Yom Kippur Shachrit, Sept. 23, 2015/10 Tishri 5776
 
My paternal grandfather, Morris Nathan (z”l), worked as a stage manager on Broadway, back in the day.  May father, Jess (z”l), spent – or ill-spent, depending on your viewpoint – his childhood watching the heyday of vaudeville from the wings.  Thus, I have an honestly inherited appreciation for questionable humor.  No surprise, I keep copious humor files, electronic and hardcopy.  Much to my disappointment, I have been at a loss to unearth ecological humor that doesn’t make us wince as we chuckle.  A few examples of how weak the field is (groaning permitted):

“I have an obsession with wind farms.” “Really?” “Yes. I'm a huge fan.”

The British government is playing down the risk of floods caused by climate change to the UK.  Meanwhile, a secret government project is underway on a restricted piece of land. The only things that go in are trucks carrying two of each animal.

The Heavy rocker band Korn has taken a responsible eco-attitude towards touring. They’re going to throw the same TV out of every hotel window. 

Belching Cows are said to produce more harmful methane gas than cars. Scientists are now trying to develop a cattle-ytic converter. 
(http://www.jokes4us.com/holidayjokes/earthdayjokes.html)

The best of the lot, from a personal viewpoint, was finding a website selling eco-bumper stickers, including a few proclaiming the driver “the world’s coolest environmental engineer,” which a couple of years ago I would have purchased for Stephen, before he retired from that field to devote himself to writing and speaking out on the religious imperative to engage in planetary tikkun.  As I said, slim pickens.

Perhaps the lack of environmental humor without a sting or a groan represents our widening understanding that what we’re facing in our lifetime, in the lives of our children and grandchildren, is no joke.  And, Jewish tradition transmits ancient teachings about our responsibilities to creation that have evolved into practical modern ecological principles to which we must respond.

We have inherited a world-view that deeply entangles written and oral Torah with the Torah of the Earth – our physical Torah scroll itself upheld by wooden “trees of life.”  We are commanded not to damage fruit-bearing trees when besieging an enemy, for these valuable food sources are not people, who can flee before an invader, rather, they are part of the divinely-established nourishment assured us in Genesis.  We are constrained in our use of the natural world by dozens of mitzvot addressing what may be planted and how, the respectful care of livestock, the preservation of species, water pollution, air pollution (both in terms of odor and particulate matter). 

To some of our mystics, all of reality expresses the divine source from which we emanate and all of its manifestations by the metaphor of a Great Tree.  Our Israelite ancestors may have considered their tree-worshipping neighbors heathens, without realizing how deeply they too were enmeshed in a system of religious practice that held sacred – as in sourced in divinity – every aspect of God’s creation, Big Bang onward.

Our very calendar directs us to live our lives in concert with the movement of sacred time as kept by the great lights, the sun and the moon, which determine our liturgical year.  Every day has its place in a cycling and recycling of opportunities to bless and be blessed.  Today itself, Yom Kippur, is the divine mechanism by which God effects our at-one-ment:  “For through the agency of this day, I will atone for you – before YHVH you will be purified from all your sins.” (Leviticus 16:30) 

Every Friday evening, when we welcome the Sabbath with L’cha Dodi, we sing “Let us go forth to greet Shabbat, for she is the endless Source of Blessing/As was ordained from the very beginning, last in creation but first in the plan.” (v. 2.)  We are reminded every week that Shabbat exists as part of the natural order, a planetary movement from evening to evening, intentionally imbedded by God into our cycling through quarter-“moonths,” the most essential holy day.  A taste of redemption, of the world to come – not only in the sense of afterlife, also as the potential for redeemed life on our ark of a planet, a redemption entrusted to our hands.

If you joined in our Tashlich observance Rosh haShanah afternoon, you shared in a charming folk ritual of tossing our mistakes into moving water, moving water that preferably has fish in it (another Jewish reason to care about water quality). Talmudic literature links Torah and water: as fish cannot live without water, we cannot live without Torah – without our millennial-long conversation, even struggle, with its infinite potential meanings.  As well, the perception that fish’s eyes never close reminds us of God’s constant attentive presence.  Even more, according to many kabbalistic works, true tzaddikim, the most righteous people, reincarnate as fish – hence, a necessity to eat fish with especial kavannah and gratitude, lifting up again the sparks of holiness inherent in the tzaddik as fish.  What a delicious teaching!  (See http://blog.shabbat.com/dvar-torah-on-parashas-metzora-diseases-pigs-and-reincarnation-by-rabbi-elchanan-shoff/)

During the month before the High Holy Days, midrash tells us that “the divine sovereign is in the field,” that is, God is especially close to us, moving about on Earth in the midst of its inhabitants.  Chabad Hassidism extrapolates from this that since the essence of the mitzvot is to make God a dwelling place below (in the natural world), it is necessary to fulfill the mitzvot by means of physical nature, in order that the natural world itself be made into a suitable home for the Holy One. (Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Likutey Sichot, via R. David Seidenberg email, 9/5/2014.)  From this perspective, we can make no separation between practical ecology and spiritual ecology.

Just how, though, are we to do this?  How are we to assure that the planet we inhabit remains a suitable dwelling for the Holy One who manifested it so that divinity may dwell within us?  God makes clear this divine intention when giving Moses directions for building the Tabernacle: do this, v’shachanti b’tocham, create sacred space that holds your attention, and I will dwell within you. (Ex. 25:8) To this day, our prayer books offer an array of blessings by which we may express our appreciation and awe for the natural world we share with the Holy One: blessings over foods, over sweet odors, upon seeing beautiful trees, hearing thunder, standing on the shore of the sea, gazing on mountain heights.

This morning’s Torah reading commands us – or, if you prefer the hassidic reading, links us to God by inviting us – to choose life, that we may live, we and our offspring.  (Deut. 30:19)  What clearer call might there be to accept our tradition’s millennia-long mandate to protect God’s creation?  Not only that – as a Jewish mandate – but, mercifully, we have reached a time of religious and spiritual re-awakening to this sacred obligation, to choose life not in the sense of short-term profit, but to choose life for the planet itself.  This re-awakening offers us yet another opportunity to apply the unique gifts of each tradition to renewing life for all forms of being on our planet.  

For example, permit me to share some examples from a text study created by R. Daniel Swartz of Pennsylvania Interfaith Power & Light, pairing excerpts from Pope Francis’s recent encyclical, Laudato Si/Blessed Be, with complementary teachings from Jewish tradition.

His Holiness writes: The natural environment is a collective good, the patrimony of all humanity and the responsibility of everyone.  If we make something our own, it is only to administer it for the good of all.  If we do not, we burden our consciences with the weight of having denied the existence of others.  From Jewish tradition, the prophet Exekiel speaks (34:18-19): Is it not enough for you to graze on choice grazing ground, but you must also trample with your feet what is left from your grazing?  And is it not enough for you to drink clear water, but you must also muddy with your feet what is left?  And must My flock graze on what your feet have trampled and drink what your feet have muddied?

From Laudato Si: Our insistence that each human being is an image of God should not make us overlook the fact that each creature has its own purpose.  None is superfluous.  The entire material universe speaks of God’s love, God’s boundless affection for us.  Soil, water mountains – everything is, as it were, a caress of God.  We hear an echo, in these words, of the Third Letter of Ben Uziel, translated by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch: One glorious chain of love, of giving and receiving, unites all creatures; none is by or for itself, but all things exist in continual reciprocal activity – the one for the All, the All for the One.

A midrash on Leviticus 4:5 (Rabbah) describes some people sitting in a ship.  One of them takes a drill and begins to bore a hole in the ship where he is sitting.  His companions say, “what are you sitting and doing?”  He replies, “what has it to do with you? I am boring a hole under my part of the ship.  They reply, “but the water is coming in and sinking the ship under us!”  Indeed.  To the same point, Pope Francis writes, “we require a new and universal solidarity. . . . All of us can cooperate as instruments of God for the care of creation, each according to his or her own culture, experience, involvements and talents.

Lastly, this inter-textual conversation asks us to recognize climate change as an issue of intergenerational justice.  Many of us have heard the Talmudic tale of Honi, who stopped along the way to watch an old man planting a carob tree.  Honi asks him, “how many years will it take for this tree to give forth its fruit?”  “70 years,” replies the man.  “Are you so healthy a person that you expect to live to eat its fruit?” Says the man: “I found a fruitful world because my ancestors planted it for me.  So, too, will I plant for my children” (BT Ta’anit 23a).

To which our teacher Francis replies, “Once we start to think about the kind of world we are leaving to future generations, we look at things differently; we realize that the world is a gift which we have freely received and must share with others.  . . . Intergenerational solidarity is not optional, but rather a basic question of justice, since the world we have received also belongs to those who will follow us.”

Jewish tradition has long recognized the risks inherent in disrupting the flow of generations, the flow of learning, of sustenance, of care, of love, of opportunity.  Most famously, Jewish jurisprudence raises nearly insurmountable barriers against capital punishment, cautioning witnesses in capital cases that if they err, the wrongful destruction of a single soul will count as the destruction of a whole world, of all the generations that would follow from the life lost in a flawed trial.  (JT Sanhedrin 4)

As I was reading the first novel in Margaret Atwood’s Madd Adam trilogy, this same insight caught me up short, as one of the characters explained the impossibility of reconstructing our built reality after worldwide environmental collapse: “All it takes is the elimination of one generation.  One generation of anything.  Beetles, trees, microbes, scientists, speakers of French, whatever.  Break the link in time between one generation and the next, and it’s game over forever.” (Oryx and Crake, p. 223.)

Neither Torah, its sages over millennia, Pope Francis, Margaret Atwood, nor I put forward these teachings for the purpose of discouragement.  To the contrary, these teachings inspire us to constant hopeful engagement in our partnership with Creation itself.  These teachings remind us of the power inherent in our paradoxical inclinations toward unbounded love and self-preserving ambition.  If we love our own lives and those of children and grandchildren, biological or metaphorical, we need to work to mitigate climate change.  For the sake of a viable worldwide economy, of a sustainable ecology, of adequate food and water, of personal safety and hope for a livable future, of a future in which diverse cultures will be blessed with enough time to figure out how to live peacefully – for all of these self-preserving ambitions, we need to work to mitigate climate change.  

We derive our capacity to meet this challenge from our sacred Source, which calls us to nurture, to heal, to protect, to save this beautiful blue ark on which we sail through eternal cosmic seas.  This is our mandate, our covenant, our moment to live into the most sacred bond we have with the Holy One: the bond to maximize the potential for life, for the life of our planetary garden.

Pope Francis prays:
All-powerful God, you are present in the whole universe 
and in the smallest of your creatures.
You embrace with your tenderness all that exists. . .  .
Bring healing to our lives,
that we may protect the world and not prey on it, . . .
Touch the hearts
of those who look only for gain
at the expense of the poor and the earth.
Teach us to discover the worth of each thing,
to be filled with awe and contemplation,
to recognize that we are profoundly united with every creature
as we journey towards your infinite light. . . .
Encourage us, we pray, in our struggle
for justice, love and peace.

To which we respond with a prayer voiced in the 19th century by the holy Reb Nachman, who wants us to know nothing more clearly than the reality of ultimate Oneness and of our inter-dependent relationship with all being:
Grant me the ability to be alone;
may it be my custom to go outdoors each day
among the trees and grass - among all growing things
and there may I be alone, and enter into prayer,
to talk with the One to whom I belong.
May I express there everything in my heart,
and may all the foliage of the field -
all grasses, trees, and plants -
awake at my coming,
to send the powers of their life into the words of my prayer
so that my prayer and speech are made whole
through the life and spirit of all growing things,
which are made as one by their transcendent Source.
May I then pour out the words of my heart
before your Presence like water, O God,
and lift up my hands to You in worship,
on my behalf, and that of my children!

​Keyn y’hi ratzon, so may this be our will and God’s.

Yom Kippur Yizkor, September 23, 2015/10 Tishri 5776

Rabbi Judith Abrams (z”l) studied intensely, learned with unparalleled insight, taught with free-wheeling delight, laughed easily and wildly, and loved the wisdom, foibles, brilliance, obsessions, cleverness, level-headedness, and mystical practicality of the ancient rabbis.  For me, two core take-aways from her teaching include: (1) develop a spiritual practice during easier times to support you in tough times, because the demands of tough times arrive unannounced; (2) when you notice a passage of liturgy that reads like it’s climbing a staircase to heaven, get on board the mantra and climb.

And climb we do.  Yitgadal v’yitkadash, magnified and sanctified – the kaddish mantra with which we acknowledge and commemorate the loss of loved ones – the prayer for the dead that requires us to exalt the glory of the God upon whom we often heap blame for our grief, the Author of life and death.  Our sense of obligation to recite kaddish runs deep, drawing the doubtful and the faithful into a ritual of intergenerational weaving, of assuring an unbroken chain of remembrance.

So essential is this weaving, that we’re willing to stretch as necessary to make sure we can fulfill our heart’s wish to bless and elevate.  Rabbi Simcha Paull Raphael remembers working as a busboy in the Catskills back in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, at the then-famous and now-vanished Kutsher’s Country Club. One summer, owners Joe and Milton Kutsher were saying kaddish for their mother. And every day, mid-morning, there would be a minyan at the hotel so the two brothers could say kaddish in community. If the maitre d’ of the dining room got a call that they needed more bodies for a minyan, he would look around the dining room to see who was finished with his breakfast cleanup and would call the names of those he was sending to the minyan – “Goldberg! Schwartz! Cohen, Raphael!” – and then he would stop, look around, and finding no more Jewish teenagers, would continue “Gonzalez! Rodriguez! – you go, too!”  Better too many than too few to uphold the Kutshers in their prayers.

Observing the anniversary of parents’ death (and the deaths of others especially close to us, and the deaths of the uncounted unnamed) originated in Germany.   Later, the 16th-century kabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria expanded our understanding of the prayer’s power: not only does our recitation assist the transition of loved ones’ souls during the first eleven months after death, reciting a yahrzeit kaddish helps sustain these beloved souls as they continue their evolution in Olam ha-Bah.

Rabbi Shulamit Theide considers more earth-bound reasons for reciting magnifications in the face of loss: “When we grieve, we face realities: life is fragile, fate is unpredictable . . . . God does not pull strings [on our behalf]. One must acknowledge this reality in order to become an adult who can pray as an adult. The rabbis, too, lived through [life’s routine sufferings and] through horrific ordeals. . . . They knew that there was no true and lasting path to God that did not admit of God’s [apparent] hiddenness from humanity.

“So they prescribed the continual process of saying – again and again – that God is, in fact, too magnificent for words. The text demands that we admit that the Holy One is so far and above all that is human that there is no earthly speech that can be adequate, no words that can suffice.  Judaism asks us to proclaim God’s greatness in the moments of our deepest losses. . . . But at some point, standing at the juncture of life and death, praising God, the knowledge of our precious smallness emerges simultaneously with the awareness of the Creator’s awesome, indescribable nature – [which enfolds and sustains us]. 

“[Some] rabbis say that by repeating y’hei sh’meih rabba m’varakh [Let God’s great name be blessed] we aid God in affixing and affirming the foundation of the world.  We co-create the world, itself spoken into existence, in the act of reciting Kaddish – [we build the stairs as we climb them, as I imagine Rabbi Abrams saying]. We use all-powerful speech while simultaneously admitting its patent inadequacy.  [Let the name of the Holy One be glorified, exalted, and honored] . . . beyond all psalm and song? We are only human. Our words – even those we use to praise the Holy One – are wounded ones.   

“[Yet,] they must be, if we are to be adults. To acknowledge God’s greatness demands that we see ourselves for what we are: the heirs and the executors of the human condition, ensouled collaborators in God’s unimaginably awesome creative unfolding.  So we learn that we must rise to our God-given task: the ethical and moral work of fashioning the world, [for the elevation of all souls, of our very own souls, in this lifetime. Say the Kaddish.  Then, work to create a world that honors all those you remember with love.  Within the unique cosmic moment of our embodied consciousness, it will indeed be a new world.]* 

After all, when we endure a loss, committing ourselves to saying kaddish gives us a chance to learn from the Torah of the beloved’s life, to appreciate the legacy that will help us build that new world. In this way, we support our loved ones making their way (however we each might imagine it) in eternity while simultaneously engaging our embodied souls in new learning and creativity.  As not everyone feels drawn to attend synagogue regularly, even to say kaddish, so it can be helpful to think of kaddish as both a specific ritual act in Jewish community and an internal process of working through and learning from the nature of one’s relationship with the person who has died.

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (zt”l) used the term “Going to Kaddish College” to describe the psychological function of reciting the prayer.  He explained how in this eleven month period mourners who open to the potential may go through a deep sense of inner evaluation, and learn a great deal about themselves and about the one they mourn.  He used to tell the following story about his father's death – one to which many of us can fully relate:

“After getting up from sitting shivah for Papa, alav hasholom, I was driving home in my truck.  Soon after I started out, a driver on the road cut me off.  I instantly let out a string of curses – Polish, Yiddish . . . every obscenity in my vocabulary.  Then I stopped myself as I heard the echoing of my father's voice.  It was exactly as he would curse and swear while driving at the wheel.  I said aloud:  “Papa, this is one of yours!  This one you can have back.”  I realized that I was just beginning to sort out my “yerishah,” my inheritance from Papa, to understand what he had given me that I could affirm as my own, and what was his, not mine.”**   

As this anecdote suggests, during the process of “Going to Kaddish College,” mourners have an opportunity to distinguish what they wish to weave forward into the new world they’re building in collaboration with their beloved’s memory, and what may be left behind.  In contrast to our wider culture’s insistence on closure, moving on, forgetting death’s ever-present teachings of love, impermanence, and hope, the obligation to say kaddish binds us to past and future both realistically and creatively.

​When you notice a passage of liturgy that reads like it’s climbing a staircase to heaven, get on board the mantra and climb.  And because the mantra includes responses, you know you do not climb alone – you accomplish the outer and inner work of initial mourning and annual remembrance in community, with others who have or will stand where you stand, grieve as you grieve, and who will, in their time, be grateful for your emotional and spiritual support.  Keyn y’hi ratzon, so may this be our work, together.


* “Say the Kaddish, Create the World (For the Very First Time)”

** “On the Afterlife,” audio-cassette, distributed by Bnai Or Religious Fellowship, Philadelphia (n.d.)

We have arrived at the eve of Yom Kippur.  We have chanted Kol Nidre, acknowledging our desire to transform ourselves in the new year, yet admitting the unlikelihood we will achieve all that we vow to God and ourselves.  If Reb Nachman’s teaching that “all was created for the sake of the choice and the chooser” * speaks truth, then this sacred day will sorely test our willingness to choose rightly.

The renowned theologian Chris Rock underscores Reb Nachman’s words: “You know, some people say life is short, and that you could get hit by a bus at any moment, and that you have to live each day like it’s your last.  Baloney [OK, he didn’t actually say ‘baloney’].  Life is long. You’re probably not gonna get hit by a bus.  And you’re gonna have to live with the choices you make for the next fifty years.”

There’s the rub: at every moment, we make personal or group choices that birth outcomes we must deal with for a lifetime – perhaps beyond. Sometimes, we are taken aback by the consequences of what seems like a perfectly reasonable choice, given what we know:

A wealthy clergy-person (denomination irrelevant), who has been faithful to God his whole life, is visited by an angel.  “God sent me to let you know you’re going to die in two days.  But, don’t worry, you will be welcomed into heaven.”

The preacher says, “that’s great – but listen, I know God has this rule that we can’t take anything with us.  Do you think God would bend it for me?  I’d really like to take something with me.”  The angel agrees to ask. The next night, he returns with a message: “God told me to tell you that you may bring one suitcase, with whatever you want inside of it.” 

The preacher is excited by the possibilities, yet can’t decide what to pack.  He considers filling the suitcase with cash, but he’s not sure what kind of currency is accepted in heaven.  Instead, he converts all his cash into gold, which he imagines must be of – literally – universal value.

Next day, he dies peacefully and finds himself at the entrance to heaven, suitcase by his side.  The welcoming angel stops him: “Sorry, but you can’t bring any worldly possessions with you.”  The preacher replies, “An angel assured me that God said it was OK.”  “Oh, well, if it’s OK with God, bring it on in.  Just out of curiosity, what’s in the bag?”  Smiling broadly, the preacher opens the suitcase, showing off all the bars of gold.  Puzzled, the welcoming angel gives the new arrival a funny look: “That’s what you brought?  Pavement?”

Sometimes, we look to religious teaching to help make our choices clearer, yet find ourselves disappointed when the tradition responds with complexity, insisting we accept responsibility and free will, pushing us back toward the school of Reb Nachman and Reverend Chris: “all was created for the sake of the choice and the chooser.” 

Our adult B’not Mitzvah class recently discussed a passage from Sifra, an early legal commentary on Leviticus, which posed a variant of “the lifeboat question.”  R. ben Patura expounded the Torah verse “that thy brother may live with thee (25:36)” with this example: Two men were traveling through the desert and only one had a water flask.  The water would suffice to keep only one man alive until reaching the next water hole.  If the owner of the flask kept the water for himself, he would reach the spring; if he shared, both he and his companion would die. 

According to R. ben Petura, “the verse, ‘that thy brother may live with thee,’ means that the water should be shared, even though both men die.”  But R. Akiva said – focusing more on the word “live” than the word “brother” – ‘that thy brother may live with thee’ means that your life takes precedence.  The water should be used to save a life.  On this question of self-preservation versus survival, ben Petura offers what we might call a romantic, “Romeo and Juliet” answer: if we can’t live together, we’ll die together.  Akiva, whose decisions generally prevail, gives a rational yet harsh-seeming response: choose life.  If we cannot choose life for all, then choose life for those whose lives can be chosen.  A guideline based on sturdy religious principle, for sure, yet leaving us with wrenching choice.  (Study handout, source unknown.)

At the heart of Judaism’s insistence on personal and communal responsibility, on the primacy of free will, is the notion that we are born to the work of choosing, created with inclinations to do good and to do evil, capable of learning to master what tempts us.  In this regard, R. Lawrence Kushner offers a useful distinction between “bad” and “evil.”

“‘Bad,’” he writes, “means ‘unfortunate,’ ‘painful,’ and even ‘horrible,’ but it does not mean that someone is necessarily responsible for what happened.  A freak accident for which no one is to blame, for instance, is ‘bad,’ but it is not ‘evil.’  [Often, though, we use ‘bad’ to mean] ‘unethical,’ ‘wicked,’ and ‘evil.’  We cry out that things should have been otherwise and that someone is to blame.  And if the one who is to blame acted intentionally, then the ‘bad’ is also ‘evil,’ [leaving us to consider] that the question, ‘why is there evil in the world?’ means ‘why are human beings evil?’” (God Was in this Place, pp. 61-2.)

Just as we might find R. Akiva’s guidance more challenging than empowering, so may we find R. Kushner’s insight disturbing.  Who wants to accept such a burden of choice and responsibility?  Happily – and I underscore happily – we are not expected to excise our potential for evil, as our human wholeness requires us to wrestle with our yetzer harah.  Remember, we are commanded to love the Eternal with all our heart, all our soul, and with all our material, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual components – with all our human “stuff.” 

One strand in our tradition even identifies the evil inclination with essential human passions: “Were it not for the yetzer harah, a person would not build a house or get married; would neither beget children, nor ply a trade or pursue a profession.” (Gen. R. 9:9.)  The great scholar R. Eliezer Berkovits adds: “The evil inclination is here recognized as a necessary ingredient of life itself, the Jewish concept of the élan vital, the individual’s desire to live and survive. It is the affirmation of one’s personal existence and the drive for self-fulfillment. It is not evil in itself, but only the potential cause of evil. The vital forces of individual existence which maintain a person in the world are the same which may carry a person against the world.” (“When Man Fails God,” A.E. Millgram (ed.), Great Jewish Ideas, p.187.)

Yet again, we return to the primacy of free will and its corollary responsibility.  Two recent films have instructed us in how to train our dragons; Judaism offers us copious guidance on how to train and direct our inclinations for good and evil, how to fulfill our roles as creative partners of the Holy One.  First of all, we are not expected to do this work alone, but rather, with a loving partner.  Reb Zalman (zt”l) points to Leviticus 16:30 as the verse that invites us to do the work of Yom Kippur in partnership with God: “For through the agency of this day, I will atone for you – before YHVH you will be purified from all your sins.”  He notes that “there are teachings in Kabbalah that point to God investing Him/Herself into the time of the 26 hours of Yom Kippur to effect the atonement for us.  How 26 hours? Because we add an hour before and an hour after.  Why 26? It is the numerical value of the divine name, YHVH.  It is love begetting a response of love, 13 + 13 = 26, 13 being the numerical value of love, ahavah.” (“A Teaching for Yom Kippur 5773.”)

Second, we are heirs to an extraordinary array of spiritual practices that help us refine and uplift our behaviors, practices that help us discern when we’re at risk of our “less good” yetzer, our more selfish inclination, taking the upper hand.  Reb Yitzhak Buxbaum likes to tell the story of a pious Jew, who on his deathbed, promised his friend that he would return to tell him how he had been judged in the World of Truth.  After some time, he appears and reports that in examining his deeds, no fault was discovered with a single exception: once, when he had sat on a court, a plaintiff slipped a coin in his pocket, which he pretended not to notice.  Because of this sin, heaven decreed the punishment of Gehinnom – a transitional place of soul-examination and learning.

When he arrived in Gehinnom, he was given a little hammer and told to knock down a gigantic building.  Daunting, perhaps, but he thought to himself: “why did I pray my whole life, why did I seek to fulfill mitzvot?  Isn’t it because I sought to do God’s will?  If this, too, is God’s will, then I accept the obligation to do it – just as I accepted the obligation to train myself to align to God’s will when I was alive – even if it takes a very long time.”  As he then tells his friend, “I swung the little hammer and hit the building once, and it collapsed in an instant, and I was welcomed into heaven, because I had accepted the decree as the same divine will that had guided me throughout my life.” (MiSod Siach Hasidim, p. 277, Daily Maggid #111, “The Judgment.”)

Judaism’s great mystical optimist, Rav Avraham Yitzhak Kook (zt’l) ceaselessly encourages us to understand our constant struggles as holy and necessary aspects of the universe’s evolution: “The perception that dawns on a person to see the world, not as finished, but as in the process of continual becoming, ascending, developing – this changes us from being ‘under the sun’ to being ‘above the sun,’ [viewing reality] from the place where everything takes on new form.  The joy of heaven and earth abide in us as on the day they were created.  In this luminous perspective, one looks at all the worlds, at the general and human development, at the destiny of each creature, at all the events at all times.” (Orot Hakodesh 2:517.)

He continues: “A foundation of the Torah is that the human being is created in the Divine Image.  The essence of this is found through the absolute freedom that humans have. . . . Without the foundation of absolute human freedom, there would be no place for Torah to exist.” (Pinkasei HaRayah, 2:16)  Thus, our routine struggles to accept our role as God’s partners in shaping creation and to discern how to align our wills with the underlying divine will represent evolutionary pathways to a fulfilled aspiration: shalom, a universal Shabbat of wholeness, wholesomeness, and boundless joy.  An aspiration we share with our divine partner.

Judaism is rich with “sacred technology” for cultivating our partnership with God.  As Martin Buber famously describes our interconnection with the One: “no matter where I take hold of a shred of [the divine Unity], I hold the whole of it.  And since the teachings and all the commandments are radiations of God’s being, a person who lovingly does one commandment utterly and to the core, and in this one commandment takes hold of a shred of the unity of God, holds the whole of it in hand, and has fulfilled all.” (Ten Rungs, 1962) All was created for the sake of the choice and the chooser, so choose something: a morning and evening Sh’ma, a blessing before food, light Shabbat candles, study a few words of Torah, offer forgiveness ungrudgingly, be still and know that God is God.

“For through the agency of this day, I will atone for you – before YHVH you will be purified from all your sins.”  Through divine love were we created; through reciprocal love are we cleared of wrongdoing.  Created in the divine image, we share the divine capacities for choice and for accepting responsibility: remember, Isaiah teaches, “oseh shalom u’voreh et harah,” God takes responsibility for making peace and creating [what we experience as] bad (45:7).  We are also created in the image of the One [who] offers good to all and who shows compassion to all divine works (Ps. 145:5). In Rav Kook’s ecstatic vision of a humanity rising to Union with the Holy One:

It is the good that I desire,
Its glorious expanses entrance me.
Its lips, its roses, I kiss,
Its beautiful vision exalts me.
Absolute good, without limitation,
Without end, constriction or boundary,
That is not separate from anything alive,
That with its love, fixes everything broken.
Good for me, good for all,
Good without badness or tightness,
Good full of pleasure for all,
Full of tranquility without anxiety.
Good forever, good right now,
Good for every people and nation,
Who seek the good and not the bad,
And the light and the delight, ‘as the One is there” (Gen. 21:7).
 
May our desire to partner with God to attain the highest rung of cosmic evolution be a catalyst for manifesting our best choices according to all of our capacities; may all of our inclinations, no matter where they arise, be for good.  Amen, g’mar tov.


* Everything you see in the world - everything that exists - is there for the sake of free will, in order to test people. The entire world and all that it contains were created to give man free will. (Sichot Haran #300; Chayey Moharan #519)
 

Rosh haShanah Shachrit, Sept.14, 2015/1 Tishri 5776

One of my favorite examples of fanatic religious differentiation goes as follows:

Walking across a bridge one day, I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. A second may ran over and yelled, “Stop! Don't do it!” “Why not?” “Well, there's so much to live for!” “Like what?” The second man said, “Well, are you religious or atheist?” “Religious.”  “Great!  Are you Christian?”  “Yes.”  “Me too! Catholic or Protestant?”  “Protestant.”  “Me, too! Episcopalian or Baptist?” “Baptist!”  “Wow! Me, too! Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?” “Baptist Church of God!” “Me, too!  [We’re really getting some bonding going on here, as the split hairs get finer.]  “Original Baptist Church of God or Reformed Baptist Church of God?”  “Reformed Baptist Church of God!”  “Me, too!,” exclaims the hopeful rescuer, as he presses on to make an even deeper connection with the jumper.  “Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1879 or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?”  “Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915!”  To which the second man cries, “Die, heretic scum!” as he pushed the other one off the bridge.

This sort of humor reinforces my sense that the real aftermath of Eve and Adam’s fruit snack in the Garden of Eden has been humanity’s ever more sophisticated skill at spotting and naming differences – you remember, eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil bestowed, among other things, the power to distinguish (and judge) one thing relative to another.  Nothing is too trivial for us not to find a way to differentiate ourselves into smaller and smaller categories:

Q. How many Christians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A. Three, but they're really one.

Q. How many Quakers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A. Ten to sit around in a circle until one feels the inner light.

Q. How many Zen Buddhists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A. Two, one to screw it in and one not to screw it in.

We do not exempt Judaism from this obsession with difference:

Q: How many Jews does it take to change a light bulb? 
A: 30. One to change the bulb and 29 to discuss it and give contradictory advice to the person changing the bulb. 

Q: How many Ultra-Orthodox rabbis does it take to change a light bulb? 
A: This has not yet been determined. They are still searching for a Talmudic reference to light bulb. 

Q: How many Jewish Renewal rabbis does it take to change a light bulb? 
A: It depends. One if it's an eco-kosher bulb that isn't going to be lit by electricity from nuclear power. Two, as long as a man and a woman rabbi have equal turns replacing in the bulb.  Three, same as above plus an additional rabbi to study the psycho-halachic implications of such a change and then lead a weekend retreat to evaluate the experience. 

To distinguish one category of people from another can certainly be the stuff of humor; it can also become the stuff of horror.  When we indulge in distinction as a means to separate ourselves from others heartlessly, we lose touch with the other part of the lesson from Eden, that the differences we note with such clarity represent variable manifestations of an underlying Unity – a unity in which all forms of being find their source.

ALEPH, the Alliance for Jewish Renewal, is celebrating 2015 as a year of Deep Ecumenism, with the tag line, “prays well with others,” and OHALAH, the Jewish Renewal Rabbinic and Cantorial Association, has selected as its January 2016 conference theme “Deep Ecumenism: V’chol Netivoteha Shalom” – “and all Her paths are peace,” referring to the spiritual diversity inherent in the Instruction, the Torah, Divinity has revealed to the many peoples of the earth.  The spiritual orientation known as deep ecumenism represents one of Yavneh’s core values, and one of the most obvious ways in which we and Jewish Renewal worldwide are striving to reframe the religious ecology of our planet. Meister Eckhart, a thirteenth-century Christian mystic, described divinity as “an underground river that no one can stop and no one can dam up.”  The contemporary theologian Rev. Matthew Fox adds that while we may discover many wells drawing from that One River, “we would make a grave mistake if we confused [any one well] with the flowing waters of the underground river [itself].  Many wells, one river.  That is Deep Ecumenism.”  Take a moment to hold that image in your mind: an unstoppable underground river accessible to all, unique to none. Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (zt”l) encouraged us to consider each religious tradition as an organ in the body of collective humanity: our differences are meaningful and our commonality is significant.  When we honor both the differentiation and the unity, we enhance the possibility of collaborating with followers of other religious paths in our shared work of healing creation. 

The expansiveness of our divine Source cannot be captured fully by any one tradition; if it could, we would have found a container big enough for God, we would have marked the limit of divine potentiality.  Reb Zalman modeled for us how to safely derive additional nourishment in traditions other than our own, understanding that each religion provides some but not all possible spiritual vitamins. (See ALEPH.org, Yavneh-Raleigh.org, Paradigm Shift.)

Deep Ecumenism orients us to the potential for learning from and growing spiritually with teachers and adherents of all faith traditions.  At Yavneh, one of our foundational kavanot (intentionalities) is to respond to the challenge of overcoming the historic hostility between faiths, primarily between Judaism and Christianity, but also to be open to learning from and growing spiritually with teachers and adherents of all faith traditions.  This kavanah manifests in our membership policy, which welcomes all supporters of Jewish Renewal, regardless of whether they are Jews, and in Yavneh’s Center for Deep Ecumenism, offering its first programming in November.
In the delicate process of God-seeking, there is no way to overestimate the centrality of the experiential.  Each of us shares in a holy obligation to open our minds, hearts, and souls to the Reality of God and to the reality that God loves diversity, nearness, and surprise.  When we model how to give up a futile triumphalism that insists that Divinity can only be accessed along a single path, we open ourselves and others to a diversity in which all religious practitioners hold on to particular “shape and color . . . [only to] form the mosaic in which we are all God’s tiles,” not to proclaim our ownership of capital-T truth.

Deep Ecumenism neither minimizes our attachment to Judaism’s spiritual understandings, nor compromises our personal and communal religious practices.  If ecumenism has a boundary, it’s in the realm of practice, at the point where we sense something damaging to our spiritual immune system, something that calls into question for us the integrity and beauty of Jewish teaching. 

Still, why should Jews be interested in the wider spiritual ecosystem?  Over 3500 years, Judaism’s survival as an independent religious practice has been so hard-won, why look elsewhere?  We read this morning of Abraham and Hannah, both of whom faced the paradox of losing and gaining a spiritual future by offering to give up what was most precious to them.  How can shopping elsewhere for spiritual vitamins be good for the Jews? 

As a life-long practitioner of Deep Ecumenism, from decades before I could name it, permit me to share my top ten reasons:

Deep Ecumenism requires us to take our own religion seriously.  If Jewish spiritual practice, learning, worship, community, history, culture – if the entirety of Jewish reality didn’t hold a primary place in my life – I would not be ready to engage with others in that open field where we all strive to yield our absolutes for the sake of divine unity. 

As a corollary, Deep Ecumenism requires us to become better educated about our tradition.  If I don’t invest time and energy delving into Judaism’s riches, what will I have to share in spiritual dialogue?

Sometimes, Deep Ecumenism helps us make sense of what puzzles us in our own tradition, requiring us to open our hearts to the varieties of Jewish spiritual experience.  If I have no understanding of how followers of other forms of Judaism engage with tradition and its evolution, I am hobbled in my efforts to distinguish between the essential core and the outer layers of various ways of Jew-ing, as Reb Zalman would say. 

Deep Ecumenism gives us an opportunity to explore the mystical heart of all faith, all yearning for connection to our shared Source.  When we learn how to engage with other traditions from the sacred heart of the cosmos, we open ourselves to realms of beauty and inspiration otherwise denied us by narrower vision.

Deep Ecumenism also helps us moderate reflexive “truth claims” and to relax our adversarial posture relative to “the other.”  We learn to hear the mythic truths embodied in alternative religious narratives and practices, and we begin to discern the particular gifts our tradition brings to the divine mosaic.

Deep Ecumenism calms our tendency to take rejection as permission to reject.  We have good reasons to challenge the triumphalisms of religions whose followers have oppressed, persecuted, and murdered Jews.  And, we have better reasons, rooted in Judaism’s essential commitment to shalom, to wholeness and peace, to share with anyone who will listen the unique blessings and insights Judaism contributes to humanity’s storehouse of spiritual riches. 

It’s not about being nice; it’s about being our own best representatives, not leaving the definition of our tradition to those who do not live it.  Engaging in Deep Ecumenism helps defuse false understandings of Jewish teachings.

When we undertake what Reb Zalman described as “the more intrepid exploration of Deep Ecumenism in which one learns about oneself through participatory engagement with another religion or tradition,” we discover what it means to open our hearts to the richness of personal and communal practice from multiple perspectives and to introduce our perspective into the mix.

In engaging with the other, we learn about ourselves. When we collaborate with fellow-travelers on other spiritual paths, our own practices are enriched — and we come one step closer to a world without religious prejudice or fear.  As Rabbi Irving Greenberg teaches, every false belief we have about another religion is a mountain we have to climb over to reach God (One River, Many Wells Conference, July 5, 2015.). 

It’s fun, a sacred game that rewards our attention and curiosity daily.  A few quick examples from our summer vacation:

In July, Stephen and I drove a circular route from Las Vegas to Zion National Park, on to Bryce Canyon, along the Escalante-Grand Staircase to Capital Reef, from there to the south rim of the Grand Canyon, and back to Las Vegas.  We took a morning to visit Tuba City, AZ, which some of you may recognize from Tony Hillerman novels as part of the Navajo Nation.  Our time at the Navajo Museum sparked numerous spiritual ah-ha’s:

First, the Navajo raise churro sheep.  When you google them, you will note that they can sport four horns.  Why there isn’t a thriving Navajo shofar industry is beyond me. 

Second, we experienced intriguing “compare and contrast” moments.  It is long-time Jewish practice to pray eastward to Jerusalem, and, during Sukkot, we honor our agricultural origins by offering blessings in six directions – the major compass points, up and down – with a swaying palm branch.

Similarly, traditional Navajo practice assigns spiritual meaning to each major compass point, daily marking the life processes of contemplation, planning, acting, and evaluating – a reasonable analogy to the traditional Jewish practice of daily self evaluation and teshuvah: “Every day the cycle is repeated, and in each cycle there is a lesson to be learned; even if we fall, we stand back up to see what we can do differently.  Every dawn is a new start, a new life, a renewal (Museum text.).”

Third, the Diné, as Navajo call themselves, “The People,” have no separate word for religion – nor does Hebrew.  They live in a sacred relationship with their land and enact healing ceremonies to connect themselves to one another in beauty and harmony.  Navajo legend says that the Diné had to pass through three different worlds before emerging in the present fourth or “glittering” world, while Jewish mystical teaching identifies four interpenetrated worlds of action, feeling, thinking, and clinging to the holy in which we enact our being.  Alternative four worlds theologies, one conceptually linear in its evolutionary path, the other cyclic.  Much to contemplate here.

We, too, are inheritors of a sacred relationship with a particular land, a sense of the holiness of Creation that over time has expanded to include our entire fragile planet.  Our mystical tradition also teaches that the ultimate purpose of our ritual practices, indeed, of all our actions in the world, is tikkun, repair and healing.  As Reb Nachman of Bratslav was fond of saying, if you believe you can do damage, then you must believe you can effect repair – just as the Navajo way teaches that one may always find a path back to harmony with self, others, and the land.

It all comes back to the light bulbs.  As Rumi writes:


     If ten lamps are present in one place
     each differs in form from another;
     yet you can’t distinguish whose radiance is whose
     when you focus on the light.


     In the field of spirit there is no division;
     no individuals exist.
     sweet is the oneness of the Friend with His friends.

     Catch hold of spirit.
     help this headstrong self disintegrate;
     that beneath it you may discover unity,
     like a buried treasure.
          “Ten Lamps”

The light is infinite; holy darkness is infinite; the sacred river is infinite.  The more we honor the infinite Unity, the nearer we draw to infinite shalom. Keyn y’hi ratzon, so may it be our will and God’s.

Erev Rosh haShanah, September 13, 2015/1 Tishri 6

Shanah tovah! For many decades, liberal Judaism frowned on talking in synagogue, except for the prayer book readings – and, of course, the sermon required reverent silent appreciation.  Yet, our Torah proposes that creation itself came into being through speech: “And God said, let there be . . .” In the interest of furthering community here at Yavneh, I would invite each of you now to take a couple of minutes to talk in shul – to wish those around you a fulfilling new year.  And yes, you may walk around some to do that.


Now, you may be thinking I’ve just set up a paradox: talk please, but for only so long.  Talk please, but only to express new year greetings.  How typical of the questions about when, how, for what purposes, and with whom we speak that have long been of interest in Jewish tradition. Word obsessed, we love the subtleties of linguistic play, we love stories illustrating the cleverness that comes with listening carefully, the amusement of sliding between possibilities to reach an unexpected conclusion, the potential of even the smallest word to carry a universe of meaning.

Four Israelis set in a restaurant in Tel Aviv. For a long time, nobody says a word. Finally, one man groans, “Oy.” “Oy vey,” says the second man. “Nu,” says the third. At this, the fourth man gets up from his chair and says, “Listen, if you guys don't stop talking politics, I'm leaving.”

Sammy, in a moment of envy, steals the rabbi's gold watch. Later, he doesn’t feel too good about it, so he decides to go see the rabbi. “Rabbi,” he blurts out, “I stole a gold watch.”  “Oh my, Sammy! That's forbidden! You should return it immediately!” Sammy looks down at the floor. “What shall I do?” “Just give it back to the owner.” Sammy pauses. “Do you want it?” “No, return it to its owner.” “But he doesn't want it.” “In that case, you can keep it.”

And back to a restaurant, home ground to a substantial percentage of Jewish humor: two Jewish men are sitting in a kosher Chinese restaurant frequented almost exclusively by Jews in Crown Heights. As they chat comfortably in Yiddish, a Chinese waiter comes up and, in fluent and impeccable Yiddish, asks them if everything is okay, may he get them anything, and so forth. The diners are dumbfounded.  When they pay their bill on the way out, they ask the owner, “Where did your waiter learn such fabulous Yiddish?” The owner looks around and leans in so no one else will hear and says, “Shhhh. He thinks we're teaching him English.”

Now, the concerns we bring to this time of year, the spiritual urgency of the Days of Awe, may lead us to feel we’re speaking a language foreign to the rest of the year.  After all, we live according to at least two different calendars, religious and secular, and in two overlapping cultural contexts: that of Jewish ritual and liturgical practice, which may or may not be a constant in our lives, and that of a globally diverse yet interactive culture.  No wonder many of the Hebrew terms we use in our High Holy Day worship seem at odds from our understanding of how these words translate in other contexts. 

Our High Holy Day prayer book, our machzor – meaning “cycle,” from the same root as “review,” as in going over one’s studies – guides us through an allegorical drama, in which our role is to close any gaps in our relationship to the Holy One.  The script, as it were, moves us from being abashed before a divine sovereign because of what we have done imperfectly to being reconciled with a loving, gracious, and infinitely patient divine lover who wants nothing more than our return to balance and optimism. 

We may know intellectually that Jewish practice supports the process of teshuvah, of repentance and return, as a daily undertaking, as a means to interrupt guilt and remorse and replace them with an ongoing exercise in spiritual refinement.  As Reb Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of the Lubavitch Hasidic dynasty teaches, “throughout one’s days one should experience teshuvah that is marked by great joy” (Lessons in Tanya for 5 Av).  Yet emotionally and practically, we may find it difficult to accept this more expansive understanding of teshuvah, when in our secular reality words like transgression, sin, repentance, regret, and apology carry negative resonances.

“Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” An article posted on selfgrowth.com explains that this movie catchphrase – which I suspect has had a disproportionate and unhelpful effect on our emotional lives these past few decades – means that because you know you are loved truly for who you are, you are accepted and now able to give this kind of love to someone else.  Somehow, “twoo wuv” implies no negotiation, no rough spots, no mutual learning, no interpersonal adjustments – only acceptance.  It is what it is. 

And here we are, asked to recognize and account for our transgressions, seek out those we might have hurt, apologize, make amends if possible, and set ourselves the daunting task of transforming future behavior. 

Here we are, asked to speak truth to God and to one another; even more, to listen for the assurance of divine and human forgiveness, of love for us as we are learning, as we are evolving, as we are transforming ourselves and our relationships.  Here we are, locked in a call-and-response between hard-won self-knowledge and the potential of forgiveness and renewal. 

Fortunately, the traditional liturgy that we have adapted for our High Holy Day prayers at Yavneh seeks to balance our words of teshuvah – which are eagerly awaited by God – with God’s assurance of loving forgiveness.  The liturgy helps us attune both to speech and listening, to the energetic exchange between ourselves and our Source. It strengthens our desire to cultivate sacred aloneness with the divine – hitbodedut, as the Hasidic master Reb Nachman of Bratslav famously teaches:

Set aside time each day to meditate and pray alone . . . and express your innermost thoughts and feelings and personal prayers to God.  Hold these conversations in whatever language you speak best. Our set prayers are said in Hebrew, but if this is not one's native language, it is difficult to use it to give expression to all one's innermost thoughts and feelings and the heart is less drawn after the words. It is easier to pour out your heart and say everything you need in your own language.

Hitbodedut is of the greatest value. It is the way to come closer to God, because it includes everything else. No matter what you lack in your service of God, even if you feel totally remote from divine service, tell God everything and ask for all that you need.

If at times you find yourself unable to speak to God or even open your mouth, the very fact that you are there wanting and yearning to speak is itself very good. You can even turn your very inability to speak into a prayer. Tell God that you feel so far away that you cannot even speak! Ask God to have mercy on you and open your mouth to say what you need (Likutey Moharan II, 25). 

If not every day, at least at this season and as often as we re-member, as we reconnect to our fullest selves, may we speak with such openness, candor, yearning, and devotion.

The liturgy also invites us to listen for speech that does not require an “outer ear.”  It reminds us that every aspect of our lived experience holds the capacity to transmit sacred messages.  According to the early 20th-century mystic Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, “once a person accustoms himself or herself to hearing the voice of God issuing from everything, the supernal meaning now comes that has eluded the person, and this is spiritual wisdom. . . .   Until finally, in the spiritual wisdom itself, one finds the true appearance of God.”  With his usual holy optimism, Rav Kook concludes, “and everyone who continues to search and philosophize increases the holiness of faith and cleaving [to God] and the light of the holy Spirit (Sparks beneath the Surface).

If not every day, as often as we re-call ourselves to the effort, may we listen for the bat kol, the divine voice, issuing from all that we encounter, not only from the words of liturgy, but from the entirety of being, from our own mouths.

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner delicately traces for us how to understand the words of Scripture, the words of the prayer book, and the words of our inner and outer speaking as the larger divine Self in conversation with our smaller divine selves.  Kushner cites the Piesetzna Rebbe, who used to say, “not only does God hear our prayers, God prays them through us” (God was in this Place, p. 135).  In our High Holy Day drama, we and God share the words of a script that directs our souls to wholeness and reconciliation.

The psalmist says, “Ki lidvarcha yichalti, For I await your word,” or, as translated by Reb Zalman, “For I made myself empty to receive your word.”  In this sacred season, out of the silent spaces in which our souls find rest and out of the silences that assail us with doubts, may we listen for the divine words that create and then shape our reality, the teachings that mediate the link between Infinite and finite being.

Jewish tradition insists that this unending “speaking and listening” represents internal and eternal processes shared by all Israel, that is by all who wrestle with the Holy Blessed One:

The teaching is internal, as we read in D’varim, Deuteronomy, for “This transmission that I am revealing to you today is not too mysterious or remote from you. . . . Ki karov eilecha ha-davar m’od, for the thing--ha-davar, that vivifying word-thing – is something that is very close to you.  B’ficha, it is in your mouth and bil’vavcha, in your heart, la’asoto, so that you can fulfill it.” (Deut. 30:11, 14)  The Holy One assures us that we are competent and capable of lifelong sacred conversation with our Source.

The teaching is eternal, for, as R. Joshua ben Levi teaches in Pirke Avot (6:2), every day the divine voice issues from Sinai, searching out our inner hearing.  Torah unfolds continually in our presence, within the Presence that holds us. When we pay attention, “Sh’ma!,” when we truly givie ourselves to the One in whom we find our being, revelation, reassurance, forgiveness, and love roll forth unabated, slaking our thirst for the love and care of our Creator.

The teaching is universal, the inheritance of all who seek the One. As vessels of infinite possibility, along with God, all of us create and shape with words, and our every word carries the potential to participate in the foundational process of teshuvah:
          Shuvah Yisrael ad YHVH Elohecha
          Ki chashalta ba-avonecha;
          Return, O Israel [all of you who wrestle with God] to the Lord your God, for 
                 you have fallen because of your sin.

And what is the sin?  A lack of attention to the constant speaking and listening that defines our interconnectedness with the One who gods us into being.  The korban, the offering which brings us closer, is the word we utter in truth, in hope, as the fruit of our sincere introspection.  Says the prophet Hosea:
          K’chu imachem d’varim
          V’shuvu el-YHVH . . .
          Take words with you,
          And return to the Lord.
          Say to God,
          ‘Forgive all guilt
          And accept what is good;
          Instead of bulls we will pay
          [The offering of] our lips. (14:2-3)

Whenever we speak God’s words and express our partnership as creators and shapers, as sources of healing and tikkun, we fulfill the blessing of being created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of the Holy One.  When we speak and listen to the words of the High Holy Day liturgy, we enact a great, mythic drama of assurance and reconciliation – a familiar drama, the end of which is predictable and blessed.

If we commit ourselves to this sacred enactment, an expression of the highest form of spiritual artistry, we have much to gain, even if we feel unprepared for our role.  As Reb Nachman says, hitbodedut, [our private conversation with God] is of the greatest value. It is the way to come closer to God, because it includes everything else. No matter what you lack in your service of God, even if you feel totally remote from divine service, tell God everything and ask for all that you need.

And, if we listen to the words we utter as if they emanate simultaneously from our hearts and God’s, then, according to Rav Kook’s holy optimism for the continual, inevitable refinement of our souls, we can only “increase the holiness of faith and [of] cleaving [to God] and the light of the holy Spirit.”

May it ever be our blessing to remain true vessels of Holy Possibility, to teach the Torah of our hearts truthfully through our lips, to rejoice in ever turning and returning to the Source of our Being.  Then, like the Psalmist, we will call out:
          Y’rei-ehcha yir-uni v’yism’chu,

          Those who are in awe of you shall see me and rejoice,
          Ki lidvarcha yichalti,
       
for I have made myself empty to receive – and I would add, transmit – your word. (119:74) Amen.