Rosh Hashana 5766
Opening Comments
Rabbi Mark H. Levin
Congregation Beth Torah
Overland Park, Kansas

In just a few moments I will turn and approach the ark, the holiest place in Jewish life other than perhaps the Western Wall in Jerusalem. There I will pray the same prayer I recite every year, that I not falter on your account nor you because of me. As much as this prayer, hinneni, means so much to me, it is not sufficient. It is not enough because although it comes from the heart, it is not your words nor is it mine. So let me begin with my own words.

At this season Jews ask family and friends for forgiveness of this year’s offenses. I cannot approach every member of the congregation. I know that each of you in the congregation rightfully has expectations of the congregation’s pulpit rabbi. Perhaps in your case I have not met your expectations. I sincerely ask for your forgiveness. I know and acknowledge that at times I have fallen short. This request means a great deal to me. I am not apologizing for something specific. But I ask that if I have hurt you in this past year, if my actions have seemed to call attention to myself rather than to God and Judaism, that you accept my apology. If any of my actions have put you off, and made it impossible or difficult to pray, please forgive me.

I offer no excuses, other than to say that this year I will try to do better.

The great theologian Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote about prayer,
“Prayer should be an act of catharsis, a purgation of emotions, as well as a process of self-clarification, of examining priorities, of elucidating responsibility. Prayer not verified by conduct is an act of desecration and blasphemy. Do not take a word of prayer in vain. Our deeds must not be a refutation of our prayers …”

We are about to begin praying. Engaging in sincere prayer threatens us because it has the capacity to revolutionize who we are and how we see the world. Most often we are not comfortable with change. Internalized prayer opens us to transformation, to become the person we know we should be, to act as we know God wants us to act. Let us be open to the self-clarification, the examination, to the catharsis of our prayers.

When it is time to sing, do not sing from the throat or the abdomen; sing from the heart. When it is time to examine ourselves, let us go to the place that hurts the most, and examine how we might do better. Where the words of the prayer book do not fit your words, change the prayer words to pray what you know is true for you inside. Let us open ourselves to the possibility that in this New Year we will create better lives.

Now I ask something specific of you. If there is one person from whom you seek forgiveness this year but have not asked, take a moment now and formulate your request for forgiveness. Think about that person intently, you may even want to look at the person, and set in your mind that you have something important to say to him or her.

With real repentance in mind, let us rise as a community as we begin these 10 Days of Penitence.



Part Two
We have been horrifyingly fascinated and overwhelmed, glued to the news, by perhaps the greatest short term natural disaster in the history of this country. In times of catastrophe the character of a people breaks through, both for good and for ill. So what have we discovered?

Individuals are rising to the challenge of protecting life. Just days into the crisis a woman at the Village Presbyterian Church got two large buses which she took to Dallas to pick up homeless people and bring them back to Prairie Village. With just a few hours notice Village Pres members and one of our congregants went on the buses to provide medical care, filled those ships of hope with supplies to bring to the people ravaged by the storm and to bring back as many as evacuees as possible.

Acts like these have taken place anonymously all over the region: people rising “to raise the poor from the dust and lift up the needy from the refuse heap,” (Ps. 113) just as the psalmist wrote.

The week prior to Katrina, Newsweek Magazine’s cover story was, “Spirituality in America.” More Americans than ever, 79%, call ourselves spiritual, meaning that we want to connect to God inside or outside of organized religion. For many among us helping to save lives provides that connection. Even those not on the front lines but who contributed or raised funds feel better about themselves and more spiritual for rising to the occasion. Heroism is a spiritual experience.

In the midst of these crises, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are the most purely spiritual holidays on our calendar. If you think about it, our other holy times have historical themes like the exodus. But Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur ask us to turn inward, to take an accounting of the soul. My guess is that those who went far out of their way to save and improve lives will feel very spiritual for a good while. For those seeking spirituality, how might this Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur make a long term difference?

All human beings struggle in the intersection between fulfilling our own needs versus raising up those around us. Some of us seem to be selfless; some selfish. But we all struggle on the continuum between the two.

During Katrina we tried to figure out what we could do: can we take someone into our homes? Wow, that’s a very big commitment many of us thought. Can we spend money on those who have been wiped out? Sure, but how much? If the refugee were your brother, sister, children or parents, I’ll bet you would have spent much more than you actually have donated thus far. Me too. Why? Because close personal relationships enable us to overcome our self-centeredness more easily than distant relationships with strangers. But how do we determine the spiritual thing to do?

Dr. Rachel Remen encountered a very talkative woman on a plane who had a next door neighbor with lots of problems. The neighbor complained and incessantly failed to manage her life. Remen’s new acquaintance related how the other woman was such a pain. Then that woman, with her disabled son, ran out of money and lost their apartment. “What did you do,” asked Remen? “What could I do? I took them in.” Astonished at this twist of events from a woman who didn’t even like her neighbor, Remen continued, “You took them in?” “Yes, what else could I do? I couldn’t allow them to be put on the street.” The woman judged her level of involvement not by family relationship but by need: doing the right thing, whatever it takes.

You want to make every decision during the day out of your best self, that part of yourself that is humble and not needy, that is compassionate but not unrealistic. You want to make your essential decisions being in touch with God.

And how do you get that connection? Daily we all wake up selfish, needing to tend to our personal needs. We pray in order to switch our orientation, to change gears, to elevate ourselves to a higher level. When you come here tomorrow morning, when you open the prayer book to contemplate prayer, know that you are here to set your priorities straight. You come here to renew or strengthen your relationship with God. The pressures of living cause us to stray. How might we construct our lives to keep ourselves on the right path day after day, without a catastrophe like Katrina to force us to choose?

Concentrate during the morning opening prayers on establishing the God connection, like dialup on a computer. Don’t worry so much about the specific words of the prayers. Prayer gives us one method to be in relationship with God, to dial God’s number, to literally feel God’s presence enveloping us and within us. The time for reflection before prayer, the opening prayers, the singing from the heart, are meant to focus us on the best within, to harvest the ripe fruit of our souls, to escape the need to feed our own egos constantly, and to feel God’s spiritual presence. Some might close your eyes and feel God all around you. Or, for those who believe that God is within, like conscience, then take a few moments to get centered, to be in touch with that profound sense of the internal presence of the divine. What is God asking of you in that moment? In the contemplative environment of the sanctuary, before God who knows the truth, begin the introspective examination of your actions.

By the time we arrive at Shema in tomorrow morning’s worship, when we will stand as a community to sing God’s oneness together, you can be connected to God, a spiritual presence. This enables you to become totally aware of how to bring out the best in yourself. The Shema contains the capacity to bring Jews to the place where we are in full contact with God. You will experience the contact made by the results. The Shema should give you that moment in your day against which every other moment can be measured. Am I doing the right thing? What ought I do about Katrina’s refugees? Later in the day when you have questions about how to act, reflect back, “Let me get back to the inner feelings of that moment earlier today when I was most in touch with myself,” intuiting God. Reciting the Shema, when you contemplate that moment, you should feel centered, content, confident: God is a presence in your life. You are wired to the power energizing creation. This is not some ecstatic moment. This is the calm awareness that we are no longer merely self-centered animals, but an extension of a being greater than ourselves. We are the hands to the body of God. As spiritual beings we breathe quiet assurance that we are acting as the divine’s presence in the world. During tomorrow morning’s worship, at the Shema, you should be totally aware of the place of your best self in the unity called God.

But you know what? Sometimes that is not enough. Real evil confronts us. Evil comes in two forms: natural evil like Katrina, and human evil like the Holocaust. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote,
The world is aflame with evil and atrocity; the scandal of perpetual desecration of the world cries to high heaven. And we, coming face to face with it, are either involved as callous participants or, at best, remain indifferent onlookers. The relentless pursuit of our interest makes us oblivious of reality itself. Nothing we experience has value in itself; nothing counts unless it can be turned to our advantage, into a means for serving our self-interests.

We pray because the disproportion of human misery and human compassion is so enormous.
Abraham Joshua Heschel, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, p. 262

You see, beyond the reality that we try to turn every event to our personal advantage, like those who in the midst of Katrina’s wake were preoccupied with exploiting the crisis to make money, sometimes evil attacks us personally. Then we find ourselves shaken, not only deciding how to react but warding off injustice.

“Rebbe,” a student asked during a Sabbath retreat, “it is so hard to be whole in this world. I envy those who withdraw and take up the monastic life. Wouldn’t we be better off as monks?”
“To withdraw from the world is to withdraw from God,” Reb Yerachmiel replied, “for the world is God manifest in time and space.” (Meditation from the Heart of Judaism, Avram David, p. 19)

“The world is God manifest in time and space!”

So, you find yourself coping during the day with someone bullying your child at school or being viciously competitive about business. Or perhaps someone is destroying your reputation, or a friend repeating an unfounded rumor and embellishing it as if it is true. How do we be spiritual in the depths of our real lives? A member of the congregation sent me this story which always refocuses me to consider what’s important. It’s called:

THE CAB RIDE

I drove a cab for a living.

Once, when I arrived at 2:30 a.m., the building was dark except for a single light in a ground floor window. Under these circumstances, many drivers would just honk once or twice, wait a minute, then drive away.

This passenger might be someone who needs my assistance, I reasoned to myself.

So I walked to the door and knocked. "Just a minute", answered a frail, elderly voice.

After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 80's stood before me.

By her side was a small nylon suitcase. The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years.

"Would you carry my bag out to the car?" she said. I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman.

She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb.

When we got in the cab, she gave me an address, then asked, "Could you drive through downtown?"

"It's not the shortest way," I answered quickly.

"Oh, I don't mind," she said. "I'm in no hurry. I'm on my way to a hospice".

I looked in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were glistening.

"I don't have any family left," she continued. "The doctor says I don't have very long."

I quietly reached over and shut off the meter. "What route would you like me to take?" I asked.

For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator.

We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds.

Sometimes she'd ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.

As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, "I'm tired. Let's go now."

We drove in silence to the address she had given me.

It was a low building, like a small convalescent home. Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door.

The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.

Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly.

"You gave an old woman a little moment of joy," she said.
I didn't pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove aimlessly lost in thought. For the rest of that day, I could hardly talk.

What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away?

On a quick review, I don't think that I have done anything more important in my life.

Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we are here we might as well dance. Every morning when I open my eyes, I tell myself that it is special. Every day, every minute, every breath truly is a gift from God.

Now, consider the evil in the world and our petty sorrows from that perspective. Our prayer book teaches, “All things which seem meaningless in the light of death are really meaningless in themselves.” Why must we cause others so much pain, and retaliate against those who hurt us, when all of us are just going to die in the end? Why not, in the difficult moments in life, retreat to those inner feelings we have during the Shema, the feelings of attachment to God, and refuse to react in anger? We read in the siddur at the conclusion of the Amidah, “O God, keep my tongue from evil, and my lips from deceitful speech. And to those who curse me, let my soul be silent.” Let my soul be silent, still, not rail and beat my fists against a momentary enemy. Retaliation, as human an emotion as it is, only continues the hurt. It is the animal reaction, not the spiritual soul’s attachment to God.

Spirituality connects us to ultimate things, like the cab driver helping a woman to die in peace. So often we respond during the day to things that really don’t matter, like hateful comments or comparing our looks to others’. The spiritual moment demonstrates that living with trivialities makes life into a handful of sand thrown into the wind. Substantial life is built upon those places you will ride past on your last ride, and the relationships you seek to recall.

I have one thing to ask of you. Please for a moment consider whom you have offended in this last year and not yet said that you are sorry, whether it was on purpose or unintended. Please consider who they might be; and reflect on, as we begin our 10 days of prayers for repentance, what individual steps you might take to change your relationship for the better.

Spirituality is the name we give to our personal soul’s attachment to God. Certainly some connect through ecstatic moments. But more profoundly we experience the soulful connection between the cab driver and the elderly lady, or perhaps a moment of God directly through prayer.

Consider what Rabbi Larry Kushner writes about the spiritual connection between a boy and his father, and the life they may have saved:

…Milt Zaiment [was reminded] of something he had done as a boy more than sixty years before when his uncle had pneumonia.

“In those days, people didn’t go to hospitals like they do now. My uncle lay in his bedroom and the doctor, a good man, came out and told my parents that the end was near. ‘I’m sorry,’ he consoled, ‘but I don’t expect him to live through the night.’ We helped the doctor on with his coat and saw him to the door.

‘Come’, said my father, taking me by the hand. ‘We have a job to do.’ He sat me down next to my uncle’s bed, sat next to me, opened the Bible, and recited a psalm. Then he gave the book to me. ‘Now you read.’ When I finished, he took the book from me and read the next psalm. And so it went, all through the night, the two of us reciting psalms, one after another.

When morning came, my uncle was still alive. The doctor returned. He was amazed. He said he had never seen anything like it, that it was a miracle. My father smiled respectfully. He washed his face, had a cup of coffee, and went to work. He never said a word about that night. My uncle lived another forty years. (Eyes Remade for Wonder, Larry Kushner, p. 55)

Miracle? Doctor’s error? The power of love? I don’t know. I know that many of us feel God’s presence in sacred moments that we never mention to anyone else. Now, this Rosh Hashanah, let us truly repent, let us authentically and sincerely attach to God, and through that connection let us change. We have drifted far. When we face essential moments, moments of decision, let us get in touch with reciting the Shema when we are fully ourselves, fully conscious of God’s presence, fully connected and focused. Let us react to God daily as we do at a moment of crisis, harnessing the best in ourselves. Today, let us return to the relationship that touches the soul of the universe.