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.
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.
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