Love Your exceptional life. 

We are walking, running, marching, maybe even dancing into this new year. How many of you have a tradition of buying new clothes or new shoes for yuntif? Here are my new shoes, just because they are fun and because they promote healthy living. The slogan for this company is “Run Happy.” That’s what I try to do. These shoes make me happy.  

I saw this billboard on a long car ride. Love your exceptional life. That seems to me the first step to loving your neighbor as yourself. 

Before you can love your neighbor, you have to love yourself. For many people that seems to be difficult.  

In case you haven’t heard this. In case nobody told you, each of you is created in the image of G-d, b’tzelem elohim. Each of you is a beloved child of G-d. And each of you is loved.  You are exceptional. Your life is exceptional. Your life matters. No one can do the things you can do. No one is called to be you. 

I remember a Girl Scout camp song: 

I’m proud to be me and I also see 
Your just as proud to be you
We make look at things a bit differently
But lots of good people do 

It’s just human nature
So why should I hate you
For being as human as I.
We’ll live and let live and
We’ll get as we give and
We’ll all get along if we try. 

I remember driving my mother to my brother’s wedding. We were crossing the George Washington Bridge in New York at rush hour. She turned to me, clearly working on a toast for the wedding and said, “I’m not supposed to say I’m proud of my kids? Because I am.” She had never said it before…and didn’t make it into the toast. I think that is part of that generation’s problem. If you were to praise a child, it would “go to their head.”  

So yes, I am proud of you. Each of you has been through a lot. As a community, we have survived the pandemic, rising anti-semitism, October 7th, the war in Gaza thus far, health challenges, job changes, moves, and so much more.  Each of you have risen to the occasion. There is much to be proud of. 

Yet, sometimes people say to me “I was the black sheep of my family.”  It caused me to look up the definition: The term “black sheep of the family” is an idiom for a family member who is considered an outcast, different, or troublesome compared to the rest of the family. Historically, the term comes from literal black sheep that stood out in a flock and whose wool was less desirable because it couldn’t be dyed. In modern usage, it describes someone who doesn’t fit in or who is blamed for family problems, often feeling marginalized, lonely, or misunderstood. 

In our Rosh Hashanah readings, some of our women characters seem to have a self-esteem issue. They may have felt they were the black sheep. Sarah was barren. She was so concerned that she wouldn’t be loved or appreciated by Abraham that she gave her “handmaiden” Hagar to Abraham and they together had Ishmael. That kind of surrogacy can often, even today, cause issues. Hagar runs away only to be told by G-d to go back and submit to Sarah. Hannah, also barren, has tried everything to conceive. Crying, she goes to pray at the temple and the priest who sees her lips moving but cannot hear her, thinks she is drunk. Barrenness and infertility are real issues, even today, but they should not be a measure of your own love for yourself. Yet many women, even today, try desperately to conceive.  

Our value, our worth was measured by our children. This was wrong then and is still wrong today. Your children alone do not define you. And it goes both ways, Rabbi Harold Kushner, z’l taught “Children need parents who will let them grow up to be themselves, but parents often have personal agendas they try to impose on their children.” 

The person who feels like the black sheep of the family may be the one who does not feel they are loved or are worthy of love. The 13 Attributes of the Divine, which we sing over and over again during the High Holy Day period tells us over and over again that G-d loves us, even if we don’t feel that love. Adonai, Adonai, el rachum v’chanun. Erech payim v’rav chesed v’emet. The Lord, The Lord, G-d, merciful and gracious, slow to anger (or patient) full of lovingkindness and truth.  

This is how G-d taught Moses to seek forgiveness. By repeating these words over and over again. It is part of our High Holy Day liturgy. While Yom Kippur atones for sins between a person and G-d, For sins between people the person has to first appease the other person by asking forgiveness.  

When a word is repeated in the Torah it comes to emphasize something, to teach us something. The repetition of the word Lord the rabbis instruct us is to emphasize that G-d loves us before we sin and after we sin. G-d always loves us. You may find that a strange message. I know that I did. Growing up in Grand Rapids I learned that Jews are about law and works—the halacha we might call it, and Christians are about love. The 13 Attributes of the Divine answers that question for me. It is part of why I became a rabbi, to answer that eternal question.  

We are told we are to be like G-d, full of lovingkindness, loving people.  

But before we can love other people, before we can love our neighbors, we need to love ourselves. 

It is not always easy to love our own selves. We might not like how our body looks. We might not find ourselves worthy of love. We might have had parents who were dictating a different message or who withheld love. We might need to forgive ourselves for sins actual or imagined. 

  How, then, do we grow into this? How do we learn to love ourselves? How do we demonstrate that we love to ourselves? Some of it is about good self-care. Self-care is a popular buzz word these days. And it basic. 

Risa has a list of five things that we need to do every day that are essentially good self-care. They show that we love ourselves, that we are taking care of ourselves: eat, drink (water), exercise, sleep, take your necessary medications. It is a good list. A checklist.  It’s simple. And on a good day I get 4 out of 5. That’s 80%. That’s a B. That’s good enough. It’s about taking care of our bodies, keeping ourselves as healthy as possible. 

But there is another component to showing love for ourselves. That’s taking care of our emotional wellbeing. When we do the mi sheberach prayer, the prayer for healing of as I always say, “mind, body and spirit.”  treating ourselves with care. The mind and spirit. Mental health is as important as physical health. It’s part of health. 

There is no shame in seeking help for mental health. It is just another specialty. I often argue with our elected officials that we need more mental health services. In Elgin we do pretty well on emergency mental health services. Arrive at either hospital, and you will be treated. Dial 988 the emergency mental health line and there is always someone on the other end of the line. Or you can text. Yet, after the critical emergency, It can be hard to find ongoing services without a waiting list. Those waiting lists can be as long as 6 months, particularly for adolescent mental health. 

People are sometimes surprised when I say I have a therapist. I do. It is a very necessary component of my life. I also have a primary care physician, an oncologist, an ophthalmologist, a dermatologist, a gastroenterologist and a dentist! They all end in ist! Finding the right match can be a challenge and a process of trial and error but it is so important.  

I suffer from what I call Better Homes and Garden syndrome. In the modern world it could be called Pinterest syndrome though I don’t hear as much about Pinterest these days. I do hear about Instagram and how people carefully curate the life they share there. It has to be just so. Perfect. I know exactly how a holiday, like Rosh Hashanah for example, should sound, look, feel, even taste. Many of those details we have managed to accomplish for today. But those expectations I put on myself are often destined to fail. And I may put them on all of you—and then lose patience when they fail. If I can’t meet my own perfectionistic expectations I can’t expect any of you to do so either. Brene Brown talks about this extensively in her book, Rising Strong. I recently I heard a similar thing on the Hidden Brain while driving to Torah School. https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/escaping-perfectionism/  

This perfectionism streak is something I will be atoning about during these Days of Awe. It is something I will have to forgive myself for.  

The previous surgeon general released a study in 2023 about the dangers of isolation and loneliness. It is one of the fastest growing issues in the United States. Lacking social connection can be as unhealthy as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.  The full advisory is (still) on the Health and Human Services website.  

https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf 

The surgeon general adds that “Each of us can start now, in our own lives, by strengthening our connections and relationships. Loneliness and isolation represent profound threats to our health and well-being. But we have the power to respond. By taking small steps every day to strengthen our relationships, and by supporting community efforts to rebuild social connection, we can rise to meet this moment together. We can build lives and communities that are healthier and happier. And we can ensure our country and the world are better poised than ever to take on the challenges that lay ahead.”  

Loneliness increased during the pandemic. Screen times are up. Kids may struggle in school. Kids may be bullied. And cyber bullying is a thing. The town of Barrington as their one book, one read the book Anxious Generation. Haidt argues that “After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why?

He lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood” began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood” in the early 2010s. This reminds me of another book, Nature Deficit Disorder which argues that kids (and adults) need time outside in nature, in unstructured play. Or lifelong kindergarten which says that play, passion, peers and projects are the best way to learn. 

Many of you have suggested that they are feeling a great deal of despair and what you need to be hearing from me is hope. I want to begin by acknowledging that there is a lot to be worried about in the world.  

Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav, who himself suffered from depression, said, “Kol ha’olam kulo gesher tzar me’od. All the world is a narrow bridge, the important thing, the central thing is to not be afraid.”

He also stated, “There is no such thing as despair” and that “It is forbidden to despair” (Lo tit’ya-esh). This perspective emphasizes that even in the direst circumstances, there is always an “unbroken point” from which renewal is possible, and maintaining hope is a fundamental aspect of Jewish identity, as expressed by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who said, “Our hope, we say, has never been destroyed”.  

My hope always comes back to the kids. The kids bring me hope.  

This leads us right back to our connected community here at CKI and loving our neighbors as ourselves. Identifying the problems and moving to towards solving them gives me hope.  

Ron Wolfson’s book, the Seven Questions You are asked in heaven ends with this question: Have you seen my Alps. Have you allowed yourself pleasure? If we have learned nothing else, life is short. So take that trip. Sip that coffee. Listen to the birds. Read that book. Dance in the rain. Oh, a buy the shoes. You are loved. You are worth it.