How does the rabbi prepare…
- When her former spiritual director and his wife, long time friends from Chelmsford say they are driving through Elgin on the way back from the Western National Parks, you say yes. What a lovely weekend with long in-depth conversations, good food, lots of laughter, walks and a hike at Carl Hansen Woods to see the Kame, ice cream, a trip to Gail Borden and the chance for us to do a dialogue about “teshuvah” for Shabbat Shuva. A very stress free weekend. May need to do this every year.
- A mikveh experience
- Lots of reading and writing
- Lots of phone calls, emails and text messages
In the old days, a rabbi would give two sermons a year. On Shabbat Shuvah, teaching people how to do teshuvah, returning, repenting. And on the Shabbat before Passover to teach people how to prepare for Passover. Here is what I said on Shabbat. May each of you be inscribed for a blessing in the Book of Life.
Ha’azzinu! Give ear! Listen up! Wake up!
As we near the end of Deuteronomy and listen to the reassurance of our haftarah as the seasons change, (yes, it is fall!) we are reminded of a number of things as we move into the weekend that also contains Yom Kippur.
Return, O Israel, to the ETERNAL your God, (Hosea 14:2)
Generously will I take them back in love;
For My anger has turned away from them. (Hosea 14:5)
This is hope. This is reassuring. And we all need reassuring.
As Fantine sings in Les Mis:
“I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving.”
She has been hurt by life, deeply, deeply hurt and she is not sure about love or that G-d will be forgiving. Many of us have been too and have the same doubts about G-d and love.
Our portion this morning is part of Moses’s swan song. His ethical will. He knows he is about to die and he is trying to impart all of his knowledge to his people.
The central message of our portions today is that G-d loves us. Still loves us. Still today. And G-d is with us. Still today.
If we return. What does that mean?
This period of time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is a great reset button. We get to start again. Last night Rev. Dr. Dave Ferner and I spoke about how to do that.
I echoed Maimonides from the 12th century who gave us 12 steps. I quip that it is the original 12 Step program. Rabbi Paul Kipnes distilled it to 6 steps:
- Regret: We can’t return unless recognize our mistakes. We have to have some remorse. (Yes, remorse. I have very few regrets in life. I once told Dave I didn’t have any remorse so it has become a joke between us. But I do have remorse for hurting people, often unintentionally,)
- Renounce: We need to admit thst our actions were wrong. No excuses. No rationalizations, No blaming the other person.
- Confess: We need to confess our sins. Not in some Catholic, go to confession before mass kind of way. Not in one of those pro forma memes you might see on facebook this weekend covering all your bases but not being specific or personal. Rather out loud. So that our ears hear what our mouths are saying.
- Reconcile: We have to “make up’ with the person we have hurt, wounded. This may be the hardest step. It begins with an apology. We’ll talk about that more shortly.
- Make amends: It could be financial compensation. It could be therapy for ourselves or others. It could be volunteering, giving back to others.
- Resolve: Teshuva is complete when we resolve to not do it again—and do not repeat the same hurt.
Sounds easy no? Just 6 steps. If you want to read Rabbi Kipnes’s full understanding, it is here:
https://www.paulkipnes.com/6-steps-of-teshuvah/
But then Kipnes attempts to answer another question: What does G-d have to do with this? He maintains it is ALL about G-d. As we said last night, Yom Kippur atones for sins between a person and G-d but for sins against each other, Yom Kippur does not atone until they have made peace with each other.
G-d gives us the courage and the strength to recognize the mistake, to find the remorse and be vulnerable enough to admit it and apologize.
Why do we do this? Rabbi Harold Kushner said:
“If you have been brave enough to love, and somtimes you won and sometimes you lost; if you have cared enough to try, and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t; if you have been bold enough to dream and found yourself with some dreams that came true and a lot of broken pieces of dreams that didn’t, that fell to earth and shattered,then you can look back from the mountaintop you now find yourself standing on, like Moses contemplating the tablets that would guide human behavior for a millenia, resting in the Ark alongside the broken fragments of an earlier dream. And you, like Moses, can realize how ful your life has been and how richly you are blessed. ”
How then do we apology? There is a lovely children’s book for Yom Kippur called the Hardest Word. G-d sends this giant bird, Zizook to find the hardest word. Zizook brings back several words as ideas. None of them are quite right. Finally, Zizook finds the word “sorry.” It really is hard to say sorry.
It is said that we clergy types only give the sermon we ourselves need to hear. My daughter thinks that I don’t apologize well. For that I am sorry. So here goess:
An apology is a statement with two key elements. It must begin by saying, “I’m sorry.” It must show that you feel remorse over your actions and it must acknowledge the hurt that your actions caused to that person.
I would add it cannot contain excuses or blame the other person. I’m sorry that you feel that way about what I did shifts the onus back to the person you’ve hurt.
It needs to be authentic and not proforma. And it requires listening, deep, active listening, Remember, that this portion began with the phrase “Give ear.”
Why is it so hard? It is hard to admit we made a mistake. It is hard to go to someone and say we are sorry, to admit it to the person, to admist it to ourselves. It is hard to give up a grudge, although we are commanded to do so:
“You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against members of your people. Love your fellow [Israelite] as yourself: I am Adonai..” (Leviticus 19:18)
But perhaps the hardest part of this equation is to forgive those who have hurt us. Atonement, both Simon and I learned in our Reform Religious Schools, can be broken down to At One Ment. The object of Yom Kippur then is to find that sense of At One Ment. It is a sense of balance and peace and joy. It is about knowing, really, really knowing that G-d, who we call One, Echad, is with us and loves us and give us joy.
People often ask me if Yom Kippur is a sad holiday. And there are elements of that. Some see it as a rehearsal for our own death. Some see the fasting as hard. Some find Yizkor painful. Ultimately, it is a joyous holiday where we begin the new year fresh and recommitted to our authentic selves, ready to begin again.
Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel said: There were no days more joyous than the 15th of Av (Tu B’Av) and Yom Kippur, for on those days the daughters of Jerusalem would go out in borrowed white clothing, in order not to embarrass those who did not have…and the daughters of Jerusalem would dance in the vineyards.” (Mishna Ta’anit 4:8).
Forgiving others, forgiving ourselves, even forgiving G-d can be like an onion. It doesn’t happen all at once. Sometimes it can take years. Sometimes we need to feel safe, to truly be safe before we can do that. But as someone said to me this week after some brothers reconciled, it can feel like a great weight has been lifted. Sometimes forgiving someone is not for the person who hurt you. It is a gift you give yourself.
O children of Zion, be glad,
Rejoice in the ETERNAL your God. (Joel 2:23)
This gives us hope. Will we get it right? Maybe? Is it easy? Not always. Can we do it? You bet. If G-d is a forgiving G-d, then we can be forgiving individuals. If G-d told Moses that