Yom Kippur Kol Nidre

Rabbi Maralee Gordon
Yom Kippur Kol Nidre 2008

Tonight I want to speak about the Wizard of Oz, with thanks to Rabbi Michael Hecht who raised the spiritual implications of the Wizard of Oz during a session of the Greater Carolins Association of Rabbis Kallah this past summer.  Yes, the Wizard of Oz, the book and movie, and specifically the wizard himself.  Do you recall how Dorothy and the tin woodsman and the scarecrow and the cowardly lion go on a perilous journey to find the wizard, quake in his presence and are given tasks to do?  Do you recall how they meet up with him again and due to Toto’s canine curiosity discover that he is a fraud.  He is not a scary-looking, booming-voiced, superhuman magician.  He is a human being hiding behind disguise and amplification.  He is a fake, a fraud, or in the quaint language of 1900 when the book was originally published, a humbug.
How often have we felt that way?  A fraud, a fake.  As teenagers did we get dressed up to appear as someone we didn’t really feel like inside?  As parents, do we do the best we can knowing we aren’t giving our children everything they need, and yet they look up to us as if we are the wizard of oz or Wonder Woman—we can heal all wounds, fix all problems. 
In the workplace that feeling of fraud can assail us as well.  If we are teachers by trade, sometimes we are only a chapter or two ahead of our students.  Many of us are called upon to give presentations to a work group or at a conference—we are looked up to as the expert.  Knowing that there are others more knowledgeable than we, aware of the wisdom of our mentors that we cannot approach, we feel like a fraud.
And yet .… As parents we manage to heal most of the wounds.  Even after they have become teenagers-who-know-more-than-their-parents, our children actually come to us for advice.  As adults they come to us with relationship issues, workplace problems, and childrearing questions.  So we must have done something right!  As teachers, our students let us know the kind of impact we have had on them; our colleagues let us know that they have benefited from our expertise and advice, even if we aren’t the world expert. 
It turns out a “humbug” can actually be beneficial and helpful.  The Wizard of Oz, not a wizard at all but a carnival man from Omaha, accomplishes what each of the pilgrims comes to him for.  He gives the cowardly lion bravery by showing him that it is already within him when he acts despite his fear.  He gives the scarecrow a brain by demonstrating that to him that he can think and reason.  He shows the tinman that he is a feeling individual, giving him the gift of the heart he has within.  He is ready to give up his wizard gig to take Dorothy home in his hot air balloon.  
The Hebrew word transliterated into English as what looks like oz, that is,  “oz”, means strength.  How apropos, for we often draw on our inner oz without even believing it is there.  We share our talents, insights and strengths with others, thinking/knowing that we are a fraud. 
That is what we are doing here tonight and all day tomorrow—acknowledging that we are a fraud.  We are not the exemplary human being that we might appear to be on the outside. 
Look, Yom Kippur is all about admitting our failings, regretting our mistakes, resolving to not repeat them, and accepting God’s forgiveness.  If we go through all the steps, God’s forgiveness is a given.  When we come to the end of ne-ilah tomorrow night, we will feel a sense of joy, not because it is finally over—that’s called “relief”–but because after all the hard work of this 25 hour day, we really will have achieved God’s forgiveness.
But for many of us, that is not enough, if we do not find it within us to forgive ourselves.
Rabbi Debra Orenstein teaches that Judaism gives us stages of repentance, so that there is a point when you know you are done.  There is an outside measure by which to measure, so that you look at all the steps and if you have fulfilled all the steps it becomes easier to forgive yourself.  The point of teshuvah, repentance, is not to suffer but change. Rarely do people change through criticism but through awareness and love.
The steps are: that I realize I hurt you, and I need to describe what I did so that the other person feels safe.  Then comes restitution—what could I do that would make you feel whole?  And finally to promise that I won’t do it again.
How do you forgive yourself?  You go through those stages, you do the mitzvah, and you realize that the burden is lifted.  It is a mitzvah to forgive yourself after doing the repentance.  The trick is to imagine your best friend or your child came to you with something that they did—imagine what you would counsel them.  Then, take that counsel yourself.
Rabbi Lawrence Kushner asks us to picture that “We go down into ourselves with a flashlight, looking for the evil we have intended or done – not to excise it as some alien growth, but rather to discover the holy spark within it.  To begin not by rejecting the evil but by acknowledging it as something we meant to do.  This is the only way we can truly raise and redeem it.  We lose our temper because we want things to be better right away. We gaze with lustful eyes because we have forgotten how to love the ones we want to love.  We hoard material possessions because we imagine they will help us live more fully.  We turn a deaf ear, for we fear the pain of listening would kill us.  We waste time, because we are not sure how to enter a living relationship.  We even tolerate a society that murders, because we are convinced it is the best way to save more life.  At the bottom of such behavior is something that was once holy.  And during times of holiness, communion, and light, our personal and collective perversions creep out of the cellar, begging to be healed, freed, and redeemed.”
“The conclusion of true teshuva [repentance], returning to our Source in Heaven, is not self-rejection or remorse, but the healing that comes from telling ourselves the truth about our real intentions and, finally, self-acceptance. This does not mean that we are now proud of who we were or what we did, but it does mean that we have taken what we did back into ourselves, acknowledged it as part of ourselves. We have found its original motive, realized how it became disfigured, perhaps beyond recognition, made real apologies, and done our best to repair the injury, but we no longer try to reject who we have been and therefore who we are, for even that is an expression of the Holy One of Being. 
“We do not simply repudiate the evil we have done and sincerely mean never to do it again; that is easy. Rather, we receive whatever evils we have intended and done back into ourselves as our own deliberate creations. We cherish them as long-banished children finally taken home again, and thereby transform them and ourselves. When we say the vidui, the confession, we don’t hit ourselves; we hold ourselves.”  Rabbi Kushner teaches us to accept our weaknesses, to embrace them as part of ourselves.  Only then can we actually accept our strengths and be able to share them with others without feeling like a fraud.
Debbie Friedman teaches that our “annual call to teshuvah is a reminder that our time in this world is limited and that we must journey honestly, accepting that our gifts are not for us alone, but are meant to be put forth in this world as a way of repairing it. Acknowledging our strengths and what we have to ofer others, makes us partners with all of creation.  The bottom line is:  We were created to be ourselves. 
That’s what Martin Buber meant when he wrote:
It is the duty of every person in Israel to know and consider that he is unique in the world in his particular character and that there has never been anyone like him in the world, for if there had been someone like him, there would have been no need for him to be in the world….The wise Rabbi Simcha Bunam once said in old age, when he had already grown blind:  “I should not like to change places with our father Abraham!  What good would it do God if Abraham became like blind Bunam, and blind Bunam became like Abraham?  Rather than have this happen, I think I shall try to become a little more myself.”  [Martin Buber, The Way of Man]
The psychologist Joan Borysenko teaches that “forgiveness starts with ourselves and extends to others.  Accepting that the core of your own being is as precious and wonderful as that of any other person is the greatest gift you can ever give yourself.”
Rabbi Bonim said to his Students:  Every person should have two pockets; and he can use each when he needs it:  In one pocket is placed the statement, “The world was created for me.”  And in the other pocket: “I am dust and ashes.”
We can be strong and helpful and expert and fallible and useless and a fraud all at the same time.  Only by accepting ourselves do we reconcile the oz, the wizard within us who has an impact on the world, and the humbug, the fraud within us who needs the help of God and humanity to get by in the world, and only then are we be able to be true ourselves.  Only by granting ourselves forgiveness are we able to admit our weaknesses before God and humans, to accept God’s forgiveness and to forgive others. 
As we begin our process of confession before God tonight, let us remember to forgive ourselves as we ask God’s forgiveness, to acknowledge that yes, I am but dust and ashes, and yes, the world was created for me.
 
‘Judge Ourselves Gently’  Shakti Gawain
Remember:
•  If you judge and criticize yourself, others will judge and criticize you.
•  If you hurt yourself, other will hurt you.
•  If you lie to yourself, others will lie to you.
•  If you are irresponsible to yourself, others will be irresponsible in relation to you.
•  If you blame yourself, others will blame you.
•  If you do violence to yourself emotionally, others will do violence to you emotionally, and even physically.
•  If you don’t listen to your feelings, no one will listen to your feelings.
•  If you love yourself, others will love you.
•  If you respect yourself, others will respect you.
•  If you trust yourself, others will trust you.
•  If you are honest with yourself, others will be honest with you.
•  If you are gentle and compassionate with yourself, others will treat you with compassion.
•  If you appreciate yourself, others will appreciate you.
•  If you honor yourself, others will honor you.
•  If you enjoy yourself, others will enjoy you.