Erev Yom Kippur: Sanctuary Service

Sermon by Rabbi Marcia Zimmerman
2012/5773

The Kol Nidre Blessing and prayer is an act of contrition to say that we are sorry for the wrongs and sins – not that we have done last year – but that we will do this year. Historically, it is a prayer that was created during the Spanish Inquisition when Jews were made to say “yes” when they meant “no,” to convert to Christianity to save their lives. To say the Kol Nidre prayer was allowing them to observe Judaism in secret but in public having to have another identity.

Historically, it was a way for them to acknowledge that they know they would sin the minute they left that service. But really, there’s something eternal in that prayer, something about the future that’s really what I believe the Jewish people is all about, about leaving a legacy for the future, making the world better. That’s at the heart of the Kol Nidre prayer and blessing and service – we look to the future.

It’s interesting because I find that people are more focused on the here and now and actually are not looking beyond their own needs. We more often than not are like the woman who, in the airport, goes to buy a newspaper and a small package of cookies. She sits at the gate waiting for her plane to arrive and all of a sudden, she hears a rustling. A man in a nice suit is eating a cookie. He sits right behind her. He’s eating her cookie! She is outraged. So she takes one herself. Then what happens – she hears rustling again. “I can’t believe it“– she can’t even look at him, she’s so angry. So she takes another one. What’s worse – the last cookie – you know what he does? He breaks it in half, and sends half of it over to her. He gets up and he leaves. She’s just fuming, she’s playing in her mind what happened over and over and over again, and then, her plane arrives, her section is called, and she opens her purse to get out her boarding pass. And there is her unopened package of cookies.

Whose cookie is it? It seems as though we are taught from a very young age about whose cookie it is. Is it yours? No, it’s mine. It just doesn’t really leave a legacy, does it? It’s about the here and now where you don’t even notice what’s right in front of you. We seem to be so caught up in that.

For me, it really is about the text from the book of Joel that says “Your children will teach their children, and their children their children, and their children the generations after.” When you’re worrying about your cookie, you’re not looking to the world and to the future and what you want to leave behind. You’re looking at just what you want.

I think there are three ways for us to create a legacy. It’s to help us understand that wisdom and knowledge is truly important. I think in this day and age we really don’t need to teach our children how to make a living; they seem to do that pretty well. We’ve taught that really well. It’s how to make a life that’s meaningful – that we’ve missed a bit. That, I think, is about a legacy.

So the idea of Judaism being a deep well of wisdom is essential. Donniel Hartman was here from the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and he said we have focused so much on the death narrative, on the Holocaust in Israel, that our children think that is the only thing that’s Judaism – that is what we’ve fed them for all these years, and it just isn’t enough, it’s out of context. We have to teach them an entire Jewish history; we have to teach them what our sources say. We have to teach them how to be in the world and what Judaism has to teach.

You know that cookie story? Well, let’s look at what Judaism has to say about it.

A year and a half ago, the Cantor and I took a number of families to Israel and we participated in what’s call the Leket program. Leket is the four corners of a vineyard or a field that is not harvested by the person who is a steward of it. Rather, it’s left for the poor. We picked onions for an entire morning and learned about this program that actually also brings uneaten food from bar or bat mitzvah ceremonies, from weddings, from a b’rit milah or a naming to food shelves in Israel to feed the hungry so that the food isn’t thrown out. I talked to the Sisterhood about this program and they’re trying to start it here at Temple Israel. It’s telling us it’s not about your cookie or my cookie – actually, none of us own the cookie. In Judaism, God owns it all, and we are but stewards of what we have. It’s said in Judaism that if we don’t give tzedakah, guess what? We are like squatters, squatters on this earth because tzedakah, justice, and charity are our rent for being on this earth. Now that is something to talk about – that is a deep well of truth. About caring for each other rather than worrying if it’s our cookie.

Wisdom and knowledge lead to character building, and that is another legacy we leave to the future generations. You see, character is built by experience. You can have someone 17 who is incredibly wise and somebody who is 93 who hasn’t quite learned some lessons they need to learn. It’s not chronology – it really is experience. But it seems that we again have not allowed this generation to have the experiences that build character. I believe failure is the number one teacher of character. Each one of us in this sanctuary has failed at some point in our lives and that’s what’s gotten us to this point, because we learned a lot of great lessons.

Wendy Mogel says that everyone needs a bad fourth grade teacher, and everyone needs a shallow, promiscuous friend. (She says it a different way.) Because the lessons you learn from a bad teacher are lessons of life; lessons you learn from a bad friend (a friend your parents don’t approve of) are things you shouldn’t do in life. You learn that – those are good lessons. But we so quickly want to protect our children and we change the classroom or complain to the principal. If we want self-reliant children and adults then we can’t protect them – they have to learn the lessons of life.

And character – character builds convictions. A conviction is an essential part of who we are and is an essential part of a legacy we must leave. You see, today would have been my father’s 90th birthday. He died six years ago in the month of November. But today, he would have been 90. Here’s a man who I didn’t agree with on many fronts. We had extremely different political views but he taught me a lot about what it means to have convictions. He spent most of his life surrounded by women, and he was not afraid of his female side of things. He was a heart surgeon, but he was an artist, he was a gourmet cook, he was a connoisseur of fine wine. He taught me a lot about beauty and aesthetics, and he wasn’t afraid to make sure that we were fed the delicious delicacies that he created. He also was a man who reinvented himself many times.

He began as a surgeon; he was a surgeon in St. Louis and worked for the university there and was one of the first surgeons to do open heart surgery, beginning first on dogs as an experiment and then moving to humans. At 50 years old, he decided to retire from surgery because he never wanted to walk into an OR and have people whisper behind his back that he was too old to perform the surgery. He retired and went into preventative care. He was a part of Mr. Fit. I don’t know if you know about that, where they came up for the risk factors for cardiac care. The idea of controlling blood pressure, the idea of not smoking, of exercising, making sure that we could control our own risk factors and have a healthier life.

And when that was over, he didn’t want to become a burden to his medical practice so he went back to school and learned echocardiogram and did those, to keep patients coming to his practice. He also tried to sell his practice to the university, to teach young doctors how to talk to patients and it got this close – it was quite an innovative idea where he was actually going to have young medical students follow him as an apprentice program. At the last minute, it fell through and so he retired from his practice.

My father taught me about conviction. He would tell me, “Marcia, it doesn’t matter what you think. It matters that you think. Stand up for what you believe in, even if I disagree.” Today, on Yom Kippur I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the mirror if I didn’t say something about the two amendments that will be on the ballot in November. What I can clearly say is that there should be no amendment to a constitution to limit people’s rights and responsibilities. Whatever one thinks, that is just wrong.

My father often would argue with me. He taught me how to debate; he taught me to debate the issues and not the people. In his memory today, as he would have turned 90, I just want to say that he really did die the way that he lived. He was hospitalized and my sisters told me to come home. I came back because he had decided he didn’t want any additional heroic measures. He had just finished dialysis, which he had been on for three years, and so we thought it would be a few days. He went back to his room and said, “You know what? I want everyone to go home, have dinner, go enjoy it, and then come back later tonight and we’ll talk.” We all went home. We were having dinner around the table where he often served us and fed us, in the home that he built for us – and we got a call that he had died. He died alone, and I believe he did so that he could always be the patriarch of the family, so we didn’t have to watch him. For him, that was important. (My mother, on the other hand, needed everybody there.)

So on his 90th birthday, I thank you for indulging me, helping me know that it really is about the legacy that each of us leaves that is essential to this world. We can take this day of Yom Kippur to look into that future and, like my father, kind of do life his way. Zichrono livrachah – may his memory always be a blessing. Amen.