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The words which you will be hearing now are not from the sermon I originally intended to deliver today. If you know me, I’m sure you’re aware that I’m a tad bit forgetful, just a tad bit, but no, I didn’t forget it at home. I’ve chosen not to use my first sermon, and I’ll share with you now the reason why. If at the end you’ll be curious to know what I originally wrote and had in store for you, you’ll be able to find it in our website. For those of you who have no access to Internet, I’ve made some copies which you can take on your way out.
When balmy summers begin turning into winter, we rabbis start worrying about what's coming ahead. During the year we try to conduct services that are both solemn and lively, and to give over sermons which are stimulating. But the arrival of the High Holydays takes everything to a different dimension. This is a time that extricates itself from the usual cycle of the yearly calendar; it stands on its own, as if suspended on a different plane. What we expect and what we feel changes. During this season, we all want to be touched in some way. If regular services have not managed to move us through the year, during these services we want to be moved. If during the year we like to take a short schluff during the sermon, today we try a little harder to stay awake. Wait, is that snoring that I hear? Some of us stay away from the synagogue throughout the year. Sometimes there is too much going on in our lives for us to come, family, commitments. Perhaps synagogue is simply not for us, we feel that we don’t get much from it. It could be that we get annoyed at the rabbis, or we have a number of different personal reasons for not attending. But in spite of all that, on Yom Kippur we try to be here. And we come in numbers – just look around you.
Therefore, we as rabbis worry a lot this time of year. Each action we do must be well thought out, every word uttered carefully. We strive to make the High Holyday experience one that will be extra special for you, And not just us, but everyone else involved in this remarkable community try to give their best- the choir, the shammasim, Ingrid, Judith, Judy, teachers, volunteers, members of the Rites and Practises Committee, everyone all the way down to our wonderful caretakers and cleaners.
Thus, for weeks already, Aaron and I have been thinking and thinking what to talk about, trying to ensure that our topics are carefully chosen. I thought I had a great idea – in Yom Kippur it is said that we try to emulate angels. We wear white like the angels; we give up on food, drink and other comforts to devoid ourselves from physicality and effectively become semi-spiritual beings. I thought – wait a minute, who wants to be an angel anyway? Boring! But seriously, it is amazing to be human. We have been blessed with so many great qualities, a drive to improve ourselves, an inner sense of morality to guide us, a need for social relations, and an intimate link to the environment around us. I know – we can be quite naughty sometimes, but hey. That was my topic - I wanted to talk about the special gifts we have received as humans and the responsibility that comes with them.
So for three days I locked myself up in my flat to write my sermon, only venturing outside to throw out the rubbish or to buy litres of Diet Coke – boy did I need caffeine! Like a hermit isolated from the world, I neglected both friends and Facebook. I got my hands on every book on the subject I could lay my hands on, and Google and I became best buddies. I probably read every single story about Adam out there, even a psychoanalytic study attributing his creation from clay to ancient anxieties about faeces and excrement. Yeah, you heard right.
When I had an overload of information in my head, I tried to mentally compute and process it all. Then I had to wait for my muse before writing. It seems she was on strike, together with our dear postal workers, but after some time – she showed up. Once I started writing I couldn’t stop and lose the momentum – what if she went on strike again?! So I wrote through the night and finished my sermon last week at 7:30 am. That’s it – I had finished it, my baby. I wanted to shout like Dr. Frankenstein when he completed his creation – It’s alive! It’s alive! I was proud of myself.
Red-eyed and half in slumber land, I looked for guinea pigs to read my piece, finding four victims. I was titillated and pushed them to read quicker so that they could pat my back sooner. Their reaction was not quite what I had been hoping. Great, they said. Interesting, they said. But it was lacking that je ne sais quoi. Too academic, maybe too dry, not that much emotion. It just didn’t do it for them. It seems that I had gotten carried away by all those books I stacked in my head over three days.
I was a bit gutted. My baby! All those hours! For some days I went through an existential dilemma – should I keep my sermon, cut it down, chop it and glue it back again? But how could I? I kept on thinking through the weekend until yesterday morning, when I decided to own up to things. Probably my test audience was right. I just couldn’t risk it. Some people might like my sermon, but was it just the thing for everyone to hear? Like I said earlier, Yom Kippur is the time when everyone wants to be touched and wants to connect. Was I doing my best to achieve this?
So, with a bit of regret, I put my old sermon aside and began writing this one. Trust me, you really don’t want to know when I finished typing it.
As I thought more and more about the process I went through over the past few days, the writing, discarding, and rewriting from scratch, I began to perceive it all as an allegory of the Yom Kippur dynamic. In Yom Kippur, we find the guts to take our past, crunch it like an old piece of paper, throw it behind us, and begin writing our destinies anew. [Take piece of paper, crunch it, and throw it behind out]...Don’t worry, I’m recycling that!
Most of us have worked really hard to arrive at where we’re standing right now. After the efforts, struggles, and tribulations of a lifetime, after all the tough steps to reach our current situation, we become pretty sure of ourselves, overconfident. We are certain that what we do is correct and proper, and can’t fathom having it any other way. Sometimes it takes those around us, those we love and appreciate, and perhaps even our adversaries, to shed a different light on our lives. Other times, it is an inner voice inside of us which whispers gently, trying to let us now that there is another way. How ready are we to hear this? Could it be a lifetime already gone to waste? Often we hear, but don’t really want to listen. We refuse to acknowledge.
Don’t get me wrong. It could be that where we are holding is the best place possible for us, that we have already met all of life’s challenges and have passed them with flying colours. But what if there is an inkling of truth in what we are being told? What if the inner conscience that speaks to us and we constantly suppress is actually more perceptive than we care recognise? For the sake of our future and fulfilment, and for the well-being of those around us – shouldn’t we stop and think for a moment, consider the possibilities? Shouldn’t we ponder about whether we live our lives the best way a life is to be lived?
When we embark on such a deep soul-search, we sometimes can become terrified at our possible discoveries. Have I lived my life in vain? Have I been so terribly wrong all these years? Truthfully though, with but a few exceptions, it is hard to categorise life into right or wrong. We can’t say that a certain life path is correct or incorrect, what is important is which life path is the best for us. Life is about trial and error. It is about experimenting, going through different roads, seeing which is more rugged, which smoother, but more crucially – seeing where they’ll all take you. We must also not grieve over the travesties we have done till now, over that which we have achieved, because without having taking that trek, we wouldn’t be able to stand at the crossroad of today and embark on an alternate path backed by the certainty of experience.
We might be doubtful, can I really do this? Sometimes we are dying for change, yet feel incredulous at its possibility. Can we truly press the delete button and have an empty screen appear before us? Is there such a thing as a clean slate? Can we really and effectively change? The Yom Kippur liturgy certainly thinks so – constantly mentioning that God will erase our past wrongs, that our stains will become white like snow. Moreover, the Talmud affirms that Yesh Adam Kone Olamo B’shaa Echat, a person can win the world over in just one moment.
Dr. Tom Steven, a psychologist from California State University, conducted a research on individuals who effectively made radical changes to their lives. Almost unanimously they could pinpoint a brief moment in their lives, sometimes remembering even the date or hour, when they were hit by a consequential revelation. In that fleeting instant, they made a commitment to change, and more importantly, they made that commitment the single most important value in their lives. And they succeeded. Will today be that day for you?
All this reminds me of the story of Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Akiva was a forty-year-old illiterate shepherd who hadn’t achieved much in his life. One day, thirst overcame him, like most of us now on Yom Kippur, so he went down to the brook to quench himself. There he noticed drops of water falling on a huge stone, and directly where the drops were falling he realised that they had fissured a huge hole in the stone. He thought to himself – if the persistent drops of water were able to cut through stone, couldn’t the words of Torah penetrate through my soft human heart? Determination overcame him, and unfaltering, he went to Cheder. At 40 years old, he began to learn how to read together with nursery children and progressed till he became one of the greatest sages in Jewish history. It was but a moment, and it changed his life. How many drops will it take to cleave through into our own hearts?
It is hard to put a stop to our lives and start afresh. Sometimes we long for change yet don’t deem it possible. We relegate change to the realm of dreams and could have beens. But truly, it just takes a moment, a break-through in our hearts and minds, and change will come. We can put our past behind us, and walk on to a fresh start. No one should have to settle for stagnation or truncation. Why accept having our wings cut when we can soar the skies? Change is a difficult process, and to succeed this quest we must gird ourselves with unwavering determination. But if we have the chutzpah to do so, we’ll emerge victorious. May this Yom Kippur be the first day of our new lives.
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