Yom Kippur Sermon I
Rabbi Charles L. Arian
Beth Jacob Synagogue, Norwich, CT
 
Baseball players tend to be a very superstitious lot, as anyone who has seen a baseball movie or read a baseball novel knows. They are very particular about the way their bats are handled, because every bat has a certain number of hits in it, and you don't want to do anything which will knock the hits out or spill them. If a player is having a cold streak and not hitting, they will often get rid of the bat they have been using, even if objectively there is nothing wrong with it, on the theory that it is out of hits.
    
    When I was growing up, if anyone in our family got sick, but not too sick, my father would always try very hard to make sure that our rabbi didn't find out. Because if the rabbi did find out, that family member would be put on the mi-sheberach list. And my dad had -- perhaps he still does -- the belief that every person is allotted at birth a certain number of mi-sheberachs. Once you have used up your allotment, they are no longer effective, but of course no one knows what their allotment is. Therefore a mi-sheberach should only be recited in case of a severe illness; you don't want to waste it on a cold or a sprained ankle.

    In the last decade or so, there have been peer-reviewed articles in medical journals which seek to measure whether or not prayer has some measurable effect on patient's well-being. Doctors have taken control groups of people with roughly the same illness and the same prognosis, the only difference being that some of the patients are prayed for and some are not. Sometimes the group which is prayed for has better results. Sometimes there is no difference and in one very large and rigorous study of prayer for those undergoing heart surgery, patients who knew they were being prayed for actually had a higher rate of post-operative complications like abnormal heart rhythms. This was perhaps because of the expectations the prayers created, the researchers suggested. 

    This kind of research is not new. Back in the 1960's, Rabbi Zalman Schachter -- who at the time was still nominally a Lubavitcher Chasid, but later went on to found the "Jewish Renewal" movement -- conducted a double-blind study of the efficacy of prayer one summer at Camp Ramah. He and his campers planted two rows of beans, praying for one row but not the other. So that they would not  treat the two rows differently, neither the campers nor Reb Zalman knew which row was the one that they were praying for. That information was written on an index card which was kept in the camp safe. At the end of the summer, they found that indeed, one row had done much better than the other. But to the campers' disappointment, the beans which had not been prayed for actually did better.
    Reb Zalman explained that this was actually a good thing. If the two rows had been identical, he said, the campers would have concluded that God is indifferent to our prayers. If the prayed-for row had done better, the campers would have believed that God could be manipulated. This way, Reb Zalman said, they learned that God does indeed hear our prayers. But then, He does what He wants.

    The prayer known as Unetaneh Tokef is the heart of the liturgy for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. In it we read that on Rosh Hashana it is written, 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 in his time and who before his time;

Who by fire and who by water; Who by sword and who by beast;

Who by hunger and who by thirst; who by storm and who by plague;

Who by strangulation and who by stoning;

Who shall have rest and who will be harried;

Who shall be tranquil and who shall be afflicted.

Who shall be impoverished and who shall wax rich;

Who shall be brought low and who shall be exalted.


And then we read that t'shuvah -- repentance; t'fillah -- prayer; and tzedakah -- charity, justice, righteousness -- maavirin at ro'ah ha-g'zerah.


    That last phrase is not easily translated. Some older prayerbooks have used such phrases as "annul the severe decree" which is certainly wrong. Severe decree would be g'zerah ra'ah -- "ro'ah" is an adjective. The machzor we currently use translates it as "remove the severity of the decree" which is probably a more accurate translation. 


    There is an Italian phrase which goes "traduttore, traditore" -- the translator is a traitor. It is based on a pun, of course, but there is a great deal of truth in the phrase. There is no such thing as an "exact" translation. Many concepts in Hebrew are not really translatable into English. A word can have different meanings depending on the context, and so on. Sometimes the problem is not so much that the translation is inaccurate as that the English language itself has changed over time. For example, the beginning of the 23rd Psalm is "ha-shem ro'i, lo echsar" which is best translated as "the Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing." When the King James Version was translated in 1611, "I shall not want" meant the same thing as "I lack nothing" does today. But most people hearing the 23rd Psalm think it is talking about the prohibition of covetousness or greed rather than about thanking God for His gifts.


     Developing an accurate translation, especially one to be used in the context of prayer as opposed to a classroom, is not an easy task. But too often in the past, translators of the siddur and machzor have solved translation problems through simply mistranslating a phrase. The translation of "ma'avirin et ro'a ha-g'zeirah" as "annul the severe decree" or even "remove the severity of the decree" is just such an example. It creates the impression that through our actions during the Ten Days of Repentance, we can somehow convince God to give us a year of life, health and prosperity even if He had originally planned otherwise.


    While on one level it would be comforting to believe that, on another level it is deeply problematic. I always thought that faith healers have it pretty easy, because if you go to a faith healer and don't get better, it is your own fault for not having enough faith. The belief that during the Ten Days of Repentance we can convince God to "annul our decree" is kind of like that. If bad things happen to you, it is your own fault. More repentance, more prayer, more tzedakah would have saved you.


    I do not believe that this is the case and I suspect that most of you do not either. We are all destined to die at some point, and the "evil decree" cannot be averted forever, regardless of how much repentance, prayer and charity we engage in. A liturgical statement to the contrary would be deeply problematic. If the liturgy sets up the expectation that we can permanently evade the day of our death, if only our prayer, repentance, and tzedakah are sufficient -- I suspect most of us would have great difficulty reciting that prayer.


    But ma'avirin et ro'ah ha-gezeirah doesn't mean that. The new Rabbinical Assembly machzor to be published in January -- which some of us studied on Rosh Hashanaha --uses a different translation. For all that it differs from prior translations, it actually conveys the sense of the Hebrew much better. It says "but t'shuvah, t'filla, and tzedakah" -- which it leaves untranslated -- "have the power to transform the harshness of our destiny."


    In other words, we do not always have the power to control what happens to us. What happens to us is often destiny -- whether you attribute it to a higher power, human causality or just blind chance. What we have, however, is the power to determine how we react to what happens to us.


    A number of years ago, a former Hillel student of mine who had gone on to become a Jewish professional tragically lost her life. She was working as the West Coast Director of Young Leadership for the Jewish National Fund and had accompanied a group she had recruited to Israel. On the way home from Israel she planned to stop for a couple of days in New York to visit friends. She went rollerblading in Central Park and was not wearing a helmet.  Somehow she veered into the bicycle path, was hit by a cyclist -- it was not his fault and he was not charged -- and she was brain dead instantly.


    Was her fate sealed on the Yom Kippur before she died? In a certain sense, perhaps it was. We would like to think that we have some understanding of how the world works but some things are truly beyond us. We don't know why she decided not to wear a helmet. Perhaps if something had happened to her on the way to the park to delay her for thirty seconds -- a missed traffic light, someone holding the elevator for someone else, an elderly person with a shopping cart coming home from the grocery store and blocking the sidewalk -- perhaps she would have gotten to the park thirty seconds later and not been hit by the bicyclist. But none of those things happened, she lost her life, the Jewish world lost a promising young professional, and her parents lost a daughter.


    I don't believe Liora's death at age 28 was the will of God. I don't believe it was a punishment, and I don't believe it could have been averted had she prayed harder, repented harder, done more tzedakah. It was not the will of God, but for whatever reason, it was the destiny of her parents to lose their daughter.


    Her parents, however, understood in their souls that teshuvah, tefilla and tzedakah have the power to transform the harshness of our destiny. Liora had not been raised in a particularly observant home -- despite the fact that her parents gave her an Israeli name -- and it was in Israel, specifically in Tsefat, that she began to adopt a more observant lifestyle. After her death, her parents made some of Liora's observance their own; rather than turning from God, they sought to become closer to God. But they also decided to do something to share Liora's love of nature, of the Land of Israel, and of Judaism with the people of northern Israel. So outside of Tzefat they created a beautiful forest in their daughter's memory. And so today in that area, you can hear people saying that they are going to picnic at Liora, or meet friends at Liora, and so on. 


    Of course in this Liora's parents were not unique. All of us know of other parents who have responded to the the loss of a child or children by doing acts of love, by making the world a better place. This, I believe, is the true meaning of the Unetaneh Tokef prayer. That our acts of teshuvah, of tefillah, and tzedakah, can indeed transform the harshness of our destiny by making it an occasion for tikkun olam, for repairing the world.


    The phrase itself, tikkun olam, comes from the Aleinu prayer which first appeared in our liturgy in the same section of the Machzor as the Unetaneh Tokef prayer -- indeed it appears on the next page. The full phrase as it appears in the Aleinu as it made its way into the siddur is "l'takken olam b'malchut shaddai" -- to repair the world under God's rule. Like much in Jewish thought, it is a delicate balancing act which the liturgy plays here. God is the sovereign, we are not; but at the same time it is our job to help God establish divine rule over all the earth.


    That same balance is reflected throughout the liturgy of the High Holidays. There are two main titles by which we address God during the High Holidays. Avinu Malkeinu, our parent, our sovereign. Avinu Malkeinu is one prayer but it actually represents two very different concepts.


    I have often in my sermons and teachings said that the relationship between God and humanity is like the relationship between a parent and a child. This insight is not uniquely mine, of course, and I have relied heavily on the thought of Rabbi Irving Greenberg, Rabbi Harold Kushner and others in developing this idea. The ultimate goal of a good parent is to equip their child with the tools he or she needs to function in this world as a fine and decent person. At the beginning, a child is pretty much helpless and a parent must do everything for him or her. But as the child matures, she is able to do more and more for herself and the parent must step back a bit. It is often painful to do so, especially as we see our children about to make the same mistakes we made at their age. But learning and growth come through failure as well as success, and a wise parent learns to let go.

 

Rabbi Kushner and Rabbi Greenberg have helped us to understand that this is the way humanity’s relationship with God works as well. Our tradition teaches us that God created us to have free will. But beyond that, God created us with an impulse to seek perfection. Adam and Eve were placed in a perfect world, but ultimately this proved unsatisfactory. We human beings thrive on challenges. If the world was perfect, and we had no challenges, there would soon be no reason for most of us to want to go on living. And God seeks relationship with us as well. Just as there is no point to our existing in a world without challenges, there is no point for God to create beings without the ability to grow and learn.

 

And so our relationship with God is now on a different plane than it once was. Centuries ago, at Sinai, God communicated directly with our people in a very public way. Today, God no longer speaks with us in discrete words. Rather, we encounter God through our study of sacred texts, our observance of sacred rituals, and our participation in a sacred community. Centuries ago, as at the Red Sea , God was involved directly in our deliverance. Today, God’s deliverance needs to come in a different manner – through our works of charity, our support of social justice, and in our professional lives as doctors, teachers, and caregivers.


    The Machzor speaks of God as Parent but also of God as Ruler. One of the challenges we face in creating meaningful Jewish life today is that we are more comfortable with Avinu than with Malkeinu. The new Conservative Machzor I mentioned earlier has an interesting comment from the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel on the Hayom Harat Olam passage which we recite three times during Musaf on Rosh Hashanah. That passage contains the same metaphors as Avinu Malkeinu, for in it we say that on Rosh Hashana "all creation is called to judgment, whether as Your children or as Your servants. If as children, be compassionate with us as a parent is with children. If as servants, we look to you expectantly, waiting for you to be gracious to us . . ." On the phrase "whether as children or servants," Heschel wrote: "the child who serves a parent serves with joy, saying even if I do not entirely succeed, my father and mother, who love me, will not be angry with me. In contrast, a hired servant is always afraid lest some fault be committed and therefore serves God in a condition of anxiety and confusion."


    Heschel did most of his writing in the 50s and 60s -- he died in 1972 -- and yet he foresaw the changes in American Jewry that would take place after his death. For most of our community, other than the Orthodox, the "fear of God" is gone. We no longer observe Jewish practices because God said so, either because the idea of a God who literally gives rules is not credible to us, or because we feel that God is entitled to his opinion but we are entitled to ours as well.  The basis of a meaningful Jewish life for most of us has to be based in love and not in fear. It has to be based in the idea of God as our Parent, not in God as our Ruler.


    And yet the Unateneh Tokef prayer, which is firmly based in the God-as-Ruler idea, comes as a necessary corrective. We are partners with God, but we are not God. God hears our prayers and is in relationship with us as a Parent. God has made us partners with Him in this world. But ultimate control and ultimate responsibility are God's not ours. The Unetaneh Tokef prayer comes to remind us that we are not, in fact, totally in control of our own lives. It is a reminder both liberating and frightening. We do not have ultimate power; but we have the power to transform the harshness of our destiny. On this Yom Kippur, let us dedicate ourselves to doing just that.


    


    





    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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