Erev Yom Kippur/Kol Nidre
Sermon by Rabbi Marcia Zimmerman
2019/5780
There’s a story about the Kotzker Rebbe. The Rebbe decides that he is going to spend Shabbat with a friend, and so he puts on regular street clothes for Shabbat. And because he is speaking at a nearby town, giving a very famous lecture, he has to board the plane as Shabbat is completed in order to arrive late at night. He doesn’t change his clothes into the clothes that a Rebbe wears.
He gets on the train and there are three students who are going to hear his lecture, but they don’t recognize the Rebbe. They begin to make fun of this old man who is feeble and moving too slowly. They laugh at him, they joke at his expense, and they even try to trip him as he walks slowly down the train car. They arrive at the town and they are excited to hear the Rebbe! And then, the reality hits them. Before the train has arrived, the Rebbe has changed his clothes and begins to exit to a big fanfare of the community waiting for him, and they realize that they have been making fun of the Rebbe himself. Shocked, they begin apologizing profusely. “Oh my goodness, Rebbe, we didn’t mean it. We feel so guilty! We are so sorry; we apologize.” The Rebbe lets this go on for some time until he finally turns to these three students and says, “You have apologized to the Rebbe, but now I want you to apologize to the old man on the train.”
Failed apologies seem to be all around us, don’t they? We have a lot of people who have done wrong in the world; hurt people. Really hurt people. And either have failed with an apology or haven’t apologized at all. Sackler family and the opioid epidemic, not taking responsibility . . . Madoff . . . We have Harvey Weinstein. We have Cosby. We have Louis C. K. . . . Over and over and over again, there are people in our midst who do not apologize, and I believe it puts our world out of balance and desperately in trouble. It is truly this idea that Aaron Lazare talks about, who was the chancellor of the University of Massachusetts medical school and has spent his entire career studying apologies. He wrote a book on apology. He says that you can apologize too soon, but actually, you can never apologize too late, meaning you should always apologize no matter how long ago the offense was. But too soon is a reality, Lazare says, because often when one apologizes too soon it’s to manipulate the situation. It’s to keep the anger of those offended at bay. And most of all, the offender has not done the work, the important internal reckoning, to understand what they have done. Without that point, really, your apology doesn’t stand. You can’t just quickly apologize for your behavior unless you really understand what has caused the offense. And that takes a lot of time. And guess what? That’s what Yom Kippur is all about.
Do you know that Kol Nidre is the longest service in the year? Why? Because we’re doing that apology stuff to God. Takes a long time.
I was listening to the radio and I couldn’t believe, as I was thinking about apology and all these averahs these sins that have been all around us, people who have offended and not had any apology – there was a whole conversation about how to bring offenders back into this community around the “Me Too” movement. Tarana Burke who coined “Me too,” understood in this interview that she is going to take care of the victims. We still need to hear the stories of the victims, we’re still hearing new stories of the victims. But she said that our community and our society has to also work on what it is to reconcile to where we can bring together these broken realities in our world. She says it really is not going to go away, sexual violence, until we understand why the wrong-doers did what they did. And in addition, for us, to acknowledge that giving them an entry back into society through the backdoor – through podcasts, through books – that isn’t going to help either. Forgiveness without an apology is cheap. We have to figure out how they are going to come back and do real t’shuvah, real atonement, do restitution because she believes that the people who are part of the problem are the exact people who have to be part of the solution. I loved that.
Burke understood that we as a community must reckon with the realities of reconstituting some understanding of how we treat one another.
Lazare goes on to talk about the fact that not only can one apologize too soon, but we also have to understand the history of apology. It was actually after WWII that apologizing became a part of civilized society: not as a reflection of weakness, but actually seen as a strength, which I think is a wonderful thing. He also went on to say what happens when you have to take responsibility for something you didn’t do? That’s something we struggle with, isn’t it? He explains that it’s sort of like buying a house. You buy the house and you own the things that you love. But you also own the hot water heater that bursts the day after you sign the papers – you own that part of the house, too. He says we have to take responsibility. We feel very proud of being part of this country, but we also feel the shame of this country being built on the back of slaves. We have to own both parts.
I’m very proud to be part of this community and this congregation and I feel honored to be the Senior Rabbi. And yet over this year you’ve received two letters about previous sexual misconduct from a youth leader in our community. And I feel ashamed of that. And I feel responsible for that. I have to take all of it.
Abraham Joshua Heschel said about WWII that there were few who were guilty, but all were responsible. Few were guilty, all were responsible. I think that is very much what it means to be a part of this community and understand that apology is part of this wider world. In This American Life there was an amazing story – there was an apology that the victim actually tweeted – that was a master apology. It healed a wound that was deep. Dan Harmon who is a head television writer, was attracted to a young writer who was part of his team. He put her work first above all the other writers; he created a jealousy in the group and an uncomfortable situation. She kept telling him, “don’t show me favors – don’t do this.” And then he told her he loved her. She said you’re my boss; no. And then he decided to make her pay for his humiliation. He publicly humiliated her over and over again. Six years passed and Dan made a public apology. He said exactly what he did, word for word. He took responsibility. He said, “I had these feelings and I knew they were dangerous so I did what I coward does and didn’t deal with them. I made everyone else deal with them.” He said, “I didn’t respect women. Because I wouldn’t treat somebody like that if I did and I would never treat a man like that.” She, Megan Ganz is her name, heard it on this podcast and was touched and amazed. She felt that there was a reconciliation that she didn’t think was possible. She felt freed and liberated and said she didn’t realize, hearing from him – ironically, the very person she never would have asked – to tell her what happened was true; she needed that affirmation. She needed him to recognize that he had actually hurt the very core of what she loved about herself, which was her creativity. She told everyone to listen, and then Dan said something that I think was important. He said you know, I think the world’s going to be better because we (meaning men) won’t get away with it anymore, and I think that’s a good thing.
The idea that you can actually ask for an apology or forgiveness or give it, that we put somebody else’s concern and belief and hurt above our own, that is when we heal. There is the head of the Orthodox youth movement, David Bashevkin, and he wrote a book called Sin-a-gogue: Sin and Failure in Jewish Thought. He talks about a Hasidic group who understands that when we sin and ask for forgiveness and do the apology that we’re actually elevated to a higher status than just enjoying life in the perfect world. He said that the idea of coming to terms with our faults is the way we create a repaired world, of tikkun olam. He says that the people who show a complicated family history to their children and grandchildren, not only talking about the successes but also about the time you failed – the time you lost the job, the time you made the wrong decision – the time your family history isn’t so great along with when it is great actually creates a stronger next generation and a strong family. Personally, it’s the same. When you can talk to your family about the things you did wrong, about the losses and gains, the failures and successes, those are the ways we actually learn to be human. The Hasidic group says don’t be in duress. Don’t sit and try. Do the work of asking for forgiveness, of apologizing, because it makes the world stronger because of it.
We also are here to do the work. You can’t really do redemption or atonement without asking for forgiveness and an apology. I often hear people coming into sanctuaries every year saying, I don’t really like saying all those al chets – I haven’t done so many of them! I haven’t done this or that… and I think it’s so funny because I hope this year we lean into it. Instead of saying I don’t do this, let’s look at understanding it a bit differently.
One of my favorites from the previous machzor is confusing love with lust. If we keep that sin to the Harvey Weinstein, Cosby, or Louis c. k., then we’re really not doing the work we should. If lust fundamentally is power, which it is – having power over somebody else – and love is seeing eye to eye with another, sacrificing for another, listening to the hurt you caused even when it makes you feel uncomfortable – that’s love. I think sometimes we confuse the two. When we want to be right in an argument and win, that’s lust. That’s being powerful over love. I hear many people who have been married 50 years say that the best thing they ever learned in a marriage is that it’s better to be happy than right.
This Yom Kippur, let us identify with those three students on the train. Let’s find the time that we have to return to the scene and apologize because we haven’t treated somebody well or right. Let us return, just as I hope they would return. When we apologize and do the hard work of introspection, when we go to another person and show our remorse, when we build reconciliation, the world is healed. The world is that much stronger. If each one of us did that, think of what a beautiful community this would be. It would be one of strength, one where our souls would soar. Where our hearts would beat, where our hands would hold. That’s the community and world I want to create and I want to be a part of. G’mar tov.