High Holy Day Sermon, Yom Kippur 2011/5772

I would like to offer two stories today – one true and one that is merely filled with truth.

The first comes from one of my favorite chassidic tales and relates the story of a father with a rather simple son. During the High Holy Days, he would pray in the synagogue of the Baal Shem Tov, but never would bring his boy with him to pray. Finally when the boy reached the age of Bar Mitzvah, his father took him to the synagogue for the first time, but only out of fear that the boy would out of sheer ignorance eat on the holy fast day.

The boy had a flute that he would play while tending the flock. Without his father knowing, he took the flute to shul. All day long the boy sat in silence in the synagogue. During the musaf prayer, the boy whispered to his father, “Father, I want to play my flute.” Terrified, the father spoke sharply and quite harshly to his son and the boy relented. This happened again and again during the minchah service, and each time the father restrained his boy.

Finally, however, during the closing service, the n’ilah, the boy grabbed the flute out of his pocket and blew a blast so loud that all where taken aback. When the Baal Shem Tov, who was acting as the service leader, heard the sound, he shortened his prayer.

At the end, the Baal Shem Tov said: This child’s flute lifted up all our prayers. Through the strength of his yearning he played his heart’s note perfectly. This was very dear to G-d, and all our prayers where accepted for his sake.

The second tale was told to me by a dear friend.

He was at the time in his last year of University, and he had been paying for his lodging by working in the student dormitories. The semester had just started, and students had been arriving for days to check into the dorms. My friend looked up, and in walks Ben. Now, Ben had not only been voted “best looking” in our high school class, he had also been one of my friend’s worst tormentors during a sadly troubled time in high school. My friend’s heart fell.

Everything he had been trying to escape – painful memories, humiliation – came back instantly. Then Ben spoke:

“Hey! Aaron!”

“Ben.”

“Hey man, how are you doing?”

Aaron, very confused, replied flatly. “Um. Ok. How are you?”

“Oh man. You know. It’s been hard. I got a job out of high school and it didn’t work out. I am going to try starting over now – so I am starting school here.”

“Um. That’s nice.”

“Hey. So what’s up with you?”

Aaron reluctantly told him a little of what he had accomplished in the last few years.

Ben listened attentively. “Wow, man. That is awesome. You were always really smart. Hey, you know, we treated you really badly in High School. I just wanted to say that wasn’t right, you know? I’m really sorry.”

And now we return to the present. We have already read and we will continue reading challenging texts as part of our journey through and exploration of the High Holy Days. It can be frightening as we read imagery of judgment, reward and punishment. It can be threatening, as we read about complex theology that we may not be willing to or ready to wrestle with at this moment in our lives. But the beauty of these stories is the beauty of the practical nature that exists behind these prayers and rituals. We are part of a living tradition – an ever-evolving Judaism that is eternally relevant.

It is, however, especially difficult as our complex rituals— the Hebrew, the standing the sitting. . . . am I doing this right or wrong . . . will anyone notice—make our celebration of holidays into something that can be very stressful . . . at times, possibly to the point of getting in the way of our ability to simply be in the moment.

It is perhaps ironic, perhaps even shocking, to read in the Talmud, in Mesechet Taanit, the part of the Talmud that deals with fasting and fast days: “R. SIMEON B. GAMALIEL SAID: THERE NEVER WERE IN ISRAEL GREATER DAYS OF JOY THAN THE FIFTEENTH OF AB (Tu b’av or what we call today Jewish Valentines Day) AND THE DAY OF ATONEMENT.“

The Day of Atonement. Yom Kippur. Today! The day of greatest joy in Israel.

How can that possibly make sense when we fast, when we beat our chests when we read “On Rosh Hashanah it is written and On Yom Kippur it is sealed, who shall live and who shall die.” Have we lost something in the last 2000 years? Or is there a way that we can look at Yom Kippur today that can make that real for us? Can we reconcile the solemnity of the now with this vision from our past?

So if I may, I submit that the entire cycle of the High Holy Days, and the events leading up to them, is a perfect opportunity for psychological, emotional and spiritual health that in turn brings about joy.

Consider an example that I believe to be universal. If we all think hard enough, I am sure that we can think of someone that we have hurt or that has hurt us that we have not yet forgiven or that is waiting for words of apology from us. Most of the time we do not even have to think hard at all – these thoughts are a part of our every day reality.

So then it is tradition in some synagogues on the second day of Elul, the month before the High Holy Days, to hear in our liturgy for the first time the call of the shofar. It is no mere symbol. The sound calls us to engage in our tradition. The sound calls us to the process of teshuvah.

But teshuvah is not one sided. Whether we need to be forgiven or ask forgiveness, teshuvah is our tradition’s word for engaging in the sacred process of forgiveness within all of our relationships.

So picture how this works: We enter Elul with one, five, ten, chas v’shalom 100 people that we need to forgive or that we have never forgiven. It doesn’t even matter which side of this equation we are on – the one that needs to forgive or the one that needs forgiveness – both represent a true burden to the spirit. How much time every day do we spend thinking of these people and these injuries, some of them yesterday and some of them 10, 20 or 60 years in the past that feel as if they were yesterday?

How much of our daily energy do we spend thinking of these injuries?

How much of our energy do we spend walling these thoughts and memories away so that we do not have to think of them?

What does it cost us?

Now we hear the shofar and enter Elul and are required by our tradition to perform a chesbon nefesh – a searching inventory of all these injuries. But here is the trick – we have to do something about it.

Our tradition states that G-d will not forgive our pleas to be forgiven, no matter how sincere, for a transgression against our neighbor. We must engage in teshuvah ourselves with our neighbors.

So on one possible path, we listen to the call of the shofar and our tradition and make this searching inventory. Those that we have been avoiding apologizing to we finally approach and begin the process of healing. To those that have harmed us we say words so simple yet so potent, “I forgive you.”

Yes I know this is brutal. This is far easier said than done. Our pain often seems to be inseparable from our selves. When someone asks how we are doing we filter our answer through our pain and then make decisions based on unhealed memories.

But what price are we willing to pay? If we pray today “on Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed,” what are we writing and what are we sealing?

The gates of repentance being open is our symbol for that limited time when the main focus of our Judaism is to get our attention— to get us to think about and do something about these pains and injuries. And if we engage in this process and do this work we reach n’ilah today and our burdens are indeed lifted. That locked up energy is freed. We are inscribed into life. It is a day of joy for the children of Israel.

Yet if we do not . . . it is the most real and practical and terrible psychological reality for us and for our relationships. If when the doors are open we choose to do nothing, we have pressed the injuries deeper, harder to get at, harder to deal with, harder to even consider approaching next year when we once again hear the shofar. We have sealed them and we ourselves have closed the gates of repentance around us.

We have sealed our wounds but we have not healed them.

The reality is, our traditions – our poems and prayers and songs and sacred texts – our Judaism – do not belong in a museum.

They are relevant. But at the same time, all of those items can get in the way of the work that they are supposed to help us remember to do. In the tale of the Baal Shem Tov and the boy with the flute, the boy’s prayer was accepted and elevated everyone else’s prayer because it was the ideal – avodah sh’balev, the pure worship of the heart. It is a reminder of the simplicity underlying this amazing holiday.

The story of my friend on the other hand is the reality of the healing behind teshuva. Was my friend Aaron’s pain a great pain compared to the horrible injustices in world? Of course not, but it was his pain and his inability to move beyond his memories affected every day of his life. But when we say, “Please forgive me” or “I forgive you,” these are not mere words. Ben changed the entire narrative of my friend’s life with his words, with his teshuvah, and for the very first time my friend was able to stop living in the daily memories of a very real torment, and begin living in that moment with his relationships of that moment instead of the ghosts of his past pain.

Yom Kippur is the most joyful day in Israel?

Think of the true joy that is felt when that one burden we have carried for 20 years has at last been lifted. Now what if we work together to release these burdens, all of us, in all our relationships. What joy indeed!

These stories like our complex liturgy are part of a living breathing ever evolving collective fate. We renew our relationship with our Judaism every time we engage in a dialogue with our tradition, and then more importantly recapture the essence of Judaism – joy, relationship, forgiveness, freeing ourselves from bondage – the actions that our tradition calls us to perform.

We have a choice to write life and health and relation, and then to seal them as the reality under which that we choose to live.

May we be inscribed in – indeed may we cause through our actions and choices that we inscribe ourselves in – the book of life.