Rosh HaShanah: Gratitude in Our DNA
Sermon by Rabbi Sim Glaser
2015/5776
I was in the nation’s capitol a few weeks ago. A hundred rabbis were having dinner in, of all places, the National Archives, which they had closed to the public. Now you understand how important rabbis are? They closed the National Archives so we could have dinner there. It was surreal to hear someone actually say the words: “Please don’t get any BBQ sauce on the Constitution.”
After dessert and a speaker, we rabbis had the entire museum to ourselves to party with the founding fathers! There an old buddy, Rabbi Sidney from Chicago and I, found ourselves face to face with the Declaration of Independence – yes, the original!!
My eyes were quickly drawn to the words: “We have a right, endowed by our Creator, to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” and I thought about how very seriously we modern Americans take that inalienable right to pursue happiness.
From there we entered an exhibit of the American history of immigration and inclusion. African Americans, European Jews, Asians, Latinos, the huddled masses who over the centuries have come to these borders grateful to be integrated into a growing thriving democratic society.
I knew that logged somewhere in the hundreds of millions of records was my own mother’s arrival in this great nation. She too was ready to seek happiness in her new home, thankful for the possibility of a new beginning, hopeful for the arrival of her parents.
That, of course, was not to happen. They were trapped in a land where their most basic human rights ,and ultimately their lives, were to be taken from them.
The Archives tell how Americans have expressed their gratitude over the centuries for the precious gift of living in a successful democracy by a dedication to responsibility, to an active participation in community. In political activism. In shaping our culture.
It has not been lost on subsequent American Jewish generations that one’s right to vote in free elections is nothing short of a miracle to be thankful for. Just look at the countries these immigrants had fled. At the Archives and at the Holocaust Museum down the street, it is notably documented that Adolf Hitler ascended to power in the last German democratic election largely because of those who did not exercise their right to vote.
As an election year approaches it is good to remind ourselves of free democratic elections. It has recently been noted that of our youngest voters in this nation, those aged 18-24, less than 20% find their way to the polls to vote in national elections.
As I speak to you this morning, we see refugees in the millions fleeing horrible situations in search of a better life, and a world that is increasingly fearful of taking them in. Imagine in the year 2015, Hungarian transport trains destined for camps where the inmates are assigned numbers! There is nothing new, it seems, under the sun. The ongoing debate as to how we handle immigrants to this great land should send chills down the spine of anyone in this room who comes from a history of immigration. Excepting our Native American congregants, I believe that is every one of us!
One thing seemed very clear standing in the Capitol and seeing artifacts that chronicle the birth of our nation - Sensitivity to the plight of others has always begun with an appreciation of our own blessings. We simply cannot care about others if we have no gratitude for the goodness that is our legacy.
And yet how quick we are to forget to be thankful. The very character of a nation that provides us with the right of self-determination, the pursuit of happiness and success, and has allowed so many of us to succeed and thrive, may well have lulled us into a sense of sanguine acceptance.
This is nothing new. The final book of the Torah, Devarim, taught a lesson as relevant today as it was 3000 years ago when it first made the Israelite best seller list: When you come into a land already blossoming and fertile and bountiful, with everything prepared and ready for you, you might think you just deserve it. You may even come to believe it was all your doing.
The biblical author, writing thousands of years ago was aware that even those of us with health, safety, loving friends and family, social intimacy, financial success and material wealth still might sense that there is something missing from their lives. What could it be?
We have become like the child who is given the gift of a luscious orange from the fruit vendor, and when his mother instructs him: “now honey, what do you say to the nice man?” the child hands the orange back to the man and says: “oh yeah, peel it.”
And thus the Torah repeatedly instructs us a simple mitzvah: Give thanks!
Gratitude is more than a religious imperative. It is a necessary way to make sense and order out of a confusing complex world. Gratitude may well be the antidote to the cynicism that is all around us and part of us. As our pessimism about a world in turmoil is lifted, new possibilities come into view.
And if health is your concern, you should know that the cultivation of gratitude has been shown to enhance our physical well-being!
The Declaration of Independence guarantees our right to pursue happiness, but it doesn’t come with instructions. I looked for footnotes on how to pursue happiness. There are no such footnotes!
In Washington the author journalist Ari Shavit spoke to us said he always believed that “morality is in the DNA of the Jewish people.” Perhaps, I thought, but then so must gratitude be our DNA! After all, the biblical character Yehuda, from which we get our religion’s name comes from the verb l’hodot and means “grateful”.
You know, our Bar and Bat Mitzvah students write their speeches and they talk Torah and then they thank folks who made their big day possible. I remember years back one Bat Mitzvah girl wrote two pages on the subjects in her Torah portion and 14 pages of thank yous. At the time I was aghast and insisted that she reverse the order of her priorities. But she refused, and thinking back on it I think maybe she had it right. The theme of her speech was gratitude for the people who make up her life and have seen to her well-being.
Gratitude is hard for some of us because it implies humility. Like the ancient Israelites, how quickly we forget that we could not have reached our lofty status without the help of others. One famous Jewish immigrant, portrayed in the Archives, Albert Einstein, notably said “I have to remind myself a thousand times a day of how much I depend on other people for my success.”
Gratitude is the song human beings are supposed to sing. A song of humility and awe at what surrounds us. Remember the palpable chill in the crowd when President Obama broke into song at the memorial for the Charleston Nine? And the song? Amazing Grace of course. How sweet the sound. And how beautifully strange to hear the Commander in Chief sing the humble words “A wretch like me”.
In listening to the first Republican debate several weeks back I was amazed by how each of the candidates, almost without exception, linked himself to his “humble” origins. I think they knew they were touching a national nerve, and wanted voters to know that they appreciated the opportunities this great nation affords people. That such gratitude was an essential part of being an American.
There is much to be grateful for, even right here and now. A day devoted to prayer may not strike you as a gratitude opportunity, but look at it this way… Like the precious offering of new life given to the immigrant, this is a day given to us to begin anew! What other systems of thought or institutions grant you a “do over” in your life?
I do think that the inclination to express gratitude is in our DNA. Every earthly being has their song. Coyotes howl at the moon. Rivers flow north to south. Flowers rise up to greet pollinating bees. Birds serenade one another. Children laugh and play spontaneously, smiling an average of 400 times a day! Our song is gratitude. It should be as natural as our breathing.
This last spring I was invited as a scholar in residence to my old congregation, Beth Israel in West Hartford, CT. I was reunited with, among others, the temple custodians. One of them, a Jamaican gentleman named Bunny, greeted me at the door and it was like 17 years had passed in a day. I shared a reminiscence with Bunny from those many years ago. It was the end of a long day at Temple and as I opened the door to the parking lot I saw that it was pouring rain. “Damn it” I said rather un-rabbinically, and then there was a hand on my shoulder. I turned and it was Bunny the custodian who said words I have never forgotten: “Rabbi, the rain is a blessing.”
At that moment I felt as though I should be setting up and taking down the chairs and Bunny the Custodian should be preaching on Rosh Hashanah. In typical fashion I had forgotten the integral part of being Jewish is to be grateful and to bless things, especially things that have somehow become ordinary or even burdensome to us.
In that same congregation the domed ceiling was made up of over 7000 individual bricks. I had been told that over the hundred years of its existence about 6 of those bricks had come loose. On my not so good days at Beth Israel I would stare up at the ceiling and wonder which brick was going to come loose next. And if it was going to land on me!
I recently learned, to my astonishment, that there is actually a condition known as Missing Tile Syndrome. When one sees the ceiling of tiles and only notices the ones that have become dislodged. When you look at the jigsaw puzzle and only see the pieces missing.
Or the two shoe salespeople who are sent to an African country to scout out retail possibilities. One writes back, “Situation hopeless, no one here wears shoes!” The other writes: “Glorious business opportunity! They have no shoes!”
Missing Tile Syndrome runs counter to Jewish thinking. We are supposed to look at our surroundings and engage in hakarat hatov – expressions of gratitude for what IS there… not despair at what is missing. We are supposed to look at each other and rather than note what is missing from their character, seek the good they possess.
And the same goes for our own self-assessment. In ten days we will be called upon to recite all the sins, the flaws in our character. But why not take some time over the next several days to count the bricks that are still in the ceiling? Note the wonderful things about yourself. The gifts you bring to this world. The blessing you are to others. Be grateful for being you. Nobody else does it as well! And remember - all gratitude begins with the self. If you aren’t grateful for who you are, you’ll have a heck of a time being grateful for the presence of others in your life.
There is so much going on in the world right now that yanks us to the pessimistic; so much that scares us into the defense mechanism of being cynical and dismissive. So many voices telling us to beware the other voice. And yet there are stories of Amazing Grace that must be a regular part of our life’s narrative.
Standing in the archives in DC I was moved by the stunning portraits of men who came together in political consensus to shape American policy that would guide generations to come. And I immediately gravitated to thoughts of how divided and cynical we have become as a nation on so many issues.
How do we move from this antagonism, mistrust, cynicism to a place of wonder and gratitude for what we do have, even in the face of rancor and bitter loss?
We might start with those who have faced loss and still come out grateful for what they have. When a gunman took the lives of those 9 worshippers in Charleston the violence stunned the nation, but equally stunning was the victims’ families’ forgiveness of the shooter. A man who lost his mother that sad day said: “Love is always stronger than hate, so if we would just love, the way my mom loved, hate wouldn’t be anywhere close to where love is.” From a state of grief comes such a natural outpouring of gratitude for the gift of love that can conquer even tragedy!
Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal wrote a story he related to a rabbi soon after the conclusion of the Second World War. “In the camp,” Wiesenthal said to Rabbi Silver, “there was one religious man who somehow managed to smuggle in a siddur. At first, I greatly admired the man for his courage—, but the next day I realized, to my horror, that this man was ‘renting out’ this siddur to people in exchange for food. People were giving him their last piece of bread for a few minutes with the prayer book. This man, who was very thin and emaciated when the whole thing started, was soon eating so much that he died before everyone else—his system couldn’t handle it.” Wiesenthal continued his story to the rabbi: “If this is how religious Jews behave, I’m not going to have anything to do with a prayer book.”
As he was about to turn and leave the rabbi touched him on the shoulder and gently said: “Simon, why do you look at the Jew who used his siddur to take food out of starving people’s mouths? Why don’t you look at the many Jews who gave up their last piece of bread in order to be able to use a siddur?
As I flew out of Washington, over the tributes of gratitude to those who gave their lives for this country, over the majestic monuments to great leaders, over the seat of western democracy I gave thanks for a day of learning and inspiration and it felt mighty natural to do so.
Prayer comes in many forms. The berakhot – the praises we utter to our Creator; the bakashot, the petitions, the requests, and we are pretty good at those. And then there are, and the hoda’ot – the thank you’s. The Talmud teaches that in the end of days, when the messiah has arrived, and every single thing is perfect, and we are all joined together, and one with God, with not a single thing wrong in a perfected universe, the only prayers left to say in our little siddurim will be those prayers of gratitude. The hoda’ot. Yes, even when all hopes and dreams are answered, we will still be required to sing songs of gratitude.
Gratitude is in our DNA. We have only to let it flow.