It is Not Across the Sea – Yom Kippur Morning 5772-2011

Your soul and my soul,

How often do you sit

with someone you love

in the next room

in the next chair

and what is it

that prevents your soul

from leaping up

leaping up to say

Your soul and my soul,

aren’t they one?

aren’t we one?

that’s how I feel.

What is it that prevents you?

Instead you sit

in your own room

in your own chair

filled with longing and loneliness

and the moment passes.

From A Spiritual Life, by Merle Feld (SUNY Press) 1999, pg. 97.

Loneliness. I came across this quote by John Corry, which I think is all too true. He said that:

Loneliness seems to have become the great American disease.

I think that it is indeed. It is far too easy for us to isolate ourselves these days though we can pretend that having a thousand friends on Facebook is the equivalent of having them where we live in our daily lives. Where once we at least had to go to the local video rental place to rent a movie, already a step removed from actually attending a movie, and where we might actually run into people whom we know in the process, now we can visit sites such as Netflix through our televisions and with a simple press of a button have many more movies than were once available at any movie rental store streamed live to our television sets without ever having to leave the couch. And because many families have multiple television sets, we need not necessarily bother to agree on which movie to choose. The disagreeing party could just go into a different room and watch a different movie. Same house, separate lives.

Where once conversations were had in person or at least over the phone, now young adults simply send text messages, interacting with each other speedily for certain, but in a medium that is less personal than the now seemingly lost form of communication known as the letter. The bigger problem, and what I would like to talk about today, is that this search for ease, for things to come to us without effort and without sacrifice of any kind on our part, is rampant, not only in our use of technology, but in our personal interactions as well.

Longing for connection, it is too easy to take the easy way out. While the easy way may be to text instead of call, it can also be to sit and wait for the other to act as well. I know that I too often ask others to contact me, to email me first. Yes, I am busy and yes it is far easier to respond to an email than to remember an email address. However, being passive, not acting, may mean that I miss out on interaction with someone with whom I would love to interact, because they do not take their time to contact me. Ultimately, while we may keep this discussion at an abstract level, talking about reaching out or waiting to be reached by another, the issue is really one that is much simpler.

It is a matter of giving and receiving and our society has become one in which we expect everything to be given to us. Not only do we expect more for less expense of time, money, or effort, we may even expect that others will provide it for us entirely. We like to receive, but giving? What may not be readily apparent is that we may well like giving even more!

Which actually feels better to us? Which is more satisfying?

I think that the answer to this question is directly related to the loneliness that we feel in our lives and I am going to show you how.

Rabbi Jeff Goldwasser asked the following question in a sermon he shared with me and with other colleagues about giving:

Think about the best gift you ever got—the one you had to wait a long time to get. The one that you had really craved, and then you got it. What was it for you?

Take a moment and remember.

When I was a child, I’m sure it was some sort of action figure, perhaps a Star Wars figurine. I remember being very excited to receive an X-wing fighter and a Tie fighter from the Star Wars set for my birthday. My best friend had the Millennium Falcon and I really wanted the X-wing and Tie fighter so that we could re-enact the battle scenes from the movie. Yes, it is collectable, but a bit more than well used. A year or two later, I had moved beyond that stuff and it went into storage.

I remember, in 1984, a bit older, having a Members Only jacket and some awful pants with zippers all over them because I wanted to be cool like Michael Jackson. Have you ever seen those clothes? They had fake zippers. Fake. They were not cargo pants with useful pockets. Fake zippers. I can’t even imagine wearing those clothes today and no, not just because they would be way too small on me! Even at the time, I probably only wore them a handful of times. Why did I even want them?

A couple of years ago, I was excited to receive the Get Smart DVD set as a present from my wife, something that I had wanted for a long time. Growing up, I loved that show. One weekend soon after I got the set, I watched the first couple of DVDs full of shows, not all of them. Since then, the DVDs have pretty much been sitting on a shelf. Someday, I will have time to watch them.

Most of us can probably relate to this. There are things that we want so badly that our hearts ache. We crave them. We go out of our way to get them. And then, we lose interest or perhaps realize that we should not have wanted what we desired in the first place. Receiving something we wanted often does not feel as good as we thought that it would feel. Sometimes, as Rabbi Goldwasser notes, it may actually make us feel badly when we realize how foolish our desire had been.

Is it the same with giving? How do we feel when we give to another something that they have wanted or needed? I can tell you that as a Rabbi, I have the opportunity to offer prayers and blessings and that while it certainly feels good to receive them from others, there is nothing like seeing the impact that a little bit of caring, a few words, a hug, holding a hand, can have on someone in need of such a gift.

But I agree with my friend, Rabbi Goldwasser, who talked about giving his daughter the brand new American Girl doll she had been talking about for weeks.

He noted that, “for a parent, it’s a great feeling. It’s almost intoxicating.” Even going back to when I was little, I remember gifts and remember how I felt.

Giving really can feel better than receiving. The experience is deeper, longer, and much more satisfying. Receiving just reminds us how banal most of our desires really are. Giving lifts us up and opens our hearts. It makes us feel connected to others and connected to the best that is within us.

Waiting and hoping that the other will give and that we will receive is a problem, my friends. Not only will our receiving be less fulfilling than our giving, but we have to wait. Why wait for something upon which you may improve with a little effort?

Not only does the joy of giving most often supersede the joy of receiving, but through giving gifts, we are more likely to receive them as well. Show that you care about others and most of the time they will show they care about you. Offer love and you are more likely to receive love. It is too easy for someone who is aching for love and affection from the one she or he seeks it from to say, “If he loved me”, “If she loved me,” “she would reach out to me,” “he would give of himself to me,” “she or he would come to be with me.” So we wait to receive.

Your soul and my soul,

How often do you sit

with someone you love

in the next room

in the next chair

and what is it

that prevents your soul

from leaping up

leaping up to say

Your soul and my soul,

aren’t they one?

aren’t we one?

that’s how I feel.

What is it that prevents you?

Instead you sit

in your own room

in your own chair

filled with longing and loneliness

and the moment passes.

If we give instead of waiting to first receive, life will be better.

This Merle Feld poem was included among the texts that I studied as part of the Institute of Jewish Spirituality’s rabbinical cohort. It was not offered as advice for building relationships, nor as an argument for why we should give, though I think that it can make us think about both. It was instead offered as a way to help us think about our connection to the divine.

Many of us would like to feel a stronger connection to God, to the Jewish community, to the Jewish tradition. We, to use the symbolism of the prayer, sit in our own room, in our own chair, filled with longing and loneliness. We could, if we wished, reach out, give of ourselves, and perhaps would then receive.

Our Tradition tells us that God is waiting. In fact, we read it every year in the Yom Kippur liturgy.

On this Yom Kippur day, we read:

This is Your Glory: You are slow to anger, ready to forgive…Until the last day, You wait for them, welcoming them as soon as they turn to you.

Tradition tells us that on this day especially, we have an opportunity, that God is waiting. It would certainly be wonderful if God reached out and said “Hi,” first. Maybe, even gave us a big hug. It would probably be a bit startling. But we don’t need to take this analogy literally. The simple fact is that you get out of your spiritual life in proportion to what you invest of yourself in it. If we turn, God will turn. We reach out, God will reach out. That is what our text is saying.

If you want to feel that spiritual connection, seek it, don’t wait for it. If you want to feel a part of the community, seek that connection. If you want to connect to the divine, to reach out to God, do it. Don’t wait. Don’t just sit there in your chair letting loneliness engulf you.

Sometimes we wish for connection but we feel that a barrier exists. Perhaps our feelings were hurt in the past when we reached out, our giving was not received as we would have liked. Perhaps, we have felt that we were even pushed away, rejected. Perhaps, we felt misunderstood when we approached and the response was not what we wanted. There are many more things that could follow the word “perhaps” all of which could be our justification for why we do not now try to connect, try to give, try to care, try to love. Many reasons. But the result is that longing and loneliness are with us.

Whether we are talking about personal relationships, about our spiritual journey and connections to our religious Traditions, or about our own happiness, waiting to receive is not as much fun as receiving and receiving is not as good as giving.

This lesson is not a new one. In fact, is based upon two very ancient Jewish directives, “love your neighbor as yourself” and “do not do unto others as you would have them not do unto you.” We should give to others because we want others to give to us, not to wait to receive. To use the words of Hillel, “All the rest is commentary. Go and learn.”

But there are no words better than those in today’s Torah portion:

“It is not across the sea.”

We can reach it. We can do it. We can combat the loneliness in our lives by reaching out our hands, our voice, our prayers, our souls—and giving of ourselves.

Shanah Tovah.

May you be sealed in the Book of Life for a happy and healthy year.

Prayers of the Heart – Kol Nidrei 5772-2011

This summer, the educational curriculum at Goldman Union Camp focused on prayer. In the first educational program of the session for the older students, the students were asked the following question. “Why do you pray?” And given four possible answers, hoping to elicit from them discussions including other possible answers—and there are many. So to the question, “Why do you pray?” The students were offered the following four answers:

-Because it makes me feel closer to the people I am with.

-Because it makes me feel closer to God.

-Because I feel obligated as a Jew.

-Because it is tradition.

The kids had to choose the one of these four with which they most agreed and then go on to discuss it. Think about your answer for a moment. With these four choices, which would you choose? What questions and concerns would you have about the choice itself? I will repeat the question and answers.

Why do you pray?

And here are your options:

-Because it makes me feel closer to the people I am with.

-Because it makes me feel closer to God.

-Because I feel obligated as a Jew.

-Because it is tradition.

Right off the bat, it was clear that this was going to be a challenge. First, many of the students told us that they prayed because they were told to do so by people in authority, their parents, their rabbi, their camp counselors, etc… None of the choices fit that response, so this group of students had to consider why they would pray IF they had a choice.

Another large group of kids considered themselves to be agnostics or atheists and wanted to choose, “I do not pray” as a response to the question, “Why do you pray?” The absence of this option ended up creating a substantial amount of discussion among the kids, some on the point, “Do you have to believe in God to pray?” The answer, which may be surprising to some, is “no” and for a number of reasons, some of which I will discuss in the next few minutes.

One of the most important things that became clear to the kids in discussing prayer this Summer is that the concept of prayer as simply saying traditional blessings or offering some sort of plea to a greater being is not inclusive of many forms of prayer, nor of many of the most important reasons to pray. Many of the kids who believed that they only prayed when forced to do so by those in authority found out that they actually pray at other times, some of them quite often, and do so when not forced at all.

First off, think about what happens when you find yourself amid a community at prayer, even if you do not yourself offer prayers.

In being with a community and hearing others pray, we become more aware of our obligations to others and our ability to help others, by seeing and hearing the words of prayers. Hearing their prayers seeking healing of a loved one, for example, we may realize that our joining in the prayer may make the person whose loved one is ill feel better, more cared for, even if we do not believe that our prayer may have any effect upon the person who is ill.

If our thought may offer support and comfort to those in need, so too may the thoughts of others offer support and comfort to us. As our prayers may be directed toward them, so may their prayers be directed toward us. And if you have ever been in a time of real need and found yourself engaged in prayer, you know just how powerful it can be to know that others are praying with you and even on your behalf.

In that vein, Debbie Friedman said that:

We can never know what happens to the prayers we utter. We do not know what happens to the words we speak with one another. The words we pray might feel useless, and we may feel that they simply dissipate into thin air, gone forever. Once we let them go, they are airborne, out of our control. It is the same with every step and every breath and every movement we make. But we never know. They may be the very thing that is life-giving and healing to another person.

And our prayers need not have words!

Frederick Douglass, who escaped from slavery, said, “I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.” Similarly, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote of his participation in the 1965 Civil Rights march led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that:

For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying.

Those who have participated in efforts to feed the hungry, who have taken hammer to nail building a home for someone without one, who have tended a garden, who have cared for those who are ill, who have worked with those in pain, who have helped to bring new life into the world, who have sat for long hours holding a hand… You know that actions may be like prayers, that an offering of our hands and feet may be no less powerful, and often will be much more powerful, than any words that we might offer.

The phrase in the pastoral care community is, “Don’t just say something, stand there.” Sometimes just being there is more powerful than any words we might say, more appreciated than any prayers that we might offer. If you have ever given or received a hug from a loved one or a friend at a really difficult moment, you have experienced perhaps the most powerful kind of a prayer, a caring embrace, which often allows tears and emotions to flow forth.

How far beyond the four options for why we pray are we now?

Remember them?

-Because it makes me feel closer to the people I am with.

-Because it makes me feel closer to God.

-Because I feel obligated as a Jew.

-Because it is tradition.

Yet, the act of praying is not just about offering of ourselves or for those with whom we happen to be praying.

Prayer helps us to be more aware of things in our world. When we recite fixed prayers, such as Shalom Rav, the song for peace that we sing during an evening service or the G’vurot – the prayer that notes that God helps those who are in need, our thoughts are focused on the needs of others who may not be in our midst. We may realize that our thoughts had been too focused, or perhaps only focused, on ourselves or our immediate circle. Thus, the act of praying may result in our being more mindful of our actions in relation to the broader world and thereby altering our behavior toward others.

But while the repair of the world and the betterment of the lives of others is certainly a big part of our regular prayers, prayer may help us understand and improve ourselves.

When we take a few moments to focus our thoughts on our feelings, our hopes, and our desires, we become more aware of ourselves, more mindful of what is going on within us, as well as perhaps seeing more clearly what is around us. This can result in our desiring to change ourselves. Kierkegaard said, “Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.”

In many ways, prayer is a kind of conversation with us sometimes speaking, offering our hopes and desires and sometimes listening, not just to others’ prayers uttered aloud, but to those words passing through our lips or even to the murmurs of our hearts uttered in silence.

Some of you may know that I have spent four weeks over the past two years attending the Institute of Jewish Spirituality’s program with rabbinical colleagues from around the country. The primary focus of the Institute’s program is a mindfulness curriculum that includes meditation and yoga in addition to text study and regular daily prayer services. All of these are actually forms of prayer.

Mindfulness meditation is, as I described prayer to be a few moments ago, a kind of conversation with us sometimes speaking, consciously creating thoughts, and sometimes listening, being mindful of the thoughts running through our minds.

Yoga is also a kind of conversation, an interaction of body and mind. Some consider yoga practice to be a kind of offering, a kind of prayer. But even if one only considers it to be exercise, it is exercise that requires the mind to pay attention to what is going on with the body. In doing that, one becomes more aware of the needs of the self. If you have ever found yourself in the midst of a more intense yoga practice, you could easily have found yourself at prayer. “Let me be able to do that today. Maybe today it will work for me.” To whom are you speaking? For those who are saying to themselves that this happens when I run, bike, climb mountains or even just climb the stairs as part of rehabilitation, you are absolutely right. This is a form of prayer.

Prayer is not just a way to communicate with something beyond the self, but is a way to commune with our own spirits, to be mindful of our thoughts, and even to converse with ourselves, perhaps sorting through our own thoughts and feelings. Let me feel better, let me do better, let me be better. It does not take, an “O God in heaven” before these statements for them to be forms of prayer.

And how many of us, have stood in awe of a wonder of nature? How many of us have felt connected to creation when we’ve walked upon a beautiful forest trail or looked out from upon a high vista and looked down upon the valleys? Perhaps we saw ourselves in the context of human existence of one generation leading to the next, of our ephemeral nature compared with mountains, our smallness compared with the vastness of the ocean. Perhaps, just perhaps, we thought to praise creation and perhaps a creator.

Prayer, ultimately, may then indeed help us to understand ourselves better, to connect ourselves to something greater than ourselves alone, to bind ourselves with the traditions of our ancestors, to connect us with others in our community, to elevate our spirits unto God or even to help us feel at one with the whole of creation.

If you had asked the campers at the beginning of camp this past Summer about their feelings concerning prayer—and we did—many would surely have told you that they found prayer awkward, difficult, strange, foreign or any number of other adjectives implying a level of discomfort with or even outright rejection of the practice of prayer. I do not suppose for a moment that this is substantially different from how many of their parents and grandparents view it. In fact, I would say that a substantial majority of the world’s Jews feel this way.

Over the course of the two weeks that I was at camp, and I am certain over the following two weeks as well, many of the students came to understand prayer differently and felt much more comfortable engaging in it. It was not because they became Baalei T’shuva, suddenly turned piously religious, nor because their beliefs about God changed radically. This change occurred because they came to understand what prayer could be about, especially in a modern Reform Jewish context.

I hope that I have opened up for you pathways of prayer that you may have never explored or perhaps, having explored them and currently practicing them, never thought of them as ways of praying. To the question “Why do we pray?” then, the answers are as manifold as the ways.

It is told of the Baal Shem Tov that one Yom Kippur day a poor Jewish boy, an illiterate shepherd, entered the synagogue where the Baal Shem Tov was praying. The boy was deeply moved by the service, but frustrated that he could not read the prayers.

So he started to whistle, the one thing he knew he could do beautifully. The boy wanted to offer his whistling as a gift to God.

The congregation was horrified at the desecration of their service. Some people yelled at the boy, and others wanted to throw him out.

The Ba'al Shem Tov immediately stopped them. "Until now," he said, "I could feel our prayers being blocked as they tried to reach the heavenly court. This young shepherd's whistling was so pure, however, that it broke through the blockage and brought all of our prayers straight up to God."

May all our prayers reach their home.

G’mar Hatimah Tovah. May you be sealed in the Book of Life for a Good Year.