us in this world, but the heavenly realm as well. 

What we do, will do, and have done will cause us to be written and inscribed in the book of life, we pray.  As we begin these days of repentance, prayer, and charity, we might ask ourselves what these prayers mean and how we are supposed to understand them.  Do we believe that God is sitting up in heaven with a quill pen keeping track of everything we do in a giant ledger or on a long scroll?  Maybe we imagine God crouched over a laptop with an Excel spreadsheet of our deeds, each of us getting a new tab, the sum of our actions automatically updating with each entry.  However we might imagine it adding up, our deeds have a metaphysical effect: our actions affect even God Themself.  They can temper judgment’s severe decree! 

These cause-and-effect beliefs are hard for our modern sensibilities.  When the rabbis of old teach that our deeds affect the heavens, they do so in part to remind us that if our actions can impact God in heaven, imagine the impact they have on earth.  If every one of our actions matters so deeply to God, then we are called to mimic the Divine Concern and consider how every one of them matters to us and to those around us.

What we do matters, every moment of every day.  It is all taken into account by God, and so it should all be taken into account by us.

The ancient rabbis explained that Divine Concern for the effects of our actions.  In Pirke Avot, the collection of teachings from the earliest generations of Rabbis, we read that “Rabbi Eliezer, son of Yaakov, says: One who does a single good deed acquires a single defender. One who does a single sin acquires a single prosecutor.”[2]  Rabbi Eliezer here teaches that our deeds essentially assemble a collection of lawyers to plead your case before God.  The good deeds amass a team of defendants, and the bad deeds amass a team of prosecutors. 

In The Talmud, “Rabbi Joshua ben Levi said: All the commandments which Israel performs in this world will come and testify on their behalf in the world to come.”[3]  Rather than serving as the attorneys, according to Rabbi Joshua ben Levi, our deeds serve as witnesses, testifying on our behalf before the throne of judgment.  Though he doesn’t elaborate, clearly some would testify for the prosecution and some for the defense.

Rabbi Shmuel Eidels, known as the Maharsha, who lived in Poland in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, goes even further in a teaching on this very passage of Talmud.  In his commentary, he teaches that “in each action of a person’s hands is created a spiritual being based on the deed, as it is said, the one who fulfills a commandment gives strength to the host of the heavens,” [4]  Our actions, the Maharsha teaches, create.  It’s not just that the actions call forward the prosecutors and defenders, he says.  It’s not just that the actions themselves take the stand.  No, all of our actions are moments of creation.  Positive actions create a force in the heavens that buttresses the foundations of God’s abode.

The Maharsha goes on to explain that the opposite is true as well.  “And thus…one who commits a sin removes strength from the host of the heavens, and gives strength to the side of impurity, and they are witnesses who testify against him.”[5]

Doing the right thing is heavenly infrastructure.  By following mitzvot, and living up to our moral standards, we strengthen God.  When we miss the mark, when we sin, we chip away at the heavens and strengthen the case against us in the heavenly court.  These High Holy days allow us the opportunity to make up for those times we’ve missed the mark.  We enter the sanctuary of our souls hoping that our prayers, our contrition, and our commitment to deeds of lovingkindness will begin to make up for those times.  But the Talmud and the Maharsha remind us that focusing on this only on these days is not sufficient because our actions every day are moments of creation.  These days are supposed to guide us for the rest of the year.

The Maharsha’s teaching that every one of our actions is a moment of creation means that every action we take allows us the opportunity to mimic the Divine, to participate in the act of creation.  Every action in our lives has the potential to be another Big Bang, another moment of B’reishit bara!  This potential is exciting, as we embark on this new year, because it gives us another chance to build upon that infrastructure.  It gives us another chance to hold ourselves accountable.  It gives us a chance to improve.

God tried out other versions of existence before committing to this one.  The other ones were not good.  In an interesting midrash, Rabbi Judah bar Simon teaches that the world we live in today was not God’s first attempt.[6]  He asks why the Torah, in describing the first day of Creation – on which God speaks light into being, separates light and darkness, and names day and night – why on this first day of existence, does the Torah say, “And there was evening.”?  For Rabbi Judah bar Simon, the “and” is superfluous.  This is to teach us, he says, “…that there was a time-system prior to this.”[7] And the midrash adds a teaching of Rabbi Abbahu, who said that, “This [‘and’] teaches us that God created worlds and destroyed them, saying, ‘This one pleases me; those did not please me.’”[8]

This one, though, as we read in the Torah, is good and, ultimately, very good.[9]  So when God created something that God wasn’t especially proud of, God tried again.  Rabbi Avi Stausberg teaches that the successful creation of the world was only made possible by the creation and destruction of previous attempts.[10]

It took God a few tries to get it right.  Rabbi Natan Zvi Finkel, in his essay “Destruction and Building,” explains God’s repeated attempts at creation by looking at the book of Proverbs, which teaches that the world was created with wisdom.[11]  “…In the destruction of the worlds, there is great wisdom…However this is not really destruction at all, rather it is the way of wisdom: through the different attempts to build worlds and their destructions, the foundation is established upon which the world is based.”[12]  Destruction leads ultimately to wisdom when we are inspired not to make the same mistakes a second time.

If we have the same creative power as God, then, like God, we have the ability to discern wisdom from our mistakes and use it as the foundation of our world.  That’s what these days are about.  Discerning wisdom from our mistakes, from the moments we destroyed, the moments we chipped away at heaven, the moments we moved the border.  Whether God is keeping that ledger or not, these days, reflecting on our deeds, call upon us to take stock of what we created and what we destroyed.  And, these days teach us that even from those moments of destruction, there is the opportunity to create again, with every action of our hands.

Today is the birthday of the world!  Hayom Harat Olam!  These words remind us that among the many meanings of this Rosh Hashanah, today is a celebration of creation and God’s creative power.  We marvel at it and celebrate it.  With a simple speech act, God sends all of existence into being.  We sound the shofar to recall the moment when, out of Tohu vavohu, out of an unformed and void cosmos, God spoke existence into being. 

And, at the same time we marvel at our own divine creative power, at the power we have in our hands.  According to Rabbi Finkel, we are obligated to use it.  “A person is obligated to be similar to God in all God’s attributes, so too is it obligated upon a person to create worlds like God.  As it is taught [in the Talmud]: ‘Be similar to God.  Just as God is merciful and compassionate, so should you be merciful and compassionate.’”[13] 

Because it’s not only wisdom that God uses as a tool of creation.  The Psalms teach us Olam chessed yibaneh, that God created with chesed, lovingkindness.[14] And as God creates with lovingkindness, we are called to mimic that lovingkindness in all that we build and all that we create.  We are called to show love for ourselves, and for others.  In doing so, we forge ahead and build upon a sturdy foundation.  We partner

Tonight, we enter the year 5782 with blasts of the horn and praises of God.  Ahead of us are untold opportunities to change the world, to create with wisdom, compassion, and deeds of lovingkindness.  Let us take up the charge and hear the sound of the Shofar calling us to build a world of chesed.  Let the sounds of the shofar call us to repair, through our actions, the heavenly realm, so that God’s presence may continue to be strongly felt.  For if we participate in the work of creating a world founded on wisdom and built from love, then God’s presence will truly be felt around us and through us.  And then, it will truly be a Shanah Tovah.  A good year.

Ken Yehi Ratzon.

Amen.

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[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/belgian-farmer-moves-belgium-france-border/

[2] Pirke Avot 4:11

[3] BT Avodah Zarah 2a

[4] Maharsha on Avodah Zarah 2a in Chidushei Agadot

[5] Ibid.

[6] Bereishit Rabbah 3:7

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] See Gen. 1

[10] Rabbi Avi Strausberg, Hayom Harat Olam – We are the Creators.  https://www.hadar.org/torah-resource/zokhreinu-lhayyim-memory-and-promise

[11] 3:19

[12] Rabbi Natan Zvi Finkel, as quoted by Strausberg, Rabbi Avi., Hayom Harat Olam – We are the Creators.  https://www.hadar.org/torah-resource/zokhreinu-lhayyim-memory-and-promise

[13] Ibid.

[14] 89:3

Yom Kippur 5781: The Power of Disruption

 A version of this sermon was delivered on Yom Kippur Morning 5781 at Temple B'nai Torah - A Reform Congregation in Wantagh, NY.

As an undergraduate student, I found a work-study job at the main campus library.  Many of the work-study jobs available were based on either checking out books or putting books away.  Having passed AP French, I managed to snag a plum position at the Center for Baudelaire Studies at the French Collections.  My job was to scan, clean up, and catalogue newspaper and magazine clippings from the archives of a French theatre critic, which had recently been donated to the library’s collection.  The French Collections were not easy to get to.  They were in an upper corner of the library, through areas that were seldom traveled, especially by students. 

To get there easiest, I would often take the old elevator.  It was small, slow, and had that gate thing that you had to close yourself for the elevator to operate.  It was a throwback, to be sure.  On the way to that old elevator, I would pass the beautiful wooden card catalog that took up much of the first-floor foyer.  Above the card catalog hung a sign, itself a relic, that stated that the card catalog had not been updated since 1989.  It had been 10 years since anyone had put a new card in those drawers by the time I got there.  It had been 10 years since those beautifully ornate card catalogs had served a purpose.  What used to be integral to the way we learned now sat gathering dust.  Something had come along and disrupted the way books were located in a library.

Of course, I’m talking about computers and database systems that allowed for much faster sorting and searching of books.  As computers became more ubiquitous, the categories of searching for a book – by author, subject, or title – didn’t change, but the method did.  No longer rifling through cards, now just hitting a button to see where in the many floors and stacks of books the one book you were looking for could be located.

We might not feel it now, since we’re 30 plus years into it, but the onset of the computing age disrupted long traditions of how things were done.  No facet of our lives has remained untouched by it.  We all now carry minicomputers in our pockets with the ability to access any information we want, and all of them are more powerful than that first computer installed in 1989.  Some of you are watching me on one right now.  Some of you are on Facebook telling everyone else how great this sermon is!  The disruption that computing brought about has no doubt changed the course of our lives as individuals and as a society.

The personal computing age was a disruption of our own making and our own progress. And as a society, we determined that we liked the new technology and so we embraced it.  But not all disruptions are of our own doing.  Sometimes disruptions are imposed upon us by others.  And sometimes by forces entirely out of human hands.

We’re living through a major disruption right now.  We’re living through a pandemic.  While we are all still working hard just to make it through the day to day, given that we’re six months in, we’re also beginning to wonder what it all means and what lessons we can take from it.  We are seekers of meaning, as humans.  It’s not just about finding out why the pandemic happened; we have a sense of that, thanks to science.  Rather, we seek to make sense of how it has affected us.  Finding silver linings and moments of blessing in the midst of the chaos is important.  To make sense of this, though, requires deeper and longer consideration.  It means reflecting on the broader, longer-lasting results of this disruption.  We know much of what will come after is based on how we choose to respond.

So, how do we respond to such an overwhelming disruption?  If there’s one thing the Jewish people can handle, it’s disruption.  You don’t survive for 4,000 years and not go through ups and downs with the world around you.  The previous disruptions in our people’s history show us that a commitment to values and a sense of flexibility are required.  It’s not about closing the library, it’s about embracing new ways of finding the book we are looking for. 

In the year 66 of the Common Era, the Jews had begun to revolt against the Romans’ imposing rule and high taxes.  The Romans retaliated by looting the Temple in Jerusalem.  By the year 70, Imperial Rome had had it with the Judean rebels.  After four years of skirmishes and political maneuvering, the battalions laid siege to Jerusalem, and ultimately, the Temple was destroyed and the people exiled from their holy city. 

Talk about a disruption.  For the last number of centuries, the Temple in Jerusalem had been God’s abode, the only way that your petition, thanks, apology, or praise reached God.  It went up in the smoke from the altar in a pleasing aroma to the Eternal, overseen by the priests.

The Roman invasion could have been the end.  Jews’ holy sites lay in ruins, their way of life no longer available to them.  Their neighbors gone, either victims of the revolt or having fled.  This could have been the moment that the Jewish people raised the white flag and said to God, “You know what?!  Enough is enough!  This is the second time you’ve kicked us out of your house, and we get the hint!  We’re not coming back!”    

What do you do when the only way to get to God is gone?  How do you respond when the way of life you knew has been taken from you?  Some Jews did leave, to be sure.  There was a group of folks in the Galilee spreading ideas and teachings about salvation though the Son of God.  But one group of Jews said that rather than let the disruption be their end, they would adapt.  If the old technology no longer was available, they would figure out something new. Does God want all those sacrifices, anyway?  The Prophet Isaiah tells us no, doesn’t he? 

Rabban Yohanan Ben Zakkai, a leader of the early rabbis, saw the writing on the wall.  He knew the Romans would crush the rebellion and destroy Jerusalem.  He decided that the survival of God’s people and hewing to the values he held dear was important enough to find a way to adapt Judaism to their world after the disruption.

According to the Talmud[1], Ben Zakkai conspires to have himself smuggled out of Jerusalem.  He first feigns sickness and makes a big ruckus about it, so everyone knows that he has “fallen ill.”  Then, he spreads the rumor that he has died, and he has himself placed in a coffin, which is carried out of the city by two of his colleagues, Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua.  Once out of the city, Ben Zakkai emerges from the coffin and makes a deal with the Roman governor, Vespasian.  The Talmud, not always subtle in its imagery, is making a point with this story about how Judaism will continue to live, and in fact never died to begin with.  The story represents continuity through adaptability.

What deal did Ben Zakkai strike with Vespasian?  Ben Zakkai says: “Give me Yavne and its Sages and do not destroy it, and spare the dynasty of Rabban Gamliel and do not kill them as if they were rebels, and lastly give me doctors to heal Rabbi Tzadok.”[2] 

After the disruption, this is what’s on Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai’s mind.  Spare the sages: let us keep our traditions; spare the dynasty: let us keep our future; give me doctors to heal: my people are hurting and I need to care for them.  In the midst of the disruption, his concern is to make sure everyone is cared for.

Every step, Ben Zakkai is thinking about what can be done to adapt to the new reality and care for those around him.  He knows his actions affect his people.  Save the sages.  Save the dynasty of learning.  Let us go down by the coast and keep to ourselves there, safe and healthy.  Vespasian agrees, and the tradition of Rabbinic Judaism, the Judaism we know, begins in earnest.  Without the adaptation to disruption—and without disruption itself—friends, we would not be here, and neither would the Judaism we know.

The Rabbis may have had no choice but to abandon the Temple physically, but they made a choice not to abandon it spiritually.  This afternoon, we will read the Avodah Service, which tells the tale of the service of the High Priest and recounts what happened in the Temple in Jerusalem on Yom Kippur.  The Rabbis reframe the Temple worship as prayer and study of Torah, and for them, that is how they, and now we, get to God.  The technology changed.  It required an adaptation to the disruption, a new way of searching.  But it didn’t require leaving the library behind. 

Adaptation also didn’t require leaving the disruption behind.  It stayed with them.  This pandemic will stay with us.  It will color the choices we make and the world we will inhabit once we’re allowed back out into the world.

It seems so far away still.  Disruptions are hard to live through. 

Rabban Yohanan Ben Zakkai and his contemporaries were certainly pained to see their glorious city in ruins.  We are pained as we see the numbers increase, as we feel our lives on hold, as we lose jobs, as we wait for a vaccine.  But the rabbis recognized that there was an opportunity before them, to adapt.  They understood that even without the Temple, God was still present in their lives in very real ways.  Even after the pandemic, all that was important to us will remain, but it will be up to us to consider how we approach it.

Will we allow this disruption to foster innovation in our lives?  Will we make space after the disruption to reevaluate the lives we lived before?  Will we allow ourselves the flexibility to incorporate the new technology that emerges?  Will we move toward more engagement since we’ve been so distant from each other?  Will we recognize how much we are all connected to each other in ways that we did not understand before?

COVID is a disruption.  But we will make it through because we do it in a small way every year.  Because Yom Kippur is a disruption too.  It’s a disruption in our year, a disruption to our habits, and it calls upon us to consider what was before and whether we want it to continue after.  As with other disruptions we experience, ultimately today is not about the day itself, but what we choose to do afterwards, mi yom kippurim zeh ad yom kippurim ha’ba: from this Yom Kippur until the next, we heard so beautifully chanted last night in the Kol Nidre.  As much as this day asks us to look back on our deeds, we are also prodded to look forward to the life we hope to live in the aftermath.  We ask ourselves: Will we allow the new technology of teshuvah to guide us today, or will we still be looking through our card catalog of sins?

After we take off our masks for the last time, will we cling to the way we used to do things because it’s comfortable, or will we allow ourselves to embrace the disruption and hear its call to adaptability and flexibility undergirded in values?

There’s no predicting the future.  But this pandemic will end.  And when it does, we will all have a choice as to how we will live.  At the end of our Torah service, we sing words drawn from the end of the book of Lamentations, which chronicles the destruction of the first Temple: “Chadesh yameinu kekedem, renew our days as of old,” we intone as the Ark doors are closed.  We have a couple of ways of thinking about what these words, chadesh yameinu kekedem, mean.  Are we going to endeavor that our post-pandemic lives will simply return to how things were before, kekedem?  Or, are we going to strive to chadesh yameinu, to renew our days and make the most of the disruption that has been thrust upon us?  Will we have the chutzpah and resolve to make something new and powerful?  Or, will we live with our outdated technology knowing that we haven’t been updated since 5780?

The rabbis never really wanted to go back to the Temple anyway, I think.  And we don’t want the Temple back, either.  We also aren’t about to start using the card catalog again.  What are we going to upgrade as we emerge from this pandemic?  Perhaps, if nothing else, we will upgrade our sense of responsibility for each other, and leave behind an outdated winner-take-all individualism.  Perhaps, if nothing else, we will hold onto the realization that what we do affects others.  We are all connected to one another; our very breath affects the person next to us.  Our actions have wide ranging consequences.  And I’m talking about for the good!  Think of how our area, our community, this congregation, came together to implement protective, necessarily restrictive measures, to save each other, to save people we don’t even know, and won’t ever meet.

For now, we are in the midst of disruption.  It’s shaky.  It’s uneven.  It’s constantly changing.  It’s exhausting.  I know.  But it will end.  And when it does, may we all be updated.  May we emerge with a new yearning for true relationship with others and appreciation for the Divine we see as we greet them face to face, not screen to screen, with an embrace.  In the year 5781 and beyond may we all be updated in the book of life for goodness and blessing, for health and togetherness.

G’mar Chatimah Tovah.

 

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[1] Based on Gittin 56b

[2] Ibid.