Rabbi Ain’s Erev Rosh Hashanah Sermon 5784/2023
Erev Rosh Hashanah 2023: Choosing Life in our Everyday Lives
Rabbi Rachel Ain, Sutton Place Synagogue
A month or so ago, I posed the following question to you in my weekly Friday email-I asked “What are life lessons that you live by and that you might share with others?”-I received a number of responses, here are some of the highlights:
I plan ahead, to be flexible in the moment
Whatever choice you made during a difficult decision was the right one.
Everything counts
The only 2 things you really need are WD-40 and duct tape.
Laugh every day and help someone else to do so, too.
Money will never solve your problems. Happiness is more important.
Your health is your most valuable asset.
It's not all about you.
Taking the high road and being nice to people goes a long way.
Treat others with respect
What a person wanted to do and the effects of their actions are sometimes different
You can do better than you think.
I’m in a funny place in my life-somehow I have reached middle age, whatever that means, a time where I can look forward for myself, recognizing that as I enter my 20th year of the Rabbinate with these High Holidays, I am happily no longer one of the new rabbis and yet hopefully have a lot to give for years to come! I am excited about the future here at SPS as we build on the successes of the past. I am also not a new parent. I appreciate the wisdom that I have gained from experiences, mistakes, and successes along the way. And, while kids are always people in their own right, certainly at this point, as I look at my kids, I know that they aren’t babies anymore. Not even young children. So, one must ask, What is the potential in front of them…what does it mean to become a person in their own right? Can we determine what life looks like as we are living it?
The High Holidays give us an opportunity to stop and process where we are-what happened this past year that we need to reflect on, and what comes next. This is important all of the time, especially after some key moments that might happen in our everyday lives- a wedding, a death, a surgery, a birth, a college drop off, a new job. But this year, I also started to reflect on what happens after someone leaves leadership like the US Presidency, having traveled to the LBJ Library and Truman Library and thinking about the lives that “famous” people had, after they left the post that made them famous. You name it.
The question is, what comes next after the big moment passes:]
How do we move from living life at the highest moments-the crescendo, the standing ovation, to the everyday?
How do we rebound when challenges confront us (sorry, Jets fans), and how do we turn lemons into lemonade?
Why are these the things on my mind? Well, some are obvious. In life I am often privy to and privileged to be a part of weddings, deaths, and surgeries. This year we had our own college drop off and a new job in our family. And, over our travels this year, we learned about US presidents, we saw how people have made new lives in Israel, having lived in the Former Soviet Union, and so much more.
There are many places that we can look to for guidance in how to live life but one of the best things I heard recently was from a congregant here that a rabbi once told him that the motto of Judaism is to “choose life.” I referenced this last week when we read these words at the Torah service on Shabbat, but they have stayed with me. “Choose Life” is an affirmation that in Judaism, we need to do our best to live, but how?
How do we engage in the hard work of living?
I want to share some anecdotes that have gotten me thinking about this-
Sept 1 is the first day of school in Israel. It isn’t connected to Labor Day. So, inevitably, in the world of social media, I saw adorable pictures of people throughout Israel heading off to school. Of all of the pictures I saw, the most powerful was posted by a couple, a generation older than me, who were with their child and grandchild, dropping the grandchild off at Kindergarten. Who was another grandparent doing the same thing? None other than Natan Sharansky. The Jewish world’s most famous refusenik. A man, who spent years not being able to be free, as he was trying to leave the Soviet Union, unable to choose to live the Jewish life he wanted but eventually was released and moved to Israel, where he had a second act as a politician in Israel, a leader of the Jewish Agency, and now, as a grandpa. I love this. As important as all of those moments in his life that impacted the entirety of the Jewish people, the ability for him as a model to us, to show up for family, each day is a way of Choosing life.
The late Jay Shulman, a longtime member of SPS once said, I celebrate getting older b/c the alternative is worse. So how do we celebrate?
First, live with wonder:
Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, the first female reconstructionist rabbi and the first to have a pulpit where she and her husband, also a rabbi, were co-rabbis, wrote this year as she retired:
Transitions are hard, whether they be joyous, like a graduation or a new baby, or sad, like a divorce or a death. Retirement falls somewhere in between. You take a deep breath and finally exhale as you taste a sweet freedom. But there is sorrow in leaving what you have known, what has helped define the person you are. That liminal place between where you were and the unknown place where you are going is amorphous, unstructured.
When you are working, you know what you have to do every day, and what is expected of you. Now, all of sudden, there are no schedules. People keep asking what you will do next.
Here is what I have learned: It is OK not to know what you will do next. It is even good to get lost a bit, to rest awhile in the space between what you knew and what you are yet to discover. I am reminded of the words of Robert Frost: “The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.”
A second message I would suggest is to live with potential:
[In the famous interview that Carl Stern of NBC had with the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, three weeks before Heschel’s death in 1972, Stern asked the famous rabbi: “What message have you for young people?” Rabbi Heschel replied: “Let them remember that there is a meaning beyond absurdity. Let them be sure that every deed counts, that every word has power, and that we all can do our share to redeem the world in spite of all absurdities and all frustrations and all disappointments-And above all, let them remember, to build a life as if it were a work of art.”
This means that we can continue sculpting our lives the way we want; we can paint over the parts that we aren’t quite satisfied with. We can start from scratch. And we need to remind ourselves that no one life will look exactly like someone else’s, so when we find ourselves comparing, we need to remember that we are unique in who we are. As told by Martin Buber, there is a famous story about a rabbi named Zusya who died and went to stand before the judgment seat of God. As he waited for God to appear, he grew nervous thinking about his life and how little he had done. He began to imagine that God was going to ask him, "Why weren't you Moses or why weren't you Solomon, or why weren't you David?" But when God appeared, the rabbi was surprised. God simply asked, "Why weren't you Zusya?"
Can we understand that the potential in our lives is up to us? No matter how young or how old, we have the capacity to look around and choose life.
There was an article several years ago in a syndicated paper that included a list of life lessons by Regina Brett, 90 years old at the time. She was from Cleveland, Ohio and she wrote the following.
My odometer rolled over to 90 in August, so here is the column once more:
Life isn't fair, but it's still good.
When in doubt, just take the next small step.
Life is too short – enjoy it..
Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone.
When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.
It's OK to let your children see you cry.
Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it...
Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.
It's never too late to be happy. But it’s all up to you and no one else.
Burn the candles, use nice sheets, wear fancy lingerie. Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special
Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.💖
No one is in charge of your happiness but you.
Frame every so-called disaster with these words 'In five years, will this matter?'
What other people think of you is none of your business.
Time heals almost everything. Give time time.
However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does..
Believe in miracles.
Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.
All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back.
Envy is a waste of time. Accept what you already have not what you need.
The best is yet to come...
Yield.
Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift."
So when we think about choosing life, make sure to live with an opportunity to keep trying new things:
Martin Buber, taught, “To age is a glorious thing, when you have not unlearned what it means to begin.”
As I watch Jared in his First Year of College, I am so jealous of all that he is about to learn. I wonder, did I take advantage of what was in front of me when I had 4 years of college and then 5 years of Rabbinical school ahead? I think so. But I could have always learned more, and the message is, that just because many of us have college in the rearview mirror doesn’t mean that the learning stops. We should find ways to challenge our minds, bodies, and souls.
With that in mind, Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso said:
Here are some wishes for a new beginning:
May you continue to find reasons to laugh and stories to tell.
May you continue to open books and appreciate original thinking.
May you gather with old friends and still make new ones.
May your family stay close, and your love be forgiving.
May you find comfort in the familiar yet relish the surprise of the unknown.
May you keep wrestling with big ideas and never stop asking questions.
May you continue to dream and welcome the visions of the young.
May you accept what is but never stop working for what ought to be.
May the rhythm of your past always make music in your soul.•
One of my favorite prayers is the Shechechyanu.
Shefa Gold teaches that the Shehechiyanu blessing is said whenever we realize the miracle of the present moment. Traditionally, it is recited when we do something for the first time that year — such as lighting Hanukkah candles, hearing the shofar, or shaking a lulav and etrog — as well as at the start of most Jewish holidays. The blessing honors and expresses the wonder of having arrived. Of having lived.
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יהוה, אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, שֶׁהֶחֱיָֽינוּ וְקִיְּמָנוּ וְהִגִּיעָנוּ לַזְּמָן הַזֶּה
Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of all, who has kept us alive, sustained us, and brought us to this season
We will sing it at the conclusion of the service with tremendous joy and kavanah, but for now, I encourage you to recite it with me, as an affirmation that in this new year, we will do our best, to choose life.
