Erev Rosh HaShanah: Life is a Journey

Sermon by Rabbi Jennifer Hartman
2015/5776

I want to begin by sharing with you a beloved passage by Rabbi Alvin Fine that has been reverberating in my mind as of late.  It is a poem that we often associate with death as we frequently use it to bring comfort to the bereaved, but which really has so much to teach us about life.  It reads:

Birth is a beginning

And death a destination.

And life is a journey taken stage by stage:

Until we see that victory lies

Not at some high place along the way,

But in having made the journey,

A sacred pilgrimage.

As you may know, I became engaged this past February.  It was a truly special evening, cold, of course because it was February in Minneapolis, and my fiancé HAD to pop the question outside…where it was 1 DEGREE!…but no doubt special  Once I said yes, and we were engaged, he then gave me another gift in the form of advice.  At his strong suggestion, we agreed not to speak about the wedding for two weeks.  For two weeks we did nothing but enjoy being engaged.  Wow was that hard…for me.  I wanted to make plans, explore options, and discuss ideas.  I wanted to decide when it would be and where it would be and who would be there.  But Mike was wise in his insistence that we hold off and not dive into the exciting but stressful details of a wedding celebration. He knew that there would be plenty of time to make plans. Mike understood that planning and anticipating the “big day” would consume our thoughts if we allowed it.  So we needed to set the precedent that we were going to enjoy being engaged and not spend the next year waiting for our wedding.  He understood that life is not about going from one life cycle to the next, but enjoying all of the moments in between - the moments we too often allow to slip by.  I needed this reminder.

We all live fast-paced lives.  We are fortunate to have Judaism to help us enjoy and savor every moment, not just the milestones. 

Jewish life actually commands us to find blessing every day.  It helps us to sanctify the days between getting engaged and getting married, between starting our education and graduating, between finishing one job and beginning another.  Judaism helps us adjust to becoming a spouse, a parent, a student.  Even tonight, Erev Rosh Hashanah, and the days that fall between now and Yom Kippur, help us with our transition from all that happened last year to all we anticipate in this coming year.  In fact, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are the only Jewish holidays not linked to the remembrance of liberation or commemoration of catastrophe.  This is the time for the individual to concentrate on the meaning of his or her life.

As we stand together and contemplate the year past we consider the prospects we have ahead of us and what we need to do to achieve personal growth and fulfillment.   We recognize the time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to be one of reflection, of deliberation, of consideration.  We also consider it to be the holiest and most sacred time of year.  Where we often want our lives to speed up, to shorten the time between the peaks we anticipate, we want the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to slow down so that we can use them to improve ourselves.  If only we felt the same at other times in our lives.

There was recently a beautiful article in the New York Times entitled “The Myth of Quality Time”.  In the article, Frank Bruni reminds us that so often the most meaningful interactions between people do not occur at large celebrations or at big transitional moments.  They happen when we spend concentrated time with the people we love.  Bruni writes: “With a more expansive stretch of time with loved ones, there’s a better chance that I’ll be around at the precise, random moment when one of my nephews drops his guard and solicits my advice about something private.  Or when one of my nieces will need someone other than her parents to tell her that she’s smart and beautiful.  Or when one of my siblings will flash back on an incident from our childhood that makes us laugh uncontrollably, and suddenly the cozy, happy chain of our love is cinched that much tighter.” 

In my own life, my most vivid memories of my Grandmother come not from when she and my Grandfather would visit for Thanksgiving, which was always fun and exciting but hectic and short. My indelible memories of her, and the moments of our deepest connection came during the two weeks each year before Rosh Hashanah when my grandparents moved in with us in preparation for the holiday. During those two weeks my grandmother would be there day after day when I awoke in the morning and went to bed at night, and we became entwined in the daily routine, the typical, normal, uneventful activities that we take so much for granted but that fill the vast majority of our times. It is because of these weeks together that I know her morning routine, her favorite outfits to wear, he exercise habits.  When I think of my step-mom who died in 2002 I don’t immediately think about the beautiful Passover seder she prepared each year. I picture her at the kitchen stove making our usual Wednesday night pasta dinner. I remember the bag of treats she would make me and my siblings for long car rides. I think of her sitting with us while we did our homework.  I am sure that we can all recall special times such as these.

These two women understood the importance of the ordinary times.  Often though, we need reminders to slow down and cherish the journey rather than just the destination.  Judaism helps us by commanding us to “sanctify the ordinary” rather than wait for the “life changing moments”. We are to recite 100 blessings every day, no matter our mood or desires.  These blessings remind us to be grateful that we went to sleep at night and awoke in the morning, that our bodies work, that we are free people.  The 100 blessings remind us to be thankful there is an earth to walk on, water to drink, and a sky overhead.  We are to see the blessing in the food on our table, the clothes on our body and the roof over our head every day, not just when they are threatened.  Saying blessings, all the time, forces us to acknowledge all of the beauty along the uncertain and windy path of life. 

The essential act of the High Holiday season is Teshuvah.  Teshuvah means to turn toward mindfulness.  We know to be mindful during the High Holidays and the milestones of our lives.  We tell Bar and Bat Mitzvah students to read slowly and enjoy the service because it will be over before they know it.  We take lots of pictures at graduations because we never want to forget the special day and the feeling of the wonderful accomplishment.  We tell parents of infants to soak up their baby’s life because they will be grown and out of the house in the blink of an eye.  We remind wedding couples to be present in the moment because it passes by so fast.  What we forget is how important the moments in between are – the hug or kiss that you give as you are running out the door, the pat on the back after a good practice, the hand that reaches out when we fall.  So often, this is what we remember, what we hold on to, what solidifies memories in our head and relationships in our hearts.

My fiancé’s grandmother, a 92 year old holocaust survivor, loves to say the Shechechyanu.  It is her most favorite prayer – this prayer that thanks God for allowing us to be a part of precious moments.  Before meeting her I had begun thinking that maybe we have come to use this prayer a bit too often, substituting it for other prayers that would be more specific.  But, when I watch her face light up as she identifies a moment she is so grateful to be a part of, that we are all so honored to be a part of, I realize that we can never say this prayer enough, especially if it helps us to appreciate every-day joys.  She understands the need to be thankful for the seemingly mundane parts of life.  Our challenge now, as we go into the New Year, is to learn how to make our lives sacred from day to day rather than from event to event, to cherish the journey, rather than to wait for the destination, to enjoy the bumps rather than anticipate the outcome. For each of us this will look a bit different, but we will all have to make changes to live this value.  For:          

Birth is a beginning

And death a destination.

And life is a journey:

From defeat to defeat to defeat –

Until, looking backward or ahead,

We see that victory lies

Not at some high place along the way,

But in having made the journey, stage by stage,

A sacred pilgrimage.