Stories, Thinkers and Actions
Sermon
October
1, 200
Rabbi
Anthony D. Holz
As we the members of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim come together at the beginning of Yom Kippur, let us recall that Kol Nidrei is not about our past but about our future. It reminds us that in the coming year, although we may start out with the best resolutions and intentions in the world, we will make mistakes and will fail to reach many of our goals. The Kol Nidrei chant is simultaneously a restatement of our personal fallibility, and also a challenge for us to strive to make the world and ourselves better.
To help us explore ways open to us, let us turn to the writings of Martin Buber, a great Jewish twentieth century thinker whose selected Hassidic stories can illustrate constructive paths. Some of these stories may be familiar to us, others less so. But their messages relate both to our High Holy Day observance and to our lives in general.
The first of Buber’s Hassidic stories has to do with Rabbi Shneur Zalman who was denounced by his fellow Jews because his thinking and his actions differed from that of the organized Jewish community of his time. As a result he was put into jail in St. Petersburg. A Russian jailer, clearly impressed by the calm thoughtfulness of the imprisoned rabbi, started to hold conversations with him, asking him a number of questions about the Bible. Finally he asked: “If God knows everything, how can we make sense of the first part of the Bible where Adam and Eve are in the Garden of Eden and God asks Adam: ‘Where are you?”
The Hassidic rabbi replied that this is the call that God makes to every person in every era: “Where are you in your world? You only have so many years and days in your life, -- how far along have you gotten in your world?
Buber then points out how easy it is for each one of us to escape responsibility for our own lives, to try to hide from who we really are and what we truly should be doing. So God’s question, “Where are you?” is a wake up call, a summons for us to stop moving in endless self-defeating circles, to accurately see where we are in our lives and what we best now can do.
The second Hassidic story is about Rabbi Eizik son of Yekel, a very poor man who lived in Cracow, Poland. After years in poverty, he started having a recurring dream, in which someone kept telling him to travel to the foreign city of Prague, and look there under the bridge that leads to the king’s palace.
Eventually, Rabbi Eizik made the necessary preparations for what was then a big journey, and he went to Prague. But he found that the bridge he had dreamed about was guarded by soldiers day and night, so he could not start digging. Not willing to give up easily, he kept returning to the bridge every day. Finally, the officer in charge who had seen him now on a daily basis, asked him in a friendly way what he was looking for or what he was waiting for.
When Rabbi Eizik told him of the dream that had brought him to this place from a far away country, the officer laughed and told him: “You poor guy, you have worn out your shoes to simply come here because of a dream! If I believed in dreams, I would have had to take a trip when a dream once told me to go to Cracow and dig for a treasure under the stove in the home of a Jew whose name was Eizik, the son of Yekel. Can you just imagine?” And the officer laughed again.
Rabbi Eizik said goodbye, traveled home and dug under the stove in his house, where he found a great treasure. As a result he built a famous synagogue with all the wealth that he had found.
Martin Buber explains that the true fulfillment of one’s life, the greatest treasure one can find, exists really only here where one stands. Our life’s meaning is not found by hurrying and scurrying all over the planet or by looking for some grand actions to take. Rather, our existence becomes most meaningful as we pay attention to the everyday details of our lives and our relationships with one another. The true treasure lies beneath the hearth of our own home.
The third selection from Martin Buber’s Hassidic stories has to do with a Yom Kippur talk by the rabbi of the town of Ger, a sermon that warns against our torturing ourselves: A person who has done wrong and talks about it and thinks about it all the time never gets rid of it. It comes to dominate his life so that he cannot meaningfully change. In the words of this rabbi “What would you? Rake the muck this way, rake the muck that way – it will always be muck. Have I sinned or have I not sinned – what does heaven get out of it? In the time I am brooding over it I could be stringing pearls for the delight of heaven. That is why the Bible says: ‘Depart from evil and do good’ – turn completely away from evil, do not dwell upon it, and do good. If you have done wrong, then counteract it by doing what is right.”
Notice in this last story the message that we should not dwell on the past, but rather do better in the future.
I have known and loved all three of these Hassidic stories at least since 1964, before I left South Africa to study at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. Now, after having been a Reform Rabbi for 36 years, I find valuable links between these great stories and the thinking of three extremely influential and provocative modern Jewish thinkers. On Wednesday evenings spread out over the next couple of months, I plan to explore the thinking of Rabbis Harold Kushner, Lawrence Kushner and Alvin Reines. All of these rabbis have written and had real influence in the second half of the twentieth century extending to the beginning of the twenty first century. All of them can be googled on the internet. According to their different perspectives, each of these rabbis has tried to make sense of our world in ways that can lead to more constructive actions. None of these thinkers believes that God is all-knowing, all-powerful and perfect. Each thinker tries to suggest ways in which we limited human beings can do better.
Rabbi Harold Kushner struggled with the tragic death of his young son and concluded that God cannot prevent bad things from happening. If God is limited, our world is limited, and each one of us is limited, then the question of the Hassidic story: Where are you? applies to all of us. To Harold Kushner, the fact of bad things happening to good people should not in any way prevent us from doing good deeds, deeds that will help make the world better. I will be examining Rabbi Harold Kushner’s thinking on Wednesday evening, October 18.
At subsequent two week intervals, I will also touch on the thinking of Rabbi Lawrence Kushner and Rabbi Alvin Reines. Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, leading contemporary teacher of Hassidic and Kabbalistic thinking, would very much agree that the real treasure of our lives is hidden beneath the hearth of our home. From his perspective, we are within God, everything is interconnected, and only when we see the whole picture of reality can we human beings make sense of our individual lives and actions.
For Alvin Reines, the past is over and beyond retrieval. Our responsibility is to focus on this moment, so that we may help build a better future. If Lawrence Kushner argues persuasivesly that the world is more than we can see, Rabbi Reines insists that what we see is all that there is. For him, God is neither in the past, which is dead, nor in the present, which is disappearing, but always in the future, in the possibilities before us.
Our Jewish community has long been blessed with many great thinkers and teachers. This has been especially so in the modern period. My father once heard a talk given in Germany by Martin Buber. I personally have known all three modern rabbis whose thoughts and concepts of God I will be exploring.
Given the limitations of our knowledge and the limitations of our abilities, we cannot help but try to make sense of our world, so that our actions will help bring improvement. In large measure, that is what Kol Nidrei is about and also what it means to be Jewish.
As members of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, our task is to be a Kahal Kadosh, a Holy Congregation, open to diverse perspectives and sometimes unusual thinking. If we succeed in doing this, then for each person who wishes it to be so, this place can truly be a House of God, a Beth Elohim.
Where are you? Have you looked for the treasures in your own home? Have you truly focused on the possibilities of tomorrow? The High Holy Day season calls us to respond to such questions. Amen