Imagination

Back when I was in college, I took a walk by myself in Central Park.  A man who was taller and stockier than I came up to me out of the blue, stood in front of me and asked, “Are you worried?” 

And I quickly swallowed and said, “No.”  And he said, “Well - you should be.”

We are at the start of the New Year.  And if I’m gauging my own mood and the mood of others accurately, we don’t need anyone to tell us that we should be worried.   We’re plenty worried.  We’re worried about our children and grandchildren, our nieces and our nephews.  Will they find work?  Will they find love?  Will they embrace Jewish tradition?

We’re worried about the United States.  What will become of our great nation?

We’re worried about Israel.  How will she ensure her future at the beginning of the 21^st century? 

We’re worried about ourselves.  How will we withstand all of the challenges that face us – health, money, despair and downright exhaustion?

I’m not going to pretend to solve all these problems, though I have a suggestion.  It’s not a perfect suggestion, but I think it’s an important and Jewish one.

It’s expressed by one word – imagination. 

We think of imagination and perhaps we conjure up fairy tales, flights of fancy.  Imagination may seem like a luxury when times are hard.

It’s not a luxury at all.  For Jews it has been a necessity.  To get through life, and to excel at living, we have always needed, and continue to need, imagination. 

Imagination allows us to examine why things are as they are and to picture things as they might be.

It keeps tradition alive, it keeps nations alive, and it keeps us alive as individuals.  At the beginning of 5772, I want to take us on a journey to explore the power of imagination.

We’re worried about whether the younger generation will embrace Jewish tradition.  If we hand it down like a fragile museum piece, they may not.  They may say “This is important to mom or dad or grandma or grandpa” but they won’t necessarily embrace it  unless we demonstrate that Jewish tradition is a tour de force of imagination.

When the ancient Israelites said that the world was created in six days and God rested on the seventh, they most likely did not mean it literally.  They knew what a day was, just like we know what a day is.  They believed that there was a rhythm and a purpose to the world and that we could tap into it by observing six days of work and one day of rest.

In her book, The Case for God, Karen Armstrong argues that it is only recently that anyone took the Bible’s story of creation literally, or as an expression of scientific truth.  I think that’s fascinating.

The prayer, un’taneh tokef, speaks of our deeds and our fate recorded in a book.  Who will live and who will die in the coming year.

I doubt that the author meant literally that there’s a big book up in heaven.  He likely understood that image, and the notion that our fate is determined during these days, as a way to focus our thoughts on our vulnerability and our potential. 

Each generation has applied imagination in order to try to make sense out of life and to offer a plan for how to move forward.

Let the next generation of Jews do what Jews have always done – apply imagination to the challenge and exhilaration of leaving as a human being in the world. 

I’m begging each of us – at the dinner table, at the seder table, in conversations with loved ones – to encourage questions, arguments and imagination.

I want to widen the lens now.  Imagination brings nations into being and keeps them alive.  We’re worried about the US and we’re worried about Israel.

The founding fathers of the United States of America sought to create a nation based on the idea that “all men are created equal.”  Later it would include women and people of all races. 

The founders of the State of Israel sought to create a nation that would be “open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles.” 

The declaration declared that the emerging nation “will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.”

The United States has struggled mightily to ensure equal treatment and equitable economic opportunity for all of its citizens and to manage her friends, her enemies and her status in the world community. 

The State of Israel has struggled mightily to ensure that and to manage its friends, its enemies, and the claims of Palestinian leadership.

Imagination doesn’t solve everything, but it can help.  In the US, imaginative solutions are called for in the business world, in education and in government.  It’s exhausting but everyone needs to keep trying.

In Israel, creative solutions are called for, as well.  To be sure, the world must understand that Israel’s existence and survival are non-negotiable. 60 years after Auschwitz and in the aftermath of the expulsion of Jews from numerous countries in the Middle East, a secure state of Israel ensures that Jews can live with full freedom and opportunity

It also ensures that Muslims, Christians, Buddhists and atheists and so on live with full freedom and opportunity.  When a mosque is set on fire as it was in the north of Israel, all people should protest.  When a Jewish sacred site is desecrated, as Joseph’s tomb was recently, all people should protest.

And it’s time, with careful and imaginative negotiation, to move toward two states living side by side.  It’s not a new idea.  It’s what the United Nations proposed over 60 years ago.  If strong leadership on both sides is ready; if it’s what most thoughtful people on both sides want,  then everyone needs to keep moving forward with appropriate care and imagination. 

Finally, I want to focus the lens on each of us.  I want to invite each of us to peer into our own souls as we face the New Year.

Imagination keeps us energized and hopeful.  Without it, we would crawl under a blanket and stay there all day. 

Throughout our lives, imagination is the torch that illuminates the possible.

It’s hardwired in us from an early age.  For children imagination comes naturally.  It’s part of play.

We grow older and it gets harder. 

Finding love and expanding love requires imagination.  It’s not about finding the perfect 10.  I hope people who are dating understand that.  Finding love and expanding love is about the playful embrace of another human being, with the good, the bad, the beautiful and the not so beautiful that each person brings.

Sometimes you look at a couple who have been together for many years and you a see a sparkle.  Their conversation is playful.  Even if every minute isn’t a rose garden, you see respect, admiration and imagination at work and in play.

Raising children requires imagination.  However many children we might have, we often have to parent each one differently.   We know that.  And we have to figure out how to adjust as they get older. 

To navigate our dreams and their dreams, our reality and their reality, requires flexibility and imagination as our lives unfold in relationship to one another.

Facing loss requires imagination.  With my mother and father no longer around, I seem to have found myself gravitating toward certain individuals who provide me with maternal and paternal support.  Perhaps others have had that experience. 

I also find myself with memories that are part recollections of the past and part reconstructions of the past.  I’m not always sure where one ends and the other begins and I’m not sure if it even matters.

It’s up to us whether we face life’s challenges with rigid expectations and parameters that can often lead us to frustration, or with a playful, imaginative embrace of the possible as it constantly morphs before our eyes.

I’d like each of us to think about the following.  Think about a situation that seems formidable, that worries you profoundly. 

And I’d like us to ask, “Have I applied my imagination to this situation?  Have I tapped into the imaginations of others?”

Perhaps it’s just a different way of looking at the situation that might yield a little relief, or even a small opportunity.  Or, perhaps, it’s a major overhaul.

My sister’s father-in-law survived the Shoah, along with his brother.  They were in several labor and concentration camps together.

Before the war, as a teenager, he worked in a sweater factory.

After the war, he was in a DP camp in Italy, from which he was eventually released.  In a small Italian village, he noticed a woman walking next to her husband.  She was wearing a sweater that had several huge holes in it.  The war had taken its toll.

He approached the couple and said, “I can fix the sweater for you for nothing.  You won’t be able to see the holes.” 

She didn’t know him, but figured, what did she have to lose?  She gave him the sweater.  A week later he gave it back to her.  She looked at it and she couldn’t believe it.  The holes were gone.  She was so impressed that she and her husband gave him and his brother a small amount of capital to start a sweater company in Italy.  Eventually, he and his brother moved themselves and the business to the United States, where the business grew.

His son, my brother-in-law, said to him, years after the fact, “Dad, how did you do it?  How did you remove those gaping holes from the sweater?”  He’s the sweetest man and very modest.  I can imagine him saying this.  He said, “Truth is, I took the sweater apart completely and then I put it back together.”

As you can imagine, as that story was told and retold, the refashioning of the sweater became, for the family, a metaphor for what he was able to do with his life.

Were all the gaping holes really gone?  Who knows.  Of course, it’s not so simple.

At the beginning of the New Year, let’s sing old melodies and consider new ones.

At the beginning of the New Year, let’s vow that we will invite the next generation to embrace Jewish tradition, not as a fragile relic on a silver platter, but as a palpable force that helps make life worth living.

At the beginning of the New Year, let’s urge the United States and Israel to protect themselves appropriately while taking creative steps toward greater success, security and peace for all.

At the beginning of the New Year, let’s look at our lives and wonder, are we living and loving and raising new generations with imagination?  Are there possibilities regarding even our most worrisome challenges that we have yet to consider?

Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, “Above all, remember to build a life as if it were a work of art.”  

Steve Jobs, addressing graduates of Stanford University in 2005, said, “Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

If I should happen to see that man in Central Park and he should happen to tell me I should be worried, maybe I’ll answer him with a song.   A song about imagination, performed 30 years ago by a group called the Pretenders.

“Gonna use my arms, gonna use my legs.  Gonna use my style.  Gonna use my senses.  Gonna use my fingers, gonna use my ‘magination.”

At the beginning of the Jewish New Year, we say, hayom harat olam, recalling the birthday of the world.  Imagination called the world into being and keeps our manifold worlds fresh every day.

Let 5772 be a good year - a year of growth, blessing and imagination!

Originally delivered on the High Holy Days, September 2011, at Temple Israel of Great Neck