Kol Nidrei Sermon 5775

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 Kol Nidrei, the evening service at the start of Yom Kippur. In the right-hand column of this blog, you can see a list of previous posts; there you'll find all my High Holiday sermons.

And, if you feel like it, please post your comments/thoughts/reactions here, or send me an e-mail at rabbi@ohev.net. Thanks so much, and have a Happy, Healthy, and Sweet New Year!

Kol Nidrei Sermon 5775:

It’s late at night. The middle of the night, in fact. Right now, I am not a rabbi, I am a security guard at a museum, working the graveyard shift. There is one other guard as well, and after the two of us have finished our rounds, we retire to two separate guard posts, just a few rooms away from one another. It is quiet. The only sound that can be heard is the backup battery in the emergency exit sign, the soft hum of the security monitors, and faintly, in the distance, a radio program the other guard is listening to, “This American Life,” perhaps.

Then, suddenly…

[The congregation hears a disembodied voice over the loudspeaker. Each "Jeremy" in quotes below is another instance of the other voice, not me, speaking my name.]

“Jeremy.” 

A voice. Out of nowhere. Says my name. (My first name is Jeremy, by the way. I know many of you thought it was ‘rabbi’….) Obviously, it must be the other guard… although it didn’t really sound like him. But I get up, walk two rooms over, and ask him what’s up. “I didn’t call you,” he says. “Go back to your post.” Confused, I return. I check my iPhone, nothing there. The radio is off. I go back to watching the monitors, when, again, I hear it:

“Jeremy.”

Clearly, my colleague is playing a prank, so I walk back again, feeling slightly annoyed. “Here I am, buddy. What’s going on?” He assures me it isn’t him. We argue for a few minutes, and I return to my desk… though walking a bit slower this time, and starting to feel a chill up my spine. As I sit back in my chair, I hear it yet again:

“Jeremy.”

I burst out of my chair this time, insistent that it’s him… partly because I have no other explanation, and partly because I’m starting to feel frightened about what else might be going on. So I run back to the other guard a THIRD time. “Here I am, ok? Quit playing around!!” Again, we argue. And in the end, my exasperated colleague says, “Hey, if you hear it again, why don’t you just try answering the voice directly, huh? See what it says, and quit buggin’ me.” He chuckles to himself, and this time I walk back VERY slowly, and very bewildered. I ease my way back into my chair. It creaks. I can feel myself starting to sweat now. I’m nervous. I brace myself for the sound I do NOT want to hear, but sure enough:

“Jeremy… Jeremy.”

With great trepidation and foreboding, I respond, “Here I am – Hineini.”

This, with a few modern upgrades, is the story of the great prophet, Samuel. It was he who anointed the first king of Israel, Saul, and who eventually, at God’s command, also took the throne away from him. He then anointed David to take his place, and a descendant of David’s remained on the throne throughout the period of Ancient Israel. To this day, the line of David is still considered the royal bloodline of Israel. And it was Samuel who first declared David king.

When Samuel first heard God call to him, in the scene I described for you, he was just a boy. But I shared with you this little theatrical piece because I wanted each of us, every person in this room tonight, to imagine what it might have felt like for Samuel to hear that call. To picture instead a modern setting, with modern characters, and actually hear a disembodied voice speaking out of nowhere, and wonder, perhaps, for just a second: If this were you, could you respond to God with “Hineini”?

In today’s society, we often talk about not feeling the efficacy of prayer, that prayer actually “works.” I also hear people ask “Why don’t we hear God’s voice anymore? Why don’t we see miracles, and signs of God’s existence” But honestly, I think if we DID hear God’s voice speaking to us, calling us actually BY NAME, we would be terrified. What would it imply? What would come next, and is there any way that we could decline whatever God was coming to say???

I have always thought about this in regards to the prophet Jeremiah, who was ill-fated with the task of chastising and yelling at the people for their wrong-doings, and everyone hated him for it. His was a miserable existence. So why didn’t he just stop? Well, chapter 20, verse 9, is, in my opinion, one of the most chilling verses in the entire Bible, when Jeremiah cries out: “I thought, ‘I will not mention God, no more will I speak in God’s Name’ – but it was like a raging fire in my heart, shut up in my bones; I could not hold it in, I was helpless.” He had no choice. He was doomed to live this life, and say things to people that they absolutely, positively did NOT want to hear. And he, AND they, suffered for it.

What if God showed up one day and gave you a task, wanted you to rebuke the Pharaoh of the day, maybe Bashar al-Assad or Vladimir Putin? Or even just told you to turn to your family, your friends, and your neighbors, and start preaching to them about doomsday and the sinful lives they are all leading. How terrifying to even imagine, just for a moment, having to give up our jobs and our everyday lives and do such a thing.

But there ARE people who do this. And I am not talking about people who’ve had mental breakdowns or who have psychological problems. I’m also not only referring to ancient examples, like Samuel, or the other three Biblical figures who also heard God urgently call to them in the same way Samuel heard it, by doubling their name, “Abraham, Abraham; Jacob, Jacob; Moses, Moses,” and who ALL responded: “Hineini – Here I am.” I am NOT talking about them alone. Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, all of them felt it as well; the fire SHUT UP in their bones, that demanded they speak up against injustice, even at personal risk and ultimately, sacrifice.

And yes, many of the most famous examples set out with religious agendas, speaking of God and Biblical morals, but you don’t need that. Let us, for a moment, take that out of the picture. Let’s remove God briefly, yes, even here on Kol Nidrei night, IN synagogue, ON the holiest day of the year. Let’s take God OUT of the picture. Look, I want to be totally honest with you. Many people in this room do not believe in God, or you aren’t sure what you believe. And believe it or not – literally – that is OK! So forget God, I’m serious.

We can still feel that fire in our bones, in our souls (if there is such a thing as the soul). Don’t be distracted by the question of whether there’s a God or not, focus on whether you can believe in a cause, ANY cause, with the kind of passion that sometimes, but not always, comes from religious belief. Do you need God, to care about children dying because of terrible gun laws? Do you need God, to know that Ebola is a horrible virus that must be stopped? And do you need God, to dump a bucket of ice water on your head and donate to an incredibly worthy cause, that will fight an otherwise incurable, terminal disease?

On Rosh Hashanah, we talked about “Hineini” being directional, relational; it’s always said TO someone else. But that ‘someone’ doesn’t have to be God! We talked about saying “Hineini” to ourselves, but we can also say “Hineini” to the very notion of being called, of feeling passionate and committed to something you believe in. The real enemy here is apathy, cynicism, and jaded indifference. When we’re sitting in that guard booth at the museum and we hear someone call our name, it’s definitely easier to imagine it’s candid camera, or a prank, or ANYTHING other than a voice calling us to devote ourselves to something, to make the most of our lives, and to be a force for GOOD in the world… because it’s scary to care.

But what if there IS a voice calling to you? What if that voice is inside you – conscience, morality, whatever – but it is CALLING you… and you are just too scared, too worried about what it’ll demand of you, too concerned about what you’ll have to give up, to listen.

Please, listen.

What IS the message of Kol Nidrei? The lights feel dimmer, small candles line the back wall, the haunting melody of Kol Nidrei has been sung, and we’re all bracing ourselves to feel the impact of the fast, which hasn’t yet set in, since we recently ate… but we know it’s coming. We have set the stage; we have created the mood, the atmosphere. But now YOU have to choose to HEAR the lesson of the day.

I believe, that message is to believe in something, to care, to want to make yourself a little bit better, and thus to make the world a little bit better. In Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins’ book, Moments of Transcendence: Inspirational readings for Yom Kippur, he quotes Eugene O’Neill as saying, “Each of us is capable of an unimagined greatness. Each of us is a treasure house of vital potential. Yet apprehensive love and inhibited talent pervade the expression of our being. Past failure and present fear restrict the range of our feelings and the purview of our thinking. While these days of meditation awaken us to the truth of what we are, they must also quicken within us the reality of what we can be.”

“Past failure,” “present fear,” these things are also the enemy, along with the apathy and cynicism I mentioned before. We don’t believe we can change, and it’s SCARY to imagine change. But the message, the TRUTH, of Yom Kippur is that we DO have that ‘unimagined greatness’ in us… if we’re willing to hear it calling out to us, begging us for a “Hineini.”

Even the great prophet Samuel, after whom TWO books of the Bible are named, even he needed to hear God’s voice FOUR times, just as our museum guard did, before he could accept that it was, in fact, God! All the great leaders, in the world, in our communities, and our own personal heroes; they have ALL had moments of doubt and self-criticism. They’ve wavered from their path and wondered if it’s all worth it. It’s ok to be unsure. It is hard to get ourselves to a place of being ready to say “Hineini.” But tonight is a good place to start.

Use the opportunity of this evening, and perhaps also of the entire day tomorrow, into the last service at dusk, Neilah, when the curtain in front of the Ark will be opened, and you are invited to come up and stand before it to offer a personal prayer. Use this time to think about, consider – meditate perhaps – on the word “Hineini.” How are you here, and how are you NOT here?

You don’t need God to get something out of Yom Kippur, but you DO need YOU! Bring yourself fully to this experience, to the fasting, the praying, the beating our chests, and yes, to standing in front of an open Ark at Neilah time, and it WILL lead you to new “Hineini” experiences beyond this holiday, beyond the synagogue, and beyond Judaism. You will open yourself up to new opportunities in life, and to greater harmony with yourself and others.

So don’t wait, and make that voice call to you FOUR times before you respond. Listen to it today, Divine or not, and begin this new year with a resounding “Hineini!”

Shanah Tovah!

(…and G’mar Chatimah Tovah – may we all inscribe OURSELVES in the Book of Life before the gates close.)