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Rosh
HaShanah Morning 5767 Change
One Thing Rabbi
Samuel M. Cohon, Temple Emanu-El of Tucson A Jewish man buys a talking parrot, and discovers his previous owner was a Chazan, a cantor, and that this is no ordinary bird. This parrot is spectacular: not only can he speak normal English, but he also knows the entire High Holiday Hebrew liturgy by heart, and sings all the prayers beautifully, all the time. All day, every day, it's avinu malkeinu. The man is very excited, and begins telling the guys at the minyan about this amazing bird who, he swears, will be able to daven the entire service on Rosh Hashanah. Well, minyan guys being what they are, they all scoff, one thing leads to another, and pretty soon there's serious money being laid down over whether the parrot can really daven for yomtov. The parrot's owner figures he has a sure thing; he's heard the parrot's hin'ni, and knows just how great the bird is, and he takes every bet. Within a few minutes he is covering thousands of dollars in wagers. Rosh Hashanah morning rolls around, and the man brings his parrot into shul, sets him up on the bimah, opens his little parrot machzor for him, and sits back. The entire congregation waits--and waits, and waits. Nothing. The parrot won't make a sound. His owner cajoles him, tries to bribe him with tiny pieces of apples and honey, begs him—but nothing. Finally, in humiliation, he admits defeat, returns the parrot to his cage, and leaves the synagogue. As soon as he gets outside the man starts threatening the parrot. "I've never been so humiliated in my life. You cost me thousands! You miserable clot of feathers, I'm going to have you stuffed, I'm going to have you fricasseed, you'll wish you never double-crossed me..." The parrot comes to life with a squawk: "Sha, already," he says. "Think of the odds we'll get on Yom Kippur!" I’ve
been thinking about Rosh HaShanah sermons—how, in a way, they are really
just like that davening parrot. They
are set-ups for Yom Kippur. Rosh
HaShanah is Yom haDin, the Day of Judgment, of course: but in reality we
know that, even though the services are longer and the content is more
serious, Rosh HaShanah is really no more than an appetizer, a forshbeis
before the really biggest-of-the-big holy day, Yom Kippur. It’s
as the B’rosh HaShanah section of the Unetaneh Tokef prayer tells us, on
Rosh HaShanah it is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed—and anyone
knows that what really matters is not what is written but what is sealed.
Which means that we often use Rosh HaShanah as a kind of rehearsal
for Yom Kippur: all the repentance and prayer you can stand in 2 and a half
hours, followed by a very nice lunch with family and friends.
A bit of self-correction, of course, but accompanied by shofars and
apples and honey and a lovely meal with good desserts.
Yom Kippur, of course, is another matter: no food, no water, just
atonement all day long. So
just how do we go about transforming Rosh HaShanah, which after all is the
second most important Jewish holiday of the year, into something more
substantial? How do we seek to
make Rosh HaShanah into something more meaningful than a complex service
followed by a good time with friends? In
short, what constitutes the real message of Rosh HaShanah? The
concept of change is central to this entire High Holy Day period, but it is
perhaps most important on Rosh HaShanah.
The word Shanah means year; but it has within it the Hebrew for m’shaneh,
change. On Yom Kippur we are
supposed to be completing a process of change that has begun earlier.
But on Rosh HaShanah we are to look at our lives as they are, and see
what changes we must make. An
Israeli song of my youth had a wonderful, utopian refrain: ani v’ata m’shaneh et ha’olam: you and I can change the world.
Eric Clapton copied that idea about two decades later, and won a
Grammy for it: we can change the world.
You can change the world… But
the better theme on Rosh HaShanah would be you can change yourself.
You can re-make who you are into someone closer to the person you
would like to be. It’s
not always so easy to be comfortable with who each of us is.
We like some things about ourselves; and except for the narcissists
among us—you know who you are, because you are sure I’m talking about
only you right now!—except for the truly self-absorbed narcissists among
us, most of us are less than completely happy with who we actually are.
We know that we each have the capacity to change for the better, to
make true t’shuvah, if only we knew how to do it. Perhaps
the Unetaneh Tokef prayer should read that on Rosh HaShanah we begin the
hard process of change; on Yom Kippur we complete our dedication to it. So
what should you change this year? What
one quality or issue about yourself needs to be addressed seriously?
What do you do that you absolutely know you shouldn’t be doing?
What do you not do that you absolutely know you should?
In
order to understand what we must change, we must first come to grips with a
concept that most contemporary Jews—you know, us—have trouble discussing
candidly. That is the word
sin—which we somehow think that Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, and
Catholics have a patent on. You
hear it often: we Jews don’t have the same concept of sin as Christians
do—absolutely true. And, therefore, we don’t need to worry about sin much.
Ummm… absolutely not true. In
order to change to a better person, you need—really need—to look at what
you are doing that is flat out wrong, misses the mark, is in fact a sin.
Addicts don’t change without bottoming out.
Individual people—you and I—don’t change without acknowledging
that they are committing, in one way or another, something that we really
can honestly call a sin. The
great Maimonides, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, Talmudist, codifier, philosopher,
and physician, lived over 800 years ago in Spain and Egypt.
He wrote a special section on teshuvah,
the Hilchot teshuvah --the Laws of Repentance, in his great work Mishnah
Torah. Maimonides
enumerates twenty-four types of transgressions—sins—that should be
especially avoided, inasmuch as it is very difficult to repent of them.
24—one for every hour of the day.
Think what a truly resourceful, clever, and evil person could
accomplish if he set his mind to it: a new transgression every hour of the
day for a full day! Actually, I
don’t think that’s what Maimonides intended to teach. Rather,
he taught these 24 categories of sin or transgression are either very
serious, or, conversely, seem very light in the eyes of the transgressor.
Either you may feel that no repentance is possible because your sin
is so great; or, conversely, you will feel that no atonement is necessary
because it is so minor. Or you
might feel that, overall, your flaws are such that correcting them is indeed
almost impossible. I
will save you most of the 24 categories of sin; you will probably want to go
out and discover some of them yourselves this year, and who am I to thwart
your creativity? Actually, the
reason to focus on just a few of them is that we can only absorb so much
repentance at one sitting, and our ability to change—which is substantial,
in truth—is not without some limitation. So
Maimonides teaches that of the twenty four kinds of transgression, four
types are so grievous that God withholds special grace from the
transgressor; that is, these are the big four.
In all other cases God helps the would-be repenter to carry out his
good intentions of returning to God. But
these sins take special effort to redeem. These
four types of A-list transgression are: 1.
The person who is instrumental in causing people to sin, or in preventing
them from doing a mitzvah. 2.
The person who uses his influence to mislead someone from the path of the
Torah. 3.
The person who permits his own child to stray from the path of the Torah,
failing to give him the proper education and guidance; or one who has an
opportunity to prevent someone from committing a sin, and does not do it. 4.
And finally, the person who deludes himself by thinking, "I will sin
now, and repent later," or that "the Day of Atonement will wipe my
sins off, anyway." The
common theme of these grand sins, the hardest ones to correct, is that they
all involve leading others into evil. In
other words, the gravest errors we can commit, the worst things we can do,
all are related to how we prevent people from doing good, and help them to
do what is not good. There
are many ways we do this in our own lives.
Sometimes, in our inherent selfishness, we use others to advance our
own cause and pretend we are doing the right thing. Some of us are involved in organizations and projects, on
boards or committees perhaps, in which, in our earnest desire to provide
service, we allow our own self-interest to intrude and so help move those
organizations or groups away from a good and necessary path.
Fundamentally,
any of us who are persons of influence—and that is true of so many of us
here today—have a special trust. If
we have been using our influence in any way to manipulate for selfish
reasons, than we have some true repenting to do. Maimonides
has many more categories and kinds of sin to teach us about, and I will not
enumerate them all. If I used
all Ten Days of Repentance I’m not sure that I would encompass all the
various categories and qualities of clever sins that we can commit.
But
there is one particular area that bears special examination on this Yom
HaDin. These sins include an
array of transgressions that all involve turning away from and even
ridiculing Judaism and Jewish teaching and tradition.
They essentially involve ways in which, through our own extreme
skepticism, we allow our own attitude and actions to block the road to teshuvah: Here,
again, is Maimonides enumeration of these anti-Jewish sins: 5.
One who separates himself from the congregation, and does not participate in
the Jewish communal life and institutions, thus depriving himself of the
merits that belong to the entire congregation, and of the merits of
congregational prayer and repentance. 6.
One who denies the words of the Sages and scorns their holy writings, thus
depriving himself of the great spiritual benefits which they contain, with
their influence and inspiration. 7.
One who scoffs at the Divine commandments, for he will not likely repent of
his sins. 8.
One who despises spiritual teachers, for without such guidance she will not
likely find his way to repentance. 9.
One who dislikes words of rebuke, for it is very difficult for a person to
attain teshuvah without outside
influence. In
other words, this is a kind of sin committed by ridiculing the very source
that can lead to healing, correction, redemption, improvement, and change
for the better. By
contrast, what Maimonides recommends—what we know can actually work—is
to embrace Jewish tradition, and involvement in the temple community that
advances Jewish education and values, in a positive, embracing way that
acknowledges its relevance in our lives.
We Jews are born to be critical, as you know—two Jews, three
opinions, four organizations, after all.
But that doesn’t mean ridiculing the heart of Jewish life and
meaning, the great store of spiritual truth and wisdom that is the essence
of our tradition. So
I propose this morning that, in order to make this process of teshuvah
possible over these ten days, that you choose one thing about yourself that
you wish to improve or change. One
thing—not Maimonides 24, not even your 7 worst features, not even three
things you hate about yourself. Just
one, sole, solitary aspect of your personality or life that you feel is not
worthy, not right, not what it ought to be.
Choose one—and make a commitment over these ten days to seek to
change that this year. Start
today, by choosing; continue through Yom Kippur by changing. Can
you be more loving to a friend or relative?
Can you modify your mode of speech or the tone of your
email—especially email—so that you present a more positive, loving
version of yourself? Can you be
more giving in charity? Can you
support Israel more? Can you
choose to visit one sick person or shut-in once a week or even once a month?
Can you stop whatever bad habit is keeping you from being the person
you should be? You
know how most New Year’s resolutions go, don’t you, the January kind?
You join the health club on January 2nd, and by
mid-February you have worked out four times, total.
You try to drop 10 pounds by March so you can fit into your clothes,
and by April you are shopping for a new, larger wardrobe.
And so on… But
here, in this time of change and renewal, you really can remove one sin from
your life. Just one.
If you want to do it, you can. There
is a wonderful story about a Zen hot dog vendor—I’ve used it on the Too
Jewish Radio show, but I will no doubt continue to commit the inevitable
rabbinic sin of repetition. In
any case, the story goes like this: A
man comes up to a hot dog stand that advertises “Zen Hot Dogs”.
He figures he has to try one of these!
And so he goes up to the hot dog vendor and says, “I’ll take one
with everything on it.” The
vendor gives him his hot dog, and says “that will be $2.”
The
man gives him a $20 bill, and the vendor takes it, puts it in his cash box,
and closes the box. “Hey,”
says the guy, “What about my change?” And
the Zen hot dog vendor says, “Change must come from within.” And
so it must. Over these Ten Days
we have the chance to make sure that this year Rosh Hashanah will not simply
be a kind of warm-up for Yom Kippur. We
can begin the process of change, of removing sin from our own lives, today.
If
we begin that now, we can be sure that our new 5767 year will be a better
year than the one that has preceded it.
So may it be for each of us, now and in the coming days of return. L’shana
Tova tikateivu v’teichateimu—may
you be written and sealed in the Book of Life for a good year of real
change, for the better.
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