Yom Kippur Yizkor

Rabbi Philip Weintraub

Congregation Agudas Israel

September 23, 2015

YK Day: Holiness of Mundane in Loss

As my daughter approaches the age of Disney movies, the dramatic absence of parents is particularly powerful.  Think back to your childhood or of your children and grandchildren: Snow White, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Lion King, Bambi, Dumbo, Peter Pan, The Jungle Book, The Fox and the Hound, Beauty and the Beast, Pocahontas, Aladdin, Frozen, even Pixar with Toy Story or Up.  Mothers, fathers or both are killed or disappeared in remarkable numbers.  Some suggest this comes from a tragic accident that resulted in the loss of Walt Disney’s own mother.  Others say it is simply an effective narrative tool--if you want to talk about growth and maturity, “knocking off a parent” is useful shorthand.

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-there-are-no-moms-in-disney-movies-2014-9#ixzz3kcJ1gjFa

Whether in Disney terms or in reality, no life is complete without loss and loss can be an opportunity for growth.  At this stage of my life, I am grateful to have my parents and in-laws.  Parenting is a tremendous blessing, but no matter the child, having a resource to ask questions is a gift.  I cannot imagine the loss of any of them, and do not pretend to.  Yet empathy, the loss of grandparents, and even the loss of a potential life, makes grief no less real in my own life.

Having studied grief academically, through chaplaincy, through our shared experiences and my own personal losses, I have seen how different traditions attempt to assist people through their grief process.  I cannot say strongly enough how lucky we are to be Jewish, to choose Judaism, especially when we lose someone.  As Jews, our religion offers us a rubric, an algorithm, a language for loss that is frankly missing in much of our surrounding culture.

I don’t say this to make you feel guilty if you sat shiva for three days instead of seven.  I know that not all of you will come to Yizkor services next week for Shemini Atzeret, at Passover or Shavuot.  We do not have a daily minyan here to help you say Kaddish every day, but we will help you with a minyan for shloshim, for shiva or for a yahrzeit.  In all of those cases, we have always come together--as long as we have a week’s notice!

I stand here to affirm my message from the last week.  Every single day of our lives is one that can be filled with holiness, with kedushah,  with little points of light that can inspire us to deeper, more meaningful lives.  The lesson I have not clearly articulated over these last few days is that as modern Jews, we are all Jews by choice.  If we were born Jewish, we did not have any official conversion ceremony, but we chose to remain within our tradition.  As such, the rituals, the metaphors can speak to us, can help us make daily choices that bring God into our lives.  As I quoted the Kotzker rebbe earlier this week, “Where is God found? Wherever we let God in!”

For Passover 2014’s Yizkor, I introduced you to Superman Sam, Sam Sommer, the second child of two rabbis, Phyllis and Michael Sommer.  Sam had a difficult form of childhood cancer and his parents blogged from the beginning of his diagnosis, through remission, recurrence, and to his death.  Unlike so many health journey blogs, they did not stop at his death in December 2013.  While not as frequent, I get regular emails with new blog posts, with photos of the family and memories as they live their lives and as they remember him.  No matter the stages of grief, it is not a purely linear process.  People may be angry one day and accept another.  They may go back from acceptance to bargaining or denial all on a daily basis.

Rabbi Phyllis wrote recently:

Pouring

I was driving today, wearing sunglasses.

Because the sun was shining.

And then suddenly, it started to rain.

Pour, actually.

But the sun was still shining.

Brightly.

I looked around, thinking that if I tried hard enough, I would find a rainbow.

But I didn't.

And then the rain stopped.

The sun shone.

Sometimes that is how I feel.

The sun can be shining.

And without warning, a monsoon pours down upon me.

I am overwhelmed with grief.

I want to find a rainbow, to imagine that it's going to end.

The rain stops, but sometimes the rainbow doesn't show its face.

Sometimes I am completely overwhelmed with the realization that I'm never going to wake up and find Sam here.

I hope for the rainbow. For the light and love and blessing.

Sometimes it hides its face.

http://supermansamuel.blogspot.com/2015/09/pouring.html

That’s what life is.  Moments of joy, moments of sadness.  I especially loved the line that sometimes the rainbow doesn’t show its face.  It made me think of the rabbinic concept of hester panim, that when we feel lost, hurt, it is as if God is hiding God’s face.  Yet even when we feel abandoned by God, we may just be looking in the wrong place.

On Rosh Hashanah, I argued that we will find more meaning, more happiness, more joy if we could be more appreciative.  The same is true with our memories and with sadness.  We live in a world that is afraid of emotion.  We numb ourselves and distract ourselves from the realities of the world and the realities of our lives.  I argue that our lives our richer when we allow ourselves to mourn, allow ourselves to feel sad, to cry.

In this year, I shared with you some of my own feelings of loss.  We are grateful to Gd, no kunahuras, and hope to celebrate a new addition to our family after next Purim, [pretend to spit].  Yet, even as I find myself incredibly excited about such possibilities, I still grieve and yet am somehow a tiny bit grateful for the miscarriage Rebecca had last summer.  I mentioned earlier the great blessing of the Jewish tradition--rituals and things to do when we lose someone.  One of the biggest challenges people have around death is not knowing what to do, how to act, yet our tradition gives clear instructions--except where it doesn’t.  Miscarriage, perinatal and neonatal loss don’t have traditional Jewish rituals.  We discovered things in the back of my Rabbi’s Manual, online, and Rebecca found going to the mikvah to be a healing experience.  For me, this absence of ritual was the hardest part.  Yet I was blessed to have all of you.  Sharing our story with you, I heard so many, many stories.  Had I not been a rabbi, we might not have told anyone, which would have been so much more difficult for us.  We discovered that we were not weird alien creatures for being sad about losing a potential child, but truly part of a community, one of many who shared that experience.

It has not been easy to share the experience.  As much as I put myself in front of you all, there are some feelings I am more reserved about.  I love to share my joy, but am less excited about sharing sorrow.  Yet that sorrow makes joy so much richer.  I firmly believe that our ability to appreciate the wonders, the miracles of our lives is in direct relationship to our ability to mourn the losses of our lives and the broken world we live in.  When we recognize the sorrows of others, when we work to support them, how much more can we gain from our experience, how much more can we appreciate the blessings that we do have.  How much more can we celebrate?  In my own life, I ask for your continued prayers, as we hope to have much to celebrate in the coming year!  Every morning, Psalm 30 tells us that God turns our mourning into dancing.  I pray that this year will do so for all of us.

Thinking about Yizkor, our minds go to a place of memory, remembering important people in our lives. Whether they are parents, grandparents, children, siblings, spouses or other relatives and friends, they touched our lives deeply.  We simply would not be the people we are without their influence.  Whatever their biological role, they were our teachers and even without a physical existence, they can still teach us.

As Jews in the 21st century, obligation (or guilt) does not resonate in the ways it did for generations of Jews.  Yet you stand and sit here today.  You recognize the potential for holiness, meaning, love in our lives.  We are not simply organisms for whom living is our only goal.  Over the last few days, I have spoken of bringing the kedushah, the holiness, of today into the rest of the year.  I have spoken of the tools of gratitude, prayer, Israel, relationships, community, respect, and now memory and loss.  I pray that in the year to come, these tools will help you discover holiness, find meaning, bring gratitude and love into your life.  These are huge goals, yet we need not entirely accomplish them to reap huge dividends.  Every moment is an opportunity.  Do not waste it, let us turn now to the Yizkor service.

Kol Nidre 2015

Rabbi Philip Weintraub

Congregation Agudas Israel

9/22/15 (5776)

Kol Nidre: Holiness of Mundane in Human relationships

Before I start another sermon with a joke, I want to add a brief follow-up to my second day Rosh Hashanah sermon.  I spoke about the miracles and challenges of Israel and challenged you to come with me next May.  The flyers are at the table with your nametags and deposits are being accepted starting Thursday!  Now, to the humor:

A rabbi, a priest and a minister are fishing, sitting on a little boat in the middle of a lake.  After a little while, the rabbi says, “I think I need a soda.” So he walks across the lake and grabs a drink from his picnic basket on shore.  A few minutes later, the priest says “I could really use my sandwich,” so he walks across the lake and grabs a bite from his picnic basket.  The minister is absolutely amazed at this and decides to try it out.  He excuses himself to use the restroom, takes a step off the boat and starts splashing about in the water.  The rabbi turns to the priest and says, “Should we have told him about the stepping stones?”

What does it mean to be a community?  In the last few years, United Synagogue has stopped calling its member congregations congregations.  Instead they call them kehillot, communities.  We strive to be a kehillah kedoshah, a holy community, where we look out for one another, support one another, help in times of need and celebrate each other's simchas.  The rabbi and priest in my joke would have been a lot nicer had they just told the minister where the steps were!

As a community, we keep each other in the loop.  If someone is sick, we check in on them.  Hopefully I am told.  Every month in the bulletin I write that sometimes it is ok to gossip.  I would rather hear that someone is ill three times than not hear at all. While many value their privacy, I cannot offer a prayer, cannot visit, if I do not know in the first place!  Creating and growing a community is dependent on our interconnectedness.

One of the aspects of this shul that I love is the feeling of community.  In the last few years, I can think of quite a few moments where we really did things right.  When “my girls” had their bat mitzvah, so many of you came to support, that it looked like Yom Kippur--although the kiddush was a heck of alot better.  Together they worked with me for quite awhile (and continue to do so) and when we celebrated their accomplishments people really showed up.  At bar mitzvahs of some of the young people of this congregation, the same spirit was found.  There is a great energy in this room when we truly come together.  When my daughter was born we found that same energy at her naming.  Celebrating her birth with so many of you, we discovered the love that is in this community.  We pray for many more such occasions in the future!

On the other side of things, when we have lost members and friends, we have never been short for a shiva minyan.  Even when members had been less active in their later years, shiva minyanim have been well attended.  While it would be nice if more people attended some of those funerals, I spoke this week with a recent widow and she shared how touched she was with those from way back who came to attend her husband’s funeral and shiva.

Just this past week I had another moment of celebration.  I was talking to one of our co-presidents, recovering from back surgery.  He said, “Did you tell everyone to call me? I heard from him and her and her and him to see how I was doing?”  I said, “It wasn’t me.  They are doing it on their own.”  In that moment, if I can pat myself on the back, I realized that my teachings and sermons are truly sinking in!

As a rabbi, as a chaplain, the lesson that I have really learned is “just show up”.  This lesson does not apply only to me.  Your presence is what makes or breaks an event.  It is what changes a class from me talking to myself to a spirited discussion.  Your physical self in this room transforms a service from personal prayer to a minyan. Your presence at a funeral, a shiva, in the home of someone who doesn’t get out much can provide so much support.  

When you visit someone who is ill your presence can actually help to heal!  Tractate Bava Metzia teaches that visiting the ill removes 1/60th of the illness!  This isn’t to say that you just need sixty visitors, as the Talmud and later commentators advise not overwhelming people, not arriving at the same time as the doctor, and giving people with intestinal distress more space so that they are not embarrassed by their noises and odors. With those caveats, the rabbis understood that just showing up is incredibly powerful for people.  Even if there is nothing “to do”, keeping a family member company can be a major source of consolation in a difficult time.  Don’t worry too much about saying the wrong thing, but try to give the person you are visiting space to talk.  Try listening more than speaking and then you won’t say anything you regret!  (That is a good lesson not just in a hospital, but in a shiva home, or in many conversations!)

Now that I’ve just said presence is more important than words, let me remind you that what and how we say does matter, too. The way we speak to one another, what we choose to say, and where we choose to say those words are all incredibly important and should reflect our values.  We must be careful of the words we choose, not just in a hospital, but in all situations.

There is a famous story elsewhere in Bava Metzia (84a) about Rabbi Yochanan and Reish Lakish, two famous scholars.  Rabbi Yochanan was known for his great beauty, which helped to inspire Reish Lakish to drop his first profession (as a leader of bandit and thieves) and become a Jewish scholar!  Rabbi Yochanan taught Reish Lakish Torah for years; they became very close, chevrutas, study partners and friends.  

This close friendship was broken one day when their normally spirited arguments of details of Jewish law took a personal turn.  Discussing swords and weapons, Rabbi Yochanan believed that the manufacturing of a sword was complete when it was tempered in an oven.  Reish Lakish said it was not complete until it had been cooled in water after that heating.  They debated for awhile until Rabbi Yochanan said, “you were once a bandit, so you are the expert on swords.”  Reish Lakish was broken hearted and replied “If you still think of me as a bandit, what did you ever do for me?”  Rabbi Yochanan replied “What did I do for you?  I reformed your ways.  I brought you under God’s protection.  How dare you not appreciate this!”  The two men departed, both deeply offended and personally hurt by the other's reaction.  Reish Lakish was so upset, and so crushed internally, that he fell ill, and eventually died because of it.

One might think the story is over there.  Yet the lesson continues with the reminder that even deep relationships can be irreparably harmed by harsh words and hurt feelings.  The narrative continues:

Rabbi Yochanan was upset and grieved greatly for his departed friend.  The other Rabbis saw this and wanted to pick him up.  They knew that Rabbi Yochanan was at his happiest when he was studying with Reish Lakish, so they began a search to find the most brilliant scholar they could, and would pair the two together as new study partners.  They found a tremendously bright student, who for every teaching Rabbi Yochanan would bring, would give a long list of reasons why he was correct.  But this did nothing for Rabbi Yochanan.  "I don't need this," he said.  "What I need is for you to tell me why I am wrong.  That is what made Reish Lakish so special.  That for every teaching I brought, he would tell me 24 reasons why I was wrong.  It was through that discussion and that debate, that we each came to see the other's viewpoint, and together we were able to finally learn what a correct answer might be."

In our tradition, arguing is important.  Disagreements are important.  Yet, we have to be aware of HOW we are arguing.  We must do so with respect, with love with kindness.  Showing respect applies even in board meetings and financial discussions!  We must remember that from our tradition, from our Talmud, public embarrassment is seen as a cardinal sin.

While I could give you several sources,  Bava Kamma 90a gives several examples of huge fines for seemingly minor physical confrontations.

. צרם באזנו, תלש בשערו, רקק והגיע בו רוקו, העביר טליתו ממנו, פרע ראש האשה בשוק נותן לו ארבע מאות זוז

4) If he tore at his ear, plucked out his hair, spat at him and his spit touched him, or pulled his cloak from off him, or loosed a woman’s hair in the street, he must pay 400 zuz.

Dr Josh Kulp of the Conservative Yeshiva writes;

“These types of blows will probably not cause any damage and therefore the fines are for embarrassment only...They demonstrate that Jewish law takes publicly embarrassing another person very seriously and penalizes such a person with a stiff financial penalty.  Indeed according to Jewish tradition one who publicly embarrasses another is akin to a murderer. “ http://learn.conservativeyeshiva.org/2014/05/bava-kamma-chapter-eight-mishnah-six/

Dr. Kulp also teaches about of Bava Metzia 58b-59a where we learn

that one who publicly shames his neighbor, it’s equivalent to murdering him; wronging someone verbally/publicly is worse than robbing him; better to have potentially (but not actually) adulterous relationship that to publicly shame his neighbor AND finally, better to throw oneself into a fiery furnace than embarrass someone!  

On that note,

[Check the age of the room]:

A rabbi, a priest and a minister are playing golf together.  As they get to the third hole, the rabbi says to the priest, “celibacy, hmm,  Really, forever?”  The priest says, “well, almost, there was this one time.”  Around the ninth hole, the priest says to the minister, “I know that your denomination doesn’t allow gambling, but have you ever played the lottery?”  The minister replies, “Well, there was that one time our convention was in Vegas.  I put a nickel in the slot machine and won $100.  You are the first people I’ve ever told.”  Just as they were getting ready to play the last hole, the two of them look at the rabbi and say, “do you have any vices?”  The rabbi looks a little sheepish and the says, “I do love a great story.  I’m trying to figure out who I want to tell these to first!”  

Again, the rabbi in this joke isn’t the nicest guy.  I wouldn’t want to go to a bar with him!  Jewish values would teach him to keep his mouth shut.  While there are certain exemptions to rules of gossip--ie letting me know if someone is ill so I can visit, sharing information that would stop a bad marriage or a bad business deal, we are not to speak ill of people maliciously or unnecessarily.  

Rabbi Israel Meir HaCohen Kagan, who lived a hundred years ago, was an incredibly important and influential rabbi who focused on ethical teachings.  He was an ethicist, a halachic judge, (posek) whose commentary on the Shulchan Aruch, the Mishneh Brurah, is authoritative in many circles today.  In Jewish parlance, an author is called not by his name, but by his most important work.  He is not generally known as the Mishneh Brurah, but as the Chofetz Chaim, which was his work about pure speech, refraining from gossip, and all the laws and customs surrounding that issue.  His teachings there, reminding us to be extremely cautious about how we speak about others, overshadows his authoritative book on Jewish Law.  This tremendously popular and pious rabbi continues to be referenced as his seminal work, even as he was a prolific author!  His books on shmirat ha’lashon, guarding the tongue remain in print and online as primary sources today.  (On a side note, if you’d like to study them with me, I’m glad to do so!) As we enter into a day of contemplation, let us strive that the year to come will include far more positive speech!  What does it say about Jewish tradition that his book about talking respectfully is even more well known than his book about the entirety of Jewish law.

Ignoring my jokes, I can boil down this sermon to three lines:

1. The way to be a community is to show up for one another.
2. To be a holy community, we need to think about what we say to one another.
3. Being nice, not embarrassing one another is the hallmark of being a good Jew.

May these points remain with you not just tomorrow, but every day this year. We have so much to celebrate here, let us continue to work for the positive! L’shanah tovah.