***Six weeks before delivering this sermon, I had quadruple bypass surgery.***
Many things have happened in
this past year, some good, some not so good. On the bright side, this past
year, over the past couple of months, I learned to be less concerned about
having my blood drawn.
I am thankful to be able to
be here today. I’m not 100% yet. It isn’t an easy or short recovery. My voice
isn’t what it normally is and you’ll have to bear with me coughing now and
then.
Before I continue, I wanted
to thank you for the tremendous amount of support that my family and I have
received. So many people have reached out in concern, sent notes of support,
and made donations for my recovery. Your support has meant a great deal. Thank
you.
[Personal thank yous to my family, friends, and congregational leaders followed, which I have not included here.]
Today, in the context of what
happened to me, I want to talk about a traditional prayer that is difficult for
most of us to deal with conceptually. The Unetaneh Tokef prayer tells us that
God determines not only who lives and who dies, inscribing some in the Book of
Life and not others. We are told:
On
Rosh Hashanah it is inscribed,
And
on Yom Kippur it is sealed.
How
many shall pass away and how many shall be born,
Who
shall live and who shall die,
Who
shall reach the end of his days and who shall not,
Who
shall perish by water and who by fire,
Who
by sword and who by wild beast,
Who
by famine and who by thirst,
Who
by earthquake and who by plague…
The statement concludes:
But
repentance, prayer and righteousness avert the severe decree.
Most of us do not believe in
this sort of theodicy, this sort of understanding of divine judgement, the causing
of blessing or curse, with reward or punishment. I have long argued against
this concept as traditionally understood. With my recent ailment, though I’m
still not a believer in this idea, I’ve come to see this portion of our service
in a slightly different way.
The purpose of this prayer is
truly to try to help us to find order in what otherwise would appear to be
chaos, seemingly random chance. We know that bad things happen. We know too
that they don’t just happen to bad people; they happen to good people as well.
And more importantly than this abstract conception:
They happen to us and they
can happen suddenly.
- · We live in a world in which we can set the temperature
of our homes and cars to whatever temperature we like.
- · We can wear clothing that is impervious to rain,
keeping us dry in the worst of downpours.
- · We can have food from just about every restaurant in
town delivered to our homes for a nominal delivery fee or even for free!
- · We know about and can monitor and treat high cholesterol
and high blood pressure.
- · We can use a laser to fix our eyesight in addition to
wearing glasses.
- · We have ways to treat some of the worst of diseases,
ones that once would have taken lives before we were even aware of them.
- · We can ask a wireless device in our homes to turn on the lights, open the shades, play our favorite music, read us a book, change the channel, or order us a new pair of jeans to be delivered free of charge to our doorstep in less than two days. We can even do these things from wherever we are on our cell phones.
We appear to be in control of
our lives, much of the time. But we’re not. We’re truly not. It’s an illusion.
Life happens. Some people
prefer to use a different word than “life” in that statement, especially when
the results are not good ones. Life happens and sometimes what life brings
isn’t remotely ideal.
This High Holidays, Jews
around the world remember those who were killed over the past year, simply
because they were Jews. It has not been a good year for us as a people.
Lori Kaye was shot and killed
in the shooting in Poway, California five months ago. It’s hard to believe it
was only at the end of April. Lori evidently confronted the shooter near the
door. In addition to supporting the synagogue, Lori was heavily involved in
raising money to combat Childhood Cancer and for Chai Lifeline which aids
families with seriously ill children. By all accounts, she was an eishet chayil, a woman of valor, a woman
of courage. She fought her own battle with illness and was doing well. A few
months prior, she celebrated her 60th Birthday and posted about it
on Facebook. She wrote:
"Fearless at 60! As I enter a new decade, I am full of
"gratitude" & thankfulness for the many blessings in my life. As
I said on my 40th & 50th birthdays:
Life is not measured by the breaths we take, but by the moments that
take our breath away."
Unetaneh Tokef. “The moments
that take our breath away.”
So many of us here have our
own lived examples and those of our loved ones, times when life happened.
Unetaneh Tokef is a painful prayer. It makes us remember. It makes us think
about seeming randomness, chaos, and things beyond our control that happen to
us, to our friends and family members, or to others. It’s both the hurricanes
far away from us and the whirlwinds that strike our homes.
Some of us have had the
opportunity to live in times of blessing, of prosperity and relative security.
For others, the Kol Nidrei prayer, for which this evening’s service is named,
was a way of coping with being forced to face and do what they neither wanted
to face or do. Living under threat, they had to swear oaths that they did not
believe and act as they would not or could not act.
Unetaneh Tokef. Life in the places
and times they lived brought them challenges, difficulties, threats, not just
opportunities and blessings.
The Unetaneh Tokef prayer is
both about those who died before their time and those who lived ad meah
v’esrim, to 120. It’s about those whose businesses became successful and those
who tried, tried again, and failed over and over. It’s also about those who
have been struck with illness. Some of us, this past year, found out that we
weren’t quite as healthy as we thought and suddenly faced severe challenges.
Unetaneh Tokef. You need
surgery. Or
Unetaneh Tokef. You need
radiation. Or
Unetaneh Tokef. You need to
radically change your diet, your lifestyle. No more fried cheesecake at the
fair for you! No more rushing from task to task while barely taking the time to
breathe or taking time to care for yourself.
New priorities---- breathe.
Take time for yourself to make yourself what you need to be. Prioritize your
health.
But Unetaneh Tokef.
Sometimes, no matter what you do… Life happens.
You can get out there and
run, three times a week. Three 10Ks a week. You can run Half Marathons. You can
be on the right medicines and seeing a doctor regularly.
Unetaneh Tokef. Do you have a
family history? Yes.
“You won the lottery,” the
doctor said, “Genetics.” Control is a delusion. No matter how much control we
think we have, we really don’t have the ability to bring it all under our
control. We may not have much of an ability to control at all.
Unetaneh Tokef. Life happens.
What we can do is do our best
to adapt to it in the best ways. How we respond when life happens is really
what defines who we are.
- · It’s not difficult to smile when everything goes our
way. It may be difficult to remain humble when everything and everyone around
us seem to elevate us.
- · It’s not difficult to feel depressed or sad when
everything is going wrong, when bad things have happened. It may be difficult
to react with hopefulness and seek happiness, when they do.
- · It’s not difficult to avoid action when action is
painful. “Doctor, it hurts when I do this.” “Don’t do that.” So easy. But it
may be difficult to get moving and endure it as we move on and get better.
Rehab can be painful and tiring. But after rehab, hopefully, less pain and more
energy.
Unetaneh Tokef. Life happens.
The challenge before us when it does happen is to do what is difficult.
L’shanah Tovah Tikateivu
v’teiteimu.
May we all be inscribed and
sealed for a good and sweet and healthy and blessed New Year.
But if the coming year doesn’t
bring some or even any of these things,
May we do our best to do the
difficult and
Help and support each other
as we do so,
Just as you have done for me and for my family.
We’ll make the next year and
the years to come, the best that we can make them.
Good yom tov.
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