High Holy Day Sermon 1 Rabbi Matthew Earne

Transcription

1 High Holy Day Sermon 1 Rabbi Matthew Earne It was the end of the sixth day, the world was created, Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden and suddenly they hear from the heavens. Our tradition teaches the blast was a reminder that God was or king, but I think the blast hints at something different, it was a reminder for Adam and Eve to stop, pause and to appreciate the stillness. Have you ever forgotten your spouse s birthday because you were away on business? This is a sermon for you. Do you ever feel you work so hard at building something but you never have a chance to appreciate it? This is a sermon for you. Have you ever found yourself trying to explain to a friend how on Friday night at summer camp the coolest thing to do was to stand on your benches, in a hot unairconditioned room and scream from the top of your lungs: vayhi erev vayehi boker, yom Shabbat! And how the second coolest part of your summer, which you are explaining to your completely befuddled friend, was going on a Shabbat walk. This is a sermon for you. We sit on a mountain of legends, rituals, customs, and art. We as Jews sit on top of one of the richest cultures in the history of mankind. What lies at the heart of our Judaism? The blueprint for our values and ways is our Torah. What lies at the heart of the Torah? Deep in the Torah, inside the 10 commandments and adjacent to the laws for building a Temple we see the words Zachor et yom hashabbat likodsho. Remember the Sabbath and Keep it Holy. Remember! It is a word of caution. The Torah is warning us that if we go too fast, we will skip over the stillness. Therefore our Torah cries out to us Remember! And thus each generation we are challenged, who will remember and who will forget. Sixty five years ago, a diverse group of Zionists remembered. It is May 14th 1948 the British are about to leave, Israel s neighbors are about to attack, but inside Israel s borders we could not decide how to define our state. There were big debates taking place that would influence the identity and character of the state, debates that still resonate with us today. What would be the borders? What would be the role of religion? How would we treat non Jews in our country? But amazingly, at 4pm all sides agreed there needed to be an end point. Why? Because May 14th was a Friday and everyone agreed that no matter what the debate it had to be settled by 4pm so people could have enough time to go home and start Shabbos. And thus that night, as the late Yehuda Avner writes in his book, The Prime Ministers, the Kiddush on May 14th, 1948 was accompanied by the blessing Shehecheyanu thanking god for allowing us to have a state, thus linking Shabbat to the Modern State of Israel. Do we really know what we were fighting for in 1948 unless we have been stuck in line in the aisles of marzipan, elbowing, pushing, and screaming to buy your freshly baked rugalach with the special coating for Shabbat dinner? Do we really know why we risked it all, unless we have heard the blasting of the shofar on Friday afternoon announcing the arrival of the Sabbath? It is a blast that begins with a toot Shabbos, as the

2 machene yehudah shopkeepers are reminded to close up. It spreads throughout the city, causing many to simply stop in their hurried tracks and just listen, as we try to reconnect to the same stillness that was heard by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Every Friday in Jerusalem, a city remembers and her citizens smile because they know that we will lose Israel if we lose our soul and the greatest protector of our soul is Shabbat. This idea was not lost on the Zionist philosopher Ahad Haam when he shared his famous quote, More than the Jewish people have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jewish people. Twenty five hundred years ago we were a people without a land or identity, we were scattered amongst the nations of the world. One day, in a great miracle, Ezra and Nehemiah led the first return to the land of Israel since our journey in the wilderness. The first thing they did was build a Temple. But unlike the First Temple made of gold, brass and stone, this Temple was made of inexpensive wood. More powerful than the materials used to create the sacred space, was the spiritual foundation with which it was laid. The very last law of Nehemiah provides the key ingredient, the laws of Shabbat. A law that concludes with an appeal: help us ו חוּס ה ע ל י כּ ר ב ח ס דּ ך Shabbat. with your mercy to keep this What was it that Nehemiah knew about Shabbat? He knew that it was much more than a law to be kept for external reasons; rather it was something that we needed, and only through God s mercy would we be lucky enough to have it. Today I would argue that it should not be lost on us that like the community that had journeyed from Babylonia to lay the foundation of Israel, we too are standing here today as a community on the cusp of building our own place for God s presence to dwell. While not the Temple, this new home will be a place of our holy book and it will be a source of great culture. Like our ancestors gathered around Ezra, we too should pay heed to the warning that the key to our longevity is not in the quality of the materials with which we build our walls, but rather the key is our ability to make our place an area that celebrates time. The late Conservative Jewish Theologian, Abraham Joshua Heschel, argued The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals; and our Holy of Holies is a cathedral in time that neither the Romans nor the Germans were able to burn. So the capital campaign committee is probably wondering: What is a Cathedral in time? How much does it cost to build one? Well, I looked it up on Kayak.com and I can tell you while the price varies, it s not inexpensive. For $500/night you can get a room with specially designed wall paper that blocks Wi Fi signals. It s called a digital retreat center. Or for about $300/night you can go to some Resorts and get a digital detox pack. Upon payment, the hotel will give you the option to surrender your smartphones and tablets, and will provide you with a special packet that includes a tree planting kit and a board game. Sounds crazy right? Well it did to me too, so upon further investigation, not only did I find this kit truly does exist, but the kit also comes with a candle and wine! That is about $300 a night, multiply that by 52 weeks, and to be honest compared to this High Holy Day Sermon 1 by Rabbi Matthew Earne Page 2

3 detox retreat and others like it, Tot Shabbat, It s All Shabbat To Me, our regional potluck dinners, Havdalah ceremonies, and coming this October, Shabbat san Diego sound like a great deal! You might think the people least likely to go for these retreats would be leaders in the technology industry. However, the opposite is true. Google understands the value of a palace in time. Google has its workers devote 20% of their paid time to meditation, yoga and other activities that help their imaginations to wander. In fact, the founding editor of Wired Magazine, Kevin Kelly, observes an internet Sabbath. He believes that those who engage in an internet Sabbath are able to gather greater direction in their work when they go back online. In addition, other scientific reports show that offline time devoted to meditation and stillness can lead us to better health and even to greater emotional intelligence. Forty years ago, Abraham Joshua Heschel shared a similar piece of advice when he said: The solution of mankind s most vexing problem will not be found in renouncing technical civilization, but in attaining some degree of independence from it. This from a rabbi who likely never owned a cell phone! So if rabbis, tech leaders and scientists all agree that the Sabbath benefits us, the question is why is it so hard? Instead of just turning everything off, we are willing to pay up to $500 a night for someone else to do it for us. I think the answer is that what makes Shabbat difficult is that it asks of us that we stop being actors, and instead allow ourselves to be acted on. In her book the Sabbath World Judith Shulevitz reveals a powerful truth about what it means to be a human being. It means to admit that part of our human existence is open to being conditioned by the world. This idea flies in the face of our fast paced lives. We are expected to shape our world, in fact we are measured based on our ability to do so. How many of you, when you met someone, the first question you ask is, What do you do? It s the most intimidating question for a young adult. You must define yourself based on the type of impact you are to have in this world. But wouldn t it be nice to have a moment to realize that we can be effected instead of constantly feeling pressured to be effective? One of these days you will walk through a college campus and see 1100 backpacks strewn over the main courtyard. It is part of a traveling exhibition reminding us that every year 1100 college students take their lives. Why? According to an article in the New York Times by Julie Scelfo this past July, the reason is that college students are stuck in a culture where they are measured by their achievements which pushes them towards perfectionism and an inability to deal with failure. Julie Lythcot Haims the dean of freshman at Sanford University asks students to answer questions like what are your desires, and other questions expressing who they are and sees students become paralyzed as they have completely lost the ability to see themselves outside of their accomplishments. Shabbat forces us to stop achieving for a short window of time so we can return to ourselves. I think there is another reason why it is hard. What we create only becomes beautiful when we stop creating it and remember why it was worth creating. However, it is just too hard to stop and pause. And when we can t stop and pause we make excuses for why we can t. Do you ever hear yourself say, Kids don t notice if I High Holy Day Sermon 1 by Rabbi Matthew Earne Page 3

4 am not home in time. I am just not the caring one, I am the worker. It is just this one board presentation; I will make the next one? True religion, is grounded in and expresses the real. One of our congregants once shared with me a story about the blackout that occurred here seven years ago. Moments before the black out, he, a single Dad is in his office preparing for a meeting, one child watching TV, the other one on her iphone. And then silence, its quiet, no light, no computer, no telephone, no TV. The parent rushes to find a candle and a match, he lights it and looks forward and he sees something that frightens him his children. He is brought back to the same fear he felt the first time he was going to hold his newborn son, he looks at them and then for a moment worries what do I do, what do I say? But there is nowhere to run, nowhere to go; no screen to escape too, the world is dark except for the light the father is holding, a light that illuminates the family. He catches his breath, gulps and tries, you guys okay? The kids respond, and he retorts with a How are you? The fire is growing, he tries for more, How was your week? Suddenly old stories are recovered and shared. Kids laugh, talk about what they find funny, share jokes and riddles. Before they know it one hour passes. The kids don t want to leave and they are suddenly as dependent on their father as they were when they were infants. The parent is reminded that his children s needs for love, protection, and guidance never go away, and the desire to give this care never goes away, he just forgot he had the ability to give it. We dismiss Shabbat, because we dismiss ourselves. Shabbat promises us that the light of the candles reflects the very light that emanates in us. Shabbat is hard, but its reward is great. One of Shabbat s greatest rewards is the culture it leaves in its wake. On a High Holy Day season when our topic is Jewish culture, it is worth asking how we create our culture if we do not have the time to take a moment and reflect on who we are, where we come from and where we want to go. Can we really feel music if there is not a rest in between the measures? Too often we are comfortable leaving the topics of rest, and reflection, and making family time in the realm of passing conversations. Shulevitz, cautions that when we follow this path we banish the poets, along with their poetry. She argues that what makes the Sabbath unique is that it can be experienced. It is a day men and women kept and as a result each keeper contains a personal memory in a way that a simple conversation cannot. We have created memories of children decked in white, walking to the bridge at Camp Alonim to welcome Shabbat. We have created Shabbat walks, Shabbat hugs, Shabbat o grams, ruach, and sloach. Songs of dinosaurs keeping Shabbat, Shabbat angels, and even the soup we eat has its own song. Ask any teen who has attended an Israel trip or a Jewish experience what was the one single memory that has played the most enduring role in shaping their Jewish identity and I bet it was related to Shabbat. In conclusion, who am I speaking to? I am the person who sang on top of the benches at camp. I am also the person who works hard to create amazing Jewish educational programs and a sacred Jewish home, yet I worry I am losing track of that which I am trying to build. I see my children for about 30 minutes each morning, just enough time to kiss them on their heads before they go off to school. On most nights I return home hours after they are asleep. I set aside time for family events, yet while there I am thinking about what someone High Holy Day Sermon 1 by Rabbi Matthew Earne Page 4

5 said at work, or I am plagued by revisiting a work call that could have been better. I have not missed a birthday, but I worry, what will be? The busier I am the more Nehemia s prayer speaks to me, Out of your mercy, chasdecha, will you help me find Shabbat? On these High Holy Days we recite the words mi yanuach umiyanuah. Who will find rest, and who will be destined to a life of wandering without any place to call home? As we deal with that struggle I can t help but think that Shabbat will play a redemptive role. So today I am not here to tell you to keep Shabbat because the Torah says so. Although if that reason works for you, go with it. Rather I am asking for your support and your help. Join me in creating a Cathedral in time here at Beth Am. Let us become known for our ability to balance creating new frontiers versus appreciating that which we create. Join me, minute by minute and day by day to fight to set aside time for our loved ones. No one at their end of life wishes they spent more time at work. Lastly, join me in creating an internal palace that will stand side by side with our new building, with each reinforcing the other ensuring that they will be here for generations to come. Shanah Tova High Holy Day Sermon 1 by Rabbi Matthew Earne Page 5