Sorting Through the Noise - Nitzavim-Vayelekh 5774

Moishe Goldberg was heading out of the synagogue on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, and as usual, Rabbi Mendlovich was standing at the door, shaking hands as the congregation departed.

The rabbi grabbed Moishe by the hand, pulled him aside and whispered these words at him: "You need to join the Army of God!"

Moishe replied: "I'm already in the Army of God, Rabbi."

The rabbi questioned: "Then how come I don't see you except for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur?"

Moishe whispered back: "I'm in the secret service."

***

Those of us that are here today are, of course, the rank-and-file of the Army of God. We are the regulars. We like shul.

I presume that some of what we like about the regular Shabbat synagogue experience is the opportunity to pray - to sing, to meditate, to mumble, to take our time with the words of liturgy to appreciate, evaluate, immerse ourselves in ancient text.

Come Wednesday evening, it may be a lot more difficult to do that. And this despite all the wonderful features of this season: the richness of the High Holiday liturgy, the glory of the melodies, the heights of the hazzanic interpretation, and the grandeur of these days make this time of year especially powerful.

No, the reason is this: it’s all too much!

The High Holidays are something of a mixed blessing. It’s wonderful to see so many people returning to synagogue, seeking holiness, prayer, and teshuvah / repentance. And yes, the tefillah experience is moving, inspiring, and beautiful. I get shivers when I hear the first motifs of the RH/YK nusah at Selihot.

But it’s a lot to take in. A lot of time in synagogue, with a lot of words in a foreign language. A lot of people. And of course a lot of food. And how can we all expect to focus on the important things - the introspection, the teshuvah - when the ritual, gastronomic, and crowd-control issues might actually be getting in the way? How can we find our kavvanah / intention? How do we enter the High Holiday in a way that is meaningful, with so many physical and metaphorical entrances and exits and inflow and outflow?

I think that the best answer is to work harder at preparing beforehand: Take a personal inventory. Know why you are coming to the synagogue for those days, and be ready to swing into action while you’re there. Perhaps you should set aside some time for personal study ahead of time, by flipping through a mahzor or reviewing the holiday Torah and Haftarah readings with commentary. (I can point you to them in the humash if necessary.)

Given that we are just a few days away, I am going to give you something to think about right now to aid in your High Holidays preparations.

One opinion regarding the opening line of the Parashat Nitzavim, which we read this morning, foreshadows the High Holidays (Deuteronomy 29:9):

אַתֶּם נִצָּבִים הַיּוֹם כֻּלְּכֶם לִפְנֵי ה' אֱ-לֹהֵיכֶם:

Atem nitzavim hayom kulkhem lifnei Adonai Eloheikhem.

You stand this day, all of you, before the Lord your God.

The scene is this: all of the Israelites are standing together as a community and committing themselves to the covenant with God. This suggests the annual evaluation of Jews by God that is a part of the rabbinic understanding of this season. It is the theme that is addressed directly in the central prayer of the High Holiday Musaf service, Untaneh Toqef, wherein the anonymous author describes us as sheep passing before the Shepherd (with a capital S).

As we all know, the overarching storyline of the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah, the Ten Days of Repentance, is the Book of Life - on Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed: who shall live and who shall die, etc  The Talmud (Rosh Hashanah 16b) reports that there are three books: the Book of Life, in which the completely righteous are inscribed, the Book of Death, into which the names of the completely wicked go (one assumes that every year we mint new wicked people). And then there’s the intermediate book, in which all the rest of us are written temporarily during the Ten Days, with the hope that our names will be transferred to the Book of Life by the end of Yom Kippur.

But I think there is a better way to understand these days, and to do that we have to look past the “Who by fire, who by water” passage, to the following page in the mahzor:

Adam yesodo me-afar...

Each person’s origin is dust, and each person will return to the earth having spent life seeking sustenance. Scripture compares human beings to:

a broken shard / withering grass / a shriveled flower / a passing shadow / a fading cloud / a fleeting breeze, scattered dust / a vanishing dream.

And You - You are the Sovereign, living God, ever-present.

A shriveled flower - ציץ נובל

What might we glean from this passage? That we are ephemeral, that we are merely passing through, and that God is eternal. But even more so, that we are frail, easily broken or blown away. Our lives are marked by fragility. We are vulnerable, delicate.

To paraphrase Qohelet / Ecclesiastes, whose ancient words we will read on Sukkot, there is a time for that. (BTW, there’s probably an app for that, too.) There is a time to feel strong, and a time to feel vulnerable. This is the season to doubt our resilience, to acknowledge our frailty. We enter this period broken, having missed the mark throughout the past year, having transgressed not only the letter of God’s laws, but their spirit as well, having failed to uphold our end of the covenant, having violated not only the mitzvot bein adam lamaqom, those laws that apply between us and God, but also the mitzvot bein adam lehavero, those mitzvot that are essential to our personal human relationships.

And it is precisely God’s stability and ever-presence from which we draw inspiration for the year that is just beginning. We may be vulnerable, but we know that God is there, that the Divine Presence in its awesome-ness is hovering nearby, however we understand that to work, inspiring us to do good for ourselves and others.

Let’s face it, people. It is not only us as individuals who are broken. It’s the whole world. Our world is in need of some serious teshuvah / repentance. There are so many ills in this world that need our attention, so many horrible things in the headlines, from the threat of terrorism here and abroad to domestic violence and rape to the diseases ravaging humanity.

Just the events of the last few weeks - even as the conflict between Israel and Hamas has cooled down, we have watched as journalists have been beheaded by the Islamic State, as an NFL player was suspended for beating his wife (or, perhaps more accurately, for being captured on video beating his then-fiancee), as a Columbia student has mounted a protest against the university by carrying her mattress around with her all day long until the fellow student accused of raping her is suspended from school, and on and on. We have seen aid workers in Africa attacked and killed by villagers living under the threat of Ebola. Seven young men and women in Iran were sentenced to 91 lashes each for making a video of themselves dancing to Pharrell Williams’ anthem, Happy. Closer to home, I read in the Great Neck Record the other day that Nassau and Suffolk counties together have averaged 120 deaths annually for the last few years from heroin overdoses.

Sometimes, we have to ask ourselves, how could we have reached such a point? Even if I as an individual have had nothing to do with any of this, can I be held responsible? (It’s one reason why we confess our sins on YK in public, in the first person plural.)

We are frail, vulnerable, ephemeral. And we are also tyrannical, violent, and repressive. We are piteously weak and dangerously powerful. Some of us in this world are busy with intentionally hurting others; some of us are powerless to fend off attacks from others. All of this is part of the swirling sea of extremes of human existence.

It is with this in mind that we might return to the earlier part of Untaneh Toqef:

Uvshofar gadol yittaqa, veqol demamah daqqah yishama…

And the great shofar is sounded, and the still, small voice is yet heard.

We might take comfort in the piercing notes of the shofar, in the strength of its call and its majestic melody. But the real power to heal, to bring comfort to the bereaved, strength to the weary, and to help mend the souls of those of us who are emotionally wounded from having missed the mark where it counts, is found in that tiny, distant voice that you might hear when you tune everything else out.

Our lives are so busy, so filled with obligations and distractions and noise, that we might often miss that voice. But now is the time that we should be listening for it. And, I think, this is the source of strength to those who face their own vulnerability at this time of the year. While the shofar might spur us to action, leading the charge into the louder moments of our lives, that still, small voice is there when we feel alone, broken, frail, ashamed, despairing.

Untaneh Toqef is considered a master-work of Jewish liturgy, the very centerfold of the High Holiday experience. Its composer’s name has been lost to the ages, and I think we may agree that the author was brilliant. But had I written this prayer, I would have placed the statement of vulnerability first, to set the stage for what follows.

As we stand together as a community before God on Thursday and Friday, try to find that headspace where you can cut through the noise, so that when the 100 blasts of the shofar are complete, and when you have finished lunch, you can listen for that qol demamah daqqah, the tiny voice that is the source of our strength.

Shabbat shalom, and shanah tovah.

~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, 9/20/2014.)