Shanah Tovah,
everybody. It’s wonderful to see so many of you here this Rosh Hashanah. It’s
wonderful to see more of you this year than I did last year. And for those who
are streaming our service, I wish I could see you, but I hope you are as happy
to see me as I am happy to see everyone here. Next year, God-willing, we will
truly be beyond Covid and all will feel more comfortable about being at an
in-person service. Clearly we have some way to go in fighting back this
pandemic. We’ll get there. I am sure. Much of life requires a great deal of
patience.
In addition, to borrow a famous
line from Charles Dickens, a Tale of Two Cities—"It was the best of times
and the worst of times…” I think that pretty much summarizes our family’s experience
this past year. Our daughter, Shuli, met a wonderful young man, Aaron Shansky,
and the two married and that was just the best of the best this year. But Rami,
our eldest, also died tragically and that was just the worst of the worst. El
and I want to thank you all for your kindness and compassion and your
understanding during that very difficult time. We sent out many notes of thanks
but most likely were not able to reach everyone, but we both thank you all for
your cards, and emails, and donations, and concern. Thank you, thank you.
A guy goes to a psychiatrist and says
“Doc, you got help me, I can’t sleep at night.” The psychiatrist asks, “What
seems to be the problem—family issues, work issues, money issues? The guy says,
“No, it’s the ghosts underneath my bed. They’re very, very noisy.” The doctor
says, “You have ghosts underneath your bed?” The guy says, “Yea, they’re huge,
ugly, and above all, very, very noisy!” The doctor knows he’s got a tough case here
but says, “I think I can help you. It’s going to require a lot of therapy. Can
you see me twice a week for about a year?” The man says, “That’s fabulous, Doc.
I don’t know how to thank you. I’ll start next week.” Next week rolls around,
and the man doesn’t show up. Two weeks, three weeks, four weeks go by, and the
man never calls or makes an appointment, and the doctor basically forgets about
him, until a full six months later, the doctor meets the man at a local bar and
the two immediately recognize each other. The doctor says—“So good to see you
but how are you sleeping these days? “Like a baby,” the man responds, “thanks
for asking, Doc. I got the whole thing solved.” The doctor says, “I guess you
were able to find another psychiatrist to help you through those sleep issues?”
No, the man replies, “I saw a carpenter.” “The psychiatrist is now totally
puzzled and says, “A carpenter?” “Yea,” the man says. “For $50 bucks he sawed
the legs off my bed and now the ghosts can’t crawl under there anymore.”
I don’t know if you have any ghosts
underneath your bed, but I do know that for many of us, there have been a whole
lot of sleepless nights, with so much to worry about, even to fear, during the
past 18 months. The two candidates for the scariest developments of 2021 are
the pandemic, with its Delta variant adding a substantial scare element into our
lives, and also anti-Semitism, which has been on the rise for a few years
already.
You know, I serve on the Board of
Ethics of the Town of Oyster Bay, which has really turned into a lovely experience,
far more satisfying than I could ever imagine, and one day, I was speaking with
one town volunteer and we were talking shop—she about her church and me about our
synagogue. She wanted to know all about what we were doing to keep everyone
safe. So I told her about social distancing, reconfiguring the sanctuary,
streaming, zooming, masks, and so forth. She was fascinated and then she said,
“Rabbi, what are those ugly white cement boxes lining the synagogue?” “Oh,
those,” I replied, “those are security barriers to keep anti-Semites and other
crazies from ramming the building or the people in and around it.” She was so
taken aback, really shocked, and then realized the kind of issues a Jewish
community has to think about, and what a smart move we had made. By now, I’m
sure she has seen how beautiful they look thanks to Sisterhood and Men’s Club
and all of you for contributing to giving them a happy floral face. And they
are beautiful, though when we think about why they need to be there, the
bigotry and the violence in our society, those reasons remain truly ugly facts
of life in America these days.
I was ordained in 1981. If anyone
had told me that 40 years later, in 2021, I would be presiding over active
shooter exercises in our Religious School, herding the kids into safe rooms
where they would have to know how to lock the door and sit quietly, I would
have thought the prediction unbelievable. But that’s what we started doing
pre-Covid, and we will most likely have more such exercises in the future
because as a responsible and conscientious leadership will tell you: pray for
the best; prepare for the worst.
I have a better feeling about beating Covid
than I do about beating anti-Semitism. And that is for the simple reason that
at least for Covid, there’s a vaccine. Anti-Semitism, in contrast, is a virus,
a cancer, a disorder, for which there seems to be no treatment. If anyone
thinks that by writing more letters to the editor, or staging more rallies, or
hounding our representatives in government for stricter legislation will in the
end finally neutralize this disease, they are operating under a grand illusion.
Anti-Semitism has been with us for centuries and will most likely continue for
centuries more. But even with no cure, there is a way to manage it, and it’s
not by running scared, it’s by standing fearlessly, with resolve and
conviction, that Jews are true Americans, that they are as good and decent as
any other Americans, and that Jews have as much a right to a national homeland
as any other ethnic minority or majority. When Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota
representative, groups America and Israel along with Hamas and the Taliban,
she’s thinking irrationally and speaking out of ignorance. When Wyoming
representative Marjorie Taylor Green equates Covid precautionary mandates with the
treatment of Jews during the Holocaust, she is thinking irrationally and
exposing her own profound ignorance of the Shoah. When irrational claims of
this nature are made, it is our duty to point out just how irrational and
ignorant they are, but the one thing we should not do is let statements like
these scare us. In our hands, we have the greatest weapon known to humankind—the
truth. And when we speak the truth, whether to power or the powerless, we need
never be afraid.
Actually, let me tell you a story
about fear. Rabbi Avi Weiss, the former spiritual leader of the Hebrew
Institute of Riverdale, and the founder of Yeshivat Hovevei Torah, an open Orthodox
yeshivah, once had an opportunity to introduce Ariel Sharon, the former prime
minister of Israel, as a hero of the Yom Kippur War and a fearless general. And
Sharon got up and said, Rabbi—you think during those wars I had no fear? I had
plenty of fear. But one must act as if
one has no fear.
The prime minister’s confession is
not only quite a public admission, but it’s grounded in good, kosher Jewish
philosophy. Yitzhak ben Yehudah Abarbanel (1437-1508), a Portuguese financier,
philosopher, and Bible commentator, wrote as follows:
Those who go to war thinking they will
not die are not real heroes.
Just the same, those who give charity
but have no concern about money, are not serious givers.
Heroes and patrons are those who act
contrary to their feelings, their fears.
(Based on Abarbanel to Genesis 32)
This idea, so at odds with the
generation that grew up thinking do it if it feels good, is urging us to
consider our feelings only up to a certain point. Feelings are certainly not to
be ignored, but neither should they be in charge. Sometimes the right thing to
do doesn’t feel good at all. To admit an error is humbling, but it’s most likely
the right thing to do. Keeping a promise even though it’s going to cost us big
bucks, is painful, but it’s most likely the right thing to do. To openly protest
hateful speech may itself make you the target of other people’s irrational
wrath, but it’s most likely the right thing to do.
The fact is that there are many
things we do in life that provoke anxiety and fear, but we do them because they
are either the right thing to do or they are important enough for us to take
the risk. There is virtually nothing in life that doesn’t entail some level of
risk, some fear. But much of life is not about avoiding risk, which is
impossible, but rather its managing risk, which is unavoidable.
Let’s talk risk. Based on the
National Center for Health Statistics data, what do you think is the greater
mortal risk—bungee jumping of canoeing? Canoeing is riskier. What is riskier—skydiving
or a dance party? The dance party is more dangerous. What is riskier—flying in
an airplane or driving a car? The answer is driving a car. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/564015/probability-being-killed-everyday-activities-chart
What about your risk of
contracting Covid? Well, there is a risk, obviously, but like all the other
aspects of our life, we make smart decisions, we don’t tempt fate, and we put
into play those precautionary measures that the best of the medical community
advises, which means maintaining a distance from others, wearing a mask,
washing hands, avoiding big crowds, and above all, getting the vaccine. These
behaviors are not based on fear, but on managing the Covid risk we all face
when we venture forth to do whatever it is we need to do.
One
way to draw the Covid risk down to the bare minimum would be to stay at home,
but then, oddly enough, one has to take into consideration the risk of staying
at home. Household accidents account for three times as many deaths as do
injury from auto accidents. Believe me—I totally understand the desire to maximize
time spent at home. El and I don’t go out that much at all. But the point is
this: try as we may, we never bring the risk factor down to zero. It’s just not
possible.
Can you imagine what life would be
like if we kept every risk factor in mind every second of our lives? We would
be paralyzed, literally, with fear. And that is no way to live.
There is a lovely passage in the Mahzor, in
the Shaharit Amidah, in which we ask God:
Let
fear of You [God} descend upon all Your works
Well, after
all we have had to say about fear, of what possible value is there in asking
God to bathe us all in some sort of cosmic, divine fear? To answer this
question, we turn to the writings of Rabbi Joseph Soloveichik (1903-1993). He
was the Rosh Yeshivah of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of
Yeshivah University. He was known simply as the Rav (the Rabbi), and he was and
still is held in great esteem by Orthodox and liberal Jews alike. He wrote that
there is a certain kind of fear that in a sense dispels all other fears, and
that is, as you might expect, pahad Adonai, or fear of the
Lord (Al HaTeshuva by Rabbi Joseph B.
Soloveitchik). Why is that? Because you and I are expert worriers. We worry
about things over which we have no control. We worry about things over which we
do have control. We worry about things that haven’t happened yet, as if we know
what the future brings. Our wise ancestors knew all this and though they did not
quite say, there is nothing to fear except fear itself, what they did say, is
let the fear of God be your only fear, because to fear God is really a dramatic
way of saying, let’s all use our God-given brains, our seikhel, our wit, our
intelligence, to manage the risks, the fears in our lives. We are not helpless.
And if the only fear we allow is the fear of God, then everything else is going
to be okay.
The term shofar is a curious name.
Some say it has to do with a root meaning curvy. A shofar has to be curvy. It’s
a reflection of the twists and turns of life. But I think the term comes from
the same root as the Aramaic shapir, which means—it’s good, it’s
kosher, it’s all right. The shofar blasts let us know that however broken the
world may be, however broken our lives are (and life can get pretty broken) and
scary), with the help of family, friends, community and the Kadosh Barukh Hu, shapir,
it’s going to work out. Maybe not the way we ever imagined, maybe not
the way we ever desired, but shapir—we are resilient, we are
flexible, we are adaptable, shapir—we are going to be okay, kosher,
it’s all going to work out.
The
beginning of wisdom is the fear of God (Psalm 111:10)
Wisdom, the
ability to see the big picture, the wide screen, the long term, the beginning
of all that is yirat Adonai, the fear of God, which ultimately gives
birth to the courage to act, in spite of our fears.
I know you have been living with
some fears because I have been living with some fears. You think I have no
fears? I do. Plenty of them. And with this year beginning a year of transition,
as I prepare to move onto the next phase of life, I have a few more fears, and you
probably do as well. I don’t think I can convince you or anyone else, to be
free of fear; I can’t even convince myself of that. But I’m going to keep on
trying because I’m not going let hateful, bigoted, loud-mouths ruin my day, and
I don’t want a virus to ruin my life. So when it comes to the bigots of the
world, we’re all going to call them on the carpet for being hateful and
irrational, and when it comes to Covid, we’re going to follow the predominant
medical recommendations and we are going to continue living, cautiously, but living
and going forward.
The
beginning of Psalm 27 reads:
The
Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?
And there’s
the challenge the Psalmist presents to us. Whom shall we fear? Whom shall we
fear? Will it be Covid? We’re going to do what we need to do in order to manage
it. Will it be the anti-Semites? You know, hatred usually consumes the people
who spout it, besides which we can take the wind out of their sails by merely
speaking the truth. Will it be God? I hope so. Because the fear of God is the
fear that puts all the other fears to rest. When it comes to our fears, a
carpenter cutting off the legs of our bed will not help. Because the problem is
never the ghosts underneath the bed, the problem is always the ghosts in our
head. And there’s no one else in charge of our heads, but us. Shapir—it
will be okay, it’s all going to work out.
Thank you, everyone, and Shanah
Tovah.
No comments:
Post a Comment