Erev Rosh Hashanah D'var Torah

29 Elul 5768
September 29, 2008

By Rabbi Yitzhak Husbands-Hankin

Shana Tova.

Hine ma tov uma naim shevet achim gam yachad.

How good and pleasant it is when sisters, brothers, friends, join together in community. We are so blessed to have this sacred time to share in our sacred space. As we continue to grow as a Kehilat Kodesh, a community with a desire and a commitment to serve G-d.

This Erev Rosh Hashanah we are surely aware of the fact that our nation is at a crossroads. We know that our society is in the midst of crucial transformation.

However, tonight is not a night for an economic analysis, or a review of political platforms. This Erev Rosh Hashanah we are to ask ourselves questions not about financial accounts but rather we are to do a Heshbon Hanefesh, an accounting of our souls.

Jewish tradition and Jewish people-hood is what brings us together for these Days of Awe. Hayom Harat Olam. This day is known as the Day of the Birthing of the world. It is a time to reflect on the beginnings of the world and the earliest days of our mythic emergence as humanity. I want to consider with you a matter that since the earliest days, and to this day requires tikkun, repair. Throughout history, we have stumbled and fallen in our ability to harmonize our relationships with the Divine Source of Creation with our interpersonal relationships. So often character traits such as competitiveness, jealousy, anger, hatred, and fear, disturb the harmony among people as we seek our own ways to address the Divine. It is the problem we see expressed in its fullness in religious wars that spring from religious intolerance and discrimination. This dynamic of religious triumphalism has plagued humanity throughout history and has caused endless suffering, oppression and war and it continues to this day as the cause of profound animosities.

There are many dedicated efforts to counter this distressing and destructive dynamic. Resolving the long history of religious animosities is now being understood as a crucial aspect of global healing and over the past several decades increasing numbers of interfaith conferences and dialogue groups have formed with the aim of transforming religious animosities and increasing understanding and recognition of shared values.

In 1976, I attended a World Symposium on Humanity in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was my first significant venture into interfaith discourse. Among the many luminaries present was Yogi Bajahn a leader in the Sikh religion, Pir Vilayit Kahn, an esteemed Sufi Sheik and Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach z’l, the much beloved and highly esteemed teacher of Judaism. The gathering felt like a bold and yet tender beginning effort toward increased inter-religious understanding.

I remember a poignant teaching that Reb Shlomo offered and how deeply touched people were by its message. His teaching told of the tragedy of Cain and Abel. Each brother made an offering to G-d. Cain’s offering was not pleasing to G-d and Abel’s offering was pleasing to G-d. Cain's feeling of rejection, and hurt soon flared into outrage, anger and violence. Cain in his rage struck and killed his brother. This was the first murder in human history.

Countless generations have passed since the blood of Abel soaked the pristine ground of the good Earth. How many rivers of blood have drenched the land since those days rooted in our mythic beginning. The rabbis teach that Cain stood bewildered, in shock, when his brother did not rise again from the ground onto which he fell. Cain had never before seen death and he did not know that his unleashed violence would end the life of his brother. Cain cried, pouring his heart out in sorrow as he pleaded with his stone cold, silent brother to awaken from the endless sleep. Day after day, night after night Cain sobbed as he begged his brother to awaken. His violence had carried him into a world of confusion and lonely isolation a place in which he never again would know peace. Having let his jealousy and violence overtake him, he would forever wander alone and afraid.

This tragic story prods our souls to ask whether we too will one day awaken to the tragic realization that for lack of self-control and for yielding to our lowest human traits we have done irreparable harm in this world. The ancient problem of violence in the name of the sacred continues to plague humanity and requires great effort to bring tikkun, repair.

Are we capable of freeing ourselves from the repeated and horrifying patterns of religiously based violence, we see in human history?

We may recognize the dire need for change and yet so often we see change as solely an external shift not having much to do with us. These Days of Awe are not a time for casting blame but rather for searching our own hearts. What are the darkened places of our heart that allow the festering of inter religious animosities. What prejudices might we cultivate about other Jews, Christians, Buddhists Moslems, and Native Americans. The sum total of negativity we see in the world comes from nowhere other than the human heart, our heart.

Consider what our world could be if the resources we dedicate to wars and destruction resulting from our base emotions of fear, greed, hatred and jealousies could be redirected. Consider that we can cultivate our hearts to be less afraid, less greedy, less jealous, less driven by base emotions. Consider that we have within our capacity the cultivation of our hearts and the transformation of our world to be a more trusting, compassionate loving and safe.

When we yield to the call of our higher capacities, for connection, caring and compassion, when we put our focused energies toward feeding the hungry and cultivating this wonderful earth that we share when we learn to dismiss as dangerous distraction and counter evolutionary those lower calls of fear, selfishness, greed and anger that have forever set people against one another. Then we will begin to fulfill our high potential for wholeness and peace.

This may seem a fantasy after all hatred and violence has gone on since Cain slew Abel.

Are we capable of bringing about such deeply personal and at the same time such globally significant change?

Of the many prayers we recite through these days of awe, one of the most striking and poignant is the Unetane Tokef. Unetane Tokef is generally understood to be the work of a martyred Rabbi Amnon of Mayence. The Rabbi refused to convert to Christianity and was cruelly tortured. He wrote this prayer shortly before his death and it stands as a memorial to the ongoing experience of religious intolerance that so many of our ancestors suffered.

We chant this prayer both on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur mornings and it is well known for its refrain and imagery. On Rosh Hashanah, all is written and revealed and on Yom Kippur, the course of every life is sealed.

For a number of reasons it is a difficult prayer for many to say and it, like so many of our traditions must constantly be rediscovered for contemporary and useful meaning.

This prayer has been the focus of much critical examination. It can appear to be fatalistic and it can be seen as anthropomorphic to a degree that makes it unfit for usage. Interestingly, this prayer was not incorporated into the Sephardic liturgy.

Having said all of this, I ask you to step through this field of objections and criticism to consider with me a perspective that I find useful.

We are met in this prayer with a powerful realization, a reminder of the vulnerability, the frailty, the ephemeral nature of our lives in this world.

We remember the stunning reality that we are here only for a short while, not knowing when our end is near, not knowing who will live and who will die, not knowing whose fortunes will rise and whose will fall. We confront the role of seeming chance as it plays out in our lives and we designate all that is beyond our control as simply the will of G-d. This prayer can leave us feeling powerless and confused about the nature of life. It seems to imply that if we are good, we will be granted a longer life. If we are less than good, our life will end. I would like to offer a reading that is more empowering and nuanced.

We call profound and often unconscious stirrings about the nature of our lives to the surface with the Unetana Tokef. We allow ourselves to experience the awesome question of our mortality and can feel powerless in responding to the realization of our mortality. Yet, there is another message in the Unetane Tokef, revealing a possibility for expanding the fullness of our lives. It points not to longevity as the dimension in which we will find fullness in our lives. The number of our days can after all be filled with emptiness and vanities. Rather the prayer urges us to fill the moments of our lives with inner qualities and outward actions that open any moment to life’s fullest potential. It is through those awakened moments that we discover the fullness of life. This moves us beyond the domain of chance into the realm of choice. We are told in the words of the prayer that Teshuvah, a yearning and turning toward that which our innermost truth knows to be sacred, Tefillah – Prayer, a commitment to put above all else, that which we hear in our innermost heart to be true and right and what we might call G-dly, and finally, Tzedakah – Compassionate Justice, felt in the heart and shaped into transformative acts bringing justice and compassion into the world, expressing the prayerful yearnings of our hearts in ways that connect us with the vitality of the world, forever leaving a measure of tikkun, of repair, in the wake of our well lived moment.

We can choose to listen inward for deep truth or we can ignore the inner world of our spirit. When we direct ourselves to honest inner awareness and discover what we can and must change within ourselves. We can slowly and with determination shape ourselves into individuals who think, speak and act in greater alignment with that inner voice of honesty and truth. We can listen through the noisy clamoring of our fears and anxieties our reptilian brains insistence on fight or flight, and we can hear a higher voice of inner wisdom that understands that we ha more nuanced choices. We demand our own growth and improvement. We demand integrity of ourselves. This is a pathway of personal growth and evolution. This is the gateway of Teshuvah.

Tefillah – Prayer – is also a choice. We have a capacity to search within and articulate as offerings the yearnings and commitments of our hearts. We have a wonderful capacity for living in the presence of the Divine, shaping into sacred words, melodies and countless other expressions our innermost truth as prayerful offerings to the unfathomable mystery of life.
This is the gateway of prayer – Tefillah.

And we have the great and awesomely powerful choice of doing tzedakah. In Tzedek – Justice – we discover the power of our ability to be the hands and hearts of the Divine ever-creating Mystery of life. We discover our capacity to influence forever the condition of life. A moment filled with Tzedakah is a moment that has the infinite measure of reaching inward to listen to the divine ever-present conscience whispering or at times screaming the truth of the moments demand, Tzedakah is yearning to act as an agent of G-dliness, increasing justice and compassion in the world. The impact of a gesture of Tzedakah resonates in creation and forever influences the flow of life toward the ever emerging, longed for world in which justice and compassion ultimately will come to their fullness. It is through Tzedakah that our lives lose their self-centered boundary and our life energy extends to bond with all of life.

This too is a choice. This is the gateway of Tzedakah.

When we consider the empowerment, that each of these spiritual practices grants us, we discover the depth of our power to choose and to transform our world and ourselves.

The Unetane Tokef offers us three spiritual practices: Teshuvah – personal awareness and change, Tefillah – prayerful living with G-d consciousness, and Tzedakah – actions that transform the world and our own hearts increasing justice in the world and cultivating compassion within ourselves.

W must take seriously the ways in which we can apply these great spiritual practices to the challenges of our lives. These practices are necessary to strengthen us in our work toward building lives of full integrity and a world free of religiously based hatred, and violence.

The challenges are real and present. They are not far away news stories. Only yesterday we had an expression that attempts to lure millions of Americans into fear and hatred of a religious minority living in our midst. Fear mongering fundamentalist Jews yesterday distributed 28 million copies of a DVD that is geared to instilling fear and hatred of Moslems. It was sent out to 28 million American households in specifically targeted swing states in the upcoming election. Sadly, much of the content of the DVD is accurate in describing the venomous hatred of a radical segment of the Moslem people. This message and its timing and precise placement is a transparent attempt to influence the presidential campaign through the cultivation of an atmosphere fear that would cause people t favor some of the approaches to world problem solving that we experienced in the wake of 9/11.

Here we have an example of empowerment of the base impulses of humanity. Fight or flight swings is activated. We must not get lured into that type of repugnant approach into our future.

We are fortunate to live in a community in which we have so many opportunities to participate in the process of increasing inter-religious understanding. As many of you are aware, each month following the tragic assault on our nation on September 11, 2001, we have had an interfaith service as an expression of the desire to overcome religious hatred with interfaith sharing. We have within our community members of a vast array of religious groups whose population fills the world. Our local actions can have truly global impacts in this context.

Our efforts to create bridges of understanding between moderates in all religious communities take on a particular urgency when stressful change impacts our society. People may be prone to resort to fear and isolation rather than community building and cooperation. The force of actions which continue in the tragic chain of the tradition of Cain and Abel must be countered and transformed by an emerging promising hope for a world that is free from the ancient plague of religious strife. We have the capacity for change, for tikkun, and now is an urgent time for taking seriously the need to be active peacemakers in a world forever at war.

May our new House of Prayer be a place that is open and generous in sharing the rich treasures of Jewish wisdom. May our congregation be a Kehilat Kodesh, a community dedicated to the sacred work of appreciating and respectfully acknowledging G-d’s Presence in the lives of our friends and neighbors who follow other pathways to G-dliness. May we be courageous in our pursuit of peace and unfailing in our commitment to Justice as we seek to heal the world from the suffering of Cain and Abel. May we be strengthened and inspired in our efforts and our lives as we seek to move ever closer to the fulfillment of the prophetic vision of Isaiah “Ki Beiti Beit Tefillah Yikareh L’chol Haamim, My House of prayer will be called a House of Prayer for all peoples."

May we merit seeing that day. L’shana Tova Tikateivu. May you each be blessed with a year of abundant joy, good health and a sense of the sacred in the moments that fill the coming year.