Do you know what people DON’T want to talk about on Yom Kippur? Food. Drink. Everyone has that ONE friend or family member - or maybe YOU’RE that person - who insists on talking about their favorite foods, or perhaps more specifically what they plan on eating to break the fast. I know that the fasting is NOT the easiest part. And I certainly can agree that if the rabbis had allowed drinking - even just water - would that have been SO bad?
I also sometimes hear from people who say that it’s confusing why we fast. Are we mourning? Is this a sad fast? To which the answer is, no. We have sad observances also, and unfortunately, our Jewish history has warranted the institutions of new fasts or more reasons to abstain from food, from time to time. Fasting is indeed a way that we express communal grief and sadness. But Yom Kippur is not a sad day. Then, when I proceed to explain that today is about intentionality, focus, setting aside material needs to really commit ourselves to the introspective work of self-examination, asking and accepting forgiveness, and striving to be better in the year ahead… I get confused looks. Inevitably, someone will say (and I imagine they are expressing the sentiments of countless others): “I think I could focus better if I wasn’t so hungry.”
I get it. I FEEL it. Headaches, fatigue, discomfort, dry mouth, irritability; all the signs of hunger and thirst. I GET IT, OK??? STOP NAGGING ME!!! Sorry, just a little grouchy this evening; I apologize… But here’s the thing; if you had food, if you had water or juice, if you could soothe all these uncomfortable, annoying feelings right now… wouldn’t you be sooo tempted to just go back to regular life? To talk about the weather, the Phillies, the Eagles, the election, our families, and aaaaaaall the other things that take up everyday life. When you feel this hunger and fatigue… you almost CAN’T focus on anything else. The very thing that we spend Yom Kippur grumbling and complaining about IS the thing that keeps us present to the day.
And related to that, I also want to say that our culture is often one of instant-gratification, or - if we’re feeling generous and bountiful - we’re willing to accept a SLIGHT delay in our gratification. Just enough for that food order to arrive from GrubHub or DoorDash or UberEats. The truth is, we do NOT like to sit in uncomfortable emotions. And believe you me, this sermon - perhaps more than any others I’ve delivered these High Holidays - is being preached inward as well as outward. It is HARD to stay in the emotions of fear, anger, loneliness, frustration, sadness, embarrassment, and shame. Every fiber of our being may be screaming “RESOLVE THIS!!! For God’s Sake, someone tell a joke or play a happy song or bring me my takeout order! This. Is. Unbearable.”
Even just silence is sometimes hard to bear. When we have shiva services over zoom, I open up the floor to allow people to speak about the deceased. And sometimes no one wants to unmute and grab that microphone. 10 seconds of silence, with all of us just staring at one another, can feel like an absolute ETERNITY! And it’s happened a couple times throughout these holiday services as well.
If, however, we are serious about working on ourselves, on being better in the year to come, and genuinely wanting to be a healthier, more harmonious person emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and physically, we need to shift our goal. This is hard to do. This takes a lot of work. Luckily we still have another hour and a half in which to work on this... oh yeah, AND then we have opportunities into Sukkot… I guess then also New Year’s Resolutions we can make on January 1st, and then other opportunities to improve before we get to next Rosh Hashanah and start this all over again. We DO get more chances; the gate is not closing on God’s end. But maybe we’re all selling ourselves short? Closing the gate, and blocking ourselves from being more present, whole, and harmonious? Why are we willing to be unhappy, maladjusted, uncomfortable, and not-whole, when there IS an alternative? When we reject the chance to improve, to make our lives and indeed the whole world a better place, we are closing the gates on ourselves. No one is slamming it in our faces… we are.
So if we want to stop hurting ourselves, we need to shift our goal. The objective is NOT to avoid feeling sad, unhappy, angry, offended, or ashamed. Those are human emotions, and we are MEANT to feel them like all the other ones. Yom Kippur is saying “Don’t eat your problems away. Don’t drink them away - with a stiff drink or a soft one - don’t self-medicate them away in the myriad ways that we all create coping mechanisms so as NOT to work on these issues. Just Be. Even when you’re feeling sad and alone; Just Be.
Throughout Yom Kippur, I’ve referenced the Still, Small Voice, the Kol Demama Daka, that we are meant to listen to. The voice of God, the voice of morality, the sound of kindness and compassion that is appealing to us at all times. But there is also a Kol Demama Daka inside each of us. Sometimes we’re too stressed, too busy, too preoccupied with family and friends, with games on our phones or scrolling through Social Media. Life. Is. Hectic. It is full of distractions and to-do lists of things that genuinely have to be done. And take up our time, energy, resources, and money. And yet, the Kol Demama Daka IS still there. There is always a voice telling us we COULD be more harmonious, more purposeful, kinder, more connected. Sometimes it’s just really, really faint. It’s hard to hear it, especially when we’re chewing, sipping, driving, exercising, scrolling, chatting, fixing, zooming. It can be so, so hard to hear it…
Hillel the Elder once wrote in Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of Our Ancestors: “Do not say, ‘when I have leisure time I will study,’ for perhaps you will never have leisure time!” Or, as John Lennon is erroneously credited for having written in his song “Beautiful Boy”: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” (It was actually first attributed to a cartoonist, Allen Saunders, from 1957…) Either way, the points that Hillel and John-slash-Allen are making are one and the same: Do it NOW! There are a million reasons to wait, to postpone, to delay, to first get something to eat and drink - maybe some egg salad on a bagel, and a nice glass of cold apple juice - and THEN we’ll work on ourselves. Then we’ll take the time to study, to introspect, to consider, to delve, and to REALLY commit to making serious changes. But we don’t.
Is it really true that if we had something to eat and a glass of… whatever, that we would be more focused, attentive, awake… AND willing to spend time on this? No! We would want to move on to the next thing. Get ready for tomorrow’s to-do’s, plan next week, think about Halloween, the impending election, the environment. ALL these things would snap us back to reality. Oddly enough, the fasting DOES help us keep our own feet to the fire (at least, potentially…). It can force us to stay with ourselves, in that pew, in that chair in the corner of your dining room, facing that screen, thinking about what/how you want to change.
I wish I could invite you all to come and say a prayer before the open Ark. Our final service of Yom Kippur, called Neilah, is that most special of services where the Ark remains open for about an hour; the entire repetition of the Amidah. Many years ago, we began the tradition of inviting people to come up - whenever they’d like to - during this time to say a prayer of their own in front of the scrolls. Many synagogues do this; it has the potential to be quite powerful… Sadly, I can’t do that. But that also means we are all forced to remember that God is all around; God is no more here, in front of this particular (and suddenly much more colorful, vibrant, and beautiful) Ark, than any Ark in a shul anywhere in the world! It would be easy to use this as yet another excuse NOT to be present. “I would be focused, but I can’t approach the Ark.” Again, I get it.
There is a powerful reading in our Machzor that we won’t be doing out loud. It’s on page 3, at the very start of your prayer book. It’s called “Now is the Time for Turning.” And it would be easy to say “well ‘now’ could be anytime. Maybe it was actually last High Holidays, or last week, OR it’s coming up; in six months or 30 years into the future!” But “now” could also be… “now.” I can’t invite you to the Ark, I won’t be checking if you remain standing for Neilah, and I’ll never know if you used this time to listen for the Still, Small, Voice - the Kol Demama Daka - that is calling out to you,
because it is ALWAYS calling out to you. And I’m not going to read “Now is the Time for Turning” out loud. I simply invite you to all these things. I invite you to take this opportunity. To not worry about the egg salad and apple juice, to not make other plans, to not picture God somewhere else… ANYWHERE else. Be Here Now. Listen for the voice. Don’t close your gate. Be. Here. Now. (pg. 408)
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