יום כפורים תש”ע
כל העולם כולו גשר צר מאד, והעיקר – לא לפחד כלל!The whole world is a very narrow bridge – but the main thing is not to be afraid at all!
Many of us love to sing this song. Yet -let us be honest – Ours is a season of fear.
Just recently our local Montclair paper – I refer to the NY Times, of course – observed that the Toronto Film Festival was full of “movies laden with doomsday predictions, conspiracy theories (and facts) grim statistics, alarming charts, dire predictions and shreiking, whimpering and failing men and women.” (9/17/09 – Arts section, Manhola Darhis, “Watching a Nation Fall Apart, Entertainlingly). Whether we turn to cultural reporting in the media or to our political realities, on the national or global level, or when we look to our Jewish concerns, here, abroad, or in Israel, and even if we turn to our mahzor – our prayer book for these Yamim Nora’im – these Fearsome Days – fear is all around us. Small fears and medium fears, and very large fears. What are we afraid of and what are we afraid for?
We are afraid of people and of ideas. And some of them are, indeed, frightening. We are afraid of what is said – and of what is not said; we are afraid of what is – and of what might be; of what is being done – and of what might not be done. We are afraid of God – and we are afraid of those who fear God.
Fear is all around us. And those blessed among us, who are not afflicted with fear, are surrounded by those who are – so that fear is really all around all of us.
What generates fear? What is it? What is its essence? Is it good or bad? How does it manifest itself? How shall we live, surrounded as we are, by fear? Suffused with fear? Shall we embrace it, or avoid it, or transcend it? Can we find help in our tradition so that we may work through these questions?
On Rosh Ha-Shanah we celebrate the birthday of the world, which means that we celebrate the Creation – not of light, which was created on the First Day of Creation – but, rather, the creation of the human being.
And our Torah opens the book of human history with the birth of fear –
ויקרא ה’ א-להים אל האדם, ויאמר לו – איכה?
And God Almighty called out to the human being and said – Where are you?
ויאמר את קולך שמעתי בגן, ואירא, כי עירום אנכי, ואחבא.
And he said – I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid, for I am naked, and I hid.
(Gen. 3:9-10)
For the Torah, history begins with the birth of fear. So it should not be surprising that it envisions the end of human history as an era in which we will no longer know fear. Here are the words of the prophet Micah –
והיה באחרית הימים ….וישבו איש תחת גפנו ותחת תאנתו – ואין מחריד.
And it shall be, at the end of days … people, each one, shall sit under their own vine or fig tree, and there will be no one to cause fear.
(Micah 4:4)
But we have not, as yet, reached that blessed day. And so we continually swing, back and forth, between our fear-filled reality and our hope for a time of fear-less-ness.
A few weeks ago we read Moses’ dire threats to Israel, should they forsake their covenantal obligations with God. A cascade of curses and punishments gushes forth from his lips. But the culmination of all the horror is Moses’ last picture –
והיו חייך תלואים לך מנגד, ופחדת לילה ויומם, ולא תאמין בחייך.
בבקר תאמר מי יתן ערב ובערב תאמר מי יתן בקר
מפחד לבבך אשר תפחד, וממראה עיניך אשר תראה.(דברים, כי תבא, כח:סו-סז)
Your lives will dangle before you, for you will be afraid day and night, and you will not have faith in your own life.
In the morning you will say – If only it were still evening – and in the evening you will say – If only it were still morning –
all from the fear that you will fear in your heart, and from what your eyes let you see.
(Deut. 28:66-67)
The Torah conceives of terror and insecurity as the ultimate evil to be endured by a human being.
How can we overcome fear? How can we defeat it?
Neither power nor success can sweep away fear – Even the powerful can be afraid. The very word for power and success – חָיִּל – is related to the word for fear and trembling – חִיל . The mighty angels on high, as we read in our machzor, are possessed by fear and trembling at this season of fear. No, power cannot protect against fear. What was the cause of our persecution and enslavement in Egypt? – Fear. It was Egypt’s fear of the Israelites. “Perhaps they will become too many. Perhaps they will not remain loyal.” What started as a tremor of fear grew into an avalanche of hatred,, contempt, the debasing of truth and of the human being. That regime of fear created a state mechanism of informing, incarceration and extermination, in an ever expanding and ever more futile effort to overcome its fear of another people.
(Indeed, the concluding verse of the Admonition, following the verses on fear just quoted, is the threat that we will return to Egypt.
In context, this must mean – you will return to the land of fear. [and Pesach is the experience – however fleeting, of defeating fear – the fear before midnight and the release. the opposite of fear is not courage – but freedom.])
That is what fear can do, what it can become. Of course we know that fear can be a natural, life-saving emotion. A blessing, even. We recoil from dangers and threats – and we flee to safety.
To flee to safety – it is such a comforting thought. To protect one’s self. But there is a thin line that separates legitimate self-protection from mean-spirited selfishness. In Hillel’s words –
אם אין אני לי מי לי
Hey, if I don’t look after myself, who will?
וכשאני לעצמי מה אני
While, if I look out only for myself, what have I turned into?
But when fear becomes so profound that it forecloses that sense of openness, the sense that escape is possible, it becomes a curse. Fear can then become paralyzing. We are like a deer caught in the headlights. We cannot respond; we cannot move. That paralysis can freeze us in our places, or it can be a paralysis of endless repetition. Instead of fleeing or hiding, we let the false safety of routine hide the storm clouds from us. Fear produces denial. We deny the outside world. And because we are afraid, we deny a world that is not out to frighten us, but calls out to us in need. We hide, not from danger, but from the outstretched hand, the pleading eye, the broken heart.
Fear tends toward denial. Out of fear we are ready to deny the truth when we are confronted by it. When we hear the truth spoken we cannot abide it. We deny it and we shout out – You lie! We cannot help it, for we are afraid. We are powerless to flee or fight fear itself.
Although, as I said, power cannot defeat fear, fear itself makes us feel powerless. And we do not like feeling that way. I mentioned before “small,” “medium” and “large” fears. But the truth is that fear inclines toward growth – Small fears metastasize and become larger and more frightening, until they become huge fears. So fear grows to have an even more poisonous effect, a more insidious effect, upon us. When we feel that there is nowhere to hide, that we cannot flee, we turn, like a caged animal might, and we attack. Because fear makes us feel powerless, it can make us grasp for power.
One way we can feel power is by lording over others. Or – we can feel more powerful when we turn that emotion of fear – an emotion that so diminishes our own self-regard – into another emotion – into that lying, ugly emotion that nevertheless makes us feel so powerful – we turn fear into angry hatred.
Fear becomes hatred and contempt. We hate what we fear because we feel weak when we are afraid, but we feel powerful when we feel hatred. We want to feel strong and invincible. Hatred and contempt are evil because they are poison for the soul.And because they lead to acts of evil cruelty. But they are also evil because they are based on falsehood – they try to make us forget that we are afraid.
Why do I dwell so graphically and so gruesomely upon the pathology of fear? I do so because I believe that we – as Jews, as Americans and as citizens of the wold – are enmeshed in a supremely important contest over the role of fear in our lives, in our politics, our social policies, in our ethical choices and our visions of spiritual authenticity and fulfillment.
We see, every day, in the national arena, a contest between those who seek ways to improve a broken polity and those who seek to capitalize on fear, no matter how outrageous or unfounded.
We see, every day in the international arena, a contest between those who hope for a global society of freedom and those who have embraced a cult of death as the only escape from their overwhelming fear.
We see, every day in our Jewish world, a people – ourselves – traumatized by tragedy and irreplaceable loss – gripped by fear so tightly that we are often paralyzed in the face of truths that contradict our sense of trauma and victimhood. Jewish fear can be the most subtle. We are afraid to believe that we are not weak and defenseless. We are afraid to believe that our existence is not always imperilled every second. We are afraid to believe that we are powerful enough to act powerfully, and sometimes unwisely, selfishly or wrongly.
But, just as surely as this is the season of Fear, it is aso the season of Repentance. I ask – if we are always the victims, always the ones wronged, if we have nothing ever to repent for, then how can we participate in this season of repentance? What meaning can this season of repentance have for us?
Am I, then, saying that all fears are evil chimera, silly phantasms or, worse, excuses for greed, selfishness, insensitivity and the oppression of others? No. There are real fears, serious fears.
As we open our mahzor we find that fear is a a recurrent theme. But it is hard to discern a clear message about it or a coherent approach to it. We can receive mixed signals. Should we be afraid or should we not?
Our hazzan will chant, as she did on Rosh Ha-Shanah – Hin’ni – here I am –
נרעשת ונפחדת מפחד יושב תהילות ושראל –
overwhelmed with fear, fear of the One Sitting and Listening to the praises of Israel.
Fear.
And, as we have done for over a month, we also recite the opening words of Psalm
ה’ אורי וישעי, ממי אירא?
God is my Light and my Salvation, whom shall I fear?
No fear.
Perhaps one way to reconcile these contradictory impulses is to absorb the teaching of our tradition – if we can come to fear God we will come to fear nothing else. But is that enough? As I mentioned earlier – one of our great fears is of those who profess to fear God. Seemingly afraid of nothing and no one else, they wreak terrible destruction on the world. No, we need to go further. There is a difference between fear – פחד – and reverence – יראה. Fear פחד – is associated in our tradition with Isaac. Isaac was blind. Fear blinds us to others. When we are afraid we are blinded to anyone else. Isaac was bound up. When we are afraid we feel squeezed and attacked. We are under assualt, constricted and trapped. But reverence – יראה – is related to seeing, as we read on Rosh Ha-Shanah, when the reverent Abraham had his eyes opened and his love for his God and for his child affirmed and blessed. Reverence opens vistas – בהר ה’ יראה – standing upon God’s moutain top, we can see all around.
Can our community create a culture of reverence – of fear that leads to caring and love? I am so gratified that we have made small efforts to support those among us struggling with all the issues that arise when one’s livelihood is threatened or demolished. I am gratified that we have joined together to contribute our own baked bread and our own packages of food for the hungry. May these efforts deepen and expand.
If we must fear, let us fear that we have hidden from the Divine voice calling – איכה – where are you? I will give you just a tiny example (-to tell you the truth, I am too afraid to give any big examples at this moment) – I know of the wide-spread custom to absent one’s self from Yizkor if one has not lost any dear ones. I know of the custom but I don’t know of a single compelling reason for it, except for, perhaps, fear of an עין הרע – the evil eye – fear of bad luck. I ask – if we must fear, perhaps we should fear for the person who must stand at Yizkor alone, with no one to stand by him or her? Where are we at that time? Where is our sense of the broader vista beyond our own private selves, a vista that can open up to the entire community, living and dead, and ultimately to the Source of All Life?
To fear or not to fear? We cannot answer that question if we do not do the work necessary to sort out our legitimate fears from our false fears – and moreover, if we do not try to study ourselves to determine when it is we who are feeling afraid and when it is fear itself that is fearing – having coopted our minds and souls, leaving ourselves vulnerable to the venom of fearfulness.
The protection against paralyzing, all encompassing, irrational fear is teshuvah – repentance. The call to repentance is a call founded on the basic belief that each of us is a powerful moral agent– not a mere victim. Repentance assures us that there is always an escape from our fears, that our backs are never so pinned to the wall that we will need to throw away our capacity for thinking, feeling, empathy and good-heartedness in the name of some hard-headed emergency appeal for survival, winner take all.
Our backs are not pinned to the wall. There is more space to maneuver. We are not bound and blind. Where are we? We stand atop God’s holy mountain. We need but look around us. Our world is spacious enough for us to turn around and around – and to re-turn, again.
Yom Kippur 5770 – יום הכפורים תש”ע
After all these thousands of years, this evening still holds a privileged place in our calendar and in our consciousness. What is Kol Nidrei really all about? Why has the Jewish people chosen – in the face of some serious rabbinic opposition – to begin this holiest of days with this recitation?
A popular idea is that Kol Nidrei derives its pathos from its linkage to Crypto-Jews – Iberian Jews who, some 500 years ago, had to practice their Judaism secretly, after they were forced to choose between conversion to Christianity, expulsion or death. But research has shown that the roots of Kol Nidrei reach much further back, perhaps even a 1000 years earlier than that, to the earliest evidences of Jewish community in Babylonia. This indicates to me that Kol Nidrei arose from concerns that are not so specifically linked to a particular historical moment. There is something more fundamental at stake here.
What is the issue that Kol Nidrei addresses, and what makes it so apt a choice for the beginning of this sacred day of atonement?
Kol Nidrei is a formulaic recitation of cancellation of vows. It leads directly to our declaration and appeal that God forgive the whole House of Israel – recited, just as Kol Nidrei is recited, 3 times.
ויאמר ה’ סלחתי כדבריך.
And the Eternal said: I have forgiven, as you have said.
(Num. 14:20)
The logic is elusive: We know that we make promises and that we break them. We know this is bad. So we want to cancel the promises made – no promises made, no promises broken. Hence no sins. But, hence, no sins to forgive. So why, then, ask for forgiveness?
And why pick this sin of all our many, many sins, to start off with? We have long lists of sins that we loudly proclaim throughout the day. Why is this the one we focus on initially?
Let us start from the beginning, from the ראשית – which has the word ראש – as in ראש השנה – in it.
Yom Kippur follows upon Rosh Ha-Shanah, the birthday of the world, the birthday of humanity. We read:
וייצר ה’ א-להים את האדם עפר מן האדמה, ויפח באפיו נשמת חיים, ויהי האדם לנפש חיה.
And God Almighty made the human being of dust from the earth; and God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the human being became a living soul.
(Gen. 2:7)
A living soul – נפש חיה – This term is used in the Creation story to describe all living, mobile beings – birds and fish and insects and animals. But there is one small difference in the use of the term as applied to them and as applied to us. All creatures, except the human being, are automatically, from their very first instance of creation, נפש חיה. Only the human being becomes a נפש חיה – for the verse states:
ויהי האדם לנפש חיה –
and the human being became a living soul..
How do we become a living soul? The Targum – the ancient rabbinic interpretive translation of the Torah explains – by translating this last phrase to say: And the living breath becaime in the human being a spirit who speaks – לרוח ממללא.
According to this view, we become living souls as we learn how to talk. Of course, the acquisition of speech is appreciated as a fundamental process with regard to cognitive development.
Sifre 31
So one finds that when Jacob was to die he called unto his sons, and admonished each one privately, and then called them all together as one. He said to them: “Perhaps there is among you one who, in his heart, is conflicted regarding the One Who spoke so that the world came into being? But his sons answered him, ‘Hear O Israel – just as there is no conflict in thy heart, so is there no conflict in our heart, as it says: ‘the Lord our God the Lord is One: only One.’ Regarding this it says: “And Israel bowed on the head of the bed.” (Gen 47;31) Did he bow on account of the head of the bed? Rather he gave thanks and praise that no dross had issued from him. And some say: “And Israel bowed on the head of the bed.” means – because Reuven had repented. Another word -he said, ‘Blessed be the name of His glorious kingdom for ever and ever.’ The Holy Blessed One said to Jacob, “You have indeed desired for your whole life that your children should, when they rise early and when they retire for the evening, recite the Sh’ma.”
Pesahim 56a
Said the Rabbis, How shall we act? Shall we recite it, — but our Teacher Moses did not say it. Shall we not say it — but Jacob said it! [Hence] they enacted that it should be recited quietly.
Yoma 2;6
Mishnah. He then came to the scapegoat and laid his two hands upon it and he made confession. And thus would he say: I beseech thee, O Lord, Thy people the House of Israel have failed, committed iniquity and transgressed before Thee. I beseech thee, O Lord, atone the failures, the iniquities and the transgressions which thy people, the House of Israel, have failed, committed and transgressed before Thee, as it is written in the Torah of Moses, Thy servant, to say: For on this day shall atonement be made for you, to cleanse you; from all your sins shall ye be clean before the Lord. And when the priests and the people standing in the Temple court heard the fully-pronounced Name come forth from the mouth of the High Priest, they bent their knees, bowed down, fell on their faces and called out: Blessed be the Name of his Glorious Kingdom for ever and ever.
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