Rosh HaShanah: Youth-Led Creative Service

Sermon by Rabbi Tobias Moss
2019/5780

Un’taneh Tokef. Let us proclaim the sacred power of this day, awesome, full of dread.

Who by fire? Who by water? Who by slow decay? Who by moose? 

Who by moose?! No, that wasn’t said out loud. That was in my own reading as I thought of what was my closest call, closest brush with death during the past year.

Who by moose?

I began this summer with a 1,700 mile drive from my home in New York City to my new one here in Minneapolis. Accompanied by two of my most adventurous friends, we took the scenic route, driving on the Canadian side of the Great Lakes. It was beautiful and I was full of excitement for this transition, for joining Temple Israel, for leaving the crowded Big Apple and coming to the Land of Lakes.

As we started to drive Superior’s northern shore, a new traffic sign was spotted popping up along the road: yellow signs with muscular antler-clad animals in mid-gallop. These weren’t like the slender deer signs I’ve known in suburban New Jersey. There were two words posted below the image: night danger. But sometimes you see a sign without understanding its significance. So we drove along after the sun had set.

I was behind the wheel when, out of the darkness, only some yards in front of the car,

I suddenly identified a cluster of skinny legs and hulking bodies. I was horrified and confused about why people would cross a highway at such a dangerous spot.

My instinctive reactions took over as I swerved out of the way. We pulled over and caught our breath. The three of us pieced the image together. We had just barely dodged two humongous black-furred moose. They were nearly invisible on the dark highway. As far as I’m aware, though one never knows for sure, that was my closest brush with death from the past year. Who by moose?

Now were I to try to further update Leonard Cohen’s “Who by Fire,” itself an update on Un’taneh Tokef, “Who by moose?” just wouldn’t cut it. It doesn’t sound elegant enough; it’s not the way I’d choose to go. But then again, one of the points of this prayer is that in real life we don’t know how, we don’t know where, we don’t know when we will go. However, at this awesome time of year we muster the collective courage to ask the question who by this, who by that?

At last year’s asking of “who by fire,” no one could have known the answers: which house would have a freak electrical fire and everyone wouldn’t make it out, that the Amazon would burn with unprecedented intensity; that in nearby Duluth, Adas Israel’s 118-year old synagogue 

and eight Torah scrolls would go up in flames just weeks before this year’s High Holy Days.

And as for the coming year, we know that tragedy, or if we’re lucky, only adversity, will certainly befall us. So once again we ask: Who by this? Who by that? Come on God, come on Judaism, give us a roadmap for the year to come! We get none.

We hear no answers to those explicit questions of the poem. But we do hear an answer to unspoken questions. What shall we do in advance of such tragedies? What shall we do after they come to pass? We don’t get a roadmap, but we do get direction.

וּתְשׁוּבָה וּתְפִלָּה וּצְדָקָה מַעֲבִירִין אֶת רעַ הַגְּזֵרָה

T’shuvah, t’filah, and tzedakah will temper the severity of the decree.

Repentance, prayer, and righteous giving will ease the hardship of what’s to come.

It is not a detailed roadmap, but it is a compass, a way to navigate during these ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and in the year to come. Three stars to follow: 

T’shuvah – repentance

T’filah – prayer

Tzedakkah – righteous giving

However, just learning a bit of orienteering doesn’t mean it is easy to get where you want to go. They don’t erase the hardships of life. They temper them, reshape them, help us to make meaning, move beyond the bad to experience more of the good.

I’ve learned about these three guiding principles from two of the most Minnesotan things I’ve done during my first few months here.

The challenge to “temper the hardship of the decree” was the central theme that I encountered during my obligatory first pilgrimage to the Guthrie Theater—you see Minneapolis caught my eye not just for its proximity to lakes and moose, but also the acclaimed theater scene.

At the Guthrie, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage debuted her newest play about a truck stop sandwich shop, Floyd’s. The whole play takes place in the sandwich shop kitchen where ex-convicts are striving for two goals with equal fervor: repentance and the perfectsandwich.

Three young cooks were recently released from jail, but are struggling with the stigma they receive from the outside world and their own persisting guilt. They are easily set off when someone brings up their past, and they have great concern they’ll fall into bad habits. These three look up to a wiser and older cook, Montrellous, who seems to have moved beyond his own troubled past.

“Look here, being incarcerated took a little something from all of us. Cuz you left prison don’t mean you outta prison. But, remember everything we do here is to escape that mentality. This kitchen, these ingredients, these are our tools. We have what we need.”

This is the Jewish belief. We have what we need. T’shuvah is possible.

My teacherRabbi Larry Hoffman notes that one biblical description of sin is that it is a burden that weighs us down. God nosei avon, lifts up, that burden. If God removes the burden on a person, then so must society practice forgiveness, then so must we each practice forgiveness with ourselves.

T’shuvah is largely about dealing with our past. This season’s second guiding principle,T’filah, prayer—especially petitional prayer—is how we express our hopeful reaching out towards our future. We allow our souls to express our deepest desires. We join together with our people to do the same.

Throughout the play, the cooks come together for their own sort of communal ritual as they prepare simple sandwiches. They dream. They daydream. They dream out loud about discovering the ultimatesandwich!

“Cubano sandwich, with sour pickles, jalapeno aioli and . . . and sweet onions!”

“Grilled blue cheese with spinach, habaneros and . . . candied apples.”

“Maine lobster, potato roll gently toasted and buttered with roasted garlic, paprika and cracked pepper, mayo, caramelized fennel, and a sprinkle of . . . of . . . dill,”

(I knew I’d have to do this sermon on Rosh HaShanah, because this would be too painful to hear on Yom Kippur.)

Rafael asks: “Can the perfect sandwich be made?”

Letitia asks: “When we get there, will we know?”

And again, the wisest among them, Montrellous, responds: “We can only strive for the harmony of ingredients. That’s all.”

Here in synagogue, we don’t usually dream together of the perfect sandwich.

We dream of a world perfected.

We pray for peace.

We pray for community.

We pray for healing.

Our prayers don’t get answered in a direct or explicit fashion, but as Montrellous suggests, we nonetheless strive towards these ideals in our daily lives, though we do not know whether we’ll ever achieve our ultimate aims.

As 20th century Reform Rabbi Rabbi Ferdinand Isserman eloquently puts it: “Prayer cannot mend a broken bridge, rebuild a ruined city, or bring water to parched fields. Prayer can mend a broken heart, lift up a discouraged soul, and strengthen a weakened will.”

To elucidate our third guiding principle, tzedakah, righteous giving, I’d like to share a lesson from an unexpected place, from my most Minnesotan day here: the State Fair! We don’t have that sort of thing where I come from.

The fair’s nickname is the Great Minnesota Get Together. It seems to me that this has at least two meanings, the first being all the people that get together, and the second being all the subjects, themes, and attractions that get brought together. You can learn about the latest in organic lawn care or you can eat a deep fried waffle-encrusted breakfast sandwich on a stick—I don’t think that’s the perfect sandwich. You can walk through an art gallery made of corn kernels, or, as I did, you can spend half an afternoon learning how honey is made.

Rabbeinu Bachya, an 11th century Rabbi, writes in his book Chovot HaLevavot, Duties of the Heart, that one has the internal duty to see the world not just as it plainly seems to be, but to seek lessons from nature. We should observe and contemplate the natural world, and deduce Divine wisdom from this practice. And so in the middle of the State Fair I asked myself, and the beekeeper, what I could learn from the bees.

There are many other types of bees. There’s the bumble bee, carpenter bee, mason bee, leafcutter bee, and sweat bee, not to mention wasps, hornets, and other, meaner varieties.

When it comes to honey production, these other bee species are stingy. They only produce enough to survive day by day. When winter comes, the entire hive dies, every worker bee dies, save for the queen who hibernates alone for the winter, and then starts the hive from scratch in the spring.

But the honeybee does things differently. Even once they’ve made enough honey to keep the hive alive, they just keep going. They can end up making three, four, five times as much honey as they’ll ever consume.

Thanks to this generous spirit, if you will, when winter comes, even here in Minnesota, the hive survives along with queen. Thanks to this generous spirit, humans can enjoy from the honey surplus, without harming the health of the hive.

Likewise, for us, tzedakah helps our community survive the winter, the weak along with the powerful. Tzedakah is also how we share the sweetness of life.

Tzedakah is too often translated as charity, which limits the idea to only material giving. While our tradition does challenge us to do with less and give more, it also invites us to recognize the other bounties we have to share as well. Here the Bible’s Book of Proverbs teaches another lesson from the honey bee.

צוּף־דְּבַשׁ אִמְרֵי־נֹעַם מָתוֹק לַנֶּפֶשׁ וּמַרְפֵּא לָעָצֶם׃

Pleasant words are an overflowing honeycomb

Sweet to the soul, healing for the bones.

As you eat your High Holy Day honey, don’t just revel in the sweetness of the moment, but also let the honey serve as a guide. As you enjoy the surplus that the bees made, what surplus do you have that you can offer as tzedakah? What can you do to help the hive survive the winter, the weak along with the powerful? How you can help the community not only survive, but also taste life’s sweetness during these ten days and throughout the coming year?

One day we will all reach our end. Some of us by fire, some by water, some by slow decay, but hopefully none of us by moose, since we all now know what those “night danger” signs mean. 

Jewish tradition acknowledges this human reality, our human frailty. Rather than let it halt us in our tracks, we do not experience our mortality as a dead end, that there is nowhere left to go because of it.

Un’taneh Tokef concludes: 

Our origin is from dust

And our end is to dust.

But God, 

You are beyond description.

Your holy name suits You

And You suit your Name,

And somehow we are named After You.

May Adonai Eloheinu, the Eternal Source of Strength, give strength to Am Yisrael the People Israel and all humanity, as we navigate the New Year to come. We have no roadmap, but we do have these three stars to follow. T’shuvah, T’filah, Tzedakah. Repentance, Prayer, and Righteous Giving.

Shanah Tovah.