There is a power in this week’s portion—and like every year—it comes just before Rosh Hashanah.
We are in the chapel/library today because the text tells us that it is not too far for you. “But the word is very close to you. In your mouth and in your heart that you may do it.”
You stand here. All of you. Today. Before the Lord your G-d. To enter into the covenant.
Your leaders, your wise old ones, your wives, your little ones, your water drawers and your woodchoppers.
How do we stand before the Holy One?
With reverence and honor. With respect. With humility. With fear and trembling. At attention. As individuals but as part of the collective whole.
It tells us that all of us are standing here. How are we inclusive today?
We are inclusive when we welcome everyone. When welcome our guests and our neighbors. When we welcome differing levels of Jewish observance and interfaith families. When we welcome the youngest and the oldest. By having age appropriate activities and accessible bathrooms. When we think about sound systems and large print books and distance to the coat racks. When we welcome multi-racial families and differing family configurations—families, couples, singles, widows, divorcees, LGBTQ. All those people in our congregation—17 at last count born in different countries.
It seems an odd choice—why water drawers and wood choppers?
Maybe as Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson teaches, he wood choppers and the waterdrawers are different parts of ourselves as we stand together before the Holy One with our whole community as we enter these Holy Days.
He asks, how often do we see the person across from us or next to us as an object to cut down, prove wrong or shape in the image we think they ought to be? This can happen with our families, our friends, our business associates and workplaces or even, dare I say it, in our synagogue. It can happen with our relationship with God. And I think it can happen with ourselves. Sometimes, myself included, we are our own worst critics, judging ourselves too harshly. We go too far, we cut too deep and it becomes hard to repair the relationships, with our friends and family, with our fellow workers, with ourselves or with God.
Waterdrawers, however can be a metaphor for how people are wells of inspiration, waiting for us to engage them, learn from them, and to be nourished and satisfied by them. It needs to be a two way street. We need to give and receive. However, I think we need a caution, a well can dry up, if it is not replenished.
Moses, in his last address, just before he dies implores us further…
“See I set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life that you may live.”
That’s a good message on this last Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah. Choose life that you may live—just as we implore G-d to inscribe us and seal us in the Book of Life.
Last week in our last session on Jonah, one of our participants said that when Jonah keeps saying he is so angry he wants to die. He has sunk to the depths—the very depths—he went down to Jaffa, then tried to run away to Tarshish, he went down into the hold of the ship, then was thrown into the depths of the sea, then into the belly of the fish.
Then he is rescued…spewed out, vomited, or as the kids prefer, burped out. But he is still not happy. He wants to die.
As someone pointed out—he seems suicidal. Whether he wants to die by his own hand—or someone else’s, he wants his pain to end.
September is National Suicide Prevention Month. From the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention:
Although there is no single cause of suicide, one of the risks for suicide is social isolation, and there’s scientific evidence for reducing suicide risk by making sure we connect with one another. We can all play a role through the power of connection by having real conversations about mental health with people in everyday moments – whether it’s with those closest to us, or the coffee barista, parking lot attendant, or the grocery store clerk.
It’s also about the connection we each have to the cause, whether you’re a teacher, a physician, a mother, a neighbor, a veteran, or a suicide loss survivor or attempt survivor. We don’t always know who is struggling, but we do know that one conversation could save a life.
The statistics are stark:
Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the US. Almost 45K Americans die by suicide each year. For every suicide 25 people attempt suicide. Suicide costs the US $69B annually.
- The annual age-adjusted suicide rate is 13.42 per 100,000individuals.
- Men die by suicide 3.53x more often than women.
- On average, there are 123 suicides per day.
- White males accounted for 7 of 10 suicides in 2016.
- Firearms account for 51% of all suicides in 2016.
- The rate of suicide is highest in middle age — white men in particular.
I have been thinking a lot about the topic of suicide. I am watching two young people—one here in Elgin and one in Oregon. Both are frustrated. Both have serious challenges. Both have some underlying mental health issues. Both feel isolated and alone.
What is our responsibility?
To connect. To stand with someone. To make them feel welcome. To reach out.
This summer there have been some high profile suicides—Anthony Bodain, Kate Spade. I don’t think we will ever know why. In the old days, the wisdom was we shouldn’t talk about suicide or ask if someone felt like hurting themselves—we might propel them into action. In the old days, there was a sense that talking about suicide was a cry for help. That males suicide and females attempted. Some of that old thinking has gone out the window.
I am glad that our teachers here at CKI were trained by the Board of Jewish Education about mental health and suicide. Because sadly, children are not immune. Once I was called into to the middle school when there were three 8th grade boys who had committed suicide. At that point, there didn’t seem to be a connection between them—but it turns out there was—they had all been in the same boy scout troop (out of school) and had been at camp together. They played on the same basketball team—and they were being bullied. Maybe they were gay. What I learned in dealing with that episode—
If you have never seen a young man dressed in his scout uniform laid out in his coffin, you haven’t experienced deep sadness.
What is our responsibility? To be community.
It is like Hillel said—Do not separate yourself from your community.
Reach out. I pledge to meet you anywhere, anytime, any place.
Choose life that you may live.
A poem:
Stand for a while in this doorway,
exactly in the place of in-between.
Pause now while we are not yet there,
Lean against the frame of life
Be here between the inside and the outside.
Gather up the known and clear space
for the not-yet
In these days when the harvest is full,
and the year winds toward its inevitable end….
Let leaves blanket the ground and prayers float upward
Let me not pass through this doorway too quickly
Let me be still enough
to hear the pure, exhausted, ecstatic voice of the soul.
(Rachel Sabath Beit-Halachmi, Nantucket Island, August 2000)