Rosh HaShanah Morning 5783: This Year is Next Year!

 A version of this sermon was delivered at Temple B'nai Torah - A Reform Congregtion in Wantagh, NY on Rosh HaShanah Morning 5783.

Every year, as these High Holy Days approach, rabbis across the country debate whether or not to touch on topics that might be too divisive.  “Shouldn’t we come up here onto our pulpits and speak words which unite?” many would say.  “Aren’t there enough things that we agree on?  Do you have to focus on those things which divide us?”  Well friends, we take our cues from the Prophets.  From Isaiah who calls us to righteousness.  From Jeremiah who calls us to end corruption in our institutions.  From Ezekiel who saw far into the future.  And so, I know that when the times call for it, it must be done.

Therefore, I begin my remarks this morning with some trepidation, and I ask that if what I am about to say offends you, you at least hear out my argument.  A couple of weeks ago, in Queens, not that far from us, The Chicago Cubs swept the New York Mets at CitiField.  It was so far the only sweep the Mets have suffered this season.

Now, trust me, I don’t bring this up to rub salt on a wound, because let’s face it, not only would that be a not great way to start 5783, but also it was not two weeks later that the Cubs were eliminated from the playoffs while the Mets have secured their spot.  I don’t bring up these three games, whose aggregate score was 15-6, to insult the Mets or their fans.  I don’t mention these three late season games to make myself feel better about a mediocre rebuilding year for my beloved North Siders.  No, I bring it up because of what those three games represented for Cubs fans like me.  

After a season of fewer ups than downs, a season of selling off some of the last pieces that came together in 2016 to finally win the World Series, a season of treading water, those three games in mid-September allowed for us wayward devotees of Wrigley to hold on, for just a little longer, to our most precious of commodities, our hope.  There was no real chance for the Cubs, yet those three games rallied the fans and made it all the easier when the time eventually came to say: “There is always next year.”  

Can you think of a more hopeful statement?

Even though we’ve had a rough go of things of late, experiencing more downs than ups, suffering so many losses one right after the other, even though it may feel like the last two years were an exercise in watching the world around us spin more and more out of control, our tradition teaches us that we are not allowed to give up on hope.  We are not allowed to look at our world and only see the problems before us.  We are not allowed to consider the world as unredeemable, our neighbors as unredeemable, ourselves as unredeemable.  We believe in redemption, calling out to God as the ultimate Redeemer.  We believe in a better future, even when our present is complicated.  We believe in hope.  It has been passed down to us.

As we take our first steps into 5783, let us do so with hope in the future and for the future.  Let us declare that today is next year!

What is it in our tradition that calls us to hopefulness?  The first of our ancestors to use the term was Jacob, who, from his deathbed, blesses his children in turn.  In the midst of his blessing for Dan, Jacob utters the phrase: “liyishuatecha kiviti Adonai, for your redemption, I have hoped, O Adonai.”   In this moment, Jacob is in the middle of blessing his sons and grandsons, setting them up for their future without him, teaching them one final lesson, and seemingly out of nowhere, he utters this call to the Eternal.  Some commentaries  explain this as separate from the blessing, as an aside by Jacob, perhaps due to his faltering health.  Others redouble the prophecy and read in an allusion to Samson.  

Jacob declares his hope at the end of his life, surrounded by the next generations.  Jacob has experienced all of life’s ups and downs.  He is the weaker twin, born second.  His mother manipulates him into coercing his father to giving him his brother’s rightful blessing.  He has to flee his home.  He is conned by his father-in-law.  The love of his life is taken too early from him.  His daughter is sexually assaulted.  His sons conspire to massacre a town and then sell one of their brothers to slavery, only to tell Jacob that Joseph is dead.  He endures so much trauma and hurt, enough that anyone would lose hope.

Yet we also know that God chooses Jacob over Esau.  That in being forced to work so many years, Jacob grows more powerful and wealthy than he could ever imagine.  The son he thought dead later becomes his and his family’s lifesaving provider and has risen to be vice-pharaoh of Egypt.  Along the way, he has seen angels come and go, and he even bested one angel in a wilderness wresting match.  His victory prompts the angel to rename him Yisrael.  

Rather than consider these words of hope in the midst of blessing as merely an aside, what power there is in considering them a part of the blessing to his progeny.  Jacob has lived a life.  And then, at the end, unprompted, Jacob reveals to us how he survived it all.  Hope.  God, I always hoped for your salvation.  It takes more than a blessing from a parent; and Jacob ought to know.  It takes hope.  

We are B’nai Yisrael, descendants of Jacob, blessed with that same hope in our spiritual DNA.  

What blessings of hope will we utter as we make our way into this new year?  What lessons about hope will we teach our children and grandchildren?  

Jacob teaches the generation after him an important lesson about what it takes to make it through this world.  It takes hope.  Jacob’s lesson is passed down through the generations.  Because, while the seed of hope is planted in Jacob’s sons, it is the daughters of Israel who will sow its yield.  

When the people of Israel cross the parted waters and are reborn into freedom and covenant, they honor God’s wonderous act with song.  In famous words, Moses and the people Israel sing a song of salvation and redemption: Who is like, you, O Adonai, among the Gods that are worshipped!?  And then Miriam, the Prophet, takes out her timbrel to lead singing and dancing, followed by all the women taking out their timbrels.  Nowhere earlier in the Torah does it tell us that the women readied their instruments.  Nowhere does the Torah indicate that the women were packing their drums.  We read about the unbaked bread, but no timbrels.  So, the sages, understandably, ask where the women got these “tupim,” these rhythmic instruments in the desert.

Well, sometimes the rabbis answer out of logic.  If the women had them, they must have packed them.  But, why would they?  The Midrash answers that the women packed them, because they were righteous, and because they knew that God would redeem them.  The women’s righteousness is their hopefulness.  Packing for celebration in the shadow of the devastation of Egypt is an act of hope.  The Israelite women have hope, even in the aftermath of enduring a terrible, genocidal regime, they hope in God’s salvation, they believe in it, they expect it.  So, they pack their instruments, always ready to break out into song.  Hopeful at every turn.

Imagine the scene in Egypt as they’re packing to go.  Imagine what their families say to them as they are packing the seemingly useless instruments.  You didn’t have time to raise the dough, but you remembered your drum?!

The drums are only useless if we think we’ll never have occasion to use them.  What timbrels will we pack for the year ahead?  What can we have at the ready so that we are prepared when our hopes come to pass, when we have no choice but to celebrate and dance?

As the inherited hope passed from of Jacob to the generation of the exodus, so too has that hope been come down to us.  Hope is our inheritance!

But is hope enough?  Is hope supposed to pay our grocery bills, our energy bills, our synagogue bills?  Is hope enough to end the difficulties we see all around us?

Of course not, and our tradition understands that alongside hope, more is sometimes needed.

When the people are ready to enter the Promised Land, Moses sends scouts to check it out before they make their way into it.  Is it even possible to conquer?  What’s in there anyway?  When the scouts return, 10 of them tell the people that they will not be able to conquer the land.  There are giants there and they will devour us!  There is no hope to fulfill God’s promise.  They spread this story among the people, causing them to lose hope as well.

But Joshua and Caleb come back and say that it is true that there will be challenges, but that with some hope, and knowing that God is on their side, they will be able to overcome anything laid out before them.  

What does this story teach us about hope?  It teaches us that the place of hope can sometimes be a lonely place.  Joshua and Caleb, the two scouts who come back hopeful, are the minority.  They are outnumbered.  It’s only through God’s intervention that their plan to move forward takes hold.  In spite of overwhelming negativity, they remain hopeful.

But Moses understands, perhaps from this episode, that hope is not enough.  And so at the end of his life, when he passes the mantle of leadership to Joshua, Moses tells the people and tells Joshua exactly what they need.  Chazak v’ematz, Moses tells the people, and then Joshua.  Alongside hope, you need strength and courage.  Alongside hope, you need strength to make it through the difficult times.  Alongside hope you need courage to try and also courage to be ready for when, inevitably, hopes are dashed.

It is for this reason that the Psalms teach us to put these two ideas together.  At the end of Psalm 27, which we have been reading each day of the month leading up to the High Holy Days, in the last verse of that psalm, we read: קַוֵּ֗ה אֶל־יְ֫יָֹ חֲ֭זַק וְיַאֲמֵ֣ץ לִבֶּ֑ךָ וְ֝קַוֵּ֗ה אֶל־יְֹיָֽ Hope in the Eternal, be strong and courageous in your heart, and hope in the Eternal.  As we have been readying ourselves for these High Holy Days, these last words of Psalm 27 reverberate in our ears, leading us to next year.  Hope, strength, courage, and hope.  There is hope for our future, if we are only strong enough to make it there and courageous enough to fight for it.

I want to share one more story about hope, about Tikvah, because I know that when we use that word, we cannot help but think of Israel, whose National Anthem, Hatikvah, announces that we are a people of hope.

Some of you know that I spent about a week in Israel this past summer.  While I was there, I have to tell you, the traffic was…ungodly.  Why?  Everywhere you look, construction and infrastructure projects.  In Tel Aviv, I don’t think there’s a highway that’s not torn up, and major parts of the city are enduring a big dig for a new subway and surface construction for a new light rail.  Imagine if the LIE, Southern State, Northern State, Meadowbrook, and the Wantagh were all under construction at the same time, and also Hempstead turnpike and Jerusalem were too.  It was a mess.  It certainly took strength and courage to drive around!

And then, just a couple of weeks ago, Israel announced and touted a brand new tunnel that is a part of the entrance to Jerusalem, which will hopefully reduce the traffic burden on the holy city.  That tunnel and all that construction in Israel are symbolic of the od lo avda tikvateinu attitude, of the sense that our hope is not lost.  The tunnel represents a sense that the future is bright and busy and peaceful enough that this major highway tunnel was a good investment.  The tunnel and the subway and the light rail represent the hope that Israel is not going anywhere anytime soon.

So, what am I supposed to do about the Cubs?  Well, with all the strength and courage that I can muster, I hope for next year.  There is always next year.  Next year is unformed and void; it hasn’t been created yet.  It is potential awaiting formation, promise awaiting fulfillment.  Next year is a winning season.  Next year is traffic free.  Next year is a chance to do it right.  Next year is opportunity granted.

There’s always next year is a statement of hope.  Next year starts today!  Rosh HaShanah is a celebration of hope, called from mountaintop to mountaintop by blasts of the horn, celebrating the hopeful future that is laid out before us.  It reminds us that where we are going is not yet determined.

Will we bring our timbrels with us?  Will we teach our children the importance of hope, even when life can be difficult?  Will we maintain our hope, even when we are outnumbered, and trust that our hopeful vision is worth the strength and courage we will need to bring it about?

For we certainly know that it will take courage and strength to make the world into what we want it to be.  It will take courage and strength to make ourselves into what we aspire to be.  All of that is sure.  What is also sure is that we cannot and will not accomplish either of these sacred tasks without hope.

Shanah Tovah.

May this year be your next year!

Erev Rosh HaShanah 5783 Holiness: Our Gift and Our Obligation

 A version of this sermon was delivered on Erev Rosh HaShanah 5783 at Temple B'nai Torah - A Reform Congregation in Wantagh, NY.

The Aleppo Codex, written in Tiberias over 1100 years ago, is one of the oldest surviving Hebrew manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible.  It contains the most accurate transcription of the traditions of the Masoretes, whose customs of pronunciation and chanting, inherited from the generations before them, we still use to this day.  The Codex, which looks more like a book than a Torah scroll, traveled to Jerusalem from Tiberias, and then to Egypt.  In Egypt, it was used by none other than Moses Maimonides, The Rambam, one of our people’s greatest scholars and philosophers, whose work we still consult to understand Jewish law and thought.  In his Mishnah Torah, written in the 12th century, he even remarks about this particular volume, referring to it as the Codex he relied upon while formulating his laws.  This is the book he used to look up verses and to cite sources in the Bible.

After Egypt, the Codex made its way to Aleppo, Syria, where it gets its name.  There it was kept by the Jewish community for centuries, until the 1950s, when it was smuggled to Israel.  Sadly, the Jewish community of Aleppo is all but no more, and their glorious synagogue has been destroyed, another casualty of the war.

The Codex now rests at the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem at the Israel Museum, alongside the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were written and hidden almost 1,000 years before.

I have been to the Israel Museum a few times.  It doesn’t always make the list of sites that fit into a cramped itinerary.  It wasn’t until the last time I was there, however, that I saw, or maybe better, noticed the Aleppo Codex in the Shrine of The Book.  

Gazing upon those pages, those words, in deep dark ink, still legible and comprehensible today, still transmitting the same messages and commandments as 1100 years ago.  In many ways, the Codex is a representation of the Jewish people surviving through the generations. 

As a rabbi, standing above its thick glass case, peering into the words of Torah that I know well and remembering all that this book has lived through, was overwhelming and exciting for me.  It was clear, I came to understand, that the Codex was imbued with the holiness of the generations.  A holiness that was present as it was written with devotion and dedication to a divine obligation.  A sought-after holiness that was the impetus for Maimonides to do his work, clarifying our obligations.  A holiness that comes from an object that brings together divine purpose and the human action.  A holiness that has been passed down to us through the inheritance of our tradition.

It’s not often that we feel or experience such a definite sense of holiness.  We may seek it out.  We may try to fill our lives with it.  Yet it often remains elusive, internally and outside of ourselves.  Part of that elusiveness is because holiness is neither easy to define nor easy to understand, even if sometimes it may be easy to experience.  

Holiness surrounds us our entire lives: from the kiddush at a bris or a baby naming to the blessings of kiddushin at a wedding as the rings are exchanged, to the mourners’ kaddish at the gravesite.  Declarations of holiness punctuate the most powerful and important moments of our lives and the lives of those we love.  Yet, holiness is not meant to be a momentary blessing or prayer.  It is an endeavor, an act of emulation, a state of being.

When spouses under a chuppah speak the words of the vow of kiddushin to each other, they are declaring that their partner is set apart and special, different from all others on Earth from now on.  These events of generational and familial connection are indeed holy moments.  A soaring rendition of Avinu Malkeinu, as we heard tonight with thanks to our Cantor and our Choir, moves our souls and becomes for many of us a holy moment.  These Days of Awe, especially, call us to come face to face with the holiness presented to us, outside of ourselves, in order that we commit to the obligations which can lead us to reach the holiness within ourselves.  

Linguists tell us that the root kadosh means separate and set apart, often for special purpose.  As Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz explains it: “To be holy is, in essence, to be distinctly other.”   Yet we also know that holiness is ethereal and ephemeral.  It’s a feeling as much as a designation. It’s an obligation and a gift.  It’s internal and external.  It’s a part of us, yet we seek it.  For something we talk about so often, kedushah could use some clarity.  And so, this year, as a congregation, we will be studying, exploring, and working to understand holiness.  Holiness as a gift from God and holiness as our obligation from God.  And we’ll start at the beginning.

The first declaration of holiness takes us all there.  As Creation concludes, God proclaims it very good, tov me’od.  God has done a lot of separating and declaring purpose over the last six days, as water, earth, and sky are each given their own distinct and separate space and as each is filled with unique creatures.  Once creation is done, God ceases from working on the seventh day.  Then, וַיְבָ֤רֶךְ אֱלֹהִים֙ אֶת־י֣וֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִ֔י God blesses the seventh day וַיְקַדֵּ֖שׁ אֹת֑וֹ and God sanctifies it.   God doesn’t just say it’s holy.  Well, actually God does, because that is how God works, speaking equals creating.  In speaking the holiness of Shabbat, God makes it holy by separating it from the week,  by assigning it special rules and regulations,  by preventing creative work.  God also makes it holy for all time.   We are gifted the holiness of Shabbat from God.  We are commanded to remember and observe Shabbat lekodsho, in order to make it holy.  Shabbat, the holy day, is our gift and our obligation.

On Shabbat and other holy days, we make that holiness literal through the blessing of kiddush.  A few minutes from now, we will hear the special kiddush for Rosh HaShanah.  The kiddush tonight includes the root kadosh four times.  Our English translation masks the repetition by using synonyms.  We bless the sweet wine for a sweet year.  Twice we announce that God has chosen us from all other peoples to sanctify us, to make us holy, through service to God and the mitzvot.  The mitzvot, our obligations themselves, are our inheritance.  Our holiness through their observance is a gift from God.  

When we lit the candles earlier, ushering in the new year, we recited the blessing that reminds us: asher kiddishanu bemitzvotav, that we are made holy through God’s commandments, that which God calls us to do.  When we start to look for it, we see that holiness, kedushah, is the heart of our covenantal project.

We are chosen by God for special purpose.  The holy words we will chant from our Torah when we arrive at Yom Kippur afternoon, from the Torah portion Kedoshim instruct us as such.  In the longest hours of the fast, as we await sunset and see the finish line ahead of us, we make the deliberate choice to announce God’s words to the entire community of the children of Israel: Kedoshim Tihiyu.  You shall be holy!  We are obligated to be holy, God tells us, for I the Eternal your God am holy.   

What could that mean?  How is our holiness related to God’s?  God meets the criteria for holiness.  God is separate and apart.  There is only one God.  We call God the Holy One of Blessing, HaKadosh Baruch Hu.  We’re supposed to mimic that!?  We’re supposed to mimic that.  As our Shabbat rest emulates God’s rest, our holiness mirrors God’s.  According to Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, God possesses consciousness, power, love and freedom.  “Humans are instructed to become more like God.  They become more holy by developing their consciousness, by creating and applying more power for life and good, by deepening their capacity for love and relationship, by exercising free will to choose life and do good.”  

We emulate God when we utilize those gifts we have because we are made b’tzelem Elohim, in the divine image: those gifts of consciousness, power, love, and freedom.  As a holy nation, we are called, as Martin Buber writes, to “not withdraw from the world, but rather radiate a positive influence on it through every aspect of Jewish living.”   Holiness is manifest when our Judaism, our Jewish values, our Jewish commitment to Torah, Worship, and Deeds of Kindness, are felt by the world around us.  

The Midrash teaches that God’s holiness is above us.   A Chassidic teaching reframes the language to understand this midrash as God saying that the holiness that is above is the same as our own.   In this way, the holiness we create here on earth, the generational lessons, the customs, the recognition of and dedication to the special purpose, the accepting of the gift and the fulfillment of our obligations, all of that leads to holiness below and holiness above.  Our actions have a direct effect on the heavens.  It’s not just mimicking the divine, it’s the effect we have on the divine.  Our seeking holiness feeds the divine holiness.  We become partners with the divine in not just creation, but in bringing about God’s holiness.  What a gift we are given, if only we follow through with our obligation!

Holiness is not situational or momentary; it’s ongoing.  Kedoshim tihiyu is in the future tense Rabbi Chayyim Ibn Attar highlights, because: “The implication is that this is a commandment which is an ongoing process.”   We don’t just become holy once or experience it once; we constantly engage with it.  We seek ways to imbue our lives and our surroundings with it.  We are asked to constantly accept the gift and agree to the obligation.

Kedoshim tihiyu is an odd commandment.  On the one hand, we’re commanded to be special and set apart, distinguished.  On the other, we’re asked to do so as a part of our community.  Each of us seeks out holiness based on the communal obligation.  We are each called individually to honor our parents and keep Shabbat.  We are called communally to holiness.  Moses is to speak these words, declaring the people’s holiness, to the entire community of the children of Israel.  This formulation in the Torah stresses that everyone was to hear.  The gift is communal.  The obligations more often individual.

Being in the presence of holy words, as I was at the Israel Museum those few years ago, I sensed a holiness outside of myself.  Together, we will have opportunities over this year to come closer to holy words in a powerful and meaningful way, and I don’t just mean by studying them and hearing them.  By now I’m sure you’ve seen save-the-date information for our Torah Restoration weekend in early December.  We will all, as a community, participate in the writing and the restoration of holy words.  We will welcome our Torah scribe to teach us about the scrolls and the words and about their writing.  Those who choose will have the opportunity to write in a Torah scroll.  

When we gather in December, to write with dark black ink on parchment, with a feather pen, we will emulate our ancestors, who did it just the same way.  We will write and fix the same words that appear in the Aleppo Codex from 1100 years ago and the Dead Sea Scrolls of 2,000 years ago.  We will write and fix the same words handed to Moses on Sinai.  The holiness of the generations will be evident.  We will restore our holy sefer Torah, and we will ensure that the letters are bright and clarion for the next generation.  I encourage everyone to participate in this powerful and meaningful opportunity to come face to face with the holy words.  To ensure that the gift of holy words we have been given is passed down to the next generation.

Holiness is always around us and a part of so much of our tradition. We may take it somewhat for granted.  We’re in a sanctuary, a holy room.  We have a holy ark, holy Torahs.  Clergy are referred to as klei kodesh, vessels of holiness.  There’s no getting away from it!  At the same time, we are also always in pursuit of it, seeking it, looking for ways to fill our hearts and souls and our world with it.  The Kabbalists inspire us in this endeavor: “Be persistent in learning how to sanctify what you do.  In the end, the Blessed Holy One will guide you on the path that wishes to impart holiness to you, so that you become holy”   We seek holiness so God can gift us holiness.

Let us therefore dedicate our year of study to seeking out a deeper understanding of kedushah, of holiness, for ourselves and our community.  And thereby may we instill within each of us and all of us that holiness which is our inheritance and our calling, our obligation and our gift.

Shanah Tovah!

Yom Kippur 5782: Post Traumatic Growth

 A version of this sermon was delivered on Yom Kippur Morning 5782 at Temple B'nai Torah - A Reform Congregation in Wantagh, NY.

            Let me tell you about the sermon I had planned for today.  It was going to be glorious.  It was going to be powerful and hit all the right notes.  It was going to be a meditation on the moving words of Psalm 122, the Psalm for the ascent to Jerusalem.  I was going to connect our feelings of returning to our house of worship to those of the Psalmist returning to the rebuilt Jerusalem.  Then Cantor was ready to sing a beautiful rendition of the Psalm for us to herald our triumphant return to congregational worship.  My friends, that is not what you are going to hear today. 

As with so much over this last year, plans had to change.  New ideas had to be considered.  And I’m going to be honest with you, because this day demands it.  I’m angry about it.  I’m angry in part because so many are not here with us today.  So many are not able to be, because we are still mired in this pandemic and living through the difficulties and the stresses of the day to day.  I’ve been angry about it for a while, and I want to apologize for those times my anger at…all of this…got the better of me and infiltrated the work I care about so deeply.

            A year ago, I put all my cards into the hope that by this day, The Day, Yom Hakippurim 5782, we’d be in our new normal.  The vaccine was coming.  Hope was on the horizon.  The reality of 5781 was temporary.  There was no way we’d still be dealing with spreading cases and overwhelmed hospitals turning patients away.  Now we’re back to accounting over 1,500 deaths a day.  A year ago, the delta variant was not on our minds. 

And yet, here we are.  Yom Kippur 5782.  In many ways much better off than a year ago, to be sure.  My vaccine status, yours, and my family’s has allowed us to resume some of our normal life.  But in other ways, we’re still deeply in it, and we can feel it.  We’re still experiencing the weight of all of it, and you’re still not all here with us to plead for and then to celebrate God’s loving forgiveness.

            It’s traumatic.  And it’s ok to say so and to acknowledge how we are feeling, what we’ve been through, and what we are still going through.  It’s ok to acknowledge the exhaustion.  We’re tired.  Extraordinarily tired, in unprecedented ways.  It’s ok to acknowledge the ways we’re not our best.  It’s ok to acknowledge the things we miss, and the experiences we won’t get back, and the ways we feel not ourselves, even if much of our lives has gone back to how it was.  Just as Yom Kippur asks us to acknowledge our failings of action and thought, today, and this year, let us also acknowledge our failings due to emotion.  The difference is our emotions are not always up to us.  What is up to us is how we react to them. 

            Trauma is not something we talk about too often, though it’s clear we’re all going through it.  According to psychologists, trauma is the response to a deeply distressing or disturbing event that overwhelms our ability to cope.  Trauma often causes feelings of helplessness.  It diminishes our sense of self and our ability to feel the full range of emotions and experiences.  Does this sound like you over the last number of months? 

Often a trauma, like a loved one’s death or a natural disaster is a one-time event.  We experience an urgent response in our brains that attempts to alleviate the situation.  Then, once the event is done, a different part of our brains activates, more rational, more measured, less reactive.  Trauma limits our normal access to ourselves and our emotions.  Often, we can feel highs and lows, but our baseline normal is missing, hard to settle into, hard to calibrate.

What we’ve been living through, over these past 18 months: this is more than that.  It is relentless.  Every day, more bad news.  Every day more deaths.  Every day new guidelines and new regulations and new fights over those guidelines and regulations in our communities.  On top of that, the nation is in turmoil, we’ve experienced wars and insurrections, and the climate is a catastrophe…And our lives continue, with carpools, and errands, and masks.  We are living through a period of ongoing trauma as this pandemic continues, peppered with additional traumatic moments, and it’s no surprise how we’re all reacting. 

If we think of our brain like a muscle, we can imagine the quick response area tensing and relaxing when encountering something difficult or traumatic.  In ongoing trauma, that part in our brain doesn’t get a chance to relax.  It doesn’t give way to the rational, thoughtful part.  Our brains’ traumatic response areas have been in constant tension.  This, then, never allows us to relax, to reset, to move forward.  We’ve been at high alert for 18 months.  That’s why we’re so tired.  That’s why we’re not thinking as clearly, and why we may seem more impulsive, and less measured than usual. 

We’ve all heard about PTSD, about post-traumatic stress disorder, wherein a trauma leads to intense, disturbing thoughts and feelings related to the experience that last long after the traumatic event has ended.  It is terrible and important to understand.  What we don’t talk about all that often, however, is its corollary, post-traumatic growth.  Now these are not opposites, nor are they stages.  They are two distinct reactions to trauma.  Sometimes people will experience both.  But one is much more common than the other.  According to David Kessler: “Pain, death, and loss never feel good, but they’re unavoidable in our lifetime.  Yet the reality is post-traumatic growth happens more than post-traumatic stress.”[1]

Post-traumatic growth is not about finding silver linings or moments of blessing, though that is important and helpful in its own way.  Post traumatic growth is when the trauma leads to a change in the way we live our lives after the trauma has ended, a change in how we think, live or feel.[2]  It’s about making meaning and discovering new creativity, and it’s different for each of us. 

For some it will be about finding greater appreciation of the life we have and sensing what brings us joy and prioritizing that.  For others it will be about appreciating and strengthening our relationships, or focusing on the ones that really matter, and maybe letting go of ones that don’t.  For some of us, it will be about breaking old patterns and feeling our own personal strength.  I hope that for all of us it is about increasing our compassion for others and exploring a new spirituality. 

We are clearly not there yet, not quite ready to take this on, as we are still so far from an ending.  We know that there won’t be a return to normal, as much as a new normal.  And getting there will require that we prepare ourselves for what will come next.  We may think we don’t know how to do it.  How could we know what to expect?  The pandemic is literally unprecedented in our lifetimes.  That is true.  But our traditions, particularly the synagogue customs of this day, The Day, Yom Kippur, can serve as a guide for us.

Yom Kippur is a model for a traumatic experience that leads to growth.  This entire day is set up to literally put the fear and awe of God into us.  It is meant to make us come face to face with God’s power, and face to face with our mortality.  We clothe ourselves in white like a funeral shroud.  We empty ourselves.  We empty the Ark, the Aron, which is also the Hebrew word for casket, and we metaphorically stare into our own graves. 

But that’s not all.  We don’t just think about our own deaths, we consider the many ways we and others may not make it into the book of life, as we did in our Untaneh Tokef prayer earlier this morning.  And then, a little bit later, we’ll pray our Eleh Ezkarah and pour out our souls.  This is our tribute to those whose deaths in the last year did not have to happen.  This is based on the tradition of reading the stories of the martyrs of our people, who gave their lives in horrific and painful ways for the sanctification of God’s name.  As we hear about their deaths, we put ourselves into their shoes.  It’s heavy.  It’s meant to make an impression.  It’s meant to change us.  It’s traumatic for the purpose of growth.  “If we allow ourselves to live with the consciousness of death, it will enrich us by making us understand how precious life is.”[3]

Similar to the other liturgy of this day that speaks of death in the abstract, our Yizkor Memorial service, which we will pray together in a little while, deals with deaths that are personal, those we have experienced, those that are closest to us.  Yizkor is in many ways about acceptance of our loss, our trauma.  Together we honor the lives that our loved ones lived.  We remember them.  We take time to recall them, to mourn them, often feeling again as if they only just left us.  By honoring their lives, by recalling our loved ones of blessed memory, by recalling what they meant to us, remembering times we were together, and how much we hurt that they are gone, we give their deaths more meaning and give our own lives more meaning.  We know that as we remember, we will be remembered.  We recognize that while we cannot bring our loved ones back, we don’t have to leave them behind.  We call ourselves to continue to live and to live better for their sakes.

And the prayer most associated with death in our tradition, the Mourner’s Kaddish, is so much about what happens after the trauma, that it doesn’t even mention the trauma, death.  The Mourner’s Kaddish is about sanctifying God’s name, making God’s name great.  Over and over again, in synonym after synonym, we praise God.  Magnified, extolled, blessed, acclaimed, revered, beautified, etc., etc.  The prayer we recite on behalf of our departed loved ones is about renewed spirituality.  It’s about searching for something bigger to make meaning out of the difficulties of our lives.  It’s about putting faith in God and affirming life.  After a trauma, we bless and affirm life!

 This is a day that is truly nora v’ayyom awesome and full of trauma!

And yet at the end of this day, after all this trauma, where will we find ourselves?  We will see ourselves in as pure a state as we can be.  We will be ready to put our teshuvah into practice, make better decisions, and break patterns of bad behavior.  Out of this truly difficult day, we come out ready to strengthen relationships and called again to do more for those in need in our community and our world.  This day is not just leading to a break fast, it’s leading to a break with who we used to be and a connection to who we can grow into.

Encountering our death brings meaning into our lives.  As the angel Michael learns in the TV show “The Good Place,” “Every human is a little bit sad all the time because you know you’re gonna die, but that knowledge is what gives life meaning.”[4]  Yom Kippur demands we give our lives meaning by leaving the sanctuary different than when we entered it because we have come face to face with our mortality.  

Yom Kippur traumatizes us so that we grow.

At the end of the day, when our mouths are parched and dry, and our feet ache from standing before the heavenly court, we participate in a special and sacred ritual moment, unlike anything we do on any other day.  We take out the Torahs once again, as we did last night, and we stare into that empty Ark one more time.  Last night we declared that we will sin, that we ought not be taken at our word.  This time, though, as the last rays of sun darken and the purples and mauves paint the heavens, we make three declarations.  First, we recite the Shema, declaring that God is one and one alone.  These words are familiar to us as the central prayer of our people. 

As are the words of the next line familiar: Baruch Shem Kevod Malchuto L’olam Va’ed.  We are used to hearing them immediately after the Shema, but here we say them three times.  Once each for the past, the present, and the future.  This line, unlike the Shema is not from the Torah.  Rather, it comes from the service of the High Priest on Yom Kippur, based on the Psalms.  After he would come out from the Holy of Holies, atone, and declare God’s name, the people would bow low to the ground and exclaim these words: Blessed be God’s glorious majesty forever and ever!  And they would proclaim God’s sovereignty.

Then seven times we repeat: Adonai hu HaElohim:  Adonai is God.  Seven times, a number that symbolizes wholeness and holiness, like the days of creation.  We exclaim that God is our God, using two names of God, one that refers to God’s justice, Adonai, and one that Refers to God’s mercy. 

The end of Yom Kippur tells us that after the trauma of the day.  After coming face to face with our deaths, the deaths of our people, and recalling the deaths of our loved ones, we declare the presence of God.  We put ourselves into something bigger than us, that makes us more than just random atoms floating through a multiverse.  These three declarations make us part of a bigger plan, with more purpose than we can understand.  We declare God’s presence as a springboard to the days after.

Then, we sound a Tekiah Gedolah.  You might think that after such a long day, after fasting and praying and atoning, we’d maybe want to get out of here more quickly.  Maybe just a plain old tekiah.  But instead, we linger.  We allow the note of the shofar to call out as long as possible.  We make it last.  We hear the sound of God’s presence as at Sinai and we can’t bear to take ourselves away from it!  Why?  To hold on to the moment of purity.  To hold onto the moment of connection with God, our tradition, our history, and our community.  To hold onto the pristine soul within us for just a moment longer, because we know that as soon as the shofar ends, we’re liable to go back to our ways.  One more second of the tekiah is a second we don’t yet have to deal with the world after Yom Kippur.  The long call of the Shofar reminds us to take the lessons of this day with us.  “Grow from this day!” it says to us.

And as we will grow from this day, so will we grow from this extended trauma that we are living through.  There won’t be a shofar blast to announce the end of COVID, unfortunately.  But one day, we will look back on this time and marvel at how it changed us.  One day, I’ll get to give that sermon.  One day, we will look back at this day and exclaim how different we were before.  

We will look at ourselves and we will see how we have grown, and we will recognize that we don’t get over trauma or leave it.  No, we absorb it into us, and let it propel us.  And if we take the lessons from our tradition, we can use it to push us to grow toward the heavens.

G’mar Chatimah Tovah.

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[1] Kessler, David, Finding Meaning.  Scribner 2019, page 15.

[2] Much of this is based on teachings by Dr. Betsy Stone on Post-Traumatic Growth

[3] Kessler, David p 56

[4] The Good Place S4E12

Kol Nidre 5782: Making the Bitter Sweet

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

            Let me tell you about my friend Martha.  You might not expect it, but one of my best friends is a somewhat lapsed-Catholic, high school guidance counselor a good number of years older than I am.  Manners prevent me from telling you exactly how many years…  We met for the first time on my first day teaching at the day school in Atlanta.  Martha is originally from Michigan and made her way to Atlanta via some time in New York, including living in Huntington well before I knew her.

On that first day of my first real job out of college, into my classroom peeked a tall woman with a broad, warm smile asking if I needed anything and introducing herself.  In my insecurity, I said no and quickly rattled off my credentials, for which she still ribs me to this day.  After that inauspicious beginning, we soon became good friends, though on paper you’d probably never imagine the two of us getting along so well.  We are very different, but we do share, among other things, Midwestern roots, a sense of humor and cultural references, and now an almost 20-year friendship.

I want to talk about Martha tonight, not because I need to apologize to her for something, or because I’m waiting for an apology from her.  Tonight, I want to talk about a change I noticed in my good friend a number of months back.  Now, Martha and I don’t get to see each other that often, so we mostly talk on the phone, text, and interact online.  About 18 months ago, I noticed this change online, on her Facebook profile.  During the election in 2016 and in the first months of the former administration, Martha was an avid poster of news articles, fact checks, and also opinions, both her own and those of others with whom she agreed.

Martha had a regular group of Facebook friends and acquaintances who would like, comment, and often get into Facebook arguments with her and each other about these posts.  I’ll admit here, before the heavenly and earthly court, that I was sometimes involved in these online spats.  How did it go?  We all know… Martha would post something, then, like clockwork, there’d be one comment pushing back, often quite rudely, then often another.  Then, of course, the people who agreed with Martha would chime in and fight back, often rudely, and back and forth it would go.  The engagement with the post would drive it higher on people’s news feeds, so more folks would see the posts that had more disagreement and vitriol.  But then, one day, Martha’s Facebook presence started to be different.  Suddenly, there were very few political posts.  Now it was mostly pictures of her and her family and dogs and occasional positive statements.  Supportive statements.  Statements of hope.  It didn’t happen after the 2020 election, it happened well before.

I asked her recently if she noticed the change and if she’d done it on purpose.  She said no.  I asked her if she made an active decision to change what she posted.  She answered me that she was just tired of getting into a fight all the time.  She made a choice to post things that could really only be responded to with positivity.  She made the choice and put in the effort to spread that which might be able to gain consensus rather than that which would divide.  She opted for sweetness rather than bitterness.

And while that’s easy to say and easy to declare as an intention, apparently, it’s not so easy to do…

According to a study published this summer by researchers at Cambridge and New York Universities,[1] negative political posts are twice as likely as positive ones to get shared and go viral.  This is separate and apart from the questionable algorithms that promote certain content over other.  Reactions from users made clear, in a study surveying millions of posts and reactions, that negative content leads to more frequent and more polarized reactions and more frequent sharing of the information.  A negative post is more likely to be shared and spread than a positive one.  What does it mean for our social fabric that we are more comfortable sharing the negative than the positive?  What are we sharing about ourselves when we do this?  

Posts that demonize the other side are almost 5 times more likely to get engagement than posts that talk about policy effects and almost 7 times more likely to get engagement than posts that use moral or emotional language.  Negative posts on social media have disproportionately led to more negativity being spread than positive posts have led to positivity.  That’s led to an imbalance of stimuli whose compounding effects we need to correct.[2]  

But seeking out that balance goes against our instincts, which is part of why it’s so hard to overcome.  As humans, our brains are wired to remember negative stimuli in a different way than positive.  According to Psychologist Rick Hanson, our minds are like Velcro for the bad experiences and Teflon for the good experiences.[3]  Evolutionarily, we can understand why.  If we forget how hot the fire is and how dangerous it is and only remember its warmth and light, we’re going to keep getting burned.  It’s part of why we remember pain and traumatic events so deeply.  It’s meant to be a defense mechanism for the future.  Too often, though, we know, it becomes a source of its own pain in the present. 

So, if opting toward and remembering the positive goes against our instincts, and if the negative gets the stronger reaction and amplification, what are we supposed to do?  We could, and maybe should, give up social media.  Unfortunately, it is now enmeshed in our communication so deeply that until something else comes along, we can’t.  So what instead?  Well, to answer that, I want us to look to the heavens, but not in the way you might suspect…  Rather than looking up from our low places and calling out to God as the Psalmist encourages, tonight I want us to look up and take our cue from the birds!

Did you know that all species of songbirds originated in Australia?  And Australia, as you may know, is a land riddled with carbohydrates.  Due to nutrient deficiencies, plants in Australia “struggle to convert…sugars into leaves, seeds, and other tissues.  They end up with excess [sugar], which they…give away.  Flowers overflow with nectar.  Eucalyptus trees exude a sweet substance called mannah from their bark.”[4]  This excess sugar is responsible for the size of the birds in Australia, and for the emergence of and prevalence of songbirds, which comprise about half the known species of birds and which are known to have originated in Australia.

How does Australia’s sugary terrain take credit for the prevalence of songbirds?  Well, it has to do with how birds’ taste receptors work.  Most mammals, like humans, taste sugar thanks to two genes that each build one half of the sweet receptor that sends the message to our brains that we’re eating something sweet.  Some mammals, however, mostly those that eat meat only, have evolved to have one faulty gene of the pair, blocking the receptor from being activated.  According to research led by Maude Baldwin of the Max Plank Institute for Ornithology, this is probably what happened to the small dinosaurs, who we now understand were most likely the ancestors of the bird species we have today. 

So, the dinosaurs millions of years ago couldn’t taste sweetness, and neither could their evolutionary descendants, the birds.  What happened?  Well, a shift happened, a mutation.  At some point, in order to survive, in order to live, the birds began to detect sweetness.  The research shows that what happened was not a mutation on the faulty gene to make it work, but rather a mutation in a different gene.  The birds’ savory receptor, their umami and bitterness receptor, changed.  One half of the two genes that make up the savory tastebuds of birds shifted from being able to taste the savory to being able to taste the sweet.  In order to survive, in order not just to survive, but to thrive and to take flight into the sky and spread across the planet, the birds had to trade out bitterness for sweetness.

It goes against our animal instincts to prioritize the positive in and around our lives, to prioritize the sweetness.  It goes against our evolution to try to downplay the negative.  And at the same time, it is clear that our spiritual instincts, and our spiritual evolution demand that we do! 

Our Torah and our tradition make clear that humanity’s most base instincts ought not always be the driving force in our decision making.  We are given dominion over the animals in Genesis in part because humans, made in the Divine Image, have the ability to discern, to differentiate good from bad, separate and apart from our survival needs and instincts.  No story makes this clearer than Cain and Abel.  When Cain kills his brother and God chastises him for it eternally, the Torah is telling us that we are, unfortunately, at our core, prone to violence when we don’t get our way.  The rest of the Torah, seemingly, is about helping us to move away from those animalistic urges, moving away from those instinctual habits that tell us that survival is the only prerogative.  The Torah urges us to change our receptors.  Our belief in God, our traditions, and our communal responsibilities demand we do as well.

We share the kiddush cup around the table at Shabbat, making sure everyone tastes of the sweetness and joy, which the wine symbolizes, from the same cup!  We shower our b’nai mitzvah with candy.  At the Passover seder, we make a sweet paste out of the mortar, and we never taste the maror without a little charoset.  The matzo changes before our eyes from the bread of affliction to symbolizing the sweet-smelling paschal sacrifice.  Our Jewish lives call out to us to taste sweetness!

What are ways that we can choose to go against our instincts and make the choice to taste sweetness?  This is a part of the role of community, to share with others in their times of joy.  Yes, we are always supposed to be here for each other in times of need, in times of sickness, in times of sadness, after a death, God forbid.  But we are also meant to share in our communal joy.  That's the role of blessing: to recognize the sweetness and joy in our lives and offer gratitude.  By blessing moments of sweetness and goodness, we recognize where it all comes from: God as the Creator of All, Sovereign of the Universe.  In saying blessings, we mark the moments and declare that the sweet, and the good are worthy of praise and thanksgiving.  Judaism understands what it means to emphasize sweetness. 

In the Torah reading we will hear tomorrow morning, from the book of Deuteronomy, God sets before the people, before us, options.  God, through Moses, says: “רְאֵ֨ה נָתַ֤תִּי לְפָנֶ֙יךָ֙ הַיּ֔וֹם אֶת־הַֽחַיִּ֖ים וְאֶת־הַטּ֑וֹב וְאֶת־הַמָּ֖וֶת וְאֶת־הָרָֽע׃  See, I set before you this day life and goodness, death and evil.”[5]  As Rashi explains: “the one is dependent upon the other: if you do good, behold, there is life for you, and if you do evil, behold, there is death for you.”[6] 

A little later in the reading, we hear an almost repeat of this: הַחַיִּ֤ים וְהַמָּ֙וֶת֙ נָתַ֣תִּי לְפָנֶ֔יךָ הַבְּרָכָ֖ה וְהַקְּלָלָ֑ה I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse.”[7]  Life, goodness, and blessing are all grouped together, almost as if to be interchangeable.  Likewise, death, evil, and curse are grouped together.  Both are before us.  Both are laid out and we are granted the autonomy by God to make a choice.  God’s desire is clear.  Choose life.  Choose goodness.  Choose blessing.  Choose sweetness.

Tonight, through the enchanting melody of the Kol Nidre, intoned so beautifully by Cantor Timman, we make a pledge that from this Yom Kippur to the next, God shouldn’t hold us to the promises and vows we make to God.  We say that we know we are going to miss the mark, even though we don’t intend to.  Tonight, let us also pledge, knowing that it will be hard and knowing that we will miss the mark, that we will opt for sweetness rather than bitterness.  Tonight, let us pledge that however we can and whenever we can in the year ahead, we will work to change our bitterness receptors to sweetness receptors, so that, like the birds in the sky, we may not only live, but thrive.  Let us opt to taste the sweetness because, like Australia, there’s so much sweetness to be had! 

In this year ahead, after a year of being so separate from one another, so distanced and removed, let us commit to sharing in each other's joys.  Let us choose goodness and blessing and choose to spread more good news than bad, more positive encouragement than negative feedback!

There is a tradition that when we break our fast tomorrow after the three stars appear in the sky, that the first bite of food should be something sweet.  Either an apple with some honey, a piece of sweet challah, or the like.  In my family, the first bite is always my mother’s rugelach.  No, she won’t give you the recipe.  Yes, they’re very good.  The hunger pangs haven’t yet started for those of us fasting.  Tomorrow, after we make our way through this day of emptying ourselves physically, spiritually, emotionally, may that first bite of sweetness trigger our receptors.  May that first bite of sweetness inspire us to a year of sweetness.  A year of joy.  A year of going against our instincts and opting for goodness, blessing, and life.  

And may our commitment to ourselves and to each other lead 5782 to truly be a good year, a sweet year for us, our families, our nation, the Jewish people, and the world.

Shanah Tovah, u’metukah.

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[1] https://www.pnas.org/content/118/26/e2024292118

[2] Ibid.

[3] Kessler, David. Finding Meaning. Scribner 2019.  P 198

[4] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/07/origin-of-birdsong-sugar/619387/

[5] Deut. 31:15

[6] Rashi on Deut 31:15

[7] Deut: 31:19