One of the traditional names for this High Holy Day season is “The Days of Awe” – Yamim ha- Nora’im. In the old days one could find a prayer book that collected all the prayers for Rosh Ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur and it would be called – Mahzor la-Yamim ha- Nora’im – The Prayer Cycle for the Days of Awe.
But that traditional phrase has fallen out of fashion. Notice, for instance that our own Mahzor Lev Hadash does not employ that phrase on its cover. When I lived in Israel and I mentioned that the Yamim ha-Nora’im were approaching people looked at me askance, or quizzically. What was I worried about?
You see, while the word “nora” in Biblical and traditional religious parlance refers to our awe and reverence for God – Who is called “Nora” – awesome, in modern Hebrew this word nora does not mean “awesome” but, rather, “awful.” So my Israeli acquaintances thought I was saying that awful days were coming, and they were concerned or amused.
But, that was then and now is now. Times have changed and, I am sorry to say, there is no longer any reason for a misunderstanding – we really do live in a time of yamim nora’im – terrible, awful days. These are days of war, plague, environmental degradation, fundamentalist oppression in all forms – mild to horrific, and social polarization and injustice. What is the mahzor – the right set of prayers, the right set of responses – for these terrible days, these yamim nora’im?
The problem is a paradoxical one for us, because, for the most part, the terrible days I refer to seem to be so far away from us, personally, here in Montclair, here at Shomrei. Does any of the terrible stuff happening in the world directly affect us? Here and there someone we care for, someone in our family, may be called up to be stationed overseas to support our combat efforts. But, by and large, we are not subject to famine, devastation or wholesale murder.
What is a realistic and honest way for us to respond to the awful, terrible realities we know are out there? I struggle with this question, and I do not pretend that I have it all figured out. But I want to share with you some fragments of my own response.
First of all I want to share with you a short portrait of a person. I take this report from a story in the New York Times that appeared in August. Let’s listen to this person’s story and then ponder what it might be saying to us:
Her name is Josephine Finda Sellu. Ms. Sellu is the deputy nurse matron at the government hospital in Kenema, Sierra Leone. She has watched the raging Ebola epidemic strike down countless men, women and children. For every person she nurses back to health there are scores who die painful, ugly deaths. Under her charge 15 nurses have died from contracting the disease while ministering to its victims.
Ebola has struck fear into the hearts of the people of Western Africa. The latest reports say that the disease is spreading at the rate of five new cases an hour. Those infected are shunned by their own families. Recently a group of medical and aid workers who tried to visit a village in order to help them was massacred by the locals, out of fear that they were carriers of the disease. Out of supreme panic these people do not even want to learn how to fight for the lives of their loved ones. For so many, fear has vanquished all other human emotions, all values disappear when they fear that their own survival is at stake.
But Josephine Finda Sellu is not one of those. She walks into the chamber of death every day. “There is a need for me to be around,” said Ms. Sellu, 42, who oversees the Ebola nurses. “I am a senior. All the junior nurses look up to me.” If she left, she said, “the whole thing would collapse.” So she keeps on, against the wishes of her own family.
Ms. Sellu spoke about the nurses she had lost to Ebola. Usually so keen on projecting strength to her subordinates, she began to cry.
“It has been a nightmare for me,” she said, her features contorting. “Since the whole thing started, I have cried a lot.” She added: “It came to a time when I was thinking of quitting this job. It was too much for me.”
But the lesson she drew appeared inevitable to her. “You have no options. You have to go and save others,” Ms. Sellu said. “You are seeing your colleagues dying, and you still go and work.”
“There are times when I say, ‘Oh my God, I should have chosen secretarial,’ ” Ms. Sellu said. But her job as a healer, she said, “is the calling of God.”
What does Josephine Finda Sellu’s story mean for us?
We are safe and far away from such extreme challenges. In a manner of speaking, it is we who have “chosen secretarial.” We enjoy singing “and who shall I say is calling?” rather than having to decide to respond to “the calling of God.”
What does her example have to do with us?
The first thought I have is simply that we must pay attention to this person’s story. Yes, we should be grateful that we are spared such terror and pain and such an extreme challenge to our moral fiber. But we must not comfort ourselves in feeling that we are safely distanced from her experience. We must allow it to bridge the great distance we
normally feel between ourselves and some foreign individual struggling in a miserable third-world country. I say this not because the first case of Ebola has just arrived on our shores. I believe that the fundamental truth that Josephine Finda Sellu has responded to is “not up in Heaven, or across the sea… It is not far away from us at all.” (based on Deut. 30:11-14) It is a truth that we must respond to.
These 10 days that we are concluding today are called the Ten Days of teshuvah. Teshuvah means repentance, return and response. A teshuvah is an answer to a question, an answer to a call.
The great Dr. Viktor Frankl wrote about his experiences in the concentration camps and what lessons he drew from living in them, day to day. This is the year of letting go, and he speaks of what we need to let go of. These are the Ten Days of Response, and he speaks of our responsibility. He writes:
“What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves, and furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men (in the concentration camp), that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly.
Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual…” [Man’s Search for Meaning, p. 98]
“Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct.” “Not in talk.” The question of “talking” has occupied me for some time. What to say? How much to say? How to say it? When? Where? When to be silent? These are questions I have spoken about it and written about it, and I have chosen to speak or not to speak at various times and contexts based on my struggle with this issue.
Yom Kippur begins with Kol Nidrei, a meditation on our problem with speech. It is also the one day a year in which we speak out loud the line that has been inserted into the recitation of the Sh’ma. The first line is “Sh’ma Yisra’el, H’ Elokeinu, H’ Ehad.” This verse is always said out loud. But the next line is never said out loud except for today. It is “Barukh shem k’vod malkhuto l‘olam va`ed.” That line is not found in the Torah, which is the source of the entire text of the Sh’ma – all three paragraphs. Except for this line. This line is an addition. It does not appear anywhere in the Torah. Where did it come from and why is it here?
According to the rabbinic legend, the first verse of the Sh’ma was originally spoken by Jacob’s sons. They spoke to him on his death bed. God had given Jacob an extra name, Israel. So Jacob’s children addressed their father by that name as he lay dying. They said – Listen, Israel, we accept upon ourselves and into the future, beyond your life, that the Eternal is our Almighty God, the Eternal is One.” And Jacob’s dying words were in response to that affirmation. He said, “Barukh shem … The name of God’s Glorious Presence will
overflow forever and ever.” Those words are words of personal response. We recite them silently all year long. But on Yom Kippur we are called upon to speak out our personal response out loud, in full voice. During these terrible days, we are called to respond.
I want to share with you one other fragment of a response that we can consider. This one is closer to home. The relationship between talk and conduct is a matter of great contention with regard to Israel and the Middle East.
Unfortunately, we have allowed a culture of wasteful and even destructive conversation to overtake our attention. Instead of acting constructively we allow ourselves and others to vent, posture, and attack others, while abandoning any pretense of actually listening to what others may say if there is even a hint that they may say something we do not like. And we pride ourselves in aggressive speech at the dinner table while we do nothing to advance the wellbeing of Israel and all human beings who suffer in this conflict.
And while we waste our time in useless and evil speech, the main players in the region, aside from adding to this disease of broken discourse, engage in actions that range from the stupid, to the cynical, to the insensitive, and to the violent.
So it is very important that this coming Monday night we have the opportunity to meet a special individual who will be visiting Montclair. I urge you to go meet Ali Abu Awwad.
Mr. Abu Awwad is a Palestinian activist. During the second intifada in 2003 he was shot by an Israeli settler and arrested, and he lost his older brother. After much inner struggle, he has chosen to promote dialogue and trust over revenge and hatred. He is now a courageous voice for Palestinian non-violent protest. He made this transformation after he met others at the Bereaved Families Forum, an organization that brings together people from both sides who have lost loved ones in the conflict. Shomrei screened a documentary that this group produced last year, for our S’lichot program. It was moving and challenging to watch and listen to. How much more so is it a challenge to be a direct participant in this effort. Yet Ali Abu Awwad made a choice and he began to learn how to channel his pain and anger not only into nonviolent resistance, but also into reaching over the chasm
that divides between Palestinians and Israelis.
Awwad is a founder of a new group “Roots/Judur/Shorashim: the Palestinian Israeli initiative for Understanding, Nonviolence, and Reconciliation,” based in the West Bank, that promotes dialog and trust between Israelis and Palestinians as the way to peace.
This meeting is co-sponsored by Bnai Keshet, Shomrei Emunah, Ner Tamid and Jewish Federation of MetroWest. His trip is facilitated by the organization “Encounter” which seeks to foster respectful conversations about the Israel/Palestinian issue.
This meeting will challenge us to repair our culture of discussion. We need to learn that to respond is not to “talk back.” We need to learn that “talking at” is not the same as “talking with.” And, even more than that, we need to learn when to stop talking and when
to listen. Above all else, I think, this meeting will call us to listen. We need to enter this meeting fully accepting that we may not agree with all that we will hear. But that is not the question.
Rather, if we really listen, we will hear a call. Like Josephine Finda Sellu and like Ali Abu Awwad, we , too will be able to hear a call. Who shall I say is calling? Answer that any way you wish. But, truthfully, that, too, is not the question.
If we listen we will hear a voice calling out for us to respond. And we will be held responsible – we will need to utter our response – our teshuvah – perhaps silently, at first, but, eventually, out loud.
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