The home I grew up in was a cape cod house on a tree-lined street in New Jersey. I didn’t think it was small growing up, I didn’t think it was large. I do remember, though, that my mother thought the kitchen was a bit on the small side - specifically, that it didn’t have enough counter space, as she would occasionally tell my father.
One day we were visiting with my aunt and uncle who lived in a larger house on the other side of town that had a larger kitchen to begin with and my aunt wanted to show my mother that the kitchen had been redone. The kitchen was even more spacious than it had been, with two ovens and lots of counter space.
My mother ooh-ed and aah-ed at all the appropriate moments, my aunt served a lovely meal, my mother wished my aunt Mazel Tov on her renovated kitchen and said “use it well.” And then we got in the car to drive back to our side of town. My mother said nothing to my father in the ride home but he had a sense of what she was thinking.
A week later, a week during which my mother didn’t once mention my aunt’s upgraded kitchen, she was cooking steaks for dinner. She pulled the tray with the perfectly cooked steaks out of the oven, balanced the tray on the small counter and, as it turned out, the tray toppled over and landed face down on the floor, every single steak upside down and marinating in whatever had been used the day before to clean the floor.
That evening I heard a few words that I didn’t know my mother knew. And a few days later my parents started to renovate the kitchen.
On arguably the holiest day of the year, I want to talk about keeping score with other people. I think we all do it. We compare ourselves to other people, our houses to their houses, our kitchens to their kitchens, our lives to their lives.
We compare our accomplishments, our appearance, our relative fortune and misfortune to the accomplishments, appearance, fortunes and misfortunes of others.
We keep score when it comes to what we get and we keep score when it comes to what we give.
That would be just fine. Except that often it makes us miserable to keep score with others.
Yom Kippur, I believe, can teach us how to move beyond keeping score with others. An important lesson stems from the phrase ועניתם את ונפשותיכם v’initem et nafshoteikhem - which we usually understand to mean, "you shall afflict your soulֿs." That’s why we don’t eat today and refrain from other pleasurable things. But there’s another way to understand that phrase which I’ll come back to.
Since Yom Kippur is the day of confession, I’ll share some of the ways in which I have kept score over the years. And I invite you to think of your own scorecard as I go through a whirlwind tour of my scorekeeping.
In elementary school I kept score with my friend Jon. I looked enviously at the fancy toys that he got for Hanukkah rather than the more modest ones that my parents gave me.
In middle school and high school I kept score with my friend Steve who was more athletic than I was and didn’t get made fun of while playing basketball like I sometimes did.
In college I kept score with my friend Louise who could write a brilliant, cohesive essay in one hour, instead of what I did, which was to take hours through the night, pacing around, doubting myself, and ultimately putting together something fine but often not as good as what Louise wrote in an hour.
When I became a rabbi, I kept score with colleagues who had larger congregations and larger attendance for events.
The scorekeeping goes further and deeper. I had lunch with a high school friend recently and we were catching up and he was telling me about his parents, who he said are doing well, thank God, but not moving around quite as quickly as they used to.
And I said, gee, glad they’re ok. And I meant it. But I thought to myself, lucky him that his parents are alive and basically well. By the time I was 42 both of my parents were gone. They didn’t see my kids graduate high school and of course won’t be around for future milestones. So there I was, keeping score about how many years I got to enjoy my parents’ company as compared with how many my friend is getting to enjoy,
The thing is that when we keep score about what we get - gifts, status, abilities, life circumstances - we tend to compare ourselves to people who get and have more.
I didn’t compare myself to people who don’t have food to eat on Hanukkah or any other day. I didn’t compare myself to people who can’t even hold a basketball or who can’t write an essay no matter how much time they have or whose parents didn’t see their own high school graduations or who never got to meet their parents altogether.
That’s how scorekeeping tends to go when it comes to the “what do we get?” question.
We also keep score when it comes to “what do we give?”.
Perhaps you have friends or relatives whom you need to call if you’re going to have a conversation - they almost never call you, you need to call them. If you keep score, this may annoy you.
Perhaps you are in a romantic partnership or a marriage where you feel that you are giving more time, more energy, more forbearance, than your partner.
Perhaps you feel that you are often the one volunteering your time and energy to the community and you wish other people would step up more.
Perhaps you feel that you are the one at home or at work who usually picks up the slack or who works hard to maintain calm when everyone else is freaking out.
Perhaps you feel that most of the responsibility of taking care of an elderly parent or an ill relative has fallen on you, rather than a sibling or another member of the family.
Just as many of us tend to compare ourselves with others who seem to get more than we get, we tend to compare ourselves with others who seem to give less than we give.
I sometimes have apprehension about Yom Kippur as it approaches, but when it comes, I find myself swept away. There are a bunch of factors - the melodies, the drama, the intensity, the fact that we’re all in this together.
But there’s a deeper reason, I think, which goes back to the phrase I mentioned before and what it might mean.
V’initem et nafshoteikhem - according to Rabbi Shlomo Riskin - doesn’t have to mean "afflict your souls." It can mean, "encourage your souls to sing out." (He derives this from the same root used to denote singing during the episode of the calf.)
Yom Kippur is the day when when we think about ourselves, not in comparison with others, but in terms of what we ourselves need.
What we ourselves need to get and what we ourselves need to give.
That’s different than looking at what everybody else gets and what everybody else gives.
My mother might have wished she had a kitchen like my aunt’s, she might have wished she had a kitchen like Louis XIV for all I know, but ultimately what she arranged for, was what she felt she needed.
I suggest that we can, and often do, as life goes on - shift away from “what does she have” and “what does he give” to “what do I need to have” and “what do I need to give.”
I need to exercise. I don’t need to be as good at basketball as my friend Steve.
I need to put thoughts together to share with the congregation or the wider community. I don’t need to do it in an hour like my friend Louise.
I need to help this congregation become, more and more, a place of welcoming and relevance. I don’t need for it to be the biggest congregation in the world, or even North America.
I encourage you to think about what you need to get and to achieve in order for your soul to sing the song it’s meant to sing.
We talk about Passover as the festival of freedom. I suggest that this day, Yom Kippur, is also a festival of freedom. Freedom from keeping score with others, freedom to nurture our own souls.
Some times things are bad and we need relief, from physical pain, or unlivable emotional circumstances — not because someone else is doing better, but because it’s what we need. And we should do what we can, hopefully with the support of loved ones, to try to find that relief.
Sometimes we need more time to ourselves - not because our friend gets more vacation days, but because it’s what we need. And we should do what we can to find opportunities to care for ourselves, to refresh and renew.
Sometimes we need to make a change in our lives - professionally or personally or both - not because our friends have better jobs or relationships, but because it’s what we need.
These moments of reflection on Yom Kippur give us the opportunity to ask ourselves, What do we need to receive in order for us to be able to sing the song we’re meant to sing?
That’s not keeping score with others, it’s keeping track of ourselves. The Hebrew for that is חשבון הנפש heshbon hanefesh. Not a comparison with others, but an evaluation of ourselves.
Something I realize more and more as time goes on is that giving is also a need.
So you may have discovered that you need to reach out to a friend, even if you are the one to make the first call, or to make sure your parents are ok, or to provide a certain kind of support for your household, even if you wish others would do more.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, it may well be a good thing, and anyway, it’s part of who you are. And so you may want to try, though it's really hard sometimes, not to get derailed by thinking about why your friend/spouse/sibling doesn’t do what you do. I mean, by all means you can speak up, express your discontent, ask for more support.
But it seems to me that at the end of the day, and at the end of the months and the years, we each end up giving in ways that we need to give - either because others don’t step in enough if at all, or because our souls urge us to do so, or both.
That’s true of the giving we do with our families, with our friends, with people in the community, with people outside of the community.
I began with a story about my parents and I will end by reflecting on how they shared life’s responsibilities. My dad paid the bills, my mom did the cooking, my dad worked full time for more years than my mom, but she worked full time as a teacher for many years. They both worried about my sisters and me full time when we were growing up and well into our adult lives.
I imagine that if you added up the hours they spent on home matters and child-raising matters and professional tasks for all the years, it is quite possible that my mom would have logged more hours.
And then, on top of that, she took care of my dad when he got sick.
She may have kept score in her head - but somehow I don’t think so.
When I would complain to her, growing up, that so-and-so seemed to have more than me or seemed to get away with doing less, she would express the following sentiment, in a mixture of English and Yiddish:
I don’t care if so-and-so bangs his head against the wall, jumps up and down and yells bravo.
You still need to figure out your life.
My mom’s version of, Encourage your soul to sing out.
Score-keeping with others is hard to give up completely and maybe the competition can serve a good purpose on occasion. But I wish us, I dare to bless us with, the increased ability to identify and to put into motion what we need to get and what we need to give.
To figure out what it takes for OUR souls to sing out. Not Jon’s soul, not Steve’s, not Louise’s, not all the people with whom we keep score - hopefully they’ll figure it out for themselves.
Inspired by those who came before us, by those no longer present whom we recall, by those with whom we share our lives, let's continue to find our own path, to acquire what we need to acquire, to achieve what we need to achieve, and to give what we need to give.
So that OUR souls can sing out. So that each of us can say, and mean - אשירה לה׳ בחיי ashira ladonai b’hayay - I sing out to God with MY life.
Originally shared with the Temple Israel of Great Neck community on Yom Kippur 5779.
One day we were visiting with my aunt and uncle who lived in a larger house on the other side of town that had a larger kitchen to begin with and my aunt wanted to show my mother that the kitchen had been redone. The kitchen was even more spacious than it had been, with two ovens and lots of counter space.
My mother ooh-ed and aah-ed at all the appropriate moments, my aunt served a lovely meal, my mother wished my aunt Mazel Tov on her renovated kitchen and said “use it well.” And then we got in the car to drive back to our side of town. My mother said nothing to my father in the ride home but he had a sense of what she was thinking.
A week later, a week during which my mother didn’t once mention my aunt’s upgraded kitchen, she was cooking steaks for dinner. She pulled the tray with the perfectly cooked steaks out of the oven, balanced the tray on the small counter and, as it turned out, the tray toppled over and landed face down on the floor, every single steak upside down and marinating in whatever had been used the day before to clean the floor.
That evening I heard a few words that I didn’t know my mother knew. And a few days later my parents started to renovate the kitchen.
On arguably the holiest day of the year, I want to talk about keeping score with other people. I think we all do it. We compare ourselves to other people, our houses to their houses, our kitchens to their kitchens, our lives to their lives.
We compare our accomplishments, our appearance, our relative fortune and misfortune to the accomplishments, appearance, fortunes and misfortunes of others.
We keep score when it comes to what we get and we keep score when it comes to what we give.
That would be just fine. Except that often it makes us miserable to keep score with others.
Yom Kippur, I believe, can teach us how to move beyond keeping score with others. An important lesson stems from the phrase ועניתם את ונפשותיכם v’initem et nafshoteikhem - which we usually understand to mean, "you shall afflict your soulֿs." That’s why we don’t eat today and refrain from other pleasurable things. But there’s another way to understand that phrase which I’ll come back to.
Since Yom Kippur is the day of confession, I’ll share some of the ways in which I have kept score over the years. And I invite you to think of your own scorecard as I go through a whirlwind tour of my scorekeeping.
In elementary school I kept score with my friend Jon. I looked enviously at the fancy toys that he got for Hanukkah rather than the more modest ones that my parents gave me.
In middle school and high school I kept score with my friend Steve who was more athletic than I was and didn’t get made fun of while playing basketball like I sometimes did.
In college I kept score with my friend Louise who could write a brilliant, cohesive essay in one hour, instead of what I did, which was to take hours through the night, pacing around, doubting myself, and ultimately putting together something fine but often not as good as what Louise wrote in an hour.
When I became a rabbi, I kept score with colleagues who had larger congregations and larger attendance for events.
The scorekeeping goes further and deeper. I had lunch with a high school friend recently and we were catching up and he was telling me about his parents, who he said are doing well, thank God, but not moving around quite as quickly as they used to.
And I said, gee, glad they’re ok. And I meant it. But I thought to myself, lucky him that his parents are alive and basically well. By the time I was 42 both of my parents were gone. They didn’t see my kids graduate high school and of course won’t be around for future milestones. So there I was, keeping score about how many years I got to enjoy my parents’ company as compared with how many my friend is getting to enjoy,
The thing is that when we keep score about what we get - gifts, status, abilities, life circumstances - we tend to compare ourselves to people who get and have more.
I didn’t compare myself to people who don’t have food to eat on Hanukkah or any other day. I didn’t compare myself to people who can’t even hold a basketball or who can’t write an essay no matter how much time they have or whose parents didn’t see their own high school graduations or who never got to meet their parents altogether.
That’s how scorekeeping tends to go when it comes to the “what do we get?” question.
We also keep score when it comes to “what do we give?”.
Perhaps you have friends or relatives whom you need to call if you’re going to have a conversation - they almost never call you, you need to call them. If you keep score, this may annoy you.
Perhaps you are in a romantic partnership or a marriage where you feel that you are giving more time, more energy, more forbearance, than your partner.
Perhaps you feel that you are often the one volunteering your time and energy to the community and you wish other people would step up more.
Perhaps you feel that you are the one at home or at work who usually picks up the slack or who works hard to maintain calm when everyone else is freaking out.
Perhaps you feel that most of the responsibility of taking care of an elderly parent or an ill relative has fallen on you, rather than a sibling or another member of the family.
Just as many of us tend to compare ourselves with others who seem to get more than we get, we tend to compare ourselves with others who seem to give less than we give.
I sometimes have apprehension about Yom Kippur as it approaches, but when it comes, I find myself swept away. There are a bunch of factors - the melodies, the drama, the intensity, the fact that we’re all in this together.
But there’s a deeper reason, I think, which goes back to the phrase I mentioned before and what it might mean.
V’initem et nafshoteikhem - according to Rabbi Shlomo Riskin - doesn’t have to mean "afflict your souls." It can mean, "encourage your souls to sing out." (He derives this from the same root used to denote singing during the episode of the calf.)
Yom Kippur is the day when when we think about ourselves, not in comparison with others, but in terms of what we ourselves need.
What we ourselves need to get and what we ourselves need to give.
That’s different than looking at what everybody else gets and what everybody else gives.
My mother might have wished she had a kitchen like my aunt’s, she might have wished she had a kitchen like Louis XIV for all I know, but ultimately what she arranged for, was what she felt she needed.
I suggest that we can, and often do, as life goes on - shift away from “what does she have” and “what does he give” to “what do I need to have” and “what do I need to give.”
I need to exercise. I don’t need to be as good at basketball as my friend Steve.
I need to put thoughts together to share with the congregation or the wider community. I don’t need to do it in an hour like my friend Louise.
I need to help this congregation become, more and more, a place of welcoming and relevance. I don’t need for it to be the biggest congregation in the world, or even North America.
I encourage you to think about what you need to get and to achieve in order for your soul to sing the song it’s meant to sing.
We talk about Passover as the festival of freedom. I suggest that this day, Yom Kippur, is also a festival of freedom. Freedom from keeping score with others, freedom to nurture our own souls.
Some times things are bad and we need relief, from physical pain, or unlivable emotional circumstances — not because someone else is doing better, but because it’s what we need. And we should do what we can, hopefully with the support of loved ones, to try to find that relief.
Sometimes we need more time to ourselves - not because our friend gets more vacation days, but because it’s what we need. And we should do what we can to find opportunities to care for ourselves, to refresh and renew.
Sometimes we need to make a change in our lives - professionally or personally or both - not because our friends have better jobs or relationships, but because it’s what we need.
These moments of reflection on Yom Kippur give us the opportunity to ask ourselves, What do we need to receive in order for us to be able to sing the song we’re meant to sing?
That’s not keeping score with others, it’s keeping track of ourselves. The Hebrew for that is חשבון הנפש heshbon hanefesh. Not a comparison with others, but an evaluation of ourselves.
Something I realize more and more as time goes on is that giving is also a need.
So you may have discovered that you need to reach out to a friend, even if you are the one to make the first call, or to make sure your parents are ok, or to provide a certain kind of support for your household, even if you wish others would do more.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, it may well be a good thing, and anyway, it’s part of who you are. And so you may want to try, though it's really hard sometimes, not to get derailed by thinking about why your friend/spouse/sibling doesn’t do what you do. I mean, by all means you can speak up, express your discontent, ask for more support.
But it seems to me that at the end of the day, and at the end of the months and the years, we each end up giving in ways that we need to give - either because others don’t step in enough if at all, or because our souls urge us to do so, or both.
That’s true of the giving we do with our families, with our friends, with people in the community, with people outside of the community.
I began with a story about my parents and I will end by reflecting on how they shared life’s responsibilities. My dad paid the bills, my mom did the cooking, my dad worked full time for more years than my mom, but she worked full time as a teacher for many years. They both worried about my sisters and me full time when we were growing up and well into our adult lives.
I imagine that if you added up the hours they spent on home matters and child-raising matters and professional tasks for all the years, it is quite possible that my mom would have logged more hours.
And then, on top of that, she took care of my dad when he got sick.
She may have kept score in her head - but somehow I don’t think so.
When I would complain to her, growing up, that so-and-so seemed to have more than me or seemed to get away with doing less, she would express the following sentiment, in a mixture of English and Yiddish:
I don’t care if so-and-so bangs his head against the wall, jumps up and down and yells bravo.
You still need to figure out your life.
My mom’s version of, Encourage your soul to sing out.
Score-keeping with others is hard to give up completely and maybe the competition can serve a good purpose on occasion. But I wish us, I dare to bless us with, the increased ability to identify and to put into motion what we need to get and what we need to give.
To figure out what it takes for OUR souls to sing out. Not Jon’s soul, not Steve’s, not Louise’s, not all the people with whom we keep score - hopefully they’ll figure it out for themselves.
Inspired by those who came before us, by those no longer present whom we recall, by those with whom we share our lives, let's continue to find our own path, to acquire what we need to acquire, to achieve what we need to achieve, and to give what we need to give.
So that OUR souls can sing out. So that each of us can say, and mean - אשירה לה׳ בחיי ashira ladonai b’hayay - I sing out to God with MY life.
Originally shared with the Temple Israel of Great Neck community on Yom Kippur 5779.
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