Kol Nidre Sermon, 5775

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5775 – The Year of Letting Go – Kol Nidrei Rabbi David Greenstein

The South Sea island of Borneo is a natural treasure. Its rain forest, one of the oldest in the world, is the home of myriads of different kinds of living creatures. Interest in these species has led to developing creative ways to capture them, so that they can be studied or shipped to zoos in many countries for our edification. And, of course this must be done without damaging them. For instance, there is a market for Borneo monkeys. But how do you catch these agile and clever critters?

This is how: The trap is a simple one – a large coconut. A small hole is opened in the coconut, just big enough for the monkey to squeeze its hand into. The coconut is hollowed out and goodies – bananas or peanuts – are inserted. The coconut is then fastened to a tree or anchor. When the monkey comes by and discovers the delicious treat inside the coconut, it slips its hand inside and grasps the food.

But its hand cannot come back out through the hole as long as it maintains its grip on the food. No matter how hard or how long it tries, the monkey cannot get free of the coconut. Stubborn, bewildered and exhausted, it cannot move forward – because it simply will not let go.

http://owen.curezone.com/prose/openyourhandstory.html

This year is “the year of letting go.” Of course every year is a year of letting go. As the Kol Nidrei declaims – “kulhon y’hon sharan, sh’viqin, sh’vitin … all our vows shall be released, relinquished, laid to rest.”

But this year it is especially so. This year really is “the year of letting go.”

How so? Well, we need to back up first and remind ourselves that the Jewish people gave the world the gift of the seven-day week – with six days of work culminating in a seventh day of rest – the Shabbat. Now, there is nothing natural about dividing time into seven-day bundles. This division reflects no natural cycle. But the Torah taught us a new concept – that one God created nature and rules over nature’s cycles. God’s cycle overrides any of nature’s cycles. This is one of the core messages of Shabbat.

Similarly, just as we group days into bunches of seven, we bundle up years into bundles of seven. For six years we work and on the seventh year we are to observe a Year of Shabbat. The Torah calls this year a “Shabbat for God.” And it also calls it a Year of Sh’mittah – a Year of Letting Go. This year that has just begun – 5775 – is a sh’mittah year, a “letting go” year. This is a unique and original gift that the Jewish people have offered the world. I believe that it is also a gift that we need to accept for ourselves. What can it mean for us today?

The Torah formulated Sh’mittah for ancient Israel in mostly agricultural terms. Here is one place where the Torah explains the concept:

Lev. 25 –

[…]‘When you enter the land I am giving you, the land must observe a Sabbath rest to the LORD. 3 For six years sow your fields, and for six years prune your vineyards and gather their crops. 4 But in the seventh year the land is to have a year of Sabbath rest, a Sabbath to the LORD. Do not sow your fields or prune your vineyards.5 Do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the grapes of your untended vines. The land is to have a year of rest.
[…]
23 […] because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers. […]

The messages that come forth from this and other texts in the Torah speak to our relationship to the land – specifically the Land of Israel, but also to nature as a whole, including the wild animals with whom we share this planet, and to other human beings, most especially those who are poor. The Torah envisions a year-long experiment in openness – open spaces and open spirits. It dreams of a harmonious return to the paradise we once knew in the Garden of Eden.

But in order to return to the Garden, we must be willing to let go. What are we called upon to let go of? We are told t let go of our belief that we are the owners of the land. God tells us that we do not really own the earth. “The land is mine,” says God, not yours.

This message is paradoxically – and pointedly – applied specifically to the very land that God says is being given as an inheritance to the people of Israel. This text plainly starts out with the words: “[…]‘When you enter the land I am giving you.” And, yet, God, in practically the same breath, tells us that the land is not ours to do with as we wish. We are not the owners of the land. As far as God is concerned, we “reside in [God’s] land as foreigners and strangers.”

This point was not only pertinent in ancient times, when Israel was commanded to “take possession” of the Promised Land. Today, as well, during this era of violent contention over ownership of this tiny piece of land, in the middle of the vast expanse of geography known as the Middle East, the same Torah that many of us appeal to as our deed of title to the land also tells us that we do not hold title to it at all. No human being does.

So, perhaps the Torah’s limitation of the laws of the Sabbatical Year to the land of Israel should not to be taken as a limitation at all. Perhaps the message is meant to be one of emphasis – If God’s command to let go applies in this Promised Land, where our ownership of the land seems to be guaranteed by God, then how much more so should the message be heeded everywhere else.

Here, in the great United States, don’t we proudly proclaim, “This land is your land; this land is my land”! This classic hymn to the land of America is meant to be a celebration of its bountiful natural resources as it also praises its burgeoning social vitality borne of pure freedom.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
A voice was chanting, as the fog was lifting,
This land was made for you and me.

What the concept of Sh’mittah tries to teach us that “this land was made for you and me” but it is not “my land” and it’s not “your land.” The land was made for us so that we would sojourn upon it.

But, if it is not our land, what are we supposed to be doing with it? The Torah explains why the first humans were placed in the Garden of Eden: We are commanded “l`ovdah u-l’shomrah – to work it and to preserve it.”

“To work it and to preserve it” – By all means, we must work the land, shape it, extract from it nourishment and resources, and enjoy it.

But we must also preserve it. The Preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes – Kohelet – says: “Look at the work of the Almighty; for who is able to fix anything once it has been ruined?” (Eccles. 7:13) And the midrash explains: “When God created the first human beings, God led them around the Garden of Eden and said: ‘Look at My works! Look at them and see how beautiful and excellent they are! I created them all for you. See to it that you do not ruin and destroy My world; for if you do, there will be no one else to repair it.” (Eccles. Rabbah 7:13:1)

How many living beings have we driven to extinction? How many vistas have we eradicated forever? How many natural sources of energy have we squandered, after first destroying the landscape in order to grab them? How many wells, streams, ponds and seas have we poisoned?

We cannot go on like this. But, in order to find a new path forward we must learn to let go. We must learn what to let go of, when to let go and how to let go.

What shall we let go of? It seems to me that there is one really gigantic thing we must let go of. It is the deadly, and self-indulgent conviction that the small, individual things we try to change cannot make a difference. This is the voice of the snake in the Garden.

The voice of the snake in the Garden is the voice of cynicism. It is the voice that tells us to constantly reach and grab hold, when we really should be letting go. It is the voice that tries to get us to believe that the other voice – the one that commands us “to leave it be” – does not really care for our wellbeing, but is actually motivated by supreme self-interest. It insists that the call to self-limitation cannot possibly spring out of generosity, but is a subterfuge, a trick, a fake. And that accusation – against others – frees each of us to indulge in our own sense of self-interest.

The voice of cynicism is deadly because it leads us to make deadly choices. It is deadly because it prevents us from embracing a larger concept of life, one that transcends ourselves. The voice of cynicism denigrates the self in the name of shielding the self. It treats the self with patronizing indulgence rather than with respect and faith.

The alternative is to let go of self-indulgent cynicism and allow ourselves to believe in ourselves as the marvelous beings who are the subjects and heroes of the prayers of these Days of Awe – so tiny and seemingly insignificant in the vast stretches of the cosmos and in the byzantine machinations of civilization, and yet so central and needed in the repair and redemption of this desperate world.

The Borneo monkey will not let go. It believes that if it lets go of the banana that it will never get another banana again. And it wants its banana now. Or it believes that if it lets go some other monkey – God forbid! – will get the banana, instead. Or – it believes that it has a right to the banana, so that letting go of it would be a betrayal of its legitimate rights. The Borneo monkey has many good reasons not to let go. And those reasons entrap that monkey just as surely as the coconut does.

Whatever else we relinquish in this sh’mittah year, we must let go of our cynicism. If these Days of Awe are founded on anything, they are founded on a profound faith in the power of each person to make a change, a difference.

In this year of letting go let us resolve to respect ourselves enough to believe in the tremendous power of our own humility. Then we would be able to let go of our cynicism. And then we will be able to learn what else to let go of, and when and how.

learn what else to let go of, and when and how.

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