5764 Erev Rosh HaShanah

Introduction

I was an English major in college. I am a lover of words. This carries over to my religious life. I am delighted when I discover a nuance or connection in words I have known a long time that helps me see more meaning. I remember being quite thrilled when I heard Reb Zalman Schachter point out the links between all the words with “spire” in them. “Spire” means breath, and also soul, as in “spirit.“ To “inspire” is to take in spirit. To “conspire” is to breath together. “Respiration” is breathing itself. The same richness is found in Hebrew word sets, although they might be less familiar to you.

For example, the words Torah, a teaching, Moreh, a teacher, and Horeh, a parent, all come from the same Hebrew root, yarah, meaning to aim or to direct an arrow. This is interesting in contrast to the Hebrew word for sin, chet, which is an archery term for missing the target. Occasionally, the word moreh indicates an archer, not a teacher. But once you can feel the action of the verb in the root, a moreh, a teacher, is a person who aims a student to head down a proper course. A parent is much the same. We have a beautiful translation of a modern Hebrew poem by Yehudah Amichai, talking about the birth of his son. He speaks of a child being like a missile sent into the future.

“ I launched him.
I’m still trembling.”

The lines have added richness when you know that the action of parenthood, in Hebrew, is the aiming of a child toward a target. Parents are blessed that they should bring their child to Torah, Chuppah, and Maasim Tovim -- to learning, family, and being a mentsch. The target is spelled out. But the aiming can be very complicated.

Most of all, we can hear this action of aiming in the word Torah. It means guidance, direction, aim. It’s meant to send us on a trajectory toward holiness, toward goodness. If we understand it correctly, it changes our direction, gives us focus, gives us a goal, a target.

Its primary myth, the main story of the Torah, has to do with getting out of oppression, becoming free, and moving toward the Promised Land, while building a society with God present at the center. The freedom we are aiming for is not simply American style political freedom; a set of civil rights. But rather, we learn here about progress toward spiritual freedom; true full acceptance of who we are, and an exhilarating awareness of how richly we are blessed that leads to a full engagement with the world around us.

To get a sense of what this might be like, think of that wonderful character, Zorba the Greek from the movie of Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel. As Jon Kabat-Zinn describes it,

Zorba’s young companion turns to him at a certain point and inquires, ‘Zorba, have you ever been married?’ to which Zorba replies, ‘Am I not a man? Of course I’ve been married. Wife, house, kids, everything… the full catastrophe!’

It was not meant to be a lament, nor does it mean that being married or having children is a catastrophe. Zorba’s response embodies a supreme appreciation for the richness of life and the inevitability of all its dilemmas, sorrows, tragedies, and ironies. His way is to ‘dance’ in the gale of the full catastrophe, to celebrate life, to laugh with it and at himself, even in the face of personal failure and defeat. In doing so, he is never weighed down for long, never ultimately defeated either by the world or by his own considerable folly.

Spiritual freedom means having the power to be fully ourselves, healed, joyful, loving, present to wonder and gratitude It means having the power to lead our lives, not be led by cravings, bad feelings, other people’s needs or opinions. It is having the power to harness our energy to do wonderful, daring things that make us rejoice in being alive and allow justice, mercy, and peace to flow. And it means doing all this in the midst of the chaos of family, making a living, being part of a community and a nation, and members of the whole web of living things on earth. What does such breaking free require?

THAT is a lifetime question.

Perhaps every religion on earth develops to address that question, and pass on what has been learned. Certainly many of our Jewish stories, holidays, and practices lead us to reflect on it.
As much as the spring celebration of Passover leads us to ponder the process of liberation, the High Holy Days also lay crucial groundwork for developing spiritual freedom. It is largely our sense of feeling undeserving that blocks us from experiencing our own wholeness and freedom. The High Holy Day themes of forgiveness and atonement helps us clear away obstacles to feeling worthy. The readings and prayers lead us to awaken to the reality of God as loving and intentional Creatior, as spiritual source and parent, lovingly willing to forgive us anything as long as we are committed to teshuvah, to turning our lives around toward the holy. So we concentrate on the forgiving nature of God.

We also try to see the majesty of God in laying down the law and in choosing whether or not to grant us our lives for another year. In fact, we can be quite overwhelmed with the image of today as the Birthday of the World, the vision of the Torah's creation story that all reality came into being with spiritual intent. The world, let alone the universe, is so vast, so old, that our significance or place in it can seem utterly lost.

But part of the answer is to experience that overwhelm and to know that whatever the point of it all is, it is something far beyond our individual power to control, or perhaps even to understand. We are being tumbled and blown around by forces far beyond our power to control. We were born without being consulted. We will die whether we like it or not. All of cosmic history set it up so that there would be this kind of life here and now. All of human history that unfolded before us created conditions we now have to cope with, have to work with and leave the results to our children. In some ways, our choices in how to lead our lives were made for us by the circumstances of our families, our genetic predispositions, the society we find ourselves in and the opportunities or lack of them that were available when we came along…You could argue we have no freedom at all, but are only subject to these many conflicting confusing forces, and that they are random.

But the religious vision of our people, and in fact of almost every people, is that spiritual meaning has nothing to do with numbers or scale. We say that to save one life is like saving a whole world. The fact that a lot is going on here doesn't make your individual choices one bit less important. The more you understand how connected you are to the whole, the more you understand how crucial your actions are to the good of all.

But we also musn't overestimate our personal power. Like Dirty Harry says, "A good man knows his limitations." In Judaism, we are always telling the story of the Exodus, and emphasizing the saving power of God. Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionism, called God “the power that makes for salvation,” because as far as he was concerned, that was the key divine function that touches and changes our lives. In our prayers, we are constantly reminding ourselves of how much God can do, for example, whenever we recall the crossing of the Red Sea. On one level, it describes a supernatural miracle, set as a key moment in Jewish history. For Reconstructionists, as indeed for many Jews, whether it “really happened” is of no importance whatsoever. What matters is that it is a true diagram of how, despite our limitations, we sometimes find ourselves on the far shore of an impossible crossing, aware at least momentarily that we did not supply all of the power that made this possible. Yes we cooperate, yes we participate, but we can’t make salvation any more than we can split the sea. And yet, because of the very nature of God, that is where the ride can take us. Holding this memory, telling this story, we keep faith alive that anything is possible. One aspect of freedom is refusing to limit the imagination; daring to dream that grand and glorious transformations toward the good can occur.

But what can we do in the face of the full catastrophe, the onslaught of life in all its drama and urgency? The world will not pause while we get our bearings. Perhaps my favorite verse in the Torah is Exodus 14:13. The slaves have gone free, but now the sea is before them, the army pursing from behind. The people are beginning to panic and Moses cries out to them:

Al tirau
Hityatzvu ur’u yeshuat Adonai
Asher ya-aseh lachem hayom.

Moses says,

Al tirau - Do not be afraid.
Hityatzvu ur’u - Hold still and see
Yeshuat Adonai - The salvation of God
Asher yaaseh lecha -That [He] is making for you
Hayom - Today

And then, as you know, the sea splits and we escape miraculously, and travel on to a mountain we never knew we would come to, where we receive a gift we still cherish today. It was an incredible experience, but not more so than things that continue to happen now. The slaves didn’t believe it could happen, and if we don't believe it, we are slaves too. In fact, they are hard to reassure even after they see miracles. So Moses has to tell them,

Do not be afraid.
Hold still and see
The salvation of God
That He is making for you
Today.

I want to take my time over these holidays to explain just this verse alone, and I doubt I can show you everything it implies. Tonight, I want to discuss what it means to not be afraid, and how much that is connected to the repentence and forgiveness of Rosh HaShanah. Tomorrow, I will reflect on what it might mean to hold still and see. On Yom Kippur, we will look at the salvation God makes through us, and finally, the importance of being in Today, of being here now, of building our awareness of the fleeting reality of the present moment. This verse constitutes a target we can aim for that will help us on our way to spiritual freedom.

Do not be afraid.
Hold still and see
The salvation of God
That He is making for you
Today.

Al Tirau-- Don’t be Afraid
So let’s begin with this paradoxical, impossible instruction: Al Tira-u, don’t be afraid. We hear this in prayers and psalms in a number of places. You hear it in Adon Olam : Adonai li v’lo ira - God is with me, and I won’t fear. Psalm 23 begins, “Adonai is my shepherd. I shall not fear.“ Psalm 27, the psalm said throughout the month leading up to Rosh HaShanah proclaims, “God is my light and salvation; so who should I fear?”

Apparently, we share the ability to feel fear with most other kinds of animals. We have been given fear by nature to protect our survival. How could we do away with it, and would it be wise to do so? Are we simply singing ourselves a lullaby when we hear the instruction, “Have no fear”?

Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, who I mentioned above, whose book is called “Full Catastrophe Living,“ and who is known for his work using mindfulness meditation to help medical patients with chronic pain and stress, points out that:

If we are honest with ourselves, most of us will have to admit that we live out our lives on an ocean of fear. From time to time, in even the hardiest of us, feelings of fear surface. They may be about death or being abandoned by someone. They may be about being abused or violated or tortured, or about feeling pain or being alone or being sick or disabled, or about someone you love being hurt or killed. We may have fears of failure or fears of success, fears of letting other people down or about the fate of the earth. Most of us carry such fears with us. They are always present but they only surface under certain circumstances.

And these fears do more than cause us pain and stress; fear leads us to make bad judgments and do terrible things, as Edmund Burke wrote, “No passion so effectively robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

Stress researchers have identified the fight or flight response, the biological response to danger of either running away or striking back, and human beings resort to these choices all the time. But we do not have to be enslaved to this. Human beings have been given some higher functions that allow us to override these automatic brute responses, and stay calm in the midst of danger so that we can use our highest best self to determine our responses. Many spiritual practices, from meditation to martial arts to prayer, confession, and moral inventory, are meant to help us respond without, or despite fear.

If we achieve that, we live much more at peace with others and ourselves. It is mostly our fears that lead us to the actions that we most regret, whether by responding with brutality, or simply by dishonoring our own truth out of fear of rejection. The Torah uses harsh terms for this, and tells that if we don’t focus all our powers on loving God, behaving as God expects and concentrating on it constantly, we become spiritual prostitutes, asher atem ZONIM ahereihem, whoring after whatever catches our eye, selling ourselves out in the effort to mollify our fears. We lose our clarity about who we are, we lose our dignity, and we allow ourselves to do things that cause us pain, shame, and regret.

We’re so afraid we won’t be loved, or won’t succeed, or won’t survive that we become convinced we ought to participate in things that do us and others harm. The harm done to ourselves may be the worst. In The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz writes, "Humans punish themselves endlessly for not being what they believe they should be. They become very self-abusive, and they use other people to abuse themselves as well. But nobody abuses us more than we abuse ourselves.” Most of us have internalized impossible, uninspired, fear-based expectations of what we should be, and we never measure up. We cannot forgive ourselves for not being what we think we must be, for not being what we decide is perfect, and we judge others harshly for their shortcomings as well. The way we treat others is almost always a reflection of how we treat ourselves; which is kind of an inside-out way of reading “Love your neighbor as yourself.” I see that as a warning to treat the self with kindness and fairness and compassion if you expect to be able to live in peace with others.

The goal for this season is to see how we are mistaken in trying to live up to something false, to see the harm it has done us and others, and to repair the damage. The way the Torah puts it, we need to love God most and worry most about whether we are acceptable to God. The Torah even uses the word “fear” for this, and encourages us to fear only one thing: God’s displeasure. God is displeased when we act like we are less than we are: holy beings created in the divine image, charged with bringing about more peace, wisdom, justice, kindness, and reverence. Anything we do that doesn’t show we hold ourselves and others as precious and holy is a big mistake.

But once we realize what our fears have led us to do, we can begin to repair the damage . Here is a true story of such a turnaround:

A Ray of Peace
Rabbi Harvey Abramawitz (in Chicken Soup for the Jewish Soul)

Riyadh was born in the Old City of Jerusalem, one of four children of a successful engineer. They moved to the suburbs when he was a toddler, and he remembers his childhood in Ramallah fondly. In a very matter of fact way, he told me that in 1982, while on his way home from school, he had been shot by an Israeli soldier. There had been a street demonstration going on at the time, people were running all over the place and there was a lot of confusion. Passersby rushed the wounded youth, bleeding profusely, to his parents’ home He was seen by a local Palestinian doctor who was unable to do more than apply a field dressing to stop the bleeding. But the doctor quickly arranged for him to be transported in a Red Cross car through the mountains to a hospital in Jordan, where he was assessed to be in critical condition. Once stabilized, Riyadh was flown to out of the country secretly to a hospital in Turkey. Because of the difficult situation in his homeland, and the fact that he had departed illegally, he could not return. And so, sponsored by a Palestinian doctor in Texas, he sought political asylum and was admitted to the United States.

After time in school, Riyadh faced an uncertain future. His parents urged him to stay in the United States until the situation at home calmed down. Though his visa was for only a short duration, he applied for admission to a school of engineering in Texas.
About a week after being admitted, he received a letter summoning him to a meeting with the dean of students. Riyadh was worried, wondering what the dean could possibly want with him. He was quite uncomfortable during the meeting. The dean stared at him, but also acted in a very fatherly and concerned way, inquiring whether he was happy there, and whether there was anything he could do for him.

“ Well, my visa is very short.” Riyadh told the dean.
“ No problem. I will get it extended for the full four year term of university.” replied the dean. “Is there anything else you need?”

Riyadh alluded to his financial situation, and was then surprised by an offer of a full scholarship. After further prompting by the dean, Riyadh admitted that he didn’t really have anyplace to live, and he had no income. On the spot, the dean offered him a position as a systems administrator, which would afford him a place to live and a small stipend.

With his college years thus assured, yet completely baffled as to how it had all happened, Riyadh began his higher education. After afew months, the dean again sent for him, making it clear he had something he had to tell Riyadh.

One Riyadh was in his office, the dean told him that he knew him; he knew who he was, he had recognized his name from the application to the university.

Riyadh was puzzled. The dean knew him? Recognized his name? How could that be possible?
“ Riyadh,” said the dean, “I am the soldier who shot you.”

As Riyadh, amazed and stunned, listened, the dean went on to relate his own story to the student. Joel was born in Brooklyn, and had emigrated with his parents to Israel as a child. When he was grown, he signed up for his period of duty in the Israeli army. When he and his fellow soldiers were sent to restore order after a demonstration had turned violent, he found himself in a very dangerous situation. Rocks were being thrown, and the situation was getting out of hand. He was very frightened, and had fired his rifle in what he believed was an act of self-defense. Fate decreed that the bullet his young Riyadh.
When Joel learned later that he had shot a young Palestinian boy, he was deeply distressed. His fellow soldiers tried to console him, saying that sometimes unfortunate things happen in violent street confrontations, as well as in war. He should not blame himself.

But Joel needed to find out what happened to the kid he shot. Once he learned Riyadh’s name, he went straight to his parents’ home to inquire about him, and to apologize. Riyadh’s parents were very old fashioned, and would not even speak to Joel. His father threw him out of the house.

Joel continued to feel personal anguish over what he had done. After some time, he and his family decided to return to the United States and make a new start.

Back in the United States, Joel went on to complete his graduate degree, and find a job with a college in Texas. He had been stunned to find Riyadh’s name on the list of students, and was very grateful to have the extraordinary opportunity to offer help to the one he had harmed.

There is a saying in 12-step circles that, “Fears are not facts.” Much of the time, our worries are out of proportion to reality. The trick is to learn to be calm in the presence of fear, something I will discuss more tomorrow. As Mark Twain said, “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear -- not absence of fear.”

In the Bible we have a great story about anxiety over past harm done, where we read about Jacob’s return journey home. (“Anxiety” being a fancy term for a certain flavor of fear.) Jacob leaves home in a hurry, having stolen the birthright and deceived his father in fear of being disinherited. He leaves his brother Esau murderously angry at him, and now, twenty years later, he is coming back. He sends gifts ahead to try to show respect and win his brother over. He divides up his family and belongings in case one group gets attacked, the other might survive. But he still can’t sleep, “and a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn” (Gen 32:25). This is the famous story of Jacob wrestling with the angel, coming out of the encounter somewhat broken but with a new name, Israel, and a true acceptance of exactly what he has done. And when Esau arrives with his 400 men, instead of a battle, these twin brothers embrace.

It is the struggle to accept our broken parts, and our imperfections, that allows us to come home to ourselves in peace. The Talmud teaches that if we swallow bitter herbs at the seder whole, without chewing on them, we have not fulfilled our obligation.”(R. Yocheved Heiligman) What does this mean? To really accept what is bitter, we must face it fully. Most of us try to bury it, avoid it, pretend we don‘t know it, and remain in a state of terrible anxiety about being found out.

Sogyal Rinpoche, the modern Buddhist monk who wrote TheTibetan Book of Living and Dying, writes about how to speak to someone on his deathbed, who has not reconciled with himself or others. This advice struck me as remarkably close to the Jewish tradition of seeking Teshuvah, repentence, in large part by asking forgiveness from others. He writes:

A friend of mine who had just graduated from a famous medical school started work at one of the larger London hospitals. On her very first day on the ward, four or five people died. It was a terrible shock for her; nothing in her training had equipped her to deal with it at all. Isn’t this astonishing, considering she was training to be a doctor? One old man was lying in his bed, staring at the wall. He was alone with no family or friends to visit him, and he was desperate for someone to talk to. She went over to him. His eyes filled with tears and his voice trembled as he asked her the last question she expected to hear:" Do you think God will ever forgive me for my sins?

She asked me in her pain and bewilderment, ‘What would you have done?’

…I told her I would say, ‘Forgiveness already exists in the nature of God; it is already there. God has already forgiven you, for God is forgiveness itself. ‘To err is human, and to forgive divine.’ But can you truly forgive yourself? That’s the real question.

Your feeling of being unforgiving and unforgivable is what makes you suffer so. But it only exists in your heart or mind. Haven’t you read how in some of the near death experiences a great golden presence of light arrives that is all-forgiving? And it is very often said that it is finally we who judge ourselves.

In order for you to clear your guilt, ask for purification from the depths of your heart. If you really ask for purification, go through it, forgiveness will be there. God will forgive you. To help you to forgive yourself, remember the good things you have done, forgive everyone else in your life, and ask for forgiveness from anyone you may have harmed.

[In speaking to the dying] Encourage them to make up with friends or relatives, and to clear their heart, so as not to keep even a trace of hatred or the slightest grudge. If they cannot meet the person from whom they feel estranged, suggest they phone them or leave a taped message or letter and ask for forgiveness. If they suspect that the person they want to pardon them cannot do so, it is not wise to encourage them to confront the person directly. A negative response would only add to their already great distress. And sometimes people need time to forgive. Let them leave a message of some kind, asking for forgiveness, and they will at least die knowing that they have done their best. They will have cleared the difficulty or anger from their heart. Time and time again, I have seen people whose hearts have been hardened by self-hatred and guilt find, through a simple act of asking for pardon, unsuspected strength and peace.

Rabbi Eugene Borowitz says “Only when we find the inner power to lovingly take back the one who hurt us can we overcome estrangement." There is an ancient Jewish model for this [found in Tanhuma B. Vaet’hanan]: ‘When Moses [is seeking forgiveness from God for the people after the incident of the Golden Calf, and he asks] to see God’s face [Ex 33:18], Moses was really asking "Show me the attribute You use that helps You rule the world." God said, "I will cause all my goodness to pass before you." When God passed before Moses, God said of Himself, "Adonai, Adonai, el rahum v’hanun…" (quoted in The Jewish Moral Virtues, Eugene Borowitz & Frances Schwartz).

You know that tune. It means, God, God, God of Love and Grace, Patient, Great Kindness and Truth, extending kindness to multitudes, forgiving everything. That is what a person knows when they have witnessed God go by. But what can clear away all of the negativity in our lives and help us know this is real? Usually, the fears we have lead to misdeeds which lead to guilt and punishment and more self loathing and more wrongdoing and an ever deeper estrangement from the self and the divine. Perhaps most effective response to misdeeds would be to remind a person how GOOD they are.
Forgiveness has the power to help restore goodness in people.

Jack Kornfield writes that:

In the Bebemba tribe of South Africa, when a person acts irresponsibly or unjustly, he is placed in the center of the village, alone and unfettered. All work ceases, and every man, woman, and child in the village gathers in a large circle around the accused individual. Then each person in the tribe speaks to the accused, one at a time, each recalling the good things the person in the center of the circle has done in his lifetime. Every incident, every experience that can be recalled with any detail or accuracy, is recounted. All his positive attributes, good deeds, strengths, and kindnesses are recited carefully and at length. This tribal ceremony often lasts for several days. At the end, the tribal circle is broken, a joyous celebration takes place, and the person is symbolically and literally welcomed back into the tribe.

Don Miguel Ruiz helps us connect this back to spiritual freedom. He says:

Forgiveness is the only way to heal. We can choose to forgive because we feel compassion for ourselves. We can let go of resentment and declare, That’s enough! I will no longer be the big Judge that goes against myself. I will no longer beat myself up and abuse myself. I will no longer be the Victim.'

First we need to forgive our parents, our brothers, our sisters, our friends, and God. Once you forgive God, you can finally forgive yourself, the self-rejection in your mind is over. Self-acceptance begins, and the self love will grow so strong that you will finally accept yourself just the way you are. That’s the beginning of the free human. Forgiveness is the key.

A final story of Jack Kornfield that that underlines this point:

"No matter how extreme the circumstances, a transformation of the heart is possible."

Once on the train from Washington to Philadelphia, I found myself seated next to an African American man who worked for the State Department in India, but had quit to run a rehabilitation program for juvenile offenders in the District of Columbia. Most of the youths he worked with were gang members who had committed homicide.

One fourteen year old boy in his program had shot and killed an innocent teenager to prove himself to his gang. At the trial, the victim’s mother sat impassively silent until the end, when the youth was convicted of the killing. After the verdict was announced, she stood up slowly and stared directly at him and stated, “I’m going to kill you.” Then the youth was taken away to serve several years in the juvenile facility.

After the first half year, the mother of the slain child went to visit the killer. He had been living on the streets before the killing, and she was the only visitor he’d had. For a time they talked, and when she left, she gave him some money for cigarettes. Then she started , step by step, to visit him more regularly, bringing food and small gifts. Near the end of his three year sentence, she asked him what he would be doing when he got out. He was confused and very uncertain, so she offered to set him up with a job at a friend’s company. Then she inquired about where he would live, and since he had no family to return to, she offered him temporary use of the spare room in her house.

For eight months he lived there, ate her food, and worked at the job. Then one evening, she called him into the living room to talk. She sat down opposite him and waited. Then she started.

‘ Do you remember in the courtroom when I said I was going to kill you?’
‘ I sure do’ he replied.

‘ Well I did,’ she went on. ‘I did not want the boy who could kill my son for no reason to remain alive on this earth. I wanted him to die. That’s why I started to visit you and bring you things. That’s why I got you the job and let you live here in my house. That’s how I set about changing you. And that old boy, he’s gone. So now I want to ask you, since my son is gone, and that killer is gone, if you’ll stay here. I’ve got room, and I’d like to adopt you if you let me.’

And she became the mother of her son’s killer, the mother he never had.”

"Our own story may not be so dramatic, yet we have all been betrayed. We must each start where we are. In large and small ways, in our own family and community, we will be asked to patiently forgive over and over.” And it will often demand that we face many fears, and carry on anyway. It’s not that these problems are easy to solve.

Jack Kornfield, another from the Jewish Buddhist contingent, cautions that “Forgiveness does not happen quickly. For great injustice, coming to forgiveness may include a long process of grief, outrage, sadness, loss, and pain. True forgiveness does not paper over what has happened in a superficial way. It is not a misguided effort to suppress or ignore our pain. It cannot be hurried. It is a deep process repeated over and over in our heart which honors the grief and betrayal, and in its own time, ripens into the freedom to truly forgive.”

When we can face the fear, the anger, the rejection of others that always includes rejection of a part of ourselves -- When we have the courage to accept the painful truths in our lives without flinching, then we are finally free to act like holy beings we really are.

Al Tirau - Do not fear.