ROSH
HASHANAH—OCTOBER 3-4, 2016 / 1-2 TISHREI, 5777
L’Shanah Tovah, everyone. Midway is back together again for this New
Year, 5777, and I know you join with me in prayer for a healthy, fulfilling,
and peaceful New Year.
An elderly man, faced with the
usual medical challenges brought on by old age, feared his wife was losing her
hearing and so he decided to create an experiment by which he could determine
once and for all if her hearing was failing.
One day, while she was sitting outside reading, he quietly crept up
behind her, and from a bit of a distance, he said, “Martha, can you hear
me?” No response. He crept up a little closer and said,
“Martha, can you hear me?” No
response. Finally, he got right behind
her ear, and said, “Martha, can you hear me?”
And Martha replied, “For the third time, ‘Yes.’”
Hearing plays a very important role
in Jewish ritual and that is certainly the case on Rosh Hashanah. We have to hear the shofar blown and allow
the blasts to penetrate our souls. We
have to listen to the words of the Torah.
We have to listen to our conscience at this time of year and confess to
our shortcomings and failures. And
today, as twice every day, we have to recite the words of Sh’ma, a word which
itself means “Hear:” Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. The problem with the Sh’ma is, as with any
rote declaration, after about the one thousandth repetition, we may no longer
be hearing what the words are really saying.
This year, we have engaged in a
very unusual—some might say foolish, others might say daring—exercise, with our
prayer services. We recited the Sh’ma in
an unusual way with hopes of hearing it in a way we have never heard it before. We read Torah in an unusual way with hopes of
hearing the Rosh Hashanah reading in a way we have never heard it before. Why should we tamper with tradition,
especially in a community that respects tradition as deeply as ours?
We
could all come up with a hundred items that distinguish us as Jews, but
certainly on top of that list, or in the very least close to the top, would be
how we gather for worship and study.
Praying is a quintessentially Jewish action, not unique to the Jewish
people but certainly characteristic of the Jewish people, and when Jews come to
our services and cannot follow them or worst, follow them only to find them
uninspiring, that should be a problem for us all. It’s a problem because if anyone comes to the
synagogue and leaves untouched by the words of this great Mahzor, so
much of which is steeped in the values we cherish as a people—that’s a
problem. It’s a problem because we have
a special relationship with God. God and
the Jewish people—we’re tight! But in
order to maintain that relationship, we need the proper tools, and the tools
that are right for one group may not necessarily be right for another. How do we create a mikra kodesh, a sacred
gathering on holidays and festivals, that moves people, that inspires people, that
galvanizes people? This challenge is not
new. And if you want to know just how
un-new it is, let’s go back 2500 years to the days of the great prophet Isaiah.
Isaiah
was not someone you’d want to invite over for dinner. He was testy and critical, and he was always
telling us what God had to say. That
said, he was usually right about the things that bothered him. He had a few words for the Jewish people when
it came to prayer or worship. Isaiah
speaks:
My Lord
said:
Because
that people [he’s talking about us] has approached [Me, and here he is talking
about God]
With its
mouth, and honored Me with its lips,
But has
kept its heart far from Me,
its worship
of Me
Merely a commandment
of men, learned by rote--….
So the wisdom
of its wise ones shall fail
And the
prudence of its prudent ones shall vanish.
(Isaiah 29:13-14)
Let me tell you in plain English what Isaiah is saying. He’s saying that if you come to synagogue,
and mumble mindlessly for three or four hours, saying what you’ve said
thousands of times before, not necessarily even knowing what you’ve said, and
if that is passed off as authentic worship, then eventually, good people will
drift away, because they will know, as sure as does God, that prayer without
sincerity, prayer with your body in one space and your kishkas somewhere else,
is not prayer.
I heard
this great story about the first Chabad rabbi who made his way to the Soviet
Union in 1987, when the Perestroika movement, that movement for Reform in the
Communist Party was underfoot. It was
the Lubavitcher rebbe who sent one of his sheluhim, one of his
emissaries to Kiev to reignite the Jewish souls there who for so long could
practice their religious traditions only secretly or at great risk of losing
financially and professionally. And so
it came to Kol Nidre, the eve of Yom Kippur, and the synagogue was packed for
once in many, many decades. The hazan
chanted Kol Nidre and everyone was moved by the music. But it was a very traditional service, and in
spite of the Hebrew/Russian mahzorim, every word of the mahzor translated, the
rabbi could tell that he was losing the congregation. They simply didn’t know what to do. They had been away from prayer for so long. So the rabbi decided he would, break the
monotony and tell a story about the Ba’al Shem Tov that would illustrate that
you don’t need to be a Talmudic scholar to touch God. So he tells this story.
Once,
the Ba’al Shem Tov (Israel ben Eliezer, aka: Ba’al Shem Tov 1700-1760), the
charismatic and influential founder of the modern day Hasidic movement, sensed
that the good Lord above was on the verge of sentencing the Jewish people in a
harsh manner. And as such, the Ba’al
Shem encouraged his Hasidim, in this little Polish town, to pray with all their
heart, all their might and all their soul. So the Hasidim went to work—that is,
they prayed fervently. But it wasn’t
working. A poor, untutored shepherd was
in the back of the shtibel and he wanted to join in, but he didn’t know how to
pray. So he opened up the prayer book,
and the first page as in so many of these European prayer books was the Hebrew
alphabet. And he read the alphabet out
loud and then shouted to God—Look, I don’t know Hebrew, but I know the letters,
so I give You the letters and You assemble them the way they need to be
assembled.” And at that point, the rabbi
in Kiev said, the Ba’al Shem Tov knew that the community was saved because all
that was required for a prayer to be real was for the prayer to be recited with
utter sincerity. And that poor illiterate
shepherd had pierced the heavens in a way that no other Hasid in the room
could.
The Jews of Kiev loved that
story. They related. And all of a sudden, one heard resounding
through the expansive sanctuary of the Kiev synagogue someone who shouted, “Alef.” And a few people responded “Alef.” And the same voice was heard, “Beis.” And now more of the congregation returned the
call, “Beis.” And after a minute or two,
the whole congregation had recited the entire Hebrew alphabet. It was a havayah—an experience, unforgettable
and profound. For that community, at
that time, in that place, the alphabet was the most sincere prayer uttered that
evening. Completely unorthodox and
completely genuine.
Mark Twain once remarked that,
“Golf is a good walk spoiled.” Sometimes
I think the way we read Torah is a good story interrupted. It’s almost impossible to build any emotional
crescendos when you break it up into five parts, as we do on Rosh Hashanah; six
parts, as we do on Yom Kippur; and seven parts, as we do on Shabbat. Moreover, because so few of us understand the
Hebrew, we become dependent on the Mahzor’s translation, and the Torah reading
itself becomes background music. The reading
of the Torah, so central to our weekly gatherings, was never meant to be
background music. It was meant to be the
symphony. In a pre-printing press era, when no one had
humashim, and not everyone was conversant with the Hebrew, then it was the tool
that we used today, the metrugeman—a person conversant with the Hebrew who
would translate clause by clause, the Torah reading—which allowed people to
both hear and understand and ideally feel the words of the Torah. I witnessed this ritual myself in Jerusalem
several years ago when I made my way into a tiny Yemenite synagogue, and where
the Ba’al Keriah, the Torah Reader, stopped after each verse and the meturgeman
translated the verse into Aramaic. Of
course, that practice in Israel is the Jewish irony of Jewish ironies. This group, so stuck in a specific tradition,
translated the Hebrew for Israelis who essentially understand the Hebrew, into
Aramaic, a language that very few of them understand at all. But there you have it: a demonstration of the
grip that ritual and tradition have on people so much so that these rituals
persist long after they make any sense.
During
the course of a service, especially one that lasts for four or five hours, one
could conceivably drift; maybe even take a little nap. Of course, this has never happened to anyone
in this room, but the service being long and the Hebrew acting sometimes as a
stumbling block between ourselves and the prayers, we might just find ourselves
elsewhere—figuring out a problem at work, wondering who won’t show up for the
yom tov dinner, catching up with a neighbor whom we have not seen in some time,
and so forth. Just as it is with every
other space in the world, it is possible to be in one space physically, but to
be totally absent at the same time. And
this disconnect is particularly disturbing during prayer, when the point of so
many of these ancient traditions is to direct us to being present, being
mindful, being aware of the miracle of the moment. Being present means being engaged. And being engaged, however it comes about, is
a worthy if not sacred objective.
There’s
a beautiful verse in Proverbs about mezuzot petahai, “the mezuzot of
God’s entrances.” (Proverbs 8:34). Rabbi
Yehudah bar Sima has a problem with the mezuzot reference (cf. Midrash Rabbah,
Ki Tavo, 2). Why? Because we may have mezuzot on the doorposts
of our homes, but where does God have mezuzot?
And if your answer is the synagogue, which is sort of God’s home, it’s
not a very good answer because a synagogue does not require mezuzot. That’s a bit of trivia everyone should
know. Mezuzot are fixed on the places
where you live but not on the places where your work or exercise or even pray. It’s not wrong to affix a mezuzah there but
it is not required. So Rabbi Yehudah
searches for an answer and he explains as follows. The verse is meant to teach us something
about being present. Just as a mezuzah
never departs from the doorpost, so too we should never depart from God’s home,
whether the synagogue or the Bet Midrash, the study hall. As long as we remain present in God’s home we
will attain happiness. And that very
verse intimates for all of us how to be present: Ashrei adam shome’a li—Happy
is the one who can hear Me [that is, God].
If we are truly present in God’s home, we will be able to hear God. And if we are not hearing God, it’s not
necessarily because God is silent, but it may just be that we’re
hearing-impaired, hampered by a spiritual protocol that obstructs our access to
the beauty of the mahzor’s words, the cantor’s pleas, or the narratives of our holy
Torah. Today’s experiment was an attempt
at getting us to be more present and improve our ability to hear. Were we successful? You’re going to let me know between now and
Yom Kippur. We’re going to be sending
out a brief Survey Monkey to the congregation in order to collect your feedback
on this prayer and study experience.
I understand that this type of
service is not everyone’s bowl of chicken soup.
I’m actually not interested in replacing the traditional service that
has been the hallmark of our congregation since its inception. I love that service—all five-and-a-half hours
of it. That classic, unedited service is
part of who we are as Jews. But what I think we should consider as a community
that serves a broad-base of Jews, a community with a very wide umbrella covering
Jews of all backgrounds and temperaments, like ours, is an alternative
experience, not because we are trying to dumb-down Judaism, but precisely
because we are trying to open it up, to as many people as possible, to all Jews
who yearn for an authentic relationship with our tradition and God at this
special time of year.
Will some people laugh at a
Conservative synagogue conducting a service like this? Absolutely.
But you know creativity through the ages always invites ridicule. There’s this great song, written in 1937 by
George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira, “They All Laughed”?
They all laughed at Christopher Columbus
When he said the world was round
They all laughed when Edison recorded sound
They all laughed at Wilbur and his brother
When they said that man could fly
They told Marconi
Wireless was phony
It’s the same old cry
They laughed at me wanting you
Said I was reaching for the moon…
Well, that part of the song I needn’t get into. The point is that innovation, discovery, are
rarely viewed in a positive light because human nature is drawn to the
familiar, the known (whether it’s right or wrong), the accepted, and is often
anxious if not downright fearful of change.
That’s not a criticism; that’s an observation and everyone in this room,
myself included, almost always greet change with some degree of concern. But then as Jews, we have this thing called
the Yamim Norai’m, The Days of Awe, days during which we are actually
encouraged to do that which we fear most: change. Question the status quo and ask
yourself—could it not be better?
Abraham
Joshua Heschel once said, “To pray is to know how to stand still and dwell upon
a word.” Isn’t that beautiful? Were we to take Dr. Heschel’s advice, our
service would be 10-12 hours in duration.
But maybe what he is telling us is that it’s not so terrible to make
some judicious choices in which prayers will be said and which we will save for
another Rosh Hashanah in another year, to sacrifice quantity in the service of
quality.
You
know, I reject the idea that man created God.
To me, that’s a declaration of cynicism.
But I do believe we, that all of humanity, are capable of creating the
presence of God, given the right words at the right moment. To do that which brings the presence of God
into this space is the whole point of this sacred space. To ask God to be with us this first day of
the New Year, to help us create a loving family, a caring community, an ethical
nation, a world that pursues peace… For
us to emerge from this space empowered because we know our hands have become
the hands of God in doing the good work of healing on this earth… For us to begin this New Year with a renewed
sense of mission that in fact, we are capable of making a difference in the
lives of the people we love the most… that is no laughing matter. Why not be bold enough nd flexible enough to
create just that sort of havahah, that sort of experience? That is what an authentic religious
experience can be if we only choose to make those changes that will make it so.
Ketivah v’hatimah Tovah—May we all be written and inscribed
into that Book of Courage and Daring to do what is best for our fellow Jews and
all good people wherever they may reside.
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