A Prayer of Unity with the People of Israel

Thank you to Barbara Bernstein for sending me this prayer composed by Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, California

El Maleh Rachamim -- Compassionate God,
We pray not to wipe out haters but to banish hatred.
Not to destroy sinners but to lessen sin.
Our prayers are not for a perfect world but a better one
Where parents are not bereaved by the savagery of sudden attacks
Or children orphaned by blades glinting in a noonday sun.
Help us dear God, to have the courage to remain strong, to stand fast.
Spread your light on the dark hearts of the slayers
And your comfort to the bereaved hearts of families of the slain.
Let calm return Your city Jerusalem, and to Israel, Your blessed land.
We grieve with those wounded in body and spirit,
Pray for the fortitude of our sisters and brothers,
And ask you to awaken the world to our struggle and help us bring peace.

Thoughts on the Current Violence in Israel

As we are today witnessing a new round of violence in Israel, it is important to remember that there are people of goodwill on both sides who are working toward peace and a shared vision of the future of the State of Israel. On our congregational trip last May to Israel, we visited the Center for a Shared Society at Givat Haviva, located on a kibbutz near the Green Line that demarcates Israel proper from the West Bank. There we met with Lidia Aisenberg, who talked to us about the mission and strategies of the organization and guided us on a tour of Barta’a, an Arab village about a five minute drive off route 65, one of the busiest roads in Israel.

A few days ago Lydia sent me a declaration signed by Jewish and Arab mayors and regional authorities calling for a secure and shared life in Israel. The banner above the declaration said, “Jews and Arabs won’t give up on a Shared Society”. Here is a summary of the five points of the declaration:

1.       The statement affirms that the State of Israel is based on the principle of equality, and has been a shared home for both Jews and Arabs since its inception.

2.      It calls  upon all the citizens of Israel, and residents in Wadi Ara and the Triangle in particular, to maintain an attitude of respect and avoid any harm to one another. It condemns any attack on body, soul, or property, as well as any expression of physical or verbal abuse.

3.       It appeals to the leaders of both peoples to refrain from incitement and the ferment of emotions. “Our task at this time is to inspire calm and ensure public safety.” It appeals to religious leaders, intellectuals, educators and teachers to lead people in dialogue that will help adults and children to deal with the complex situation in a way that will not lead to manifestations of racism, revenge, injury, or threats to the other.

4.      It urges the Israeli government to pursue a political solution that will enable all people in Israel to live in security and peace.

5.       It recognizes the great sensitivity of the Temple Mount / Al Aqsa Mosque for both Jews and Muslims. Asks the Israeli government, the government of Jordan and the Palestinian Authority to manage the crisis responsibly and to  preserve the status quo on the Mount.

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 The declaration concludes, “During this time of crisis we will continue to maintain good relations and promise to remain faithful and committed to our partnership, which is based on mutual responsibility and equality between Jews and Arabs in the region and in the country.”

For more information on Givat Haviva go to http://www.givathaviva.org/

Erev Rosh Hashana 5776

Listening to our Prayers

In his 2002 debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer introduces us to the mythical village of Trachimbrod, Ukraine, circa 1791. The village has 300 citizens, all of them Jewish. This shtetl is divided into a Jewish Quarter and a Human Three Quarters. In the Jewish Quarter, everything of a sacred nature goes on – religious studies, kosher butchering, bargaining – and in the Human Three Quarters all secular activities take place. Dividing the two quarters is the synagogue. There are two Torahs in the ark, placed strategically so that one Torah sits in each zone.  When the men of this synagogue pray, they have a strange custom.  They clip a rope to their belts and hoist themselves via a pulley to the ceiling. This is so they can be, literally, closer to G-d.

There is another group in the village that never attends the synagogue. This group meets every week in different people’s homes. They have no Rabbi, they sit on pillows in a circle, and engage in group led discussions. Mostly they talk about their recurrent dreams, which they then record in a book.

When the balance of Jewish to secular changed in the village, it was the custom of the people to lift the synagogue and move it, a little to the right of to the left, to reflect the new ratio of Jewish to secular. Eventually the synagogue was put on wheels, making the ever changing negotiations between religious and secular less of a schlepp.

Friends, when I read this description of the mythical Trachimbrod community, I could not help but think of our own Congregation Beth Shalom community.  There is one group who do not come to services because the Rabbi talks about G-d too much, and our prayer book is filled with images of the Divine. There is another group who do not attend services because services are not spiritual enough, they do not sustain your soul. I am hesitant to reveal to these two groups that the subject of my talk tonight is prayer. I am concerned about how you will receive it. For those who do not come to services because the Rabbi talks about G-d too much – I am afraid you will find my sermon entirely irrelevant to your lives. For those who do not attend services because services are not spiritual enough – I am afraid you will not find my sermon deep or spiritually satisfying.

You must be asking yourselves by now – if the rabbi thought that half of us would be either disinterested or disappointed in what he has to say, why did he choose this subject to begin with? Does our rabbi have sadomasochistic tendencies? The reason I choose to speak about prayer this sacred eve is this: We come to synagogue this evening for different reasons. For some, it is a chance to see and to be seen. Some come in solidarity and in identification with our Jewish community. Some come out of curiosity as to what the Rabbi will say. Some come to hear the beautiful music of our Cantor and choir. Some come because of associations the High Holidays have with parents and grandparents, with warm childhood memories. Some come because their parents want them to come.  Some come because their husbands or wives want them to come. Some come because their friends and family are here. Some can’t figure out why they come, but they come anyway.  No matter what our particular reasons are for being here tonight, we all expect to spend some time in prayer. Prayer may not be the primary reason we come, but it is the primary activity we will engage in over the course of the next two weeks! That is why I gave myself the challenging task of speaking about prayer.

There are two functions that prayer ought to serve – to comfort us and to challenge us. I want to explore those two aspects of prayer this evening. Prayer aims to comfort us.  Our prayers reassure us that however chaotic the world may seem or our lives may be, there is a loving G-d who cares about us, who watches over us, who is with us in times of suffering.  As you know, the theme of this season is teshuvah – return.  Our prayers inform us that however far we have strayed, there is a way back. No matter how much we have disappointed ourselves or others, no matter how far we have departed from our ideals, in this holiday season our prayers teach us that we can begin anew, we can leave old baggage behind- that all can, and will, be forgiven if we are honest with ourselves and with others. We can make atonement --- at -one- ment – to become at one again with G-d, at one with our friends and family, at one with ourselves. If we would listen to our prayers, instead of merely recite them we might find that they express in words what we cannot. The prayers may be ancient – the human struggles they convey are not.  If we would listen to our prayers, instead of merely recite them, we may find that we are not the first to fall in love, the first to experience the pain of loss; we are not the first to be stricken by the uncertainty of illness, the first to worry about how we will put food on the table, the first to experience betrayal. If we would listen to our prayers, instead of merely recite them, we will learn that we are not the first to have misgivings of the past, or apprehensions about the future; that we are not the first to feel the pain of loneliness, or the panic of abandonment – if we would only listen to our prayers, and not merely recite them.

Prayer should challenge us as well.  We must not only examine our past deeds.  We ought to challenge ourselves with questions about our present and about our future. Who am I? Am I living according to the highest ideals of the Jewish people? Where am I in this stage of my life?  Am I headed in the right direction?  As we challenge ourselves, we must remain aware that those around us are all facing challenges of different kinds. All of us are imperfect beings, all are struggling to be better parents, to be better spouses, to be better friends, to be better children, to be more honest and more loving  kinder and more generous. Ultimately, we must challenge ourselves to ask, “How can standing in the presence of G-d this High Holiday season help me to address some of these issues?”

Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shlomi , z”l  once said that prayer is less like a vending machine – you put something in and you get something out – and more like a flight path – you are transported into another place.  But let’s face it – sometimes we feel like we are grounded for hours when we pray, as if by bad weather or mechanical difficulties. All we want to do is get off of the plane.

Should that happen, take comfort in the story of Rabbi Nachum of Chernobyl , who was once reciting his High Holiday prayers with great fervor. His grandson, standing near him, felt a sinking feeling. Everyone seemed to be praying with great concentration, but it took all the strength that he had to be able to focus on even a single word.  Afterward, the grandson approached his grandfather, with much trepidation, aware that he had barely been able to make it through the service.  Would his grandfather, the great Tsaddik, be angry with him? Reb Nachum turned to him and said, “My son, how your prayer took heaven by storm today! It lifted up all those prayers that could not come through the gates!

Sometimes we too feel like complete failures at prayer. We feel like we have no talent for it. Then we look around, see others who appear to know exactly what they are doing, and conclude that maybe next year our time would be better spent on some other endeavor. The story of Reb Nachum is telling us that if we only end up praying that we would be able to pray, if we wish to cry but find our tears lacking, if we hope that we will ascend on the wings of our prayers but find that we cannot even get off the ground -- then we should know that this too is a high form of prayer.

There. Your Rabbi is done. I have said my piece and we have all survived….. as far as I can determine.  I will ask you one more thing. When you are talking with your friends and your family tonight or tomorrow morning, and they ask you about the Rabbi’s sermon – if it spoke to you, tell them you liked it. By all means, tell them it was a good sermon! But if you are a person who doesn’t come to services because the Rabbi talks about G-d too much; or if you are a person who doesn’t come to services because services are not spiritual enough; well, then I would think this was a difficult sermon to hear. So if someone asks you about the Rabbi’s sermon, think of the response of Pope Francis when asked about homosexual priests.  As you may recall, the Pope responded to that question, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Likewise, if someone asks you about tonight’s sermon, please consider saying – “The rabbi’s sermon? – Who am I to judge?”

Shanah Tovah

Rosh Hashanah Day 1 5776

The Courage to Dream

“If you will it, it is not a dream”.

This is perhaps the most famous Jewish quotation of the 20^th century. It was written by Theodore Herzl, Jewish visionary and founder of modern political Zionism. He was referring of course, to the ages long dream of the Jewish people that they would be one day restored to their ancestral land, the Land of Israel. It was a dream that was kept alive by religious Jews for two thousand years. The dream of return to Zion is a central theme in our prayers, the recitation of which three times a day helped keep this dream alive. Herzl was a secular Jew, and he took up the dream in a way never envisioned by his more traditional forbears. The return to Zion would be a political movement, born of political necessity, employing the tools of statecraft to achieve its ends. The dream remained intact – only the methods of achieving it had changed. According to Herzl, it would not be G-d who redeemed the Jewish people –the Jewish people would redeem themselves.

We are a religion of dreamers. In his book, The Gifts of the Jews, Thomas Cahill describes ancient Sumerian society, out of which Abraham and Sarah emerged, as one “in which life is seen……..as part of an endless cycle of birth and death: time perceived as a wheel, spinning ceaselessly, never altering its course….”  These were societies in which fatalism was the operant philosophy and where the idea of human advancement was absent.  War, disease, despotic government all had to be endured because this was the Will of the gods and nothing would ever change. Cahill writes that the Jewish people brought to the world “a new vision of men and women with unique destinies – a vision”, he writes, “that thousands of years later will inspire the Declaration of Independence and our hopeful belief in progress and the sense that tomorrow could be better than today.”

That dream of progress, that dream that “things don’t always have to be the way they are”, is embodied in the Jewish idea of tikun ha-olam, our obligation to change the world for the better. It is embodied in our notion of Messianic times, a time where the entire world will be redeemed. The prophet Micah best articulated that dream when he wrote, “And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall they learn war anymore. But every person shall sit under their grapevine or fig tree with no one to disturb them.” Rabbi Harold Kushner recently called this dream of progress the theology of “not yet”.  The theology of “not yet” is the refusal to see what is wrong with the world as reflecting God’s will and the recognition that human action is required to do something about it.  In other words, it is not G-d’s will that hundreds of thousands of people be killed in war and millions displaced and seeking refuge, as we have recently witnessed. It is not G-d’s will that today a child dies every minute from malaria in sub-Saharan Africa. It is not G-d’s will that there are almost 15 million children living in Africa who have been orphaned due to AIDS. G-d doesn’t want that. G-d doesn’t desire that. G-d wants us to use our G-d given talents and intelligence to do something about that, though.

We are a religion of dreamers. It got me to thinking – does G-d dream?  I think so. G-d dreams of a world that is founded on justice and on righteousness, a world where the dignity and value of every person is upheld.  G-d then shared that dream with a nation at a mountain called Sinai. The Jewish people bought into that dream. That is called the covenant.  From that time on we would take up the dream, and work toward making the world a place where the painful gap between the world as it is and the world as it should be could be narrowed.  G-d and the Jewish people shared the dream that through human action humanity could work its way back, gradually, to live once again in peace and tranquility of the Garden of Eden.

Rosh Hashannah, the birthday of the world, would seem an appropriate time to review our dreams and ask, “How are we doing?” But I am not going to give a report card for world progress.  We have other kinds of dreams as well -- the dreams we have for ourselves and for our children. It is those dreams I would like to focus on today. The humorist Erma Bombeck once wrote, “There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, ‘Yes, I’ve got dreams, of course, I’ve got dreams’. Then they put the box away and bring it out once in a while to look at it, and yet, they’re still there. These are great dreams, but they never even get out of the box.”

This past year, I was recruiting people for our congregational trip to Israel. I approached a man I knew casually, who is not a member of our congregation, but who I know is Jewish. I asked him if he might be interested in traveling with us to Israel. “Rabbi,” he said, “I am so glad you asked. It has been a life-long dream of mine to visit Israel.” I was encouraged.  It was beginning to sound as if he was going to sign up for the trip. Then he added, “But I just can’t do it this year. You see, I can’t get away right now. Let me know when you take another trip.”

I was disappointed, but I tried not to show it. But I will tell you what I was thinking: “This man is no youngster. He is 75 years old if he is a day. He’s retired. He has the money. How many chances does he think he is going to get to fulfill this dream of a lifetime? What in the world is he waiting for? “

His response reminds me of a story I read recently. In the 1960s, President Eisenhower received the gift of a rare, white tiger named Mohini. For years, Mohini lived in the Washington Zoo and spent her days pacing back and forth in a 12-by-12 foot cage. Finally the zoo decided to build her a larger enclosure so Mohini could run, climb and explore. But when Mohini arrived at her new home, she didn’t rush out, eagerly to her new habitat. Rather, she marked off a 12-by-12 foot square for herself by the fence, and paced there until her death. Mohini was literally trapped in a box of her own making never enjoying the new opportunities available to her.

We are all a little bit like Mohini.  Just like her we create imaginary boundaries that we feel we cannot cross, even when the opportunity presents itself to do so. We set arbitrary limits upon ourselves.  In Biblical times, the call of the Shofar marked the beginning of the Jubilee Year, when all slaves were freed. The call of the shofar, then, should serve as a call to us to end our internal imprisonment, to break the fetters of our self-imposed chains, to move us out of our comfort zone, to call us to a life of greater freedom and renewed passion.

Unfortunately, we often underestimate ourselves and our capabilities. We build our own internal cages, and become fearful about what lies outside of it. There was once an 18th rabbi named Chaim ben Yitzchak of Volozhin who made that mistake. When he was young, he was not an ambitious student, and in fact one day told his parents he no longer wanted to study but would rather go to trade school and learn to be a shoe maker. He announced his decision to his parents who reluctantly acquiesced.

That night, the young man had a dream. In it he saw an angel holding a stack of beautiful books.  “Whose books are those?” he asked the angel. “They are yours,” was the answer, “if you have the courage to write them.” This dream changed the young man’s life, and Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin was on his way to discovering the scholar that he was meant to become.

One of the metaphors of these High Holidays is that G-d has a book before Him where he inscribes our fate for the coming year. It is true that some of what happens to us in the coming year and in the remaining years of our lives is in G-d’s hands. But it is also true that, to a great extent, we write the story of our own lives.  A medieval rabbi said: “Days are scrolls: write on them what you want to be remembered.” Our tradition teaches that we have the power to change our lives, to pursue our dreams, to control our own destinies.

Think of the next year as a book filled with blank pages. How do you want to fill them in? What do you want the book to say next year, when you read it?

 ---- I finally learned to read Hebrew this year.

----- This past year I made an effort to spend more time with my wife and children. It has meant setting some limits on my work, but it has really been worth it.

---   Last year I volunteered at the homeless shelter. It has opened my eyes to a world I barely knew existed.

What will be written on YOUR pages?

One thing we can continue to be proud of as Jews – despite our many setbacks, we have not been afraid to dream. We have not been afraid to articulate our dreams, to re-affirm them, even in the face of failure and disappointment. To be a Jew is to never lose hope, to always hold on to the dream. To be a Jew means to share a dream, if one dares say, with G-d, of a world where every human being is valued and the Divine presence is unmistakable. We transmit our dreams to our children, and pray that they will cherish them, even as one generation gives way to the next, seeing our dreams of a perfected world not yet realized. The Talmudic sage, Rabbi Tarfon says, “It is not upon you to complete the task, but you are not free to desist from it.” There is much work to be done in our lives, and in our world -- many obstacles to overcome, many challenges to be met. We must boldly meet all these challenges with courage and with intelligence and with faith.

As it is with the dreams of the Jewish people, so it is with our own, personal dreams. Rosh Hashanah is the ideal time of year to take those dreams out of their box, examine them, put them on the line, and resolve to work toward fulfilling them in the years to come.  Progress may be slow, and success elusive. But as American philosopher Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours …..if you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now, put the foundations under them.”

To that we may all say, AMEN!

Kol Nidre 5776

Three Reasons to Forgive

On this sacred night, when we stand before G-d and ask G-d to forgive us, I am going to talk about how important it is that forgive others. Our tradition teaches that only if we are willing to forgive others is G-d willing to forgive us. I am going to talk about three reasons that we ought to forgive others. Before I do that, I am going to share with you two surprising instances of forgiveness.  We are going to see what these can teach us about what forgiveness is and what forgiveness is not.

“The most beautiful thing a person can do is to forgive”, wrote Eleazar Ben Yehudah, the founder of Modern Hebrew. That beauty was on full display last June as some of the relatives of the nine people killed during Bible Study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina confronted the killer of their loved ones at his bond hearing.   Relatives the victims stunned the world, when, with tears in their eyes, they offered forgiveness to the killer. The daughter of Ethel Lance, one of the victims of the shooting said, "You took something very precious from me. I will never talk to [my mother] ever again. I will never be able to hold her again, but I forgive you. And [may God] have mercy on your soul." Anthony Thompson, a relative of another victim, faced the perpetrator and urged him to repent of his action. Then he added, “I forgive you and my family forgives you.”

The classic Jewish formulation of forgiveness comes from the rabbinic text called The Talmud. “G-d forgives sins committed against Him, but sins against one’s fellow human beings must first be forgiven by the injured party.” This means that in the matter of ritual transgressions – a person has eaten a food forbidden by Jewish law, or has violated the Sabbath in some way – we may ask G-d directly for forgiveness, and it will be granted. But in matters where a person has committed a transgression against another, that person’s forgiveness must be asked, and restitution, if possible, must be made. 

Almost nine years ago, a 32 year old married father of two walked into an Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, shooting ten girls and killing five of them before taking his own life. The mother of that deranged man, Terri Roberts, lived in the community. Her first thought was that she would have to move away. But members of the Amish community came to her that night and urged her to stay. Some of the victims’ family attended her son’s funeral. The parents of two of the girls who lost their lives were among the first to greet her following the burial of her son. That is what compassion and forgiveness look like when put into practice.

Terri Roberts ended up staying in the community. For the past nine years she has been going every Thursday to the home of one of the most seriously wounded girls to take care of her. It is, perhaps, her way of making some restitution for the horrible act of her son. Think of that – Terri Roberts is the mother of the man who committed this horrible crime, and the parents of one of the victims allowed her into their home to care for their daughter. This is what forgiveness and restitution look like.

It is difficult to forgive someone who has wronged us.  Yet, as we can see in both the example of the South Carolina Church and the Amish schoolhouse, as difficult as it may be, it is possible even in the most extreme of circumstances. What do they know that they can teach us about forgiveness?

The first lesson that they can teach us is that forgiveness is not about forgetting. Unimaginable pain, like the murder of a loved one, does not just disappear.  They know that forgiveness is not about excusing; forgiveness is not about denying; forgiveness is not about minimizing suffering or harm. They know that forgiveness is not about reconciling with the offender.  It is not about reunion with the offender, or establishing a relationship with the offender.  Forgiveness is not about giving up their right to be angry. Those who forgive retain their right to be angry, but they use that anger differently, they use that anger wisely. 

Forgiveness is about giving up the right to revenge. Forgiveness means giving up the right to retaliate against the perpetrator, of, if the perpetrator is dead, to retaliate against their family. The Amish could have driven Terri Roberts out of the community had they wished to. They could have punished her for what her son did. But the community made it clear that they were not about to take revenge on her son by mistreating his mother.   

Forgiveness in this case also means letting go of the bitterness, the resentment, and the hostility toward the perpetrator and his family. One Amish farmer put it this way, “The acid of bitterness eats the container that holds it.” Forgiveness does not mean that there should be no punishment for the crime. Had the killer survived, the Amish would have wanted him locked up, but not for revenge. They would want him locked up in order to pay for his crime and to keep the community safe.

We have just looked at what forgiveness is, and what it is not. Now I am going to tell you three reasons why it is important to forgive. The first reason we should forgive is because we cannot allow the actions that others took in the past to have control over our lives and affect our emotional and physical health in the present.   We cannot afford to waste our energy being trapped in anger over what others did to us in days gone by. Holding onto resentment and bitterness and failing to forgive can tie us to a person who we ought to have left in the past long ago.

Rabbi Harold Kushner tells of how a woman once came to him, and poured out her anger against her husband. “Do you know what he did to me?” she said. “I got him through medical school and then he left me and married that no good floozie of a nurse?”  And she went on and on and on, telling him in gory detail how he had mistreated her and how he had neglected the children and how he had to be pressured to pay the children’s tuition, and so on and so forth.

 Finally, Rabbi Kushner got tired of listening to this tirade, and so he interrupted her, and he said, “I think you should let it go.”  And she said, “What????? I should let it go, after what he did to me?”

 The Rabbi said, “Yeah - you should let it go - not for his sake, but YOURS. Because, for ten years now, you have been holding a hot coal in your hand, waiting for your ex to walk by so that you could throw it

at him. And for ten years now, he has been living a happy life with his new wife and you have been burning your hand. Isn’t it time that you put the coal down, and got on with your life?”^[1]

The second reason that we should forgive is because we are in need of forgiveness ourselves. When I used to do marriage counseling a couple would come into my office and I would ask them each to describe the problem they were having. The wife would then recite a list of everything her husband did wrong. When it was the husband’s turn, he would recite his own list of all of his wife’s shortcomings. Then I would ask the wife what she may have contributed to the problems they are experiencing. Silence. Then I would ask the husband what she may have contributed to the problems they were experiencing. Silence. You see, it is human nature to remember all of the times that we have been hurt by others, but we tend to repress or ignore or be unaware of all of the times that we have hurt others. We tend to make excuses or rationalize away our own behavior, all the while holding accountable anyone who has slighted us in the least!  But we are not aggrieved innocents, none of us – we too are people who have gone astray, we too have done wrong, even if we do not see it.

If we do tend to rationalize, if we do tend to minimize, if we do tend to explain away our own hurtful behavior, how, then, can we become aware of what we have done? The Torah teaches that we have an obligation to our fellow to tell them when they have wronged us. So when somebody hurts us, our tradition says that we need to sit down with them, face to face, and have a conversation about that. When we do that, we will often find that the other person feels hurt as well! It is not easy to hear that we have wronged another person – especially if we consider ourselves the injured party! Yet, what alternative do we have other than to talk it out?  To NOT say something means that we will end up carrying around our resentment. When we fail to speak to one another, what happens then? We unload our pain on others, and tell them about what was done to us! This is engaging in Lashon HaRah – spreading gossip.  So the second reason we should forgive is that we too need to be forgiven. If we want others to forgive us, we need to be willing to forgive them.

The third reason that we should forgive is that people change. I know a person who had a drug problem when he was a teen. In order to support his habit, he stole things. He had a friend named Sonny. One day he was over at Sonny’s house, and he stole some jewelry from Sonny’s mother. Many years later he received an angry message from Sonny on Facebook. Sonny berated him, he said, you know, my mother died and you can never ask forgiveness from her for what you did. You are an awful person! You are scum of the earth. The person replied, “You are absolutely right when you describe everything that I did. I am also not that person anymore…”

This is a very simple and poignant response, and speaks to the power of Teshuvah, of repentance. Maimonides says that when we do true repentance, we leave the past behind and it is as if we are born anew. Sonny was hanging on, for years, to anger and bitterness over what his friend did when he was younger. People don’t stay the same – we all grow, we all change, we all mature. What sense does it make to hold on to anger over something that happened years ago? Who knows how many relationships between brothers and sister, between children and parents, between good friends, have been strained or ended because of something that happened in the distant past? We need to let it go.

May we all find a burial place in our hearts where we can lay to rest all of the wrongs that we have suffered. May we unburden ourselves from the dead weight of un-forgiven injuries.  This is truly the path to the freedom, peace and wholeness we all seek in our lives.  For forgiveness can heal the broken heart, allow us to love again, renews us, and give us a fresh start.

G’mar Chatimah Tovah

---

[1] As told by Rabbi Jack Riemer 

Where Heaven Meets Earth Yom Kippur Morning 5776

Where Heaven Meets Earth

Do you know “Where the world began?” I bet if I asked you “How old is the world” you would be able to answer that question. If you were speaking from a Jewish point of view, you would say the world is 5776 years old. If you were speaking from a scientific point of view, you would say the earth is 4.543 billion years old. I bet if I asked you “How was the world created” you would be able to answer that question, too. If you were speaking from a Jewish point of view, you would say that “G-d spoke and the world came into being.” If you were speaking from a scientific point of view, you would tell me about the “Big Bang Theory”.  But if I asked you, “Where the world began”, I don’t think that many of us would be able to answer that question, even from a scientific point of view.  It may surprise you, but there is a Jewish answer to that question!

According to our tradition, the bedrock upon which the Temple in Jerusalem was built is called the Even Shtiyah, or Foundation Stone of the world. It is the center of the earth –it is the very foundation upon which G-d then constructed our world. It is where the world began. The midrash explains, “The Almighty created the world in the same manner as a child is formed in its mother's womb. Just as a child begins to grow from its navel and then develops into its full form, so the world began from its central point and then developed in all direction.” That central point is the rock upon which Abraham performed the sacrifice of Isaac; it was upon that rock that the Temple in Jerusalem was later built; for the Muslim, it was from that rock that Mohammed ascended to heaven, thereby becoming one of Islam’s holiest sites as well. That rock is “The Rock” of the “Dome of the Rock”, the Golden Dome that dominates the Old City of Jerusalem.

That Rock must be a very special place. In fact, it is known as the “place where heaven meets earth”. It is the place where Abraham encountered an angel who stopped him from sacrificing Isaac. It is the place where the High Priest would enter on the Holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur, and ask forgiveness for himself and his family, for all of the priests who served in the Temple, and for the people of Israel as a whole. That Rock marked the portal to heaven – the place where heaven meets earth. It was on that place that G-d chose to build the Temple.

That is one tradition explaining how G-d chose the site of the Temple in Jerusalem. There is another Jewish tradition that explains that choice. I want you to listen carefully to it, and consider which story you like better. The second story explaining how G-d chose the site of the Temple in Jerusalem involves two brothers who shared a field. The first brother is married with children. The other brother is single. After harvesting their crops and dividing them into two equal piles, the married brother thinks, “Here I have children to take care of me when I am old, but my brother has nobody.” At the same time the single brother thinks, “I have only myself to feed, but my brother has a wife and children.” At night, unbeknownst to the other, each brother brings some of his wheat and places it in the pile of the other.  Each brother is amazed when, in the morning, their piles remain the same. Each night thereafter they carry wheat from one pile to the other, but in the morning, their piles remained the same.  One night, they met in the middle of the field. They realize what is happening and fall into one another’s arms.  That place of brotherly love was chosen by G-d to be the site of the Holy Temple.

Which origin story do you like best?  In the first story, G-d just chooses a random point from which to start the world. After all, one has to start somewhere!  It is upon that point that the Temple is built. In the second story, G-d chooses a place of brotherly love to build the Temple. Both stories explain why the site of the Temple is the place where Heaven meets Earth, but from each story we can draw different lessons.

In the first story, the place where Heaven meets Earth is a point on a map -- In the second story, where heaven meets earth is a place in the heart. The lesson is that heaven meets earth each time a human being reaches out to help his or her fellow human being.  That can be anywhere in the world. Heaven meets earth when congregants gather at a shiva home to console the mourner. Heaven meets earth where a daughter holds her mother’s hand at her bedside and talks throughout the night as her mother lay dying. Heaven meets earth when a child with Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy courageously mounts the bima to lead our congregation at his bar mitzvah. Heaven meets earth when a bat mitzvah girl organizes a race for her Bat Mitzvah project that raises thousands of dollars for the Celiac Disease Foundation. Heaven meets earth each time a congregant provides a meal for someone who is ill. Heaven meets earth when we sit together to study, to pray, and to celebrate.  Heaven meets earth in those who have bravely struggled for years with chronic illness and in those who have reaffirmed life after tragic losses. Heaven meets earth when we gather with the Muslim community to make sandwiches to feed the hungry, when we volunteer at our local food pantry to help the needy, when we staff the local homeless shelters to help those who are victims of domestic violence or poverty. Heaven meets earth when we gather to remember the victims of the Holocaust, or make a pilgrimage to Israel to experience our Holy Land. Heaven meets earth in the excitement of our children when they study Hebrew and in the perceptive questions they ask about their Jewish heritage. Heaven meets earth every time we give of our time, our effort, and yes, of our money, to make our Congregation the vibrant Jewish community that it is – these are the places where Heaven meets Earth!

Any interaction between two people is potentially the place where heaven and earth meet. It follows then that the earth must be filled with heroes and angels. Not only the kind of heroes who overcome a heavily armed man on a train to Paris, saving countless lives, as we saw in just a few weeks ago. There are heroes and angels among us every day, appearing in countless guises, manifesting themselves in myriad ways.  Rabbi Ed Feinstein, a prominent American Conservative rabbi, spoke movingly about this is a video as he recounted his experience as a cancer survivor. Rabbi Feinstein had two bouts of colon cancer. The second bout required ten hours of surgery, and even with that, as he tells it, his long term prognosis was guarded. He relates:  

……. after the 10 hours of surgery I woke up two a half days later at three o’clock in the morning in the hospital room by myself.  My glasses weren’t on so I couldn’t quite focus my eyes and I just was in so much pain and so much distress and so confused I began to tear the IVs out of my arm.  Into the room walks a very large nurse.  An African American gentleman who I came to know as Charles and Charles looks at me and says “What are you doing?” and I said “I’m gonna die”.  And Charles said “Not on my watch, too much paperwork and now sit here and be quiet” he says to me.  And I didn’t know if I was still asleep, if I’m awake, if this guy is real, am I in Heaven ………?  I didn’t know what it was.  He comes back 5 or 10 minutes later.  He gives me a bath.  He gives me something to suck on.  He puts the IVs back in.  He fluffs the pillow.  He puts a new blanket on and he sits with me for a few minutes and he says “tell me who you are”.  And I discovered when I was sick that the world is filled with angels.  Angels aren’t creatures with wings and halos and harps.  Angels are ordinary people who do extraordinary acts of goodness and kindness without asking for anything in return.  Charles was my angel and to me that’s the indication that God is close and that these people without asking for any recognition, for any reward, for any acknowledgement, for anything back just extended themselves to me and all of their expertise, their compassion, the power of their souls to heal me. …….. The world is full of angels and that’s the indication that God is close.” 

This true story brought to mind a fable that I recently read:  There was once a little boy wanted to meet God.  He knew it was a long trip to where God lived, so one day he packed his suitcase with Twinkies and root beer; and started off on his journey.

When he had gone about three blocks, he met an old woman in the park. She was sitting on a bench just staring at some pigeons.  The boy sat down next to her opened his suitcase and took out a root beer. He was about to take a drink when he noticed that the old lady looked hungry, so he offered her a Twinkie. She gratefully accepted it and smiled at him.  Her smile was so pretty that the boy wanted to see it again, so he offered her a root beer. Once again, she smiled at him.  The boy was delighted. 

They sat there, the two of them, all afternoon, eating Twinkies, drinking root beer and smiling, but they never said a word. As it grew dark, the boy realized how tired he was and he got up to leave, but before he had gone more than a few steps, he turned around, ran back to the old woman and gave her a big hug!  She gave him her biggest smile yet. 

When the boy opened the door to his own house a short time later, his mother was surprised by the look on his face.  She asked him, “What did you do today that made you so happy?” He replied, “I had lunch with God.” And before his mother could respond, he added, “You know what? She’s got the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen!”

Meanwhile, the old woman, also radiant with joy, returned to her home; her son was stunned by the look of peace on her face and he asked, “Mother, what did you do today that made you so happy?” She replied, “I ate Twinkies in the park with God.”  And before her son responded, she added, “You know he’s much younger than I expected.”

G-d is much closer than we think. We do not have to travel to Jerusalem to find the place where heaven meets earth.

The Kotzker Rabbi asked his disciples, “Why did God create human beings?” One student answered, “Each person is created in order to work on their soul…” The Kotzker Rabbi angrily responded, “That is idolatry! No, God put us on earth to keep the heavens aloft – to help our fellow human beings and bring holiness to our world!”  Each time we act with kindness, with compassion, with generosity with our fellows we bring holiness to our world. That is the place where heaven meets earth!