October 2014

In case you missed my sermon last night or would like to read it

Has anyone here played the game Candy Crush? It’s a game with seemingly infinite levels that you can play on your phone or through Facebook. I played Candy Crush until about level 150, when I realized that I was starting to get addicted. But I have friends who have gotten to level 400 and far beyond. While many people here tonight grew up without any electronic games, I grew up in a time when there were video games like Super Mario Brothers with a set number of levels. Once you beat the set number of levels, you beat the game. There was an immense feeling of accomplishment when you beat not only another level, but also the entire game after rescuing the princess from the eighth and final castle.

As in video games, there are many things we try to “beat” in real life. We can try to beat traffic or the crowds or the clock. Many of us also try to beat or conquer our fears. This week’s Torah portion, Lech L’cha, provides important insights about the process of dealing with fear. Our patriarch Abram seems to conquer his fear Super Mario Brothers-style. God asks Abram to leave everything he knows—his country, his homeland, his father’s house—and go to some mysterious land that God will show him. Abram doesn’t hesitate. He just gets up and goes, bringing his wife Sarai and nephew Lot with him from Haran to Canaan. If he had any fears, it seems like he conquered them all.

But shortly thereafter, we see a paradigm shift. Famine strikes Canaan, and Abram has to look elsewhere for food. He ends up going all the way down to Egypt. But before he gets there, we realize that he hasn’t completely conquered his fears. Abram’s fear becomes apparent again when he asks his wife, Sarai, to lie about her identity before they enter Egypt. Abram is worried that the Egyptian men will kill him in order to have access to his gorgeous wife.

How can a man who was so brave, who so easily left everything he knew for an unknown land, now let his fear take over to the point where he makes such an absurd request of his wife?

It may seem a bit strange, but it’s actually pretty realistic. People don’t just conquer their fears in one fell swoop. It takes time. We can have moments of bravery and sometimes relapse into fear and anxiety again. But if we stick with it, we can get better about confronting our fears. The only way to conquer a fear is to confront it again and again.

That may be part of why we celebrate holidays like Yom Kippur and Halloween each year. Many people’s greatest fear is of death. The fear of our own mortality has led to many creative euphemisms for death and countless products that mask the signs of aging to help us avoid our fear of life’s natural cycles.

But fortunately, holidays like Yom Kippur and Halloween give us a chance to confront death in a safe way each year. On Yom Kippur, we behave as dead people do. We do not eat, drink, bathe, or have marital relations. Some people even wear kittels or white robes that are used for burial. Yom Kippur is a day to practice dying, so that it’s not as scary later when it really happens. Halloween is another holiday when we surround ourselves with images of death – skeletons, ghosts, and zombies – all to desensitize us to the trauma of life’s end.

Each year, these holidays encourage us to confront our fear again because we need the repeated exposure. Fear is not conquered in the manner of Super Mario Brothers. It is more like Candy Crush. There are multiple levels of fear. We may conquer one fear like Abram, and then struggle more with another fear. But the more we confront our fears, the less scary they become. May we all be blessed like Abram with the resilience to confront our fears again and again, until they have disappeared from our lives. And may we be blessed also like Abram with courage and peace. Amen.

In case you missed my Yom Kippur morning sermon or would like to read it.

Like Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur has acquired a number of names and identities over time. It began with the biblical names of Yom HaKippurim (“The Day of Atonements”) and Shabbat Shabbaton (“The Sabbath of Sabbaths”). Later in the Talmud, Yom Kippur is referred to as Yoma (Aramaic for “The Day”). It is also called Yoma Rabbah (“The Great Day”) and Tzoma Rabbah (“The Great Fast”). One would think that six different names would be sufficient for a single day of the year. But over time, people also began to refer to Yom Kippur as Yom HaDin, “The Day of Judgment,” which was originally the nickname of Yom Kippur’s good friend, Rosh Hashanah.

While Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur began as very different holidays, their proximity on the calendar has led to a blurring of identities. The shofar used to be Rosh Hashanah’s “thing,” but people liked it so much that they added just one more shofar blast to the end of Yom Kippur. The prayer Unetaneh Tokef, which famously asks who shall live and who shall die, was also originally Rosh Hashanah’s “thing.” But it was such a moving reading that it became a part of Yom Kippur’s liturgical repertoire, too. And it was largely because of the prayer Unetaneh Tokef that Yom Kippur also came to be known as the Day of Judgment.

In the first of Unetaneh Tokef’s four paragraphs, the Day of Judgment is described as a fearful event. Even the angels who have presumably done nothing wrong are quickly pacing back and forth in trepidation. “Hinei Yom HaDin!” they proclaim with anxiety. “Behold, it is the Day of Judgment!” The prayer describes how God will be the Judge who evaluates every creature, taking everything into account, even the things that were forgotten or unnoticed by others.

On one hand, I understand this anxiety about being evaluated. It makes me think back to my first Religious School teaching job when an accreditation team came to observe my classroom. I worked hard to make my lesson plan the best it could be for that day. But you never know what children will do or say especially in front of strangers that you are hoping to impress. I was so worried that one of my students would say something inappropriate while the evaluators were in my classroom and that the whole school would be denied accreditation due to my class and my shortcomings as a teacher. But everything went fine. The team poked their head in while my students were actively engaged in an appropriate discussion. I breathed a sigh of relief as they shut the door, and the school received the necessary accreditation.

Afterwards, I wondered why I was so nervous about being evaluated, and I realized that most people find the prospect of being judged a bit intimidating and even somewhat threatening. On my favorite, guilty pleasure reality TV show at the time (WifeSwap), I would often see characters shout some variation of the phrase, “Don’t judge me!” as if judgment were the greatest sin possible. A number of popular musicians, including the late Tupac Shakur and the more current Miley Cyrus, also assert in their lyrics that only God should be judging individuals. Suffice to say, we really don’t like to be judged by other people.

Some might say that it’s because we don’t like to hear negative things about ourselves. While that’s certainly part of it, I think there’s even more behind our belief that God generally does a better job of judging us than other people do.

I recently learned about something called the Zeigarnik effect. In 1927, in a series of groundbreaking experiments, Bella Zeigarnik concluded that when given a broken circle to consider, the human brain focuses on the unfinished part of the circle. The same tendency appears in many other aspects of life. People have a significant inclination to notice and be attracted to that which is disappointing, torn, unfinished, and broken.

But God evaluates things differently. God sees the whole picture, while our eyes narrowly focus on a fraction of reality. God is Dayan Ha-Emet, the True Judge who can see the positive and negative simultaneously. God is not hyper-focused on the broken part of the circle, like so many people are. The traditional image of judgment for the High Holy Days is an old-fashioned scale, where one side measures our mitzvot or positive actions, while the other side measures our sins or negative actions. All we have to do to be written in the metaphorical Book of Life is to tip the scale in a positive direction. Yes, we need the positive side to outweigh the negative side by some margin, but we are still considered acceptable and lovable and worthy of life’s blessings even with our admittedly negative qualities.

That’s not often the message we receive from the media. Advertisements especially prey on our insecurities and demand an unrealistic standard of perfection from us. We are never thin, rich, beautiful, or young enough according to these standards. Photoshop is brought in to save the poor wrinkly and flabby souls whose photographs were already the closest thing we have resembling this narrow view of perfection. We are always a broken circle in their eyes and often in our own eyes as well.

Even the prayers that people composed for Yom Kippur focus only on the broken and disappointing aspects of our life. We confess our shortcomings in the Ashamnu prayer, which describes our actions in terms of an alphabet of woe: “Ashamnu, Bagadnu, Gazalnu – we have trespassed, dealt treacherously, and secretly robbed.” But this is only part of the picture, and Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first chief rabbi of Israel (when it was still the British Mandate of Palestine) recognized that. To counterbalance this negativity, he wrote a new prayer: “Ahavnu, Bachinu, Gamalnu – We have loved, we have cried, we have given back.” In addition to the alphabet of woe and failure, we must consider the alphabet of joy and success. This is true judgment, a holistic and godlike evaluation of not only our shortcomings, but also our strongpoints and beautiful traits.

It is vitally important when judging ourselves and others to consider not only the broken parts of the circle, but also the many arcs that are perfectly in place. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, the great 18th century Hassidic thinker, taught that we must search for even the tiniest speck of goodness in a person whom others have dismissed as a worthless sinner. When we train ourselves to see the goodness in such a person, we will also come to see the same goodness in ourselves. This is important for everyone and especially people who are prone to depression and self-condemnation. If we get too down on ourselves, too focused on the negative qualities, we will become paralyzed and unable to reach our spiritual potential in life. We need to seek out even the smallest traces of positivity to encourage ourselves and each other to build upon these successes, rather than to give up and resign ourselves to a lowly state of living. That is the only way to accomplish our sacred task of becoming better and better each year.

When we practice the art of finding the good in other people and in ourselves, our view of life becomes more godly. We become more like God, Dayan Ha-Emet, the True Judge who sees the potential for a perfect circle, rather than focusing on the small segment that is currently in need of repair. May we all learn to see ourselves and others as God does this year, and come to recognize the abundance of goodness around us and within us all. Shanah tovah!

In case you missed my Kol Nidrei sermon or would like to read it.

Long ago, there were two Buddhist monks on a journey from one monastery to another. Seeking enlightenment, they took a vow of silence and chastity and were on their way to learn meditation from a famous Zen master. About a day into their journey, they arrived at a river, and on the bank they came across a young woman in a beautiful dress. “Good afternoon,” she said. The two monks nodded a silent greeting. “I was on my way home until I became lost. Now, thanks to a kind old woman, I know that my village is on the other side of this river, but I am afraid to cross the water. Can you please help me?” she asked. The younger of the two monks shook his head silently.

Without a word, the older monk picked up the young woman, carried her across the river, and set her down gently on the other side. The two monks continued on their way, side by side in silence. Three days later, the younger monk couldn’t take it anymore, “I can’t believe you did that! We took a vow not to touch women! How could you carry her like that?!” The older monk broke his silence then too, and said, “I carried the woman for just three minutes, but you have been carrying her for three days.”

Yom Kippur is a day to reflect upon everything we have been carrying around for the past year: all of the guilt, grudges, resentments, and emotional pain that we usually try to hide. Our prayers on this day bring these aspects of our lives to the forefront of our minds as they so thoughtfully remind us of all the mistakes we have made this year. Indeed, at times we have all acted selfishly or foolishly. It can be difficult not to replay these embarrassing moments in our minds – you know those moments when we realize what happened and say, “I can’t believe I did that! They must think I’m such an idiot.”

It’s difficult to let go of that shame. But it can be even more challenging not to mentally replay the moments when other people’s selfish or foolish behavior hurt us deeply. Someone may have made an insensitive comment about us or something dear to our hearts without realizing the pain their words could cause. Others may have intentionally deceived us and shattered our trust. Even if these incidents happened long ago, the anger we feel about these wrongdoings may still be festering in our hearts.

We may also feel anger towards people who have broken and disregarded rules, as in the monk story. It can be very frustrating to see others behave as if they are above the rules that we work so hard to abide by. We may also feel resentment towards people who have not contributed their fair share to a group project or shared household. Or we may be carrying resentment towards those who have asked more of us than we could possibly give. Even if the initial incidents happened long ago, the resentment we feel about these grievances may still be smoldering within us.

Rabbi Harold Kushner once related the story of a woman whose husband walked out on her and their three children. Every month after the husband left, the wife struggled to pay their bills, while her ex-husband lived it up with his new wife in another state. The now single mother was furious. Ten years went by, and this woman was still as angry as the day he left. She went to ask Rabbi Kushner for advice. He said it was like she was walking around with a hot coal in her hand, always ready to throw it at the person who had hurt her. But it had been ten years, and the hot coal had never come close to him. All she had been doing by holding onto this anger was burning a hole into her own hand.

While there are many things in life worth getting angry about, there are very few things worth staying angry about. It’s not healthy to completely suppress our feelings. It is vital that we acknowledge our anger and upset feelings as they occur within us. But most grievances are worth thinking about for only a little while – maybe two minutes and certainly not more than two days. The Talmud (in Sanhedrin 27a) defines an enemy as a person one has refused to speak to for three days out of spite. If three days after an argument, we find ourselves still obsessing over it, we are not simply acknowledging our feelings, we are actively creating an enemy and nursing a grudge.

The Torah warns us not to hold a grudge in Leviticus 19:18, which is part of the holiness code that we will read tomorrow afternoon. The verse reads, “Lo tikom v’lo titor. You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge.” Rabbi Menachem Ben Saruk, a Spanish rabbi from the 10th century, defined titor (the word for bearing a grudge) as “holding onto anger.” Both the Torah reading and the prayers of Yom Kippur are advising us to stop carrying around these grudges and resentments in our hearts.

No message could be more fitting for Yom Kippur, a day the Torah calls “Shabbat Shabbaton,” or the Sabbath of Sabbaths. We all know the essence of Shabbat is sacred rest, a break from the mundane pattern of endless work. Forgiveness is a form of sacred rest. It is not an emotional state that arises naturally; forgiveness is a conscious choice to let ourselves rest and to stop carrying the cumbersome anger and resentment with us everywhere we go. The rabbis of the Talmud understood the act of carrying to be a form of work. They specifically mention carrying among the 39 categories of work forbidden on the Sabbath. On Yom Kippur, the Sabbath of Sabbaths, we have a sacred obligation to rest and not carry anything – not a briefcase, nor a jackhammer, nor a grudge. Today is the most important day to rest both physically and emotionally. It is a day to let go of the heavy emotional and spiritual baggage we have been carrying inside of us for so long.

What’s more, the Torah also teaches us about another Sabbath—the sabbatical year when even the land gets to rest and all debts are forgiven. One of my childhood teachers once told me that relationships are like bank accounts. We cannot withdraw more than we deposit without facing penalties. We may have overdrafted our relationship accounts with others this year, and they may have overdrafted their relationship accounts with us. This Yom Kippur, this Sabbath of Sabbaths, is a time to settle and forgive these emotional debts. It is time to end the tally marking of who is right and who was wronged. It is time to start fresh, emotionally debt-free in the new year.

There are a few things that we have no spiritual obligation to forgive, such as murder, slander, and domestic abuse. But for the more common emotional debts that we may need to settle, and for people who need the spiritual release from the emotional burdens of even the most egregious offenses, I offer a few tips on how to forgive this year: It may help to remember Rabbi Kushner’s analogy, that anger and resentment are like hot coals which hurt us when we hold onto to them. When we hold grudges, we are often hurting ourselves more than the person who originally hurt us. And the more mental energy we give them, the less mental energy we have for the more important things in life. When we constantly think about them and how they hurt us, we are allowing them to live in our heads rent-free and do more damage to our property. It’s time to evict them and reclaim that mental space for ourselves. It is time to lighten our burden by refusing to carry resentment in our hearts any longer. The anger and hurt and resentment will only get bigger and heavier if we continue to focus on them like the young monk who eventually exploded in rage. We must decide whether to focus on resentment forever or forgiveness now. Which one do you believe will make you feel better today and in the long run?

In the case of loved ones who have hurt us, we can shift our focus from the ways they have let us down to the ways they have raised us up and brought joy into our lives. We can magnify their positive qualities, rather than their shortcomings under the magnifying glass of our mind. It is our choice how to view loved ones who have hurt us. We can choose to view them compassionately and remind ourselves of how much forgiveness would mean to us if we were in their situation. Imagine if we were the ones who made a mistake and someone else held it against us forever. Is that something we really want to do to another person? Is being right more important than being happy? Must we self-righteously gloat over their failings forever?

Regarding loved ones or even strangers who have hurt us deeply, we could also write a brutally honest letter telling them how much pain they have caused us. But instead of sending them the letter filled with pain and anger, we can tear it up and burn it. As we watch the smoke rise, we can think about the fact that we are not limited or defined by that pain and anger. We will be here long after those feelings disappear.

There are many steps we can take to loosen our grip on the grudges and resentment we have been carrying around. There are many ways that letting go of this pain can benefit our lives. For those seeking enlightenment like the monks, it may come from lightening our own emotional load. Enlightenment is a process that we must choose and realize for ourselves. We must decide what to set down on the bank of a river, or to forgive in the bank of our relationships with others. We do not have to keep carrying every mistake and resentment with us for days and years on end. We can choose to let go. May we decide to truly observe Yom Kippur, the Sabbath of Sabbaths, this year, by not carrying the resentment through this day and choosing instead to engage in the sacred and restful act of forgiveness. Amen.