What if?

It was 2:54 a.m. when Peter checked the clock, got up out of bed, went to the living room window, and returned to inform me that he couldn’t see the moon from inside and was going back to sleep until the alarm went off.  It was set for 3 a.m.

That seemed ridiculous to me.  What’s another six minutes of shut-eye? But since Peter gets up before dawn to drive in early to the city for work, I uncharacteristically took pity on him. I turned off the alarm, bundled myself into the warm clothes I had laid out at the foot of the bed, and trudged onto the back porch to get a better look at the night sky. I promised to inform him if there was something worth seeing.

Sure enough, balanced gently on the bare branches of the trees was the rosy full moon.  Rosy because this was the night of December 20, 2010 – the night of a full eclipse of the moon.  By the time I staggered out into the cold it was perhaps 90% eclipsed with just a sliver of bright whitish-yellow moon waiting for the pink shadow of the earth to complete its journey. 

I went back to give Peter the news and he joined me outside for a quick peek. The scientists say this was the first total lunar eclipse coinciding with the winter solstice in 372 years. I missed that one, of course.  And the next is 84 years away.  I don’t expect to be around for that one either.

There’s a wonderful time lapse video of the eclipse.

The experience made me think of the lovely lines from the Modim prayer for Shabbat morning in Mishkan T’filah, our Reform movement prayerbook. On page 257 it begins with thanking God for “…the expanding grandeur of Creation, worlds known and unknown, galaxies beyond galaxies, filling us with awe and challenging our imaginations.”

The moon is intertwined with Judaism. We measure our year by the lunar calendar. Major pilgrimage festivals in the Torah take place at the full moon to allow safer travel up to (and returning from) Jerusalem in Biblical days.  Women have their own Jewish holiday – Rosh Chodesh – to celebrate the new moon. 

 

We take the moon in the night sky for granted, pausing to oooh and ahhhh over it only when we happen to catch it out of a car window as it rises, large and glowing, at certain times of year.  Or when summer nights draw us out for a late night walk and looking up we see the sharp outlines of craters and mountains staring back at us from a small white globe. 

Years ago I read a fascinating little book entitled, What if the Moon Didn’t Exist by astronomer Neil Comins.  I like “What if” books.  Like the prayer says, they “challenge our imaginations.”  What if the earth had no tides? What if life as we know it did not exist?

What if Peter had not woken at 2:54 a.m.? What if the alarm had not gone off? What if it had been a cloudy night? What if my warm bed was not waiting for me to crawl back in and drift off to sleep?  What if I had to sleep outdoors bundled against the cold?

What if God had not given us eyes to see the wonders of this world? And minds to perceive its beauty? And hearts to feel for those shivering on a cold night beneath a rosy red moon? And souls to know that we are part of this marvelous creation and its unfolding?

HALFWAY

Halfway.  That’s where my husband is right now.  Halfway across the ocean, exactly 637 nautical miles, on the way from Norfolk, Virginia to Tortola, B.V.I.  After a week’s delay of the start of the race (more like a flotilla), the boats in the annual Carib1500 race left port on Monday morning, November 8th.   If all goes as planned, they should be back on dry land some time next Tuesday.

Following the boats on a satellite tracker map is amazing but also takes my breath away.  I think back to AP English class and the line from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner:  “Water, water everywhere, and nor any drop to drink.”  Well, Peter and his buddies have water everywhere, but believe me they are not thirsty or starving. 

They are on the Ilene – the 43’ boat owned by our good friends Roger and Ilene Karlebach.  It’s a guys trip with Roger as captain and the flesh and blood Ilene back home in NYC. She’s getting ready to fly down next week to meet them at the finish.  She and Roger will then spend the winter in the Caribbean on the boat. Not bad, eh?  You can follow their blog at Ilene the Boat.

In our family we never do anything halfway.  That’s why I’m so proud of Peter and of all our children.  At work, in relationships, in values and commitments to causes: we are a “give it all you’ve got” kind of family.  This was true when Melissa put one foot in front of the other and kept going through heat and exhaustion to finish her first marathon in Chicago in October.  This is true right now for Carrie who has been in Haiti working for Hopital Albert Schweitzer since May. (And yes, that’s near the center of last month’s cholera outbreak.) And it is true for Phil whose newest recorded songs will finally be out next Tuesday, November 16th.

Looking back, we can spot the halfway point in any endeavor. It’s just that it can’t be measured as neatly as the nautical miles from Virginia to Tortola.  In the middle of a project, a relationship, or a life, we don’t really know that we are halfway.  Some undertakings finish abruptly and unexpectedly.  Other goals seem to keep receding into the horizon causing us to readjust our timeline.  Halfway is only an illusion when it comes to real life.

 

Next week I will be teaching a class along with twenty other rabbis at an event here called Sweet Tastes of Torah.   The topic I chose months ago is Crossing the Yabok River: Judaism and Mid-Life Self Acceptance. It will focus on Jacob and his mid-life return to his home to enter the next stage of his spiritual and family journey.  I love this episode in the Torah as he struggles to reconcile his past and his future and emerges with both a blessing and a limp.  Breakthroughs are not without hurts and wounds. 

So my determined husband passes the halfway mark out among the rolling waves of the Atlantic. And here at home, I am taking the measure of my past and future.  I cannot yet see the final destination, but I hope to set my sails and harness the power of the spiritual wind, the “ruach,” that will carry me to a place of blessing.

The Colors of Autumn

Driving along I-95 is often a headache.  Not so when the season is autumn and the leaves are in full color. That was my experience yesterday, October 27th, on the drive from New Jersey to Bridgeport, CT.

Full color was my spiritual theme for the day.  Arriving at B'nai Israel (the temple in Bridgeport), I walked through a lobby filled with the colorful books of their temple "book fair." I opened the door into a beautiful meeting room with a glass wall and light pouring in.  There were gathered a few of the women rabbis who were attending this one day "retreat" with author Dani Shapiro.  The faces of my women friends light up my memories and stir my soul.  For the next hour we talked one on one or in small huddles - catching up on family, career, challenges, life.

By 11 am we settled in at the long table.  We are a colorful bunch -- but I suppose that's true of any human gathering.  Like leaves, we knew how to settle softly into our place: quieting to listen to Dani describe her Jewish journey in her early years.  Then, softly adding our voices with comments and questions in between her reading of excerpts from her book, Devotion.  

There was deep sharing.  There was silence.  We pondered the hand of the divine in the coincidences and small miracles of life -- and the conviction that there is no divine deterministic hand.  We were in awe of the intertwinings that revealed themselves organically over the conversation: two women who had not seen each other in over a decade, since one had sat on the rabbinic admissions committee interviewing the other.  One held the key to reshuffle the other's memory of the day.  Tears were shared.

For me, the bright autumn glow outside was matched by a glow inside when I learned that Dani was a friend and student of Sylvia Boorstein. Sylvia was my meditation "teacher" for four wonderful weeks (spread over two years) during the contemplative meditation training I took at Elat Chayyim.  She is the person who I think of when someone asks: Who would you most prefer to be stranded with on a desert island.  When you are with Sylvia, there are no islands.  No desertion.  There is presence. I loved bringing up those memories during the hours around that table in Connecticut.

Full color.  That is what life sometimes offers us.  Soon the leaves will finish falling.  There are still acorns dropping on our roof, waking us off and on during the quiet fall nights.  Soon there will be silence and the colors will be evergreens and browns and blacks and whites all around the yard.

Inside each of us, though, there is still room for full color.  Even in winter there are blossoms in the spirit. New ideas, plans, adventures, books, music. We look for the brightness within.   Even in times of grief and change, there are the friends and family who stand like sentinels along the highways of our lives: who add the red color of laughter, the deep orange of fiery love, the yellow (almost transluscent) color of deep conversation.

I think I'll go out and gather a few leaves to remember this lesson.

Apologies: Returning to Our Best Selves, and to our Judaism

A few folks here at temple have asked for a copy of my Kol Nidre sermon. So, better late than never - here it is.  Since Yom Kippur there have been more incidents of people mis-speaking and then apologizing in our general culture; we human beings have a knack for falling short. We also have the possibility of correcting ourselves. This sermon is dedicated to the belief that with a little courage and a lot of humility, we can truly improve and apologize sincerely.

KOL NIDRE  2010

It was June 2, 2010.  The game was over.

Detroit Tigers president/general manager Dave Dombrowski brought Amando Galarraga from the home clubhouse into the umpires’ room as requested. There, umpire Jim Joyce apologized to Galarraga for having blown the call that cost the pitcher a perfect game on the 27^th batter.  Following the apology, the two hugged. 

Afterwards, Galarraga said of Joyce: “I give a lot of credit to that guy. He apologized. He feels really bad. Nobody is perfect. What am I gonna do? His eyes were watering and he didn’t have to say much. His body language said a lot."

And Jim Leyland, Tigers’ manager, added the following:  “The players are human, the umpires are human, the managers are human, the writers are human. We all make mistakes.”

We are all human.  We all make mistakes.  As we gather here this Yom Kippur we know how true that is.  We all make mistakes.  Mistakes. Errors. Transgressions. Sins.  Pick your word. Whatever you want to call it, most of us excel at this part of being human. 

But tonight is also about teshuvah – repentance.  And most of us do not excel when it comes to apologizing and changing our ways. 

This week I asked some of our seventh graders about apologies. Most seemed to agree that it’s easiest when you are apologizing to a parent or a really close friend. Why? Because you know that person cares about you, trusts you, and will believe you.  When is it difficult? When the person from whom you seek forgiveness is someone who already dislikes you or mistrusts you.  Convincing that person that you are sincere is tougher.

And sincerity is what it is all about. 

There were many big public apologies in the press this past year.  Remember when Helen Thomas suggested that Israelis should go back to their homes in Europe? Later she apologized saying: “I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians. They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon.”

And then there was the statement from Pop Benedict XVI to Ireland's victims of sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic clergy.  "You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry."  But Andrea Madden,one  of the victims, now an adult, said: "He didn't apologize for anything the church has done, only for the actions of pedophile priests. [The Church's actions] weren't just down to errors of judgment. This was a proactive covering up of the sexual abuse of children to avoid scandal for the church. Pope Benedict completely failed to own up to this."

And one more: 

In July,  Shirley Sherrod received apologies after a tape was aired showing her making remarks which, taken out of context, appeared to reveal her acting in a racist way toward a white farmer.  She had been forced to resign from her position at the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture.  Turns out that the full tape shows she was explaining how she learned to overcome racist tendencies and look at each human situation without regard to the color of someone’s skin.  Bill O’Reilly said, “I owe Ms. Sherrod an apology for not doing my homework, for not putting her remarks into the proper context.” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack apologized to Sherrod for jumping to conclusions about the video clip and he offered her a new job in the department.  A few weeks ago, by the way, she declined that position.

It’s hard to gauge the sincerity of an apology, and people have various opinions about the Pope, Helen Thomas and Bill O’Reilly’s sincerity.  It’s not so easy to judge whether someone really means what they say. 

And it’s tough for others to know how sincere we are, when we are the one apologizing.  Tonight, as we try to realign our lives, I would like to offer a few ways to make an apology sincere, drawing on the recommendations of the great Jewish scholar, Moses Maimonides.

First, start within yourself.  The first step of Teshuvah, repentance, has always been and will always be self-awareness.  If you cannot admit in your own heart and mind that what you did is wrong, then you cannot offer a sincere apology.  A calculated apology to appease someone, to get them off your back, to get a lighter punishment: is not a sincere apology.  You can fool some of the people some of the time, but most people you won’t fool at all.  And - you won’t fool yourself.  Inner change can only happen when you delve into your mistake, own it, and decide to ask forgiveness.  A false apology may give you a superficial sense of relief, but internally it alienates you from your truest best self. 

Another component of a sincere apology is tone of voice and body language. Remember when Galarraga said about Joyce, “His eyes were watering and he didn’t have to say much.”  While it’s possible to fake such things, most of us communicate not only with words but with our body language and tone of voice.  To apologize is to lower yourself, to be humble, to put yourself at the mercy of the one to whom you are apologizing.  Few of us welcome that feeling.  But someone who wants to make a sincere apology has to be in that place of vulnerability.

When apologies are in writing, it’s harder to convey the tone.  And if you are approaching a person who is angry, he or she may be reading between they lines – imagining insincerity.  That is why email and letters are not as powerful as a phone call; and a phone call is not as powerful as a face-to-face apology.  Not only does the hurt person need to see and hear your sincerity, but it’s hard to tell if someone has genuinely forgiven you if you don’t see their body language, too. 

There’s a third step. Sincerity also comes through when one makes reparations to the one your have wronged.  Not all apologies have this component, but many do.  Teshuvah means literally “returning” – and our goal should be to return whatever we have taken from another person:  his material possessions, his dignity, his pride, his good name.  When we wrong another person, sincere apology calls for righting whatever can be righted. It frustrates me for example, when an incomplete truth or an outright lie about Israel gets big headlines, and then the correction or retraction is buried in small print a few days later.  That is not a sincere apology.  On a personal level, if we blamed a brother or sister for something we did, it means going to our parents to tell the truth, not just apologizing to our sibling.  If we wrong someone publicly, or in front of others, correcting the wrong also requires a public component.  When there is not way to go back and correct the hurt, it can help to acknowledge that and ask the person to tell you the best way to make it up to him or her.  The one who is hurting can then advise you on how to put the balance back into the relationship.  

There is one last component of a sincere apology.  It’s what comes after “I’m sorry.” It’s when you let the listener know that you have not merely realized your error or regretted it, but you have understood it, learned from it, and are committed to not repeating it.  This is what Maimonides taught.  The final test of sincere repentance is when the opportunity to repeat the sin comes around and you do not succumb.  

Just as this day calls us to be sincere in our acts of apology to others, it asks us to be sincere in our relationship to Judaism.  Yes, we must repair our friendships and our family ties, but we must also repair our bonds to the Jewish people, to our religion, to the temple, and to God.  Our liturgy tells us that for sins committed against people, Yom Kippur does not atone unless we have made things right with those people.  But it also tells us that Yom Kippur does atone for sins committed against God.  We rarely examine that half of the equation.

I would like to reword it a bit for those of us whose concept of God is not of a being sitting on a throne counting our sins.  I prefer to say: Yom Kippur, when properly observed, gets us back on the path to the ethical life that God and  Judaism asks of us.  Yom Kippur is atonement: at one ment – not just with each other, but with our religion, our community, our God.

How does the day of Yom Kippur do that?  First, through fasting. Fasting is not about punishment, but about taking our minds off of our bodies, and onto our souls.  Then there is contemplating the finality of death as we dress in white, the color of shrouds, reminding us of the urgency of self-improvement.  The prayers, even if not taken literally, ask us to think about the ultimate values and beliefs of our religion, and about our responsibilities as Jews.  Lastly, simply sitting among hundreds of fellow Jews reminds us that we are part of something larger than our individual lives:  something that stretches from Sinai to us and into the future. 

These High Holy Days at Temple Beth El mark the start of our 60^th year as a Temple.  Sixty times this community has joined together to pray on Yom Kippur. Children have grown up within these walls, heard the shofar blow year after year, and some have returned with their own children to reinvigorate this congregation.  Yes, the faces have mostly changed.   The rabbis and Cantors have changed.  The seats and even the Machzor, the prayerbook, has changed.  What has not changed is the heartfelt desire to reach out for holiness, join hands in transforming the world for the better, and share our sorrows and joys with those who understand us best – our fellow Jews.

So I challenge you today to commit fully to teshuva – to return to each other, return to your best self, and to return to a stronger Judaism. Wherever we are in our Jewish living, there are either more, new or deeper connections to be made. 

Our Torah reading tomorrow morning teaches, “It is not far away across the ocean that you should say – who will go across the seas and find it and bring it back for us? No, says the Torah, it is close to you—in your hands and in your heart, that you might do it.”

What is it that is so close to us? What is right here at our fingertips?

Judaism.  Isn’t that what we all sense by coming here this night? Judaism offers us a way of life that brings out the best in us, helps us practice being good, steers us away from bad behavior, and through us effects the world for the better.  We have an inheritance of values, teachings and mitzvot. We have ethical and ritual deeds that on the one hand arouse our noblest impulses, and on the other - warn us when we are on ethically shaky ground. Eytz chayim hi la-machazikim bo: It is a tree of life to those who hold fast to it.  And this day, Yom Kippur, we do not just hold it fast, we grip it tight and cling to it. 

And so, in closing, I would like to invite you to cling to Judaism.  To make this 60^th year of Temple Beth El a year of renewed Jewish living for you, personally.  As Reform Jews, we understand there are many authentic ways to be a religious Jew.  Instead of emphasizing specific mitzvoth, commandments, we offer general categories of religious expression that call out to us to be taken seriously. And this night, with the pleading sounds of Kol Nidre – a song of broken promises -  still echoing in our ears, I am asking you to make a pledge – a promise you can keep for the coming year.

This is not a rhetorical request.  I have in my hands six different color pledge sheets.  Each describes a way to live your Judaism.  On each sheet are five or six choices, options from which to choose one that speaks to how you would like to grow as a Jew in the coming weeks.  The coming weeks, because we want to use the momentum of this day to spur us to action.  By choosing one sheet, and then one item from that sheet, and then doing it to the best of your abilities, you will not only turn back toward the path of Judaism with enthusiasm, but you can start the journey down that road.

These are the six sheets.  And in honor of our 60^th Anniversary we are going to do an old style pledge drive right here in the sanctuary.  After I briefly describe all six areas of Jewish involvement, I will repeat each area, one by one, and ask for volunteers to raise their hands and make a pledge to take home that page and choose an item.  The sheets are all out on the table in the downstairs lobby. There is a tear off at the bottom of the sheet to return to me with your pledge, indicating the item you chose.  The goal is a minimum of 10 people for each of the six areas: which will come to 60 – equivalent to our temple’s 60^th Anniversary.  Of course, more than 60 can participate.  And you can take a page even if you don’t raise your hand publicly.  There are 50 copies of each page on the downstairs table and they will also be posted next week on our temple’s website.

Before I read the areas of Jewish living, there is one urgent action item not on any of the pages. While we welcome diversity and choice, there are still moments when we want to act as one community.  That item is our temple’s support for Family Promise: our major social action initiative this year.  In a few months we will be overnight hosts for a week to homeless families getting back on their feet.  Before that, there are high start up costs for the van and day center and the ongoing programs of Family Promise. In a few days we will stand beneath the Sukkah and remember when our people did not have a permanent roof over their heads.   On your way out of temple today, Hope Rothenberg and Susan Oliff from our Social Action Committee will be giving each family a flyer requesting a $36 donation – which will be matched by a generous donor here in Bergen County.  Fill out your name on the back of the flyer, return it with your check during before the end of Sukkot on September 30^th, and all certificates will be posted in the temple lobby.

Now for our pledge drive.  There is a sheet for the exploring worship and prayer with suggestions like saying the Sh’ma at end of day or coming to the Learner’s Service next Shabbat morning.  A second sheet is about Israel, including taking a trip there this year – perhaps with Cantor Timman in February,  or advocacy or following Israeli news on a website or in a magazine.  The third sheet is for being a mensh – working on how we relate to others, like showing appreciation and resisting gossip. The fourth is for Learning – listing many opportunities for classes but also suggestions for Jewish books and online study.  The fifth is Tikkun Olam and lovingkindness, acts that can transform the world and reach out to the needy. And the last is keeping Temple Beth El a vibrant Jewish family through joining a chavurah, volunteering, encouraging others to join, and much more.  When Izzy speaks tomorrow morning, I’m sure all of us will be even more inspired to take on those mitzvoth.

And now, the show of hands.  Ten –a minyan – for worship and prayer?

Ten for Israel connections.

Ten for being a mensh.

Ten for Jewish learning.

Ten for Tikkun Olam and lovingkindness to others.

Ten for our family here at Temple Beth El.

Thank you.  We have pledged together tonight to bring sincerity to all we do.  We have explored how to turn back in sincerity to those we have hurt, and to turn toward the deeper Jewish life that inspired us to be here on Kol Nidre.

The tree of life is our Torah.  We placed it back gently in the Ark tonight.  When we close the Ark doors at the end of Yom Kippur, may the teachings of our religion, the teaching of Teshuva, Tefila and Tzedaka, come home with us and live in our deeds and words.  May we find at-one-ment with those we love and with this holy community.  And may God accept our prayers and our deeds from this Yom Kippur to the next.

Amen

Musings on a Sukkah

So, our backyard sukkah is up and waiting for sundown this Wednesday evening.

When I say "our," I mean more than just Peter and myself.  When we moved to Demarest, New Jersey back in the summer of 2004, we knew we wanted to connect with our neighbors and to our delight there were three adjoining yards (two in the back and one to the side) with other Jewish families.  They all had young children, while we were the empty nesters (barely......).

So, we proposed building one together.  Peter and I supplied the materials, we all pitched in, and our neighbor Alan stores the pieces in his shed. Each year Alan and his kids pass the boards over the fence between our yards. Folks show up with levels and drills.  This past Sunday, with my Mom in from Cleveland adding to the fun, it was up and ready to decorate in 90 minutes. We even paused for a group photo and to sing "Happy Birthday" to Sharon under the sukkah!

The best part is watching the children grow. One year a child will be barely able to hold the hammer and "pretend" to help, and in a blink of an eye she will be drilling a screw into a hinge.  This year Sammy was big enough to scribble a drawing while his twin sisters created detailed sketches of pumpkins. One of his sisters has got it into her head (thanks to a terrific religious school teacher at our temple!) that it is a mitzvah to sleep in the sukkah. She's made it pretty clear that she'll be out there one night soon. So watch out Alan -- rumor has it you're the designated overnight parent!

Sukkot is a time to appreciate the bounties of nature but it is also a time to be grateful that we have a roof over our heads. That's not so for the many homeless families in Bergen County.  I say families, because I'm talking here about the children who don't have backyards to build a sukkah.  They don't have kitchens or bedrooms either.  In 1986 a group of folks got together like our neighborhood friends. They wanted to build something really big.  An organization to help homeless families (many of them working families) get back on their feet and into permanent housing.  They've been doing that for many years now and have helped thousands of people.

This past year the group changed its name to Family Promise of Bergen County.  Our temple will be one of the overnight hosting sites when the new system is up and running in a couple more months. Up to 14 people will be having dinner and sleeping over in classrooms that will be converted into bedrooms for a week this December.  The start-up costs for the new program include buying a van and renovating space at a church in Ridgewood for a day center (with counseling and so much more for the families). Family Promise also runs a free drop in dinner program 365 days a year in Hackensack, helps with transitional housing, a summer day camp for children who are homeless, job counseling, referral services, and so much more.

At Kol Nidre services we announced a fundraiser for Family Promise called: My Family's Sukkot Promise to Family Promise.  In remembrance of when our ancestors did not have a permanent roof over their heads (those forty years living in the wilderness after escaping from slavery in Egypt.....), we asked households to try to donate $36 - double "chai" - to Family Promise.  That was on Friday night. By end of day on Monday, we had over $1000 collected.  Since a generous donor on the Family Promise board issued a matching challenge, that translates into $2000.  And we are still collecting through the end of Sukkot on September 30th.

I'm not planning to spend a night outdoors in our backyard sukkah -- even if the temperature is expected to be summer like the rest of this week.  But when I look out and see a little girls and her daddy in sleeping bags later this week, I'll be thinking of those other children and their mommies and daddies who we have promised to shelter in our temple on their way back to self-sufficiency.

May all the children of the world be sheltered beneath the wings of God's presence, and beneath a roof in a home of their own.

THE GIFT OF FAILURE

THE GIFT OF FAILURE    Second Morning Rosh Hashanah 5771/2010

Sermon given at Temple Beth El of Northern Valley in Closter, NJ last week.  

In 1970, Larry Brilliant – a young man with a medical degree and an eccentric resume - was in an ashram following the teaching of a Hindu Guru. That day in 1970, his  guru called him in and gave him an assignment:  to to Delhi and eradicate smallpox.  when your guru speaks, you listen.  So he takes the bus 17 hours to Delhi and goes to the Health Ministry in full garb – long hair, long robes. You get the picture. And he announces:  I’m here to eradicate smallpox.

Turned away, he takes the bus back to the ashram.  In a few weeks, the guru sends him back to try again.  And  again. And Again. Each time he adjusts a bit.  Cuts his hair; puts on western clothes. The 15^th time – Larry runs into a U.S. worker at from the World Health Organization who just happens to be visiting, and is in charge of smallpox eradication.  He hires him to go out in the field. Larry takes the job as a UN medical officer.   He helps organize the 1500 workers going door to door monthly over a two year period. They find the cases, inoculate all who came in contact, check back each month, and devise new techniques for tracking pandemics. By 1975 the last case of smallpox is recorded in Bangladesh. In 1980, the WHO officially declares that smallpox has been eradicated.

A great accomplishment.  But I share this story because at first, Larry Brilliant failed. 

He failed not once, but 14 times.

As we pray together during these ten days from Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur, I sincerely believe that the year ahead can be a  good year if we are more reflective, more attuned to the connections in the universe, and more loving toward others.

And, if we seek out opportunities to fail.

Some of you might be thinking – are you crazy Rabbi? I have enough failure in my life, and you want me to look for more?

Yes. I do.

Our Torah is filled with great role models of failure.  Abraham failed to make peace between Sarah and Hagar.  Jacob failed to teach his sons to love each other, causing Joseph to be sold into slavery.  Moses failed 9 times to convince the Pharoah to let the Israelites go, and he failed to keep the Israelites from backsliding into idolatry and selfishness and despair during their 40 years in the wilderness.  King David failed morally when he took Bathsheba as his wife.  Most of the prophets failed to convince the kings and the common Israelites to be loyal to God and God’s laws. 

Our Torah does not hide the failures: it includes them as part of our history.

So this Rosh Hashanah, I am inviting you to embrace failure.  Or, as Mark Frauenfelder, the author of Made By Hand puts it: have The Courage to Screw Up.

In Mark’s book on the Do It Yourself movement in the United States, he opens with a chapter entitled just that: The Courage to Screw Up.   He explains that most people loathe failure so much, they avoid trying things that require pushing past their current abilities.

How true this is, and we know where much of it comes from. In our educational system, mistakes are negative – points are taken off for errors.  We are judged and graded by how close we come to perfection.  This continues in our relationships when we have friends or relatives who keep a list of our past errors and don’t let them go.  And it happens in our worklife – when mistakes are taken as black marks on our personnel files, instead of being treated as opportunities to learn and be better at our jobs. 

in response to this learned avoidance of failure, when we start to do something new, and it begins to go wrong, most people give up rather than keep at it.

We’ve all seen children who get frustrated when they first start to learn a sport. They say things like “I’ll never be able to do it. “  “It’s too hard.” and sometimes: “I give up.”  Adults have these feelings too, but we are more likely to hide them or to figure out how to avoid something that seems too difficult.  For example, I don’t like going to group exercise classes. I know I will make mistakes in front of other people. And that will make me feel foolish and incompetent. So, I either take a class where everyone is a beginner and the teacher invites mistakes, or I exercise alone.  The truth is that no one cares about my mistakes in the gym – and the only way the others manage to move so smoothly through the routines is that they made mistakes and learned from them.  There is no shortcut.

Mistakes are not only inevitable, but a necessary part of learning and skill building. Brain research shows that making mistakes is one of the best ways to learn. When we do something wrong – we pay attention to it, we think it over, we analyze it: and out of that we learn. 

Tom Jennings, the brilliant inventor in the realm of the internet and computers, wrote in Make Magazine: “Mistakes are synonymous with learning.  it is true that Deep experience helps avoid problems, but mainly it gives  you mental  tools with which  to solve inevitable problems when they come up.”

Rosh Hashanah is a time to take out our mental toolbox, rummage around, and see what new items have shown up; What mistakes have morphed into life lessons, and which ones do we still need examine.

If we leave the toolbox locked up on the shelf, we miss an opportunity.  As Mark met with a variety of do it yourselfers – the kind that build cigar box guitars, or welded hand-made devices onto their espresso machines,  or designed their own chicken coops, or grew their own food – he discovered that, as he puts it: “The Best folks honor their mistakes – not hide them.” They even take pride in showing off their mistakes and what they learned from them.

The best folks honor their mistakes.  Not hide them, honor them.

This is a great message, a message we truly need to hear, right here at Temple Beth El this year.  It’s been a year challenging, painful, frustrating, and difficult times for our temple community.   Temple life was anything but perfect in the first months of the past Jewish year. We failed to be the kind of congregation we want to be. And then we had a choice: to learn from our conflicts or to shove them aside and just hope all would return to some new normal.

Rabbi Larry Kushner teaches that people will easily tell you what you’ve done right. It’s harder to get them to tell you about your Chaseyr – what you lack.  The best friends are not those who sweep your faults under the rug, but who hold up a mirror and sit by your side as you see the truth of who you are. They are not interested in merely making you feel better, they want you to be better.

I am proud of this Temple – of the members, the lay leaders, and the staff – for their willingness to join me in recent months in looking together at our individual and communal weaknesses, our frailties, even our failures. Instead of focusing on who is right and who is wrong, we came to ask: what can we learn? How can this experience give us the mental tools to face whatever challenges come next? How can we be a better temple – a better rabbi – a better board?  Now, looking forward to 5771, we have faith that it will be a year of moving forward, for we have new tools in our temple toolbox.

The best folks honor their mistakes.  In our personal lives, we need this lesson as well.  I would like to suggest that we do three things this coming week so that we transform our mistakes of the past year into blessings.

First.  Make a list of your mistakes.  Focus on a few that bring up the most disappointment in yourself.  Ask yourself: what have I learned from that? What would I not know about myself if I had not made that mistake? How have I begun to use my new knowledge of myself in my relationship with others or with the world? How am I better today, or how will I be better in the coming year, because of that mistake?

Second. We can sit down with someone who is close to us and who we trust, and ask them to help us reflect on our failures.  It needs to be someone who we truly believe wants us to be our best.  And we can be that trusted reflective partner to others.  Such friends or loved ones or counselors can help us find our blind spots. They can also encourage us, cheer us on as we make difficult changes, and not let us give up on ourselves.

Third, we can go out and take risks and make some more mistakes. 

We will all fail.  If we fail and do not reflect and learn, then the failure was wasted on us.  That is why the best gift we can give ourselves in life is the gift of failure.

We are entering aseret y’mei teshuvah – the ten days of repentance.  This holy period in the Jewish year would not exist if it were not for human failure.  There would be no teshuvah, no returning to our best selves, if we were already there – in a state of perfection.  Today is not about praying to be perfect.  It is about honoring our imperfections so that we can wrestle with them, understand them, and transform them.

Many years ago, I wrote a sermon about my son’s baseball card collection.  I contrasted the way cards are valued by dealers - the card with no dents or creases has the highest value - with the way we are valued by God.  When God looks us over, our dents and creases and worn places make us more – not less – valuable. We only grow from our flaws, not our perfections. 

Of course, there are different consequences to different failures.  If I try fail to take care of a house plant and it dies, there is no morality involved. If I fail another human being,  Judaism is clear that we must make address the relationship with apology and even reparation.  We will talk more about that at Kol Nidre. I am not suggesting this morning that we should purposely fail, but that we should accept that failure will be our lot. 

This summer several of us studied the Untaneh Tokef prayer together from the new book – Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die edited by Dr. Lawrence Hoffman.  Most of the contributors to the essays in that volume rejected the idea of a God that counts up our sins and decides our fate. Rather, they emphasized the human reality reflected in the prayer:  that we are mortal, that our individual lives are full of unpredictability and lack of personal control, and that we can be better human beings through repentance (reconciliation with others), through prayer (connecting to the highest values and ideals that Torah and God ask of us), and through Tzedaka, nourishing our lovingkindness.  There would be no needs for teshuva, tefila and tzedaka if there were no human failings.   The question is – will we add the tools of Judaism to our toolbox of how to improve after our failings, or will we give in and give up on ever changing.  The two worst responses to failure would be either to despair of the human condition, or to become complacent about it. Judaism asks us not merely to have faith in God, but to have faith in God’s creation: us.

I heard Dr. Rachel Remen explain it this way in a talk this past year: Failures teach there is life beyond failure: the seed of a new and different life.

Especially On Rosh Hashanah, we plant the seed of a new and different life.  the Chassidic teacher, Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, taught that there is always another step, another rung to climb on the ladder of becoming.  We would all like to be a Tzaddik – a completely righteous person, without faults. But is that possible?

Judaism’s goal is not inner peace; it is about climbing that ladder. Rosh Hashanah is the pause to look down from the heights, to steady ourselves, to catch our breath, and to gather the courage to climb even higher.

The story is told of a student who asked his rebbe, “How will I know when I’ve reached the level of a  tzaddik?” The rebbe answered, “As long as you keep asking that question, you are there. When you stop asking, thinking you reached it, then you have not.”

Let me leave you with a closing thought from the poet,  Antonio Machado, which seems tailor-made for Rosh Hashanah, the day of apples and honey. He wrote:

Last night as I was sleeping

I dreamt—marvelous error!—

that I had a beehive

here inside my heart.

And the golden bees

were making white combs

and sweet honey

from my old failures. 

Dear God, accept our accomplishments and our failures from the year that has ended. In the months to come, send us your gifts of health, happiness, love, support, self-awareness and courage.   None of us will be spared challenges in the year ahead.   Help us do our best to engage in them and learn from them.  Grant us the courage to embrace the gift of failure, so that we may continue to grow into the human beings you meant us to be. 

Amen.

HOLY GROUND

HOLY GROUND         

Here’s my sermon given at Temple Beth El of Northern Valley (Closter, NJ) on Rosh Hashanah Morning, 5771/2010

OK.

So you get a job taking care of someone’s sheep.

Every week you take them out in the hills; let them eat; chase away wild predators.

Week after week.  Sometimes you come home at night to sleep. Sometimes you stay out in the hills. 

You eventually marry the boss’ daughter.  Life is quiet and predictable.  Which is a big improvement, because there’s actually a warrant out for your arrest back in your hometown. 

One day you’re just minding your own business and the sheep, when something catches the corner of your eye.  Maybe it’s just a reflection, but it’s just too weird. You turn to take a closer look.  Now it’s got some color – orange, yellow, red.  Doesn’t look quite right out here in the hills.  You move a little closer and something strange is happening to the bush in front of you.  It’s burning, but it’s not burning up.

And then comes the voice.  It tells you to take off your shoes because you are on holy ground.

Holy ground?  You’ve been walking these paths for years and the ground looks just like it always did.  Same dust. Same small rocks.  Same ants.  But you listen and you take off your beat-up sandals ‘cause you realize something has changed.  You can’t see it, but you can feel it.  When your bare feet touch the ground the voice continues. It tells you to go back to your hometown, confront a cruel leader, and make him give up his oppression of the Israelites, your people. 

This Rosh Hashanah morning, I would like us to think through the notion of Holy Ground together.   I would like to propose that in the midst of the discussion about what should or should not be built within a few blocks of Ground Zero, Judaism has something to say to us about what constitutes a holy place, about our own capacity for holiness, and about the way to promote holiness and tikkun olam as we enter a new year.

Can holiness reside in a place or an object?  When Moses stood next to the burning bush, the physical earth was like any other earth.  Holiness resided in the encounter with God.  When God breaks through from the realm of the supernatural into the realm of the natural, our physical world is momentarily transformed.  But did that spot in the desert remain holy once God had departed and Moses headed off to Egypt? As far as we know, Moses did not place a marker of some kind on the spot – expecting that if he came that way again, he would be able to find God there. What he learned was that God could speak to him anywhere – even in a lowly thornbush - if he was ready to listen.

We Jews have very few places we label as holy.  Tradition says there are four holy cities in Israel: Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias and Hebron.  One was the site of the Temple – a place of prayer;  the great mystical rabbis taught in another, famous scholars are buried in the third, and the last is the burial place of the patriarchs.  Unlike certain religions that require pilgrimages to holy places, Judaism respects these holy places but there is no commandment to live in them or even to visit them.

And yet – we human beings know that an intense experience in a place can leave an imprint in the mind, influencing thoughts and emotions. Visiting that place can bring back the event in a way that photos or memories cannot.  There are couples who return on their anniversary to the place where the marriage proposal took place and feel their romance bloom again.  Or adults who like to go back and visit their childhood home and are filled with nostalgia.  Some Holocaust survivors return to stand in the places of suffering and loss  - taking their children with them to pass on the sense of place.

Our human imagination and empathy allow us to feel the holiness that someone else experienced in a place, even long after the event. That is part of the mystery of visiting places where great events happened. Just two years ago, standing on the small hill of rubble at the site where the last fighters of the Warsaw ghetto made their stand at #18 Mila Street in Warsaw, I could feel the echoes of courage and sacrifice. Here in the United States, the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in D.C. return me to the passion of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream Speech” – though I was not there in person that day in 1963.  And anyone standing on the deck of the floating white memorial to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii cannot help but sense the extraordinary events of that tragic day. 

  

When we stand physically in a place that was the site of a blessing or a tragedy or a life-changing event: Our rational side says – it’s just earth like any other.   It is our imagination and our empathy that make it glow again with the energy of that event.

But the holiness is not in the place.  It is in the deeds that occurred there.  And it is  within ourselves - as we choose how to respond to those awe-filled memories.  Holy Ground is not about the ground itself, but about what that memory evokes.

And so we ask the second question: Is there a way to be holy without standing at a Burning Bush?  Do all of us have access to the sacred?  The answer is yes.  There is another dimension to holiness.  Human actions, relationships, and experiences can also be holy.  Like Moses, you have probably had sacred moments in your life – whether you used the word holy “kadosh” or not.

Maybe it was the moment a baby was born in your family; or when you handed the Torah to your child as he became a Bar Mitzvah; or when you were blessed at the Ark on your Bat Mitzvah day.  Perhaps it was under the chuppah on your wedding day  - a Jewish marriage ceremony is actually called kiddushin – because each partner says to the other: you are now kadosh to me – no longer ordinary, but unique.

Or perhaps you experienced the holy when you walked away from a potentially fatal car accident; or you were so moved by nature, or music or art that you felt transported outside of yourself.

Think of it this way – in our ordinary lives we move along the surface of experience. We go to work, school; we have conversations with friends and family; we play some ball, eat some pizza, watch a movie, take out the trash.  Sit in the sanctuary. And then something shifts.  The experience turns deeper in some way – and we feel connected to the world, to our feelings, to our values, or to others more intensely.

Those deep inner connections are a glimpse into the realm of the holy:  God’s realm. Holiness is when the curtain separating us from God is pulled back for a moment, and a reality beyond our normal vision is momentarily revealed.

In the Torah, we are called to be a holy people.  This is not how we dress or eat, but how we act toward others.  When a deed of lovingkindess or caring or honesty or justice enters this world, it also adds to the reservoir of the sacred. We do not need to travel to some physical location to access this kind of holiness – it is a potential inside of us at all times.  Holy ground is not where we are, it is when we are – when we are being our best selves.

Holy ground is a tennis court off to the side of the main courts in Dubai back in February when Venus Williams played a match against Shahar Peer of Israel.  Shahar was there because Venus had refused to attend the tournament if Dubai banned the Israeli, as it had done the year before.  Venus’ stand for justice made that court holy ground.

Holy Ground is a bench in the outdoor sanctuary at Eisner Camp this summer when a homesick ten year old was comforted by a friend who put her arm around her and told her it would be O.K.

Holy ground is the living room of a home in Northern Valley when a husband admitted to his wife that he was a drug addict and agreed to go into rehab.

Holy ground is sitting by the bed of an ill parent in the hospital, dabbing at his lips with a little water-filled sponge while you wait for him to come back to full consciousness.

Holy ground is a golf course when14 year old Zach Nash disqualified himself and surrendered his medal after winning a junior Wisconsin PGA tournament. He discovered he had one too many golf clubs in his bag a couple hours after the tournament. His comment: "I knew right away I couldn't live with myself if I kept this medal.”

Holy ground is when an Israeli stands in front of a bulldozer sent to demolish a Bedouin’s home because the government won’t extend a building permit. And holy ground is when a young Israeli soldier stands at a checkpoint keeping his country safe.

Holy ground is the stone pavement near the Wailing Wall when Women of the Wall read from the Torah and assert their religious rights.

Holy ground is a temple educator’s office when the phone rings with teachers calling in to offer to give up their jobs if the staff is downsized so that the needier teachers among them can keep their positions.

Holy ground is a makeshift hospital in Haiti or Africa or a clinic in the Bronx or Newark or Paterson, when a doctor is giving free medical care to those in need.

Holy ground is a nursing home when a twelve year old becomes a friendly visitor to a lonely resident; or a field when he plays ball with a child with special needs.

Each of us stands on holy ground when our words and actions bring the holy into this world. 

And so my final question – How can we promote holiness and further the work of Tikun Olam: perfecting this world that God placed in our care? 

The holiness of Ground Zero was conferred by the tears shed, the sympathy expressed, the unity experienced by the rest of the nation – most of whom never stood at Ground Zero. Its holiness lives inside survivors who faced death and rebuilt lives that were forever changed. Its holiness is in the courage of rescuers and responders and ordinary folk helping their co-workers or even strangers.

The ground at Ground Zero cries out to us to reject the senseless hatred and radical religious fanaticism that caused the tragedy in the first place.  And we do that best by removing hatred and fanaticism from our own lives.  Ground Zero calls for neighbors to reach out a helping hand to neighbors, as they did on 9-11, without regard for race, religion, age or gender.  The barriers between us melted away for a brief moment on that day – the enemy did what he never imagined: he made all Americans one.  And we must not lose that one-ness, that unity, that great American ideal in which our differences and our diversity become our greatest strength.

The only way to spread religious understanding and brotherhood and religious freedom is to live it here at home.  The fanatics like Al Qaeda hate us because they are afraid of the freedoms we enjoy.  We must therefore protect those freedoms with more zeal than ever.  We are naïve if we think the current controversy is limited to keeping one mosque away from the neighborhood of Ground Zero. It is part of a greater reaction against the presence of American Muslims in our cities and towns. The story of Ground Zero ought to be about what our country stands for – the values that radical fundamentalists rejected: democracy, and tolerance, and diversity.

And that is why we need an Islamic cultural center just a few blocks from Ground Zero.  Because The Muslim community behind 451 Park Place is exactly the kind of Muslim community that is needed in America.  The center will be a kind of Muslim JCC – a gathering place for individuals and families that see no conflict between their religion and their identity as Americans.  Its founders are not newcomers to the neighborhood.  They live out the values of respect, human dignity, interfaith cooperation, lovingkindness in all that they do. And for that, they are as hated by Al Qaeda as we are. 

The great Rabbi Hillel taught – in a place where there is no humanity, act with humanity. We must judge each person, each religious community, by its own values and behaviors.  We Jews know what it was like to be looked down on by others, to have our religion denigrated and despised and called evil.  To have our presence in America blocked, our synagogues opposed.  We therefore have an obligation to see that no one else is treated this way.

Today, on this Rosh Hashanah morning, we read in the Untaneh Tokef prayer how God musters and numbers and counts each of us.  I want to be counted – and I want all of our Jewish people to be counted – among those who stand up and say:  I am offended and outraged when untruths are spoken about any religion, culture, or ethnic group. 

Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust writer and scholar, once wrote:  “A Jew must be sensitive to the pain of all human beings. A Jew cannot remain indifferent to human suffering, whether in other countries or in our own cities and towns. The mission of the Jewish people has never been to make the world more Jewish, but to make it more human.”

Today is the birthday of the world.  The first human beings that God created were not Jews, or Christians, or Buddhists, or Muslims or anything else. According to the midrash, God took a little clay of every color, from every part of the earth, and from that formed the first man.  And God made only one man and woman from whom all others are descended, so that from the beginning no one would be able to say to another – my blood is redder than yours.

So, how shall we celebrate this Rosh Hashanah? How can we make it a truly holy day and the year ahead a holy year?

One way is to recognize that wherever we stand is holy ground when we stand up for what is right.  When we hear someone accusing all Moslems of being violent or hateful, we must speak up, as Jews.  We must be on the side of tolerance and respect. We can also make our position known in person. This Sunday there will be a Religious Freedom interfaith gathering at St. Peter’s Church, a block from Ground Zero from 3-4 pm, followed by a walk to 451 Park Place. 

Another way to make this year sacred is to meet our Muslim neighbors.  In the 50’s and 60’s we Jews reached out to the Christians among whom we lived.  We created interfaith Thanksgivings, and dialogue groups, and had our Christian neighbors over for Chanukah or Passover. We believed, correctly for the most part, that if they knew us personally they would give up their negative stereotypes.  The tables are turned: it’s we who – if we are honest – harbor negative stereotypes of Muslims. Two weeks ago in the middle of Ramadan, Peter and I attended a break-fast at the home of a Turkish family in Cliffside Park.  There was no agenda except to break down the barriers between those of different religions by sharing a meal. We will be returning the favor by inviting them to our Sukkah at the end of this month. It’s time for us all to reach out to the Muslims in our own neighborhoods. I invite those of you who would like to create some event here at the temple to bring Jews and Muslims together to be in touch after the holidays.

Moses put his sandals back on his feet and set out for the Pharoah’s palace.  In the years ahead, he would hear God’s voice in many places – in Egypt, at the Sea of Reeds, on Mount Sinai, and one last time as he stood looking over the Jordan River at the promised land.  But I imagine he never forgot that first encounter, when a voice called out from a burning bush.  My wish for each of you, and for myself, is that we we heed that burning call from God in the New Year – and respond with deeds of lovingkindness, justice, and compassion.  Then, wherever we walk, it will be holy ground.

Amen.