Rabbi Maralee Gordon
Rosh Hashana Day 2008
Looking forward
On Rosh Hashanah we assess our year just past. This is not the overarching goal of the process, but the means to setting out on the new year with renewed purpose and readjusted route. It is our gps telling us we missed a turn and need to revise our route. For all of us the new year promises economic uncertainties and belt-tightening.
Many change-oriented organizations are suffering from a drop in membership or donations. This promises to be a serious problem for social service agencies, food pantries, volunteer organizations, art museums and, yes, MCJC. Many people see their synagogue dues as coming out of disposable income, extras–not in the category of necessities. So some say to themselves, I won’t renew my membership. I’ll just pay for High Holiday tickets and go then. The week after Yom Kippur, we have a community dinner in the Sukkah, but those who just bought tickets for the Holidays will think to themselves, well I didn’t join this year, so it wouldn’t be fair to attend. So you won’t show up to have dinner with us in the Sukkah. You won’t dance with the Torahs on Simchat Torah. You’ll skip the adult education series we have planned this year which combines learning top of the line Jewish cooking from our resident chefs and bakers with Jewish learning on unexpected topics—Kabbalah, Jews of Morocco, to name just a couple. You’ll talk yourself out of attending the Chanukah party with your kids or grandchildren because, you’ll tell yourself, it wouldn’t be fair since I’m not a member. You will lose out but so will we. We rely on the mixture of energies, the variety of skills, the age range over four generations, the hands-on, do-it-yourself nature of MCJC. When someone decides to skip it for this year, the quality of life for the entire community diminishes. We’re going to lose out by not having your unique energy to vitalize our Jewish community.
An old friend of mine and Leo’s, we’ve probably known Howard Cohen for 35 years. We have photos of him dancing at our wedding. He is on the Tzedakah Committee of the Chavurah, Jewish fellowship group, we still nominally belong to, even though we moved beyond the metroplex 21 years ago. The Tzedakah committee of the Am Chai Havurah puts together a list of sound organizations to support, some doing direct aid to the Jewish community, some doing direct aid to needy populations of Chicago, and some doing global work to help those in need. This year he sent out this message: “For those of you who may be experiencing some discomfort concerning the direction of the stock market these days, I offer the following suggestion for putting the emotion to good use: Use it to greater appreciate the difficulties of those who are experiencing difficulties greater than yourself, and act to relieve their circumstances by making your annual tzedakah contributions.”
This is another thing we do together as a community better than we can do on an individual basis—work to save the world. We are taught that when you save one life you save an entire world. Together we participate in the Woodstock Hunger Walk which sends the contributions of those who participate to Heifer International to give destitute people around the world the chance to get on their feet with a flock of chickens, a milk cow, or a flock of sheep or goats, and keeps contributions here in the community for those who can’t fill up their gas tank to get to a medical appointment or who run out of food before the end of the month, even with food stamps and their allotted visits to the food pantry. Here are the envelopes; who’s going to walk? Together we will contribute hundreds of bags of food to the Algonquin Food Pantry this year in our Corner of the Fields food drive and send donations to Mazon to help those in need around the world. We’ll bring in the coats our kids have outgrown and those we have grown tired of—because we have the luxury of growing tired of our clothes before they wear out—to contribute to residents of McHenry County who can’t buy new clothes for their kids or themselves.
Together we make an impact on the world, and together we support members of our community when they need help. Last year Faith in Action called to tell us that there was an older Jewish woman living with her grandson and his family in Wonder Lake. She was lonely, couldn’t drive anymore, and missed having contact with a Jewish community. The Canter family has taken her under their wing, brought her to services with them and I’m not even sure what else. We carpool each other to services and Religious School, provide food and comfort at shiva minyans, kvell at bar/bat mitzvahs and particularly at Confirmation. In August six of our young adults awed us at Confirmation, yes with their speeches, and also with the beauty of the young adults they have become.
Rabbi Jack Riemer tells this story as one of his favorites, not to be taken literally since we don’t believe in the Devil (except perhaps the one inside each one of us): The story is that the Devil once called a meeting of his staff and said to them: we’re doing very badly this year. The number of sins that people commit is way down. What are we going to do in order to up the amount of sins in the world? He gave them twenty-four hours to come up with an answer.
When they reconvened, one of the demons said: My technique is that I try to tell people that there is no God, and therefore that they don’t need to keep the Torah or do the mitzvot. But it doesn’t work. People aren’t stupid. They look around and they see how magnificent and how complex the world is—and so they realize that there must be a God. And so I fail.
The second demon said: My strategy is: I tell people that there is a God, but that He didn’t give the Torah. And therefore, they don’t have to keep the Torah or do the mitzvahs. But it doesn’t work. People are not stupid. They look into the Torah and they see how wise and how understanding it is, and they realize that God must have given it. And so I fail.
The third demon said; My strategy works. I tell people that there is a God, and I tell people that He gave the Torah. But I say to them: what’s the rush? Stay in bed —you can always do the mitzvahs tomorrow. And that works!
I’d venture to guess that each of us at one time or a few, members or not, have looked at the calendar of events at our little shul on the prairie and thought, gee it would be nice to attend that lecture. When the time comes we hear, from that demon inside, oh stay home I can always go to the next one. Or, hmm, Shabbat dinner at the synagogue—that would be great, but then as it comes close—oh, we can just have pizza at home, there’ll be another one next month. Or you plan to come to services one Saturday morning, but oh well, I don’t know– there’s another one next week. But there is someone in the congregation saying kaddish who needs you here this week. And since you didn’t participate in the Torah discussion, that little back and forth about business ethics or sibling rivalry didn’t have an impact on you. And you won’t get to know that member of the congregation who lives two towns over and went to high school with your brother.
Now you may think that you have enough of a Jewish community with the friends you made years ago when your kids were little, but what about the newcomers out there who are just building up their adult Jewish network now. Take a minute to look around the room—how many strangers do you see? Wow, isn’t that great? Look at all the potential out there to enhance your Jewish network.
Do you ever feel that you are not living at your best and fullest? But it’s too late to change—or so we think. Abraham and Sara remind us that it is never too late to start on a new path. This is the glory of our ancestors and of our High Holidays: they both proclaim to us the possibility of a new beginning. You say that you are too old to learn, to study? Rabbi Akiva, living at a time of much lower life expectancy, learned to read at the age of 40 and became the greatest scholar of his day. I can’t promise that you’ll become another Rabbi Akiva, but you can certainly make a new start and learn to read Hebrew and/or learn more about your Jewish heritage here at MCJC.
Perhaps you feel like you’ve stayed away from community activities for so long you’re embarrassed to come in the door. It’s been so long, how can you change now? The life of Abraham calls upon you to dare to change. Abraham left his home at the age of 75 and carved out a new life for himself and his family. He broadened his horizons and changed every community he came in contact with. I can’t promise that you’ll become another Abraham, but your participation in the activities of MCJC can have an impact on your life, and even more importantly, an impact on our community. We want your two cents in our Saturday morning Torah discussions, at our Wednesday learning over lunch and with our visiting scholars throughout the year. We want your hands and heart helping us in our social action efforts.
Perhaps you feel reluctant to come to services because you don’t know the words. The life of Hannah, as we just heard it so beautifully expressed by Jaci Krandel, calls upon you to dare to join our worship. Hannah prayed to God with all her heart in her own words. Her presence in the sanctuary changed her life and the life of Eli the priest as well. You may not be another Hannah, but your spiritual energy joined with the rest of our congregation will have a deep impact. Just as two or three of us could not sing Avinu Malkeynu with the same impact on all of our hearts and souls as when we sang it as a room full of pray-ers, so it is on every Shabbat. The more voices that weave together, the stronger the fabric of our community.
Don’t let your financial situation or your work hours keep you from being an integral part of our community. That’s like cutting off your nose to spite your face. We need your energy, and you need the support of your community’s members. Don’t let estrangement from our doors become a permanent habit. Let your internal gps guide you back into your Jewish community, so that we can all benefit from each of your individual strengths, gifts and melodies.
May it be your will.