Rabbi Philip Weintraub
Congregation Agudas Israel
October 4, 2014
Yom Kippur Yizkor
בְּראֹשׁ הַשָּׁנָה יִכָּתֵבוּן וּבְיוֹם צוֹם כִּפּוּר יֵחָתֵמוּן כַּמָּה יַעַבְרוּן וְכַמָּה יִבָּרֵאוּן מִי יִחְיֶה וּמִי יָמוּת.
On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on the Fast day, Yom Kippur, it is sealed, How many will pass on and how many will be born, who will die and who will live.
From the Unatanah Tokef, a focal point of the Musaf Amidah on both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we offer this prayer. We cry out to Gd, every one of us. We look around the room. We see those who are with us and those who are not. We remember those we lost, the good times and the bad.
Yet at the same time, we celebrate. Yom Kippur is a day of deeply mixed emotion. It is truly a roller coaster of a day. At Kol Nidre, we ask Gd and each other to pray among sinners, knowing not only that all of us are imperfect, that all of us have sinned. Whether the sins are large or small, hurting others, ourselves or Gd. I read this week a brief, yet powerful piece reminding that we must remember not only to forgive others, but to forgive ourselves for the sin of not fulfilling our expectations. Yom Kippur morning we beat our chests repeatedly. We cry out to Gd to forgive our sins. We do the Avodah service, remembering the powerful experience of the Temple, when the Cohen Gadol announced to the community that they were forgiven. At that point, the modern and ancient versions of Yom Kippur split! When our ancestors had the Temple in Jerusalem, the rest of Yom Kippur was a celebration. Once the high priest completed the Avodah service, we knew we were forgiven! Engagements were made, marriages announced. The traditional Torah reading for Yom Kippur afternoon is all about relationships--who exactly are you allowed to marry and who can you not?
For us, we do not see the crimson thread turn white. We do see the scapegoat tossed off a cliff. We do not know if our sins have been forgiven. We continue our service with the Eleh Ezkarah, remembering the martyrs of our tradition, Jews killed for teaching Judaism, for simply being Jews. Originally written about Roman persecution, using stories from the Talmud, today we read about the martyrs of the Crusades, about the Inquisition, about the Shoah, the Holocaust. We could add readings from Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, where Jews were sent from their homes, exiled and killed because of the blasphemy that there might be a Jewish state in the Middle East. We could share stories today of Jews attacked around the world, simply for being Jews. I could go on, but the day continues.
Yom Kippur mincha tells us the story of Jonah. We remember NON-Jews being told to repent, the people of Nineveh. Yet they do and they are saved. On a holiday about our particular relationship with Gd, we share a universal reminder of the power of redemption.
After mincha, we offer one last prayer service. No other day of the year has FIVE different services, five different opportunities to beat our breast, to confess our sins. Yet we come back, again and again, to some of the same words. We cry out, again and again. For some the repetition is boring. They are ready to eat. (One more thing to confess!) Yet the repetition can bring us focus, can push us to greater heights. Coming back this afternoon, this evening, we imagine the gate of forgiveness, the book of life, and we try to write ourselves into it.
If only we work harder. . .
If only we do what we are supposed to do. . .
As I stand before you this morning, I am torn. I am broken. I am imperfect. I am a person who devotes his life to helping others, yet inevitably I fail. I have spent weeks looking for the perfect words to inspire you, to help you find the strength to live another year. I have looked for the perfect words, that will inspire you to see the world the way I do, to look at the spirals of the Jewish calendar, to let the rhythm of the calendar be the beat of your life. And yet as I stand here, the words fall flat. Not all of them will reach you. They will drift in the ether, in the echo of this beautiful new room. So I fall silent.
וּבְשׁוֹפָר גָּדוֹל יִתָּקַע. וְקוֹל דְּמָמָה דַקָּה יִשָּׁמַע.
THE GREAT SHOFAR will be sounded and the still small voice will be heard.
Yom Kippur is unlike any other day. While we have other fasts, other days of prayer, this is a day of reflection like not other. What are we trying to do? Who are we trying to be? How do our expectations help us succeed or fail?
From the third page of his book, Rabbi Sherman sets the scene, it is 1985:
“Very few people get to live their dreams. But there I was, forty-one years old, the rabbi of a major congregation in Syracuse, New York, and married to my summer camp sweetheart. As a preacher, I was passionate, creative, confident, energetic, and well-known in the greater community. I was on a career path. . .My children were growing up with a strong sense of identity and appreciation for Jewish values. . .Not that every last detail was perfect. I had more trouble than most balancing career and family. . .”
Two pages later he writes:
We cannot always identify the precise point in time when our lives are transformed. For my family, it was 2AM on a frigid March night. . .when I awoke to a child’s whimper. . .
(After a brief debate over which parent would get him, the not-pregnant one did, Rabbi Sherman went to his son’s room):
I felt his forehead and found it very warm. Not good, but not a disaster, either. I would give him Tylenol and call our pediatrician in the morning.
“Eyal, let’s go to the bathroom.”
No response.
“Eyal, let me help you. You’ll feel better.”. . .
Without my assistance, he would have crumpled to the floor. I atrributed his fatigue to the late hour. Then I noticed his pasty color, his jiggling legs, his incoherent speech. His favorite yellow and red pajamas were drenched in body fluid and his eyes were distant and unaware. At that moment, before I even called out to Leah for help, I knew: something was terribly wrong.”
From there, doctors were called, visited, hospital stays began. They discovered a brain lesion and were told that their son had, at most, a few months to live. Yet they weren’t ready to let go. They fought and called doctors up and down the east coast. They found a surgeon willing to operate and the surgery was successful. They were jubilant!
If the story stopped there, I am not sure Rabbi Sherman would have written his book. He would have had a brief detour on his career path, a couple months of extra time with his family and then gone back to his previous life. Yet that is not the end of the story, it is only the beginning. A few days after the surgery, Eyal had a brainstem stroke and was in a vegetative coma for months. To hear more of the story, you will have to read his book. Today Eyal is in his thirties. He is dependent on a ventilator, cannot breathe, eat, or move independently. Yet his mind is intact. With the determination of his family, he had a Bar Mitzvah, attended school, graduated from college. Putting a paint brush in his mouth, he has become an accomplished painter. He has found success in his own way. He has redefined expectations not only for himself, but for his entire family.
Every aspect of their lives had to change. Every priority had to be reconsidered. Eyal has had extended stays in the hospital many times in his life. The Sherman’s home had to be adapted. Rabbi Sherman even had to reconsider what a Bar Mitzvah would look like--Eyal learned the Torah reading, but could not make it audible--so for that Shabbat, he put in cameras and huge screens so that the congregation could SEE Eyal’s lip read the Torah--with proper trope!
Yizkor for me, is a time of remembrance. I think of those who I have lost, my grandfathers Artie and Benjamin, my grandma Doris, and those who are still with us, yet sometimes feel lost, my Grandma Alice post-stroke. I think of those we have lost this year, parents of some of you in this room, people I have known and cared about. In every family, we have a story of suffering, of illness, of challenge. Whether it is cancer or heart disease, Ebola, AIDS or tragic accidents, we ourselves or people we know are personally afflicted and affected by challenges.
As the great shofar is sounded, as we imagine writing ourselves in the Book of Life for the next year, I wonder about how we react to all these challenges. What holds us up when times are tough? How do we keep our strength when we feel like we will crumble? What do we have in our toolbox to help us manage our expectations?
At the end of the day, Gd, faith, love, one another, therapy, community are all tools to get us through our difficult times, to help us find ways to celebrate again after and even DURING times of tragedy. One Yizkor I shared with you the power of AND, that we can be both happy AND sad, jubilant AND disappointed, sweet AND bitter. Sadness and joy are not mutually exclusive possibilities.
As much as we like, we cannot control every aspects of our lives, every little or big thing that happens to us. What we can control is our reaction. How do we deal with the challenges of life? Choosing to respond positively, with hope, with a new plan for action, that we can do. As I said on Rosh Hashanah, today is the day Gd has made, rejoice in it.
As we prepare for Yizkor, as we think of those who we have loved and lost, let us think of the decisions they made. Did they react well to stress and change? How can we emulate them when they did? If they did not, how can we use their example to react with love and hope!
Next year, when we return to our regular sanctuary, we will ask ourselves again, for whom has the shofar tolled--and how did we react?
The most powerful line of the Unetanek Tokef tells us that T’shuvah, T’fillah and Tz’dakah have the power to transform the harshness of our destiny. Renewing ourselves/repenting, prayer/yearning and charity/deeds of righteousness do not miraculously defeat cancer or solve all our problems. Rather, they change our attitudes; they help us gain the tools to thrive in any situation.
G’mar tov!
