2008 Rosh Hashana Sermon Day 1 Rosh Hashana Day 2
KOL NIDRE NIGHT
Rabbi Ronald L. Androphy
East Meadow Jewish Center
October 8, 2008
Many people have asked me, “Rabbi, what did you learn at Harvard?” I usually answer them by describing the wonderful courses I attended and the research I undertook on the Bible.
But the truth of the matter is that I learned so much more than what I experienced in the classroom, the library, or while engaged in my own research. I absorbed so many life lessons during the five months I spent in the Boston area. And tonight I want to share a few of those lessons with you. But we are going to explore these life experiences together in a special way. You see, I found that I could learn a lot merely by opening my eyes as I traveled the four miles from our apartment in Brookline to my office on the northern end of the Harvard campus. So tonight you are going to join me as we bicycle together from Brookline to Harvard. Are you ready?
It’s now about 8:30 in the morning and we have already davened, showered, dressed, and had breakfast. We make our way downstairs (we live on the third floor of an owner-occupied house) and, because we do not have a separate entrance, we spot our landlady, Karin, and wish her a warm “Good morning” and a “Good day” as she prepares to leave for work. Her children, Katherine and Peter, have already left for school. And here we learn lesson number one:
You see, Karin and her children are not Jewish. They are actually devout Episcopalians who attend church every Sunday and participate in church events. And since we do not have a separate entrance to our attic apartment, we walk through their section of the house several times a day; as a result we have become quite close with them. Karin has made us feel extremely welcome. She went out of her way to make keeping kosher easy for us by purchasing or giving us brand new kitchen appliances. We have had Karin, Katherine, and Peter to Shabbos dinner in our apartment, and have answered their questions about Judaism. The lesson we can learn – and actually I learned this lesson long ago, but it was certainly reinforced during our five months in Brookline – is that religious people of one faith respect religious people of other faiths. This is contrary to what many Jews believe, or once believed. They thought that the only way to gain acceptance in the Gentile world was to surrender their Jewish customs, traditions, and distinctiveness, and assimilate into American society. This is just not true. As America has become, in many respects, an even more religious country, it has become even easier to maintain our traditions because, as I said, others respect us more for observing than for hiding our Jewish background.
So down the steps we go, out the door, and onto the porch. We unlock our bicycles, put on our bicycle helmets – no riding in the Boston area without a helmet! -- and start pedaling up Naples Road towards Harvard Street. And before we go very far we learn lesson number two:
Look around at these beautiful homes, including the one we live in. Aren’t they magnificent! The homes on our block and on the adjacent streets are almost all over a hundred years old. They are large and beautiful, most with magnificent, hand-carved woodwork, and one can tell that these homes were built for the upper crust of Brookline society. In fact, President John F. Kennedy’s birth home is on the block behind where we live, and the house the Kennedy family moved to next, once Joseph Kennedy became wealthy, is on the corner just three blocks down our street. But most significantly, each home is unique; no two houses are the same: this one is wider, this one is taller, this one has a wrap-around porch, that one has a second-floor balcony or two, that one has a gabled roof, this one has a peaked roof, and so on. Every house is different from its neighbor, unlike here on Long Island where every house in a development is almost exactly the same as every other house.
The beauty and uniqueness of these homes immediately taught me an important lesson. I viewed these houses as a metaphor -- a metaphor for us human beings. Just as these homes were different from each other, just as each had features that the others lacked, yet each one was beautiful, so it is with human beings. Each person is unique; each person is different. Some people are blessed with certain talents and abilities that others may not possess; people have different characters and personalities, backgrounds and heritages. Yet every person is special, every human is beautiful, each in his or her own special way.
Judaism taught this same lesson two thousand years ago. The Mishnah asks why it was that God created the world beginning with just one human being, Adam. The Mishnah answers that God began humanity with a single individual person for several reasons. First to teach that if, God forbid, a person murders another person, the murderer has destroyed an entire world because, like Adam who once constituted the entire human universe, each individual is a world; and to further emphasize that if one person saves another person’s life, God accounts it as if the rescuer has saved an entire world. In other words, each individual is unique and of infinite value. Second, the Mishnah teaches, that God began the world with a single individual so that no one can say, “My ancestor was greater or better than your ancestor” because all of us derive from the same common ancestor, Adam. In other words, all humans are equal. And the third lesson that God’s filling the world with people all descended from the same progenitor teaches us, according to the Mishnah, is the greatness of God. As the Talmud explains, when a human king or a government mints coins, all the coins look exactly alike because they are all made from the same mold. Wondrously, God works differently. God stamps every human being with the mold that he used for Adam, and guess what? – no two human beings come out looking exactly alike. Every human being is different; every human being is unique; every human being is beautiful; every human being is special. An important lesson for us to internalize and to incorporate into our lives every day in all our relationships with other people.
This lesson reminds me of a true story I heard recently about something magical that happened in Cinderella's Castle at Disney World in Florida:
Children and parents were crowded into a room waiting for Cinderella's appearance. She made a dramatic entrance and the children clamored around her.
Whoever had hired this young woman to play the role of Cinderella found a remarkable match. She was perfect: flawless skin, beautiful face, bright eyes and radiant smile; and, she was costumed exquisitely. She looked like the incarnation of the cartoon Cinderella
The children wanted to touch her and have her wave her wand over their
heads. She smiled down at them and the room was electric with excitement. Electric for everyone except two boys, apparently brothers, who stood next to a far wall, away from the other children. The older boy held the hand of the younger, much smaller boy, whose body and face were disfigured. The look in the young boy's eyes was that of yearning. How he wanted to be with Cinderella! How he wanted to be a part of the other children! But he held back, undoubtedly out of fear. He had likely been hurt too many times before by children who made disparaging remarks about his disfigured appearance.
But unexpectedly, Cinderella turned and saw the boys. And she must have noticed the longing in the little one's face, for she slowly made her way through the throng, inching toward the far wall. Then something magical happened. Cinderella did the most remarkable thing -- something she had probably been instructed by the Disney people never to do. She bent down and kissed the little boy's face.
The boy smiled a big and beautiful smile. Cinderella had kissed him! Could anything be so wonderful? Of all the children in the room Cinderella had kissed HIM!
No matter what happens to this boy, he'll always have that moment when Cinderella kissed him. And when he looks into the mirror he will always see the face that Cinderella kissed looking back. Who knows ... for months, for years,
maybe forever, the mean, crude, and cruel remarks, the stings and barbs of life, will hurt a little less. And he will stand a bit taller and feel a little more special. He'll never forget the day that Cinderella, who was able to see the beauty in all children, kissed him.
Wow! We are still on Naples Road, so let’s pedal on. <Hum bicycle-riding music> We turn right onto Harvard Street, pass the two Jewish bookstores, the kosher bakeries, the kosher Chinese restaurant, the kosher butcher, the kosher deli. (Be thankful I am delivering this sermon tonight when all of you are full from a big dinner rather than tomorrow when we will be fasting and I would be making you hungry!) You will notice as we bicycle our way down Harvard Street something very interesting that distinguishes Massachusetts from New York. At unregulated crosswalks -- by that I mean crosswalks where there are no traffic lights -- pedestrians have the right of way. That is, cars must stop for any pedestrians in an unregulated crosswalk. In fact, have you noticed the stanchions in the middle of the street next to the crosswalks that say “Vehicles must stop for pedestrians in crosswalk.”? And cars actually do stop. And I have seen the police ticket drivers who fail to stop. By the way, we bicyclists stop for pedestrians, too.
Can you imagine that happening here in New York? Suppose there were a crosswalk right in front of our synagogue leading from our side of Prospect Avenue to the other side, and no crossing guard. Do you think drivers would stop if you were waiting to cross? Would you trust your young children to cross the street there unattended? Probably not.
For me the fact that motor vehicles must stop for pedestrians is also a metaphor that teaches an important lesson, and that lesson is: though we live in a world that is dominated by machines, we cannot forget the human touch.
Let’s face reality: our lives are dominated by machines -- our cars, the train, our TVs, our computers, our cellphones, our PDAs. I readily admit that all of these machines are wonderful conveniences that make our lives easier and more enjoyable, but sometimes we allow them to dominate us rather than our being their masters. Are we close to that point in the movie 2001 in which the computer -- I think its name was “Hal” – dominates the humans rather than the other way around? We humans must reassert our humanness by not succumbing to idle hours of mindless TV watching, or useless computer surfing, or the ease of automobile driving on those occasions when we could just as easily and more beneficially walk. Unlike machines, we were bestowed by God with minds that can reason, evaluate, make moral decisions, feel, love, and show compassion, We must never allow the coldness and impersonal nature of the machines that we utilize depersonalize us. We should adhere to the Talmudic teaching that every person should think to himself or herself, בשבילי נברא העולם – the world was created for my sake, which the Talmud means not as a statement of hubris, but as an attitude of humanness and responsibility.
After allowing the pedestrians to cross, we continue down Harvard Street towards Commonwealth Avenue, or “Comm Ave,” as they call it in Boston. <Hum music> But a few blocks before Comm. Ave we notice a change. Harvard Street looks a little bit different here, the apartment buildings look a little – what shall I say? – less well-kept, and there is a different feel to the area. We realize that we are not in Kansas anymore, Toto. Actually, we have crossed from Brookline into Allston, which is part of the city of Boston. Now there is nothing wrong with Allston, but it is different from Brookline. Brookline is more upscale than Allston. While both communities are ethnic, the ethnicity is different: On the streets of Brookline one hears not only English, but also Chinese, Hebrew, and Russian; in fact the Brookline Public Library stocks books and DVDs in all four of those languages. In Allston one hears Spanish and Portuguese. The students who live in Brookline are more likely than not graduate students, while those living in Allston are probably undergraduates. Brookline contains more young marrieds; Allston more singles. You get the picture.
The clear distinction between the two communities calls my attention to the issue of boundaries. Some boundaries are beneficial, some are deleterious. Some boundaries are self-imposed or self-defined, others are artificially created. Some boundaries are porous, while others are impenetrable barriers.
As we contemplate these borders, we realize that some boundaries are immoral: barriers that prevent people from reaching their full potential, barriers that hinder a child’s educational development, barriers that hinder an individual’s personal, moral, emotional, or professional growth.
But some boundaries have merit. Judaism posits that those boundaries which guide us in our moral decisions, or the decisions we make about whom to marry or not marry, or the decisions we make about how to raise our children, or the decisions we make about how to live our lives as Jews -- all are important to our survival as a distinct and righteous people. The boundaries that result from Jewish values have value in and of themselves, for example, by protecting the inviolability of the Jewish family.
Another example: I explain to couples at whose weddings I officiate that one of the reasons the groom breaks a glass at the wedding is because of the tragic events of Jewish history. Because our people has experienced tremendous tribulations throughout our history, as happy as a wedding is and as much as it is a mitzvah mentioned in the Talmud to celebrate and rejoice with the bride and groom, there must be boundaries at the celebration. The rejoicing must be within the bounds of propriety, and cannot degenerate into a drunken, orgiastic bacchanal. Boundaries are sometimes important. Maybe that is why in the Book of Deuteronomy we read: ארור מסיג גבול רעהו -- Cursed be he who removes his neighbor’s boundary. While in its Biblical context this verse castigates one who surreptitiously moves the marker that separates one’s property from his neighbor’s so that the person usurps his neighbor’s land, in its wider sense the verse has been interpreted to apply to anyone who removes or changes the standards that are the bedrock of our traditional Jewish values and way of life.
We continue on towards Comm. Ave <Hum music> and just as we are approaching the intersection, OH NO! LOOK OUT! BOOM! I have just been “doored.”
Do you know what “being doored” means? It happens when you are riding your bicycle, and a passenger in, or driver of, an automobile opens his/her door without warning just as you are passing; you have no time to react and you go barreling into his car door. I know because it happened to me.
I thought I was pretty careful while bicycling around the Boston area on streets where there was much traffic and many parked cars. As I drove alongside parked vehicles, I was always attentive and wary lest anyone open his/her door as I was riding by. However, the guy who “doored” me was not exiting from a parked car; he alighted from a vehicle that was actually on my left, in the traveling lane. Traffic that day was backed up at the intersection of Comm. Ave and Harvard Street because of construction, so this man, who was a passenger in the back seat of the vehicle, decided, I guess, not to wait for traffic to clear, and chose to get out before the T stop. Unfortunately for me, he made that decision exactly as I was bicycling past; he opened the door right in front of me; I couldn’t stop, and, instead, slammed into his open car door. Naturally, I fell off my bicycle onto the pavement, but, luckily for me, I was wearing my helmet so I was uninjured, except for a few scrapes and a huge black-and-blue mark on my thigh that developed a day or two later. My bicycle survived relatively intact. I was more concerned about my laptop which was in my backpack, but, fortunately, that, too, was undamaged. The guy’s car door didn’t fare as well, though: apparently, when I slammed into his door, I bent the hinges, so the door would not close properly. A policeman who had witnessed our little accident came over and told the man it was his fault, so I drove away, somewhat shaken, but, thankfully in one piece.
My accident, however, highlighted for me an important lesson that I realized previously, but not well enough: one always must expect the unexpected.
That is, of course, a foundation of religious thought, both Jewish and Gentile. When a totally unexpected event occurs that is tremendously positive we call it a miracle; when a totally unexpected horrendous event occurs we call it a tragedy or disaster or “act of God.” In the case of my admittedly minor accident, I like to think that God had somehow intervened on my behalf and saved me from serious injury. I did bentsch “Gomel,” the traditional prayer a Jew recites when he or she is saved from some danger. But expecting the unexpected is also tied to a lesson the Talmud teaches that pertains directly to this High Holy Day season.
Pirkay Avot, what I like to call “The Book of Quintessential Jewish Wisdom,” states that a person should repent one day before he/she dies. As the commentators ask, “How can a person repent on the day before death? Does anyone know when he or she will die?” The answer is, of course, that no one knows when he/she will depart from this world. We live in the realm of the unexpected. While we think we can control our destinies, while we boast that we are masters of our own fate, we also understand that life is full of the unexpected: car accidents that can snuff out a person’s life in an instant, diseases that can manifest themselves seemingly from out of nowhere, natural disasters that strike without warning. What Pirkay Avot is teaches us is that given the uncertainties of life, we should repent every day because each day may, in fact, be our last. The Talmud is not being gloomy or morbid; the Talmud is expressing reality, practicality, and spirituality. In an uncertain world, the Talmud wants us never to regret those things we have perpetrated that we should not have committed, or fail to perform what we should have done. If a person views each day of his/her life as the last, he/she will make peace within his/her family and among his/her friends; will try to achieve all that he/she has dreamed of accomplishing; and will establish or reestablish his/her relationship with God. A beautiful teaching, no? And one which all of us should contemplate not only on Yom Kippur, but throughout our lives.
Getting back on my bike, we finally cross Comm. Ave and continue north on Harvard Street almost to the end. <Hum> We turn right onto Cambridge Street, huff and puff as we bicycle over the bridge that takes us over the Massachusetts Turnpike and the railroad tracks, and glide down the other side of the bridge, dodging the potholes in the street as we do so. But now we face a dilemma: Cambridge Street has widened to seven lanes, three in each direction plus a left-turn lane, and we want to make a left onto North Harvard Street. The problem is: we are riding in the gutter to the right of the extreme right lane. That means that we must cross seven lanes of traffic in order to turn left. How are we going to do it?
Well, as with most things in life, there is an easy way and a difficult way. We could, on the one hand, hope that no cars are coming at that particular moment and quickly dash to the left so we can enter the left-turn lane. Or we could go to this very short cut-out on the right, just opposite the left turn onto Harvard Street, and wait for the light to change, hoping that the cars turning left from North Harvard onto Cambridge Street southbound actually see us crossing the street. What do you think we should do? I know there is a sermon in here somewhere, but it eludes me as we warily evade the cars and turn onto North Harvard Street.
We pedal our way north on North Harvard Street, <Hum> passing three-family houses, a branch library, and Bicycle Bill’s (where I get my occasional flat tires changed while I wait). We continue past Soldier’s Field, Harvard stadium, and the Harvard Business School. Crossing Soldier’s Field Road, we pedal our way over the Lars Anderson Bridge which spans the Charles River and leads us into the People’s Republic of Cambridge. But as we cross the Charles River we look down and see the Harvard and Boston University crew teams practicing on the river. And we can witness another lesson in action.
I am certain that most of you heard the story about what occurred several decades ago when my alma mater, Brandeis University, decided to launch its own crew team. Since, at that time, Brandeis liked to think of itself as the Jewish Harvard, the Brandeis team decided that its first challenge would be against Harvard. The Brandeis team prepared and prepared, practiced and practiced, for the big event. Finally, the day of the event arrived, the Brandeis team placed its boat into the Charles River, the Harvard team placed its boat in the river. “Ready! Set! Bang!” -- the gun went off signaling the beginning of the regatta. Within seconds, the Harvard crew team had left the Brandies scullers in the dust, figuratively speaking, and quickly zoomed past the finish line, while the Brandeis crew team had barely rowed a few meters.
Dejectedly, the Brandeis team returned to Waltham in ignominious defeat. With head bowed in embarrassment, the crew coach reported to Abe Sachar, the president of Brandeis at that time. “Mr. President,” the coach reported, “we had our butts kicked by the Harvard scullers. However, I was able to determine why the Harvard rowers were so successful, while we were abysmal failures. You see, Mr. President, at Harvard they have one man screaming, “Stroke, stroke!” while eight guys row; here at Brandeis we had eight guys shouting, “Stroke! Stroke!” while only one guy rowed.
As we bike over the Charles River and watch the crew members practice, we witness what a team effort competitive rowing is, and I emphasize both words: team and effort. It takes tremendous strength to be a competitive male or female rower: one must be tall, muscular, and possess tremendous energy; and it is clearly a team effort: if just one of the rowers slackens the pace or tires, the team’s success is inevitably undermined.
The same is true of being a Jew; it, too, is a TEAM EFFORT. Yes, it takes strength to be a Jew, not physical strength, but moral strength. It takes courage to be different: to conduct oneself according to a higher moral and ethical code; to live by loftier values; to conduct oneself by higher personal standards of honesty and integrity. It takes effort to choose to be different: to eat differently by keeping kosher, by observing Shabbat and treating Shabbat time as sacrosanct, by observing the festivals of the Jewish calendar by staying home from work and keeping one’s children home from school in order to attend shul to celebrate the holidays. It takes courage to stand up, speak out, and defend and support the State of Israel. It takes effort to demand that one’s children continue their Jewish education beyond Bar and Bat Mitzvah, and to continue our own Jewish learning as adults. And it takes conscious effort to choose to marry a fellow Jew, and, if one does intermarry, it takes effort to raise one’s child as a Jew. But interestingly, like those rowers we watch as we bicycle across the Charles River, not only does being Jewish demand strength and energy, but it also makes us stronger when we do expend the effort and make the right choices.
And being Jewish is also a TEAM effort. As the saying goes, “It’s tough to make Shabbos by oneself.” It is always easier to live as a Jew within a supportive family and community. Husband and wife have to be on the same page; parents must be on the same page when it comes to Jewish observance and education for the children. We must support our synagogue because it is easier to pray, celebrate, and observe together. We must feel a deep moral, spiritual, and familial connection with our fellow Jews throughout the world because it is by uniting in mutual support that we can overcome the obstacles and challenges that confront the Jewish people.
And, unlike the Brandeis crew team that consisted of eight talkers and only one do-er, all of us must be do-ers. Judaism is a religion of action, and we must be active participants in observing the commandments, traditions, and practices of our Jewish religion if we, as individuals and as a people, want o be successful in rowing down the river of life.
Okay, we are in the home stretch now. <Music> We bicycle up JFK Street, carefully maneuver our way through Harvard Square, cut through the Old Quad, pedal past the Science Center. As we do we cannot help but notice the juxtaposition of the old buildings of Harvard with their neo-gothic architecture and the newer buildings with their much more modern structural design. This reminds us of Conservative Judaism: a balance between reverence for tradition and the accommodation of modernity.
We turn left onto Divinity Avenue, past the Semitics Museum where the offices of the Center for Jewish studies are located, and into the Divinity School campus. We find a parking place for our bicycles in the bike rack adjacent to the Divinity School Library, and enter the Vanserg Building behind us. This is where my office is located.
It has taken us about twenty-five minutes to bicycle from Brookline to Harvard – about as long as this sermon – and I hope you have learned many lessons along the way. I know I did. You see, as I have often commented to congregants and especially to Bar and Bat Mitzvah students, you just have to look at the world with Jewish eyes.
There are many other lessons I learned during my eleven months on sabbatical and especially during my five-month fellowship living in Boston and studying at Harvard. But we will have to leave those for another time. We have arrived at my office, and I must get to work. I log onto my computer, open my copy of the Hebrew Bible, and continue my research on the language of the Biblical text.
Oh, yes, there is one lesson I forgot to mention. No matter where one travels, no matter where one relocates temporarily, “Oh, Auntie Em, there’s no place like home.”
Shana Tova.
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