Yom Kippur: Woe Is Not Us

Sermon by Rabbi Sim Glaser
2013/5774

A recent poll was taken asking which holidays Jews like best. It indicated that Hanukkah is far more popular with younger Jews than Yom Kippur. Really? I mean, come on kids, what’s not to like about the big Kippur? You got your fasting, staying in Temple all day, having to say you’re sorry for a billion things you messed up on? You like Hanukkah better? With the chocolate gelt, potato latkes, dreidl games and presents every night? Come on! Yom Kippur’s the bomb! I guess it could have been worse. They might have said Christmas…

OK, so Yom Kippur is kind of a bummer. But it is designed that way. And here’s the thing. The power of Yom Kippur relies on the fact that Jews are able to know the difference between a downer day and the other days of the year. To be Jewish is to master the art of distinguishing moments to dwell on our suffering and moments to focus on choosing life and living. As the biblical book of Ecclesiastes famously tells us: there is a time to laugh and a time to cry.

We Jews are a people of extremes. Chaim Weitzman, the first president of Israel, once said: The Jewish people are like everyone else, only more so. When we kvetch, nobody kvetches better. It has been asked, why are there so few Jewish alcoholics? Answer: Because it interferes with our suffering.

And when we party we really party. Mark and I recently played for an orthodox wedding that was totally wild. Jugglers, magicians and fire-eaters entertained the bride and groom. We did a 45 minute non-stop hora. The party got so crazy men and women almost started dancing together.

That same book of Ecclesiastes teaches us that although life is short and filled with frustration, we should eat drink and be merry, for what else is there? I always think of the Jewish couple in the restaurant who are overheard saying: “ach, the food here is terrible… and such small portions!”

We are a people constantly aware of the ups and downs of life. Consider the tale of Yankele the traveler who orders a pair of pants from the Jewish tailor. When he has to leave town the pants are not yet ready. Seven years later he returns and finally the tailor delivers. Yankele says: “God made the world in seven days, yet you take seven years to make a pair of pants.” “Ah yes, but look at the world,” says the tailor, “and look at my trousers!”

In my 25 years as a rabbi I have been asked many times: how do you go from those wonderful joyous moments to the sad ones and back again often right on the same day? My answer is typically Jewish. I answer with another question: I don’t know, how do you do it? We all do it… Take Yossel the carpenter who informed the funeral director: “my wife has died, and I wish to make arrangements for her burial.” “But how can that be?” asked the funeral director. “We buried your wife two years ago.” “Oh, that was my first wife,” said Yossel, “and now my second wife, too, has died.” “Pardon me,” said the funeral director, “I didn’t know you had remarried. Mazel tov!” I’m proud of the fact that although the Jewish people know suffering better than anyone on the planet, we’re still the funniest people on the planet. What’s that about? How could such a thing have happened? Theories abound. One is that humor is the way Jewish people take risks. Generally speaking we’re not your bungee jumpers or regular contestants on Jackass. And with certain notable examples we are pretty fiscally conservative.

Jewish humor has always been a risk taking humor, tempting fate. I know this first hand. Though it isn’t my day job, thanks God, I have tried my hand at stand up and have gotten myself into some trouble doing it often at totally inappropriate times... like on Yom Kippur the most solemn day of the year.

I feel like it is part of my own pathos, my own sense of sad family history, holocaust roots, Jewish neurosis guilt and anxiety that fuels my need to try some risky humor.

For example, speaking at the Tennebrae service at our large Roman Catholic neighbors down the street a few years ago I referred to it as the Basilica of St. Miriam. I was the only Jew in the room with two thousand Catholics celebrating the crucifixion, death and resurrection of their lord Jesus, (which for most of Christian history was blamed on us) and passing a giant life size cross over their heads distinctly in my direction. Talk about conspicuous. I got up to speak and said that I felt like a matzoh ball in a bowl of clam chowder.

There is something just so Jewishly appealing about goofing around with people who take themselves too seriously.

Yes, I’m the rabbi who used my dog Flora as a subject for a High holiday sermon. It’s the one sermon people remember. “rabbi I remember that sermon you gave about your dog.” And yes, I’m the rabbi who brought our former dog Sophie up onto the bima one Purim to show off how she would refuse to eat a dog treat if I said it was treif. She’d turn her head away with disdain. Then I’d say “kosher” and she’d gobble it up. She even knew how to play dead – Sophie! Hodroff! Now there was a yiddisha pup. canine a hora.

Why do we do things like that? I can only say from my own experience that the deeper the pain and sadness that lies within my heart the more titillating it is to risk it with some mischievous humor. I’m hardly the first one to figure that out. Woody Allen, Lenny Bruce, the Marx Brothers, John Stewart, Jerry Seinfeld, Mort Sahl, Joan Rivers, Larry David, Don Rickles, Mel Brooks, Jackie Mason, Rodney Dangerfield. In 1975 it was estimated that more than two thirds of the working comics in the world were Jewish. The Jewish people are experts both in despair and unbridled joy. So we need to set specific times for appropriate solemnity so that we aren’t always wallowing in despair.

There is a lot of “woe” out there. You get a lot of street cred these days when you can prove you’ve overcome terrible circumstances to get where you are. This country likes to dwell on suffering 24/7. You watch American Idol and it is hard to determine what gets the votes, the talent or the sad story that proves the contestant overcame incredible hurdles to get there. Suffering is still very hip. People today try to score bonus points by revealing the suffering in their past. The contest shows on TV are not just about talent – they are often about who has suffered the most. Never mind my singing, let me tell you about my stint in rehab! Before I begin my number, can I just tell you that my great grandmother, the moment she came to the new world died the moment she set foot on Ellis Island.

Maybe the show should be called America’s Got Tsurus. It’s almost as though if you haven’t got a tragic story to tell your work isn’t relevant.

This is nothing new. Suffering has always been entertaining. Some of you are old enough to remember the television show Queen for a Day, in which the housewife with the most woeful story got crowned. Each contestant had to talk publicly about the recent financial and emotional hard times she had been through. Her need for medical care or a child with an illness, or a husband out of work. The harsher the story the higher the applause meter would read. The winner would be draped in a velvet robe, given a glittering jeweled crown to wear, placed on a velvet-upholstered throne, and handed a dozen longstemmed roses to hold as she wept, often uncontrollably, while her list of prizes was announced.

Times haven’t changed all that much. Candidates running for office trumpet their humble beginnings with far more passion than their track record as a public servant. From the days of honest Abe’s log cabin to Bill Clinton’s single parenting to Marco Rubio’s immigrant parents to Elizabeth Warren’s waiting tables at 13 years old to a host of health struggles, alcoholism and drug addictions.

It isn’t enough to have talent or been a suitable public servant. You have to have gone through hell!

One of biggest problems with being constantly confronted with suffering is that we become inured to it. Hardened. Insensitive. And we lose respect for suffering. As unpopular a notion as this might be to hear, suffering, like everything else in this world, has a purpose, and for many, the purpose is learning – achieving gratitude for the beauty of life, for when the pain ceases and we can breathe easily again.

But to use suffering as a badge of honor is not really the Jewish way, and thus we tell jokes about it. One that comes to mind is the Jewish woman who halts the city bus between stops and bangs on the door. “oy” she says, clutching her chest, “if you knew what I have you’d let me on the bus” so the driver lets her on. She moves back and sees a seat she wants and says to the person sitting there “oy, if you knew what I have, you’d let me have that seat.” Of course she gets the seat. She hits the buzzer to have the bus stop right in front of her apartment. “oy, if you knew what I have you’d let me off here at my home.” Fine, says the driver, and as she steps down he asks her – by the way, lady, what exactly is it that you have?” and she replies “chutzpah”.

There are plenty of sad days on the Jewish calendar. Yahrzeits are sad. Funerals of course are sad. But in our brand of faith, joy trumps sadness. It kind of has to. Tisha B’Av marks the destruction of both Temples in Jerusalem and numerous other tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people. We sit on the floor as mourners and in dim light chant the book of Lamentations… Except when it falls on Shabbat no overt mourning is allowed. Even today, Shabbat lightens our Yom Kippur load.

The Talmud instructs us that when a funeral procession and a wedding procession meet at a crossroads, the funeral stops and waits for the wedding to pass. As the Torah portion we just heard says, when faced with blessing and curse we are to choose life. We are taught that one must opt for life and wholeness, before one can adequately confront death and brokenness.

The Latin word for suffering passionem is related to our English word passion, which obviously is related to the word compassion. The real opposite of suffering, then, is not joy, but apathy. Indifference. Suffering and relating to suffering ultimately should lead to our being more compassionate. But you can’t relate honestly to suffering when it is thrown in your face every moment. Suffering is very sacred and should be treated as such. The only way to do that is to celebrate and commemorate both extremes of living.

Wise sages in many different traditions including our own tell us that suffering brings clarity, illumination; for the Buddha, suffering was the first rule of life, and much of it comes from our own wrongheadedness — our cherishing of self. The world’s great religions will teach us that we have the cure for much of our suffering within us. I believe that a sense of humor is a huge part of that cure.

After the terrible Japanese Tsunami in 2011 the Dalai Lama visited a fishing village that had been decimated. Schools and homes were now reduced to rubble. Many had been killed. Thousands of Japanese turned out to welcome him, including a group of orphaned children. There was little he could do to comfort them considering the horrible losses they had endured. Still, he told them to change their hearts from sufferers to helpers and somehow find the strength to turn the bitterness into hope. He gave hugs and held hands. He smiled. And yes, he cried.

So why, with the uniquely significant Jewish history of suffering, have Jews emerged as such a funny people? My theory is a Kabbalistic one. Jewish Mysticism teaches that God’s reason for creation is that there be someone for God to have a relationship with us, and the primary reason for that relationship is to bestow goodness and happiness. Our job is to accept it. Humor is God’s blessing and it is instilled within us as an antidote to suffering. Why else would laughter feel so good? But the distinctiveness of this Yom Kippur day is the proof that we cannot live a life of constant woe. If we did, this holiday would mean nothing and true suffering have no meaning. It is precisely because we have this innate heart of joy that we are able to turn one full day a year over to serious introspection. But if all we dwell on is the darkness, we won’t know what to do when tragedy or loss strikes.

But there is and always will be suffering. A problem of Jewish theology has always been that if God is a just and perfect God who created this world, it ought to be perfect. But it isn’t. It’s a mess. The Jew has three options – to despair, to repair it, or to laugh at it. With over 2000 years plus of tsurus behind us option #1, despair is out of the question, so we opt for fixing and shticking. Joking, provoking and hoping. In this way we perform the ultimate duty of humankind – to accept God’s goodness in one of its most delicious forms – humor.

May you be inscribed for blessing on this Yom Kippur day for a year of life and laughter, of hoping and coping and being fully human. L’shana tova