We Change When We Need To: A Message for Yom Kippur 5776

Several months after my father died, back in 1996, Deanna and I and our boys, all younger than 6 at the time, moved from Roslyn to West Hempstead.  My mother said, a few weeks after we moved to the new house, I’m going to drive out to see you.

That may sound like nothing to you.  But she might as well have said to me, sweetheart, the day after Passover we’ll do brunch on top of Mount Everest. 

My mother didn’t like to drive.  She got anxious when she needed to drive.  She had a poor sense of direction. 

Once when my sisters and I were little, after we’d moved to New Jersey and she took us back to see our ophthalmologist in Brooklyn because my father couldn’t drive us at the time, she got lost on the way back.  She began a sentence with, “If we ever get home…”

When we were growing up, my mother only drove when she absolutely had to, only locally and she defined what was local.

Driving to Long Island from New Jersey, requiring the crossing of two bridges, to an address she’d never been to, was a big deal.

Yom Kippur is supposed to be about reflection and resolution and the possibility of change. 

In his book, Halakhic Man, Soloveitchik wrote that teshuva, repentance, change, is an act of self-creation.

Maimonides said that we’re not just supposed to change our actions, we’re supposed to change our personalities. 

Last month I got an email from the head of a rabbinic organization urging rabbis to talk to their congregations about Pope Francis’s encyclical regarding climate change and economic inequality. 

And I want to say, to Soloveitchik, to Maimonides, and to the author of the email about the Pope, “Don’t you understand that it’s really hard to change, forget about the global issues – it’s hard to drive from New Jersey to Long Island when someone else used to do it.  It’s hard to deal with life day to day when it throws us God only knows what.  And you’re asking us to think about self-creation and personality transformation and the relationship between melting icebergs and growing income gaps?”

I’m going to offer some Yom Kippur heresy and here it is.  Ladies and gentlemen:  we don’t change. 

We Rise Up Together: A Message for the New Year

I’m thinking of a place where African Americans are elevator operators and speak only when spoken to.

Where gays are so deep in the closet they can barely see the light of day.

Where women take dictation and sometimes harassment from their male bosses and continue to smile and bring them coffee.

Where Jews are the objects of anti-Semitic slurs.

What place have I just described? 

Many places, I suppose.

But specifically I was thinking of the office of a particular advertising agency, Sterling Cooper, in the early 1960’s.  Sterling Cooper, you may know, is a fictional ad agency depicted in the award-winning TV Show, "Madmen." 

We’ve made some progress since the early 1960’s.  Some progress.  The reason we’ve made progress at all is only because each underprivileged group I mentioned made some noise and advocated for themselves.

The 60’s were a turning point for each group I mentioned including Jews.  And slowly, painfully, to differing degrees and in different ways, over the next decades and up to the present, each group gained more equal footing in this country. 

A human being can only take so much when marginalized or put down.  There comes a time when we grow so fed up with the way we are being treated, fed up with the status quo, that we demand a change.

We say, “this time will be different.”  And then, if we are courageous and persistent, we take the steps necessary to ensure that things will be different for us.  That we will be treated decently, equally.

I’m going to reflect on that but I won’t stop there.  It’s not right to stop there and our tradition demands that I go on.  I will go on to urge us to consider that the sense of justice which demands “this time will be different for me” also cries out for “this time will be different for you.” 

Subduing the "Yes-But" and Learning to Listen

There’s a tiny creature that is extremely common and very industrious.  It’s called the yes-but.

I won’t ask you to raise your hand if you ever heard of a yes-but because I’m sure you’ve heard of it you just didn’t know what it was called. 

The yes-but actually lives inside of us, each of us, I think.  It’s industrious, for sure, also somewhat impulsive, especially when we’re talking to other people.

Especially when we’re talking to other people who say things that we don’t agree with.

Here’s how it works:  We’re listening to the other person – yet as we’re listening, the yes-but is jumping up and down, tickling our throats until we open our mouths and say to the other person:

Yes – I heard you.  BUT did you consider this?  Yes, I know you’ve said this.  BUT don’t you know that?  Yes, you’re entitled to your opinion.  BUT how can you say such a thing when so-and-so, who’s an expert, feels differently?

The yes-but is alive and well inside of us.  And it makes it hard for us to really listen to each other.  Before the other person has finished talking, we’ve come up with all of the arguments to prove him wrong.  While the other person is still talking, the yes-but has all but silenced her.

I’d love to meet two people who disagree with one another about the Iran Nuclear Treaty who have managed to subdue their internal yes-but’s long enough to really consider what the other person is saying before responding.

How Do We See One Another? The Challenge of Getting Past First Impressions

I want to describe a conversation I had while in Israel this summer.  It has to do with how we see one another.

While our rabbinic group was involved with its program at the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, a group of Christian theologians were simultaneously involved in their own program. As we’ve done for the past several summers, we had a few joint sessions with the Christian leaders. 

For one session we joined in small groups to discuss the concept of the Jews as the chosen people.

A rabbinic colleague and I joined with a Baptist minister from Massachusetts.  She spoke to us about the experience of being African American and serving a largely white congregation for several years before taking an administrative role in the church.

Faith and Fear: Reflections on My Recent Month in Israel

Recently I was sitting and learning with my rabbinic cohort of colleagues at the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem when we were informed that in five minutes there would be a test-siren, just to make sure the system was working properly.

I quickly called Deanna, who was in our apartment at the time, to let her know.  And sure enough the siren went off five minutes later.

As you might imagine, she was happy for the heads up.  Last summer, of course, the sirens were not just a test.

To state the obvious, Israel is very pleasant when there isn’t a war. 

It was a very different experience this summer.  Much calmer than last. 

We took buses everywhere, had a chance to go to the beach in Tel Aviv, ate in cafes and just to make clear, I also did a lot of studying, just like I was supposed to!

At the Tomb of Abraham in Hebron

One of the main topics our rabbinic cohort discussed was faith, mostly defined as faith in God.  You may or may not be surprised to hear that this is a very complicated topic for rabbis and one that many of us like to avoid.

What we discovered, as we spoke and studied and went on a few field trips, is the extent to which faith is connected to fear.  Noting the less fearful mood of this summer in Israel, as compared with last summer, I nonetheless want to reflect on the connection, as we studied and explored it, between faith and fear.  Even during peaceful times, after all, fear is a part of life.

The Secret to True Self-Esteem

My son just returned from a trip to Iceland with one of his best friends.

While he was there, he hiked all over, took in the nightlife in the capital city – it never really got dark, so it wasn’t technically nightlife – and he sent us pictures with captions like “most beautiful scenery I’ve ever seen.” 

When he got back, we schmoozed about the trip and he told us that when he and his friend were sitting in a restaurant, they looked around and had the following perception:

That they were the shortest, most plain-looking people in the restaurant.  Apparently the restaurant they were in drew a lot of native Icelanders.  According to my son, they were all well above 6 feet tall and looked like models for Nordic track. 

Whether or not he realized it at the time, he created an interesting modern version of the Torah’s story of the twelve scouts, which we read this morning.

The essential story is similar:  The land is beautiful beyond belief.  We, however, are inadequate.  The people are larger, stronger, nobler than we are.

My son and his friend felt this in a humorous way and I don’t think he was reflecting a deep sense of inadequacy.

But our ancestors who scouted out the land felt their inadequacy profoundly.  To be fair, they were not on a post-college jaunt.  They knew that they had to conquer this land, not just visit and take pictures, that their lives would be on the line.

After considering my son’s story and the ancient story, it occurred to me that they present an opportunity to reflect on the notion of self-esteem.

Let's Not Give Up on Prayer

I was in a hospital recently with a family whose loved one was nearing the end of his life.  The family asked that I say a prayer and I recited the prayer traditionally reserved for those moments.  The prayer begins with a request for refuah, for healing, but goes on to say, if this is the end, if healing is not to be, then take this person gently, lovingly.

One of the people who heard the prayer is a native Hebrew speaker and she noticed the sudden transition in the prayer – from requesting healing to requesting a gentle end to the person’s life. 

We talked about that a bit and then we all recited Shema Yisrael together, sensing that the neshama, the soul, of their loved one was already in a different place.

Experts in Jewish tradition and community-building lately have focused on the reality that prayer is hard for people to relate to for lots of reasons. 

They go on to say that there are many ways to engage Jews and we should be emphasizing those, which include Jewish learning, Jewish culture, social action.  Since prayer may not be compelling for people, we should be placing more emphasis on these other areas.

To which I say yes, but...