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Essential
Truths about Humanity
Shabbat
Shuvah Ha'azinu 5765 Sermon
September 17, 2004
Rabbi
Samuel M. Cohon
Shabbat
Shalom, and L'shanah Tovah. This
evening we are entered into the Shabbat of Return, of Repentance, between Rosh
HaShanah and Yom Kippur. I love
the ironies of this particular Sabbath. For
one thing, it is called the Sabbath of Return--yet falling as it does
immediately after Rosh Hashanah, when a couple of thousand people, all told,
attended our synagogue, and Yom Kippur next Friday and Saturday, when perhaps
2500 people in total will attend, at most a few hundred people will be here
over this Shabbat. We might
better call it the Sabbath of flight, or the Shabbat
B'richah instead--the Sabbath of Absence sometimes seems more
appropriate. It's as though
attendance at Temple is limited by some sort of natural measure, and
T'shuvah, return, is suspended this weekend.
Of
course, there is a danger in simply counting heads as a measure of
achievement, or accepting statistics as a means of spiritual success.
Repentance is measured one person at a time, and in the degree of
return, rather than the number of returnees seated in the pews at any one
moment. Still, statistics can
tell us something... And what
they tend to tell us, is that, for all the fervor and beauty of the Rosh
HaShanah liturgy, for all the power of the music and the prayer, most of us
have a pretty hard time making changes of great substance in our personal
conduct.
Nobel
Prize Winning poet Wistlawa Szymborska, a favorite of mine, had a poem, 'A
Contribution to Statistics'. I think it illuminates, in a simple and not entirely subtle
way, some essential truths about humanity--that is, us:
Out
of a hundred people
those
who always know better
-fifty-two
[percent]
doubting
every step
-nearly
all the rest,
Glad
to lend a hand
if
it doesn't take too long
-as
high as forty-nine [percent],
always
good
because
they can't be otherwise
-four,
well maybe five [percent],
able
to admire without envy
-eighteen
[percent],
suffering
illusions
induced
by fleeting youth
-sixty
[percent], give or take a few,
not
to be taken lightly
-forty
and four [percent],
living
in constant fear
of
someone or something
-seventy-seven
[percent],
capable
of happiness
-twenty-something
tops,
harmless
singly, savage in crowds
-half
at least,
cruel
when
forced by circumstances
-better
not to know
even
ballpark figures,
wise
after the fact
-just
a couple more
than
wise before it,
taking
only things from life
-thirty
[percent]
(I
wish I were wrong),
hunched
in pain,
no
flashlight in the dark
-eighty-three
[percent]
sooner
or later,
righteous
-thirty-five
[percent], which is a lot,
righteous
and
understanding
-three
[percent],
worthy
of compassion
-ninety-nine
[percent],
mortal
-a
hundred out of a hundred.
thus
far this figure still remains unchanged.
You
see, we are all clearly fallible, self-interested, self-justifying, mostly
decent when untested, not so strong when tried, once in a while inspirational,
often confused--and all of us have a limited shelf-life.
It
strikes me that the Torah portion for this Shabbat, HaAzinu,
is just about perfect for people like that, for human beings trying to find a
way to goodness and knowing, in a sort of dim way, our own limitations. For this week we have the final song of Moses, a poem of
soaring imagery and fairly brutal self-justification, of love and frustration.
It is, in its own way, a revealing masterpiece of a great orator,
Moses, singing of the greatness of God, of the plain fact that his was a
generation of Jews who were "crooked and perverse", who were "foolish
and unwise"--a nation "devoid of counsel" with no understanding.
In other words, a fallible and self-interested group, not so much evil
as ungrateful and not too bright. Just
like the people Szymborska is talking about; just like, well, more or less,
us.
There
is hope here, too, however, albeit in small doses: Remember, Moses says, the
days of old, "Zchor Y’mot Olam",
ask your father and your elders and they will tell you what you should
know--that God is Eternal, and we are the ones who will pass.
God will ultimately make expiation, atonement, for our people.
This
passage is Moses' valedictory speech, but it is also his own funeral
oration--for Moses is singing of his own end here, and he knows that he, too
is mortal. God has done so much
for this ragged group of slaves, and now that they are on the very brink of
entering the Promised Land he, Moses, will only be permitted to gaze on it
from afar--ki mineged tireh et
ha'arets--but he will not be permitted to go in.
Moses,
our greatest teacher, our leading rabbi, perhaps the greatest figure in all
Jewish history, can only come to the border of the Promised Land.
His lesson is one of both word and example: we, too, can come close but
never quite enter the Promised Land. Perhaps
only at this last moment does Moses come to realize that the journey to the
promised land was really all about the journey, not the arrival. How he took the trip, how he passed along the way, was what
mattered.
Often,
this portion is not actually paired with Shabbat Shuvah, by the way--the
lunar calendar is a regular but rather fickle mistress in the near term, and
the Torah portions are sometimes matched with Haftarot other then the ones
that our rabbis chose so carefully for them 1500 years ago.
So it is a special opportunity to have HaAzinu as our Shabbat Shuvah
reading, matched with the beautiful passages from Hosea, Micah, and Joel that
make up our selection tomorrow. Shuvah
Yisrael the prophets begin--, Israel, to the Lord your God.
You have stumbled in your error and transgression.
Come back...
Return,
we are told. Overcome the odds.
Repent your mistakes and sins, and make your teshuvah.
Return to Me, God says, and I will bring you back to Me in love.
Do not fear. Return.
Shabbat
shuvah is an invitation, but it is also a challenge.
For when we try to return we are often a little stymied by the
potential--indeed the likelihood--of failure.
Sure, we can come back, but we know in some part of our hearts that we
are unlikely to fully succeed. Repentance
means changing habits we shouldn't have, making up with people we don't
like, remaking our character in ways that are painful and serious, even
modifying some of the desires of our hearts--and that's very hard to do,
and we are, essentially, predestined to some degree of failure.
If teshuvah is the Promised
Land of this part of the Jewish year, we are more than bit like Moses, already
fully conscious of the fact that we ain't really gonna' get in.
We just might get to the border--mineged
ha'Arets--but we will never really make it.
There is that statistical problem: we are, 100 percent of us, human and
fallible.
So
if we aren't able to make it, why bother to try?
The
lesson of HaAzinu comes in the fact that we are still reading the great story
of Moses, and finding inspiration from it.
Moses was a hot-head and, in his youth, a killer--and yet he brought
not only himself but an argumentative people of great stubbornness-- some
things don't change all that much!--to the very border of the Promised
Land. He helped create Teshuvah
for himself and for so many others. If
Moses could do it, can we?
If
we look at it properly--reasonably, I guess--the answer is yet.
For at this time of Teshuvah, our task is to return to the some of the
best that is within us, to come back part of the way to God and goodness--not
all the way. Full Teshuvah would
be entering the promised land. Our
job is simply to make this journey our own, and undertake it with honesty and
effort--to get to the border, if you will.
And
the truth is that you, personally, are already on the right path.
You are here tonight, on this Shabbat Shuvah.
You have begun to return. You
are part of the good side of the statistics; you have defied the irony, on
this night, and you bring some holiness with you by doing so.
You are why we have Shabbat shuvah.
May
your return over these Aseret Yemei Teshuvah be blessed with a measure of success at return
and repentance. And may you come
to appreciate, and treasure, the journey--and so, inadvertently perhaps, find
the borders of the Promised Land.
Ken
Yehi Ratson.
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