Rosh Hashanah - Sermon 1

Shanah Tovah! - Happy New Year! 

For anyone who wasn't able to join us at Ohev Shalom for the High Holidays, but was curious to hear what was covered in the sermons, I'm posting them here on my blog. Below you will find my sermon from the first day of Rosh Hashanah, and I'll also be posting my second day sermon here as well. Next week I'll add the Yom Kippur speeches, in case you're interested. And, if you feel like it, please feel free to post your comments/thoughts/reactions here, or send me an e-mail at rabbi@ohev.net. Thanks so much, and I hope to see you at Ohev for Yom Kippur!

Shanah Tovah.

I’d like to ask everyone to please indulge me for a second (and, if possible, answer as honestly as you can); please raise your hand if you are actually happy to be here, in this place, at this moment, right now. (Terrific; you all get extra credit after services.)

And this, obviously, is the riskier one, but please raise your hand if you wish you were somewhere else right now, anywhere else! (Thank you, teenagers, you can put your hands down now…)

I began my sermon this way because I think it’s important to be honest. We’re here, right? We’re all in this room together, and yet we each come with our own biases, preconceived notions about the High Holidays, expectations, hopes, fears, and so on. However you’re feeling right now, let’s also be fully present to this experience, together. Presence, mindfulness; that is my theme for this year’s High Holidays, so you’re going to hear a lot about that in a few minutes. But I want to step away from that concept for right now.

I recently realized something about my HH sermons, in general, after listening to a podcast (like radio shows you download to your smartphone and listen to anytime) – it’s really like a sales pitch. I was listening to ‘This American Life,’ where one of their producers, Alex Blumberg, is leaving to start his own business. And he was talking about trying to woo investors, but he was nervous about it, because he said you only have a short amount of time to make your ‘sales pitch.’ He talked about creating a PowerPoint, called a pitch deck, and how he was perfecting his ‘elevator speech,’ his short presentation, in which he was trying desperately to grab the attention of investors and really wow them.

And then it hit me: You are my investors. Whether you want to be here or not, basically this, right now, is like your agreeing to meet me at Starbucks to hear my pitch deck, my PowerPoint presentation. Even if you’re happy to be here, you and I both know our time is limited.

Lucky for me, I’m not ACTUALLY trying to sell you a product, but I DO want your buy-in, I AM looking for you to invest. And I’m hoping that my message, and your subsequent investment of time, energy, and enthusiasm in yourself and in the community will have an impact, not just today, but for the duration of the HH, and hopefully for the rest of this year, and maybe, just maybe, even beyond that. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

So here’s the pitch. In one word: Hineini. Now, I’d like to think I’ve already done some of my homework on the sales pitch with you, because I’m guessing at least a decent percentage of the people in the room knew I was going to say ‘Hineini.’ I’ve already dropped little hints here and there, mentioned it at the Congregational Meeting in June, it made its way into a new series in our monthly newsletter, L’Chaim, without my even having to propose it, and some people have already been talking about it. So you and I may be sitting down together at Starbucks for the first time, but I’ve already gotten my buzzword into your head. Yeah, that’s right, I’ve got you right where I want you...

Ok, so let me tell you about ‘Hineini.’ I like to think of it as the most important word in the Torah that you’ve never heard of (that’s a pretty good start to a sales pitch, don’t you think?). Maybe you know ‘Shema Yisrael,’ ‘Hear O Israel,’ or ‘Bereishit Barah,’ ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,’ or ‘Anochi Adonai Eloheicha,’ ‘I am the Lord, your God’ (the first of the Ten Commandments); I would argue that ‘Hineini’ should be in that same category, but many of you never heard the word until I snuck it into your heads over the summer, or just now, here in Starbucks.

In short, Hineini means ‘I am here,’ or ‘Here I am.’ Now if you HAVE heard of Hineini, it might be from some of its most famous uses. Abraham says Hineini, ‘Here I am,’ when God first makes contact, first speaks to ANY human being, and commands him to leave his homeland and move to Canaan. Moses uses it as well, when God calls to him from the Burning Bush. For Abraham and for Moses, and for a few more important figures as well, THAT moment, that “Hineini” means something very, very special.

It’s not just “Here I am,” like roll call in school – present and accounted for – it’s SO much more purposeful. It’s readiness, it’s realization of mission, it’s filled with dedication: “Hineini, Adonai!” “Here I am, God, let’s do this thing!!” Without perhaps realizing it, many of us HAVE felt “Hineini” moments in our lives. At the start of a new job, perhaps? One that we believe in, feel passionate about, and ready to throw our body, mind, and soul into? Or perhaps parenting, filled with trepidation and uncertainty, but “Hineini,” here I am, bring on the sleeplessness, poop, and messier house than you could have ever imagined. Hineini comes in many forms in our lives.

But Hineini isn’t actually just for big, powerful, life-changing moments or crossroads, filled with mission-drive purpose. As I’ll share with you in a minute, and throughout our High Holiday services together, Hineini is used in the Bible for other, less momentous or famous situations, but are perhaps just as important anyway. Hineini, can also be a word that just indicates ‘presence.’ Here-ness. And as such, I think it’s an incredibly important word that you and I should be saying more often. Like when you’re sitting in services, listening to some rabbi deliver a long High Holiday sermon – it’s just as important in that moment to be present to your experience. We should all be able to say “Hineini,” I am here in this moment, and aware of myself being here.

Thich Nhat Hanh, the great Buddhist teacher and practitioner of mindfulness meditation, wrote a book called ‘You are Here: Discovering the magic of the present moment.’ And guess what? His entire message is about getting his readers to say ‘Hineini,’ ‘Here I am.’ Our ancient Jewish teachings and the equally ancient Buddhist proverbs are both trying to send the same message: How can we live in this moment, right now? How can we open our eyes, our minds, our hearts, and our souls to the world and the people around us, and live more fully in the here and now? This wisdom is especially crucial on the High Holidays.

And indeed, over the course of THESE High Holidays, I want to look with you at some of the people who said ‘Hineini’ in the Bible (as well as some who ‘claimed’ to say it, and we’ll have to decide whether we believe them or not, and some who SHOULD have said it, but sadly did not), and we will examine how the message of ‘Here I am’ in our Jewish tradition corresponds to so much of what others teach about mindfulness and gratitude. When we put it all together, across history and from around the world, my sincere hope is that we will all learn something about how to say ‘Hineini,’ ‘Here I am,’ to ourselves, to the people around us, to Judaism, and perhaps, to God.

I want to share with you a little secret about me… that many of you know: I’m a bit of a stickler when it comes to Hebrew grammar, Hebrew spelling, and Hebrew pronunciation. If you’re a Torah reader or a Gabbai, or you lead services for us, you’re probably nodding your head right now and rolling your eyes at me. (But some day you’ll thank me!) And it was my love of Hebrew grammar and spelling that perked up when I began looking for instances of ‘Hineini’ in the Bible, because I was very surprised to discover that it is spelled in three different ways.

In fact, the three variant spellings are amazingly significant, and each changes how the word is pronounced. It’s either ‘HiNEHni,’ HiNEIni,’ or ‘HineNI,’ with the emphaSIS on the last syllaBELL.

The most common form, “HineNI” means ‘look’ or ‘now,’ or perhaps more famously, ‘Behold!’ This form shows up in TONS of really significant moments in the Torah. In the story of the Exodus alone, it shows up at the burning bush, when God sends Moses to Pharaoh, for several plagues, at the splitting of the sea, the giving of the manna, the striking of a rock for water, AND at the giving of the Ten Commandments. But despite its prominence, this is NOT the form that means “purpose” or “life-altering” mission. “HineNI” reminds us that even in our everyday, mundane lives, we should be present to our experience. “Be Here Now,” no matter what you are doing in this moment.

Thich Nhat Hanh talks about the miracles of mindfulness, and the first is “presence.” He writes, “Being TRULY here is very important… where mindfulness is, true life, solidity, freedom, and healing also manifest.” So even the everyday moments, the “HineNI”s are essential.

As for the other two forms, I don’t want to bore you with grammar, but basically Hebrew has pairs of vowels that are similar to one another, but one is considered stronger than the other. This is not a value judgment, just a reality of Hebrew grammar. And yet, the Torah uses them to indicate strength and weakness in a fascinating way. Even though the weaker form only appears twice in the whole Torah, one of them is in tomorrow’s Torah reading. And an instance of the stronger vowel is in that reading as well, so we can compare the two.

On p. 103, God calls to Abraham, just as he did when he sent him to Canaan, but this time God aims to test his faith with the infamous Binding of Isaac. Abraham responds, in verse 1, with great strength and religious conviction, ‘Here I am’! He uses the stronger form of the word, “HiNEIni.” Just six verses later, on p. 104, Abraham and his son, Isaac, are walking together up the mountain. Abraham knows he is about to slay his own son, but Isaac does not. The child innocently perks up and starts to ask his father a question. ‘Father,’ he says? Abraham responds, ‘Here I am,’ but with the weaker vowel, “HiNEHni.” Such a subtle little distinction between them! A single dot, in fact, but the fear and uncertainty in his voice reverberates so loudly! He cannot face his son, he cannot be fully present to him. Perhaps Abraham doesn’t want to bring himself fully to ANY PART of this awful scene, trying to remove his heart from the terrible act he is about to perform.

And if that weren’t enough, when Abraham is on the brink of doing the unthinkable, four verses later, v. 11, with his child bound below him and his arm raised high with the knife poised to slash and kill, an angel calls out to Abraham, doubling his name: “Abraham, Abraham!” And Abraham yells back, cries through his tears, ‘HINEINI’!!!

The stronger form is back, and Abraham is now demanding of God, ‘Is this really what you want??? Is this where I am meant to be, can this be what you want of me??!?!?’ And the two of them are both released.

‘Hineini,’ Here I am.’ In the absence of angels or mountain sacrifices, it may feel as if OUR presence, OUR mindfulness does NOT have the same implications of life and death as Abraham’s.

It’s not true.

When we live without being fully present to our experiences, we are not alive, or maybe as alive as we could be. Thich Nhat Hanh jarringly states, “Some people live as though they are already dead. There are people moving around us who are consumed by their past, terrified of their future, and stuck in their anger and jealousy. They are not alive; they are just walking corpses.”

Sometimes you and I, we are so busy thinking about work, and obligations, and anything other than what’s going on right in front of us, that even when we DO respond to others around us, we are not there. We say “HiNEHni,” half-heartedly, rather than “HiNEIni,” fully present. And as a result, we eat without tasting our food, we read without internalizing words, and we pray without feeling any real intention. We miss those precious moments with family and loved ones, when we are physically in the room, but mentally absent, on a phone or focusing elsewhere. Life ebbs away, and we are left with regrets. Are we then any better off than Abraham, who was about to lose his son?

So here’s the challenge of “Hineini”: In order to be more fully present ALL the time, we need to experience the highs AND the lows, the positive moments in life as well as the negative ones. Sometimes what happens is that we try to protect ourselves from the bad stuff, so we deaden our emotions a little. Pain, illness, heartache, death – we don’t want to FEEL the intensity of those moments, so we go through life a little bit removed. But when we censor one aspect of ourselves, we lose other parts as well. It would be really nice to be able to remove the bad emotions and keep all the intense highs, the joys and celebrations in life. But that’s just not how it works. When we remove ourselves from one emotion, we unintentionally remove ourselves from ALL emotions.

So “Hineini” actually requires us to bring ourselves back to the whole range of emotion. Which is particularly true here, on the High Holidays. It would be great to just get to come here and sing the fun tunes, see all our friends we haven’t seen in a long time, enjoy the apples and honey and cake at the end of services, and that’s it! But the main message of the season is repentance; we need to do the hard work as well – say we’re sorry, own our mistakes and shortcomings, be open and honest with ourselves, and with God – and THEN the lighthearted parts of the holiday experience, the songs, the loved ones, the food, will be that much more enjoyable.

In the case of our patriarch, Abraham, God called him, the first time, to an incredible, unique relationship, unlike anyone before him, and the second time called him to do something unthinkable and terrible… and BOTH times, Abraham said “Hineini.” We must all challenge ourselves to be present to all of life’s experiences, and to be able to say, to them ALL: “Hineini,” “Here I Am.”

So that’s it, that’s my sales pitch, that’s my pitch deck. And like a new entrepreneur, trying to court an investor to help with a new startup, I hope that my elevator speech hasn’t just left you with something to think about, but that’s is also tempted you to come back for more! Tomorrow I’d like to introduce you to the very different ways that three generations of ancestors use “Hineini” in the Torah, and what we can learn from each of them. We also have yet to explore the prophet Samuel, trying to decide what “Hineini” meant for him, and on Yom Kippur morning we’ll end our journey standing next to Moses at the Burning Bush, where hopefully you’ll be challenged to look at “Hineini” in an entirely new way.

But for now, we’ll end with Thich Nhat Hanh’s message of presence. In his book, You are Here, he says simply, “How can you love if you are not here?” Our theme for these High Holidays is “Hineini,” but “Hineini” is always offered in response. In Genesis 3:9, God says to Adam and Eve, “Ayeka,” “Where are you?” And really, that is the underlying theme behind “Hineini”; the question that drives the reply.

Sooo… “Ayeka” – Where are YOU? I hope you’ll come back so we can continue answering this question together.

And when you do, I look forward to buying you another cup of coffee.

Shanah Tovah!