Rabbi Heidi Hoover's blog

The Freeing Power of the Days of Awe: Yom Kippur sermon 2013/5774

The sermon I gave at Temple Beth Emeth v'Ohr Progressive Shaari Zedek on Yom Kippur morning, September 14, 2013:

Today at sunset, or at the conclusion of our final Yom Kippur service for the day—whichever comes first—we will break our fast together, and that will mark the end of this year’s 10 days of repentance and atonement, and we will embark on a fresh new year, with a clean slate.

It has been pointed out by some rabbis that the word “atonement” can be split up into “at one-ment.” The idea is that through atonement, we actually are going to a process of becoming “at one” with ourselves, with God, with those we love. When there is something wrong in a relationship—angry, hurtful words have been said or harm has been done, it often feels like there is a separation, a barrier. Making amends, atoning for what has gone wrong, forgiving and asking for forgiveness, can remove that barrier, making the relationship whole again. That can apply to a relationship with God, with ourselves or our self-concept, or to a relationship with another person.

I remember one year at Thanksgiving, many years ago now, when my mother was going through one of her recurrences of the cancer that eventually took her life. I was maybe still in college. I had this idea that I would help cook Thanksgiving dinner to make things easier for my mom. I had this vision of both of us in the kitchen, cooking together. It didn’t occur to me at first, though it did afterward, that it might be hard for my mom to feel like she needed help making the dinner, or that my offer might emphasize that she might not be there to make it the following year.

Anyway, she gave me an assignment to make the asparagus casserole—it was the day before Thanksgiving—and she went off to do whatever she needed to do. Well, this wasn’t what I had in mind. This wasn’t a warm, companionable mother-daughter cooking experience. I wasn’t upset about it, but I didn’t get around to making the casserole. That evening, when Mom was ready to start preparing food, she was furious. She yelled at me, and I said I thought the evening still counted as the same day. I don’t remember exactly what else was said, but my mother stormed out, got in the car, and drove away. I didn’t know where. I still don’t know where she went or what she did. This was not typical behavior in my family, though.

I was devastated. I left the house too, and walked around the neighborhood, crying. Sobbing, really. When I came home she wasn’t there. I felt horrible. I loved my mother more than anything, and there was this wrong thing—that was my fault—between us.

She eventually came home and went into her bedroom. I came to the door, and as I looked at her, sitting in her bed reading, I suddenly realized what it was all about. I said, “I don’t want you to die,” and she said, “I don’t want to die either.” I told her I was sorry, and we hugged and cried together, and that ugly thing that was separating us was gone. Our relationship was whole again, and we were “at one” through our atonement.

In the Torah we read many stories of wrongdoing and hurt between siblings. One example is between Moses, his sister Miriam, and his brother Aaron. In chapter 12 of the book of Numbers, Miriam and Aaron speak against Moses. A barrier of pain and anger separates them. God calls all three of them to the Tent of Meeting and strikes Miriam with a scaly white skin infection. Aaron turns to Moses and repents, saying, “O my lord, account not to us the sin which we committed in our folly,” (Numbers 12:11). In regular language, that’s “We’re sorry, please forgive us.” The separation between them closes as Moses prays for God to heal Miriam. Their spirits are whole once again, though it takes Miriam’s body a week to heal.

That’s what repentance does. It allows us to return to wholeness of the spirit. It’s no accident that the word “spirit” refers to both our soul, that which animates us, but also to energy. When we are spiritually whole we feel ready to face the world. Our morale is good, we believe in ourselves and our abilities, we feel energetic and creative. We feel strong—not necessarily physically, but inside.

Another story of siblings illustrates not only the importance of repentance for making our spirits whole again, but the importance of forgiveness. This is the saga of Joseph and his brothers—you’re probably familiar with at least part of it. Joseph is his father’s favorite, so his brothers hate him. They throw him in a pit and then sell him into slavery. Joseph winds up in Egypt, and after some trials and tribulations, he becomes rich and powerful. His brothers, who have been living their own lives back home, wind up coming to Egypt to buy food when famine strikes. They end up in front of Joseph, though they don’t recognize him. He tests them, threatens them, and ultimately reveals himself to them. He bursts into tears and tells them who he is and that he forgives them. I don’t think that is the moment when he actually forgives them, though, it’s just when he has the opportunity to tell them. I think he forgave them earlier.

Because here there is not only an emotional barrier and separation, but for many years, a physical one. They are separated for a long time. I can only imagine that the difficulties with his brothers weighed on Joseph and troubled him. After Joseph is in Egypt for a number of years, after he becomes Pharaoh’s right-hand man, he marries an Egyptian woman named Asenath. They have two sons. Well before he encounters his brothers again, Joseph names his first-born son Manasseh, saying, “For God has made me forget all the troubles I endured in my father’s house,” (Genesis 41:51).  

Joseph’s choice of a name with that meaning—made me forget—seems to me to indicate two things. One is that up until this point, his experiences with his brothers have been a weight on his spirit. The other is that with the birth of his own son, he is able to forgive his brothers and move on. There are times when we are not able to be with a person who has wronged us, or when it would not be a good idea to be with that person. In these cases, they do not have an opportunity to repent to us or make amends. We do have the opportunity, though, to forget—not to truly forget, but to allow the pain of the past to become less of a presence in our daily lives—and move on even in the absence of the one who wronged us, allowing our spirits to become more whole.

Later, when Joseph’s brothers come to Egypt, he is able to see that they have indeed repented for their past behavior, and he tells them that he has forgiven them. There is something of a reconciliation, though they really don’t become one big happy family afterward. For the wholeness of Joseph’s spirit and the release of his pain, they don’t have to be. He got there himself, as we sometimes must do for our own spiritual and psychological health.

We are taught, “For sins between a person and God, the Day of Atonement atones. But for sins between a person and another person, the Day of Atonement does not atone until they have made peace with one another.” (BT Yoma 85b) I’ve already discussed the way repentance and forgiveness of one another, when it works the way it’s supposed to at this time of the year, can dissolve the barriers that prevent our spirits from being whole, and can bring us back to being “at one” with each other. What about sins between ourselves and God?

We must first ask, as Reform Jews, what sins between ourselves and God are. I suggest that sins between ourselves and God are the times in the past year when we have neglected our spiritual responsibilities. By this I don’t mean the times we didn’t go to services. Maybe that’s a relief to some of you. Rather, I mean the times we didn’t listen to our internal voices when they said, “I need something. I need spiritual stimulation. I need time for contemplation. I need learning. I need to explore what my purpose is in this world.” It is our spiritual responsibility to consider why we are here and what we are supposed to be doing with our lives. Not for our parents, not for our children or our partners if we have them, but for our own sense of who we are and what we are meant to do. For some of us, it feels comfortable to phrase this as what God wants us to be doing. For others of us, that God-language is uncomfortable, and perhaps more resonant is the idea of what feels right, what fits, what brings spiritual satisfaction.

The repetitive prayers of this day, and the prayers sung or chanted by the cantor on our behalf, are an opportunity to contemplate how we have sinned by ignoring the needs of our spirits at times during the past year—because we were too busy, or too tired, or too scared, or too lazy to attend to them. This is our time to atone for that by spending this time considering what the needs of our souls are, and forgiving ourselves for the times we didn’t notice or address those needs. Letting go of the “shoulds” of the past year for ourselves, letting go of any guilt we’ve placed on ourselves for not meeting our own unreasonable expectations of ourselves, we can become at one and in touch with our own selves again. We can end this day hungry, physically tired, but spiritually rejuvenated, ready to begin a new year.

This letting go isn’t easy. It’s easier—and sometimes on some level satisfying—to hold on to resentment and bitterness. For some of us, it’s very difficult to let go of the things we’ve done wrong, and let ourselves off the hook. When I was in my 20s, I was working at a technology consulting firm, and I remember a yearly review I had. My boss gave me high marks in every category but one, which was “is able to acknowledge mistakes and then move on effectively.” She said I needed to do a better job letting go of having made mistakes after they were corrected. It took me a long time to get over that. In the 20 years or so since, improving the ability to let go of mistakes after they are past has been part of the work I’ve been doing on myself.

This day, this holiest day of the year, this Shabbat of Shabbats, let us allow the weakness of our bodies—some of us weakened by fasting, some of us by the lengthy services—open us up to revelation, to the opening of our hearts and our souls, so that we can be freed from the pain and worries we carry from past misdeeds or hurts. May our repentance be true, and having repented and atoned, may we feel at one with our spirits and with our loved ones. May we feel free, new, and fresh, as the year 5774 is still new and fresh. May we enter this new year ready to celebrate at Sukkot, when we rejoice about the food and shelter that physically sustain us, and at Simchat Torah, when we rejoice because we begin anew to read the Torah that spiritually sustains us. May our spirits be whole, our energy be high, our belief in ourselves be strong, and may we be ready to face the world in joy. Amen, Shabbat shalom, and g’mar chatimah tovah. May you be sealed for a good year to come.

Fear: Kol Nidrei Sermon 2013/5774

Sermon delivered at Temple Beth Emeth v'Ohr Progressive Shaari Zedek during the Kol Nidrei service, September 13, 2013:

We have begun the most intense part of our period of repentance and atonement for this year. Those of us who do not have medical conditions that require food and drink will be fasting until tomorrow evening. Those of us who must eat and drink to maintain our health may eat simple foods and drink only water or use other methods to differentiate between this day and other days. Our services are long, and the prayers are sometimes harsh, bringing us face to face with sins we may have committed in the past year.

On Rosh Hashanah I spoke about how difficult it is to make decisions about what’s right in morally complex situations. This evening I’m thinking about how one of our common emotional responses—fear—can lead us to make poor decisions that we later repent for.

In the book of Genesis, we read about the lives of Abraham and Sarah. On Rosh Hashanah we read the very familiar story about how Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac. There is an episode in the Torah shortly before that one which may be less familiar to you—it is part of what is also a traditional Rosh Hashanah Torah reading, but it’s not part of our minhag, our custom, here to read it on Rosh Hashanah. It is the story of the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael.

The basic outline of the story is this, and I’m going to take it back a little way to where Hagar first takes a major role. Hagar is an Egyptian maidservant to Sarah, Abraham’s wife. Back when she was still called Sarai, and he was Abram, God made a covenant with Abram called the “Covenant of the Parts.” It comes out of a talk between Abram and God about Abram’s lack of an heir. God says Abram will have a great reward, and Abram challenges God, saying, “What can you give me, seeing that I will die childless…and my steward will be my heir.” (Genesis 15:2-3) God says no, that Abram will indeed have his own heir. God goes on to make a covenant, a promise to give the Land to that heir and all of Abram’s descendants, who would be as many as the stars.

Immediately after this, Sarai tells Abram to take Hagar as a concubine, so that Sarah, who is barren, can have a child through her. (In ancient times, this was the equivalent of surrogate motherhood—Hagar would have the child, but it would be considered to be Sarai’s child.) This is when Hagar first comes into the spotlight. She gets pregnant, and recognizes the power that gives her over her mistress, Sarai. The Torah tells us that “When [Hagar] saw that she had conceived, her mistress was lowered in her esteem.” (Genesis 16:4) Sarai has an argument with Abram about it, and then she treats Hagar harshly, though we’re not told exactly what that entails. Hagar runs away, but is sent back with a promise that she too will have many descendants. Hagar gives birth to Ishmael, Abram’s first son.

Then we don’t hear anything about Hagar for a few chapters. Sarah gives birth to a son after all, and that’s Isaac, and that brings us to the passage often read as part of the Rosh Hashanah Torah reading, and where Hagar comes back into the picture. On the day of the feast for Isaac’s weaning, Sarah sees Ishmael playing. She has a very strong reaction. Our rabbis said variously that Ishmael was playing at idolatry, which would tempt Isaac to do the same, or engaging in sexual molestation of Isaac, or playing at bloodshed—trying to shoot Isaac with a bow and arrow. Some of our rabbis simply say that because Ishmael was playing there, Sarah noticed him and realized that he (and his mother) might expect for him to inherit, which was indeed the plan before Isaac came along, and Sarah does not want him to inherit now that she has her own son. The Hebrew word used for “playing” is m’tzachek, which is related to Isaac’s name, Yitzchak. That’s how our commentators connect the playing with Isaac as well as Ishmael.

At any rate, Sarah tells Abraham to throw out Hagar and Ishmael, so that Ishmael cannot share in her son Isaac’s inheritance. Abraham is upset about this, because Ishmael is his son, but God tells Abraham not to worry and to do what Sarah says. God promises that Ishmael will also become a nation, but that for our story, Isaac is the one that the inheritance will go through. Off go Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness, where they have their own drama that we’ll discuss at another time.

Our rabbis often go out of their way to explain why Sarah was doing the right thing to be the driving force in kicking Ishmael out, but to modern eyes, it’s tough to let Sarah off the hook here. We read this and see a woman oppressing another woman. I believe that one way to look at the choices she makes in her relationship with Hagar is that they come out of fear.

After the covenant God makes with Abram that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky, Sarai, I believe, though it is not stated in the text, notices that God did not mention her descendants. Events so far have indicated to her that she cannot have children, and she fears for her future. What will her life be like if Abraham’s descendants are not also her descendants? She takes steps to allay her fear and ensure her own place in the covenant in the only way she knows how: giving her handmaiden Hagar to Abram as a concubine. Later, she has Abraham expel Hagar and Ishmael because she is afraid for the future of her son, Isaac, and wants to make sure he receives the inheritance from Abraham. These decisions are ultimately not beneficial, but are damaging to her family, and damaging to Hagar and Ishmael.

We might also find ourselves making decisions out of fear. I want to draw a distinction here between the good decisions fear leads us to make and the bad decisions we make out of fear. If we stay on the sidewalk because we’re afraid of getting hit by a car, that’s a smart decision. If we stay in the house and never leave because we’re afraid of getting hit by a car, that’s fear leading us to make a decision that is damaging to our lives.

Patty Chang Anker, who incidentally will be our Sisterhood brunch speaker on October 12^th, has written a book called Some Nerve: Lessons Learned While Becoming Brave. Her book is mostly about people who decide not to do things out of fear. She addresses fears people have of fairly easy-to-avoid activities, such as swimming or surfing in the ocean, riding roller coasters, or climbing high in the air on ropes courses. She spends more time, though, on everyday activities most of us encounter at some point, like driving, decluttering the house, flying, and public speaking. She also tackles the fear of something every one of us will encounter, but most of us only once: death.

The thesis of the book is that facing these fears constructively is worthwhile because living in a way that avoids every encounter that frightens us makes our lives smaller, less rich, less fully lived. Also, the more we can face and overcome our fears, the more courageous we become, and the stronger we feel. When we let ourselves decide not to take action out of fear, we can do damage to ourselves by not learning, by not experiencing. It can sometimes inconvenience us or worse, and it can also lower our sense of our own capabilities and worth.

We make decisions sometimes not to act out of fear of what will happen to us, and sometimes we make decisions to act, also out of fear. Again, these are sometimes reasonable and constructive decisions, but they are sometimes ill-advised and destructive. People also frequently disagree on whether a given decision that is motivated by fear is a good one or a bad one. This past week was the 12^th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack. In response to that attack, our government passed the Patriot Act and increased surveillance on us, in addition to entering into wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our civil liberties have been restricted. Many Americans believe that this is absolutely justified, and that giving up some freedom is worthwhile to be safer from terrorists. Others believe that we have already gone too far out of fear, and that we are doing damage to ourselves.

At a personal level, sometimes people stay in abusive relationships because they are afraid of what will happen if they leave—they are afraid they won’t be able to support themselves or their children. These are real and justified fears, but the decision to remain in an abusive situation is deeply damaging and can be life-threatening. I do not want to downplay the difficulty of the situation for someone who is suffering abuse at home, nor do I want to blame someone who finds herself or himself unable to leave. Anyone who is being abused needs help and support to overcome the many fears and dangers.

One of many women’s greatest fears for their own future is of getting breast cancer. All of us know someone who has had the disease. My mother died of it. There has been controversy recently over the effectiveness of mammograms. This past April in The New York Times Magazine , Peggy Orenstein wrote about studies indicating that mammograms often lead to false positives, or conditions that may develop into cancer, but may not. They often don’t catch fast-growing, invasive cancers that might crop up and metastasize between mammograms. She writes:

“According to a survey of randomized clinical trials involving 600,000 women around the world, for every 2,000 women screened annually over 10 years, one life is prolonged but 10 healthy women are given diagnoses of breast cancer and unnecessarily treated, often with therapies that themselves have life-threatening side effects. (Tamoxifen, for instance, carries small risks of stroke, blood clots and uterine cancer; radiation and chemotherapy weaken the heart; surgery, of course, has its hazards.)”

Furthermore, Orenstein writes:

“Thousands of women now consider double mastectomies after low-grade cancer diagnoses. According to Todd Tuttle, chief of the division of surgical oncology at the University of Minnesota and lead author of a study on prophylactic mastectomy published in The Journal of Clinical Oncology, there was a 188 percent jump between 1998 and 2005 among women given new diagnoses of D.C.I.S. in one breast — a risk factor for cancer — who opted to have both breasts removed just in case. Among women with early-stage invasive disease (like mine), the rates rose about 150 percent. Most of those women did not have a genetic predisposition to cancer. Tuttle speculated they were basing their decisions not on medical advice but on an exaggerated sense of their risk of getting a new cancer in the other breast.”

The fear for our future can lead us to make decisions that are damaging to our bodies and to our lives.

Then there are the examples of making decisions out of fear that come up in our more casual relationships, that we may encounter daily. These are questions of when to speak out and when to remain silent. Do we confront friends or acquaintances when we feel they are behaving in unhealthy ways or unethical ways, or do we keep silent because we are afraid of their anger or their rejection?

Perhaps our fear can lead us to speak foolishly. I have a tendency to make a joke when I am feeling nervous or afraid. More than once in my life this has led to misunderstandings that caused a lot of anger and upset, and I repented for having made those jokes.

When we notice ourselves feeling fearful—or angry, another emotion that can stem from fear—it is worthwhile to check any decisions we are considering making. Are we reacting in a reasonable way to fear, or are we causing needless damage due to overreaction to fear, damage either through our action or through our inaction?

As we look at the pattern of fear and decisions stemming from it in the story of Sarah, Hagar, Isaac and Ishmael, another theme emerges: Sarah wants to control what will happen. This is a common response to fear, especially existential fear. The idea that we do not control our own lives and what happens to us is, for many people, terrifying.

This summer someone close to our family was badly burned in a freak kitchen explosion. Part of the trauma, besides the pain and damage to her body, was the realization that there was nothing she could have done to predict or prevent this accident. She is okay and healing well, and I don’t know if she is experiencing lasting psychological effects. I know that I am a little nervous every time I turn on a burner in my kitchen, though. This didn’t even happen to me, but it shook my illusion of control over my life and my environment.

The fact is that everything can change in an instant, in any instant. The fact is also that most of the time it doesn’t. Until it does. There are certain parts of our lives we have a measure of control over. We can make decisions about what we put in our bodies, how much we exercise, how well we take care of our health. We decide whom to associate with, whom to make a life with. If we have children, we teach them what we can about keeping themselves safe. The Talmud tells us that parents are obligated to teach their children to swim. This gets spun out metaphorically into the idea of living in a sink-or-swim world—knowing how to swim is knowing how to survive, how to take care of yourself out there.

And yet, our control is limited. Accidents happen. Illness happens. Natural disasters happen. The only thing that is sure is that, to paraphrase a Hank Williams song, we won’t get out of this world alive. Death is the one certain thing. Well, death and taxes, according to Benjamin Franklin.

So, we’re afraid of not being in control, and we’re afraid of what will happen to us. But there is so much we just aren’t in control of. What if we were able to live our lives without the fear? How would it change our decision-making to stop being afraid of what will happen to us?

As many of you know, one of my favorite sayings comes from Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav: “Kol ha-olam kulo, gesher tzar m’od, v’ha-ikar lo l’fached klal.” “The entire world is a very narrow bridge, and the most important thing is not to be afraid at all.”

The idea of the narrow bridge captures the scariness of life, the lack of control, the danger. The idea of not being afraid invokes the thought of being clear-headed enough to make good decisions about how to take the next step on the bridge, and the one after that, and the one after that.

Let us resolve this year to try to be less afraid. To accept what comes, to trust that there are those around us to steady us if we begin to fall. Let us try to catch ourselves before we say something or do something out of fear that is not what we would have said or done if we were not afraid. The entire world is a narrow bridge. This year, may we not be motivated by fear, and may our courage grow every time we refuse to let fear dominate us. Amen, and g’mar chatimah tovah. May you be sealed for a good life in the year to come.

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Living in the Gray: Rosh Hashanah 1st Day 5774/2013

Last night I spoke about the cycle of our year, and the inevitability of making mistakes over the course of the year that require repentance when the high holiday season rolls around again. And the fact that we do have good reason to repent every year does not make us bad people. It just makes us people, people who have failings and who live in a morally complex world. Because while our prayers may sound like everything is very clear—you did wrong, or you didn’t—when we’re going through day after day of choices, conscious and unconscious, it’s not so black and white. We live in a world of gray, where the right answers are frequently difficult to discern.

When we make moral or ethical decisions, we often have to weigh competing interests, allocate scarce resources, or work with limited information. We often do this without thinking consciously about it, but not always. And the decisions we make sometimes lead to negative consequences. Today I’m going to discuss three ways in which the complexities of making moral and ethical choices can lead to the need for repentance and atonement.

First, we sometimes find ourselves in situations where there are no good options. Anything we decide to do will lead to harm, even the decision to do nothing. Second, we might decide to do the wrong thing for the right reason, or the right thing for the wrong reason. And Third, we might do something we think is right, but have it go wrong in the execution.

There are times when we look back on a situation, or when we’re facing a situation where a decision needs to be made, and any option we choose will cause some kind of harm. An example we are facing just now as a country is what our national and international responsibility is with regard to intervention in Syria. Our president has asked the Congress to authorize a limited military strike in response to what seems to be accurate information that President Assad of Syria has used chemical weapons against his people. It’s clear that this is a complex and difficult issue. A limited strike in response to the use of chemical weapons would not end the conflict in Syria, would be largely symbolic, and might kill more civilians. However, an intervention that would stop the killing and lead to regime change would involve massive U.S. troop involvement, loss of American lives, and another lengthy war in the Middle East. And there are multiple groups of rebels fighting Assad, with no clear leader if he were to be deposed. The fighting and killing continues as we debate this, and as we do nothing, more and more innocent Syrians are losing their lives or being displaced from their homes and becoming refugees. There are really no good options for the U.S., or for the Syrians, for that matter.

The Union for Reform Judaism is currently formulating a position on the resolution before Congress, proposed by President Obama, that would authorize him to take action against Syria in response to the use of chemical weapons. The URJ has asked for the input of Reform Jews and Reform congregations on this. We will hold a brief discussion of this issue on Friday evening before services, and while we do not expect to formulate a position as a congregation, if anyone would like to express an individual opinion to Gerard or to me, we will pass them along to the URJ. They have asked to receive synagogues’ comments by Monday at 4 pm.

No matter what our president and Congress decide to do, it seems likely that conflict and bloodshed in Syria will continue, and we as a nation will likely have reason to feel that we have something to repent for, even though there are really no good choices, in fact, because there are no good choices.

Another example, closer to home, of how we might find ourselves in a situation without good options. An elderly parent, still living alone, becomes increasingly unable to care for him- or herself. Home aides are very expensive, and adult children working full-time cannot be there for that parent as needed. Yet the parent is adamantly opposed to entering a retirement home. This kind of situation puts a lot of stress on the family, and there are really no good choices. The parent may be a danger to him- or herself at home, but is terribly unhappy to leave that home. How does a responsible son or daughter weigh honoring the parent with the realities of the situation? It is very difficult for everyone involved, and both parent and child likely will end up with something to repent for, even if the final decision that is made is the best one, the only feasible one under the circumstances.

I look to our Torah portion for today for one more example of a lack of good options. Abraham is ordered to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac. He has no good options here, forced to choose between his God and his son. He chooses his God, and we sometimes criticize him for that, or at least say that we could never make that kind of decision. Even though it ends up okay, and an angel stops the knife at the last minute, father and son have to spend the rest of their lives knowing that Abraham would have gone through with it. Some of our commentators have said that Sarah’s death, which in the Torah is right after the Akeidah, the near-sacrifice of Isaac, came about because she was told what happened and was so upset that she died. Others note that while Abraham and Isaac go up the mountain together, the grammar of the text is singular when Abraham goes back down the mountain, which seems to indicate that Isaac is not with him anymore, and they read this as a consequence of the trauma on the mountain. Even if Abraham was right to choose God over Isaac, he is certainly left with something to repent for, because really there were no good choices.

There are times when we end up doing the wrong thing, but for the right reason. There is a website called freerangekids.com, created by Lenore Skenazy. Her position is that parental fears for their children’s safety have gotten out of control, and that parents are so concerned with keeping children safe that the children are not given the chance to become self-reliant and independent. If you think she has a point, and I do, this is an example of parents’ doing the wrong thing for the right reason. Of course we want to keep our children safe, but when we are so careful that they don’t have the opportunity to explore and become independent in age-appropriate ways, we ultimately do them a disservice.

A classic example of doing the wrong thing for the right reason is the myth of Robin Hood. He stole from the rich, but gave the money to the poor. The stealing was clearly wrong, but in that society with its corrupt leadership and brutality toward the poor, someone who helped the helpless against the powerful was considered a hero, and the myth of the noble bandit grew up around Robin Hood. He did the wrong thing, but for the right reason.

In our Torah, we look again to Abraham. Early on in his relationship with God, when he was still called Abram, he and Sarai, having heard God’s command to leave their home and go to the land God would show them, travel to that land. Then they leave almost immediately because of a famine, and go to Egypt. Poised to enter Egypt, Abram asks Sarai to pose as his sister rather than his wife, because she is so beautiful that Abram believes the Egyptians will kill him in order to have her. She does so, with the result that she is indeed taken from him and brought into Pharaoh’s palace. Pharaoh is consequently afflicted by plagues and lets her go, reprimanding Abram for not telling him that Sarai was his wife. Here Abram was trying to preserve his life, and that is the right thing to do. However, I believe it was wrong to put Sarai in that position, though there are arguments on both sides.

Sometimes the reason for doing something seems so right that the thing we do wrong, doesn’t really even seem wrong to us anymore. An ethical dilemma that is sometimes posed is the starving person who steals a loaf of bread. Is it wrong to steal the bread if you’re starving? There are many people who would say that that is not the wrong thing for the right reason, but that it is actually right to steal the bread.

Protesters who engage in civil disobedience are breaking the law, but believe that it is necessary to fight for their cause, and that therefore breaking the law is not wrong—it is morally right. However, sometimes protesters can turn violent, or those who are dissatisfied with the government might go so far as attempting assassinations or engaging in other kinds of destruction. Most of us would likely believe that when people are murdered for a cause, that that is the wrong action, even if the reason is right. The murder of doctors who perform abortions is an example that most people would consider a wrong action for the right reason, as opposed to an action that, while wrong on its face, stops being wrong because the reason is so right.

This is a subtle distinction, and it illustrates the complexity of the interplay between our actions and our intentions, as well as the way the same actions can be right or wrong depending on the situation, and depending on who is deciding whether the actions are right or wrong.

One more example, of how an action can be wrong in one situation and right in another: exceeding the speed limit in your car. If I am driving faster than the speed limit because it’s fun, or because I want to hit all the green lights on 4^th Avenue so I can get home faster, that’s wrong. It’s dangerous to drive over the speed limit, as well as illegal. However, if, God forbid, my child was hurt and I was taking her to the emergency room, I’d suggest that exceeding the speed limit, while also, of course, being as careful as possible, would be justified. Even in this simple example, there is room for argument about whether the action is right or wrong depending on the situation.

It’s worthwhile, in our examination of our souls this High Holiday season, to consider whether we have done wrong things for the right reasons, things that we might need to repent or atone for, even though we had good intentions.

And then there is the third case, when we have every intention of doing the right thing, and it goes wrong in the execution. This is something that happens often enough that it has a name: The Law of Unintended Consequences. There are many examples of right intentions going wrong.

Here’s one from Israel (in either Dan Ariely’s "Predictably Irrational" and "The Upside of Irrationality" or Duncan Watts’ "Everything is Obvious Once You Know the Answer"):

At some day care centers in Israel there was a problem with parents’ arriving late to pick up their kids. The workers at the center had to stay late and wait for the parents, who weren’t paying for that extra time. So the centers instituted a late fee if parents weren’t on time picking up their kids at the end of the day. Rather than seeing late arrivals drop, they actually increased! The parents apparently felt less guilty about showing up late since they were paying the fee.  Moreover, when the centers stopped the fee a few weeks later, the late rate at those centers remained as high, since the social stigma of being one of those late parents wore off.

Another example comes from environmental law in the U.S. When the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973, it imposed land use restrictions on property inhabited by endangered species. The result was that property owners would take steps to make sure that their property was not hospitable to endangered species—cutting down stands of old trees and taking other actions that further reduced already-scarce habitat for endangered animals.

In the Torah, an illustrative story focuses more on Sarah than on Abraham. When God makes the covenant with Abraham, God promises that Abraham will have many descendants. Sarah, knowing that she is barren, takes steps to make sure that there will be offspring, giving her servant Hagar to Abraham. Though the text doesn’t say this outright, I believe that she is trying to assure herself a place in the covenant—Hagar’s child, in the tradition of the time, would be considered to be Sarah’s, since Hagar is her servant. However, the whole thing doesn’t go the way Sarah plans. When she gets pregnant, Hagar feels powerful and shows it. Sarah, some years later, has her own son after all, and sees to it that Hagar and her son, Ishmael, are thrown out. This sets up the opposition between Isaac and Ishmael, and is the mythical origin of conflict between Jews and Arabs. Those are some pretty powerful unintended consequences.

It isn’t easy living in a morally complex world, where we sometimes find ourselves without good options in an ethical dilemma; where we sometimes do the wrong thing for the right reasons, or convince ourselves that our reasons are so right that the wrong thing isn’t really wrong; or where we try to do the right thing but there are consequences we don’t see that end up causing harm. There are those who would prefer to deny these complexities, but if we do that, oversimplifying what are really complicated and difficult ethical decisions, we are even more likely to do harm.

It would be great if we could see the whole picture every time, take into account every contingency, and see a clear path to the perfect solution. But if we could do that, we would be gods ourselves. Earlier this week a member of our congregation got an error message at work: “You do not have the access right to data in this universe.” That seems like an extreme response when you’re working with customer management software, but when you’re working with truth, and trying to figure out the ethical and moral dilemmas of life, part of the picture is that no, we don’t have the right to all the relevant data in the universe. And even if we did, there are times, lots of times, when we’re left with things to repent for no matter what we do.

And that’s not so bad. It’s part of being human. We wrestle, we struggle, we do the best we can to be the best we can, and we fail, and we learn, and God willing, we do it better the next time around. We look to our tradition for a moral compass, but it is up to us to decide how to apply it. We come together, week after week on Shabbat, and year after year on the High Holidays, to consider how we’re doing, and how we can learn from what we’ve done.

We have all made mistakes, because living is hard, because we don’t have access to all the data, because we have free will. We have also all done right, and done well, by acting out of love and the desire to do what is right. We are not expected to be perfect. Rather we are expected to do our best. We have the support of one another and the support of God, whatever we may mean by “God.”

The support of God might mean that moral compass. It might be a feeling of support from something that is greater than ourselves. It might be a recognition of the limits of our comprehension and control. Or the support of God might be the support we get from those we care about. The psalmist wrote, “I lift my eyes to the mountains; from where will my help come? My help comes from the Eternal, maker of heaven and earth.” (Psalm 121) May this High Holiday season be a source of recognition of our own humanity and that of others, of the complexity of life and its moral and ethical choices. May we feel help and support at this time when we make ourselves vulnerable by admitting to ourselves and to others where we have gone wrong, and atoning so that we can make a fresh start in the coming year. Amen and l’Shanah tovah u’metukah. May you have a good year and a sweet year.

Sisyphus and Kohelet--Here We Go Again: Erev Rosh Hashanah 5774/2013

This is the sermon I gave at Temple Beth Emeth v'Ohr Progressive Shaari Zedek in Brooklyn, NY, on Erev Rosh Hashanah, September 4 (so early in the secular year!):

Here we are again. Another Rosh Hashanah has arrived—this one disconcertingly early in the secular year. Together with Jews around the world, we come together for this High Holiday season, which is devoted to soul-searching and repenting for all the ways we have gone wrong in the past year. We have begun to recite together the various prayers of confession and pleas for forgiveness: “Avinu Malkeinu, we have sinned against you…. Avinu Malkeinu, be gracious and answer us, for we have little merit. Treat us generously and with kindness, and be our help.” “Forgive us, pardon us, grant us atonement!” There are many more, especially when we reach Yom Kippur, ten days from now. We will recite Une-taneh-tokef, that strange and disturbing listing of all the ways we might die in the coming year, declaring that these days, which we also call the Days of Awe, are the time when God makes that decision.

For those of us, myself included, who don’t think of God as a Being seated somewhere with an enormous Book called the Book of Life—a Being more or less human-looking though clearly far more powerful than we are, some kind of cosmic Santa Claus—for us, there are many other ways to understand what happens during these days. We might think about the concept of God forgiving us as a way to forgive ourselves, or the idea of God accusing us as a reminder that it is critically important to our development as rational and moral human beings that we take a step back now and then to evaluate how we’re doing.

There is one idea that is nowhere in our liturgy for the Days of Awe. That idea is that, having completed this year’s project of examination, repentance, and atonement, we will not need to do it again next year. It is assumed, in our liturgy, on our calendar, and in our texts, that every year, when Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur come, we will have plenty to repent for.

After Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we will celebrate Sukkot, our joyful harvest holiday. The biblical book that is traditionally read on Sukkot, though, is not especially joyful. We read Ecclesiastes, which is probably best known because of the song “Turn, Turn, Turn,”—its lyrics come from chapter three of Ecclesiastes. The book is not only applicable to Sukkot, but to the Days of Awe as well.

The book of Ecclesiastes is traditionally attributed to King Solomon, late in his life, in part because it addresses the pursuit of wisdom, and Solomon was known for his wisdom. Ecclesiastes talks about the cyclical nature of things, and takes a general attitude that all is futile—we don’t know what will happen, we can’t fathom how God’s justice works in the world as innocent people suffer and evil people go unpunished, and in the end we die alone and can’t take any of our worldly riches with us. It can be a kind of depressing read.

As we sit together for another Rosh Hashanah, entering the 10 days of repentance that culminate on Yom Kippur, we know—don’t we?—why there’s no hint in our liturgy that we might not need to be back here next year. It’s true that if repentance were once and done, none of you would be here for me to give a sermon to next year, but that’s not the reason. Rather, as Ecclesiastes puts it, “There is not one good person on earth who does what is best and doesn’t err” (Kohelet 7:20).

Every one of us has reason to repent, every year. Every one of us missed the mark this year, and missed it again and again. Every one of us needs to do t’shuvah—we need to turn back toward God. Here the word “God” means the ideal of who each of us would be if we were always able to do right. We are here to turn, to return, to realign our intentions and our actions with the ideal of who we want to be. And it’s something we have reason to do every year. The cycle continues. Is that something to be depressed about?

Most of you probably know the myth of Sisyphus. The story goes that in ancient Greece, he made the gods angry in various ways, and was condemned to spend eternity pushing a boulder up a mountain. Every time he got the top, the boulder would roll back down to the bottom and he’d have to go down and start all over again. The real punishment of this is not in the labor itself, but in the futility of the labor. Sisyphus successfully pushes the rock to the top of the mountain, but his work is for nothing. The rock bounds down to the bottom again. Every single time. Forever. And he knows it.

Author and philosopher Albert Camus wrote about the Myth of Sisyphus. He describes the punishment as an “unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing.” He envisions Sisyphus’s work as “the whole effort of a body straining to raise the huge stone, to roll it and push it up a slope a hundred times over; one sees the face screwed up, the cheek tight against the stone, the shoulder bracing the clay-covered mass, the foot wedging it, the fresh start with arms outstretched, the wholly human security of two earth-clotted hands. At the very end of his long effort measured by skyless space and time without without depth, the purpose is achieved. Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit. He goes back down to the plain.”

Sisyphus’s plight fits right in with the view of the world of the author of Ecclesiastes. In the first chapter of Ecclesiastes, we read: “One generation goes, another comes, but the earth remains the same forever. The sun rises, and the sun sets—and glides back to where it rises. Southward blowing, turning northward, ever turning blows the wind; on its rounds the wind returns. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full; to the place [from] which they flow the streams flow back again.” (Kohelet 1:4-7)

Neither the myth of Sisyphus nor the book of Ecclesiastes offer the hope that as the cycles continue, something might change. However, Camus, in his essay on the Myth of Sisyphus, offers something different. In the myth, the Greek gods intended to punish Sisyphus. But Camus sees in Sisyphus joy. The joy comes in embracing the cycle, in owning it and not hoping or wishing for something different.

And who is to say that pushing that boulder up the mountain is the same every time? Did the gods of the myth truly understand the human man, Sisyphus? Surely there was horror and agony in the beginning, at the recognition of an eternity at this work. But later, perhaps there are times when, watching the boulder roll back down the mountain, Sisyphus feels strong, knowing that he will succeed at pushing it back up again. Or perhaps in that walk down the mountain, he feels at times serene, because he knows his job and his purpose—to push that rock up the mountain again. On still other walks down the mountain, perhaps he feels grateful for the respite between trips up the mountain. Perhaps he begins to talk to the rock, to consider it his partner in this fate. As Camus puts it, “His fate belongs to him. His rock is this thing.” He is not looking anymore for a way out.

Albert Camus was not a fan of religion, though it would probably be more accurate to say that he was not a fan of Christianity. He didn’t like the hope that Christians were urged to have for a life after death. He believed that an afterlife was a way to make people reconcile themselves to a miserable life, and prevent them from trying to change their condition in this world, because they would get a reward later. Needless to say, he did not believe there was life after death.

In this attitude he was not far off from the Jewish position. We do not focus on what might or might not happen after we die. Though there is Jewish discussion of what might happen after death, we acknowledge that ultimately we have no idea. Therefore, as Camus would have it and Ecclesiastes too, we must focus on this life, and own it, and make the most of it. We are not in a waiting room where what happens doesn’t matter because the real thing comes after we die. This life is what we’ve got. The author of Ecclesiastes says, “Only this, I have found, is a real good: that one should eat and drink and get pleasure with all the gains one makes under the sun, during the numbered days of life that God has given him or her; for that is his or her portion.” (Kohelet 5:17)

If each of us is Sisyphus, I would suggest that life itself is our boulder. We spend the year pushing it up the mountain—its clay getting under our fingernails, its weight smashing our toes when we slip, its weight tiring us and making us sweat, its movement up the mountain giving us moments of exhilaration and achievement. Then we reach the top and it rolls back down again. The high holidays are the period when we are walking down the mountain and preparing to push the boulder up again.

We consider: How could we position our bodies differently so that it feels more like we’re working with the boulder than against it? How can we appreciate the moments of achievement more, rather than focusing so much on bruised toes and broken fingernails? How do we find the joy in pushing the boulder up the mountain?

In our tradition, we find our people frequently climbing mountains. In the Torah portion we’ll read tomorrow, Abraham climbs a mountain with his son Isaac, in order to sacrifice him. This is perhaps the opposite of Sisyphys’s plight—Abraham expects to climb this mountain once, to perform an irreversible, life-changing act. If he climbs a mountain again, he will hardly be the same person.

When the Israelites approach Mt. Sinai, they ask not to go too close because they are afraid, and Moses climbs the mountain alone to receive the Torah. Here, again, though Moses climbs the mountain more than once, the result is life-changing for him and for the Israelites, all the way down to us, because he receives the Torah in our myth.

So we have before us two types of mountain-climbing myths. Abraham and Moses climb mountains, and everything changes, while Sisyphus climbs his mountain with his boulder over and over and nothing really changes, except perhaps his attitude, echoing the book of Ecclesiastes.

In our lives, we find both. Sometimes we go through a year, or an experience, that challenges us, and ultimately changes us. Other times, we go through the cycles of our lives and find ourselves in the same position, doing the same thing, again and again. Both of these are the nature of life. Truly life-changing events are not so common. The rest of the time, we get up, go to work, go through our day, and it’s pretty much the same day after day.

But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t change through the cyclical parts of our lives; it’s just harder to see. The cycle of going through the year, getting to the Days of Awe, and taking a step back for 10 days to look at the cycle before we begin it again, is where we can make evolutionary change. Our sage Maimonides said that true t’shuvah is not achieved until we find ourselves in the same situation where we made our mistake, and we don’t make the same mistake again. Without the cycle that puts us through the same challenges, how could we achieve that t’shuvah? If I repent for losing my temper with my children because I’m stressed, how do I know I’ve really repented unless I get stressed again and am again in a situation where I am inclined to lose my temper with my children? Fortunately for me, I’m sure to have lots of opportunities to try that one again.

The author of Ecclesiastes is right: Life is made up of cycles—cycles of seasons, cycles of life, cycles of behavior, cycles of the secular year and the Jewish year. The cycles are punctuated by life-changing moments or events now and then. It is for us to bring meaning to the cycles, to have determination that we can make life better for ourselves and those we love, through t’shuvah that leads us to alter our behavior. The Days of Awe are a gift to us, part of the cycle that is also a respite from it. This is the time for us to assess where we want to adjust our attitude and our behavior, to make the coming year incrementally different from the past one, and, we hope, incrementally better.

Let us embrace not only this opportunity, but every day in the coming year when we have strength to go on. As the author of Ecclesiastes writes, “How sweet is the light, what a delight for the eyes to behold the sun! Even if a man lives many years, let him enjoy himself in all of them.” (Ecclesiastes 11:7-8) May we make the most of these Days of Awe, and go forward with appreciation for our lives and the opportunities they hold for doing better than we have in the past, even within the seeming sameness of the cycles of life. Amen and l’Shanah Tovah u’metukah—have a good and a sweet year.