5765 High Holidays: Yom Kippur

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Yom Kippur 5765-2004 - Zochreinu L'chayim: May We be Remembered for Life
by Rabbi Yael B. Ridberg

There are moments you remember all of your life. Last Yom Kippur was one of those moments for me. Instead of being here with all of you, I was at St. Vincent’s Comprehensive Cancer Center to sit for 5 hours of chemotherapy.

To say it was surreal is an understatement.

If Rosh Hashanah is all about birth – the day we celebrate the birthday of the world, then Yom Kippur is all about death. We rehearse for our death by wearing a kittle/shroud and by abstaining from life affirming activities like eating and sexuality. But when we emerge from Neilah, we are to rejoice at having lived through another year, satisfied that our prayers and teshuvah have been heartfelt, and ready for the opportunities for change that lie ahead.

Our liturgy on these days echo with the uncertainty of life. The words of these days are meant to mirror our lives. They teach us that life is fragile, that we can be here today and gone tomorrow. They teach that our lives are filled with many opportunities for blessing and praise, but they are also filled with opportunities for questioning and fear.

Mi yichye u’mi yamut – who will live and who will die -- we read in the Unetaneh Tokef, and last year for the first time, I asked those questions with myself in mind.

Humanity in general dreads death. People don’t want to think about it, and we certainly don’t want to talk about it. But Jewish tradition is very clear – we will all die sometime, even if we try to evade it the best we can. The Talmud makes a mysterious claim that only Yom Kippur and death atone. We say the vidui – the confession – on both occasions, but really, acknowledging our faults, making amends, and righting our lives shouldn’t wait until our death, when it would not be a conscious, decisive step towards atonement.

There is no doubt that my life is significantly different than it was a year ago. Not just because of the diagnosis, but because of how I look at my life and some shifts in priorities I have made. I have not made changes because I literally believe they will protect me from a recurrence, but in the absence of certainty, these changes enrich my life and remind me of what’s really important.

In the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Rosh Hashanah there is a little teaching that can help us see the shifts we need to make in our life before we are confronted by the possibility of our own death.

Rabbi Yitzchak said: Four things cause the unfavorable decree against a person to be torn up. These are: Tzedakah: charity/righteous action; Tza’akah: crying out; Shinui shem: changing your name; Shinui ma’aseh changing your actions.

They echo, of course, the response following unetaneh tokef, that teshuva, tefillah, tzedakah—Returning, prayer, and righteousness will avert the severity of the decree. This liturgy invites us to put our life in perspective. it invites us to reorder our priorities. But the Talmudic sugya – passage – is different. It speaks of the real possibility of changing one’s life, if the kavannah, the intention is heartfelt. My colleague and friend Rabbi Richard Hirsh quipped that these 4 options could be described as: buying your way out, crying your way out, lying your way out, and trying your way out. Kidding aside, I prefer to see them as giving of yourself, expressing yourself, finding yourself, and renewing yourself.

Today, before the service of Yizkor when we remember our loved ones, I want to look at these four things as a way for us to contemplate how our lives will be looked at by the future generations when they rise to remember us.

Tzedakah – giving of yourself I don’t really have to tell this group about the value of tzedakah. But I want to extrapolate from the plain meaning of the word – justice – to imagine something else. As you sit here, cast your memory over the course of your entire life and bring to mind two acts of kindness, righteousness, “mitzvoth” if you will. They need not be grandiose. Let whatever wants to arise show itself. In picturing these moments when you gave of yourself, become aware of how they affect your consciousness, how they might transform your feelings and state of mind.

Now that you’ve brought them to mind, look carefully at the quality of these situations. My guess is that they are remarkably simple. Telling a loved one you love them before they died; flying across the country to be with a friend; cooking a meal for a family in need.

Now there may be some of you who cannot think of something like this on demand, or what comes to your mind you immediately reject because it seems superficial or small, or imperfect. This is not an indication that you haven’t given of yourself ever – I think it’s a reflection of how hard we are on ourselves. In the stress and complexity of our lives we may forget our deepest intentions. When we give of ourselves without ulterior motives, without hesitation our lives can be enriched. And the Talmud quotes from Proverbs that tzedakah can rescue from death – we can understand that giving of ourselves can save us from isolation and a closed heart.

Tza’akah - Expressing Yourself: Growing up the child of a psychologist and a Jewish educator, I was taught that sharing feelings and ideas are important to spiritual/emotional well being. When I was young I had no trouble expressing pain, sadness, anger – they would empty out of me like an overflowing stream. But as I have gotten older – and I am sure many of you can relate to this – I am more protective of my feelings, I hold it in more, I imagine they’ll go away, or I don’t give them their due.

As Americans in the 21st century, we pride ourselves on our ability to juggle our busy lives, work long hours and produce and achieve as much as we can. When we are challenged some of us pretend that nothing has changed. I will share with you that the last year, one of the hardest things for me to admit to myself was that cancer had actually affected my life. I didn’t want to give it any “credit” if you will, no more “air time” than it was worth. And even now sometimes I say, Oh, it was just a bad dream – like it didn’t happen. But it did, and there were many moments that filled me with sadness and even rage.

Expressing ourselves around issues, experiences and challenges is part of creating a full life. Thank goodness we have emotions! Otherwise the world would be a very grey place.

Cast your memory over the course of your life and bring to mind two experiences when expressing what you truly felt and asking for what you need made all the difference.

And when the Talmud quotes the Psalms where it is written: Then they cried out to God in their distress and God would take them out of their straits, let us imagine that when we express our needs to those we love and who care for and about us, we can move from darkness to light.

Shinui ha-shem – finding ourselves. One of the most profound benefits for me of my yoga practice is the time spent with myself literally in my body. So many of us are completely disconnected from our physical selves, it seems we are only head and sometimes heart. But when the mind –body connection is truly alive I believe we are better able to understand ourselves and our limitations.

At the beginning of class, the teacher often invites us to dedicate our practice to something or someone. Over the last year my practice has been dedicated on many occasion to finding myself amidst my new reality. Towards the conclusion of the class the teacher will remind us to remember our dedication and take it with us in the rest of our day. This is a powerful exercise because it forces me not to compartmentalize my life further. It is asking me to recognize the interconnectedness of who I am and who I want to be.

It’s not psychobabble to talk about the need to know who we are, even if there are aspects of ourselves that we may “reinvent,” from time to time. Knowing who you right now is a spiritual journey worth taking.

Bring to mind to experiences in your life where you made a significant change in your self identity. Perhaps you changed careers, perhaps you found a loving committed relationship after swearing you’d never commit. Maybe you took on a hobby or interest that became a passion and self defining activity. Being able to accept that things might change about you some for the good and some for the bad is a reality we all must face.

Remember the movie back to the future? As the young Marty McFly tries desperately to recreate his parents’ past, when it seems as though certain things may not happen, the images of himself and his siblings begin to dissolve from a picture he carries. But what is so great about the film, is that when his parents do get together (and everyone is still in the photo), he has reconstructed the tale so that his father isn’t the wimp he was and his mother didn’t settle for second best.

I think that finding yourself and knowing yourself means an acceptance of your past, a revaluation of certain experiences for your present, and a sense of hope about the future. So when the Talmud quotes Genesis that “Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, for Sarah is her name, for I will bless her” let us imagine that there are moments of transformation that can symbolize our journey of growth and maturity.

Shinui Maaseh – renewing yourself I once heard the story – could be an urban legend— of a derelict man standing on a street corner near Wall Street, begging for money. Reaching out his hand, he pleaded with a passing executive with the words, “Change? Change?” The corporate executive responded with a pained expression on his face, “I’m trying, I’m trying!”

The Jewish concept of teshuvah isn’t just about changing one time only. it is a commitment to changing, returning, renewing ones self all the time. On Yom Kippur we stop to take the time and ask ourselves, what is the core of our life? Are we living by it? Are we moving towards it?

As you take one more long view over the course of your life, bring to mind 2 experiences of profound change that you have gone through. Perhaps you are in recovery from an addiction. Perhaps you let go of a lot of anger and bitterness in your life, or maybe you just made a commitment to watch your easily flared temper with your kids.

When we make profound changes in our behavior we are renewing ourselves. Returning to that zest filled, wonder seeking person before we were hardened by life experiences, and before we ever resorted to the thinking that we could never change our reality.

When we consider loving well and living fully, we can see the ways our attachments and fears limit us. I think one of the central tasks towards renewing ones self is learning how to let go. The Buddhists really know how to do this. “Let all beings be free from attachment” is a well known meditation mantra. I think it’s particularly hard for Jews because we are constantly instructed to remember! And the more we remember, the more attached we are to things, experiences, and events in our lives.

But over the last year, learning to let go of things that don’t matter in the face of what does has been extremely important to my healing. I was extremely concerned that when I lost my hair from chemotherapy, my daughter would be deeply affected and would share my own feelings of loss and altered self image. Although only 16 months old at the time, Margalit modeled for me how to let go. She was simply unfazed by her mother with a wig, with no hair, with a scarf. Nothing mattered to her because I was still her mother and she was attached to me, not my hair.

I knew that it would be a waste of my time and of my limited energy to worry about my hair. It would grow back. But I would never get back the six months with my family – so that’s where my energy went.

There’s a great story about Reb Shlomo Carlebach the legendary spiritual leader and composer of so many of our beloved melodies. He had come to the US as a refugee from Austria and the Nazis. Every so often he would return to Germany and Austria to give concerts and people would ask him, How can you go back there, after what they did to you? Don’t you hate them?

And Reb Shlomo would say: I only have one soul, if I had two I would gladly devote one of them to hating the Germans full time. But I don’t. I only have one soul and I’m not going to waste it on hating.”

We each only have one soul. What are you, right now, this moment, wasting it on? What do you need for renewal? Let us remember what the Talmud teaches us concerning the people of Nineveh who we will hear about this afternoon, “that they repented, and that God relented concerning the evil that God had said would be brought upon them.” Let us remember that we shouldn’t wait until the possibility of our death to seek answers and renewal in our lives. “If we seek the answers now, we can act in the coming year to bring ourselves closer to our core.” (Lew, p. 230)

Mi Yichye u mi yamut – Who WILL live and who WILL DIE? We cannot answer this question. This is the only life we have, and we will lose it sometime. But while we are living, let us acknowledge that indeed, there are things that will help prevent an isolated, meaningless life.

May the coming year enable us to give of ourselves in new ways. May we be able to express our dreams and our fears. May we find ourselves with an expanded sense of self, and may the one soul that we have be renewed for the good.

Zochreinu L’chayim – May we be remembered for Life.

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