Now that we've gotten through Rosh Hashanah, I thought I would post a couple of my sermons. In previous years, I've mostly focused on adding my four MAIN sermons (Rosh Hashanah Day 1 and Day 2, Kol Nidrei, and Yom Kippur morning. But someone asked me for Erev Rosh Hashanah, so I'm starting with that one. If anyone would like to read any others that aren't here, please just let me know. Thanks! And, as always, your feedback is welcome and appreciated.
Erev Rosh Hashanah 5779 - D’var Torah
Shanah Tovah!
Earlier, when I began our service here tonight, I included in my Welcome Message a Hebrew question - “Ayeka?” “Where are you?”
I meant it in the context of preceding what we imagine is the ideal response, which is “Hineini.” But we can consider “Hineini,” “Here I Am” aspirational. And even aspirational over the course of the holidays, not just here tonight.
In the meantime, I ask it as a genuine question, Ayeka? Where are YOU right now? Not geographically speaking, but on a MUCH larger spiritual plain. Because I truly mean it as a question, I want to take a moment before continuing with my remarks. It’ll be brief, but in the next minute of silence, just consider if you are feeling happy, anxious, excited, tired, bored, amused, angry, present, absent - whatever. If I’m going to talk about Ayeka, I want you to have some sense of where you are, how YOU are feeling. I’m going to stop talking now.
So Ayeka is actually a Biblical quote. It’s just one word, but it comes from the Book of Genesis, 3:9. Of course, I am taking it entirely out of context. There, in Bereishit, God is strolling through the Garden of Eden and calls out to Adam and Eve, “Ayeka?” to ascertain where they are, and perhaps also to see what hijinx they might be getting themselves into THIS time. Spoiler alert: It’s worse than God could have imagined...
For God, Adam, Eve, and one super-conniving snake, it’s not about prayer or mindfulness or spirituality. But even there, in the First Book of the Torah, God isn’t really asking an attendance question, right? God DOES know where Adam is PHYSICALLY; even a surface-level reading of the text teases out of us a deeper interpretation, because imagining God bewildered and genuinely confounded by the Where’s Waldo of the Garden of Eden just seems too strange. So even IN context, this word simply MUST mean more than just “Where you at??”
I also feel I need to defend myself, and point out that the rabbinic tradition is, at its core, a long history of employing verses from one part of the Bible to serve an ENTIRELY different need or function someplace else. The fact that the original didn’t mean that at all never stopped a rabbi from quoting ANYTHING!
Let’s focus on a second example. Look at p. 2 in your Machzor. The book suggests a welcoming blessing for the entire holiday season, namely “Shalom, Shalom…” Here, on Erev Rosh Hashanah in 2018, it seems like the perfect opening line of a prayer service. It is welcoming everyone into the building, whether you live a block away or on the other side of Delaware County… or maybe even FURTHER away! A crazy notion.
Lo and behold, this too is taken from elsewhere in the Bible, where the context had nothing to do with welcoming worshipers during High Holiday prayers. It comes from Isaiah 57:19, where the famous prophet is gazing into the future, at a time when the Temple will be rebuilt and Jerusalem, and the people will be welcomed back (Shalom, Shalom) from their dispersion anywhere and everywhere across the globe (la’rachok v’la-karov). So again, a text that isn’t about us at all, is used to speak to our experience here today.
But I wear my rabbinic propensity for disregarding context with pride! The welcoming blessing is PERFECT for us! Because it could be read as saying that you are welcome here, not just regardless of your point of origin, but also regardless of your state of mind. Are you feeling ‘rachok,’ far from here, either because you wish you were somewhere else, you have other things on your mind, or are just disillusioned and cynical about anything you might encounter in this service? Or are you ‘karov,’ feeling close, meaning you’re eager to pray, learn, and sing; excited and yearning for the spiritual vacation we’ve promised you?
Most likely, it isn’t one extreme or the other. Many of us are somewhere in between, and we’re likely to shift along that spectrum over the course of the holiday, or even a single service, or maybe even from minute to minute. I want to offer three important reminders:
That’s ok. Do not judge your experience. I know what I’m talking about here, folks. I am constantly judging myself and feeling harshly critical of my own decisions and experiences. I urge you not to do that. Allow yourself to feel uplifted by a prayer or totally unaffected by it. Hopefully something I say over the holiday will resonate with you, but something else might not at all; it might even upset you. All of it is ok. I mean that truly and sincerely.
Keep checking in with yourself, and asking yourself this simple question: Ayeka? Where are you? What’s going on inside, why is it sometimes so hard to look at, and what are you hoping to get out of these services and this High Holiday season. The more you check in, the easier it’ll get to listen for a response.
And finally, please hear the sincerity of my “Shalom.” My “Shalom, Shalom,” in fact! You are welcome here, you are not judged or pressured here, and we are all grateful to share this High Holiday experience with one another. Whether you are ‘rachok’ or ‘karov,’ far away or close by in WHATEVER way you choose to hear that; we bid you Shalom.
And of course, Shanah Tovah.
No comments:
Post a Comment