The story is told of an old Jew who
prayed every day at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. One day he was interviewed
by a reporter for the Jerusalem Post. “How many years have you been praying
here?” asked the reporter? “Sixty-seven years,” replied the man. “What do you
pray for?” asked the reporter. “I pray for peace between Jews, Muslims and
Christians. I also pray for the love of human beings for one another. And, I pray
for politicians to be honest and fair.” The reporter asked, “So what has this
long experience of prayer been like for you after all these years?” “It’s like talking to a wall,” replied the
man.
Prayer can be a frustrating
experience. We pray, but we sometimes feel as if we are talking to a wall. We
pray, but we seem to get no response to our prayers. Nothing changes – neither
us nor our world. Perhaps after sixty
seven years the man in this story needs to change something about how he prays.
Shake things up a little. Try something different. Perhaps this year we too can
try something different.
Contemporary American writer Ann
Lamott advises us not to get trapped in the mundane routines of life. Don’t be
afraid of finding G-d! She writes, “Emerson said that the happiest person
on earth is the one who learns from nature the lessons of worship. So go
outside a lot, and look up. My pastor says you can trap bees on the floor of a
Mason jar without a lid, because they don't look up. If they did, they could
fly to freedom. Instead, they walk around bitterly, bumping into glass walls.”
This summer, Middy and I learned
some lessons about worship by visiting Yellowstone National Park and the Grand
Tetons in Wyoming. We looked up! The
natural beauty of these treasured parks is overwhelming. The Grand Tetons soar
above pristine lakes, wild rivers plunge through deep walled canyons, rolling meadows
dotted with yellow, and pink and violet wildflowers spread out at our feet.
Time and again we stood spellbound as we took in the beauty around us. Everything is laid out perfectly, as on a
canvas by Monet. . “WHO PUT This Here?” I
cried out. Indeed, there is no need for a signature on this work of art, as the
psalmist writes:
“The Heavens declare the glory of
G-d/The skies declares His handiwork
"Day after day the word goes
forth/night after night the story is told
"Without speaking, without a voice
being heard/ the story is echoed throughout the world."
I felt I understood, on a deeper
level, those words of Psalm 19, which we recite in our prayers each Shabbat morning.
All one needs to do is listen to the silent testimony of Nature herself to know
that this is the work of our Creator.
Rosh Hashanah is our annual
celebration of G-d’s creation. It is, as we know, the Birthday of the World. I
don’t know if you have noticed that in our prayers we praise G-d as “The One
Who Creates the World” – present tense – rather than, “The One who Created the
World” – past tense. This reminds us that creation is a, dynamic, ongoing and
unfinished process. At Yellowstone National Park, which sits on the crater of
an active volcano, one witnesses firsthand evidence of this. One sees it in the breathtakingly hot,
sulfurous gasses escape from holes in the earth called fumaroles. Out of other
vents in the ground boiling water, heated by the magma below, is spewed into
the air in a jet streams we call a geyser. Numerous other hot springs bubble up from the
ground, providing breeding grounds for organisms, called thermophiles, which color
their waters in yellows, in oranges, in blues, in purples, in greens. In other
places bubbling mud oozes up from beneath the surface of the earth forming
ominous looking pools called mud pots.
Upon seeing all of this, the words
of the Psalms came to mind: Mah Rabu Maasecha, Adonai, Me’od amku mach-she-vo-techa -- How great are your works, Adonai, your
designs are profound.
Being so immersed in the beauty and
grandeur of nature elicits feelings of awe and of closeness to G-d. The
medieval poet Moshe Ibn Ezra tells us that we err when we seek G-d in miracles
or in supernatural signs. All one has to do to find G-d is to “look up”. He
writes:
I see You in the starry field, I see
You in the harvest's yield,
In every breath, in every sound, an echo of
Your name is found.
The blade of grass, the simple flower,
Bear witness to Your matchless power.
In wonder-workings, or some bush
aflame,
Men look for God and fancy Him
concealed;
But in earth's common things He stands
revealed
While grass and flowers and stars spell
out His name.
But Jewish thought is far from unanimous
in extolling the virtues of finding G-d in nature. In a passage of Pirke Avot,
a collection of rabbinic teachings, Rabbi Yaakov says: One who walks along a
road and studies, and interrupts his studying to say, "How beautiful is
this tree!", "How beautiful is this ploughed field!"---the Torah
considers it as if he had forfeited his life!” Make no mistake about it, Rabbi
Yaakov is saying that interrupting ones religious studies to appreciate the
glories of creation makes the student of Torah deserving of death! This is hard to comprehend. How could
it possibly be wrong to take a moment to appreciate nature? True, the Jewish
ideal has always been to find G-d in holy texts. But should there not be an
acknowledgement that there are multiple ways of seeking and feeling close to
G-d?
Fortunately, that passage in Pirke
Avot does not represent the final word on the subject. Rabbi Nachman of
Bratzlov, the great grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, would spend an hour every day
alone praying in a natural setting in addition to his daily prayers with a
minyan. His disciple, Reb Noson, would recite this prayer before setting out
into the fields:
“Master of the Universe, let me
seclude myself in meditation and prayer every day, going out to the fields to
meditate among the trees and the grass, pouring out my heart in prayer. For all
the leaves and grass, all the trees and plants, will stir themselves to greet
me; they will rise to imbue my words and prayers with their energy and life
force. All the trees and plants of the field will merge with my words and
prayers; they will combine all their spiritual power and bring my words up to
their celestial source. Thus my prayers and supplications will attain
perfection.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the 19th
century American poet and philosopher, would agree. We are not the same when we
are in nature. He wrote, “In the woods we return to nature and faith. Standing
on bare ground all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am
nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I
am part or particle of G-d.”
Jewish mysticism refers to this
state of being as “bitul ha-yesh” or “nullification of all traces of self –
centeredness. It is when we are engaged
so deeply in prayer that we forget about ourselves altogether, and lose
ourselves in the moment.
This evening we are gathered once again
in our house of worship on Rosh Hashanah. We are all here in search of something
-- whether it is a sense of community, a feeling of peace or comfort or
consolation, an inspiration to propel us forward, an answer to a question, a
renewal of hope, a way out of a quandary, or perhaps a way to draw closer to
the Almighty. Some of us might feel “up against a wall” and some of us might
feel like a bee trapped in the bottom of a mason jar. I hope during the holiday
season we will all have a chance to get out into nature, to look up, and when
we do, to discover for ourselves some of the lessons nature can teach us about
worship. There are many stories about individuals, some of them famous rabbis,
who struggle to find their way to meaningful prayer. Tonight I want to leave
you with the story of an entire Jewish community, the community of Kiev,
Ukraine, who gathered one Rosh Hashanah and discovered a uniquely meaningful way
to worship and to connect to G-d.
For 70 years the government of the
Soviet Union prohibited Jews from learning Hebrew. It had been a crime to teach
Hebrew or to gather in prayer, whether in synagogue or even at home. Countless Jews had been sent to Siberia by
Soviet authorities for attempting to learn about prayer or to pray. Yet following the dissolution of the Soviet
Union, Jews in Kiev, Ukraine gathered in the synagogue for the first time in
generations on the first day of Rosh Hashanah in 1991. The Lubbavitcher Rebbe
had sent an emissary with Russian-Hebrew prayer books to lead High Holiday services
that year. The synagogue was packed with Jewish men and women, children and
teens, who were attending services for the first time in their lives. Just imagine that experience! They had prayer books in Russian and Hebrew,
but, of course, could not read the Hebrew – the language of the service they
were attending. There was a great deal of excitement and anticipation in the
air. But after a short while, the Rabbi realized that the congregation was no
longer engaged in the service. They were becoming bored. Many of the people
began to wonder, “Could these be the prayers that they had yearned for so many
years to recite?
The rabbi interrupted the service and
turned to address the congregation. He told them the following story:
The Baal Shem Tov, the great
Chasidic teacher, was leading a prayer service. Within the congregation there
was a simple shepherd boy, who could barely read. He didn't know any of the
prayers. But as the Baal Shem Tov led the congregation, the boy was so moved
that he wanted to pray. Instead of the words of the prayers, he began to recite
the letters of the alef-bet. He said, "Oh God, I don't know the words of
the prayers, I only know all these letters. Please, God, take these letters and
arrange them into the right order to make the right words." The Baal Shem
Tov heard the boy's words and stopped all the prayers. "Because of the
simple words of this boy," he said, "all of our prayers will be heard
in the highest reaches of Heaven."
When the
Rabbi of Kiev finished this story, there was complete silence in the
congregation. Then, the silence was shattered when a man sitting in the
congregation yelled out “Alef”. Thousands echoed back “alef”. Then another
voice called out “bet”. Thousands responded – “bet”. And so on through the
Hebrew alphabet. When they had concluded
the alphabet, the congregation filed out, confident that their prayers had
reached the highest realms of heaven and had been accepted by G-d.
Jewish
tradition teaches that there are 70 paths to the Torah. There are many ways to engage
in meaningful prayer, not only during this High Holiday season, but throughout
the year. It is up to each of us to find our own way. No one can do it for us.
As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel teaches, “The words of our prayer must not fall
off our lips like dead leaves in autumn. They must rise like birds – out of the
heart – into the vast expanse of eternity.”
Shana Tovah
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