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 27th 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 60th 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 60th 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 60th 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 60th 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 30th, 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
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