Shanah Tovah

 

            My friends, I want to speak with you tonight about something difficult and painful, something most of us have faced at some time, perhaps several times, in our lives, perhaps recently: What should we do when life knocks us down? How do we get up again?

            One day we may be riding high and the next day our kishkas are knocked out, our confidence shaken, our dreams gone. What do we do when that happens? How do we get back up again? We may face the loss of a job or our retirement savings. An illness or accident. An aging parent or the loss of a loved one. None of us is immune to the pain and suffering that can bring us so low we wonder how we will ever get up again. When that happens, how do we get up again?

            Let me share with you a story I learned from a friend of mine, Rabbi Eddie Feinstein, about his father who suffered a serious stroke. R. Feinstein moved his father to a rehab facility near him and visited him every night after work. At first he found him very depressed. Then one night, he found his father’s attitude completely changed. He wondered whether it was due to progress in physical therapy or a change in medication. But he soon found out the real reason.

            At 11 pm, his father excused himself, explaining he had an appointment. “Who do you have an appointment with at eleven at night?” R. Feinstein asked. His father answered, “A few nights ago, they brought in a kid who had been in a terrible motorcycle accident. The kid was completely paralyzed, his body almost destroyed. The kid was so depressed he was suicidal. He saw nothing in his future so he refused to take his medications. He wanted to die. They brought social workers and psychologist and psychiatrists, but no one could reach the kid.” No one except Rabbi Feinstein’s father.

            With his own broken body in a wheelchair, he wheeled into the kid’s room each night when it was time for the kid’s medications. He stayed with the kid and talked to him, talked him into staying alive for just one more day. Each night, he went to speak with the kid, bringing him back from the abyss into life.

            That is what R. Feinstein thinks healed his father;[2] caring for someone else.

 

            This story could be the same story told about some people here tonight, though I won’t mention names. Though debilitated by catastrophic illness or injury, they, too, found people worse off than themselves. They, too, got up, after life had knocked them down, by reaching out to help others.

 

            Reb Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the first Lubavitch Rebbe, taught that each of us will face times in our lives when we will want to give up. We will be knocked down so hard we will think there is no way we can ever get up. We will be ready to give up on life, on the world, on our families, on God. It is then, according to Reb Shneur Zalman, that we must reach out and do one good deed. It is then, especially, we must do one selfless act of kindness, of gemilut hasadim, for someone else. It is in that act of kindness that we will find our own tikkun, our own healing. By helping others we find the strength to get up.

 

            How do we get up when life knocks us down? One way is by helping others.

            Another way is by focusing on what we do have rather than on what we lack or have lost. Gratitude and appreciation help us to again feel joy. As our ancient Rabbis taught, “Who are rich? Those happy with their lot.”  

            Our Rabbis were not preaching the value of complacency or poverty. Far from it.  Our mission as Jews has always been to strive to make ourselves and the world better. And, as the fictional philosopher, Tevye the Milkman, reminds us in his song “If I were a Rich Man,” while there is no shame in being poor, there is no great honor in it, either.

            However, even for Tevye, being a rich man is not an end in itself. Too many of us forget that when we are riding high.

            Perhaps that is why our Rabbis decreed we recite these words each month to announce the new moon: “May it be Your will …God… to reawaken in us joy and peace…grant us a …life of goodness and blessing, …financial and physical well being,…a life of reverence and fear of sin, free from shame or reproach,… a life of abundance and honor...in which the wishes of our hearts are fulfilled for good…”

            Our Rabbis linked the desire for financial success with a concern for living an honest and honorable life. We are to keep the need to earn a living in perspective so it does not take over our lives, so we can live lives of joy and peace dedicated to honor and goodness, faith and community, even when we enjoy abundance. 

            There is another lesson here as well: when we keep the need to earn a living in perspective, then our own happiness is not dependent upon the abundance we may enjoy one moment and lose the next. Then, even in the worst situation, if we have food on our table and a roof over our heads, we will remember there are people who are worse off than us. That will not only fill us with gratitude but motivate us to share even what little we may have to help others. When we do that, we will heal ourselves in the ways that count most, as surely as R. Feinstein’s father did by helping the kid injured in the motorcycle accident.

            Our ancient Sages taught, “In heaven God doesn’t weigh our income, only our receipts.” Our Sages also taught that these receipts pay “interest” not only in the next world but also in this world, by giving us the sense of satisfaction and self-worth that comes from doing even one small good deed, let alone several.

            Perhaps this is why, as Reb Shneur Zalman taught, even one good deed contains the tikkun, the healing we need to help get ourselves up when we have been knocked down. 

 

            Our Sages also remind us that when we do enjoy abundance, the abundance we have is not an end in itself but a tool for spreading goodness in the world.

            Tevye understood this. For Tevye, being rich was just the means to allow him the leisure to connect more deeply to God and his community, the same God and community that helped him get back on his feet every time he was knocked down, whether by family tensions, persecution, pogroms or, ultimately, exile.

            Tevye was constantly able to get up because he had God and the community, his Jewish community, with him.

            My friends, God and the Jewish community are also with us.

 

            This month we have been reciting the 27^th Psalm during services. We will recite it again later this evening. This powerful Psalm begins: “The Lord is my light and my help, whom shall I fear?” Then it adds, “Though my father and mother leave me, the Lord will care for me.”

            I used to have trouble saying this line. But then my mother died and I finally understood these words: even when we think we have no one left to care for us, even when we find ourselves knocked down by loss, loneliness, and despair, we are reminded God is with us. With this knowledge, we can more easily get back up again when life knocks us down.

            You may know the story of the man who dreamt he saw a beach covered with two sets of footprints, one set belonging to him and one to God. As scenes from his life flashed before him over the footprints, he noticed that during the most difficult parts of his life, only one set of footprints appeared in the sand. He cried out to God, “How could you have abandoned me when I needed you most?” God replied, “I would never abandon you. During those times of pain and trial, when there is only one set of footprints in the sand, that was when I was carrying you.”

             

            Psalm 27 ends with the words, “Be strong, take courage, and hope in the Lord.” God is always with us, always ready even to carry us if we need it until we can get back up on our own two feet. Knowing God is with us gives us the courage, when we falter, and the hope, when we despair, to hang in there, confident these troubles will pass and things will get better so, that with God’s help, we will be able to get up regardless of how far we may have fallen.

 

            Just as God is with us, so, too, our community can be with us, if we let it.

             

            Each of us is more than our individual selves. We are more than our families. Our lives are interconnected with those around us. That is why we are here tonight, on this holiest night of the year, because deep down we know there is strength, hope, and comfort in community. That is why community is so important. That is why our community, Beth Shalom, is so important.

 

            It is harder for us to feel that sense of community than it was 16 or 20 or 30 years ago when Beth Shalom was only 125 member families, before we had our own synagogue building, or even 12 years ago when my family and I first came here, when we were just a little more than 250 families, shortly after this holy sanctuary was built. We have gotten so big it is harder to know everyone’s name, let alone everyone’s faces. It is harder now to make new friends and harder now to find seats with the friends we do have when our sanctuary is filled to capacity with B’nai Mitzvah guests each week. It is even harder to find time to reach out to each other, as our work lives become more demanding and our family lives seemingly busier than ever.

            But that doesn’t make community any less important. It doesn’t change the fact that there will be times when we, or others, will need the community to be there for us. It doesn’t change the fact that when we open ourselves to our community, when we share our time, our energy, our presence, the “interest” we accrue enriches our lives in significant ways.

            I have seen individuals who were knocked down by life and found, in our community, the way to get up. Their lives were transformed when they began to attend services regularly, interact with other members, and share their time to help on a committee or with an activity, even if for only a few minutes a month. By helping, they found the strength to get up. They found their tikkun, their healing, in our community.

 

            Why should life have to knock us down before we realize how much of our time and energy is spent on fleeting things rather than on relationships and activities of lasting worth? None of us should have to experience life knocking us down to realize how much we really do need each other and how much we really do need to be needed.

 

            Right now, Beth Shalom needs all of us.

            Beth Shalom is facing some general challenges, as are all non-profits right now, as well as some challenges specific to us.

            The good news is we also have some great opportunities ahead of us, particularly as the Jewish population of Howard County continues to grow. Our new President and Board have been working overtime with our staff and many generous congregants to steer us successfully through this difficult period, working to establish the appropriate infrastructure we require while continuing our mission to educate our children, meet the spiritual needs of our congregants, comfort mourners, build bridges of understanding to our neighbors, help those in need, do what we can to repair the world, and work to realize our dream of completing our building expansion to better meet the growing needs of our increasingly diverse membership. We are doing all this while remaining committed to making sure no one is excluded because of financial hardship, because everyone has a place here and everyone deserves to have a place here in our community.

            Beth Shalom has faced challenges before. Each and every time we have not just survived but thrived. And we will again, by relying on the lasting values that have supported our People throughout the ages when life knocked us down: on acts of kindness and generosity, faith in God, and connection to our community.

 

            The sad fact of life is that most of us will, at some point or other, find ourselves on the ground looking up, not sure how we got there. My friends, if we make the most of the lessons we learn on the way down, if we pay attention to those lessons, and not forget them, then we may do things a little differently when get back up on our feet. When we do things a little differently, we may find, even if life again throws us a low blow, we are better able to stay on our feet or get back up more easily.

 

            Rabbi Harold Kushner, in his book, Faith and Family, writes, “If we root our lives in goodness, in honesty, in charity, then even if [the] bad things that come our way are the result of bad decisions on our part, our sense of ourselves as good people will diminish the severity of what happens to us.

            “And if we form the habit of charity, of feeling the pain of other people, and wanting to do something to help them, then our own problems will hurt us less, not only because we will be aware of how much suffering there is in the world, but also because we will have learned to see ourselves as people with the power to do something about it. We will see ourselves as people who act, not as passive victims…

            “On [the High Holy Days], the synagogue’s message is “don’t be afraid.” Don’t be afraid of change, of not being able to control things that are so important to you, not because life guarantees happy endings but because the right kind of life leaves you equipped to cope with whatever ending comes along. Don’t be afraid that life may hurt, not because we can promise you it won’t hurt, but because faith and friends, and self-esteem will make you strong enough to take it.”[3]

           

            My friends, we find self-esteem in acts of goodness, kindness and charity. We find faith by letting God into our lives. We find friends by opening our lives to and becoming active in community. These are the steps that help us get up when life knocks us down.

            May we not wait for trouble to strike before we embrace these steps that can enrich our lives with significance and bless us with a sense of connection. May the coming year be filled with many blessings for us all and may we be agents for increasing goodness in our community and in our world, And let us say, Amen.

 

Shanah Tovah

 

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