Kol Nidrei 5779 - Main Sermon
Shanah Tovah.
“Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.” I love that quote. I don’t exactly know why, and I’m not quite certain why it’s stuck with me through SEVEN books, even though it’s from the end of Book One, but when the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Albus Dumbledore, uttered that line to Harry Potter, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I know it seems a little silly to begin there, but last week, on Rosh Hashanah, I reminded you that you trust me… even when you don’t see where I’m going with things, so I’m going to ask for a little of that trust here tonight. This D’var Torah will NOT be all about Harry Potter...
One of the most wonderful things I’ve had the joy of doing in just the last few months is to re-read the Harry Potter series. This time, my nearly-six year old daughter, Caroline, sits next to me; sometimes listening intently, sometimes shouting responses to the characters or asking questions right in the middle of a sentence. She hides her face when it gets too scary, and for some reason she keeps mixing up Hagrid and Dumbledore. Last week, we started the THIRD book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I read them on my own many years ago, and through all seven books - through all the adventures and twists, spells and Quidditch matches - one thing that always fascinated me was J.K. Rowling’s emphasis on the name of the main bad-guy, Lord Voldemort. Sorry, You-Know-Who or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.
In the entire wizarding world, only two people seem to feel confident saying his name; Harry Potter and Albus Dumbledore. In Book One, whenever Harry says the name, everyone else cringes and cowers. Then, towards the end of the book, he accidentally says it in front of Dumbledore, apologizes, and corrects himself to say “You-Know-Who.” That’s when Dumbledore says to him: “Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.”
God is a little bit like Lord Voldemort. Ok, I realize that’s a crazy sound byte, and I would like to think it SHOULD be the exact opposite. I want to believe that Lord Voldemort is evil incarnate, at the far end of one side of the spectrum, while God is everything good in the world at the other end. But here we are, on Kol Nidrei, and if we’re being HONEST - and many of you know my theme this year is, indeed, “Radical Honesty” - underlying our service here tonight is A LOT of fear. We may not subscribe to it personally, but our prayers emphasize God’s Book of Life, in which we all hope to see our names written. We pray fervently, so we won’t die in the year ahead. A hard truth to look at, I know, but it is a VERY present theme on Yom Kippur.
In Hebrew, we call the days from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur “Yamim Noraim,” and translate that as “Days of Awe.” Peter Koelle always rolls his eyes when I say that, and he tries to correct me. Because he’s right! It IS an awful translation. “Yamim Noraim” really means “Terrifying Days” or “Days of Fear.” Incredibly, I could NOT find a literal translation online! Every Jewish website, even every dictionary website, just wrote “Days of Awe” as the “literal” translation. Exasperated, I went to Google Translate and wrote the word “Noraim” by itself, and sure enough, the translations were “terrifying, frightful, dire, dread, shocking, [even] hellish!” “Ah,” I though. Finally an HONEST translation. So I added the word “Yamim” for “Days” to see what Google Translate would now say. Wouldn't you know it: “High Holy Days.” Oy. We are so fearful of the word “fear,” that we cannot even say IT out loud.
I don’t WANT us to think of God this way… but we do. Many of you have heard me rail about “g-d,” and Rabbi Miller can tell you I feel WAY too strongly about this. The word “God” is not God’s Name, and it’s anyway in the wrong language. But we write g-d like we write You-Know-Who; we can’t bear to get too close. It’s supposed to be out of respect, I know, but really we’re just moving further and further away from God.
Names are SO important. As many of you also know, I have an affinity for names. I wish I could teach it to others, but that’s hard to do. I do sometimes think of it as a super-power I’m very fortunate to have. I’ve seen people in services just once, then they’ve showed up again a year (or more) later, and for some odd reason, their name just pops back into my head. But in truth, I HAVE also worked hard to cultivate it over the years. On Rosh Hashanah, I promised you I’d reveal some of my secrets; well, here they are!
If I’m sitting in a meeting with people I don’t know, when we go around and introduce ourselves, I draw a little table on a piece of paper and write in everyone’s names next to where they’re sitting. Or even like this, during services, I may quickly scan a section and just say your names in my head. Sure, it’s one extra thing to think about, but again, names are SO important. On occasion, I’ve employed an accomplice. I may ask a friend to introduce themselves first, so I can hear someone’s name. So yeah, there are a few tricks of the trade… And I’ve come to realize, over the years, just how crucial this is. If you stop into Ohev’s office during the year, and I know who you are, it may make you feel like you belong, EVEN if you aren’t here so often. When we process around with the Torah scrolls on the High Holidays, I try to say every name I know out loud, because even though this may not be true for everyone, I know that some people may feel, “Ah, I DO matter, I am seen, this IS my congregation, because the rabbi knows me.” And I genuinely feel I do. Names are important. If I point over there and invite our president, ANNIE, to say a few words, or ask our first vp, JOHN, to stand up, for a brief second they may feel a twinge of discomfort, even pain, feeling unseen because I seemingly “forgot” their names are Amy and… I want to say, Jim?
Knowing someone’s name can create intimacy. And having an intimate name for someone can increase that further still. In an article for Scientific American, entitled “Why Do We Use Pet Names in Relationships?”, author Elizabeth Landau examines the use of nicknames and terms of endearment in relationship. Among other findings, she quotes one researcher as saying, “With increasingly public lives, an intimate nickname between partners is all the more important for distinguishing the false intimacy of social media from the real intimacy of direct human relationships.” When we know someone’s name, our bond becomes REAL. So how come we don’t know God’s Name?
You may already be aware of this, but even when we DO say God’s Name in the Jewish tradition, we are using a place-holder! “Adonai” is what we say INSTEAD of pronouncing God’s actual Name. That name is spelled Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, also known as the Tetragrammaton (from the Greek, meaning “THE Four Letters”), and we actually do not know how it should be pronounced. Perhaps something like Yahwe, or closer to Jehova, Yehoah. Only the High Priest in the Ancient Temple in Jerusalem ever said it, and even then only once a year… ON Yom Kippur! Tomorrow we will mimic that service, and Rabbi Miller is going to speak a little about The Tetragrammaton, God’s Holiest Name. But in light of all we’ve said so far, about names, it IS interesting that we don’t say God’s Name. That’s when it really feels a bit too much, for me, like He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named in Harry Potter. Why are we running away?
Last week, I also told you I’m illustrating my theme of “Radical Honesty” with a Hebrew word from our prayer book, the word “Emet,” meaning “Truth.” One instance that I find really fascinating comes right before the Shema prayer. It caught my eye, because it’s translated really poorly, which is always your first clue that it’s complex, and the translators just didn’t know how to convey it without it sounding awkward. The TRUE meaning was hard to sit with. As we gather the four corners of our Tallit and sing “Va-havieinu l’Shalom…” about God bringing us together from the four corners of the earth, we add the line, “v’Keiravtanu l’Shimcha ha-Gadol Selah b’EMET.” Our Lev Shalem editors took a stab at this one: “...always drawing us nearer to Your Name; that we may truly acknowledge You..” They move the word Emet over to go with the second half of the phrase, because otherwise it’s too awkward. Incidentally, I looked in our old Siddur, Sim Shalom, and they just left out the word “true” altogether. Didn’t even translate it! But you and I are being HONEST readers, right? I might therefore suggest something like “You have drawn us closer to Your Great Name THROUGH Truth.” “B’Emet.” The path into a closer relationship is through Names AND through Truth. Without truth and honesty, it is difficult to get close to something; it is hard to cultivate a bond.
Rabbi Miller and I were even discussing what might seem like a heretical idea, that as we’ve lost the pronunciation of God’s Name, and instead our rabbis have told us it’s TOO powerful, it’s too awesome and fearful - uttering the name could level mountains! - that we’ve grown apart from God, Adonai, Yahwe. And on this one day, on Yom Kippur, God invites us to utter The Name. Abraham Joshua Heschel (whom I think I’ve referred to nearly EVERY High Holidays…) wrote two books, “Man in Search of God,” and “God in Search of Man,” and here it is as if God is indeed searching for US! God wants desperately to be seen, to be known. All year long, we’re too afraid to even say the word “God,” so we insert a stupid dash; today, we see you, God. We feel the strength of our relationship, and we can be real and truthful with one another.
I have to be honest about something else: When you only come a couple of times a year, or when you only think of God ONE way, it’s hard to deepen and intensify that relationship. (For some, maybe that’s the point?) When we grapple with our texts and our Tradition, we see God as loving, vengeful, jealous, playful, comforting, stern, authoritarian, and kind. The answer to the TRUE nature of God is not one or the other… it’s all of the above. When we only have one narrative, one story, however, we can’t see any of that. The Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, whose book “Americanah” some of you may know, recorded a phenomenal TED talk on this very subject. If you’re not familiar with TED talks - Technology, Entertainment, Design - they are really worth looking up on YouTube. Adichie gave a TED talk entitled “The Danger of a Single Story.” She talks about how people in the West have only ONE image of Nigeria, or sometimes of all of Africa, and THAT, itself, is a symbol of power. There are so many stories of America - our movies, our music, our sports, our politics, our clothing, food, and everything else - that Americans don’t experience this particular danger. She states, “To insist on only negative stories is to flatten my experience, and to overlook the MANY stories that formed me.” Perhaps most importantly, she emphasizes how storytelling is tied to power; that those in power not only have many stories about them, like the United States on the world stage, but when you have power, you also get to tell someone else’s story. You control THEIR narrative as well.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie also says something that really, really stuck with me: “When you show a people as one thing, as ONLY one thing, over and over again… that is what they become.” I never realized it before, but in my work with people in Chester, THIS has been one of their chief complaints! We, in the suburbs, all have ONE story about Chester. About violence, gangs, drugs, and poverty. We reduce them to ONE THING, and not only is it false, not only is it demoralizing, but it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. As Jews, especially Jews living in the US in 2018, we don’t face this as much as we did for most of our history. But the stereotypes never go away fully, do they? Money-grubbing, bank-controlling, world-conspiracy-creating Jews, ruining the world. Even Adichie admits in her talk that she knew only ONE story about Mexicans when she went there for a visit, and was embarrassed and ashamed when she realized how untrue, and certainly incomplete that picture was. We do this to God, when we only focus on the story of the Binding of Isaac or verses like “Eye for an Eye, Tooth for a Tooth.” We say the Bible hates gay people and prohibits abortion, when the texts are AT BEST unclear about these things, and more often tell nuanced stories with many layers and facets.
So let’s look at Ohev Shalom. What is our story, as a community? Well, for one thing, it is NOT one, single story. Some people here have been members for the better part of a century, others walked through those doors tonight for the very first time. We are single, married, divorced, widowed, gay, straight, young,…. less-young, male, female, trans, cis, Jewish, not Jewish, atheist, Caucasian, Latinx, African-American, light-skinned, dark-skinned, and so much more. If we are being radically honest, we do a pretty good job of including everyone… BUT we could do better. And the challenge here, much like what I spoke about on Rosh Hashanah, is that we have blind spots to other people’s experiences. We don’t always realize when we’re minimizing another or making them feel invisible, so we need to be open to critique and challenge ourselves to see things in a new way. Let me give you a couple of examples:
Bathroom signage. We have male bathrooms and female bathrooms. But for some, this is forcing a choice and a statement that they don’t want to make. If you’ve never thought about this, or at least never struggled with it, you CANNOT minimize its importance. You simply DON’T know! I’ve spoken to leadership about ways to modify our signage, and it has made some people uneasy. “What about MY discomfort? Why do I have to change?” Well, this is the crux of it, isn’t it? It’s all well and good when all we have to do is LISTEN to someone else’s story. That kind of inclusion is great for most people. Why? Because it’s an easy lift. It doesn’t inconvenience you or make you change anything about yourself. If, however, we are trying to genuinely include others, TRULY and HONESTLY make room for someone else’s story, it IS going to be hard! You ARE going to be uncomfortable! And if you’ve never previously been uneasy walking into a bathroom, never been unsure if you were “allowed” in there… maybe it IS your turn? I’m not certain what it’s going to look like, but I AM pushing leadership to change our signage. They won’t both be unisex bathrooms - at least not yet - but we can make room for this change, don’t you think? Our hearts - and our restrooms - are big enough; I’m sure of it.
Along a similar line, you may never have realized this, but when you are called up to the Torah for an honor, we are declaring to the world that you are a woman or a man. The Gabbai calling you up for your aliyah calls out “Ya’amod,” meaning “please rise,” but specifically for a man, or “Ta’amod,” specifically for a woman. Around the progressive Jewish world, there is now a call to shift this ritual to something else. One suggestion is “Na La’amod,” meaning “please rise” in a general sense, with no gender indicated. We’re going to try this tomorrow. Annie - I’m sorry, I mean “Amy” - is going to be our Gabbai, and she has agreed to try this out. It’s different. It’s weird. It’s not what we’re USED TO. And it’s important.
Names are important; titles are significant… and our stories are essential to who we are. As we spend the whole day of Yom Kippur trying to know God a little bit better, one prayer in particular encapsulates this for us. It’s referred to as the Thirteen Attributes of God, or you may know it as, “Adonai, Adonai, Eil Rachum v’Chanun…” In THIS story of God, again it’s just one story among many, we emphasize God’s characteristics of kindness and goodness. Twelve of the thirteen are almost synonyms of one another, “Rachum, Chanun, Erech Apayim, Rav Chesed, Noseh Avon, Nakeh” - Merciful, Compassionate, Patient, Abounding in Love, Forgiving Sin, Granting Pardon. All are about kindness and forgiveness… except one. Right in the middle, we have the one odd-trait-out; any guesses? Emet. When we see all of God’s goodness, when we wrestle with all of God’s punishments and chastisements, when we aspire to connect to God more fully… we need to incorporate a TRUE understanding as well. One that is open, vulnerable, humble enough to know it is incomplete, willing to be challenged, and radically honest.
Before I conclude this D’var Torah about names, stories, labels, relationships, and vulnerability, I want to fulfill a promise. On Rosh Hashanah, I told you my topic for this sermon, and I mentioned something painful. To illustrate my point about the importance of names AND of knowing people’s stories, I want to put myself out there, and share perhaps my worst experience as your rabbi. My most cringeworthy encounter. It was so bad, in fact, that when they left the congregation - and they DID leave because of my bungling - they told Bonnie Breit what had happened, and she could NOT believe it was true. She came and asked me, and I had to say, “yes! It’s horrible… and it’s true.” Even though they left, I am changing their names for this story: I’m going to dip into my Swedish heritage, so I don’t use anyone’s name here; let’s call this couple Sven and Ingrid. Deep breath.
They weren’t Ohev members for very long, but they did come semi-regularly on Friday nights. For some reason, their names just wouldn’t stick in my head. Most other people’s did, but I had to keep reminding myself who they were, and I simply don’t know why. I also had trouble retaining their story. Ingrid had shared it with me, but it JUST wouldn’t take. There were a couple of minor uncomfortable incidents, but then there was The Big One. One Friday night, we had eight Jewish congregants in the chapel and this couple. For some reason, I had told myself Sven was not Jewish. Meaning we only had nine, and thus no minyan. In the middle of the service, when everyone was meant to stand for the Barechu, I counted again to make sure and told everyone to be seated. Not only did someone question whether we had minyan, but it was Sven! HE asked if we didn’t have ten? THAT should have been my clue! I got it wrong. If the man is asking whether we have a minyan, he’s probably Jewish!! Cut your losses, give him the benefit of the doubt, and move on. Say you miscounted. Laugh it off. But no; young(er) Rabbi Gerber, determined to contract foot-in-mouth-disease, stepped into that awkward silence and said - in front of everyone, “Sven… are you Jewish?” To which, of course, he replied “yes,” and I tried to quickly move on. It didn’t matter; the damage was done.
What I wouldn’t have given to take that back. To perhaps have one of those Time Turners that Hermione Granger used in the third Harry Potter book. I would only have needed to jump back fifteen minutes in time! But no such luck. The next time I saw them, I apologized profusely again. We met in my office, and I tried to ask how I could make it right, but it was simply too late. I had not seen them. I had forgotten their story, I had trampled on their experience, and Ingrid in particular could NOT move past it.
The point here is NOT to scrutinize this story endlessly; there were indeed lots of factors at play. It’s really not about the specifics, but I am mentioning it here for two main reasons: One, to share my vulnerability. I remember a lot of names and a lot of stories; but I mess up sometimes. And epically so. I hope you therefore feel you can make mistakes as well. And two, I feel it illustrates the importance of being known and seen. That experience was painful, to be sure, but it DID also help me grow. Sometimes (often?) we cannot grow without being uncomfortable.
We cannot evolve without humbly stepping outside our own experience, and pushing ourselves to see things in new ways.
One easy (or easiER) change is to stop thinking of God like Lord Voldemort. We are not talking about He Who Must Not Be Named; this is not The Dark Lord Himself. I promise you. It is God with an o; Yahwe, whose name we cannot pronounce, but who yearns for a relationship with us and is filled with compassion, makes mistakes some of the time, and is - at the core - all about Truth. Adonai is not an evil wizard! More challenging, perhaps, is to listen to other people’s stories, acknowledge that making room for them WILL mean pushing ourselves to be uncomfortable and contract ourselves and our own egos a fair amount, and that we need to constantly and consistently shape and reshape our community to be its best self. No matter how many stories we encapsulate, there is always room for more.
When we are afraid, or even uncomfortable, awkward, or worried we just said the absolute wrong thing - we step away. We will do any, any, ANY thing we can do to get as far from these horrible feelings as possible. But that’s actually just going to make it worse. We have to NAME our fears, we have to NAME our relationships, and we have to NAME our experiences of ourselves, our world, and our God. If we can’t use the names, then like Professor Albus Dumbledore said, the fear of the thing itself will only increase. Names are important. Speaking them out loud, honestly and truly, can help us overcome even our worst fears. Then, perhaps, we can tell our OWN stories, and not let others tell them for us. And THAT is true magical power indeed.
Shanah Tovah!
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