High Holidays 5776 - Sermon 3 of 4 (Kol Nidrei)

Now that Yom Kippur is over, I would like to share with you my two final sermons in this year's High Holiday series. Pasted below is my sermon from Kol Nidrei, the night of Yom Kippur, and I will also post shortly my Yom Kippur morning sermon; the final in my series on "Ahavah," "Love." As always, feedback is welcome and appreciated.

Shanah Tovah!

What does the Book of Life mean to you? How are we to understand this ledger, this peculiar concept, which dominates our High Holiday liturgy in general, and our Yom Kippur services in particular. We just sang about it: “B’Seifer Chayim, B’rachah v’Shalom, u’Farnasah Tovah, Nizacheir v’Nikateiv l’fanecha” - “Remember us,” O’ God, and “write us into” “The Book of Life, Blessing, Peace, and Good Fortune.” More than just this one song, we actually refer to the Book of Life A LOT throughout the holiday. We greet one another on Yom Kippur with, “G’mar Chatimah Tovah,” “In the end, may you be sealed for good”? And we also say “L’Shanah Tovah Teichateimu,” “May you be sealed for a good year.” All of these images, and many others in our High Holiday prayers, speak of being written, signed, inscribed, and sealed in God’s Book of Life. We rarely spend too much time unpacking this, but tonight, in light of this year’s High Holiday theme, we must.

Every year, I speak on one, single topic across four High Holiday sermons. Two were delivered on Rosh Hashanah, tonight is number three, and I’ll offer one final sermon tomorrow morning; all four - this year - are on the subject of “Ahavah,” “Love.” Last week, we spoke about “Love Your Neighbor As Yourself” and “Love Peace and Truth,” and tonight let’s delve into the enormous, intimidating, and so crucially central topic of “God’s Love.” And so, I feel compelled to look at the song we just sang, and how we are all impacted by the image of God’s Book of Life. Many of us struggle deeply with this idea, and the ramifications which accompany it. Traditional Jewish theology tells us that there is a Book of Life and a separate Book of Death, and our actions before, during, and even immediately after the High Holidays determine our fate; will God write our names in one book or the other for the Jewish year that is about to begin. “Mi yichyeh u’mi Yamut?” we ask in the famous (or perhaps infamous…) Untane Tokef prayer - “who will live and who will die” in the year ahead?

This notion hurts us a lot. If we imagine that God is making deliberate, willful, intentional decisions about our lives, we feel angry. How and why are you choosing my fate? If we believe that God has answers in mind for the questions of who will live and who will die, who by cancer, flooding, dementia, and car accident - we feel furious! “YOU did this??” “You made this happen?!?” It hurts too much to entertain these ideas. Yet how can we not? And if we want to speak of God’s Love, can we do so without facing these horrible, painful, but ever-present questions?

         

On Rosh Hashanah, I shared with you that earlier this summer I spent some time in England, and saw the beautiful redone sanctuary of the New North London Synagogue, with three quotes on love from the Torah carved into its walls. Front and center, right about their enormous, 20 ft. Ark, was written: “v’Ahavta et Adonai Eloheicha,” “Love the Lord, your God,” and many of us know that the quote continues, “b’Chol Levav’cha, uv’Chol Nafshecha, uv’Chol Meodecha” - “with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might.” How can we do that, love God at all, let alone with our entire being, when we’re sitting here contemplating these Books of Life and Death, and the implications they might have? And while we’re here, pushing the envelope and asking these tough questions of the Almighty, I’ve simply got to ask… is it reciprocal? If I can get there, if I COULD, somehow, push myself to truly love Adonai with my entire heart, my deepest soul, and all my might, will God do the same? When God commands my love, will I get it back in return? Or will I be the tragic lover in a Shakespeare play, pouring my heart out to my beloved, only to learn that my feelings are embarrassingly and heart-breakingly unrequited?

We sing, over and over, on the holidays about the Thirteen Attributes of God, “Adonai, Adonai, Eil Rachum v’Chanun,” and we list each of God’s praiseworthy characteristics. Kindness, compassion, faithfulness, forgiving… Why doesn’t the list include some form of “Ahavah”? Does God not love us?

On the High Holidays, we say that we are here to ask big questions. Rabbis often use this speaking opportunity to challenge our thinking about Israel or anti-Semitism. But tonight I feel that we need to turn our attention to God, and to our relationship with our Creator; if indeed we believe there is a Creator out there, responsible for breathing life into us in the first place. It is so, so painful to feel alone. And sometimes we look up at the sky, or we read about death and destruction in the news, and we search inside ourselves, and we do, we feel alone. Today, on this holiest day of the Jewish year, should we not ask ourselves, one another, and the Heavens above, about God’s Love?

Easy answers are hard to come by. Of course they are. But let us ask the question nonetheless. And let me turn to our ancestors, the sages who lived thousands of years before us, for guidance, as they struggled with these very same issues as well. In fact, they often lived with the threats of violence as a part of their everyday, ongoing lives, so if they found a way to understand and come to peace with loving God, being commanded to do so, and feeling God’s love in return, we certainly can as well. The great sage, Rashi (whose hometown of Troyes, in France, I also visited in June, by the way), wrote that to love God was to perform God’s commandments out of love. In other words, the way we express our love for God is not through love letters, chocolate boxes, or a dozen roses;

it’s through living our lives with tremendous love, kindness, compassion, and forgiveness towards ALL of God’s Creation. When we love that which God loves, then we are expressing our love for God as well. And this, I believe, is our first step towards understanding this issue a little bit better.

In just a few days, our lives will all be impacted by an historic visit here in Philadelphia. As you are all most certainly aware, Pope Francis will be arriving on Friday. And more than perhaps most people, our current pope understands that loving God IS a commandment, and it is lived by loving others around us. Pope Francis recently stated: “We must restore hope to young people, help the old, be open to the future, spread love. Be poor among the poor. We need to include the excluded and preach love.” I am a big fan of his. Pope Francis cuts to the core of difficult issues, strips away all pretense, and addresses critical topics unapologetically. He knows how to put his faith into action, and he feels, deeply, that compassion and love are at the center of our existence.

But our big struggle actually wasn’t trying to figure out how WE should love God; we wanted to know IF God loves US, and how THAT is being expressed! We want to know, is it reciprocal… and perhaps more painful to ask: why - sometimes, even often, do we not feel loved? Let’s return to the Thirteen Attributes of God. The word “Ahavah” may be absent, but actually the totality of all these other behaviors - kindness, compassion, forgiving, faithful - IS love.

Each of the thirteen Hebrew words like Chesed, Rachamim, Chanun, each has its own meaning, but each is also a synonym for love. And these attributes of God, they are not action-driven or mighty, like “conqueror of enemies” or “curer of Alzheimer’s Disease.” God’s role in our lives is to partner with us, as a source of kindness, compassion, and strength in difficult times. God does not step in and stop weather storms or prevent dictators from rising to power, but is ever-present to give us courage, hope, inspiration, and of course, love IF we are willing to let God in. When we look to the sky and expect God to remove hunger from the world, we are sorely disappointed. But when we instead look around and see that all the food the planet needs IS here, we may, perhaps, instead pray for God to speak to all of our hearts and lovingly urge us to distribute it more equitably. God is present, the question is really whether our eyes and our souls are open to see and feel that closeness. The 13^th Century Persian poet, Rumi, wrote: “Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” We need to open ourselves up and remove the barriers, then love will find us.

Joe Rosenstein is the author of a siddur called Eit Ratzon, which contains wonderful meditations and thought-provoking prayers. It also contains one of my favorite reimaginings of how we understand God’s role in our lives. The second paragraph of the Shema is very hard for us to accept. Much like God’s Book of Life, we struggle with this passage from Deuteronomy, chapter 11. It speaks of the consequences for disobedience to God’s laws, and specifically God’s withholding rain on our fields, which we all know causes droughts and starvation. Again, it is painful to imagine God doing these things on purpose. But Rosenstein reads it differently: “If you listen to My commandments, [says God,] and you do them, the rain that falls on your fields will also fall in your lives, enabling EVERYTHING to grow.” In other words, when we live with compassion, kindness, forgiveness, and courage, and we accept a sense of commandedness in our lives, all kinds of things grow and flourish, in a literal AND metaphorical sense. Not because God will now show us favor, but rather we’ve created a good life, filled with blessings and strong relationships which are themselves a reward. Even when bad things happen, we are rooted and fortified, and emotionally able to face challenges, illnesses, and hardship. Our eyes are open to the symbolic rain, the bounty, that is all around us.

Perhaps most powerfully, Rosenstein then turns it around. He writes: “If you turn away from My commandments, then you will also turn away from My rain; you will no longer be aware of this blessing and its source, so that, for you, the rain will no longer exist.” It is not physical rain which God withholds. The commandments are a tool to make us aware of all the beauty and wonder in our lives, and if we instead choose to live without meaning, then how could we possibly feel and perceive the blessings that exist all around us? When we come to services on Yom Kippur and take stock of our lives and seek to make real change - we are actually writing ourselves into the Book of Life. This is the message I want to say to you all here tonight. It is not God who writes us in that book. Living a life of meaning and purpose, being able to ask forgiveness of another and accept it back fully and wholeheartedly, being vulnerable and introspective, and yes, able to really see and feel love in our lives, giving it and receiving it - doing all these things is equivalent to writing ourselves into a book of life; a book of living, truly and fully living.

There is also pain and hardship, misfortune and illness in our lives. When we are angry and wounded, we ascribe our misery to God because it at least gives us a focus for our outrage. And our wrath IS often justified. But I do not believe that God is sending these things to punish us. I cannot. Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, the rabbi of that synagogue in London, writes about pain and love, suffering and perseverance. He describes seeing people who have experienced deep loss or hurt working within themselves to tell an inner story which helps them integrate and cope with their situation. He writes, “we may not be able to change the facts of what has happened to us, but… we are able to determine, at least in part, what it SHOULD mean in our souls and in our lives.”

Sometimes it can feel like a loved one, trying to offer a hug, to hold us, but we are too filled with rage to even notice their presence. God has not abandoned us, but sometimes it hurts too much to feel the embrace. This is hard work. That is why our Torah tells us to experience God’s love “b’Chol Levavcha, uv’Chol Nafshecha, uv’Chol Meodecha,” “with all your heart, soul, and might.” If you want to feel it, it is there. But we have to be willing to let love in. And, as Pope Francis reminds us, to spread it to others as well.

I hope that this Yom Kippur will be for you, for every one of us, a meaningful and introspective holiday. Use this time to have an honest conversation with yourself, and - if you want it to - that mindful introspection WILL also be a conversation with God. Our ancient Talmud teaches us: “It is not sufficient to leave God’s love in heaven; it must be in our hearts and hands.” Think about how you could better experience the rain and bounty that is already falling in your life, and what it might look like for you - with a full heart, an open soul, and with dedicated might - to bring this love down from heaven and write YOURSELF into the Book of Real Living in the year ahead.

Shanah Tovah!