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 morning 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!
Ok, so this one is a
little bit harder to put on the blog in written form. It involved a bit of
theatrics on the bimah, so you’ll have to use your imagination. Sorry.
Basically, picture me fumbling around nervously. First, I started delivering
the wrong sermon, went back to my chair to get the right sermon, dropped IT on
the floor and the papers flew everywhere, then finally made it to the table,
where I continued to fidget, tap the table nervously, knock the microphone with
my hand, and have trouble getting the words out correctly. (It had the desired
effect…) Finally, I began my sermon:
When God first called
to Moses at the Burning Bush, Moses was frightened. (Clear throat) He really
didn’t want the job. He felt… Excuse me. (Take out handkerchief, wipe forehead…)
He, Moses, that is, felt that he wasn’t the right (tap table) person for the
job, that he wasn’t able to speak so good. (Clear throat again) Not, in a
sense, he didn’t feel he had a way with his words.
In fact, the Torah
mentions SIX different times that Moses protests to God, giving various reasons
why God should pick someone else. The first time is in… wait, I had the
citation here, hang on… It was Exodus, chapter 2. No, sorry, chapter 3. Right,
verse 11 in chapter 3, and then in chapters four, five, AND six.
And reading about all
the protestings of Moses’s, we are kind of left picturing him as a bit of a
nervous wreck! The kind of person who it might have been painful to have to
listen to, who couldn’t really speak in public.
It would be so awkward,
you know? [Pause] Kind of like, if a person started the wrong speech. Then dropped
his papers before even starting to speak. Or had to keep wiping his forehead,
creating uncomfortable pauses. And said things like ‘speak so good’ and
‘protestings,’ and kept clearing his throat, tapping the table, and fidgeting
while speaking. It would be unpleasant to listen to, I think?
But Moses grew, he
improved. He probably learned to take a deep breath whenever he got nervous
(take a deep breath), and then, gradually, he began to trust his own abilities
to speak in public. [Pause]
[By now, I’m delivering
the speech in my usual tone and pace.]
It was indeed in
chapter three that God first approached Moses at the Burning Bush, and first
called him to the formidable and daunting task of freeing the Israelites from
bondage in Egypt. And then Moses did, in fact, protest SIX times, eventually
pleading and begging God to just, please find someone else. But God knew that Moses
was the right person for the job, just as I imagine that, on some deep level,
Moses too knew that he could do this.
Even before that first encounter,
at the fiery shrub, God was watching Moses’ actions, not listening only to his
words. He, Moses, defended an Israelite being abused by an Egyptian taskmaster,
when he himself, raised in the palace, had nothing to gain and everything to lose by sticking up for this
lowly slave. He then came to the rescue for a group of women by a well in
Midian, chasing away their male harassers, even though he was an
outsider, and again was risking his own safety by intervening in someone else’s
affairs.
Even the Burning Bush
itself showed Moses’ readiness. The rabbis tell us, in a midrash, a rabbinic
story, that the bush had actually been burning since the dawn of time. A Ner
Tamid, a perpetual flame. Moses was just the first one to actually stop and notice
it, the first one aware enough of his surroundings, curious and inquisitive,
sensitive to disturbances in the world around him, to pause and turn aside to
look. All of these things were seen by God, and so Adonai knew the right
person for the job was standing right there, even though Moses was not yet
convinced.
And, of course, when
God DID reach out to him at the bush, Moses’ response was… “Hineini.” And so
today, in this the final of our four sermons on “Hineini,” on mindfulness and
presence, I want to talk to you about saying this difficult word even when
we’re not ready. And I began my sermon by kind of putting you through a little
awkward display of poor public speaking, because I really don’t think Moses was
good at it at first. We know the Moses who led the people for 40 years, brought
them out of bondage; but I wanted us all to actually experience an earlier version of Moses, nervous and
sweaty. In my mind, I picture some of the Israelites, who, when first
approached by Moses while in slavery, saw this anxious, fidgety schlemiel, a dope even, who didn’t
present well at all, and they probably thought to themselves, “This guy is
gonna stand up to Pharaoh and free us from oppression?? No way!!”
But later, on the other
side of the Sea of Reeds, and then years later, after receiving the Ten Commandments
and having Moses lead them through countless battles, and fending off
rebellions and constant complaints, those same Israelites must have looked at
him with new eyes and thought, “Boy, were we wrong about him! Who knew that he
could accomplish so much?” I’ll tell you who knew… God! And THAT is not only
how I want us to understand Moses, that is how I want us to look at
ourselves here today as well.
We cannot afford to
wait until we feel completely competent, ready to go, free of fear and doubt,
and only THEN will we be ready to say “Hineini.” No! We must say “Hineini”
first. We must push ourselves to declare, “Here I am! I am ready to make a
difference in my life, I am ready to be more present to family and friends, to
be kinder to myself and to truly improve in the year ahead”; and when we make
such a declaration, the journey can then TRULY begin.
We can ALL be Moses. We
can start off saying “Hineini” even when we’re nervous as can be. We can grow
into the person and the ideals that we long to embody. But we need to be
deliberate. We need to make choices, and we need to have our eyes open, like
Moses, to the burning bushes that may be out there along our journey. I can
tell you right now, they won’t be lying right there, IN your path, waiting for
you to step over them! They may be off to the side, out of your current field
of vision, slightly inconveniently located away from the main path; you
have to choose to turn aside and find that bush.
I want to share with
you a story:
Lincoln Hall was the
name of an Australian mountain climber who scaled Mount Everest in 2006, but
who, on the way back down, was afflicted with altitude sickness. His
companions, his sherpas, they all tried to help him, but to no avail.
Eventually, they just left him. Several other groups also passed by, either
going up or down Mount Everest, but they never turned aside to try and help
Lincoln Hall. Incredibly, he survived a night alone.
The next day, another
climber, Dan Mazur, was passing by with his team, and they saw a man sitting
alone, with no oxygen tank, half undressed, and clearly not in his right mind.
Mazur chose to abandon his own mission, later stating to reporters, “The summit
is still there and we can go back. Lincoln only has one life.” This all took
place at 8,700 feet, much closer to the top than the bottom, but Mazur stepped off
his own path, and instead helped bring Lincoln Hall back down to safety.
In that moment, SO
close to your goal of reaching the summit, you might think the worst thing
would be to have to abandon your quest. Who will remember me, if I don’t
actually make it to the top?? Yet ironically, many other people climbed to the peak
of Mount Everest, but most of them are not famous. The story of Dan Mazur is
known today, and has been the subject of books and movies, because he saw that
his journey lay elsewhere, not in forging ahead and upward, but in turning
aside and stepping OFF that path.
When Mazur was
interviewed after this ordeal, and asked how he could abandon his quest, he
also stated: “There is a Buddhist teaching that life is all about the journey,
not the destination.” This is also a very Jewish saying. In Pirkei Avot, the
Ethics of our Fathers, the rabbis teach us: “You do not have to complete the
task, but neither are you free to desist from it.” Don’t worry about beginnings
and endings; focus on the journey, focus on the here and now.
This certainly sums up
the life of Moses. He never does reach his destination, assuming that
destination is supposed to be the Promised Land. But if we look at Moses’
legacy, can we really say he didn’t achieve his goal? We sometimes lament for
him, because we think the purpose of it all was to set foot inside Canaan. Yet
Moses achieved SO much in life, and lived with great purpose and meaning. And
really, THAT is what it’s all about.
The word “Hineini” is
all over the Hebrew Bible, 178 times, in fact. But most of them are used, not
in the strongest form of mission-driven purpose and great intentionality, but
in passing speech. Only 14 of the 178 are powerful examples of people opening
up their eyes – to themselves, to the people around them, and to God – and
realizing that they can be more, they can DO more with the time they’ve been
given on this earth.
I want to pause for a
second, before I conclude this, my final sermon of four on “Hineini.” Why did I
choose this theme? Why is THIS, mindfulness in Judaism and in our everyday
lives, the most important issue to me, especially considering the violence in
Israel, the rise of anti-Semitism around the world, and so many other crisis
issues capturing our attention right now, like climate change, gun violence,
ISIS, and Ebola? Why devote FOUR sermons, on the most well-attended holidays of
the year, to talking about “Hineini”?
Many people in the
Jewish community today do not feel that Judaism is relevant in their lives. They
don’t believe it speaks to their experiences, it doesn’t know what they are
going through. I have chosen to devote the majority of my time this High
Holiday season to saying to you, Judaism CAN help you navigate through your
daily challenges and stresses, it does have SO MUCH to say about our everyday
lives.
When we read about
people saying “Hineini” in the texts of our Tradition, we need to look past the
specifics of their situation, the ancient contexts of their existence, and see
that the Bible is reaching out to you and to me, it’s trying to offer some
wisdom about how to live our lives to the fullest. In our library, just down
the hallway, Amy Graham, our librarian, has put out books for people to peruse
during the High Holiday season. (She does this every year, which I think is
fantastic) One of the books that’s sitting by the couches is Hineini in Our
Lives by Norman J. Cohen. In it, Cohen writes about the people who say
“Hineini” in the Bible, much as I’ve shared with you on these Days of Awe, and
he echoes this sentiment I just expressed, about the connection between ancient
models and everyday life in 2014. He explains: “Every moment of calling and
response is a model for each of us, who must learn how to discern the call of
the other and react to it appropriately. We are the Abrahams, the Moses’s, and
the Samuels of our time, and we are challenged to hear the call and the cry as
they did.”
We began the holiday on
Rosh Hashanah, reading Torah portions about Abraham, and how he said “Hineini”
and was able to be present to himself and God. Earlier this morning, Fran Stier
chanted beautifully our Yom Kippur Haftarah, from the prophet Isaiah, which (perhaps
by now not so surprisingly) ALSO contains the word “Hineini,” in its strong,
present, purposeful form. But this time, it is not a person saying “Hineini” to
God; it is God saying “Hineini” back to us! P. 286, v. 9, reads: “Then, when
you call, Adonai will answer; when you cry out, God will say: Here I am.” And
in the margin, our Machzor takes note of the connection between Abraham’s
“Hineini” and God’s, and how the two bookend the High Holiday season.
But it doesn’t just tie
together Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, it is the message I want to convey to us
all here today. When we make the effort, when we reach out and challenge
ourselves to be present to our own experience, and to really push ourselves to
say “Hineini” even when we’re not ready, even when we feel like bungling fools,
dropping papers and making nervous mistakes; IF we can say “Here I am to this
life; Here I am to what the world has to offer me; and Here I am to make the
most of it all,” THEN God will be our partner. God will join us in our projects,
and the work of our hands will be blessed.
Judaism has SO MUCH to
offer us, to help us navigate our everyday lives. I hope you will choose to say
“Hineini” and join us on this journey. Turn aside from the ordinary path; seek
out the Burning Bush that will inspire and enrich your life. If you do, the
community and ALL the stories of our Tradition will be here to respond
resoundingly, to welcome you in and to say “Hineini”
Shanah Tovah!
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