September 2014

Rosh Hashanah 2014

In case you missed my Rosh Hashanah morning sermon or would like to read the text:

Yom Hazikaron Wake Up Call

Long ago, there was a young man who was absolutely fascinated with all things related to engineering and chemistry. His father would teach him what he knew about these subjects from a young age, and it didn’t take long for him to realize that that his son had a particular interest in explosives. This fascination only grew stronger over the years. By age 34, this young man had made significant contributions to the field of explosives. In 1867, he invented dynamite. His name was Alfred Nobel.

Although Alfred was a pacifist, his family played a significant part in many wars. Their success in business depended largely on selling explosives to be used in battle. It was something the Nobel family had become known for.

When Alfred’s older brother, Ludvig, died, a French newspaper focused on this family’s connection to death and destruction. This newspaper mistakenly published an obituary of Alfred rather than his brother Ludvig. The headline read “The merchant of death is dead,” and it described Alfred as a man “who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before.”

Upon reading these words, Alfred realized that he did not want to be remembered as a merchant of death. He resolved then and there to change his legacy. In his will, Alfred left most of his wealth in trust, in order to fund the awards that would come to be known as the Nobel Prizes.

It often takes something drastic to inspire a true and lasting change in one’s life. Alfred Nobel had to see what his obituary would say about him before he found the motivation to line up his actions with his values. Few people have the chance to read their would-be obituaries, but many people experience a similar wake-up call in light of other dramatic occurrences. It may be the death of a loved one, the end of a serious relationship, or a health scare that triggers such introspection and motivation to change one’s life.

Why do we wait for something drastic to happen? Is humankind fueled by high drama? Today’s Torah reading seems to suggest as much. Year after year, we read the dramatic story of Abraham nearly sacrificing his son Isaac. The story begins with a test of character. God calls out to Abraham and tries to find out if he is the sort of guy who would ever sacrifice his own son. Abraham’s response here seems out of character. In the past, he would often speak up. But now he is oddly quiet.

The text says nothing about Abraham’s emotional state either. He seems to be walking around like a zombie, going through the motions of life without any connection to his emotions or his deepest values. He travels for days, saying nothing. Then when he arrives at his destination, he says just what he needs to say to keep people off of his back, and not a word more. He tells his co-travelers to hang out with the donkey for a bit, assuring them that he and Isaac will be right back. Then when Isaac gets suspicious, Abraham tells him that there will be a lamb waiting for them at the top of the mountain. Somehow Abraham manages to tie Isaac up and bind him on the altar like an animal. Isaac may have thought his dad was just playing with him, until he saw the knife go into the air.

In this story, there are no French newspaper headlines for Abraham to read that morning. Instead, his wake up call comes in the form of an angel, a messenger who calls him out personally. Somewhere along his journey, Abraham lost all sense of himself. He used to be the one who would stand up to injustice and defend the innocent. He even argued with God about destroying the wicked city of Sodom, insisting that God should spare the city for the sake of just ten righteous residents. But now Abraham seems numb to injustice. He has become not merely a passive bystander to injustice like many fearful people. Abraham’s priorities have gotten so jumbled, that somehow he has become an active participant in injustice and in the sacrifice of his own child. Abraham has totally lost himself—his core identity, his core values, everything that made him who he was.

Abraham has lost his sense of self so much that the angel must call out his name twice. “Abraham! Abraham!” He has to work twice as hard to remember who he is after journeying for so long and climbing the mountain, all while following external advice rather than trusting his own gut feeling. Perhaps the angel was a voice within him, the sense of self he had lost. When this voice calls to him, he answers: Hineini, meaning “Here I am.” Abraham is back!

His inner voice speaks firmly: Don’t do it. Don’t sacrifice your son. Family is precious. This is not what God wants for you!

It was then that Abraham’s eyes were opened. He now saw clearly what his life had turned into, and it wasn’t what he wanted. Rather than continuing to sacrifice his son, he decided to pursue another possibility. He quickly found a ram to sacrifice instead, and we remember this ram each year as we blow the shofar.

The shofar is designed to be a wake-up call. It is a reminder of Abraham’s most dramatic life moment. And its ancient voice is calling us to change before we end up too far along a path that is not consistent with our deepest values and identity. It beckons us to return to ourselves and the core values that God planted within us.
We are commanded to hear the shofar each year on Rosh Hashanah, so that we remember this story and do not have to wait for our own dramatic life moment to occur. We do not have to wait for a health scare, relationship end, or death of a loved one to make a change in our lives. We can start living our lives in line with our values right now.

The Torah refers to Rosh Hashanah as Yom Hazikaron, meaning the day of remembrance. Traditionally on Rosh Hashanah, we remember Abraham and the ram. And we ask God to remember all of the good things about us and our ancestors. We try not to focus on the negative things that could merit punishment. But this is not just how we pray on Rosh Hashanah, this is also how we must live our lives if we wish to reach our true potential. Rather than relying on the mercy of God or a kind obituary writer, why don’t we make sure we will be remembered for doing good, by actually doing good? Why don’t we grab the pen and become the true and intentional authors of our lives?

I ask: what do you want to be remembered for? Do you want to be remembered as the guy who sacrificed his son? Or do you want to be remembered as a loving parent who was there for your children? Do you want to be remembered as a merchant of misery? Or as a merchant of hope? Do you want to be remembered as a good friend with a generous spirit? A brother or sister you could count on? An accomplished musician or a respected professional? Are your current actions reflecting these aspirations? Or are they currently out of sync, as the actions of Abraham and Alfred Nobel’s were at one point in their lives?

The shofar is calling us all to return to our deepest values and pursue the life visions we have in our hearts. We never know exactly how long we have to live, but we know exactly what we need to do in order to live the lives we want to be remembered for. Do not wait days or months or years for a tragedy to wake us up to the need for change. Let the beginning of this new year, the shofar blasts of 5775, be the only wakeup call we need to become the people we were meant to be. And let us say: Amen.

Shanah tovah!

Erev Rosh Hashanah

Like a professional spy, Rosh Hashanah has many names and identities. We know it best as the Jewish New Year, or Rosh Hashanah literally meaning “the head of the year.” But the Torah refers to this holiday as either Yom Teruah (the day of trumpet blasts) or Yom Hazikaron (the day of remembering), depending on the passage. The rabbis of the Talmud couldn’t seem to nail down Rosh Hashanah’s identity either. They knew Rosh Hashanah by all of these aliases, plus two more: Yom Hadin (the day of judgment) and finally Yom Harat Olam, meaning “the day the universe was conceived.” I am particularly drawn to this last alias.

If today is Yom Harat Olam, or “the day the universe was conceived,” that means we are celebrating the anniversary of creation. And when we celebrate an anniversary, we are not just commemorating some past event. We are celebrating its ongoing influence in our lives. For example, when a married couple celebrates their anniversary, they are ideally celebrating their ongoing relationship and continued love, rather than simply commemorating the date of their wedding ceremony. And when we celebrate the conception of the universe, or the birthday of the world as the cakes at tomorrow’s Family Service will say, we are not just celebrating the moment when our mustard-seed of a universe began to expand. We are celebrating the ongoing process and power of creation.

Our community includes a number of professional artists and parents, who have a profound understanding of what it is to create. The artists and parents among us know what it is to conceive and birth something into existence. But we do not all have to be professional artists or parents in order to participate in the ongoing process of creation. Every person here is a creator, fashioned in the image of the ultimate Creator. Every single one of us is a creator of life, as we create our own lives day by day, year by year.

Yom Harat Olam is the day for us to decide what it is exactly that we wish to create this year. Today is the day we must plant the seeds for the lives and growth we would like to see. But before we start planting seeds willy-nilly, we have to take a step back from our daily lives and consider the bigger picture. We need to reflect and come up with a rough sketch of the garden we wish to create. We must ask and answer for ourselves one of the most common and often dreaded job interview questions: “Where do you see yourself in 5, 10, or 20 years?”

Many people find their palms becoming moist with anxiety while trying to describe their long-term professional goals to an interviewer. But this question need not cause us anxiety on Rosh Hashanah, when it’s just us asking the question of ourselves and when we’ve already got the job. Yes, God already hired us to be the landscape artist of our own lives. God knows we all have what it takes to make something beautiful.

Most of us have been doing a great job already, even if we have doubted some of the decisions we have made along the way. Was it really a good idea to plant squash over here? It seems to have taken over the yard. Was it wise for me to go to medical school? I’m not sure that’s what I want to do for the rest of my life. Should I have waited longer to get married? Would marriage have been easier five years later? We all have these questions and doubts sometimes.

Even though these questions can sometimes become a source of anxiety, it is still a blessing that we have such capacity for self-reflection. It is this capacity for examination that enables us to turn our lives into beautiful and unique gardens. To share a personal example of self-reflection and transformation, let me tell you that although I am a rabbi now, I did not grow up in a religious household. My weekends were spent watching television with my family and playing outside with my friends, rather than attending Shabbat services or Religious School. But that all changed in 7th grade, when I had to write a speech for my English class. This middle school assignment led to perhaps more self-reflection than the teacher could have ever anticipated. It was then that a seed was planted. I don’t know if it was a comment my grandmother made about her parents hiding their Jewish identity in Nazi Germany, or the fact that one of my favorite TV shows at the time stared a Jewish character. But something inspired me to pick Judaism as the topic for my 7th grade speech.

As part of my research, I started attending Shabbat services with my grandmother. There was something about the music, the intergenerational community, and the ancient wisdom I encountered at Shabbat services that suddenly piqued my interest. It was like nothing I had ever experienced before. It led me to come back week after week, excited to learn something new and to connect with a newfound spiritual side of myself. I realized then that something had been missing in my life. There was this rich spiritual and communal experience available the whole time, and I was only now becoming aware of it. As soon as I encountered this warm and inviting Jewish community, I realized that it was something I wanted to plant in the garden of my life.

So I got to work. I grabbed a metaphorical shovel and started digging. I signed up for an adult Hebrew class with my grandmother and became a regular at both Shabbat services and Torah Study at age 12. I asked my mom if I could enroll in the Religious School, and I read as many books and websites about Judaism as I could find. I knew the more work I put into it, the more lush my garden would be.

But that turned out to be only one part of my garden. As I got more involved with the synagogue, I grew closer to the rabbi. He really took me under his wing and graciously allowed me to shadow him in order to see what rabbinic life was like, when I said that the idea of becoming a rabbi had crossed my mind, but I wasn’t sure exactly what rabbis did when they weren’t leading services. While shadowing him, I saw how this man was able to help countless families through all sorts of challenging circumstances. I saw how he shared in the many joys of their lives, too. And I saw how community and Torah were at the center of his life. In other words, I peeked into the garden of his life and realized that I wanted the garden of my life to have the same beauty. At age 13, I decided that I was going to become a rabbi, and I started planting more seeds.

I asked my family to enroll me in Jewish schools, including a Jewish boarding high school in North Carolina, so that I could get an even more substantial Jewish education. Then in college, I became a student leader in Hillel and began to teach Religious School at a local synagogue. I also made multiple visits to Hebrew Union College, the Reform rabbinical school, to get myself on their radar before I applied to them my senior year of college. I wasn’t going to leave the fulfillment of my dream to chance. I wasn’t going to let it sit in a stack of ideas for that vague “someday.” I knew if I wanted this to happen, I had to plant the seeds, water the soil, and pull out the weeds day after day, year after year. I was determined to create this beautiful garden of a life.

But I wouldn’t have known what to do, if it were not for my first rabbi and other mentors who guided me along the way. I would not have known how to make this garden, had I not seen the beautiful gardens that they created first. I would have wandered around lost if I had not asked them what I could do to create a life like the ones they had created. Of course, sometimes we all feel a bit lost. We may not know what exactly we want to do with our lives, until we encounter someone who is already doing it. This ambiguity about purpose and direction in life is very common. Even the first human beings, Adam and Eve, had this experience.

In the story of creation, which we will be reading in the next couple of weeks, God models for Adam and Eve what a garden can look like. God creates the garden for them to enjoy and then instructs them to work the land, so they can get a strong sense of how to take care of a garden before it is time for them to go off and create their own gardens. The first human beings needed this sort of modeling and guidance. They needed to be exposed to someone else’s creations before they could figure out how to create a good life for themselves. This is true for most people. That is why we have parents, teachers, rabbis, friends, and sacred texts to guide us. We all need artistic inspiration and guidance in life.

Sometimes we can also benefit from the fresh perspective of others. Good friends, loved ones, and professional advisers including therapists can help us to see when weeds may have grown in our gardens. They can often help us to remove those weeds before the weeds take over our garden. And they can recommend other things to plant in their place. Everyone around us is filled with some kind of wisdom. Everyone around us has made their own garden with at least one beautiful aspect that we can imitate. If you are feeling unsure about the garden you have created so far, you can change it. Research how you can remove the weeds from your life. Maybe those weeds are grudges, addictions, or negative self-talk. There are known ways to remove all of these weeds from the garden of your life. Other people can help you find out how.

If you are feeling lost or aimless in life, do not despair. Rather look to other gardens for inspiration. No garden is perfect, but many gardens are quite beautiful and worthy of imitation. If you are at a point where you love your garden, share it with others. Take other people under your wing and become a guide to the creation of beauty and meaning.

Today is Yom Harat Olam, the day we must decide what world we wish to create. Think about the seeds you have planted in the past, and if they seem worth planting again or nourishing further. You have already planted some beautiful things. But your garden is not full yet. There is still time in your life to create something new, no matter if you are 6 or 96 years old. So I ask: What seeds are you going to plant this year? And I pray that you will find the support you need to tend your garden and create the luscious and beautiful life you deserve. Shanah tovah!

the donkey, the candle and the rooster

In case you missed tonight’s story and discussion on Ki Tavo:

There once was a rabbi named Akiva. He was known for being an excellent student of Torah and an optimistic guy. Whenever anything unpleasant happened, he would always say, “Gam zeh l’tovah,” meaning “this too is for a good reason.” One day Rabbi Akiva set out on a journey with only the most basic travel essentials—no, not the tiny tube of toothpaste or travel-sized deodorant that we bring on trips today. All he brought was a donkey, a candle, and a rooster. The donkey was his main form of transportation, the candle was so he could study Torah late into the night, and the rooster was to wake him up in the morning.

After a long day of traveling, Rabbi Akiva arrived at a gated city. He went deep into the city and inquired at every inn about vacancies. (This was before you could make advanced hotel reservations online.) Everyone sent him away, and Akiva had no option except to sleep in a field outside of the city. As he walked out to the field, he said to himself, “Gam zeh l’tovah – this too is for a good reason.”

Shortly before sunset, Akiva made himself a pillow out of wild grass and found rocks to light his candle. It wasn’t easy to light the candle, but he managed to do everything he needed before nightfall. He lit the candle, tied his donkey to a tree, gave some grain to the rooster, and even reviewed the Torah lesson he had learned earlier that week before nodding off.

Shortly after falling asleep, he awoke to a horrifying sound. Akiva lifted up his candle and saw that a lion had come and attacked his donkey. The poor donkey didn’t stand a chance, and quickly became a midnight snack for the lion. Akiva laid perfectly still and quietly thanked God that he was still alive. He could have been a second midnight snack for the lion, but he was safe. “Gam zeh l’tovah,” he said, “This too is for a good reason.”

After watching the lion leave, Akiva fell back asleep and was woken again to a strange rustling sound. A weasel had now come for his rooster. Akiva tried to protect his rooster, but the weasel was too quick for him to catch. Now Akiva had no rooster. But he still had hope. “Gam zeh l’tovah,” he said, “This too is for a good reason.”

Just then a howling wind started to blow. Of course, it extinguished the candle that Akiva had worked so hard to light. Everything he had worked for was gone, but Akiva still said, “Gam zeh l’tovah” before falling back asleep in the dark and lonely field.

When Akiva woke up the next morning, he smelled smoke. He looked over at where the city gates were yesterday and saw charred stones and piles of ashes. Robbers had come in the middle of the night, raided, pillaged, and enslaved the inhabitants before burning the city down. If Akiva had been in the city that night, he could have been killed or enslaved. If his candle had been lit, or his animals had been making noise in the field, the robbers might have found him out there and made him a slave, too. Akiva was filled with awe as he said once again, “Gam zeh l’tovah. Indeed, every seeming misfortune was for a good reason.”

This week’s Torah portion ends with a series of blessings and curses. Rabbi Gunther Plaut, a prominent Reform Torah scholar, suggested that there is not a strong difference between these blessings and curses in the Torah. The curses are merely the inverse of the blessings, and vice versa.

In light of this interpretation and story, I have two questions for us to discuss:

1. What do you think about the difference between blessings and curses? Are they merely the inverse of the other? Or is it a matter of perspective as in Akiva’s story? As in the same thing can seem like a blessing or a curse, depending on one’s perspective?
2. If you were trying to encourage people to follow the rules of the Torah, would you include more blessings or more curses to motivate people? Do you think most people respond better to positive incentives or negative consequences? Why?