The Place Where We Are Right - A Kol Nidrei Sermon Yom Kippur 5783

This is Yehuda Amichai’s poem, HaMakom ShBo Anu Tzodkim – The Place Where We are Right

From the place where we are right

Flowers will never grow

In the spring

 

The place where we are right

Is hard and trampled

Like a courtyard

 

But doubts and loves

Dig up the world

Like a mole, a plough

And a whisper will be heard in the place

Where once stood the house

Which was destroyed.

 

These are strangely febrile times, times when we cling simultaneously to claims to stand in the place where we are right and simultaneously fear we might not see enough flowers in the Spring. Goodness even the flowers are nervous.

Maybe our greatest modern Hebrew poet was on to something, maybe we need to leave the Makom ShBo Anu Tzodkim – the place where we are right – and dig up our world like moles and ploughs so whispers can be heard and flowers can grow.

What I want to do tonight is think, from a Jewish place, about the appeal of certainty, its dangers and the other options that are open for us, if we have the courage to embrace another path.

I’ve spent plenty of time claiming to be certain. I understand, I think, that appeal. Certainly, I understand its appeal more having read Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow.

Kahneman, the Nobel prize-winning economist and psychologist suggests we have two systems operating inside our minds. One, the fast one, makes the quick decisions that get us through the day-to-day challenges of our lives. System One is good at certainty but can’t really handle complexity. For that we need System Two - the slow system, the one that can handle nuance, deliberation and doubt. System Two is the system we need to access to handle the more complex challenge of our life. But this second slower system of thought is harder to access and harder to hold at the centre of our decision-making self.

It is, say the psychologists, not only easier to exist in the world of certainty, it’s also more immediately gratifying. Our fixed opinions give us a dopamine hit of self-satisfaction.

And then there’s this world of stuff we all inhabit – the world of marketing and advertising that tells us if only we were to buy this, or subscribe to that, we’ll have complexities eased and inadequacies evaporated. But there are two problems with standing in a place of certainty.

The first is … well once I wandered through the streets of Weimer with a Lonely Planet guidebook in my hand. “Goethe it said,” directing my attention to the famous house, “is the last person to possess the totality of all human knowledge.” The first problem of certainty is that the world isn’t really knowable. Maybe in the early 1800s, one particular German genius could hold all human knowledge available in his time, but even that, even him, is insufficient for our complex today. The first problem with our claims to certainty is that we are so very likely to be wrong.

The second problem is the way our certainties close us away from other people, isolating us and increasing the brokenness of our society. When we place more effort in our claims to be sure that we are prepared to leave the place of certainty, we create a more fractured society, we fracture our friendships, our work relationships, even our families and we close our own minds to the possibility of growth.

But the attractions of certainty are so much greater than many of us can withstand. Most of us don’t feel easy in a world where we don’t know, where we are forced to face our limitations and inadequacies.

Religion suffers from a bad reputation when it comes to this question of certainty. Religion gets blamed for the overflow of claims of certainty that exist in the world. That might be fair, sometimes. I know there are religious purveyors of certainty, but I’m not one. This community isn’t about the promotion of the value of certainty. I don’t think this religion – Judaism – is about the promotion of the value of certainty. In fact, I don’t think any religion, as I understand the term, could claim certainty. I mean, if you believe in a truly powerful God, the first thing to know is that God’s ways are beyond our knowledge.

‘My thoughts are not your thoughts,’ says God to Isaiah, ‘my ways are not your ways.’

The great Hassidic master known as the Ishbitzer had this to say about the slightly strange way in which God expresses Godself at the very opening of the Ten Commandments – I am the Lord your God – said God, but in so doing used an unusual way of saying ‘I’, rather than the usual ‘Ani’ – the first word of the first of the Ten Commandments is ‘Anochi’ – there is an extra Chaf – כ – a letter, the Ishbitzer says should be understood according to its plain meaning – of ‘similar to’ or ‘like.’[1] Utterly transformative idea. Not ‘I am God,’ but ‘I am approximate to God’ as the Ishbitzer goes on to say, ‘this Chaf teaches that no fullness of God’s self was imparted, only a dmut - a refraction, a dimyon – an aspect.’[2] At the very moment of greatest illumination of certainty in our faith there is merely a dmut a dimyon.

In the book of Jonah, coming soon to a Bimah near you, Jonah is the anti-hero. He’s the guy who gets things wrong. God spends the entire book attempting to ease our reluctant prophet out of his certainties. Meanwhile the true heroes of the story get it. Ulai says the Captain of the Ship, let’s try this and maybe it will work. Mi Yodea says the King of Nineveh, let’s try this and who knows, perhaps it will work. Transformation follows their abandonment of certitude.

Transformation, surely, is only ever possible when we abandon the certainty of our current experience of what, and who, is right in the world.

Time and time again the Torah, and its heroes, temper their hopes and aspirations with caution – with this word Ulai.

Sarah, wrestling with infertility, suggests Abraham father a child through the maidservant Hagar, with the phrase (Gen 16:2) Ulai Evna Mimena – maybe I shall be built up through her.

When Moses looks at the Children of Israel dancing before the Golden Calf, he volunteers to reclimb the mountain with this phrase, Ulai achprah bad chatatchem – maybe I will achieve atonement for your sins.

In Lamentations (3:27-29) we read, “It is good to wait patiently until rescue comes from the LORD.... Let a person put their mouth to the dust — Ulai Yesh tikvah Maybe there will be hope.” 

In Amos (5:15) we read, "Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish justice in the gate; Ulai yechenan maybe God will be gracious"

The Talmud[3] records that

When Rabbi Ami reached this verse in Eicha, he cried. He said: A sinner suffers through so much and only 'maybe' there is hope? 

And when Rav Asi reached this verse in Amos he cried. He said [a person does so much good’ and only maybe God is gracious?

But maybe there is a different way to understand this Ulai – the maybe of faith and honesty.

Dr Judy Kiltsner suggests

Ulai [opens up] the potential [of] human beings to imagine [our]selves as other than [we] have always been and to undertake the courageous task of corrective repair that will reverse [our] standing before God.[4]

This Ulai of faith, correctly understood, is not a product to solve certainly, but a way to live with uncertainty, in an uncertain world. It’s a way to open us up to new possibilities which, by very definition, we cannot see from the place in which we still stand.

If we remain in today’s place of certitude as to out righteousness – Bmakom ShBo Anu Tzodkim – there is no chance of encountering the new possibilities of growth, of a potential beyond our current experience. There is no chance of flowers in the spring – which brings me back to Amichai.

Having claimed flowers will never grow in the place where we are right, Amichai goes on to say,

Sfeikot and Ahavot dig up the world like a mole, like a plough – bringing fertility and possibility.

Sfeikot – doubts – I understand. Ulai – the doubting maybe – needs to be part of our articulation of the desire to see flowers in the Spring. I need to stay uncertain.

But Amichai also counsels as to the ability of Ahavot – literally Loves, alongside Sfeikot – doubts, as a way to break up the hard and trampled ground from which no flower can emerge. It’s a remarkable pairing Sfeikot v’Ahavot – doubts and love. Amichai was a very remarkable poet.

It’s hard to love people who are utterly certain of their own correctness. It’s hard, too, to fall in love when we think we are certainly right ourselves.

Love both demands and supplies a missing part in our certitudes, a sense of longing and an opening of our security-gate towards the gifts of another. It might be expected that love offers certainty, but my own experience of love is that it demands I worry more about my beloved than it allows me to wallow in self-satisfaction at my own security.

I think, at least for me, Amichai has it absolutely right, that love functions like a mole or a plough churning up the compacted earth of my solitary courtyard, bringing possibility, but at the expense of my ability to claim that I am Tzodkim – right.

There’s something interesting in the three Biblical commands to love.

VAhavta Et Adonai – says the Torah - And you shall love God

VAhavta Et Reicha – says the Torah – And you shall love your fellow

VAhavata Et HaGeir – says the Torah  - And you shall love the stranger in your midst.

What do they have in common? We aren’t told to love what we can control. WE are told to embrace the other, the unknowlable.

You shall open your defences – calls the Torah. Churn, churn, churn up our certitudes.

So if you are feeling a little uncertain and unsure in the face of this day ahead, this year ahead, this life ahead. Here’ the good news. You’ve come to the perfect place. That’s the good news. Here’s the bad news. I don’t promise you will feel any more certain 25 hours from now.

But maybe, if we can learn to embrace the uncertainty, the doubts and loves we will find a way to see flowers growing in the spring and hear whispers in the place where the ruined House once stood.

And may the year come to us all in peace, sweetness and health,

Hatimah Tovah

---

[1] Mei HaShiloach, Yitro

[2] אך הכ"ף מורה שאינו בשלימות ורק דמות ודמיון הוא להאור

 

[3] Chagigah 4b – I’m grateful to R. Josh Weiner for bringing this text to my attention

[4] “The Wings of the Dove,” in Subversive Sequels, p.29

The Habsburg Emperor - “A mortal, sinful human being.” - A Yizkor Sermon for Yom Kippur 5783

 

Here’s the most interesting part of the funeral ceremony of a member of the Habsburg Dynasty.

The coffin is drawn, at the head of a procession, to the entrance of the Capuchin Church in Neuer Markt Square in Vienna.

 

And the Herald knocks three times on the large iron door.

"Who wishes to enter?" Replies the Custodian of the Church, standing behind the closed door.

 

The Herald responds,

 

“His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty,
By the Grace of God, Emperor of Austria,
King of Hungary and Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia, Lodomeria and Illyria;
King of Jerusalem,
Grand Duke of Tuscany and Cracow;
Duke of Lorraine and Bukovina;
Grand Prince of Transylvania,

Margrave of Upper and Lower Istria;
Grand Voivode of the Voivodeship of Serbia

And on the list goes – actually that’s not even half of it. The Grand Title of the Emperor of Austria has its own Wikipedia entry.[1] And after all that, the monk responds, "We don't know him."

The Herald tries again, with fewer titles.

 

The monk responds again, “We don’t know him.”

And the Herald tries a third time. This time using the forename of the emperor, describing him as "a mortal, sinful human being [who] requests permission to enter.” At which point the door is opened and the Capuchin monks exclaim, "So they may enter."

 

“A mortal, sinful human being.”

 

I want to reflect, today, on the three ways in which the Herald, eventually, introduces the deceased to their last resting place – sinful, mortal and human.

 

Sinful

When the Herald knocks the third time, the successful time, they introduce the deceased as sinful. That doesn’t strike me as a very Jewish.

 

We tend not to go big on calling people who have passed away sinners. I sin, you sin, we all sin, but in the memorial prayer we recite at funerals we say this;

 

Remember to their credit, the righteousness they have done, have mercy on their transgressions, for there is none on earth who does only good, and never sins.

 

Our sins are failings, they get in the way of the good we do, but they aren’t the way we should be identified before the world, particularly in death.

 

The Jewish way to speak of the deceased is to say ‘Zichronam L’vrachah’ – may their memory be a blessing.

 

Memories of those we have loved and lost are sometimes obviously a blessing for us, but not always. And even when memories are obviously a blessing there is something here worthy of investigation.

 

None of us is perfect, but I’ve seen – even when the journey through life has been challenging – there comes a time, usually when death is intruding on our most dear relationships, that it becomes easier to see good in someone.

 

“It was hard when I was younger,” one recently bereaved member shared with me, “but in recent years, it was easier to love and to be loved.”

 

There are so many possible truths underlying a statement like that; from parents who struggled with parenting, to now-grown children who were, as younger children, what’s the word, willful?

There are issues around physical decline and cognitive decline that ease relationships even as they hurt in so many other ways and much much more.

 

“In recent years, it was easier to love and to be loved.”

 

For many of us, we are full of deep love and enormous gratitude, but for others there is more complexity. There those of us here bearing wounds that were not be eased in life and maybe should never be eased, even by death.

 

But, as death comes, we are called to find blessing and we find it easier to find blessing – most of the time.

That’s good.

 

Memories as blessings, even rose-coloured memories, even memories that are willfully exaggerated into blessings, elevate our own lives, making us kinder and easier to love in our own imperfect turn. Memories as blessings create a sort of virtuous circle of forgiveness, tempting God into forgiveness too.

 

I think that’s why, as Jews, we stress not the sins of a person’s life in their death, but their virtues – the elements that make them and their memories a source of blessing.

 

Maybe it’s not worth waiting.

Maybe it’s not worth waiting until our loved ones have passed away or they decline to the point where all the things that annoy us, even truly sinful ones, cease to disturb us.

Maybe it’s worth looking for the blessing in people while they are still alive, and even when they are still annoying us. But that’s another sermon.

 

Back to our Herald in Vienna, their Emperor and the Jewishness of that story. The Emperor was described as sinful, mortal and human.

 

Mortal

I love the story’s insistence on the democracy of us all, in our mortality.

In death, even the greatest is, just another mortal whose life has ended.

 

With the remarkable burial societies and undertakers we work with at New London, there are no decisions to be taken as to what coffin to use. We are all to be buried in identical coffins.

There are no decisions to be taken as to what shrouds we are to be dressed in. We are all to be dressed in identical shrouds.

There are no real decisions to be taken around the order of service at a funeral. We are all to be escorted to our lasting rest with an identical service.

 

It was hard not to think of this stripped back identical fashion of Jewish funerals watching the remarkable funeral of Her Majesty the Queen. She was the proud leader of a Church, her Church, and I would have expected nothing less than the immaculate mile-long guard and pomp and ceremony that escorted her to her last resting place. It was moving and dignified and so brilliantly done. But for me, the most moving moment came when the Lord Chamberlain broke the wand of office. It was the breaking of the property and propinquity that really got me – the acknowledgement of mortality above all the pomp that seemed so true and so important.

 

We all face mortality stripped of the dignity and power of our life-time office.

In a tale at the end of Tractate Moed Katan, the great Rabbi, Rav Nahman is dying and Raba his student, comes to visit him.

 

 ‘Tell [the Angel of death], not to torment me.’ pleads the master.

‘Aren’t you an important person?’ replies the student. [‘Can’t you tell the Angel yourself?’]

Rav Nahman replies, ‘Who is important, who is regarded, who is distinguished [before death].’[2]

 

In his short story ‘The Will’ the great storyteller, Isaac Bashevis Singer, tells of a man who visited his father, a notary, to specify exactly how his funeral should run. Each year the man returns with more detail, ritual and specification; sprigs of this and shards of that, earth from here, the yolk of an egg and a silver spoon ... And the will grew every longer and elaborate.

The last lines of the tale read like this,

 

"Eventually, I suppose, the man died. I doubt whether his will was ever carried out. Most probably no-one read or serious thought about [it].”[3]

 

There is, and it’s quite right that there is, a democracy in death. Even for the Emperors of the Habsburg Dynasty.

 

And it’s probably helpful for the rest of us to worry less about the sprigs of this and the shards of that and more about the third, and last element of what the Herald would say of the Emperor as he knocked on the gates of the Capuchin Church in Vienna’s Neuer Markt Square.

 

‘Sinful’ would say the herald, and I wouldn’t agree

‘Mortal’ would say the herald, and oh yes we truly are.

And, ‘a human being,’ oh – how fortunate that Emperor was, to be so acclaimed.

 

Human

 

My mind is drawn to a teaching in Pirkei Avot;

 

Bmakom SheAin Anashim Hishtadel LeHiyot Ish

In a place where there is no humanity, strive to be a human.[4]

 

Perhaps the Yiddish works better.

 

Strive to be a mensch.

 

It’s not, of course, a one-size-fits-all demand made on our lives. The entire point of human existence is a celebration of our variety and multiplicity. The entire point of human existence is that I should be following my path towards menschlikhkeit, and you should be following yours. For this is, as the Rabbis teach, how we understand the majesty of human creation –

 

For when a King of flesh and blood mints a coin, every coin comes out looking the same. But when the King of all Kings mints a coin, every coin comes out looking different.[5]

 

That’s you and you and me, and all of us, demonstrating the majesty of our creator in our variety.

 

But there is also something about being considered a human being, even on our death, that I think we sometimes miss – even the Herald of the Habsburg Emperor missed it the first two times they knocked on the door. In fact, I think it’s the whole point of the story. We sometimes confuse our titles with our essential humanity. We think our titles are more important than our essential humanity. And they aren’t you know. They really aren’t.

 

It’s so easy to spend too much time chasing around after our titles –

 

Archduke of Austria;
Grand Duke of Tuscany and Cracow;

Grand Voivode of the Voivodeship of Serbia

 

Or, I don’t know, Rabbi of New London Synagogue, or teacher or lawyer or any one of the things we do that give us status, and income, in this world.

It’s almost too cliched to be worth an inclusion in a sermon in this, so-wise community, on such an august day, but as your Rabbi I can tell you the cliché is true. I’ve never visited a deathbed of anyone who wishes they spent more time at work, chasing the titles.

 

Even Queen Elizabeth, Queen of England, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, and that’s some title. After she passed away, I didn’t find myself remembering any of the majestic moments of majesty – of which, of course there were so many. Instead, I drifted into Youtube in search of that moment with James Bond and that little vignette with Paddington, the moments where the human was so revealed. Sadder moments reveal humanity also; the Christmas message that spoke of the annus horribilis, sitting alone at the funeral of her beloved husband …

 

I think that is at the heart of what moved so many of us when the Queen died. It wasn’t the title, it was the fact that she never lost her own humanity, or her ability to see the human in each of us even despite the heavy weight of the title.

 

I don’t know what higher an acclaim we could offer a person, on their passing.

They succeeded in their striving to be a mensch.

 

A sinner, a mortal and a human, says the Herald of the Habsburgs.

 

‘Sinful’ would say the herald, and I wouldn’t agree

‘Mortal’ would say the herald, and oh yes we truly are.

And, ‘a human being,’ oh – how fortunate are we to mourn the human beings who have blessed our lives. How fortunate we would be to be so acclaimed at the end of our lives – may we be written and sealed for good for many, many years to come.

 

Hatimah Tovah

---

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_title_of_the_emperor_of_Austria

[2] Moed Katan 28a

[3] The Will, In My Father’s House, Isaac Bashevis Singer

[4] Pirkei Avot 2:5

[5] Sanhedrin 4:5

Hope - A Sermon for Neilah, Yom Kippur 5783

Would you help me with an instant survey? I’m going to ask you, in just a moment, to put your hand up in the air – I know, a good proportion of you are English and it’s late for this kind of schtick, but humour me.

Here’s the question, don’t think too hard about it. Just an instant response.

When you think of the year to come. Are you feeling optimistic, or pessimistic?

If you are feeling optimistic, please put up your hand. Thank you.

If you are feeling pessimistic, please put up your hand. Thank you.

OK, so this is a sermon for about xx of you.

If you just want the sermon over so you can go home and eat please put up your hand. It won’t help you know – my finishing the sermon early. Service still ends at 7:19.

But to this question of optimism and pessimism. Here’s the headline for the pessimists out there. It’s not allowed – it’s forbidden to be a pessimist.

The only time I’ve sat in a room of people and been asked the same question I’ve just asked you, I also put my hand up as a pessimist. I can’t remember what omni-shambolic run of disasters were afoot – it was a while ago. But the presenter on that occasion ripped into us.  And they were absolutely right. We have responsibilities for the world, its people, and particularly the people around us. We need to pour hope out into the world, an infection of possibility would be a wonderful outbreak for our time.

Al Chet SheChatanu Lefanecha BTimhon Leyvav we’ve prayed that throughout this day - for the sin was committed before you by giving into despair.

It's the great Chasidic teacher, Rebbe Nachman of Braslav, who taught, “אָסוּר לְיָאֵשׁ עַצְמוֹ” - it is forbidden for a person to despair of themselves. It’s a famous saying. I looked up the original. It’s in his Hebrew collection Likkeutei Mehoran. [1]

כִּי אֵין שׁוּם יֵאוּשׁ בָּעוֹלָם כְּלָל - Rebbe Nachman goes on to say – for there is nothing to this thing of ‘despair’ ever, at all.

But the Hebrew collection, Likkuetei Mehoran, is based on Rebbe Nachman’s original Yiddish droshes. And whoever was responsible for the editing or the translation breaks away, at this point, from relaying the teaching of the great master in the Hebrew to say this;

וְאָמַר אָז בְּזֶה הַלָּשׁוֹן: קַיין יִאוּשׁ אִיז גָאר נִיט פַאר הַאנְדִין, וּמָשַׁךְ מְאֹד אֵלּוּ הַתֵּבוֹת " קַיין יִאוּשׁ אִיז גָאר נִיט פַאר הַאנְדִין " וַאֲמָרָם בְּכֹחַ גָּדוֹל וּבְעַמְקוּת נִפְלָא וְנוֹרָא מְאֹד, כְּדֵי לְהוֹרוֹת וּלְרַמֵּז לְכָל אֶחָד וְאֶחָד לְדוֹרוֹת, שֶׁלֹּא יִתְיָאֵשׁ בְּשׁוּם אֹפֶן בָּעוֹלָם, אֲפִלּוּ אִם יַעֲבֹר עָלָיו מָה

And he said this in this exact language: Kein yiush iz gor nit fahrhandin! He drew out these words, said them with great power and wondrous depth and awe, in order to teach to each and every person throughout the generations not to despair under any circumstances, no matter what happens to them.

Kein yiush iz gor nit fahrhandin! – There is nothing to this thing of despair at all.

Now, I know I asked about pessimism – and pessimism isn’t the same as despair.

And I know just enough about mental health and the medical condition of depression to say just this to someone struggling with clinical depression – get help, take it seriously, trust that there are people who love you and take the help.

But for the rest of us, those of us living through whatever variation of omnishambolic chaos is coming our way… don’t be a pessimist, don’t be drawn down a path towards despair. This is Rabbi Alan Lew, from his masterwork, This is Real And You Are Completely Unprepared.[2]

Despair [like anger, boredom and anxiety is just a marker of the necessity of] Teshuvah. These feelings are so familiar to us we usually believe them to be part of our intrinsic being. They are not, and in this sacred time of transformation, while the gates of heaven are open … we can see that they are not. We can see that they are just impulses, arising for a moment, the way wind and rain and snow arise in the world. They are wind and rain and snow, but they are not the world. They are not us. They only become us by our choice, by our choosing to see them that way, by our choosing to cling to them so tenaciously. We can make another choice if we wish to.

Make another choice. Choose optimism. Choose hope. Choose to have faith that when you can’t see the light in the tunnel, it’s because the tunnel doesn’t run in a straight line. Exercise the right to take control of the way we see the world. And if all that feels difficult. Try this.

Three quick thoughts.

Firstly, stop digging.

I remember the first time I led services in this sacred community, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the TV networks had that shot of the plane flying into the building on a loop, going again and again, until they realized it wasn’t helping. If you are feeling pessimistic about the world and you would like to make a different choice. Stop digging. Put down the phone. Turn off the radio. Try Shabbat. Real conversations with real people – you can us in Shul. Walk amongst the trees. I’m not counselling accepting the mess we are in. On the contrary, if you want to stoke fires of righteous indignation, nothing gets me going like taking a break from the news cycle only to return. Just remember to take breaks and if it’s dark in the pit, stop digging, especially on Shabbat.

Secondly, fix something. There is a remarkable moment in the Talmud. Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai spends 13 years hiding in a cave, and he comes, heads into town and says this,

אִיכָּא מִילְּתָא דְּבָעֵי לְתַקּוֹנֵי[3] - Is there something that needs fixing?

If the chaotic nature of life gets you down, fix something. I love this tale told by David Baum of blessed memory. He was a pediatric oncologist – and there’s a job where you need to know how to hold tight to optimism and hope. And when asked if he ever got depressed treating kids who sometimes died, he would say this.

 

As an old man walked along a beach at dawn he noticed a young boy picking up starfish and putting them in the sea. He asked him why he was doing this. His answer was that the stranded starfish would die if left until the morning sun. ‘But the beach goes on for miles, and there are thousands of starfish,’ countered the old man. ‘How can your effort make any difference?’ The young boy looked at the starfish in his hand and placed it safely in the waves. ‘It makes a difference to this one.’[4]

 

Of course, it’s not just the one starfish. It’s never just one starfish – it’s a world of mutualism, if you remember. It’s the old man, and the boy and me from the first time I heard it, and, I hope, you too. Fixing things, making a difference, goodness spills out from our good deeds, even spilling into our own hearts. Getting out into the world and fixing something is infecting optimism into the world.

If you are feeling a little bleak, fix something. Any ol’ starfish will do.

Stop Digging

Fix Something

And take time to be amazed.

It is told that Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, among the 20th century’s greatest religious thinkers and teachers, once entered his class of rabbinic students at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York and very excitedly proclaimed – “I saw a miracle this morning! I saw a miracle this morning!”

“Rabbi,” his students asked, “What was the miracle?”

“The sun came up!”

This is, despite all the challenges, an extraordinarily beautiful planet. This is, despite all grumbles and rumbles, an extraordinary gift of life. Walk amongst trees. Look out at the sky. Picture the 2.7 thousand trillion mitochondria we each have thrumming with energy, even now, and be amazed. Be radically amazed.

The ability to find radical amazement in the world, and in our lives is not so much a factor of whether the world is or is not in a state of shambles. The ability to find radical amazement in the world is a decision.

Maybe that’s not quite right, the ability to be amazed isn’t a switch to be thrown on or off, it’s a muscle, a muscle that needs to be trained, and worked to be able to bear the loads we place on it through our lives. A New Year resolution to work out the muscle of hope – there’s one last thing to daven on in the Neilah journey to come.

Stop Digging

Try to fix something

And work on being radically amazed.

Embrace hope. Banish despair. Evict pessimism from this year to come.

And if all else fails. Try humour.

As many of you will know, I had a sabbatical over the summer. It was very lovely, thank you. But while I was away, I got a call from a member.

OK, I’m on sabbatical, but it might be important. I answered.

“Hi, I know you are on sabbatical,” they said, “but I thought you would want to know immediately. I’ve decided to change my name. From now on, I would like you to call me ‘spinal column’.”

“I’m sorry,” I replied, “I’m going to have to call you back.”

Hatimah Tovah.

---

[1] 2:78

[2] P.15

[3] Shabbat 33b

[4] https://www.asi-mag.com/the-parable-of-the-starfish/