Yom Kippur (Yizkor) Sermon 5774: Life Hacks Rabbi Eric Yanoff Sign (out front); life hacks and thank yous in basket on bimah Shanah Tovah. This is a difficult day. No way around it: We haven t eaten, the services are longer than any other time of year, I make you stand and sit and stand and sit calisthenics on top of it all, in the middle of a fast!... The prayers that we say remind us over and over again how flawed we are, and how hungry we are, and what a nightmare it s going to be sitting in traffic to get off the lawn when we re done in another [AHEM] minutes. I know that this is a hard day. And that s why, right now, I want to do something to make our lives easier. (Some of you are thinking: I m hungry. You know what would make my life easier? A bagel ) And many of you know that we ve tried some edgy things in this Sanctuary you may recall chains over your heads in the shape of a Star of David, or dancing in the aisles, a broken vase. So some of you are wondering, what s he going to try next? What could be the out-of-the-box, convoluted idea, that would make my life easier on this difficult day? But that is the point what I m offering is not convoluted at all; it s not wacky, or complex. The beauty of what I m going to share with you today is how SIMPLE it is. Today, I want to introduce you to the concept of LIFE HACKS. Life hacks. You may have seen these online, on Buzzfeed or on your Facebook news feed. Life hacks are the little things that are all around us that often go unnoticed but if we stopped our frantic, frazzled pace of living, we d see the many little helps, that offer neat shortcuts. Many of these things are designed into everyday products or processes and if only we could breathe, if only we would look up, life would get simpler. For example have you heard of any of these life hacks? DEMONSTRATION: Soda can straw (don t worry it s empty!) Tic Tac container Manual Can opener for sealed packages Bread Clip for flip flop Dustpan to fill up bucket Roll for gift wrap These life hacks are right in front of us and yet, so often, we completely miss them. And so we either despair, frustrated that we seem stuck with a certain challenge or else we spend needless energy chasing our tails, devising so-called solutions that don t make our lives any simpler at all. After the holiday go online there are thousands of these life hacks a whole page of them just to make your iphone battery last longer. But today, I want to share a different set of life hacks ones that have been around much longer than the iphone. These are the life hacks that Judaism has taught us for three thousand years and they are the life hacks that, still today, we avoid and miss out on, and try to circumvent only to make ourselves crazy. If only we would pay attention to these three life hacks our lives would get not only simpler, but better and more fulfilling. Are you ready? Here they are: 1. I M SORRY 2. THANK YOU 3. I LOVE YOU Yom Kippur (Yizkor) Sermon 5774: Life Hacks - Rabbi Eric Yanoff 1 of 5
That s it those three phrases, in combination with one another or each standing alone, can make our lives better. And we expend SO MUCH ENERGY avoiding them, to unnecessarily complicate our lives. Take I M SORRY. How many of us have been in a work situation where we just messed up we know that something didn t go right. We know that we are at least partly responsible for a project failure, a lost client, a bad review or interaction. Most people, in that situation, go into a state of internal panic that manifests as CYA Cover Your Associates (well, actually, think of a shorter word that associates because it usually means throwing one of your associates under the bus, to cover your other, shorter version of CYA ). We think of excuses, reasons, stories, insurmountable obstacles that boggle the mind of a supervisor, to explain away our failures. And we spend so much time and energy coming up with the excuse when really, the first step toward a solution is right there. How would it feel to own the mistake, go to our supervisor, and say, I m sorry; I messed up. I ve thought of a plan to make it better. For those of us here who have been supervisors wouldn t we value that person more? And it s not just about work: In a relationship do we acknowledge our shortcomings, work to do better, and maybe even enable our loved one to gain a true acceptance of who we are, with all our imperfections and not who we pretend to be? When we experience tension in a relationship, the first step in healing is to be able to combine two of our life hacks and say, I m sorry, and I love you: I value this relationship, this love enough to work on the parts that are not great, and try to make it better. Saying I m sorry is not just an out it s the start of a conversation, of how we can improve. That s the whole point of Yom Kippur, when we say s lach lanu, m chal lanu, kaper lanu forgive us, pardon us. I m sorry is not just a get out of jail free card; it s saying, I accept you, you re not in the dog-house anymore - but it also says, Now the real work begins, to DEMONSTRATE that I m sorry were not just empty words, but a promise to act differently, to repair a connection with another person. Last night, during the Kol Nidre prayer, we asked for forgiveness not only for missteps over the past year, but for our faults that have not even happened, in the year to come. A thousand years ago, our Rabbis asked, How is that possible? How can we be pre-emptively sorry for the year to come? And the answer: Because part of sincerely saying I m sorry is admitting that we are, perennially, imperfect always striving to be better, but always knowing that we ll never reach perfection, which, in turn, makes it worth striving, over again. It is what keeps our relationships with other people, with God, and even with ourselves dynamic and interesting. So that s the life hack I m sorry. What about THANK YOU? This year, I believe, the art of being thankful has been transformed, made much more popular by a bit you may have seen on late-night television since Jimmy Fallon has taken over the Tonight Show. Every Friday, Jimmy Fallon has a bit where he laments that the week went too fast, he s behind on his correspondence, and he says I m sorry, and he begs the studio audience s indulgence, as he writes a few Thank you notes. The bit has a classic, repeated musical riff; it s a running joke, and the notes are brilliant and hysterically funny; here are just a few examples: Alex, can I get some of the Late-Night Thank-you note music? He pretends to write: Thank you, ATM fees for allowing me to buy back my own money. Or, Thank you, porch lights or as mosquitos and moths call you, night clubs. Thank you, sports bottles for being sippy-cups for adults. If you re thinking, I don t stay up late enough to see the show, to get the joke again, after the holiday, do what Dava and I do DVR the show, or else go on YouTube and search for Jimmy Fallon Thank yous. They are all tongue-in-cheek but think of the message: Jimmy Fallon is asking us to look at even the most ordinary parts of our existence, and to express our thanks. We could try it here, for our high-holiday services as well: Yom Kippur (Yizkor) Sermon 5774: Life Hacks - Rabbi Eric Yanoff 2 of 5
Thank you, 8:30 am arrivers on the high holidays for beating rush hour to the synagogue. Thank you, people in the balcony for believing all those years before the renovation in the structural soundness of the balcony. Thank you, people in the Frankel, under the balcony for believing all those years before the renovation in the structural soundness of the balcony. So in the course of a year of late-night, Jimmy Fallon has brought back the art of being thankful. But in Judaism, this is an art that we have refined for millennia. Traditionally, we say thank you a hundred times a day each blessing, for each moment, for each food, for each highpoint and even for each tragedy in our lives every moment in Judaism has a blessing. Whenever we say Baruch Atah, we are pausing, to reflect on a moment that because we have expressed our thanks has become extraordinary. That s what those words, Thank you, accomplish: They proclaim, This food, this scenic view, this moment has not been lost on us. This person, who has affected my life, is important to us. Thank you, God Baruch Atah. Thank you for this miracle in our lives. Saying a blessing, or saying thank you, has a two-fold effect: Think about the last time you were acknowledged for your work, or an extra effort, or even a small kindness: That acknowledgment places value on your effort. The receiver of the thank-you therefore, feels strengthened, validated. But also, it has an effect on the person offering the thanks. People often ask me what the point of praying is if we re not really sure our prayers are answered, or if God even hears us. My response, in part, is that IF you say baruch Atah enough times in a given day in the Amidah prayers, or other prayers of thanks it has a transformative effect: If you say thanks enough, then you become a thankful, gracious, appreciative person. Each one of those moments of gratitude is like a point along a line eventually, enough points become a line a constant, unending aspect of who we are as grateful people. Saying thank you acknowledges the other person s kindness but it also attunes our receptors to recognize more kindness, more of the miraculous, in our world, going forward. It s so simple: We say thank you, we say I m sorry and it heals and enriches and affirms the relationships we wish to sustain. But there is an even simpler life-hack, an even simpler phrase that means, I value this relationship. How many of us say I love you enough to the ones we love? How many of us say it in a way that shares why we love, what we love or do we say it more like, Okay, see you soon, I love you? In fact, Rabbi Alan Lucas tells the anecdote about a group of women who were at a seminar on how you can live in a loving relationship with your husband. The women were asked, How many of you love your husband? All the women raised their hands. Then they were asked, When was the last time you told your husband you loved him? Some women answered today, some yesterday, some couldn t remember. The women were then told to take out their cell phones and text their husband: I love you, sweetheart. Then they were told to exchange phones, and to read aloud the responses they received to this text message. Here are some of the replies they got back from their husbands when their husbands received a text that said I love you : 1. Who is this? 2. Eh, mother of my children, are you sick? 3. I love you too. (Aww ) 4. What now? Did you crash the car again? 5. Am I dreaming? 6. Your mother is coming to stay, isn t she? 7. I thought we agreed we would not drink during the day. 8. If you don t tell me who this message is actually for, someone will die. Yom Kippur (Yizkor) Sermon 5774: Life Hacks - Rabbi Eric Yanoff 3 of 5
How many of you thought that was funny? How many of you found that it made you uncomfortable? How many were uncomfortable because it has some truth to it? To the people we love, we don t say I love you enough. And by the way, even in those relationships where I love you would seem awkward to say there are other ways of accomplishing the same goal to stop and say, I care about you, I value you, we are not just two people going opposite ways on the escalator but we matter to one another. And sometimes like with thank you saying these things is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we express care for another person, then we become a caring person and the other person feels cared for. That is, too often, a novelty in and of itself. I learned this not specifically about I love you, but the power of expressing any caring when Dava and I first moved to the Midwest, and of all places, I learned it at Starbucks: For six years, I had lived in New York City. Now in New York, going to Starbucks is a full-contact sport the line is fast-moving, and out the door and so you practice your Starbucks order because at all costs, you want to avoid the angry, impatient glares of others (including the barrista) if you hesitate at all when it s your turn to order. I had mine down: Grande skinny vanilla latte with whip. So here we are, new to the Midwest, where everything is a bit slower and less gritty than Manhattan and I run in to Starbucks, ready to be quickon-the-draw with my order, and the cashier says, Good morning! How are you doing, this fine day? UH. I said. I was completely disarmed by this kindness, this care for me, care for me beyond my coffee order. And that s from a Starbucks cashier. Imagine the power of I care for you, of I love you when it is someone we truly love! Imagine what those words do to a relationship. Even if they are known they cannot be taken for granted. They are so easy to say and so often, we mean them so deeply, but we don t say them enough. These life hacks I m sorry, Thank you, I love you they are the most direct path to a fulfilling, deep, living, meaningful relationship. And yet, we skip over them, or gloss over their power, way too much. They are so easy because more often than not, they are true, but they are missing from our lives. And the thing about each of these life hacks I m sorry, Thank you, and I love you For anyone of us who has regret about a loss the ending of a relationship, the loss of a job, and certainly the loss of a loved one who has died: For anyone of us who holds onto some regret about such a loss our regret is that we wish we would have said more of at least one of these phrases. Of the relationship that has gone astray, if only we could say: I m sorry. We started with such high hopes. Thank you for the time and energy that you put into our time together. There are still parts of you that I love, the parts that made me fall in love with you. I m sorry, and I hope you re sorry, for what we ve lost. To a parent who has died, we might want to say: Thank you for the person that you made me. I am only sorry that you are not here to see what we ve accomplished together because I could not have done it without you. I love you. To a spouse, whom we ve lost, we dream of saying: I love you still to this very moment. I miss you. I wish I could ask you just one more question. I am sorry, perhaps, that our times were not always perfect together, that our last words maybe were not words of tenderness, but words of logistics, or even frustration. I am so thankful that I had you in my life. To a sibling, or tragically, a child whom we ve lost what we d give to say: I love you. Thank you for enriching my life while we shared this world. I m sorry that it was not for longer. Yom Kippur (Yizkor) Sermon 5774: Life Hacks - Rabbi Eric Yanoff 4 of 5
You see: It is not only our LIVES that are made more livable by these simple words. It is our LOSSES that remind us how precious these simple words are. I m sorry. Thank you. I care about you; I love you. It s that simple and it s that important. And so, as we come together for Yizkor today, we are given a gift: An opportunity to say these words even after it seems that it s too late. Because it s NOT too late. Right now we can express our thanks, our regrets, and most importantly, our love of those whom we ve lost. Because though their loss pains us, their memory lives on and affords us the chance to say those things not said, or not said enough. And perhaps, even in saying them now even for some, years later we will feel, once again, thankful. We will feel just a little forgiven and God-willing, we will feel comforted, and cared for, and loved. God we pray: At this most sacred time, may we find comfort, forgiveness, appreciation. and love. Keyn yehi ratzon So may it be God s will. And let us say: AMEN. The Yizkor service begins with a wordless melody to draw on the strength and togetherness of our community. Let s sing together; as the Torah scrolls are brought forward, we rise, as Yizkor begins in our community s commemorative books found at seats, or at the back of the Sanctuary. Yom Kippur (Yizkor) Sermon 5774: Life Hacks - Rabbi Eric Yanoff 5 of 5