Erev Rosh Ha-Shanah Sermon 5770 / 2009

Westchester Reform Temple Scarsdale, New York Delivered 09.18.09 I am honored and so, so happy to greet you on this, my seventh Rosh Ha-Shanah at Westchester Reform Temple, in this new sanctuary both inspirational and intimate. I hope you feel as I feel tonight: right at home. Please pause with me to acknowledge how many people, how much time, how much thoughtfulness and insight, how much generosity of spirit has been summoned in service of this sanctuary. And please acknowledge how much yet summons us. We are still building. Moments like these conspire less toward self-congratulation than toward a great humility. Our name for this special time of year, “Days of Awe,” takes on new resonance tonight. We come here at the turn of the year, a year that in its own disquieting way also conspired less toward self-congratulation than toward a great humility. On the morning before Rosh Ha-Shanah last year we sat here with many a worshipper’s electrocardiogram dancing up and down in queasy tandem with stock market. We’ve endured a year for the ages: a landmark election that changed the face of the country; bank busts and big bailouts; the once-mighty General Motors giving new meaning to “Cash for Clunkers”; a raging and uncivil debate over the future of health care in America; a frightening and persistent upswing in unemployment and underemployment… and that’s just the domestic front. Against the backdrop of these public upheavals many sitting here tonight have also endured untold private pains. And though some of the dust has settled over the year that was, we sit here tonight very much uncertain about the year to come, this new year 5770, very much humbled. There is, of course, nothing wrong with a little humility, hard won though it may be. If the last year impelled us to spend less and save more; to use less and conserve more; to reexamine our views about health care, about what constitutes a “right” and what a “privilege,” then perhaps on balance we can look back and say that it served a good purpose. But a fine line divides a feeling of awe and humility from a feeling of smallness and insignificance. “Today I saw a red and yellow sunset and thought, how insignificant I am!” writes Woody Allen. “Of course, I thought that yesterday too, and it rained,” he adds. The Unetaneh Tokef prayer announces the essential message of the Days of Awe: “Our origin is dust and dust is our end. Each of us is a shattered urn, grass that must wither, a flower that will fade, a shadow moving on, a cloud passing by, a particle of dust floating on the wind, a dream soon forgotten.” It is feeling at the heart of the human condition: to understand our mortality; to know the futility of so much human striving; to feel small and inconsequential. We all know that feeling. Years like this one, and moments like this one, have a way of magnifying it. The masters have spilled oceans of ink on it. Do you remember Gregor Samsa? “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were, armor-plated black and when he lifted his head a little he could see his dome-like brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed-quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his build, waved helplessly before his eyes. ‘What has happened to me?’ he thought. But it was no dream.” Franz Kafka. Metamorphosis. We’ve all been there, all been Gregor Samsa at one time or another: transformed into something hopeless or helpless; flailing about; alone. It requires no special prompting. But the loss of a loved one, or a job, or a retirement account can make us feel insecure, adrift, captive while we watch cherished dreams vanish. “What has happened to me?” we ask. But it is no dream. So what do we do? We compensate. We puff ourselves up. We tell ourselves, and we tell others, that our importance derives from what we have accumulated--wealth or status or influence or advanced degrees. In ourselves and others, we mistake net worth for true worth. We value impressive titles over the lowercase friend, helper, mentor, mensch. We confuse career success with life success. A ship is sailing through the Atlantic on a cold and foggy day. Suddenly a voice is heard from somewhere out on the water. It is a cry for help. The captain runs to the side of his ship, only to realize that the fog is so thick he is unable to see exactly where the cry is coming from. But he can hear a frightened voice yelling, “Save me; I am in a boat that has sprung a leak. Save me!” The captain quickly grabs a bullhorn and shouts in the general direction of the boat. “We are trying to get to you. What is your position? What is your position?” The voice answers back, “Senior Vice President of a bank! Senior Vice President of a bank!” How ironic that arrogance, entitlement, self-important bluster most often arise not from high self-regard but rather from low self-esteem, from a feeling of powerlessness and inconsequentiality and insignificance. Here is where our Jewish tradition has something important to teach us. Did you know that one of the pivotal characters in the Bible is an unnamed man standing in a field in the middle of nowhere? Joseph has gone in search of his brothers who have headed off to the north country to tend their flocks. As Joseph ambles around the countryside, he happens upon an anonymous man who asks him, “What are you looking for?” Joseph tells him, “I’m looking for my brothers. Can you tell me where they are shepherding?” Indeed he can. The man points the way to the territory of Dotan where Joseph encounters his brothers and the real story begins. Now imagine how it might have gone had Joseph not encountered the stranger in the field: no run-in with his brothers; no colored coat torn from his body and dipped in blood to fake his death; no pit of terror out of which Joseph was dragged, chained, and sold into slavery; no bereaved father; no voyage to Egypt; no help for the beleaguered Egyptians; no safety, survival, or salvation for the starving Israelites, including Joseph’s own family; no Israelite migration to Egypt; no Moses; no Exodus; no Sinai; no Torah; no Promised Land, no Jewish People. The identity of the man who helped Joseph intrigued the Rabbis. RaSHI insists that he is in fact the angel Gabriel, directing the action as God’s messenger, steering the course of Jewish history from the sidelines. Ibn Ezra said just the opposite: he’s just a passerby, no more, no less; an ordinary person with ordinary information to share. But it is Nachmanides, the 13th Century Spanish Sage, who offers the best and most beautiful resolution. “The Holy One of Blessing sent Joseph an unwitting guide in order to bring him to his brothers. That is why the Rabbis said that the man was an angel, in order to teach us that these events were not meaningless, but that God’s will shall prevail.” In other words, here we have an ordinary man--a mere passerby--yet he was unwittingly fulfilling God’s design. What, then, is an angel? Not a supernatural being but a human being, a person who, unbeknownst to him or herself, can fulfill a divine purpose. Indeed, the Hebrew word for angel, “mal’ach,” is also the word for a human messenger. One and the same. I share this with you today because I believe it illustrates an essential precept of Judaism. Which is: You. Are. Important. Against all the seeming randomness, against this reeling world, against every feeling of insignificance and meaninglessness: You are important. You are significant. What you do, what you say, is important. It matters. You may not even realize it, but you are here to carry out a Divine purpose. Your importance has nothing to do with your title, or your degree, or your job. It has nothing to do with your Google ranking or your grade point average. It has nothing to do with your assets or your influence or your looks. It has everything to do with who you are: You are a child of God. You are a reflection of God. You are an unwitting instrument of God’s purpose. A messenger. A mal'ach. An angel. This is what the Torah means when it teaches that human beings are created in God’s image. That honor, that supreme measure of our significance, comes to us not by achievement or appointment but by birthright. To be human, to be alive, is to be an image of God. It is to be, in a word, important. Two weeks ago at my nephew’s bris the mohel said these words about little Samson Noah: “You don’t think this child can change the world? He can. He is important.” Understanding this, understanding the true nature of our importance--really understanding it--has a surprising effect. Instead of feeling puffed up, we feel genuinely humble. The helpless Gregor Samsa, the deflated, defeated, insignificant one, takes on renewed human dignity. We come to realize that our words and our deeds--small and unsung though they may be--have transformative power. We no longer mistakenly conclude that in order to make a real difference we are required to perform extraordinary acts. Judaism instead asks only that we perform ordinary acts with extraordinary faithfulness. Visit the sick. Feed the hungry. Clothe the naked. Cultivate integrity. Pay wages promptly. Promote fairness. Study sacred wisdom. Speak with sensitivity to and about others. These are but a few of the deeds that our faith demands of us, quietly heroic acts, that unsung angels can perform again and again, day after day. When you are gone they will soon forget the car you drove. They will however long remember the acts of kindness you performed for someone else. One word from an anonymous stranger set forth the course of Jewish history. What could one well-chosen word from our mouths, one thoughtful gesture with our hands, set in motion? This past year, I tracked down a man with whom I had not spoken in more than twenty years, in order to tell him that something he once said to me changed my life. When I was twelve years old and a camper at the National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan, my bunk’s counselor-in-training was Jeff Van Valer, a skinny eighteen year old with a mullet haircut. (We all called him “Jeff Van Halen.”) Last fall, I remembered something significant Jeff once said to me, and it became important for me to find him. I tried everything: Google, Facebook, 411. I finally located an investment banker in Tahoe City named Jeffrey Van Valer. I left a rambling voicemail at his office. His secretary called back to say, “Mr. Van Valer has never heard of you.” I persisted. Two weeks later I tracked down a “Joseph J. Van Valer, MD, Neurologist” in Indiana and figured, what the heck. I left another rambling message. Two days later, I received this e-mail: “Hey, Rabbi: Or should I say Jonathan Blake, Esq. (didn’t you used to write home to your parents with that title?)? How’s it going? I was very pleasantly surprised to hear you’d called. When were you in the cabin? 1986? Intermediate Boys Cabin 10? Wow. I even wondered how you found any contact information. I googled Jeff Van Valer and found some investment guru out in Tahoe City. Anyway, Thanks a ton for looking me up. Send me some info on yourself, and I’ll get into some detail shortly!” In my reply, I explained the reason for my call. I had been sitting in the office at WRT meeting with Cantor Abramson about teasing and bullying among school-age children (which we see all too often, even here at WRT). In the course of our discussion I remembered something Jeff Van Valer had once said to me, and felt the need to reach him. “One day,” I wrote to Jeff, “you came up to me while I was walking across campus and said, ‘Hey, can we take a walk?’ So we went for a stroll through the main building and you very gently, but with authority, said, ‘Jon, you’ve got a great sense of humor. You have the ability to make people laugh. But you should really work on using that skill in ways that don’t hurt other people's feelings. You should really work on not using your sense of humor at the expense of others.’” “I just wanted to tell you,” I wrote, “that I think of that conversation more often than you could ever know, and that it was one of the most important lessons I ever learned. So, in a very real way, you changed my life.” Jeff sent back one of the most beautiful letters I’ve ever received. I’d like to share part of it with you. “Dear Jonathan: When my assistant, Becca, called me and said ‘Rabbi Jonathan Blake,’ you popped right into my mind before true thinking intervened and began to suggest that I may be mistaken. Where I live, Columbus, Indiana, rabbis don’t call very often (never, really)…. In responding to your call, I’ve had a rash of possible approaches to your initiative: where I am and where I’ve been; what I’m doing and what I’ve done; what I (and my wife of 9 years) have produced, namely and most proudly my two children, Martha and Joe (8 and 5 respectively); what I remember most that might be relevant to you…. The jumble of notions races toward the digital page like a peloton of bicycles. The lead bike, my ability to organize, verbalize, and type, slips and crashes, and and all those speeding ideas pile up on top. As an organizer and instructor of many, you surely know the feeling. The most important thing, though, is that I once said something to you that resonates and has affected positively how you look at things. It’s an honor to be in that esteem with you; I have several poignant experiences with individuals in the past who have done that for me, but to know I have done that for someone straightens me right up and makes me feel important. Like I’ve been carrying the proverbial torch without even knowing I could.

Thanks, Jonathan. Your contacting me—both in your reason and tenacity—will probably influence me more than anything I ever said to you.” In the course of Jeff’s lengthy letter he cited other examples of passers-by who had unwittingly steered his life’s course in significant ways, like Dr. Chun-Fang Wu, who told Jeff, then a doctoral student, that his academic research should keep him up at night with excitement. “There’s not enough time in this life to do everything. You’re either going to be a good scientist or a good father. I am a good scientist.” Shortly thereafter, Jeff abandoned his Ph.D., applied to medical school, wrote what he called an “acceptable” Masters thesis, and came back home to Indiana. Jeff concluded his letter with a pledge: “I’m going to contact those people.” Thus was a meaningful friendship kindled, or re-kindled, and thus was a high holiday message born with little need for my extra verbiage. We may never know how important our words and our ways may be. Like a stone tossed into a still pond, what we do here and now ripples outward and touches distant shores. What you do, what you say, how you choose to live: these are important beyond your ability to measure. A friend of mine recently observed that we each leave behind an “ethical footprint” no less than a carbon footprint. We have been taught to limit our carbon footprint. “But we should feel no qualms about making our ethical footprints as big as possible,” she said. “Through our actions, we make our mark on the world,” a mark that persists even beyond our imagination. My friends, I am confident that many of us have a Jeff Van Valer, a passerby along life’s way, who has turned out to be an unwitting angel of the Most High. In some cases the person is truly anonymous, or nameless to us, or long since gone and so will never know the ways in which a simple word or deed steered the course of our lives. But in many cases that person can yet be found. And in some cases, that person may be someone deeply familiar, one’s most intimate companion or closest kin, a person who has made an immeasurable difference and who yet may feel anonymous, unsung, insignificant. Surely we can identify parents, children, siblings, husbands or wives who from time to time feel invisible to the people who ostensibly matter the most. And so I want to leave you tonight with a little High Holiday Homework. Would you try to find one or more of those messengers in your life and let them know that they are important? Track them down. Tell them that they matter, and why they matter. Tell them that something they said one day, or some act of kindness they once performed, without fanfare or hope of reward, made a difference. If you sing the song of the unsung, you’ll be making the music of the angels. L’shanah tovah u’metukah.