It’s Erev Rosh Hashanah, the sacred eve of the new
year. Darkness settles over the crowded
shul in the heart of the Old Country.
The air is heavy with anxiety as the community prepares to usher in the Yom HaDin, the great Day of
Judgment. Everyone watches with bated
breath as the rabbi slowly approaches the Holy Ark. He opens the curtain, bows low, then cries
out: Ich bin a gornisht, Ich bin a
gornisht—I am nothing, a no one!” Then he steps back, exhausted, but also a
little relieved.
The cantor and the president of the shul follow suit, then
the officers, the machers, and after
them, the rest of the congregation. All
file up, in turn, stand before the Torah and confess: Ich bin a gornisht—I am nothing!
Meanwhile, an itinerant beggar wanders in quietly and sits
on a back bench. Bewildered by the
commotion, he figures this must be the required congregational custom, so he
drags himself up to the ark, bows down and does his part: Ich bin a gornisht.
At which point the cantor turns to the rabbi and sneers:
“Look who thinks he’s a nothing!”
**********
This old Yiddish joke still brings a smile because, like
most Jewish humor, it contains a strong kernel of truth. It gently mocks the arrogance that underlies false
modesty. The punch-line warns us to be
wary of excessive humility, which may be just another expression of inflated
ego.
And yet, time and again in our liturgy for the Days of Awe,
we stand before the Holy One and proclaim our unworthiness: We are mere clay,
dust and ashes, passing clouds, grass that withers overnight. And we sing, repeatedly, the ancient
refrain: Avinu Malkeinu, chanaynu
v’anaynu, ki ayn banu ma’asim—God, have mercy on us and show us compassion, for
all of our deeds amount to. . . nothing.
That’s the song of this season, our constant plea—and it
boils down to this: All of our virtues,
our charitable deeds, our life’s work. . .
Gornisht. Nothing.
Each and every one of us, from the CEO to the homeless
beggar, the pious sage to the brash atheist—all of us stand before the Holy One
and say, “I am nothing.”
**********
So what can we make of this stark confession that runs
throughout our davenning during these Days of Awe? How might we find meaning in the seemingly
harsh and humbling words? One
possibility is to read them as a bracing corrective to our narcissistic secular
culture. In self-absorbed twenty-first
century America, Avinu Malkeinu can
be a powerful, counter-cultural reminder that we are not the center of the world. It’s the verbal equivalent of the Deep Field
Image captured by the Hubble Space telescope, in which a random slice of sky,
equivalent to the size of a tennis ball viewed from a hundred yards away,
reveals the presence of over 3,000 galaxies.
I love looking at that picture, because, paradoxically, even as it
points to our infinitesimal smallness, it makes me feel expansive—blessed to be
a tiny part of our magnificent, ever-expanding universe. I’ve enjoyed that same feeling while paddling
through whitewater canyons, camping in the rainforest, and walking the flanks
of Annapurna in the Himalayas. Like
those experiences, Avinu Malkeinu
simultaneously humbles and exalts us. As
my colleague, Rev. Marci Glass commented to me, the words remind us that good
deeds are our response to God’s grace, not a tally that we keep in the hope
that God will somehow find us worthy.
**********
A second reading of the prayer questions not just the impact of our actions but also their
underlying motivation. Perhaps our intentions are not as virtuous or
sincere as we would like to believe, even when our deeds lead to positive
results. We are incredibly complicated creatures; the
human brain, with its labyrinthine networks of over 100 billion neurons, is the
most complex structure in the known universe.
We are, therefore, mostly unaware of the processes that drive our
decisions and interactions. Our true and
full intent lies buried deep in our unconscious minds. So when we say, “Ayn banu ma’asim—We have no good deeds,” we are essentially
admitting that nothing we do can be considered a purely altruistic act. Even our kindest and most charitable
undertakings may contain a hidden streak of selfishness. This realization should not stop us from
striving for goodness, but it might make us a bit more humble about boasting of
it.
**********
My third and final reading of Avinu Malkeinu is the one that has resonated most powerfully for me
in the weeks leading up to this new year.
I learned it from the eighteenth century Hasidic master, Dov Baer of
Mezhirech, by way of Bob Dylan.
The Great Maggid, Dov Baer, offers a metaphor for the
experience of Nothingness, which he considers the only path to becoming a new
and better person. He taught:
Nothing is able to change
from one form to another—for example, an egg that would hatch into a chick,
without first completely nullifying its present form, which is to say, the
egg. Only then will another form be able
to come forth from it. It is this way
with everything in the world; it must attain the level of Nothingness. Then it will be able to become something
else.
In order to truly change, Dov Baer is telling us, we must
first strip away everything we’ve known.
If his language seems a bit opaque, Bob Dylan’s version, from his
masterpiece, “Like a Rolling Stone,” is much more succinct, as he sings, with a
snarl:
When you’ve got
nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose.
Nothing to lose. That’s
where Avinu Malkeinu takes us during
these Days of Awe—to the place where, having no accrued merit, we’ve got
nothing to lose. To where we can’t afford
to rest on our laurels or bask in our past accomplishments—for they may be exactly
what’s holding us back. Nothing to lose is a clarion call to keep
it fresh, to start anew. To grow.
**********
My friends, today’s progressive Jewish world dearly needs
this perspective, for many of our established practices and organizations
aren’t doing very well. Recent
demographic studies suggest that liberal Jewish institutions have become
sclerotic and out of touch. American
Jews are voting with their feet, exiting en masse. The 2013 Pew Center report, “A Portrait of
Jewish Americans” shows us abandoning religion at an alarming rate; almost a
quarter of us now claim virtually no connection whatsoever with communal Jewish
life. I suspect that in the
West—including here in Boise—the percentages are even worse. Across the board, the leading indicators such
as synagogue attendance, giving to tzedakah,
and identification with the land and people of Israel, have declined
precipitously. The vast majority of
today’s American Jews are Jewishly illiterate and communally disengaged.
So how has the Jewish establishment responded to this
epidemic of attrition? Mostly with
business as usual, fiddling while Rome burns.
We make superficial changes—tweaking our curricula, funding two week Birthright
trips, moderating our dues scale. It’s
the equivalent of applying band aids to gaping wounds—avoiding the systemic
change that this crisis demands around education, access, content and
membership.
But there are other voices, calling in the
wilderness—visionary leaders with the courage and creativity to break new
ground, like Noa Kushner, the rabbi at The Kitchen, San Francisco’s innovative
Jewish community without walls. Speaking
on the podcast “Judaism Unbound” she makes a powerful case for radical change,
noting: “When you look at the sheer numbers of who is and who isn’t participating
in Jewish communal life, if 90% are not connecting, drastic measures need to be
taken and experiments need to be run.”
The good news is that history is on Rabbi Kushner’s side—and
ours. If the past is prelude—and I
believe it is—then we need not despair.
We Jews have always rallied to renew ourselves in times of crisis. We
have survived for over three thousand years because we’ve been willing and able
to reinterpret Torah anew in every generation.
When the Romans destroyed the Temple, the Rabbis re-defined
the Jewish community as the People of the Book, thereby making our tradition
portable—and possible—in exile.
When our reading of that Book got out of balance, with too
much head and not enough heart, the Baal Shem Tov and his Hasidim reimagined
the tradition with ecstatic music and meditation, laughter and dance.
When Hasidism—and other Orthodoxies—rigidified, alienating young
Jews, Reform and Conservative Judaism arose to offer a lively, contemporary
alternative. And when those movements,
in turn, grew stagnant, Reconstructionism, Jewish Renewal, and a resurgent
Modern Orthodoxy revitalized Jewish community.
And when centuries of stateless exile grew first tiresome
and then lethal, Zionism enabled us to realize our people’s age-old dream to
reestablish a nation of our own.
Jewish life endures because we have always harkened to the
Darwinian imperative: adapt or perish.
That is why all the ancient empires, from Egypt to Rome to Babylon, have
vanished from the earth, but we are still here.
We Jews have adapted when others have perished—we have
endured—because we are committed to the Talmudic principle of ipcha mi-stabra—of questioning
everything, thinking outside the box, never being content with the status
quo. We’ve survived because we’ve been
willing to take chances, to try and fail, and try and fail again until we get
it right, at least for a little while, blazing creative new paths.
We’re still here because we know, from Avinu Malkeinu and a whole lot of history, that in watershed
moments, our past deeds amount to nothing if we do not use them to transform
our present.
Here, then, the question for us: What might the progressive
Jewish community look like if we applied this wisdom to our current
crisis? How might we envision our Jewish
future if, instead of clinging to hackneyed routines, we emulated our ancestors
and acted boldly, as if we had nothing to lose?
**********
For starters, we would stop blaming those who opt out. I suspect that many of you who are here
tonight do not plan to be back very much in the coming year. And many more—the large majority of Boise’s
Jewish population—are not here now and never have been. It is easy for rabbis and other Jewish
leaders to dismiss those on margins. Al cheyt—I’m guilty of this. I have used this bimah to urge infrequent attendees to up your commitment of both
time and money.
No more. Instead of
noodging or questioning those of you who rarely, if ever, come to shul, I want
to interpret your disengagement as a tacit dissent to our business-as-usual
approach. I want to ask, respectfully:
what can we do differently, to entice you to join us? How might our failures push us to evolve into
a more inclusive, spiritually-inspiring congregation? Those of us on the inside must learn to listen
to the unaffiliated and disengaged. Let
us hear their voices and harness their talents.
For oftentimes, the outliers teach us the most. As Jewish writer and activist Anita Diamant
teaches: a tallit is not a tallit without the fringes. They are what make
it holy. Systemic change rarely begins
with those most embedded in established institutions; it’s the folks on the
fringes who are best positioned to drive innovation.
By way of example, look at Nobel Prize-winning
scientists. On average, they receive the
award at fifty-five—but that is long after the fact; almost all make their breakthrough
discoveries early in their careers, before they become too entrenched in the
system to question its fundamental assumptions.
Younger people—and other outsiders—tend to be better at thinking outside
the box, because that’s where they live.
So, too, in the Jewish world. Veteran rabbis, educators and lay leaders—the
regular synagogue-goers—are not necessarily the best candidates to push for
radical change. We’re too vested in the
status quo. It’s no coincidence that the
Jewish story starts with Abraham, the original iconoclast, smashing his
father’s idols. Now, more than ever, we
need to seek out and nurture his ideological heirs. So if you are on the margins, dissatisfied
with Jewish life as it now stands, we need you.
I need you.
After nearly thirty years in the rabbinate, firmly planted
in the Jewish mainstream, I need your outsiders’ eyes and ears, your hearts and
minds. In saying this, I hasten to add
to the regulars, to those pillars of the congregation whose Jewish knowledge is
deep and whose longstanding commitment is unwavering: such outreach does not
come at your expense or diminish your standing. Your dedication and learning
will always be at the heart of what we do.
It is, instead, to say that expanding the circle strengthens
everyone. We can all accomplish more
when we complement our established wisdom with the pioneering spirit of Avinu Malkeinu, of striking out with
nothing to lose.
**********
A
new generation of innovators is already paving the way, engaging those on the
outskirts of Jewish life—listening to their concerns, incorporating their
gifts, and putting forth bold, new approaches to Jewish study, service, and
community-building.
I’ve
mentioned Noa Kushner and The Kitchen. Their mission statement lays out the task for
twenty-first century liberal Jewish institutions:
We believe that Jewish
religious practices change lives, make meaning, and invest people in the
world. This transformation requires a
flexible, living ecosystem of Jewish experiences. . . There are no insiders or
outsiders, there are no others here. We
are all others. . . We insist that Jewish practice be relevant, a tool for
greater investment in the world. At the
same time, we practice irreverent reverence—looking for places where the
every-day draws attention to the divine.
This
is holy work, a model for Jewish renewal in the spirit of nothing to lose.
And
there are others, with so much to teach us.
You can hear many of them yourself on the podcast, “Judaism Unbound”.
Sarah
Lefton grew up with a rudimentary Hebrew school education, then moved to a
community of knowledgeable Jewish day school grads on New York’s Upper West
Side, where she realized she wanted to learn more. So she took the skills she’d acquired as a
young, high-tech media entrepreneur and launched Godcast, a cutting-edge
organization that creates animated videos to teach Torah and other sacred
Jewish texts.
David
Cygielman graduated from university determined to do something about the
obvious gap that existed for transient, post-college Jews, too old for Hillel
but too young to join synagogues. So he started Moishe House, a network of
vibrant, home-based communities run by and for Jewish twenty-somethings. There are now 93 houses in 21
countries—including one in Seattle where my daughter, Tanya is part of the
team—and soon, under the leadership of our music educator and millennial
outreach director Nemmie Stieha, here in Boise, too.
Aliza
Kline is the daughter of a Reform rabbi.
She recently founded One Table, a Jewish start-up dedicated to helping
young Jews find, enjoy, and share Shabbat dinners together, all across America.
And
Rabbi Kerry Olitzky is the Executive Director of the Jewish Outreach
Institute. He’s also the author of Playlist Judaism: Making Choices for a Vital
Future. That book challenges the
Jewish establishment with a series of iconoclastic guiding principles,
including “There is no intrinsic value in membership” and “Options for
participation must emerge from the interest of individuals rather than the
needs of the synagogue so that individuals can freely create their own Playlist
Judaism”.
**********
These innovators—and a host of others like them—recognize
the need for radical change to renew progressive Jewish life. They teach us to look forward, as if our past
accomplishments amounted to nothing—as if we had nothing to lose.
And they know—and embrace—the shifting demographics of the
American Jewish community that they—and we—inhabit and serve. Our parents’ and grandparents’ Judaism of
ethnicity and nostalgia, of Fiddler on
the Roof and guilt and obligation is a relic of the past. So, too, the binaries that once defined
Jewish life: male or female, Ashkenazi or Sephardi, religious or secular,
Jewish or Gentile. Twenty-first century
Jews want their communities less fixed and more fluid. Gone are the days when you could recognize a
Jew by her name or appearance. We are
now white and black and brown, Asian and Hispanic, gay and straight and bi and
trans and gender-queer—and we are almost as likely to be named Harper
Christensen and Arjun Patel as Rachel Goldberg and Max Cohen. Today we’re all Jews by choice, even if both
of our parents are Jewish, for we choose and make our own identities, mixing
and matching as we see fit. We’re Jewish
atheists and agnostics, students and senior citizens, Jews with all sorts of
abilities and disabilities. We’re the
interested partners of intermarried Jews and the secular folks who identify as
Jew-ish.
For many of us, born and raised in the previous century,
this prospect is new—and frightening. The
Jewish future articulated by such diverse voices may strike us as strange and
even unrecognizable. We naturally fear
the unknown, the feel of the once-solid ground shifting beneath our feet.
This holy day of Rosh Hashanah acknowledges that anxiety—and
inspires us to take heart. For those of us
in the northern hemisphere, it arrives in the fall, when the natural world is
changing all around us, when everything is dying back, anticipating winter’s
dark and cold. And yet we know this is the
necessary prelude to spring’s rebirth, the pruning that allows for future
growth. We hear this seasonal song in the shofar’s
call, which is both a lament for the old year’s passing and the new year’s
first wail upon being born. It implores
us to muster the faith to work through our fear, to embrace the unknown, to acknowledge
with the visionary Rabbi Benay Lappe that, “In one hundred years, Judaism will
look radically different from how it looks to us—and that doesn’t scare me.”
**********
And so we sing: Avinu
Malkeinu, Show us compassion, for our deeds amount to nothing.
These words are, at the same time, hard and helpful,
challenging and inspiring. They are the
creed of a people called to constantly re-enter the wilderness, to live in the
land of nothing to lose. It is an uneasy
blessing. But there is great solace in knowing
that we do not travel this path alone.
We sing our song together, in sacred chorus, in community.
Rabbi Lawrence Kushner describes our journey beautifully in
his classic book, Honey from the Rock:
This is the setting
out.
The leaving of
everything behind.
Leaving the social
milieu. The preconceptions.
The
definitions. The language. The narrowed field of vision. The
expectations.
No longer expecting
relationships, memories, words, or letters to mean what they used to mean.
To
be, in a word: Open.
If you think you know
what you will find,
Then you will find
nothing.
If you expect nothing,
Then you will always
be surprised.
And able to bless the
One who creates the world anew each morning.
**********
Let us go, then, my friends, together, toward the Promised
Land, even knowing we will never entirely arrive. On this sacred day, let us set out, with
courage and faith—with nothing to lose, a revitalized Jewish future to gain.
Let us go, with the Holy One’s abundant mercy and compassion—
loving, listening, and learning from each and every one of
us.
