YOM KIPPUR, 5782 / 2021--UNLIKE A ROLLING STONE

 

              G’mar hatimah tovah, everyone, good to see you all and with this tenth day of the Ten Days of Repentance, we hope and pray that we are able to finish the holidays secure in the Books of Life and Health and Fulfillment, and I wish you all a tzom kal, an easy fast.

              A friend of mine commented recently that he could not imagine how I must feel to finally come to what would be my last High Holiday sermon at Midway and was interested in what I would have to say. He raised the issue several weeks ago, and frankly my head had not yet risen to High Holiday altitude, and I told him that I didn’t know what I was going to say, but I wasn’t too worried because I usually come up with something. But his question got me thinking, not so much about a High Holiday sermon, as much as what a blessing it has been to be involved in this congregation and what a turn of good fortune it was to have landed here. And the irony of it all is that a big part of my having ended up at Midway has to do with a sermon, which is a story in and of itself. It’s a story that begins well over 20 years ago in my search for a new pulpit. As it turned out, the Rabbinical Assembly wanted me to interview at this wealthy and prestigious Philadelphia congregation, which I did, and after about six weeks, I received a letter from the chair of the Search Committee stating that there would be no future for me at that synagogue, in pretty much those words, which struck me as a bit overdramatic, but that was what he wrote. There was nothing to do about it and I forgot about it.

              Some years later, in 2002, a book was published, “The New Rabbi,” that chronicled the search for a new rabbi at that synagogue, and the author, Stephen Fried, devoted a page to my interview. According to Fried, I gave the wrong answer to the question, “What kind of sermons do you give?” And I remember that question because I didn’t know how to answer. It was curious that I was so caught off guard since at that time, I had already given eighteen years worth of sermons and one would think after eighteen years, I would know what kind of sermons I give. Anyway, not certain how to answer, I mentioned a recent sermon I had given, a review of Bob Dylan’s religious journey that took him from Judaism to Christianity and then back to Judaism, and since we are all on a religious journey of sorts, even if some of us have been parked at a rest stop for many years, I thought people would be able to identify with the struggles encountered when searching for not merely the truth, but a kind of ultimate truth in one’s life. So I told the Search Committee about that sermon, and that was apparently the end of the interview because they wanted a rabbi who would speak about “rabbinics, scholarly work, and religious sources” (page 152) and not Bob Dylan. Frankly, I don’t know of any congregation that wants its rabbi to speak about “rabbinics, scholarly work, [or] religious sources.” It sounds deadly, but who am I to tell anyone what the people in the pews want to hear? Anyway, that failed interview left me in a professional limbo for several months, until the Rabbinical Assembly told me that I should consider Syosset. And I may have said at the time, what is Syosset or where is Syosset? I had no idea. But I did come out for an interview. It went well. Midway hired me and I am now beginning my 23^rd year of delivering sermons to you, though if someone were to ask today, what kind of sermons do you give, I most likely would still not know how to answer.

              Though I have to tell you, and I’m just making an observation, sometimes people have come up to me after a sermon to say something like, “Rabbi, I really enjoyed your… uhm… your… uhm…well, what you call it—a sermon?” And I’ve always felt good about that because it seems to me that the best kind of sermon is the one that doesn’t sound like a sermon. So one way I could have answered that fateful question long ago is that I give sermons that don’t sound like sermons. But that answer also may not have worked because I have a theory as to what really happened in Philadelphia.

              This is the theory: The RA sends me to this wealthy and prestigious congregation in Philadelphia. The angels above hear what is going on and declare, Oh no—Rank is going to a congregation that will eat him alive. What to do? The good Lord steps in and says, “No problem—I’ll just have the head of the Search Committee ask ‘What kind of sermons do you give?’” Another angel turns to the Lord and responds, “What good will that do?” The good Lord says, “Rank has no idea how to answer that question. He’ll bomb the interview and we can save him from that pulpit.” Yet another angel asks, “But Lord, then what?” And the Lord says, “We’ll send him to Midway.”

              Now I can’t vouch that this cosmic conversation actually took place, but I will say this. Twenty-three years ago, I had no idea where I was going, but having landed here at Midway which has afforded me and our family so many fulfilling years, I can’t help but think that the hand of God wasn’t in it in some way. And putting aside all our preconceived notions about God, we might try to think of God as this invisible lure toward fulfillment. Why did you go to college at Binghamton and not Michigan? Why did you take that job in the city and not in Great Neck? Why did you marry you-know-who instead of you-know-how? All these decisions we make, some of which we make thoughtfully and some of which are executed in a fog or in the moment, lead us either closer or further from where we need to be. And when we make those decisions that bring us closer to where we need to be, it’s God working in the background, silently, unobtrusively in the extreme by which I mean we don’t even think God is there. But a big part of what faith is, after all is said and done, is recognizing where God is, or was, and whether we followed the lure or resisted it. And when you are able to recognize all the little signals and put them together, almost like those pictures you draw by connecting the dots, it ends in one big “ah-ha!” moment, and that’s the hand of God that has beckoned you to advance in the right direction.

              Over the years, I have probably spoken to you about faith and God a lot because, and I hope this doesn’t sound too ridiculously obvious, but this is a synagogue and if not here, where? The fact is that we don’t live in a world where we hear much God talk. This is partly due to the secular nature of our society and partly due to living in the Northeast. If we were down South, I suspect we would hear more God talk, but we don’t live in the South, we live in New York, and I think in order for Jews to be Jewish, especially for us who live hutz la’aretz, that is, outside the land of Israel, it’s very important to live with a sense of God’s invisible presence. The synagogue at best is the place where we need to reenergize, refuel, recharge our spiritual selves by thinking about God as the lure, the magnet, the pull that draws us toward the emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically satisfying space in life—the space where we need to be.

My good colleague, Rabbi Daniel Goldfarb of Jerusalem, and a former visiting rabbi at Midway over the holidays, whom we were most fortunate to have, reminded me that teshuvah, aside from meaning turning, also means “answer.” We could easily think of the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah as “The Ten Days of Answer.” So if teshuvah is an answer, what is the question? This is Jewish Jeopardy. And the question is the question God asks Adam, the question God asks all of us Adams and Eves, “Ayeka? / Where are you?” Are you in the space where you need to be? Are you home? Have you followed the Lure?

              You remember Rabbi Mordechai Waxman. Rabbi Waxman was one of the most distinguished rabbis of the Conservative Movement, and the spiritual leader of Temple Israel in Great Neck for many years. His influence and energy are still talked about today. Back in 1958, he edited a volume on the Conservative Movement entitled “Tradition and Change.” And what was so influential about that volume was the title itself, such that it became the slogan of our movement. The Conservative Movement was the the movement of tradition and change. I don’t know if anyone ever truly understood what the relative percentages of that two-ingredient recipe were. Was it 80% tradition and 20% change? Was it 20% tradition and 80% change? Was it 50/50? Did anyone dare establish what the percentages would be or was it meant to be undefined permanently? Looking back at all the changes that the Conservative Movement has instituted over the years, and there have been many and they have been substantial, each one was made with the intention to reach the greatest number of Jews and to meet Jews where they were at, in their own space. From driving on Shabbat, to the use of electricity, to counting women in a minyan, to ordaining women as rabbis, to homosexual marriage, each and every time we made a change it was to expand the tent. And we have been expert in expanding the tent, but we have not expanded the number of people in the tent. If anything, that number has shrunk. And that’s because religion is fundamentally about tradition, not change. Can you imagine—Midway Jewish Center: Warmth, Joy, Tradition and Change.  Hmmm…I don’t think so. It wouldn’t work, because religion is about tradition, not change.

              In the early 1900’s, our Reform brothers and sisters invested huge amounts of money into the Conservative Movement because they wanted us to change. They were a little embarrassed by us. Actually, they were a lot embarrassed by us. We were East European immigrants. We were poor. We dressed like we had come out of the shtetel, because we had just come out of the shtetel. We spoke Yiddish. We were grateful to be in America, but we didn’t understand America. Our already established Reform Jewish brothers and sisters in America knew that we would never feel comfortable in their Reform synagogues, with the organ, and the English, and the non-kosher foods. Moreover, they knew that they would not feel comfortable with us in their Reform synagogues. They wanted to create a middle ground movement that would help acclimate their poorer immigrant brethren, that’s us, to American culture. The first half of the 20^th century saw tremendous growth in the Conservative Movement thanks to, among other factors, Reform philanthropy. Solomon Schechter, the Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in the early 1900’s, famously said, “You can’t be a rabbi in America unless you understand baseball.” That was a prescription for a new kind of rabbi. Schechter was saying something about Conservative Judaism, and that was its mission was to Americanize Jews. We succeeded. Long ago. We changed just as we were supposed to. I would call it a success on a scale of a grand slam, except in a grand slam, the players run around the bases and eventually come to home plate, the space where you are supposed to be. If the Conservative Movement were truly successful, it would have brought us back home to our Judaism. And it didn’t. At some point, 40 or 50 years ago, the movement’s leadership had to say: Okay—we all understand baseball. We don’t need another baseball player. Now we need Jews who embrace their Jewish identity as fervently as they embrace their American identity. And by Jewish identity, I mean more than just stating: I am proud to be Jewish. I mean behaving as Jews have behaved for centuries:  observing Shabbat, understanding Hebrew, praying regularly, keeping kosher, defending Israel the Jewish homeland, and loving—with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our might—the Lure, the Magnet, the Pull that draws us to the place where we need to be, that place called home. Our Jewish home. And I think that’s where our Conservative Movement, a movement I adore, a movement I have dedicated my professional life to, has come up short. The inability to reinvent yourself is the road to oblivion. It’s as if this movement has been on its own, with no direction home, a complete unknown, like a rolling stone.

Oh, excuse me—I may have slipped into the Bob Dylan trap. You know, I was reading up on Dylan’s song, “Like A Rolling Stone.” It’s regarded as a transitional, revolutionary song for Dylan, moving him from folk into rock.  Rolling Stone, the magazine, rated it as number one in a list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.” Once, at a press conference, Dylan was asked if the song wasn’t about a girl he was trying to torment or if he wanted to truly change people by forcing them to see themselves. And he responded with a chuckle and said, “I want to needle them,” which I think is the kind of elusive answer one might expect from a young artist, as Dylan was at the time. Can you imagine if Dylan were a rabbi and someone asked him what kind of sermons do you give and he’d say, “Well, I like to needle the congregation.”

I don’t want to needle anyone—that sounds painful—but I do believe we need to recognize that a Jewish community that purports to be a vibrant Jewish community, has to intensify its observance of Yiddishkeit, Jewishness. The locus and future of religious development no longer rests with a national organization, certainly not ours, but rests within individual synagogues. We have seen many synagogues either close their doors or merge, and that trend will continue. It may be a blessing in disguise because the fact is the Jewish community spends way too much money on heating and air conditioning, plumbing and electricity, and the eternal and ever-present leaks in the roof, and too few dollars on effective Jewish education for adults, children, and school faculties. The joke about us in the 50’s and 60’s was that our movement was burdened with an Edifice Complex—we built buildings—beautiful, architecturally sophisticated, large buildings. We were telling America that we were proud to be Jews and we’ve made it in this country. But many of those buildings today have closed, and others struggle to remain open, and virtually none attract the numbers they were originally built for. We spend way too much time and money on buildings and way too little on the people in them. This has to change.

Midway is going to be one of those synagogues that make it. We have to commit today how we intend to address our Judaism that could use a good shot in the arm. I have had extensive talks with Rabbi Joel and our president Michael, and with a number of other members about how we must change in order to generate vibrant, smart, engaged Jews who themselves will be leaders in creating Jewish community here and elsewhere.

Later this year, beginning with Hanukkah, we’re going to return to a project that we started pre-Covid, writing a sefer Torah, completing a sefer Torah, which is a mitzvah, and that project we hope will generate some substantial dollars that will set Midway on a new initiative to reenergize the Jewish future. I envision it as a Midway Birthright, used to invest in our people, our children, ourselves, our Judaism. We won’t neglect the physical space; the Board of Trustees would never let that happen. But this special fund, separate from the General Fund and administered by a group separate from the Board of Trustees will substantially subsidize transformative Jewish experiences for the people who matter most—our children, our teens, our adults, our families and our faculties. In the next century, we build not buildings; we build people, we build Jews.

You know where you can find the best people? Right here at Midway. What a cast of characters we have had over my tenure here. You have kept me on my toes, thinking, laughing, strategizing, studying, and growing. We have, Barukh HaShem, a great community. I almost feel guilty on what a great time I’ve had.  It doesn’t feel like 23 years have passed. It feels like I got here maybe just a couple years ago. I still feel like the new rabbi, or as one famous Nobel laureate put it, forever young. That prescription doesn’t really work in the real world. El and I were on vacation, and this was several years ago. I was not yet eligible for Social Security. And we stopped at a small grocery to pick up a few lunch items—some yogurt, crackers—whatever was available in Montana that had a hekhsher on it. I paid at the register, handed the receipt over to El (she actually looks at receipts), and she says, the kid at the cash register gave you a discount. I said, what kind of a discount? She said, he gave you a senior citizen discount. I said, I didn’t ask for a senior citizen discount. She said, I guess you didn’t have to.

The truth of the matter is that the pulpit, not the rabbinate, but the pulpit requires young clergy, and thank God, Barukh HaShem, we have that in Rabbi Joel who is so talented and has brought multiple, engaging new programs to Midway, and we have it in Cantor Frei with whom it has been a privilege, an honor to work with, and we’ve embarked on a search for an assistant rabbi whom I’m sure will fit in and bring even more energy to the congregation.

This is an exciting time for us all and in spite of this crazy pandemic, we’re in a good space because it’s time for me to move on, and I’m ready to move on. Of course, El and I have no idea where we’re going. I guess somewhere far enough to give the new clergy configuration the freedom to operate unhampered and close enough to always stay connected to you. Where is that? Who knows? And as I enter this final year of service to you, you may also be wondering where the synagogue is going. And there is undoubtedly some uncertainty about that. Well, you know, life is a journey. And when you really don’t know where you are going, you just have to have a little bit of faith, and a little bit of courage to go forward. You have to pay attention to the Lure, the Magnet, the Pull. And wherever you are in this journey, and we all are on a journey, we have to stick to the synagogue and to tradition, because when we do that, we will never be on our own, and we will never be at a loss for the direction home, and we will never be a complete unknown, because in this chain of tradition that reaches back 3500 years of which we are the most recent links, we can never be merely a rolling stone. How does it feel? That feels pretty good.

G’mar hatimah Tovah!

ROSH HASHANAH, 5782 /2021--FEAR AND SHAPIR—IT’S ALL GOING TO WORK OUT

 

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.