I am, as many
of you know, a cyclist.
You learn many
things on two wheels.
Most of all
you learn how fragile a life is.
Every time I
snap on my bicycle helmet my mind flashes back to an intensive care cubicle I
visited as a Hospital Chaplain.
The patient
was Jewish. As was his wife and two small kids. He had fallen off his bicycle,
cracked his skull and was in a coma.
He died.
I think of
that fragility when I click my helmet over my kippah.
It’s a good
thing to remember on Yom Hazikaron – this day of memory.
Some time ago
I read an article on why people drive Hummers – Hummers are the massive half
tank/half-cars that you sometimes see, rarely it has to be said, in
‘I like my
Hummer,’ this woman was saying, ‘because it makes me feel safe. I’m up high and
protected.’
But she is
fragile, that Hummer driver.
Just as
fragile as I am, you are, we all are.
We are all
cyclists here,
We are all
cyclists, with our fragile souls protected by fragile bones and maintained by
fragile systems.
Back to the
bicycle.
Matt Seaton
writes on cycling for the Guardian.
He’s been
cycling all his life, but several months ago he took the cycling proficiency
road test and wrote about what he learnt.
Mostly, it was
what he expected, and knew.
But there was
one thing.
“I learnt,”
Seaton wrote, “how important it is to look over one’s shoulder when cycling.”
To look at the
cars behind.
What was so
interested Seaton about this instruction was not the notion that cyclists need
to know if there are cars behind them.
For indeed us
cyclists can hear the cars.
What was
interested Seaton was that the reason given for looking behind, as one cycles
along, is to make sure that the drives see you.
The idea
being, of course, that when a car driver sees your face, they encounter your
fragility, and then he or she can’t run you over.
They can’t
forget you.
And all of a
sudden they are obligated to give you just a little more space, between you and
the gutter.
If a driver
sees my face, sweaty and short of breath,
He, or she,
starts to shift a little uneasily, even in their Hummer.
They are
forced to recognise a fetter on their freedom, a call on their actions, an
obligation, a Mitzvah.
I want to
talk, today, about Mitzvah.
It’s a notion
that we are in danger of forgetting, in these times.
Earlier this
year I was invited to go class to class at Clore Shalom, a local Jewish school
where a number of our members attend.
It was Purim
time, I volunteered to speak about the mitzvot of Purim.
I started by
asking, in class after class, for a definition of mitzvot.
Hands went up
in the air and class after class
I was told mitzvah
meant a nice thing to do for someone.
I was told mitzvah
meant being kind.
It doesn’t, of
course.
Mitzvah means
obligation.
Two types of
obligation – obligations between ourselves and our fellows – mitzvot ben
adam lchavero
And
obligations between ourselves and our world, between ourselves and our God – mitzvot
ben adam lmakom.
Obligations.
The word
threatens to make us stutter over its harshness, in our oh so modern age.
Who wants to
be obligated?
I want to be
free.
Or, to give it
a more posh-term, ‘I want to be autonomous.’
I want to
drive around in my Hummer, so high and so gently cushioned by expensive
suspension, that I can forget what is crushed underneath my comfy tires.
By the way,
I’m not specifically interested in people who drive big 4x4s today. We all like
our metaphorical Hummers – our escape capsules from the world.
Our
metaphorical Hummers might be i-pod headphones used to block out the noise of
the street, or the selective deafness we all conveniently develop in order not
to hear those voices that distract us from our own private self-interest.
Selective
amnesia
We all want to
drive around in Hummers – immune to everyone and everything.
And yet we are
all cyclists – desperately hoping those who have the power to run us into the
gutter will see our face, recognise our fragility and feel a sense of
obligation towards us.
See my face,
Feel an
obligation.
Be dragged out
of your Hummer.
The great
Jewish philosopher, Emanuel Levinas made a career out of writing about the
impact of seeing another face, of engaging with the mortality of the soul in
your line of sight.
‘The first
word of the face’ says Levinas, ‘is the ‘Thou shall not Kill.’ It is an order.
There is a commandment in the appearance of the face, as if a master spoke to
me.’[1]
But there is
more than a mere obligation not to kill.
There is more
than the mitzvah- lo tirtzach ‘Thou
Shall Not Kill’
When one
becomes aware of the other, it calls many things into question.
Says Levinas
‘One has to
respond to one’s right to be because of one’s fear for the Other. My being in
the world, or my place in the sun, my being at home, have these not also been
the [taking’ of spaces belonging to the other man whom I have already oppressed
or starved or driven out into a third world; are they not acts of repulsing,
excluding, exiling, stripping kidnapping?’
If that
language is a little high-falutin’ how about this.
‘My entire
philosophy,’ wrote Levinas, can be summed up in the phrase, après vous
monsieur’
I put your
needs before my own.
Everything we
do in our life results in us picking up obligations.
Indeed in
choosing to speak, today, about mitzvah, I am responding to a call, made
by the new Chancellor of my Seminary in New York, Professor Arnie Eisen.
Chancellor
Eisen has called on every ordained Rabbi of the Jewish Theological Seminary, to
speak about this most important subject, on this most important day.
An obligation.
Everywhere we
go, everyone we meet, imposes obligations upon us.
How about
these obligations, from Robert Fulghum’s charming book, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten?
1.
Share everything.
2. Play fair.
3. Don't hit people.
4 .Put things back where you found them.
5. Clean up your own mess.
6. Don't take things that aren't yours.
7. Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
8. Wash your hands before you eat.
9. Flush.
Mitzvot ben
adam lchavero –
obligations between a person and their fellow come in so many shapes and forms.
There are so
many things to protect, so many people to take care of.
We live in a
web of connections, all the different aspects on our existence jostling one
another, making claims on our selective amnesia.
Every time we
try to disappear in our metaphorical Hummers, all our history and biography and
experience reminds us that there are cyclists on the road, fragilities and
responsibilities that weigh upon us even as we go to sleep and certainly when
we go on our way.
And the
quality of a life can be measured by how we respond to these obligations.
To live well
in this world means accepting these obligations with all our heart, all our
soul and all our might.
And you
shall repeat these words to your children and speak of them, when you lie down
in your homes and when you go on your way.
For among the
jostling identities we all share, in this very special community, on this very
special day, is our identity as a Jew.
And this is
what brings us to our obligations before God – the mitzvot ben adam lmakom
To live well,
in this skin, with this soul granted to us, we need to respond to this call
too.
We need to
remember our identity; call it to mind and allow it to tug us out of our
metaphorical Hummers.
We need to
remember the day God promised Abraham that his offspring shall be as numerous
as the stars of the heavens.
We need to
remember the moment we were freed from Egypt.
We need to
remember the day we stood on the foothills of Mount Sinai and heard the words
‘I am the Lord Your God.’
These are
desperately important things to remember for two reasons,
Firstly
because this chain of memory is stretched thin in this day and age, and for
many of us, sat here today, it is in danger of snapping, of disappearing into
nothing more than a vague appreciation of chicken soup and klezmer.
This keeps me
awake at night, but, of course, it’s no reason, in itself for sticking with
this 5000 year old tradition.
No the real
reason it is important to give Mitzvot time and space in our lives is that they
connect us to the deeper part of our selves. They connect us to our past and
they allow us to find a way to stand in the face of the Universe.
Our Mitzvot
give us a way to respond to the extraordinary gift of our own creation.
How does a Jew
say thank you? When we wake in the morning we are obliged to say modeh ani
lephanecha – and we claim that this works.
How does a Jew
respond to the extraordinary contemporary abundance of food that means,
radically, that starvation is simply an unknown in our community? We eat Kosher
and when we have eaten and been sated we bless. As it says in the Torah – vachalta
v’savata uverachta – and we claim that this works.
How does a Jew
respond to simply being alive and being able to live free of the trials of slavery?
We eat Matzah
and, and this is the greatest and most powerful insight in our glorious faith,
we keep Shabbat – and we claim that this works.
As the Good
Book says
Remember
that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord your God
brought you out from there with a mighty hand and with a stretched out arm;
therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.
It is the
Shabbat that is at the heart of everything, for us as Jews.
A response to
the miracle of our freedom.
A response to
the miracle of our creation.
Remember
the Sabbath day; six days you shall do all your work, and the seventh day is a
day of Sabbath and re-ensoulment.
Uva yom
hashvii shavat vayniafash - the
seventh day is a day of Sabbath and re-ensoulment
Six days you
shall run, like a hamster on a wheel, putting food on our plates and earning
the necessary crust with which to pay for the car, the new clothes, the mobile
telephony and the broadband exchange router.
But on the
seventh day you shall be re-ensouled.
You shall
stop, breathe, and take in the company of your fellow human beings
face-to-face.
On the seventh
day you shall stop, and thank God.
And we claim
that this works.
Don’t do it
because you want to, or because you enjoy it, or because your parents or kids
expect you to.
Do it because
it is a Mitzvah, an obligation.
Do it because,
as a Jew you are prepared to claim God demands this Mitzvah of you.
Do it because
you are obliged, you owe it to your past and to your future, to your ancestors
and your descendants and to God.
Do it because
you are prepared to claim that this works.
And in so
doing you will lift the Shabbat far far away from being a day off.
You will turn
a normal day into a day of re-ensoulment.
You will turn
it into a moment to stand before your creator with pride.
Many years
ago, when I was just starting to think about my own Jewish journey I was
davening with some friends on a Friday night, it was summer time.
We were all
singing away,
Singing these
wonderful tunes, rocking away.
And I realised
that there was a twig that I was brushing again, it was catching my sleeve as I
sung and rocked back and forward.
How annoying.
I went to
break it
And then I
remembered that there is a Halacha – a law – against breaking twigs on Shabbat.
And I paused.
And I
remembered that on Shabbat I don’t get to boss the Universe around the same way
I would the other six days of the week.
And I took a
step away, and left the twig where it was.
It was a tiny
moment.
But it has
stayed with me as a moment when I let my ego - my desire for instant
gratification – go a little.
And, as I did
so, this moment of stepping back from breaking the twig, I felt myself folding
into the tradition of my parents and my ancestors, back through my great
grandparents in London’s East End, back through their ancestors in the Shtetls
and cities of Eastern Europe and back still further, back to Sinai.
A little thing
like not breaking a twig can have that power.
More power
even than a Hummer.
That is the
power of the Shabbat.
That is the
power of a day of re-soulment.
So homework.
Yes there is
homework.
Two pieces of
homework.
The first is
about cycling. It is about mitzvot ben adam lchavero – obligations
between people.
The first
piece of homework is to look at someone and be moved by what happens when you
see their fragility.
Allow yourself
to be moved, to feel obliged.
And respond.
It could be a
photo of a bedraggled stranger in the papers, allow yourself to be obliged to
send some money. For you shall not wrong the stranger for you were strangers
in a strange land.
It could be a
work colleague, a lover, a friend.
Anyone who
needs a hand, a hug, a gesture of support.
As
Robert Fulghum would put it; do something to meet the obligations we
learnt in kindergarden
1.
Share everything.
2. Put things back where you found them.
3. Flush
I’m not so
serious about the ‘flush part’
But place
another person’s needs before your own.
Know that they
are fragile and you have the power and therefore the obligation to support
them.
‘My entire
philosophy,’ wrote our philosophe de jour Emmanuel Levinas, can be summed up in
the phrase, après vous monsieur’
I put your
needs before my own.
This is the
first piece of homework.
The second
piece of homework is about mitzvot ben adam lmakom – obligations between
a person and cosmos.
Looking back
over my sermons these past four years I have had the merit to serve this
special community I see I have talked about Shabbat from this pulpit many
times. But I have no greater message to offer than this.
Keep Shabbat
and save your life.
Save it from being
swallowed by the humdrum and the profane.
We all need
saving.
Light a
candle, light two.
Leave the
wallet behind.
Don’t answer
e-mail.
Anything to
rescue this most special of days.
Anything to
respond to the mitzvah, the obligation, to shomer et yom hashabbat –
observe the Sabbath day.
First - Apres
vous monsieur - I put your needs before my own.
Second -
Shomer et yom hashabbat – observe the Sabbath day
Because this
is how we respond to the obligations of our life.
Because this
is what is means to acknowledge that we are bound, obliged, by our Mitzvot.
Because this
is how we come to deserve and even how we earn the sweet, healthy and happy
year for which we pray.
Shannah Tovah
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