Shanah Tovah!
When we wish each other “Shanah Tovah! – A Good Year!” we are looking forward into the future. But, of course, it is pretty impossible to look into the future. I am reminded of a very old joke. So, without having to travel all the way to Broadway – “Welcome to the latest episode of A Not That Old Man Telling a Really Old Joke”:
One night Irving is coming home from work. It’s late and it’s Rosh Chodesh, the New Moon, which is as good as no moon at all, just like on Rosh Ha-Shanah. So it’s very dark out. At the corner he sees his friend Seymour crawling on all fours in the gutter, under the street lamp.
“Seymour! Are you all right? What are you doing in the street?” “Ah, Irving,” sighs Seymour, “I can’t find my keys.”
Irving surveys the scene and says: “I don’t see any keys. Where did
you drop them?”
Seymour: “Oh, about a block away.”
Irving: “Then why are you looking over here?”
Seymour: “Because it is too dark over there. You can’t see a thing.
Here, at least, I can search with some light.”
We can’t see the future, but Rosh Ha-Shanah is like a street lamp that gives us one more chance to look around. We can at least look back at the past. But, of course, this is also not so simple. The past is gone. Under the Rosh Ha-Shanah lights we will not see what’s lost of the past. But we can at least contemplate the past under the glow of the lamp. We can use the searchlight of Rosh Ha-Shanah to illuminate our memories.
And, sometimes, while we think we are looking for one thing, we may be surprised to find something else. You can never tell what you will find under the lamp’s glow. One memory may stay hidden in the dark, while another, that you thought was lost far off, will reappear, glimmering under the light. Thus, we sometimes recall a meaningful experience that we had, not only in the last year, but even further back.
Today I would like to share with you a recollection of mine from long, long ago. I was a student at a Modern Orthodox Jewish day school. Though my father was a dynamic rabbi who had sought meaning in non-Orthodox Judaism, my parents chose to send me to Yeshivah from Kindergarten on. I thrived in that environment. I loved the entire experience – the studies, the friends, the rhythms of Jewish life. I endeared myself to the teachers because I was such an eager student.
It was some time in middle school, perhaps 6th grade or, maybe, seventh, that our teacher gave us an assignment to write a composition. The essay had to be written in Hebrew. The subject was: “A Person I Greatly Admire.” We were charged with portraying this person and explaining why we thought he or she was a real hero.
I was thrown into a crisis. I took these assignments very seriously. But it was not the Hebrew language requirement that challenged me. I was tormented by a conflict. Who was the personal hero I should pick?
I was torn between two choices. I could write about the legendary Rabbi Aqiva. I had read and heard so many stories about him. He had transformed himself from being a poor, illiterate shepherd to become perhaps the greatest rabbi who has ever lived. Or died. For, as we will chant on Yom Kippur, he died, almost 2000 years ago, a martyr for the sake of the Torah, for the sake of keeping Jewish tradition alive in the hearts and souls of the Jewish people. For you and me.
So I could write a rousing report about why I admired Rabbi Aqiva so much.
But…
But I also happened to have another hero. Actually, he wasn’t exactly my hero. He was my idol. He was not a rabbi. He knew nothing about the Torah. In fact, he wasn’t very literate at all.
But – he could run like the wind! And he was so strong that he had hit the longest homeruns any human being ever hit – in history! His name was Mickey Mantle.
Which should it be? Rabbi Aqiva or “The Mick”?
I knew that choosing Rabbi Aqiva would be a correct choice. I think I sensed that it would also be a safe choice. But – something would not let me go in that direction. The problem, as I thought about it, was that I had never actually seen Rabbi Aqiva. No matter how much I had learned about him, he still remained, in some fundamental way, lost in the dark. Lost to me. Not really my hero.
I felt that it was important that I describe someone whom I had actually seen and experienced (- although I had only seen Mantle on TV or listened to his games on the radio). Those sights and sounds sent me into fits of joy or despair, awe or frustration. My feelings were happening in real time along with Mickey’s exploits. That seemed very real to me. So I felt it would be more honest to choose him.
I started writing about Mickey Mantle in Hebrew. I wrote about his speed and grace and power. And then I got to the main point: that he accomplished all this while being injured and in pain. How much faster he might have run! How many more home runs he might be hitting! He was not just a hero. He was a middle-schooler’s version of a tragic hero. I remember that I had to look up the Hebrew word for “bandages” in the dictionary so that I could describe how he played even though he was all taped up. I worked hard on the paper and handed it in with peace-of-mind.
Now, our yeshivah day-school had a weekly program in honor of Shabbat. Every Friday afternoon we would all gather in the lunchroom and the Principal would talk to us, offering a little sermon, or teaching, for the week. The Principal was a man in his thirties, a caring man who was building this yeshivah from the ground up. I liked him and looked up to him.
That Friday we assembled. The program began as always. And then I began to hear the Principal speak with agitation and strained emotion: “How can it be that one of our wonderful students, when asked to offer a portrait of his hero, can choose to write an entire composition about a ballplayer?! Has he never heard of the Torah greats of our time? Of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein? Of Rabbi Aharon Kotler?” He then went on to lament that the yeshivah had failed its students. We had not been exposed to contemporary Jewish figures of stature. He resolved that we would take a school trip to the Lakewood Yeshivah, to see the “Major Leagues of Torah learning,” so to speak. And, some months later, we did.
The afternoon of that assembly I was assaulted with a complex of emotions – embarrassment, confusion, sorrow, resolve and interest. It very much pained me to be the focus of this outrage and disappointment. I had never imagined that my essay had so much significance such that it would become an issue for the entire school. And I felt ashamed to have failed so badly.
Nevertheless, with all my sorrow and humiliation, I was also conscious of possessing a different awareness that I could not deny. Despite the rabbi’s alternating expressions of outrage and sadness, I knew that I was ultimately right. I knew that I had made the only honest choice possible for me at the time. I knew that the rabbi had failed to appreciate the good qualities and values that I had celebrated in my essay. I knew that I was a young boy, but that I was right. And I knew that my rabbi, whom I trusted and admired, was wrong. That afternoon I learned that such a thing was possible.
But I was also intrigued by the rabbi’s complaint. He did not complain that I had not chosen Rabbi Aqiva, who lived in the dark past, millennia ago. He mentioned rabbis who were alive today, who he claimed were giants of the spirit. He claimed that, while Mickey Mantle was beating out a surprise drag bunt single down the first-base line, these sages were accomplishing great things for us and for the world – creating institutions of Jewish learning, lighting up the Torah as never before, saving the lives and binding the wounds of a Jewish community fresh from the crematoria. What was the Hebrew word for “bandages”, again?
And I, I had to admit, I had never heard of them.
Some 50 Rosh Ha-Shanah’s have passed by since then. A lot has changed. I have learned a lot since then, about Mickey Mantle and about Rabbi Aqiva and about all those who followed in their footsteps.
Of Rabbi Aqiva I learned that his wife had defied her wealthy and powerful father to marry him because she loved him deeply and saw something extraordinary deep inside him. They married when he was forty and did not know an alef from a bet. But, with her help, he then turned his life around, and went to learn the letters of the Torah side-by-side with their son.
Of Mickey Mantle I learned that he married his wife because he could not bring himself to defy his father’s orders. I learned that he was convinced that he would die by the time he was forty, as other males in his family had. So he drank and caroused as much as he could, measuring the value of living in terms of physical pleasures and thrills. Because they were what was most valuable, he didn’t care what they cost. So he paid the price, undermining his amazing athletic powers, shortening his career, and all but destroying his wife and the lives of his four sons.
Rabbi Aqiva was put to death at the legendary age of 120, with a smile and the words of the Sh’ma on his lips. Mickey Mantle bitterly surprised himself and lived to 64 – enough time past 40 to learn to bemoan how he had betrayed his body, his soul and his family. To his great credit, he died a ba`al teshuvah – a true penitent. As he lay dying, he pleaded with the world not to see him as a role-model, but to learn from his mistakes. He tried his best to reconcile with his wife and family.
So is this simply a sharp contrast between opposites, a comparison of light and dark? So, does the final score show that Rabbi Aqiva finally beats out The Mick as my hero?
Not quite. I will always love those memories of The Mick. His swing, even when he missed, was a thing of awesome beauty. His running took your breath away. His grin was the epitome of innocence. And he taught me about imperfection.
But, I have learned that his life and the values surrounding that life are not the keys to a better understanding or practice of living. To seek them there is as useless as looking for Seymour’s keys under the lamppost.
For us the keys are hidden in the dark. We cannot move the lamppost. But we can bring a candle or, to use the double meaning of the British word, a torch, and move toward where the keys really are. Shomrei offers us candles, torches and matches.
As we recite during the Shofar service –
How fortunate are the people who know the sound of the
shofar;
Eternal One, may they walk in the Light of Your shining Face.