SCROLL DOWN FOR YOM KIPPUR DAY SERMON
Kol Nidre 5774: The
Better Story
Rabbi Joshua
Hammerman
Late last year, a
film came out, “Life of Pi,” based on a bestselling book, that drew lots of
attention and an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. It was also the most
overtly religious film of the year. The protagonist, after
all, is a Hindu who adopts both Christianity and Islam in his childhood, and,
when challenged to select one, Pi quotes Ghandi in saying "All religions are true."
All except Judaism, evidently, which is nowhere to be found on his
quest. At least on the surface.
The story is a complex
one, and in the end, it’s really hard to say what has transpired. For
most of the film, we are witness to a world where faith and kindness
miraculously prevail as Pi survives a horrible shipwreck and floats across the
Pacific with the only other survivor, a ferocious Bengal tiger, whom Pi
befriends and tames. But at the film’s end, insurance agents demand a
more believable account, and Pi is compelled to provide a much harsher version
of what happened. We are then challenged to choose which truth to
accept. The brutal but more believable story, or the one with the tiger,
the one that leads to God, the one that Pi calls the “better story.”
The message of
“Life of Pi,” is that a life imbued with meaning and purpose, a life where
kindness prevails, where the storm is defeated and death is vanquished, that
is, in truth, a better story than a life devoid of meaning, a life of
randomness, chaos and coincidence – a life without God - even if that latter
version of events appears to be more factually correct.
We choose the story
that we wish to accept as the means to organize our lives. And like
Pascal, Pi believes it is best to place our wager on God. In some cases,
as with Don Quixote, the choice is really not a choice at all, but a descent
into madness, albeit a madness marked by beauty, dignity, and chivalrous
love. The message of “Life of Pi” is that the world is better off with
the God story, whether or not it is true.
For Jews, the
choice is much more difficult – because we are big on reason. For us,
it’s not a matter of faith or reason. We have faith IN reason. You
don’t win about ¼ of the Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, Physics, Economics and
Medicine if you don’t believe in reason. The more factual story needs to be the better story, even with all its
horrors. We accept the awfulness of this world and we believe -
in spite of it.
We continue to
struggle with that God, the one who allowed Jonah to be thrown to the waves,
who allowed 6 million to die in the Holocaust, who allowed 20 children to die
in Newtown, who allowed the Boston bombers to shatter lives at the finish line,
who allowed 1127 people to die in a decrepit Bangladesh clothing factory, who
allowed Moore, Oklahoma to be flattened by a twister. We accept the
reality of all that.
And we look for
signs of the better story in how God’s kindness emerges in these storms,
through acts of human courage and dignity. We saw it in those exhausted
runners in Boston, who ran toward the explosion to assist the injured
last Patriots Day. We saw it in hoards of volunteers who poured into Long
Island and New Jersey after the flood waters of Sandy receded – some from right
here. We see it every day in our community. We see it at every
shiva. We see it while we wipe every tear. That is OUR better
story. It is the story we tell – and the story we write – even when God
seems so far away.
Allied troops
discovered a poem written on the walls of a basement in Cologne at the end of
the war:
I believe in the
sun even when it is not shining.
I believe in
love even when feeling it not.
I believe in God even when God is silent.
There is no greater
statement about how and why Jews believe.
And here’s the
amazing thing. “Life of Pi” is telling us the exact same thing – this
film about a Hindu who converts to Christianity and Islam is actually a very
Jewish story.
The ship that sinks
in the Pacific – Pi’s ship – the name of the ship is the “Tsimtsum.” Next time
you see the film, look for the name – you have to be ready, and stop the
tape. But it’s there. And it tells a story.
Tsimtsum is a theological concept created by Rabbi Isaac Luria, the Ari,
arguably the greatest of the Kabbalists of 16th century Safed. He was troubled
by the existence of evil in the world and asked the Jewish question – how could
God be present in the face of such a dire reality. Is there a place for
God in this world? Is there a place for faith in the face of a horrible
reality? His world was not that different from that of Don Quixote – but
rather than choosing madness as the solution, he chose Tsimtsum. In order to
create a finite world, the Ari theorized that God had to voluntarily contract,
create space, pull back – LEAN OUT, as it were, like a parent, to allow the
universe to grow. God became hidden and evil became possible.
But so did good. So did choice. So did reason.
Our quest, then,
mirrors the Kabbalistic quest, and it has been the prevailing Jewish theology
since the Ari. And that is to restore God’s presence to the world, to
heal the world, or as we say in the Alenu, l’taken
olam b’malchut shaddai, to
repair the world as a place for divinity to reign. Tikkun Olam – that oft used concept that is now a
pillar of our new strategic plan, comes from this.
So this is how the
Jewish story goes. The Tsimsum is sunk, and Pi’s life is thrown into
chaos, and whatever happens next, whether or not there is a tiger, there is a
lion – that is, an Ari, (which means lion); that is, there is the Lurianic
vision. Pi becomes the instrument of God’s goodness - and in
maintaining his humanity, despite the calamities he faces in either of his
accounts, he is the author of the better story – he brings God back into the
world, with or without the tiger.
Last week, I spoke
a lot about Leaning In and Leaning Out. I suggested that Judaism at times
calls on us to lean in, as Sheryl Sandberg would want women to do more often,
and it’s what we need to do to protect our kids, and at times we lean out, as
we need to do to give space for the earth to replenish.
But for Isaac
Luria’s God, Tsimtsum is the ultimate act of leaning out,
modeling for us an example of how important it is to pull back – not to
disengage, but to engage with deference, not to run and hide, but to give space
to the other, not to give away, but to share, to accept, to include, to love
unconditionally, without demands, to forge a covenant of peace with others and
with ourselves.
I am, in that
sense, a proponent of Lean Out Judaism – what I’ve called “Jewish and
Gentle.” And I believe that is Judaism’s truest nature as well as
Judaism’s better story.
The defining battle
taking place in the Jewish world right now is not between Orthodox and liberal,
because the same war rages within each of the movements too. It is the
battle between justice and love, din and hesed – between strictness and acceptance,
between exclusivity and inclusivity, between keeping out and welcoming
in. THIS is the defining battle in Judaism
today.
This is in fact the
defining battle in world religion today. It rages in Islam and
Christianity, as we’ve seen, and in other religions too. IN Judaism, It is being played out at
the Western Wall plaza, to be sure, where Women of the Wall have valiantly
struggled for basic religious rights for 25 years. But in Israel, it is also
being played out on every public bus, where women often are asked to sit in the
back by Haredim. It is
being played out in the military, and it is being played out in the public
square and in the halls of the Knesset.
It is being played
out in America as well, on issues like immigration and gay rights. And
not just in the courts or Congress but in every house of worship in this
nation.
At Beth El, our new
vision statement clearly defines us as a community that welcomes everyone
unconditionally, and this has been our calling card for many years. There
is a place for din, for
strictness, but in almost every case, here, love, hesed, wins out. It does for us as it
did for the sage Hillel, who welcomed the non-Jew who asked him to define
Judaism while standing on one foot. “Love your neighbor as yourself,” he
stated. “The rest is commentary, now go and study.”
That is Judaism’s
better story. Despite the torture, despite the pogroms, despite Pharaoh,
Nebuchadnezzar, Haman, Titus, Hadrian, Torquemada, the Czars, Stalin, Hitler
and Ahmadinijad – despite them all, and despite the horrible reality they
perpetrated, despite it all, our real story is that we have never abandoned our
basic human capacity for kindness.
Being Jewish and
Gentle makes me an “Af al pi” Jew – “Af al pi” means “despite it all” –
and it forms part of Maimonides’ ultimate principle of faith in Messianic
redemption. It’s what Jews muttered on the way to the gas chambers.
We’ll chant it again tomorrow during the martyrology section of the
service. “V’af al pi, sheyitmamaya, im kol zeh ani ma’amin…”
When Jews who
survived the Holocaust had a choice, to die or live on, the easy choice would
have been to give up and die. But many tried to slip past the
British blockade into Mandate Palestine on old battered ships. 116 such
ships succeeded, despite all the odds, and over 100,000 Jewish refugees were rescued.
That one surviving ship, now standing proudly as a memorial on the coast near
Haifa is called The Af-Al-Pi-Chen. Despite it all.
We are “af al pi”
Jews. We believe, despite it all. And we are kind, despite it all.
We are not vengeful. We do not restrict, exclude, spit at, and humiliate
people because they happen to be different from us. We do not ignore the
plight of refugees, for we were strangers in the lands of Europe, and off the
coast of Corsica and in the camps of Cyprus.
This Yom Kippur we
mark the 40th anniversary
of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. It was, without question, the most harrowing
few days of Israel’s existence. A surprise attack on our holiest of days.
Services were interrupted as sirens sounded and soldiers names were read off,
calling them to their units. For several days, Israel’s very existence hung in
the balance. The Egyptians broke through in the south. Syrian tanks
were that close to cutting off the Galilee. Israel won this war, thank God,
but the scars of 1973 still remain. Just weeks after, Elie Wiesel wrote a
passage - our teens will be quoting more of it morrow – an essay called
“Against Despair.”
He wrote, “We owe
it to our past not to lose hope…That is the lesson Judaism teaches us: that one
must turn every experience into a life force. One must not let the enemy
impose his laws. The enemy wants us to be angry so as to let anger
distort the image we have of ourselves? We will not let him. He
wants us to open ourselves to hate and despair? We will not listen.
“We owe it to our
past not to lose hope,” Wiesel continued. ”Say what you may, despair is
not the solution. Not for us. Quite the contrary: we must show our children
that in spite of everything, we keep our faith – in ourselves and even in
mankind, though mankind is not worthy of such a faith.”
“To despair now,”
he concluded, “would be a blasphemy.”
In spite of
everything. Af al pi.
And isn’t it strange how “af al pi” sounds like “Life of Pi.”
In spite of the
fact, af al pi chen, that
we have been the most persecuted people in all of history, we do not bully! In spite
of the fact, af al pi chen,
that we been denied basic human rights time and time again, from ancient Egypt,
to the Nuremberg laws, we do
not deny basic human rights.
We project
God’s love to all humanity and fight to protect the innocent from despots who
seek to harm innocents. And we do this, even when God is silent – for if we do this, God is not silent.
My God is a gentle
God. My God is a loving God. My God is a healing God. We need
to promote a theology of inclusion and we need to do it unapologetically,
despite all our scars – maybe even because of them.
Too often in the
past, we’ve ceded the field to those who spit at women at the Kotel. “Of
course we want women’s rights,” they say, “but doesn’t normative Judaism forbid
women from wearing a tallis?” Well, actually, no.
Too often in the
past, we’ve allowed religious rigidity to blind us from basic injustice.
“Of course we want equal rights for gays,” they say, “but doesn’t Judaism
actually frown on that?” Well actually, no.
Too many Af-al-pi Jews donate huge sums of money to
organizations that bill themselves as representatives of authentic Judaism,
even when their leaders profess the inferiority of gentile souls, or condone
violence against non Jews in Israel and the territories. I’m a lifelong pluralist. There are many ways for Jews to
observe rituals, many authentic ways. But
if you don’t love your neighbor as yourself, you are an inauthentic Jew. And it’s time for us to stand up and
be proud to be Jewish and gentle! Despite it all!
Af-al-pi means to believe in a world where love
can prevail, despite it all. And y’know, it’s actually happening.
We are living in the most peaceful period in human history. People are
actually becoming nicer. I know this is hard to believe. What with
Hizballah and Hamas and Assad, and not too long ago, Pol Pot and Stalin, Hitler
and Mao. But it’s true. Despite Auschwitz, Rwanda and Darfur.
According to author
Steven Pinker, the real story is also the better story.
You can see
it over millennia, over centuries, over decades and over years.
Until 10,000 years ago, humans lived as hunter-gatherers, with no
government or permanent settlements. In these ancient times, and
well beyond, the likelihood that a man would die at the hands of another man,
in the Amazon Rainforest or the New Guinea Highlands, was almost 60
percent. And then things didn’t get much better. Think of the
horrific battle scenes described in our own Bible. It was mass
carnage. Think of something that happened exactly a hundred fifty years
ago in Gettysburg. Utter carnage.
In the 20th century, supposedly the worst, most
warlike century of all time, 100 million people died in war. If the death
rate of ancient times were applied to the population of the 20th century, 2 billion would have died. Throughout
history, torture was routine, people were killed for the smallest crimes,
tongues were cut out, hands were chopped off, and entire nations were
enslaved. Your name didn’t have to be Jean Valjean to be sent to the dungeon
for stealing a loaf of bread. Pinker speaks of medieval festivals
featuring a popular form of entertainment: the practice of cat burning, in
which a cat was hoisted on a stage and lowered in a sling into a
fire, and the spectators shrieked in laughter as the cat, howling in
pain, was burned to death. I saw the square in Madrid where the
Inquisition did that to people. What fun! People were pretty nasty
back then.
This was a much
crueler planet just a few years ago. But homicide and violent crime rates
have dropped significantly in our big cities, despite the continued danger
posed by the proliferation of guns.
Pinker presents a
number of theories as to why people are becoming nicer, including a greater
premium we place on the value of life. And he world has gotten a lot
smaller. With the advent of social media, it has gotten smaller still.
And with the proliferation of new technologies of death, these weapons of mass
destruction have paradoxically made people more attuned to the supreme value of
life, and more vigilant that they not fall into the hands of the wrong
people.
We’re seeing
that play out right now, in Syria and most pointedly, with Iran.
On the individual
level, another factor is at play. We are all very concerned about the
loss of privacy in our society. The various leaks and scandals have been
disturbing. But the loss of privacy has also had the effect of making us
kinder people. Why? Well, it’s just like it used to be when
everyone believed in God. We know that all our actions and words are
being watched and judged.
It’s like that old
New Yorker cartoon, where the guy comes out of the men’s room and a buzzer
sounds and the sign flashes above the entrance, saying, “Didn’t wash hands.”
As Fareed Zakaria
writes, “Every life today has a digital signature. Where you eat, shop and
travel; whom you call, e-mail and text; every website, café and museum you
visit even once is all stored in the great digital cloud. And you can't delete
anything, ever.”
Talk about a “Book
of Life” – Each of us is now written into the Cloud of Life.
Everything we do is
being watched. But long before Snowden and face recognition, Jews
recognized that everything we do is subject to scrutiny. It says above
the ark up in the chapel, “Shiviti Adonai L’negdi tamid.” “We stand before God
always.” So now, we’re all getting religion again. We stand literally
before all the world with everything we do. We didn't need Snowden to
prove that. We are on display at all times everywhere. And, despite
the real dangers posed by the loss of privacy, knowing that we always being
watched has made us better people.
But we should be
Jewish and Gentle not because we are being watched, but because that is the
right way to live. This is message of the book of Jonah, which we
read tomorrow afternoon. At the end of the book, Jonah mourns the death of a
simple gourd that had given him shade and God scolds him for not feeling
similarly empathic toward the people of Nineveh.
That is final text
message that we receive on Yom Kippur. Be Jewish and Gentle. That
is our best story. It is a story of the triumph of human goodness as the
manifestation of God’s love.
Edie Windsor, the
plaintiff in the landmark Supreme Court case that overturned the Defense of
Marriage Act, is a member at Bet Simhat Torah, New York’s LGBTQ
synagogue. So is her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, who gave a stirring D’var
Torah there a few days after the ruling. Kaplan discussed how Judaism,
despite the pleas of its most rigid obstructionists, is susceptible to change.
Her evidence was that week’s portion, Pinchas, and its narrative of the five
daughters of Zelophehad and how they stood up for their inheritance rights —
and how God heeded them.
Kaplan brought that
lesson with her into the courtroom, when she pushed back against Justice
Roberts’ intimation that politics drove the change she sought. She countered:
“What truly has
driven the change we have all experienced is not the so-called political power
of gay people, but instead “a moral understanding today that gay people are no
different, and that gay married couples’ relationships are not significantly
different from the relationships of straight married people.”
She then went on to
describe how phenomenal and swift had been the softening of American’s
attitudes toward gays. She mentioned how only a decade ago, her rabbi had to
remain in the closet at the Jewish Theological Seminary, but now, that
week, JTS had signed on to a brief at the United States Supreme Court
arguing that the marriages of gay people should be respected under the law.
No, Justice
Roberts, the shift that so dismays you did not occur because of politics.
Gallup polling support on the issue didn’t rise from 27 percent as it was in
the late ‘90s, to 56 percent today, including a dramatic rise in red states,
without something dynamic and fundamental happening in American society.
America is becoming more inclusive.
Truly, as the video
campaign proclaims, it gets better. It is getting better because we are
getting better.
And that is the
better story.
It’s getting better
in Israel too. This summer, across the Jerusalem divide, an Israeli
volunteer medic named Haim Attias, who is also an Orthodox resident of the West
Bank, resuscitated an Arab Jerusalemite named Haitham Azloni who lay dying in
the Old City.
Azloni was somehow
electrocuted while sitting next to a stall in the Arab bazaar near the Old
City’s Damascus Gate. His heart had stopped beating and “he was dead,” a local
Arab man who witnessed the scene recalled. “I couldn’t bear to look. I walked
away.”
It was the final
days of Ramadan, and there had been some minor clashes between local Arabs and
Israeli security forces in the area, and Attias happened to be nearby. A
certified medic, he noticed Azloni lying on the ground and rushed to his
assistance. After a long attempt to resuscitate him, Azloni’s heart rate was
restored and stabilized. He woke up in a hospital several days later.
“No one came to
help me, none of the brothers, no Arabs. Only one Orthodox Jewish man came to
help me,” Azloni’s brother recounted him as saying upon his awakening. “I want
to meet the man that saved me.” And so, a few days later, they met.
“I’m hard to
forget,” Attias noted, motioning with a smile to his big crocheted yarmulke,
sidelocks and beard.
It seems totally
absurd to have the Palestinians and Israelis talking peace right now, with
everything else that is happening around them. But when you read stories
like this one, you can’t help but wonder. It sort of shuts up the cynic in each
of us.
Yes, it’s getting
better in Israel, as we can attest with the recent coronation of a young
Ethiopian woman as Miss Israel, and the victory of a young Palestinian-Israeli
woman on the popular reality show "The Voice." Israeli society,
like American society, is moving toward greater inclusiveness.
In the Shma, the
paragraph beginning “V’ahavta,” “You shall love,” it states that these
words shall be “al levav’cha,” “on your heart.” Why “on your heart” and
not in it? The Kotzker rebbe responds:
“Surely, God’s
words should be held in the deepest depths of our hearts, not “upon” them! It
seems to me that the meaning is this: we should at least keep the words “upon”
our hearts, for everyone has a time when his heart opens, and if we have kept
the words upon our hearts, then they will be ready to fall in, in that short
moment of openness. Then we will see the light of the words and we will be made
new when our souls receive these words from God.”
And so we ask, has
the world reached that point, where those divine words, imploring us to love
our neighbor are beginning to sink in?
Despite some of the
evidence I’ve provided, the jury is still out.
But for this Yom
Kippur, a second question is far more important:
Has the divine
imperative to love our neighbor penetrated our hearts? Each of us,
individually, must answer that question over the next 24 hours.
My prayer is that
by tomorrow night at this time, we will all be able to answer that question in
the affirmative – and with affirmation.
Each of us has
plenty of reason to be bitter. Each one of us has plenty of reason to
succumb to cynicism or despair. Each one of us has found him or herself,
like Jonah, abandoned and cast aside. Each one of us, like Pi, or Elie
Wiesel, has come face to face with the certainty of death. Each one of
us, like Israel 40 years ago, has been caught by surprise by the cruelty of its
neighbors.
And yet.
We must never
despair. For we are the instruments of God’s kindness and love, even when
God appears silent. It is ours to share, to accept, to include, and to be
vigilant in the pursuit of peace with our neighbors. To believe, despite it
all. To be kind, despite it all. To be Jewish and gentle, to BE
Judaism’s better story.
Af al pi
chen. Despite it all.
Yom Kippur Day 5774: Regret
Rabbi Joshua
Hammerman
This past summer, I fulfilled a lifelong dream. Visiting Australia and
New Zealand, was great, but the lifelong dream was not the destination, but
rather the journey. For in order to get there, I had to cross the
International Dateline. When I did that, I got to live in the
future. It really hit home when I was sitting at a café on Sunday while
listening to Saturday’s Red Sox game. I noted it on Facebook and a friend
from back here asking me what the final score would be.
But my lifelong dream wasn’t in
fact to cross the dateline going that way. It was the return trip. For the first time in
my life, I got to live an entire day all over again. “Groundhog Day” over
the Pacific. We were scheduled to fly out of Fiji on Sunday evening,
which, once we crossed the dateline, I realized would have put us perilously
close to backing into the prior day’s Shabbat. But it didn’t
happen. A flight cancellation forced us to stay Sunday night in Fiji
(what a horrible fate) fly out early Monday morning to LA, arriving on Sunday
night, yes Sunday night again, and too late to make any connections – forcing
us to spend the same night at a second hotel, thousands of miles from the first.
I bet the credit card companies had fun figuring that one out!
It was what one could call a Control-Z day.
Control Z is what we do on a computer when we want to erase a mistake and have
a do-over. Two keys, simple and clean. The reset button. The
old Etch a Sketch shake. A hi-tech mulligan. A moment when the past
doesn’t have to be re-lived, regurgitated and regretted – but just erased, as
if it never happened. If only life were as simple as Control-Z.
Last Yom Kippur, you may recall, I spoke on the topic of failure. I spoke
from personal experience, but I found that sermon to strike a strong universal
chord. I made the claim that failure is not only an option, it’s a given, and a
necessity to growth. We are not doomed to fail, we are blessed with failure.
So today I take the next logical step. The topic: Regret.
If failure is the kindling fueling future growth, regret is the match.
And we who now live in a world of Control-Z need to understand that there are
times when we simply can’t have a do-over, and that that is a good thing, no
matter how much it hurts.
A story is told of a bank that opened a branch in a new location. The bank
manager received a floral arrangement from a friend for the grand
opening. When the friend who had sent it arrived at the opening, he was
appalled to find that his floral arrangement bore the inscription, “Rest
in Peace.”
He was really angry, so he complained to the florist.
After apologizing, the florist said to him, “Look at it this way
– somewhere today a man was buried under a wreath that said, ‘Good
luck in your new location’.”
So, lesson one, we all do
things that we later regret. Regret happens. It is part of the flow of
life. It is the essence of being human, and sometimes we can laugh it off.
Lesson number two: Sometimes we can’t.
For Golda Meir, her greatest regret occurred 40 years ago nearly to the
minute. At around 2 PM, on Yom Kippur, 1973, sirens sounded throughout
Israel, on our holiest day, with the entire nation at prayer. The
surprise attack came after some warnings, and yet Meir and her government were
not prepared. When knowledge of the impending attack became more definite
on the day before the invasion, Golda called an emergency meeting, and it was
decided to order a partial mobilization. Golda accepted the reassurances
of her military leaders and held off mobilizing the reserves, and a preemptive strike was ruled out.
Through the courage of its soldiers and the help of a US airlift, Israel
ultimately won the war, but for days, Israel’s very survival hung in the
balance. Meir was totally exhausted. She later wrote in her
autobiography: “I couldn't even cry when I was alone." Just this
week, her testimony before a commission of inquiry was released for the first
time, and she said, "I am haunted by the decision not to have acted
preemptively against the Egyptians, always wondering if some of the soldiers
who are not with us would be with us today if I would have agreed to a strike.
On the other hand, if we had struck, we probably would not have received the
American airlift of arms." And she said in her memoirs, "I shall live
with that decision for the rest of my life."
Regret can get very personal.
Linds Redding was a New Zealander and popular blogger who worked in
advertising. He died this year at age 52 from inoperable esophageal cancer.
He wrote in a blog post: … turns out that my training and experience
had
equipped me perfectly for this epic act of self-deceit. This was
my gig. My schtick. Constructing a compelling and convincing argument to buy….
“Don’t sell the sausage. Sell the sizzle” as we were taught at ad school.
Countless late nights and weekends, holidays, birthdays, school recitals and
anniversary dinners were willingly sacrificed at the altar of some intangible
but infinitely worthy higher cause. It would all be worth it in the long run…
So was it worth it?
Well of course not. It turns out it was just advertising. There was no higher
calling. No ultimate prize. Just a lot of faded, yellowing newsprint, and old
video cassettes in an obsolete format I can’t even play any more even if I was
interested. Oh yes, and a lot of framed certificates and little gold
statuettes. Lots of empty Prozac boxes, wine bottles, a lot of grey hair -- and
a tumor of indeterminate dimensions.
It sounds like I’m feeling sorry for myself again. I’m not. It was fun for quite
a lot of the time. I was pretty good at it. I met a lot of funny, talented and
clever people, got to become an overnight expert in everything from
shower-heads to sheep-dip, got to scratch my creative itch on a daily basis,
and earned enough money to raise the family which I love, and even see them
occasionally.
But what I didn’t do, with the benefit of perspective, is anything of any
lasting importance. At least creatively speaking. Economically I probably
helped shift some merchandise. Enhanced a few companies’ bottom lines. Helped
make one or two wealthy men a bit wealthier than they already were.
As a life, it all seemed like such a good idea at the time.
Pity.
Oh. And if you’re reading this while sitting in some darkened studio or edit
suite agonizing over whether housewife A should pick up the soap powder with
her left hand or her right, do yourself a favor. Power down. Lock up and go
home and kiss your wife and kids.
Linds Redding shared his regrets – and in doing so produced his most enduring
commercial.
So let’s pause here to define regret. I borrow from a definition
presented by Kathryn Schultz, a journalist and author who has made the topic of regret her own cottage industry. She defines regret as the emotion we experience when
we think that our present situation could be better or happier if we
had done something different in the past. It’s not so much about a
failure as simply making the wrong choice.
Regret requires two things: First of all, agency – we had to make a decision in
the first place. And second of all, it requires imagination. We
need to be able to imagine going back and making a different choice, to
click control-Z. And then we need to be able to kind of spool this
imaginary record forward and imagine how differently things would be playing out in our
present. And in fact, the more we have of either of these things
-- the more agency and the more imagination with respect to a given
regret, the more acute that regret will be.
An example Schultz gives is that of her own youthful indiscretion of getting a
tattoo. I’ve discovered that tattoos and regret often go hand in hand.
Maybe that’s why Judaism frowns on it. She regretted it, almost
immediately. Sort of like Johnny Depp did when he got a tattoo of his
fiance’s name, Winona Ryder, “Wynona Forever.” But then they broke
up. What was he to do? Well, Johnny went and got a
little bit of repair work done. And now his shoulder says,
"Wino forever." It’s
a humorous example of how we all have the ability to turn lemons into lemonade.
So lesson three: When it comes to regret, we need to
drink, not the Kool-Aid, but the lemonade.
Regret doesn't remind us that we did badly, Schultz says. It reminds us
that we know we can do better.
Even God has regrets. There’s a fascinating Talmudic discussion involving
Moses, who actually blames God for the sin of the Golden Calf. After all,
if God hadn’t given Israel the opportunity to take all the Egyptians’ gold at
the time of the Exodus, there would have been no gold to create the Golden
Calf.
That’s chutzpah. But the real shocker is that in this Talmudic
discussion, the rabbis buy
into this argument. And
they have God buy into it too,
putting in God’s mouth words of regret. The rabbis went as far as to
compare what God did to Israel to giving a spoiled son a sack of money around
his neck and dropping him off in front of a brothel. (Berachot 32a) The temptation
is just too great. Israel was put in a position where they couldn’t
possibly make the right choice. (see commentaries here and here)
Shakespeare wrote, "Things
without all remedy should be without regard; what's done is
done." Regrettably,
he put those words into the mouth of Lady Macbeth, who felt no regret at all
for the crimes she and her husband committed. Kathryn Schultz points out
that “the inability to experience regret is actually one of the diagnostic
characteristics of sociopaths. It's also, by the way, a
characteristic of certain kinds of brain damage. So if, in fact, you
want to live a life free of regret, there is an option open to
you. It's called a lobotomy. But if you want to be fully
functional and fully human and fully humane, you need to learn
to live, not without regret, but with it.”
So, lesson number four: If you never feel remorse for
anything, you are a sociopath.
To sum up journey thus
far: We can’t change the past, and neither can we wish it away.
We need to be able
to confront it, deal with it, learn the lessons, make it part of who we are,
and then move on. We mustn’t let regret
consume us, for that would lead to the far greater regret of a life that has
been wasted in pity and self loathing.
I learned during
my recent trip that Australia has two animals on its coat of arms, a kangaroo
and an emu. They could have chosen lots of other animals unique to the
country. The koala is a lot cuter. Some of the species of birds are
breathtakingly beautiful. They actually consider the kangaroos an
annoyance down there. Like we think of deer. So why the kangaroo
and the emu? Because neither is able to walk backwards. They can
only move forwards. The kangaroo cannot click Control-Z.
Last night, even before
the evening service for Yom Kippur officially began, we chanted Kol
Nidre. That prayer, in its current form, gets us off the hook for all the
vows that we make that we can’t keep. But not last year’s promises. Next
years! Mi Yom Kippurim
Zeh ad Yom Kippurim Haba. (see history of Kol Nidre and in particular Rabbenu Tam's formulation of the prayer)
In other words, even before we’ve completed the process of praying for
forgiveness of the transgressions already made, we are assuming that we’re
going to mess things up again. It is a given that we will screw up. It’s
like we’re making a down payment on next year’s sins. We’re so good at
living with regret that we simply can’t imagine being without it, even on the
one day during the year designed to cleans us of it! Yom Kippur means, literally,
a day of cleansing.
Lesson number five: Some live in a
sorry state of affairs. Jews live in an “I’m sorry”state. Being
Jewish is always having to say “I’m sorry.”
And no wonder. Do you know that we utter 40,000 words each day? Do
you think there’s a chance that dozen or two just might come out wrong?
Every day! How often do we bite our lip and ask ourselves, “Did I really say
that?” Our regrets remind us of the sanctity of language, the destructive
and constructive potency of each word, but also the ability to forgive
ourselves and others for the ones that come out wrong.
Lesson six: We are flawed and imperfect. We need to learn to love the flawed, imperfect
things that we create and
to forgive ourselves for creating them.
And by the the way, among those imperfect creations are our children. We must embrace their imperfections as well, so that later on, they will be able to accept them too.
And you know, the fact that the government is listening to each and every word
we say or write one should not intimidate us. For millennia, long before
YouTube and Twitter, we felt we were being watched, if not by God than by
something even more powerful than God: the Jewish Mother.
So we’ve always felt regret. Many confuse that with guilt. Jewish
guilt is an entirely different matter. Jewish guilt is when a man calls his mother in
Florida.
"Mom, how are you?"
"Not too good" replies his mother, "I've been very weak".
The son asks, "Why are you so weak?"
She says, "Because I haven't eaten in 38 days."
"That's terrible" says the son, "Why haven't you been able to
eat?"
The mother answers, "Because I didn't want my mouth to be filled with food
in case you should call me."
But Jewish regret is simply this: “I didn’t
call my mother today. Time just got away from me and I didn’t call.
I feel badly about it, but I’ll just call her tomorrow and apologize.”
The time for Jewish guilt is past. We’ve all grown out of that.
Jewish guilt is an ethnic stereotype. Jewish regret is a religious value. And we
have another word for it: Teshuvah.
To deal with regret we need to be able to embrace the mistakes of our past and
grow from those unfortunate decisions. We need to remember and find
deeper meanings in our experiences. And, when are regrets involve
our relationships with others, we need to be able to forgive.
Forgiveness. In the song of that name, Don Henley calls forgiveness “the
heart of
the matter.”
Great song, but with apologies to Henley, forgiveness is not the heart of the
matter. It’s important. We should all forgive those who ask for it
– that’s part of the laws of Teshuvah. But the heart of the matter is not
in forgiving those who have harmed us.
It’s to ask forgiveness from those whom we have
harmed.
Lesson number seven: Asking for forgiveness is the heart of the
matter.
And there is no
statute of limitations. On the information table in the lobby I’ve put an
article about a man named Larry Israelson who waited 39 years before asking his
teacher to forgive him. It is a very moving story – and worth reading at
some point today as part of your Yom Kippur reflections. To paraphrase the
piece, the beauty of an apology is that it reveals not only who we are, but who
we hope to become. (Read the article here)
Regret leads to humility and humility opens us up. And when we expose that
vulnerability to others, relationships deepen, which in turn makes us
happier. Regret, then, is a prerequisite to happiness.
Author Brene Brown gave a great TED Talk on that topic – speaking of the power
of vulnerability. For her, shame is understood as the fear of
connection. An example she gives is one that we all can relate to.
When we know of someone who had a loss – it takes courage to call that person.
So let’s say you forget to call that person and then the next week you see her
in CVS; what do you do? If you’re like most people, you hide behind the
Cheerios. But if you open yourself up, as difficult as that may be,
you’ll go up to her and simply say, “I’m sorry.”
The worst that happens is that your friend screams at you, in which case,
hopefully you’re fortunate enough to be near the Advil aisle. But far
more likely, you will make that person’s day. And either way, you will be
unburdened. You’ll be able to sleep that night, for having reached out in
the most vulnerable human way. And if the person screams, don’t
take it personally. There’s a lot of anger that often accompanies
loss, a lot of despair and loneliness. You’ve just done your friend the
favor of letting her vent some of that anger in your direction. You’ve
taken one for the team.
Most of our regrets are about small things we do - or forget to do - every day,
like that missed phone call, or that stupid thing we said, or that the time we
mistakenly clicked “reply all.” Or that missing sock in the
laundry. Doesn’t that drive you crazy? This summer, our
congregation lost a beloved, long time member, Jerry Kanovsky. When the
laundry came out and one sock was left, most of us say, “How could I lose that
other sock!” But Jerry would say, “Hey, what a gift! An extra
sock!”
But then there are bigger regrets. About the life choices we made many
years ago.
Kathryn Schultz gives us six categories of regret: Number one by
far, education. 33 percent of all of our regrets pertain to decisions
we made about education. Others very high on our list of regrets
include career, romance, parenting, various decisions and choices about
our sense of self and how we
spend our leisure time, finance, family issues unrelated to romance or
parenting, health, friends, spirituality and community.
Basically, everything except perhaps how we put on shoes in the morning.
Regret ultimately is about mortality. It's about letting a single moment
of this precious life slip by without fully appreciating it. And it’s
about wasting so much time.
There’s a neat new website called
“Letters to my 25 year old self,” that I read about in my college alumni
magazine. They’ve gotten people from different walks of life to write
letters, giving advice to their younger selves.
What a great idea!
What a depressing idea!
But it’s something we all might want to try – and maybe you can share what you
come up with. We should all write letters to our 25 year old self.
If you happen to be 25, then write a letter to your bar mitzvah self. If
you’re thirteen, well, I always love when b’nai mitzvah get up here and say in
their speeches, “Back when I was young.” So if you’re thirteen, give some
advice to your five year old self. If you’re five…I don’t know.
Hi Joel,
It's me, 50-year-old you.
Yes it is - just shut up for a second and let me talk - I know you don't think
you'll ever be 50. But you will.
I have now lived exactly two of your lifetimes. So here's what I have learned
in as short a piece as I can write since I know you hate reading.
First - let’s get a few things out of the way:
In three years you are going to meet a girl who you will fall in love with. I
know, she's cute and all but she cheats on you six years after you marry her,
and when you find out it completely unravels your life and utterly breaks your
heart. You're a nice guy and you try to make it work for a couple more years -
but it won't - and dude, you can make it without her. So don't wallow, wishing
you could hold that relationship together.
And anyway there is someone else, someone amazing - and so much better for you.
You will meet her when you're 42 (yes, you will be 42) - only after you have
moved on and begun to find joy again in being alone. This is someone who gives
you what you need - who loves you for what and who you really are - someone who
does not expect you to change, and embraces you. I mean, dude, she likes Star
Trek and Bond movies! She is so right for you, man, you have no idea. Marry
that one. She'll give you beautiful babies and a great life.
Joel goes on to give himself lots of practical advice, including that he should
buy Apple stock in 2002.
Then he says:
Joel, your intuition is almost always right. That inner voice of yours is
almost never wrong. You just don't trust it right
now. When you get into your
mid-thirties it will all start to become clear. But everything before that is
kindergarten. I know you don't want to hear that. You're 25 and that feels like
an adult to you - but my boy, you are a child with such limited experience. Be
patient. Just fill yourself with ideas. Because your best ideas won't come
until your forties anyway.”
So basically, 50 year old Joel is telling 25 year old Joel not to sweat it
because nothing good will happen until he’s 42. But there’s one problem
with that. It’s precisely all the sweating and anguish of the 20s and 30s
that gave him the wisdom to finally make the right choices later on. He needed
them! We call them growing pains, and there is no shortcut around them.
Lesson nine: Our lives consist
of the sum total of our regrets and
how we respond to them.
And hey, who knows what the 75 year old Joel will write to his 50 year old
self. “Don’t sweat it. Things’ll really pick up at 68!”
Life presents tough choices every day, for all of us. Often the better
choice is really just the least bad choice.
I know that first hand.
This past December, my mother suffered a series of minor strokes that made it
impossible for her to live on her own. I visited her several times, but
each time I could only stay for a day and needed to return here because at the
same time a congregant was near death. Choices… should I stay there or
return here? I was torn.
She is stable now, in a nursing home, but she has lost so much. The only
possessions she seems to have left are her regrets.
So almost every time I speak with her she says, “I’m sorry.” I’m not sure
what for – but she seems to know, and that’s the heart of the matter.
She’s holding on to that last vestige of humanity that we all possess – the
ability to ask forgiveness, to say “I’m sorry.”
And I tell her, every time, “It’s OK.”
And I say “I’m sorry” too.
And she says, “Why? You’re perfect.”
And you know what? When I came back from one of those quick trips to
Boston last December and visited the family of that congregant who was dying, I
expressed my regrets for being away – and they said exactly the same thing:
“It’s OK.”
There are certainly times when it's
NOT "OK," but almost all the time, it is.
The Jewish last rites prayer is a confessional, and it is nearly identical to
the liturgy at the end of the Yom Kippur service. A Jew’s final words on
this earth are words of teshuvah - I often recite them at bedside on that
person’s behalf. There is no more powerful moment. Our last human act
will also be the most human act possible. It is the moment where
everyone gets to say “It’s OK.”
And then, and only then, are we unburdened. A prime goal we all have, though
rarely stated or understood, is for the rabbi to say at our funeral that we
died with no regrets.
We hope to die with no regrets. But the only way to live is with them.
That’s lesson number ten.
When we break the fast tonight, the tradition is to have round foods – like at
a shiva. Bagels, eggs, round foods. They remind us of the cycle of
life, the ebbs and flows, the ups and the downs. I suggest that we add
one more item to the menu. Lemonade.
If I were writing a letter to the Jewish people’s 25 year old self, somewhere
back in the Wilderness of Sinai, I’d advise them to learn how to make
lemonade. They’ll need it for the long desert journey and for the next
few millennia. And we need it now.
We need the lemonade to learn how to convert our New Normal into a nice normal,
a less threatening world.
We need to heed the advice of Golda Meir and Linds Redding, Johnny Depp,
Maimonides, Moses, Don Henley and my mother.
Like the kangaroo and emu, we can't walk backwards. We can’t click
Control-Z. Instead, we need to reset from this point in time. Right
now. Right here. This is not the beginning, but it can be a new
beginning – a time when the world, at long last, can be reborn.
May this be a year with few regrets, but may we make the most of those we
have. May we seek not perfection but correction - and
connection.
May all our pains be
growing pains, may forgiveness light our every path.
