Rabbi's
Sermons
Yom Kippur 5770
Kol Nidre
September 27, 2009
I am always behind the curve when it comes to technology,
so I apologize if I gush enthusiastically about a new device we purchased in the
last year which most of you have known about for a long time. It is a GPS system
for your car. It’s amazing. Anywhere in the country, you just plug in the
address and away you go. The only drawback to it is I no longer have an excuse
for being late. I used to be able to say “I got lost”, so now I’ll have to come
up with something different. I also think its great when you go the wrong
direction and it tells you you screwed up in a very nice way. And then it gently
says, “Recalculating”. And as we enter Yom Kippur, this is a helpful metaphor
for our life. We went in a certain direction, if it was the wrong path, we come
to shul on Yom Kippur and are told, Recalculating.
Rabbi Brad Artson shares a moving story about his own
‘recalculating’ experience. When he was a student at the Jewish Theological
seminary he envied the many students whose fathers or grandfathers were rabbis
and scholars. He did not come from a family of Jewish scholars and he determined
that when he had children he would learn with them so that they would carry with
them a legacy he never had. He and his wife were blessed with twins. His
daughter, who has grown into a kind and compassionate young woman, was never
interested in the intellectual pursuits of her father. And his son was diagnosed
with autism. Rabbi Artson poignantly tells how he inferred from his children
that God had given a thumbs down to his desire to create a hevruta, a study
partnership, with his children. He grieved over that. But when his son became
bar mitzvah he asked his father to study Torah with him in preparation for the
day. Rabbi Artson began to study with son and they have continued to study the
parasha every week. Rabbi Artson concludes that what he perceived as God’s
dismissal of his dream was only due to his preconceived notion of what the
fulfillment of that dream would look like. He had to “recalculate” what it meant
for his dream to be actualized (from the Zeigler School High Holiday DVD).
What I find so valuable in Rabbi Artson’s story is first that
he comes to recognize that his blessings are right in front of his nose. So many
of us consider our lives to be only partially fulfilled because our dreams go
unsatisfied, but often they are not unsatisfied, it is simply that we repel what
is staring us in the face because it does not fit our preconceived notion of
what we thought the fulfillment of the dream would look like.
A second lesson that I draw from Rabbi Artson is that he did
not despair when he thought his dream would not be achieved. For he continued to
teach, and to learn Torah and he is recognized today as one of the premier
teachers of Torah to American Jewry. Until his “Aha” moment when he realized
that his dream had actually been achieved, he never stopped pursuing his
commitment to spreading Torah to a contemporary audience. His personal
disappointment did not undermine his belief in his ultimate ideals and values.
This kept him centered and whole. For most of us, our
emotional pain comes from the gap between what we think we should be and who we
truly are. We hold an image of ourselves that is imposed upon us by our parents,
our society, by our status, by our dreams. But we live over here. Instead of
appreciating who we are and what our uniqueness is, we are constantly striving
to live the image of ourselves. And the gap between who we are and who we think
we should be is the source of much of our pain and deters us from truly
appreciating the blessings that constitute our lives.
There’s a story told about a young Chasid, a young student,
who approached his rabbi with a problem. He said ‘Rebbe, no matter how hard I
try to draw close to God, I’m blocked. I know you taught me, ‘Ivdu et HaShem
b’simchah, that we must worship our Creator with joy, but I can’t find the joy.
There is just so much suffering in this world, so much hardship, so much loss,
so much that I can’t accept. What can I do?’ His rabbi replied, ‘There is one
man who can teach how to overcome your obstacle,. You must go and see Reb Zusya
of Hanipoli. He can show you how to find the joy even with all the hardship of
life.’ The young Chasid trusted his rabbi, and so he set out on the journey to
find this Reb Zusya. After a lengthy trip, he arrived at what he was told was
this great teacher’s address. As soon as the young Chasid beheld Zusya’s home,
he understood why his rabbi sent him here: it was the most miserable little
hovel he had ever seen in his life. Here was a man who understood hardship and
the worst kind of suffering. When the young Chasid knocked on the door and was
bid to come in, what he beheld astonished him even more: the conditions of the
inside of the hovel were worse than the outside, and this Reb Zusya who stood
before him was a man in abject poverty, near starvation, who had clearly been
battered by illness and difficult times his whole life. ‘Reb Zusya, thank you so
much for welcoming me,’ said the young Chasid. ‘My rabbi has sent me here
because he said that only you could teach me the wisdom of learning how to
accept the terrible suffering of life, and still find joy and closeness to God.’
‘He sent you to learn what from me?’ asked Reb Zusya. ‘…To learn how to accept
life’s suffering with joy.’ Reb Zusya laughed. ‘Young man, I’m so sorry to
disappoint you, but I really have no idea why your rebbe sent you hear to learn
such a lesson from me. I have nothing to tell you about such matters. You see,
God has been very good to me my whole life. Maybe you should go and learn from
someone who has had some real misfortunes, God forbid.”
In reviewing this Hasidic tale, Rabbi Gil Steinlauf teaches
that it is very easy to misinterpret the story of Reb Zusya. Zusya isn’t just
showing us that if we think about life and its misfortunes differently, if we
adjust our expectations, then life will look alright. Rather he says, “When we
behold this world through the deepest part of our souls, we no longer have eyes
for lack and for loss. We can see the goodness and the bracha, the blessing of
life, of all of it... It’s that life really IS blessing. There really IS
abundance. It doesn’t matter how bad it seems to be: Life really IS okay!” Rabbi
Steinlauf calls this beholding life with our hearts not our heads (from his RH
sermon, Adas Israel).
If I understand him correctly, he is telling us that to truly
recalculate our approach to life is not simply to choose to accept one’s
condition and appreciate it, it is that every breath I take is a miracle right
now. What a joy to be alive now, and to be able to do right now what is
meaningful – study Torah, share with others, express compassion.
This is a valuable lesson for us as our nation struggles
through a very difficult time. This Great Recession as it is being called has
caused tremendous pain, great amounts of fear and uncertainly but also an
opportunity to “recalculate”. It is forcing each of us to ask ourselves, as
Rabbi Harold Kushner puts it, “What endures?” What is there in my existence that
is a bulwark against the vagaries and inconstancy of the life that swirls about
me? If I thought it is was my 401K I was sorely mistaken. My 401K is now more
like a 201 D.
You know what I like to point out when I am with a family at
an unveiling? Every stone has, besides the name and date of death, a list –
beloved father, brother, Mother Grandmother. They are all relationships. Other
than Senator Roland Burris, no one puts his or her resume on the stone. Just a
few choice words, father, mother, husband, wife and yet it speaks volumes of
what the individual, or more importantly those affected by the individual,
considered the essential components to that person’s life. That is what endures.
The Dubner Maggid told a story that encapsulates the Jewish
understanding of true enduring values. He told of a father in a small Eastern
European village who was walking his child to cheder, to school. Suddenly they
heard a fanfare of trumpets and an elaborate coach pulled by beautiful horses
rode down the road. The coach stopped right by them and out stepped a man
wrapped in lush furs and dripping with jewels, dazzling the onlookers. The
father whispered to his son: "Take a good look, my child. For unless you learn
and live Torah, that's what you are going to look like!"
We see the jewels and are dazzled – there is something that
does not lose value. But that is wrong. Learning and living a life of Torah,
that is what endures through recessions, depressions, and all other crises.
Some of you have heard of Robert I Lappin. He is the
philanthropist whose foundation subsidized the high school trip our kids took
two summers ago to Israel. Lappin is the type of philanthropist who feels an
imperative to give. Over the years his foundation has sponsored 17 education,
interfaith outreach, and family development programs under the umbrella of his
namesake foundation. He has given more than $30 million to Jewish causes in the
Boston area.
But his foundation was also one of the many foundations that
were defrauded by the Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme, closing briefly after $8
million vanished. Though Lappin himself lost some of his personal fortune to
Madoff, he had invested all of his 60 employee’s 401K fund with Madoff. So when
the scandal was uncovered, all of his employees’ retirement funds were wiped
out. But several months ago Lappin made good on his promise to his employees and
completely refinanced the $5 million of savings that had been wiped out.
In doing so Lappin’s personal net worth is now less than $5
million, about a tenth of what it was before the scandal broke.
So why did he do it? Giving his own money to the employees
was simply the right thing to do, he said. “At least from the feedback, they
feel very grateful and happy, which makes me feel very happy,’’ said Lappin.
But taking more then half of what was left of his personal
fortune and giving it to them, must have been tough. Although he was still a
millionaire afterwards, my experience tells me that for most people, financial
loss is not about absolute numbers but percentages. While the average person’s
draw may drop at what Lappin has left, most people who have that much don’t
think it is that much. But Lappin understood that what truly endures are not
things. Rather it is a good name, a legacy of love and concern, a heritage of
commitment. Peter Lappin, his son, said the decision to replace the employees’
losses was immediate, and that he, his brother, and his sister all supported
their father’s wishes. “You know what? The opportunity to build the wealth back
will refund us,’’ he said. The family saw the losses as opportunities to be more
creative, more innovative, more effective.
The rabbis of the Talmud (Bava Metzia 42a) teach this lesson:
“Rabbi Yitzhak said, Blessing is found only in that which is hidden from the
eye… The School of R. Ishmael taught: A blessing comes only to that over which
the eye has no power, for it is said,
The Lord shall command the blessing upon thee in thy hidden thing.(Deut. 28:8)”
Rabbi Gil Steinlauf asks, What do they mean by this? They
mean that we can never see True Blessing in life if we try to find it with our
mind’s eye: if we use only our capacity for thinking, for reasoning; if we look
from our fears, and our perceptions of economic decline and fears of future
loss. When we do that, we’re not really seeing. We’re just blinded by life’s
apparent hardships. The secret to finding blessing in life is not just shifting
how we think about life. It’s in having the courage to relinquish control, to
acknowledge that we don’t know, that we can’t know what will be and—like Zusya—have
eyes only for the blessing of what is.
This is why we are commanded to say a blessing on the
misfortunes that occur to us just as on the good. (Mishnah Brachot 9:5). Torah
wants us to be able to bless that which is.
If we can live our lives like Brad Artson relinquishing
control over goals but holding on to what is meaningful and significant, like
Reb Zusya who appreciated the beauty of each moment and not waylaid by
transitory material goods, prestige, status, and like Robert Lappin who acted on
his deepest and most fundamental values than our lives, the precious moments
that we bequeathed to by God in this world, will be not only hidden but open and
abundant blessing as well.
And to that may we all say AMEN.
