My father’s retirement required him to reinvent himself. He no longer had a job that he needed to get to every weekday at 8 am. He had newfound time on his hands. I’ll say more about how he managed this later.
To reinvent is to re-create, to forge a new approach to something. Charles Darwin explored this in the natural world as something that is random, unintentional. As an example, a mutation causes certain animals, over millennia, to develop long necks and those long-necked animals who live in places with tall trees have an advantage which lets them survive. The mutation “reinvents” the animal and, given a felicitous set of circumstances, the animal is then poised for an increased chance at survival.
But we can also recognize intentional reinvention, especially among humans, reinvention of a religion tradition, reinvention of an institution, reinvention of a person. Without reinvention, things stop in their tracks. With reinvention, continuity is possible.
I’ll begin by shining the light widely, but ultimately I want to focus on each one of us and what it might mean for us to reinvent ourselves.
Karen Armstrong wrote a book in 1994 called A History of God. She noted that in each period of human history, there was an approach to God that was shared across cultures.
Thousands of years ago, there was a period when societies throughout the world were nomadic, consisting of hunters and gatherers, and many were matriarchal. Across the board, there was a phenomenon of goddess worship. Multiple goddesses, each responsible for different aspects of life.
Roughly around the 7th century BCE, societies the world over became more centralized, more hierarchical. And so did approaches to God. God became conceived of as singular, masculine. Coronation ceremonies abounded in which God was recognized as King.
I won’t spoil the rest of the book for you if you haven’t read it but suffice it to say that in each phase of human history, worship of God was reinvented to suit the society. Including mystical visions and rational proofs for the existence of God.
None of this has anything to do with God – how could it? It’s about human evolution and, I would argue, re-invention.
Getting more specific, Judaism, of course, has been continually reinvented. Bulls, rams, lambs and a goat. Those were the animal sacrifices brought each day of this particular festival. Every day, one less bull. (Which seems like the perfect aspiration for us in these trying times. Every day, a little less bull.)
Reinvention – gradually, over generations, from animal sacrifices offered in a central Temple to rabbinic traditions and prayers.
We would have been gone. Off the grid. Relegated to a curious historical phenomenon. Had a group of leaders not reinvented a tradition, making it portable and flexible, retaining the content but changing the form and delivery.
Reinvention allows for continuity.
Moving on, getting more specific. Each synagogue needs to reinvent. There’s so much one can say here because the process is ongoing, but I’ll just focus on one thing. Synagogues by and large are becoming less hierarchical and more welcoming. The gap between members and non-members, between clergy and non-clergy, are being reconsidered.
Our strategic planning process focused on a variety of initiatives, but the overriding goal is more accessibility.
A synagogue in 2017 that makes decisions as though it’s 1950 is in for a rude awakening. We have to reinvent what sacred community looks like in 2017. For us at Temple Israel that means Sephardi and Ashkanazi and Mizrachi traditions, diversity in gender and sexuality, physical accessibility, access to interfaith couples, multiple ways of accessing prayer. And more.
And now a few thoughts about what it means for us to reinvent ourselves as individuals.
Some of us may hope to remain in the same job, partnered with the same person, in the same house, for our entire lives.
But few of us achieve that, even if we want to.
Life requires us to reinvent ourselves all the time.
Many in our congregation moved to the United States from Poland, Germany, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Israel, South America, South Africa and other places. People have shared stories with me about the professional and personal reinvention that the move required.
Many in our congregation face the challenge of living alone after being partnered for years. That requires reinvention in multiple ways, large and small, visible and largely invisible.
Many in our congregation reinvent themselves after facing physical and emotional challenges.
By reinvention I don’t mean you become a different person. Most likely you retain your essence but you manage things differently.
My father’s retirement didn’t last as long as we all wished it had. But in small ways, he managed to reinvent himself. He was a controller, and later VP of Finance, for a large printing company for decades. Every day he left the house at 6:30 am and drove to work in North Brunswick, NJ. When he retired, he volunteered for an organization called SKOR, providing advice for small business that were trying to get off the ground. He loved this work. He loved meeting people who had creative ideas and were open to advice from someone with more experience. He also took many classes at a nearby college in subjects that he loved but couldn’t concentrate on much during his working years. He had so much fun telling me about a class in French Drama he took, especially the way the professor described the perils of translating drama from one language to another.
My mother did some self- reinvention after she retired and considerably more after my father died. I’ve spoken about this before – but I’ll just say that I was impressed as she took on some of the responsibilities that my father had previously taken care of, how she drove herself across highways and bridges well out of her comfort zone.
It didn’t seem just like readjustment – it felt like reinvention, because she embraced different roles in her household, and in our family.
I invite each of us to take a minute or two to give ourselves credit for the successful ways that we have reinvented ourselves, perhaps out of necessity, perhaps out of planned self-reflection, perhaps a little of both.
It’s not easy. I know that from my own experience. I'm sure if you think about it in your own life, you realize that reinvention is often not so easy. So to the extent that we have all taken steps to move differently in the world, to adjust to new situations good and bad, we should wish ourselves hazak uvarukh, yishar koach.
We’re coming to the end of this season of introspection. The word teshuva, which we translate as repentance, conveys the notion of turning. Turning inward, turning away from damaging behavior. Rav Soloveitchik understood teshuva as an act of self-creation. Heschel invited us to live our lives as if each of us is a work of art.
I invite us to think about the mandate, and the opportunity, of reinvention. For our relationship to our creator. For our people. For our synagogue. For ourselves.
Every day, we step into our essential prayer, the Amidah, by recalling our ancestors who sang שירה חדשה shira hadasha, a new song, while journeying to a new place. Let us continue to learn to sing new songs for new legs of the journey. Let us channel our ancestors' capacity and our own innate capacity to re-create and to reinvent. We will be much better off for having done so.
Originally shared with the Temple Israel of Great Neck community on Shemini Atzeret, October 12, 2017
To reinvent is to re-create, to forge a new approach to something. Charles Darwin explored this in the natural world as something that is random, unintentional. As an example, a mutation causes certain animals, over millennia, to develop long necks and those long-necked animals who live in places with tall trees have an advantage which lets them survive. The mutation “reinvents” the animal and, given a felicitous set of circumstances, the animal is then poised for an increased chance at survival.
But we can also recognize intentional reinvention, especially among humans, reinvention of a religion tradition, reinvention of an institution, reinvention of a person. Without reinvention, things stop in their tracks. With reinvention, continuity is possible.
I’ll begin by shining the light widely, but ultimately I want to focus on each one of us and what it might mean for us to reinvent ourselves.
Karen Armstrong wrote a book in 1994 called A History of God. She noted that in each period of human history, there was an approach to God that was shared across cultures.
Thousands of years ago, there was a period when societies throughout the world were nomadic, consisting of hunters and gatherers, and many were matriarchal. Across the board, there was a phenomenon of goddess worship. Multiple goddesses, each responsible for different aspects of life.
Roughly around the 7th century BCE, societies the world over became more centralized, more hierarchical. And so did approaches to God. God became conceived of as singular, masculine. Coronation ceremonies abounded in which God was recognized as King.
I won’t spoil the rest of the book for you if you haven’t read it but suffice it to say that in each phase of human history, worship of God was reinvented to suit the society. Including mystical visions and rational proofs for the existence of God.
None of this has anything to do with God – how could it? It’s about human evolution and, I would argue, re-invention.
Getting more specific, Judaism, of course, has been continually reinvented. Bulls, rams, lambs and a goat. Those were the animal sacrifices brought each day of this particular festival. Every day, one less bull. (Which seems like the perfect aspiration for us in these trying times. Every day, a little less bull.)
Reinvention – gradually, over generations, from animal sacrifices offered in a central Temple to rabbinic traditions and prayers.
We would have been gone. Off the grid. Relegated to a curious historical phenomenon. Had a group of leaders not reinvented a tradition, making it portable and flexible, retaining the content but changing the form and delivery.
Reinvention allows for continuity.
Moving on, getting more specific. Each synagogue needs to reinvent. There’s so much one can say here because the process is ongoing, but I’ll just focus on one thing. Synagogues by and large are becoming less hierarchical and more welcoming. The gap between members and non-members, between clergy and non-clergy, are being reconsidered.
Our strategic planning process focused on a variety of initiatives, but the overriding goal is more accessibility.
A synagogue in 2017 that makes decisions as though it’s 1950 is in for a rude awakening. We have to reinvent what sacred community looks like in 2017. For us at Temple Israel that means Sephardi and Ashkanazi and Mizrachi traditions, diversity in gender and sexuality, physical accessibility, access to interfaith couples, multiple ways of accessing prayer. And more.
And now a few thoughts about what it means for us to reinvent ourselves as individuals.
Some of us may hope to remain in the same job, partnered with the same person, in the same house, for our entire lives.
But few of us achieve that, even if we want to.
Life requires us to reinvent ourselves all the time.
Many in our congregation moved to the United States from Poland, Germany, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Israel, South America, South Africa and other places. People have shared stories with me about the professional and personal reinvention that the move required.
Many in our congregation face the challenge of living alone after being partnered for years. That requires reinvention in multiple ways, large and small, visible and largely invisible.
Many in our congregation reinvent themselves after facing physical and emotional challenges.
By reinvention I don’t mean you become a different person. Most likely you retain your essence but you manage things differently.
My father’s retirement didn’t last as long as we all wished it had. But in small ways, he managed to reinvent himself. He was a controller, and later VP of Finance, for a large printing company for decades. Every day he left the house at 6:30 am and drove to work in North Brunswick, NJ. When he retired, he volunteered for an organization called SKOR, providing advice for small business that were trying to get off the ground. He loved this work. He loved meeting people who had creative ideas and were open to advice from someone with more experience. He also took many classes at a nearby college in subjects that he loved but couldn’t concentrate on much during his working years. He had so much fun telling me about a class in French Drama he took, especially the way the professor described the perils of translating drama from one language to another.
My mother did some self- reinvention after she retired and considerably more after my father died. I’ve spoken about this before – but I’ll just say that I was impressed as she took on some of the responsibilities that my father had previously taken care of, how she drove herself across highways and bridges well out of her comfort zone.
It didn’t seem just like readjustment – it felt like reinvention, because she embraced different roles in her household, and in our family.
I invite each of us to take a minute or two to give ourselves credit for the successful ways that we have reinvented ourselves, perhaps out of necessity, perhaps out of planned self-reflection, perhaps a little of both.
It’s not easy. I know that from my own experience. I'm sure if you think about it in your own life, you realize that reinvention is often not so easy. So to the extent that we have all taken steps to move differently in the world, to adjust to new situations good and bad, we should wish ourselves hazak uvarukh, yishar koach.
We’re coming to the end of this season of introspection. The word teshuva, which we translate as repentance, conveys the notion of turning. Turning inward, turning away from damaging behavior. Rav Soloveitchik understood teshuva as an act of self-creation. Heschel invited us to live our lives as if each of us is a work of art.
I invite us to think about the mandate, and the opportunity, of reinvention. For our relationship to our creator. For our people. For our synagogue. For ourselves.
Every day, we step into our essential prayer, the Amidah, by recalling our ancestors who sang שירה חדשה shira hadasha, a new song, while journeying to a new place. Let us continue to learn to sing new songs for new legs of the journey. Let us channel our ancestors' capacity and our own innate capacity to re-create and to reinvent. We will be much better off for having done so.
Originally shared with the Temple Israel of Great Neck community on Shemini Atzeret, October 12, 2017
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