A few
years ago, the journalist Gershom Gorenberg arrived home from services on the
first night of Rosh Hashanah to find two police officers standing in the middle
of his Jerusalem apartment. Puddles of
water and soot and smoke surrounded them.
The gruff Israeli police officer informed him in a calm voice: “There
was a short circuit in your refrigerator.
You have no electricity. You
can’t sleep here.” In a flash, Gershom’s
whole life was turned upside down. Minutes
before, he was in synagogue praying for a sweet New Year. Now, he was homeless. In the aftermath, how could he not reflect
upon the prayer: “who by fire, and who by water?”
These
High Holy Days often invoke the feeling that we are powerless to shape our destiny. The image, of course, is the Book of
Life. On Rosh Hashanah, the book was
opened, God wrote there the outcome for the year ahead. Tomorrow evening, as the sun begins to set,
the Book will close, our future inscribed upon its pages. The afore mentioned prayer, the Unetaneh
Tokef, reminds us in quite stark terms of God’s role in our lives: “All who
come into the world pass before You… You count and consider every life. You set bounds; You decide destiny; You inscribe
judgments.” This High Holy Day refrain challenges us: how do we remain optimistic
if life simply happens?! How do we stay
hopeful when so much is outside our control?!
Gershom
didn’t ask those questions when confronting his ordeal. Instead, in an opinion piece penned in Moment Magazine, he wrote:
“What those Rosh Hashanah prayers – “Who by
fire, and who by water” really tell us… is that much of life simply
happens. It is written for us in
advance. But it’s written in an alphabet
we knew in a dream and have half forgotten.
It’s written in the middle of the page, and around it we write
commentaries that teach us how to live.
We are given real omens. But we
decide what they mean.”[i]
Gershom,
rightly so, could have been pessimistic, depressed, even angry about the
destruction of his Jerusalem apartment.
Instead, he was able to associate the experience with gifts of
generosity. You see, when word of the
fire spread, neighbors came to his aid: friends invited him over for the holiday
dinner, found him a place to sleep, and provided him with clothes. Kindness overflowed.
Gershom
reminds us that we don’t have to feel vulnerable. There is power in our ability to define our
story. We can learn from the past,
define the present in our own terms, and look towards the future with hope.
Yes, the Unetaneh
Tokef states undeniably that God controls our destiny. Yet, can you imagine a world in which God
truly controlled everything?! Why live
life to the fullest? Why even attempt to
make a decision, if all were foreseen?
This loss of control would lead to apathy and despair.
Fortunately,
the Unetaneh Tokef concludes with words of hope: U’Teshuvah, U’Tefila, U’Tzedakah, Ma’avrin et Ro’eh Ha’Gezerah“Repentance, Prayer, and Charity, lessen the
severity of the decree.” Although much remains outside our control, it’s not
everything! We have the tools of
teshuvah (repentance) and tzedakah (righteous giving) to change our destiny. We have the power to forgive, to act with
humility, to change our ways. We have to
power to respond to our struggles with patience, to accept our limitations, and
to reshape our understanding of ourselves.
We have the power to listen, to change, to act.
And our
actions don’t necessarily need to be big, it can be the little things. For Mark Olmsted, it’s picking up trash![ii] Mark spent many difficult years as a drug
addict who sold crystal meth to support his habit. After months in prison and a commitment to
sobriety, he knew he had to make amends.
And picking up trash was it.
After
moving to Little Armenia in Los Angeles, his first reaction to the trash filled
streets of his new neighborhood was to say the well-known Serenity Prayer: “God
grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to
change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” As he walked his dog every day, he thought
that the litter piling up on the streets was just something he had to
accept. After all, what was he supposed
to do? Pick it up?
Yes,
that’s just what he did. At Home Depot,
he bought an E-Z Reacher, and just like that he started picking up empty
cigarette packs, soda cans, fast-food packages, and Styrofoam cups. For Mark, picking up trash taught him to
question all of the assumptions he had previously made. Was the only possible reaction to horrible
traffic becoming angry and frustrated?
Was he a hopeless addict who couldn’t possibly get sober?
Picking
up trash helped him answer the questions:
How can I be of service today? What do I have the courage to
change? And every night, no matter how
each day went, he fell asleep knowing that he did one thing that day that was
unarguably and unambiguously good.
In a very
significant way, Mark’s story illustrates the Jewish understanding of hope. Our tradition believes that hope is achieved through
action, through the difficult hands on work of teshuvah (repentance) and
tzedakah (righteous giving). Rabbi
Jonathan Sacks, the famous English Rabbi and Writer, expresses it this way:
“There is a difference between optimism and
hope. Optimism is the belief that things
will get better. Hope is the belief
that, together, we can make things better.
It takes no courage to be an optimist, but it takes a great deal of
courage to have hope.”[iii]
That’s
the heart of these High Holy Days. As
Jews, we aren’t just optimistic that the future will get better. We recognize that in order for our world to
become that place of wholeness and peace that we envision, we must act.
Yet, even
with the ability to shape our destiny through teshvuah and tzedakah, through return
to our best selves and giving back to our community, there is still so much
that is completely outside our control.
These are the moments of despair and hardship that only the Holy One or
Mother Nature can foresee. How do we understand these challenges? How do we find hope when so much is in God’s
hands?
One
answer is found in a story told by the late Rabbi Hugo Gryn. Many years before becoming a rabbi, young
Hugo Gryn lived through the Holocaust and was a child of Auschwitz. One year during his time in the Camps, Hanukkah
arrived. His father created a small
menorah and used their margarine rations as the oil to light the wicks. Young Hugo protested to his father that this
was a foolish act. Every ounce of food
was needed in order for them to survive.
How could they waste this precious resource in order to light the
Menorah for Hanukkah?
Rabbi
Gryn never forgot the words his father shared with him that day. “My child, we know that you can live three
days without water. You can live three
weeks without food. But you cannot live
three minutes without hope.”[iv]
In so
many ways, Rabbi Gryn and his father felt a loss of control. They couldn’t stand up to the Nazis, there
was little they could do to protest, and there were few ways to escape. Their opportunities for action were
limited. Yet, there was an option:
Tefila (Prayer). Lighting the Menorah
and reciting the Hanukkah Prayers, provided Rabbi Gryn with the belief that
tomorrow could be a better day, that his dreams and vision for the future,
would someday soon, come true. That’s
the power of prayer, the power of hope!
For each
of us, there are the moments in our lives when we feel vulnerable, fragile. It’s the phone call that begins with “I’m
sorry…,” the e-mail informing us, “The position has been filled,” the doctor’s
report that seems less than optimistic, or the disappointment that once again
the pregnancy test reads negative. These
are the times when all seems lost, all outside our control. Like Rabbi Gryn, we do have control, in the
power of Tefila: in hope, faith, and prayer.
Rabbi
Simon Jacobson teaches that Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the year because
it marks the birth of hope.[v] Yom Kippur is our moment of rebirth, when our
future is inscribed in the Book of Life.
There will be much written in our Book of Life during this New
Year. There will be moments of simcha
and moments of challenge. Moments of
health and moments of illness. Moments
of triumph and moments of defeat. Many
of us find it easier to turn towards Teshuva, acknowledging our past mistakes
and working towards forgiveness, or Tzedakah, defining the present on our terms
and engaging in acts of righteous giving.
Yet, how many of us struggle with Tefila: actively engaging in prayer to
develop a new vision for our future?
Personally,
prayer is the vehicle that brings hope into my life when every other tool has
been exhausted. Prayer helps me to
connect with my community, to articulate my dreams, and to converse privately
with the Holy One. Yes, so much remains outside
my control, but prayer provides me with the sustenance I need to put one foot
in front of the other, to push myself to achieve my dreams.
Almost
four years ago, on a freezing cold January day, Brian and I heard from our
Adoption Agency that we finally matched with a birth family. Less than two weeks later, we welcomed Caleb
into our lives for the first time. And a
few days after that, with the paperwork signed, we arrived home: a family of
three.
Today, on
Yom Kippur, I wait again. I wait for a
second phone call that tells me the good news that my family of three will now become
a family of four. That once again, I
will become a father. Waiting is
not easy, especially with so much outside my control. At this time of year in particular, I try my
best to practice Teshuva and learn from my mistakes over this past year. I pour my energy into Tzedakah, eager to make
our community and world a better place. Even
still, sometimes when there’s a pause in my day, I feel an emptiness and a
feeling of despair creeping in. I don’t
wallow in self-pity.Instead,
I turn towards Tefila.I pray and I hope that tomorrow, my dream's, will come true.
[i] “A
New Meaning for ‘Who By Fire’” – Gershom Gorenberg – “Moment Magazine”
November/December 2008
[ii]
Adapted, Mark Olmsted, “The Courage to Change the Things I Can” pp. 133 – 135
of “This I Believe”
[iii]
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, UJA-Federation of New York “The Big Questions:
Living With Purpose in 5776”
[iv]
Adapted from a retelling by Rabbi David Wolpe, “This is the True Lesson of
Hanukkah” – Time Magazine, December 6, 2015
[v] www.meaningfullife.com/faith-hope-after-september-11/
