“Gems of the Bible” – Chayyei Sarah
Second Shabbat Series
November 13, 2009
Rabbi Serge A. Lippe
Brooklyn Heights Synagogue

In a well-known tale from Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, he describes giving a tour of his synagogue sanctuary for some of his synagogue's younger religious school students. He actually just gets the doors on the Ark open--the curtains still hiding the scrolls from sight--when the teachers give Rabbi Kushner the sign that they have to leave and return to their classroom. Rabbi Kushner finishes up with the students by saying: Next week, boys and girls, when we meet again, I’ll open these curtains and show you something very special inside.”

The very next day, one of the teachers showed up in Rabbi Kushner's study with the following tale.

Upon returning to the classroom the students engaged in a heated debate as to what was actually behind the curtain of the Ark. No one actually knew for sure! But the teacher swore that they volunteered the following four answers.

One child, no doubt a budding nihilist, thought the ark would be empty.

Another, of a more traditional inclination, supposed it held a sacred Jewish book or holy object.

A third, apparently a devotee of television game shows and consumer culture, offered, "there's a new car behind that curtain."

But the child last to express her opinion told the teachers and her classmates, "No, no, no. None of those are right! Next week when the rabbi guy opens the curtain, there will be a giant mirror inside!"

Somehow, says Kushner, the last little one intuited the great mystery of every sacred text: It is holy because in its words we meet ourselves. The idea is so elegant yet so elusive that it must be rediscovered anew by each generation. Through the looking glass of sacred text we are guided back to our own lives. The Bible can therefore function not only as our own personal tour guide, but indeed as our very own life story. We reread scripture not to learn about what happened to our ancestors, but to learn about ourselves

This year’s sermon series is entitled Gems of the Bible: Conflicted Stories from the Bible as a Source for Insight, Healing and Personal Growth.  In many ways the title is repetitive, after all, are there really any stories from the Bible that aren’t conflicted stories?

The real challenge of such a series is seeking positive insights and role modeling from stories so filled with dysfunction and difficulty. On the other hand that is also what makes these stories so relevant and powerful, contemporary and meaningful. Because amidst the dysfunction and conflict, there is far more than mere survival or endurance, more than simple perseverance and fortitude. There is also satisfaction and success. Imperfect lives lived richly and fully amidst the background of tragedy and failure, suffering and regret.

My approach to understanding these stories is personal and idiosyncratic, but it is also loyal to my rabbinic education and the wisdom of Jewish tradition.

‘Loyal to my rabbinic education,’ by which I mean my training in the Reform movement’s seminary. Simply put that means avoiding apologetics and refraining from the assumption that the Biblical characters were saints, or arguing that heinous or troubling actions are justified by Divine toleration or directive.

And by ‘loyal to the wisdom of Jewish tradition,’ I mean acknowledging that these stories cannot be understood or evaluated in a vacuum. Many, if not most Biblical stories are sparse on detail and even sparser when it comes to examining--much less sharing--the emotional motivations or reactions of the characters.

I want to avoid deconstructing the stories and characters into just any reconstruction that suits my fancy or agenda.

Rather, I will try to hew close to the peshat of the text, the plain meaning and rely on the midrashic tradition to fill in gaps that seem to agree with the flow and feel of the overall narrative.

An addendum to that point is that the Biblical story does not always tie up lose ends and frequently resolves familial or personal conflicts only by the death of a character. In other words, there is no grand resolution, no dramatic dénouement when it comes to interpersonal relationships and emotional baggage. But there are lessons, positive and negative. Gems worth dusting off and polishing that are too often obscured in the details of their narrative settings.

In preparing for a first exploration of our topic, I decided this month to begin with the weekly Torah portion, Chayei Sarah, which means the life of Sarah but actually records her death in its first few verses. The story we will examine is familiar to us all, even if we aren’t actually familiar with the Biblical tale itself. Genesis Chapter 23 is actually the story of the first Jewish funeral, so I’d argue that it is in its essence universal and a conflicted story. Just how conflicted we will now see.

It is easy on first glance to pass by this chapter as simply an exercise in acquiring a funeral plot. The rabbinic sages chose to focus on this story as the very first act of Jewish homesteading in the Holy Land.

But the first and most basic story is about the necessitations of death. 

Before we even read the first verse, we recall the events that concluded last week’s portion, Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac. According to the Midrash and Rashi it is no coincidence that Sarah dies at the very beginning of this portion.

In fact two reasonable suppositions are gleaned by the Midrash because of the back-to-back nature of these stories. First, that Sarah actually discovers what Abraham has gone off to do with her only child Isaac, and that her spirit departs her in that moment, she dies. 
And second, and consequently, Sarah’s death is sudden, unexpected, and possibly--far worse—at a geographic distance, taking place while Abraham is physically away on his test with Isaac.

In one read Abraham returns home to discover Sarah has died, intuits the reason, and must bear the guilt. The other approach is certainly worse: Abraham returned home, explained what he had been up to, and Sarah died of shock on the spot.

A careful read of the text will further sketch the emotional complexity of the situation. Abraham returns home without Isaac. This is clear from last week’s parasha and from Isaac’s absence in the funeral preparations. The apparently Divine test that Abraham seemed to pass last week now appears to be a dreadful failure in all its corollary aspects: Isaac disaffected and departed, Sarah suddenly and unexpectedly dead. Even Ishmael and Hagar have been previously cast out of Abraham’s camp and life. Having returned to his encampment--where he is surrounded by servants and a thriving business [as it were]--Abraham is profoundly alone.

Add to that, a fact that makes this parasha so compelling to us moderns: Though mentioned and invoked throughout this weekly portion, God as an active character is absolutely silent and almost absent in this entire parasha, not to return until Rebecca’s pregnancy next week. In fact, after the stopping Abraham from sacrificing his son, God never talks to Abraham again. Understood in this way, Abraham’s guilt must have been tremendous, his isolation profound, his fears unrestrained.

On top of all this Abraham is still something of a foreigner, He holds the biblical equivalent of a green card at best, his situation in that moment, really his life, which has been continuously unsettled time and again since God’s summons, must have seemed unbearable. His links to the past destroyed, his hope in the future called profoundly into question. Who was he, what was his purpose, had he made any right choices?

These are the circumstances that are the emotional and spiritual background to the sudden and unplanned need to lay Sarah to rest in an appropriate manner. And here the chapter is quite explicit about what I call the necessitations of death – the unexpected and emotionally surreal necessities that Abraham like any of us must go through when dealing with a profound, sudden and unexpected, unimaginable death.  The sudden confluence of utterly disparate elements and narratives in our lives that come summarily and unpleasantly together like tectonic plates when someone in our life dies.

Abraham like almost every Jewish male since must have been certain that he would have been the one to go first. No decent God would call your wife first and leave you without a clue. Yet here is Abraham, stubbornly and almost stoically making funeral arrangements. For myself, Isaac’s absence is palpable in these moments. The scene I have seen time and again and again as a congregational rabbi of widows and widowers, too often alone, struggling through the painful banalities of burying their dead.

All of this is alluded to in the opening verses. “Sarah died in Hebron in the land of Canaan; and Abraham proceeded to mourn for Sarah and to bewail her. Then Abraham rose from beside his dead, and spoke to the Hettites, saying, I am a resident alien among you; sell me a burial site among you, that I may take my dead for burial.”

Abraham mourned, he wailed, and then remarkably, he arose from beside his dead.  A part of Abraham had of course died along with Sarah. Yet he knew he had responsibilities; to her, to the vision of the future of his family, people, and yes, God.

So he got himself up from the dead, and took on the plainest and most difficult of tasks, burying his dead. He could not continue living until Sarah was buried. Yet he was a resident alien and had no rightful place to bury her that would remain his property. He could not simply rely on the kindness of strangers or even neighbors.

He was emotionally depleted, but his material resources were not. He could afford to do right by Sarah. He could have, however, delegated the task to his most trusted servant, his major domo, Eliezer of Damascus, as he does for the grueling journey back to Padan Aram to find a wife for Isaac in the next chapter. But this is a local task and Abraham will not delegate the task to another, not even his most trusted servant. Abraham seemed to understand intuitively that there is the opportunity for catharsis and healing in the performance of such mundane and painful tasks. The living cannot avoid death anymore than we can avoid the loved ones who are our dead. To rise up from beside our dead, we must first we must walk with them for a while.

So like generations of moderns, Abraham goes off to the ancient equivalent of Riverside and Gutterman’s to arrange the physical necessities. The necessitations of death aren’t simply buying a plot of land for the first Jewish cemetery in history. The necessitations of death are implied by that phrase ‘Abraham rose from beside his dead.’

The narrative then continues: and Abraham spoke to the Hettites, saying, ‘I am a resident alien among you; sell me a burial site among you, that I may remove my dead for burial.’ And the Hettites replied, ‘You are the elect of God among us. Bury your dead in the choicest of our burial places; none of us will withhold his burial place from you.’ Thereupon Abraham bowed low to the Hettites, and he said to them, ‘If it is your wish that I remove my dead for burial, you must agree to intercede for me with Ephron son of Zohar. Let him sell me the double-chambered cave that he owns, which is at the edge of his land. Let him sell it to me, at the full price, for a burial site in your midst.’ Ephron was present among the Hettites; so Ephron the Hettite answered, ‘I’ll give you the field and I’ll give you the cave that is in it; I’ll give it to you in the presence of my people. Bury your dead.’ Then Abraham bowed low before the people, and spoke to Ephron, saying, ‘Let me pay the price of the land; accept it from me, that I may bury my dead there.’ And Ephron replied, ‘A piece of land worth four hundred shekels of silver what is that between you and me? Go and bury your dead.’ Abraham accepted Ephron’s terms. Abraham paid out to Ephron the money that he had named in the hearing of the Hettites, four hundred shekels of silver. So Ephron’s land, the field with its cave and all the trees anywhere within the confines of that field passed to Abraham as his possession, in the presence of the Hettites. And then Abraham buried his wife Sarah in the cave of the field near Hebron.

There are two elements of the tale telling that the Torah itself emphasizes.

First, having just arisen from beside his dead, Abraham’s very first action is literally to bow low before the Hettites. This is all the more amazing because God has promised the Land to Abraham. Yet Abraham doesn’t appear to feel entitled to it. Though deep in grief, Abraham’s behavior is the hallmark of self-composure and Derek Eretz, courtesy to and concern for others. Because he knew exactly what he needed and wanted, Abraham was able to humble himself in the presence of those he needed the thing from. Though one could argue that it was the responsibility of the Hettites to deal with Abraham graciously because he was grieving, Abraham doesn’t presume that entitlement.

Secondly, he doesn’t recoil or react with shock or protest to the exorbitant price that Ephron asks for. In fact there is no negotiation at all. Abraham pays the price because he is able to, not because it is reasonable. Getting the best or even a reasonable price is not what is on his mind or conscience. Unlike the wisdom of many modern secular Jewish pundits, the rabbinic sages do not perceive Abraham as a schnook violating that cardinal secular Jewish ethic – thou shall not get taken like a schnook.

How often in reality when dealing with death do we manifest our grief and anger as expectations of entitlement or concern for being taken advantage of in a vulnerable moment? How often when we are in pain, or grief, or loss, or mourning—not merely for people, but also for lost opportunities or for dreams that have died—how often do we expect the world around us to respond to our efforts to get back up by conferring upon us entitlements? How often are we made brittle by fear that we are burying all our hopes and dreams? How often are we angry that we feel abandoned, yet often secretly believing that our own deeds validate that supposed abandonment? How often do we feel the Divine Presence, which we are seeking, is hidden or non-responsive to us? How often do we walk away from such losses feeling taken advantage of? Feeling like we’ve been made to look like a schnook, disrespected by those around us?

Abraham certainly had motivation to rail at those around him. He could have focused on the mercantile manner of the Hettites or the outrageous sum demanded ever so politely by Ephron. He could have complained of Isaac’s abandonment or even God’s absence. Yet Abraham chooses to look into his own mirror. To humble himself, to disregard the issue of actually having being taken advantage of. To see that satisfaction and achieving a higher purpose in our life almost always comes with the price tag of not merely standing tall, but also bowing down. Of not caring one way or another if someone thinks they have taken advantage of us.

We read at the end of the weekly portion: And Abraham breathed his last, dying at a good ripe age, old and contented; and he was gathered to his kin. His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the double chambered cave, in the field of Ephron son of Zohar the Hettite, facing the field that Abraham had bought from the Hettites; there Abraham was buried, with Sarah his wife.

Death, which we all encounter, which deprives all of us of finishing conversations and resolving conflicts and even healing wounds, death is like a furnace that can either make us malleable or brittle. We must pass through that furnace to mourn and bewail if we are ever to return and arise from our dead. We cannot avoid it. But the furnace of death anneals each of us differently depending on what compounds we bring along and what we leave behind to burn off in that crucible.

Erev Rosh HaShanah 5769
Brooklyn Heights Synagogue
Rabbi Serge A. Lippe

 B'rosh hashana yikateivun u-v'yom tzom kippur yeichateimun

Unfortunately, it is likely to have to wait until after the Rosh Hashana to be written,
and it will take a combination of yet undemonstrated leadership and luck
for it to by signed and sealed by Yom Kippur.
 
Its hard on this eve of the New Year to shift our focus away from the continuing debacle of the economic meltdown on Wall Street and the mortgage industry and the concomitant shock-waves being felt across our nation and in the capitol.
 
One doesn't need to have a sub-prime mortgage, a declining stock portfolio or even a CD paid out by the FDIC to be concerned.

Job security for us, our spouses, children, friends certainly weighs heavily upon many, if not most of the families in our congregation. Fear of foreclosure and a frozen credit market mean that many of us may be scratching our heads figuring out how to pay bills in a timely fashion. Savings and retirement funds linked to the market—especially financial industry stocks—almost certainly mean that some are no longer positioned to retire any time soon, and others may have seen a lifetime of retirement planning seemingly evaporate in the last months.

Our interconnected economy appears day by day to be more and more a house of cards. And there could be NO worse moment in our national political life for elected officials to need to achieve consensus, serious compromise and share the blame, than just shy of 40 days and nights prior to a Presidential election.

U•teshuvah, u•tefillah u•tzedakah maavirin et roa ha•gezeirah-

Repentance, Prayer and Charity seem unlikely to be sufficient tools to resolve the current crisis. Though all three in their measure will undoubtedly be necessary and much invoked in coming days.

The long voiced concern about our children living lives less affluent than our own seems already at hand. And it is that anxiety that I would risk tackling on this tipping point of the Jewish New Year.

That fear, that our children will live lives less affluent than our own, reveals a prioritization in our modern American system of values that we need to examine.

You know, Affluence is not derided in Jewish tradition. Money is not the root of all evil, nor the love of it. In fact, says the Midrash, without the urge to acquire—the yetzer hara—no one would build a house, take a spouse, beget children, or engage in trade . . .(Genesis Rabbah 9:7)

Poverty is not esteemed in Jewish tradition. It does not ennoble the poor. Far from it, poverty is seen as a curse with no saving graces. "There is nothing harder in the world than poverty" says the Midrash (Ex.R.31:12). And the Talmud declares, that "Poverty is like death" (Ned. 7b).

Poverty is one of the three causes that deprive a person of their senses (Eruvin 41b). "Poverty easily overwhelms us, forcing us to focus all our energies on our physical survival."(p.107 Jewish Moral Virtues – Rabbi Eugene Bororowitz) The rabbis of the Talmud urge that it is better to take a job skinning carcasses in the public street than stand on pride. Better to relocate, than lack a job. Better to make Sabbath and Festival like a workday, with no special meals or extravagances than to rely on charity.  But wealth is not the goal.

Judaism does NOT value wealth for its own sake, but rather we value wealth as a tool to be wisely wielded. For wealth, sagely used, permits not merely personal independence, our ability to support others, and the honor that accompanies the presumption of the hard work that builds wealth; it also allows us to fulfill our role as God's partners, to fulfill our social responsibilities by creating societal weal.

Wealth is a blessing, but also a significant responsibility.

In fact, while poverty is to be avoided, wealth must be managed. Not in the modern sense of money management, but in the traditional religious sense that wealth can become a snare. As Ecclesiastes (5:11) teaches, "The rich person's affluence doesn't let him sleep." 


The 10th century Babylonian academy master Saadiah Gaon wrote (in The Book of Beliefs and Opinions) that, "Once one passionately seeks wealth, one discovers that it entails immense efforts of thought and exertion, keeping one awake at night and plagued by responsibilities during the day, so that even when one has acquired what one desires, one cannot sleep properly."

Saadiah's words could not ring any more resonantly than at this moment. For the flip side of the truth about affluence is that even with the greatest minds and efforts, wealth comes and goes in cycles. "Gelt iz kay-lech-dik--a mol iz es do, a mol iz es dort." Money is round--sometimes it's here, sometimes it's there. [In other words, It has a tendency to roll away] Or as the Book of Proverbs offers, "Don't exhaust yourself trying to make money. You see it and then it’s gone. It grows wings and then flies away." (23:4-5)

A more recent and spot on Jewish reflection on the fleeting nature of affluence can be found in the writings of Rabbi Jonathan Sachs, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth: “Almost every human civilization has had its periods of growth, maturity, and decline. The free market . . . may be no exception.”

English is a beautifully nuanced language. It permits us to distinguish gradations of gray unimagined in Hebrew. Few of us here would describe ourselves as rich or even wealthy. Perhaps a number of us, in more frank private moments, might risk labeling ourselves ‘affluent’ or ‘well to do’.

Perhaps you know the joke: An elderly Jewish man was k’ein a hara hit by a bus. In the hospital a kind nurse put a pillow under his head and asked, "Are you comfortable Mr. Cohen?" "Thank God," he whispered, "I make a nice living."


By at least one of the benchmarks of Jewish antiquity all of us are affluent and well to do.

In the tractate Shabbat (25b), Our Rabbis taught: Who is wealthy?

[One who derives satisfaction from his/her wealth: this is R. Meir's view. ] 

R. Tarfon said: One who possesses a hundred vineyards, a hundred fields and a hundred servants working in them. 

R. Akiba said: One who has a spouse beautiful in deeds.

R. Yose said: One who has a privy near their dining table.


As I commented, at least by Rabbi Yose’s standard we are all affluent and well to do. Many of us would also count ourselves affluent, indeed truly wealthy according to Rabbi Akiva’s dictum – I know I certainly do! And though I doubt more than a single handful of us could afford a hundred vineyards with employees toiling away in each, a few here might meet even that criteria. And no matter how bad the current economic crisis becomes, I suspect—or at least hope—that the vast majority of us will still have food on the table and a privy close enough at hand.


How do we modern American Jews define affluence?

Especially in America, affluence is a comparative, a means of judging our economic and perhaps social station in comparison with others. Our neighbors, our colleagues, even in comparison with the memory of the economic and social strata of our childhood home life.

Affluence is–in large part—the level to which we have satisfied our desires of competition with others.


Remember the Midrash I shared earlier about the yetzer ha-ra—the evil or acquisitive inclination: “without the Yetzer HaRa, no one would build a house, take a spouse, beget children, or engage in trade” well one version continues with this comment: “for thus said Solomon: Again, I considered all labor and all excelling in work, that it is [brought about by] a person's rivalry with their neighbor."  (Kohelet Rabbah IV, 4)

And the satisfaction of such desires can be a slippery slope.

Ecclesiastes 5:9 comments that “One who loves silver will never be content with silver!” The Midrash on this verse [Ecclesiastes 1:34] adds: "One who possesses one hundred, desires two hundred. One who possesses two hundred, desires four hundred. No one dies with even half of their desires fulfilled." 


My maternal grandmother liked to say, “if you have your health, you have everything, if you don’t have your health, all the money in the world can’t make your life worth living. But it might well make it more comfortable.”

When did we begin to confuse comforts with spiritual satisfaction and true blessings?

It is true, that we may well be entering a period of sustained economic contraction, and our affluence may well diminish, our creature comforts become less than before, less than we had grown accustomed to.

But is the diminishment of creature comforts, the potential decline in our and our children’s material affluence, the real crisis?

Before I answer that question, we should be clear that for some of us, my family included, there are real uncertainties affecting us day by day. It will surprise none of you that Deb and I have struggled with questions regarding her security at her firm, which we believe is high, but also the inevitable challenges she and I and our family will be facing in the coming months. We have asked ourselves questions about our ability to pay bills, to keep commitments, to keep our children in the schools we have chosen, to employ the personnel who help us run our home and lives. Like many of you, we have cancelled trips, changed spending habits and patterns and tried to scale back our consumerist inclinations. We have listened and counseled, been comforted and consoled, as friends and family, sometimes in better and sometimes in worse circumstances have also struggled through the preceding months.

And this congregation, which is so much more than a mere membership organization, I know, will be here for us and all of you as the twists and turns of the future unwind and are revealed. This is not a congregation of polite strangers. At some 350 families, not every family knows every other, but there are deep and long established ties among many here tonight.

I encourage you to make yourselves receptive to one another, to extend yourselves, to expand the circle of support and to not let anyone weather this storm alone. Quite literally, your reaching out to old friends and new acquaintances can be a lifeline. And for those, hopefully few, who find their lives upended in this economic crisis, I extend a request that you let me, as your rabbi be aware of the challenges that you and your family are facing. The synagogue and I cannot respond to what we are unaware of, but will give great effort when made aware.

And tonight I reiterate an already known truth that no one need fear that fortune’s unexpected turn in their lives means that the door to this synagogue will be closed on them.

And though Jewish customs and practices, rabbinic counseling and insight will not produce financial miracles for any of us, tonight I believe that Jewish tradition provides a spiritual antidote to at least some of the dread and anxiety that is pervading the country.


Our Rabbis taught: Who is wealthy?

The first answer from Rabbi Meir that I breezed passed is right!

One who derives satisfaction [nahat ruah] from his/her wealth.

Or as Pirkei Avot even more precisely declares:

Aizeh hu ashir? Who is truly wealthy?

Ha sameah b’helko!  The one who finds happiness in whatever his portion!


Here is a lost sensibility. It is not the quantity of wealth or keeping up with the Geltsteins that makes for our spiritual satisfaction – our nahat ruah. Wealth, affluence can bring comfort, but not meaning or spiritual satisfaction to our lives.

It seems to me that in the last 30 years we have been sold a bill of goods encapsulated in that famous 1990s bumper-sticker ‘he who dies with the most toys wins’, and despite recognizing how foolish a notion that must be, we have accepted it as at least a half-truth if not a three-quarters truth.

Rabbi Harold Kushner in his book - When All You've Ever Wanted Isn't Enough, a modern riff on the Book of Ecclesiastes, also asks what is an affluent life? He writes “It is not about . . . amassing great wealth, achieving great power. It is about loving and being loved . . . savoring the beauty of moments that don't last . . . the rare moments of true human communication.''

Spiritual affluence, meaning, is about communication and connection. It is about relationships. Relationships in which we invest our lives. Relationships with our spouses and partners, siblings and in-laws, children and parents. Relationships with our friends and neighbors, colleagues and associates. The investment is no less difficult, perhaps in fact even more difficult than managing our financial investments in the market, and the return is not guaranteed either, but we will grow in our nahat ruach--our spiritual satisfaction—just by making the investment, regardless of the return.

We are looking—perhaps—into a future in which the sun may be setting on some of the material comforts and choices that we have too long taken for granted or considered our entitlements. It is not certain and for many of us we will need a period of time to mourn the loss of the familiar and expected. But mourn we will and move on.

For all of us, God willing, this change in paradigm also presents us with an opportunity to reexamine our preoccupation with and valuation of material affluence and spiritual blessings.

Yes, our children—my children—may live lives that are materially less affluent than our own, but perhaps they may also live lives that are spiritually richer, more satisfying and more meaningful, for material wealth cannot bring those outcomes.

Such an outcome will not be an accident, for it will also require attention to the details and even some lost sleep.

It will mean devoting at least as much attention to examining what gives our own lives meaning and satisfaction as we have devoted to managing our 401k, stock portfolio or business plan.

As I said earlier, for Jews, wealth has always been a tool, a means to an end. It is not the sole, singular instrument available to us. And wealth alone can never suffice to help us partner with God in repairing this world. For it is in human connection, family and community that we discover the meaning that can fill our lives.

Jewish tradition offers rituals and disciplines that are intended to remind us not to take our blessings for granted. A list of a hundred blessings to acknowledge our daily miracles. Nisim b’chol yom and birchot nehenin. Imagine what a role model each of us would become for ourselves and our loved ones, if we were to develop the habit of personally acknowledging—proclaiming--our daily blessings, aloud in daily ritual, at least as frequently as we check our 401K and our checking balance.

For a moment, put aside your very valid critiques of this sermon and just stop, stop and look around you. Notice your loved ones, your friends and acquaintances. Think of all those who have sat here in previous years and are now absent yet have left us a legacy. And look out at these newest faces, young and old, who have joined us.

So many of our lives are overflowing with blessings that can never take material form but would leave us bereft in their absence.


We take them for granted and to rarely—if ever—say thank you!!!

 
Yes, there is what we are losing.

Our material affluence is not nothing.

But it cannot possibly be the singularly most important element of our lives. No!


The blessings that truly fill our lives and give it meaning are not found in some account or spread sheet,  they are found sitting in the pews right next to you.

 
Avinu Malkeinu – malei yadeinu mi-birchotecha

Avinu Malkeinu -- fill our hands – not with wealth or material affluence – but with your blessings!

 
Inscribe our lives in your tally sheet O God,

Inscribe us for blessing and joy,

For health and well being,

For kindness and concern,

For community and friendship.

Inscribe us for lives of meaning and spiritual satisfaction,

and let us say: Amen!

 
Erev Yom Kippur 5768
September 21, 2007
"Mastering our Time"
Rabbi Serge A. Lippe
Brooklyn Heights Synagogue

On Monday, there is almost an absolute certainty that in some synagogue in this country,
a phone call will be received that sounds something like this to those listening in on the office end of the conversation:

Shalom and Good morning this is Temple Beth Torah. You're interested in purchasing High Holiday Tickets?  You mean for next year ma'am? Oh I'm so sorry but Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur were actually last week.  Well, I'd be happy to put you our non-member mailing list. Yes?  Yes I can give you the dates for next year.  Rosh Hashana will fall on Monday evening, September 29th , Yom Kippur on Wednesday evening, October 8th. Yes ma'am, they are late next year.  Well thank you, it was my pleasure assisting you.  L'shana tovah and shalom!

Once upon a time, in a real story, a young rabbi received a phone call from the mayor of a town, who was also an official in a statewide political party. This congregant called to seek absolution for a heit, an error in judgment, made not in commission but only omission.
What was the error? The State convention for that political party had somehow been scheduled on Yom Kippur for the following year and—though now realized—was nevertheless unchangeable because of deposits and fees already paid. No one had looked at the Jewish calendar.

Once upon a time, even longer ago, a student rabbi received a call from the president of another congregation here in Brooklyn, asking him to not get upset. The president wanted the student rabbi to know that the Brotherhood had scheduled a wonderful white water rafting trip that unfortunately the student rabbi would not be able to attend. The student rabbi wondered if he had offended someone. No explained the president, somehow the trip had been scheduled on the same morning as Shemini Atzeret and the student rabbi would, of course, be leading services and yizkor at the synagogue, albeit with a smaller turn out.

Showing up really is 50 percent of Jewish life and observance.  And all of you gathered here at Plymouth tonight made it here, most likely, not by accident, but because you expected it.
You knew the Jewish holidays were coming, maybe you were unsure of exactly when, a little earlier or latter, but Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are part of the cycle of the days we have been raised to expect. And of course, to help pinpoint and secure this date, you received numerous mailings from the synagogue. You posted the BHS calendar on your refrigerator door,  and you (or your administrative assistant) recorded the dates in your filofax, your palm pilot, your blackberry or your iPhone.

Today we are nothing if not individual Masters of our overcommitted schedules.  We enter dates, resolve scheduling conflicts, tweak calendars and prior-plan our days, weeks, months, and even years, down to the minutia of minutes.  We work and live in perpetual flex-time,
multi-tasking our occupations, relationships, child and parent care, vacation and school schedules and a slew of constantly competing demands. We individually expect, and are expected to, juggle the delivery, the drop-off, the pick-up and the teleconference.

Yet there is a down side to being the almost absolute and singular authors and arbiters
of our own calendars. Having gained personal liberty over what was once deemed a top-down relatively inflexible calendar, we now move through the days and weeks, months and seasons of the year relatively unmoored to the traditional patterns and flow of the year. We are pulled no longer by a single calendar of a single community, but rather the mass and multiplicity of dates and demands from numerous and almost constantly competing commitments.

As a result we are rarely conscious of the flow of times and seasons. Events and celebrations appear like surprises for us. We lose track of holidays, birthdays and anniversaries. We lose touch with family and friends, civic organizations and the larger society.  The days—intended to mark our identity and membership in something greater –have lost their resonance. Having become Masters of our Time and the Sole Stewards of our Calendars, we have lost our moorings to the communities and greater society around us as every day is a day solely of our own reckoning and choice.

Once upon a time, calendars were the provenance of kings and priests. Calendars were societal documents that delineated the boundaries of societies and communities. Battles were waged over controlling the calendar. Julius Caesar was assassinated a month to the day of his usurping the Senate's right to set the Roman calendar and its holy days.  In the aftermath of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, Rabban Gamliel of Seder fame, the head of the Sanhedrin, for the sake of Jewish communal unity, ordered his elder and mentor, Rabbi Joshua, to travel to Gamliel in Yavneh, with staff and wallet in hand on the very day Rabbi Joshua had calculated as Yom Kippur. Not to embarrass his mentor, but to offer an object lesson in the danger to Jewish communal existence—and therefore Jewish identity and continuity—if the dating of the Day of Atonement was unresolved, uncertain.

In all societies and cultures, and especially in Jewish life, the impulse to create and maintain a communal calendar is ancient.  But the Jewish impulse toward calendrical unity has never been an end in itself. As Judaism and the Jewish people grew and spread, from Palestine to Babylonia, to Egypt and North Africa, to Europe and then the Americas, the "evolution of the Jewish calendar . . . epitomize[d] the gradual development of solidarity and communitas
among the [expanding] Jewish [people] . . . and hence, the development of an increasingly united culture and religion" writes historian Sacha Stern.

Communal calendars are not merely attempts to structure conformity, they are also attempts to establish a stage for the existence of community. How can we have community if we do not come together? Can you imagine if Thanksgiving was declared to be
any weekend in November that was convenient?

Calendar is a means of fashioning and maintaining community and identity. Calendar is a way for communities to define themselves as well as define their relationships with the greater world.

But the calendar is only as effective as each member of the community is aware of it.

In a day and age when we each of us personally controls our own calendar; and technology —almost addictively—has made that control so precise and immediate; there is now, theoretically, no excuse for not knowing, for not being aware of the flow of Jewish time and observance. No excuse for not living a bit more consciously and conscientiously
in Jewish time.

Whether you use Outlook or pencil in a hard copy calendar. Whether you keep every event on a Blackberry or keep separate calendars for business, school, family events and travel-
the information and technology is now available for you to easily integrate the events of the Jewish year. Whether you decide just to enter the holidays, or maybe the weekly Torah portions, or even the Hebrew month and date, there is nothing physically keeping you from adding a layer of Jewish awareness to the calendars you keep and lives you live.

To assist you, you'll not only be able to find the dates on our web site, but we also have laminated calendars* you can take home with you tonight. And I am making the personal offer that if you would like to learn how to integrate that information electronically into your computer or PDA, if you email me your specifics at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , I will happily send you the link to the Jewish calendar site meant for your device and program.

Of course what you do with that information will remain up to you. But I know that there's nothing like a little intentional ignorance to provide cover for something we might want to avoid. So you'll please forgive me if I'm hopeful, and a bit of a nudge. It is not so much observance of the calendar that I am urging tonight as the more basic communal building block of awareness. Of choosing to live in the awareness of Jewish time.

Tonight I am asking you to consider making a small but important Jewish commitment:
Awareness, not just of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, the first night of Chanukah and the Seder – the four best know dates of the American Jewish calendar.  [Nor, that you will attend every major and minor festival of the Jewish year, ]

But rather, that you will weave into the fabric of your personal and business and academic calendars the golden strands of Awareness of our Jewish communal days so that at least, AT LEAST, as days like Sukkot and Simchat Torah, Chanukah and Tu Bishvat and Purim, the Seder and the Seventh Day of Passover, Shavuot and Tisha B'Av approach, you will not only know ahead of time, but maybe make your decision on where you will be and what you will be doing with those dates consciously in mind.

Eleh moadei Adonai asher tikr'u otam mikraei kodesh. Good Yontiff, Tzom Kal and G'mar Tov!