Erev Rosh Hashana

Rabbi Maralee Gordon
Erev Rosh Hashanah 2008

The beginning of 5769 finds us at a time of great uncertainty.  Our anticipation, with a mixture of hope and trepidation, of what our new government will be like after the November elections, has been replaced by grave uneasiness at the financial situation facing each of us individually and all of as a nation.
 There are those in our congregation who have gone from owning their own home—well, sharing ownership with the bank–to renting.  There are those in our congregation who have lost their jobs as companies merge and downsize, and are having trouble finding another.  There are those in our congregation who are watching their retirement funds shrink and wondering how many more years they will have to work before they will now be able to retire, and just how much their standard of living will be reduced.  And, there are those of us in our congregation, already retired, who are wondering if they need to go back to work or move in with their children.  And parents are saving less for their children’s college education this year than last year.
We all have a sense of unease– just how much worse will things get before we can see them going up again.  We know it could be worse.  We’ve heard stories of life during the depression, something we are not actually close to approaching–at this moment.
 This is neither the time nor the place, nor am I the person, to explore our national financial prospects.  Rather, my focus, as is our focus every Rosh Hashanah, my focus is to reflect on our situation and what we can do amid our helplessness.  Tomorrow, after the Torah service and after the shofar service, in the musaf amida, we come to the gist of our work at Rosh Hashanah. 
 
We read in our liturgy: 
On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed:  How many shall leave this world, and how many shall be born, who shall die in the fullness of years and who before; who shall rest and who shall wander; who shall be serene and who disturbed, who shall be at ease and who afflicted; who shall be impoverished and who enriched, who shall be humbled and who exalted.
In other words, we acknowledge that we have little control over much of what will befall us over the coming year, or any year.  We don’t control the hurricanes, the housing markets or the health of our loved ones.  What we do control is our response and reaction to both the positive and negative events in our lives.
 The liturgy continues:
And returning, prayer and righteous deeds avert the severity of the decree.  In other words, what we do with the cards we have been dealt, is what determines our quality of life and our contentment.  To take a mundane example:
 Already many of us have been doing less driving in response to gas prices.  If you were planning on driving downtown for work, an appointment or a social outing, you could grumble the whole way, particularly when you go to pay for parking, you could just stay home, or you could take the train.  You could take the train and grumble—it takes so long, it only comes once an hour if that…or realizing that you have an extra hour, hour and a half, to catch up on reading, paperwork or sleep, followed by a brisk walk across the loop to your destination, you could be grateful—you could even feel virtuous or smug!
The past two decades have been a time when acquisition has been among the highest public values in American society.  Corporations acquiring corporations, banks acquiring banks, and vice versa.  On a personal level we have all bought into it to some degree or another.  Bigger cars, at least one for each driver in the family, eating out more and more, acquiring the latest cellphones, ipods and laptops, a TV in every bedroom. 
Sometimes having less can improve the quality of your life.  What happens if you all have to be in the same room to watch TV?  Family time?  Trying to save on gas can mean the social interaction of family, coworkers and friends as you run errands together, or carpool to work or school.  You can’t afford to eat out as much any more?  Have you noticed how much tastier and healthier the meal is that you’ve cooked for yourself?  You can’t afford to heat your house as high?  You get to wear that wool sweater you never wear anymore because of global warming.  You can’t afford to go out?  Dust off those board games!  Catch my drift? 
 Which reminds me of a story:
Once there lived a man who really thought his life was about as bad as it could be.  He did nothing but complain.  He would tell his friend, “The things that go on in my house you wouldn’t believe.  I have no peace.”  He complained and moaned, and one day his friend said to him, “Why don’t you go to the rabbi.  He is very wise and knows a lot about family troubles.” 
 After waiting in line he spoke to the great man:  “My daughter won’t lift a finger around the house.  My wife scolds and whines.  The baby screams all day and all night..  The twins fight like cats and dogs, and the cat and dog also fight.  Who can stand it?!?”
 The rabbi shook his head and thought.  He asked, “Do you have any chickens?”
“Yes,” said the man, “free-range!”  “Bring them into the house, and ask me no questions!”
His wife was amazed to see her husband shoo the chickens into the house.  “The rabbi has spoken,” he said. 
After a miserable day of clucking, unmentionable things all over the floor, smells…., the man returned to the rabbi to complain:  “On top of everything else I told you about the other day, I can’t turn around without stepping on a chicken!—Rabbi, what am I to do now?!”
“Do you have a cow?” “Yeeesss,” he tentatively replied.   “Bring her into the house.”
“The rabbi has spoken,” he announced to his wife as he led the cow through the doorway.  You can only imagine….
He went back a third time:  “Rabbi, help me!! Now it’s moo, moo, moo day and night, and the smell!”
The rabbi asked, “Does your wife have any poor relations?”
“Oh yes, a terrible, fat brother who eats non-stop all day, and his wife who talks on-stop all day.”
“Invite them to your home,” said the rabbi.
Finally, the man went back to the rabbi.  “My sister-in-law complains all day.  My wife is an angel next to her.  My brother-in-law has eaten twelve chickens already, and my wife feeds him morning, noon and night.”
“Tell me,” asked the rabbi, “Do they have anywhere else to go?”
“Well, we have rich cousins in the city.”
“Please ask them to go there.  Return the cow to the barn and the chickens to their coop.”
 “We will be much happier without them,” said the man.  “And wiser, too!” said the rabbi.
“The rabbi has spoken!” the whole family called to one another as they said goodbye to the relatives, led the cow to the barn and shooed the chickens out.  Then they threw open the windows and let the fresh air in as they cleaned and polished their home.  That evening for the first time, the family sat down to dinner in peace, and the man who formerly held the village record in complaints was heard to sigh, “Shalom, shalom, our home is a paradise now!”
Finally he was content with his house and home.  But content is not where we are meant to be at Rosh Hashanah, Yom Hadin, the Day of Judgment.
Rabbi Alan Lew explains where we are at Rosh Hashanah this way:  Every moment of our lives, the sacred house of our life—the constructs by which we live and to which we hold on so fiercely—nevertheless falls away.  Every moment we take in a breath and the world comes into being, and then we let out a breath and the world falls away.  Every moment, we experience what we take to be death, loss and failure.  When we become aware that this is happening, we feel dislocated, uprooted, filled with sorrow and anxiety.  We feel estranged from our own lives, and we realize how much these constructs have been keeping us from the reality of our lives—how we have been using them to give us distance from the gnawing suspicion that we have no house—that we are afloat in a great sea of being, an endless flow of becoming in which we are connected to all beings.  The great journey of transformation begins with the acknowledgment that we need to make it.  It is not something we are undertaking for amusement, nor even for the sake of convention; rather, it is a spiritual necessity. 
It is a spiritual necessity to feel the impermanence of that physical home to be able to find our spiritual home.  The shakiness of our economy forces us to adjust our priorities.  To think deeply about what is ultimately important to us.  We come to realize that driving is not a necessity if we can take the train.  Keeping the thermostat to a chilling 73 degrees in summer or warm 73 in winter is not a necessity if we adjust our clothing accordingly.  Grabbing fast food or take out is not a necessity if we reacquaint ourselves with the stove in our kitchen.
After the house in our story returned to its former self, if this were an adult story, would the inhabitants alter their behavior beyond the lack of complaints?  Would the man start praising his wife and giving his children positive reinforcement for helping around the house?  Would they take in a poor student, realizing they had more room than they thought.  Would they have put the brother in touch with a good internist and found a job for the sister-in-law to help them get back on their feet?  Would they have realized that they could get by with less poultry now that they weren’t feeding so many extra mouths, and donated more to the local food pantry or the poor neighbors down the block? 
To end with contentment is not the goal.  During our recent flooding did you have to throw some stuff away?  What about those who have nothing left to keep after Hurricane Ike.  Did you have to make repairs to your roof or foundation?  We did.  But what about those who have no house left.  Have we reached out to them?  Have you started driving less with high gas prices?  Maybe you used to come to shul in two cars and now come in one.  What about those who have to strictly plan their week to have enough gas to do all their errands?  What about those who are down to one car in the family?  Have we reached out to neighbors to run errands together?
The story is told of Baron Edmond Rothschild who once asked his personal assistant to calculate the Baron’s net “worth.”  A few days later the assistant came back with the sum total of his assets.  The Baron said “That is not how much I am worth… The government could seize all my assets in an instant.”  The Baron then removed a small key from his vest pocket and opened the center drawer of his desk.  He slowly pulled out a ledger and placed it on his desk.  He opened it and said “This is a ledger of all the money I have given to charity.  This is something that can NEVER be taken away.  THIS is how much I am ‘worth’.”
Life is not about chasing money. What you have is not what you are.  What you lack is not what you are.  You are what you give away, whether your time, your money, your parenting, your attention.  You can live with a smaller house, you can live with smaller and fewer vehicles.  You can live with less expensive clothing.  You can’t live without caring for other people.
What do we learn from uncertainty and adversity?  We learn that we don’t need as much as we thought, that we can get by with less.  We learn that we do need each other.  We learn to ask for help.  We learn to see the need of others more clearly. 
 Working together to solve problems gives us greater satisfaction than sitting around counting our losses and measuring them against someone else’s.  What’s most important to us?—our family and friends.  What are our priorities:  family, health, meaningful work whether paid or volunteer, financial comfort.  As we worry over our financial comfort, we have begun the process of reflecting on what “comfort” means.  May we remember to put these reflections in perspective as we ask God to inscribe us for a year of vitality, blessing, peace and financial comfort, us and all our people, for a good life and serenity.   Amen
“And repentance, and prayer and justice cancel the evil of the decree.”
 “Repentance” – taking account.    Both the good and the bad, both of the individual and of the community, to identify, to be aware.  Not to cover up.  Not to suppress.  To feel pain and sorrow, but also joy.  To sense regret and satisfaction, as well.  Guilt and its opposite. 
   “Prayer” – to pray is to believe.  To believe that it is possible to be different.  To believe in human ability, the ability of a person to change and be changed.  To believe in human freedom.  To believe in the capacity of human beings to give meaning to life in a world of decrees.  In the wilderness.  In God’s world. 
  “And charity” – There is work to be done. Not merely to think and to speak.  To act.      “Cancel the evil of the decree” –   because then it’s not a decree.  It’s a challenge.  A gift of God.  
 Avram Stein