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Rabbi's Corner...
Rosh Hashanah Eve Joy 5770
Rabbi Lucy H.F. Dinner
Temple Beth Or
Rosh HaShanah Eve 5760
September 18, 2009
Un“Earth”ing the Joy in the World
I. Why are we here?
Hayom Harat Olam, today we mark the birth of the world. For our youngest set we call Rosh HaShanah the world’s birthday. Though the birthday party metaphor works for the little ones, for most of us, that imagery hardly captures the core sentiment of this day. If not for the world’s birthday party, what brings us here tonight?
Your Bubbie, yiddisha mama, can tell you what brings you here, or more precisely, what you will face if you don’t come to synagogue on the holiest days of the year. GUILT! Few can escape the lure of Bubbie with the threat of Jewish guilt poised on the tip of her tongue. Guilt squared if you count the looming call of Yom Kippur, requiring us to lay our souls bare in order to qualify for the Book of Life for 5770.
Tradition also draws us back, tradition that connects us to a 4,000 year chain. We utter ancient prayers drawn to the familiar rhythm of the Hebrew; that same Hebrew that graced our ancestors’ tongues, those same supplications that have threaded Jewish machzors for tens of hundreds of years. Tradition reminds us that we return on these holy days because we want to protect that link to generations past and nourish that link for generations yet to come.
So, too the idiosyncratic call of the shofar draws us back. The sound of the shofar claims the earliest name for Rosh Hashanah found in the Torah, Yom Teruah, the Day of the Great Blast. The ancient instrument of our ancestors, its penetrating call, stirs us, shakes us, and moves us out of the repetitive stupor that threatens to define our lives if we do not awaken our souls.
Guilt, tradition, and the call of the shofar beckon our presence, and we return each year. Guilt may get you to Bubbie’s table, but rarely can it get you to eat her gefilte fish, if you don’t have a taste for it. Tradition may entice you to explore your roots, yet tradition will not motivate your personal return to God during the Days of Awe. Guilt and tradition drive you to the synagogue. Ultimately, that ancient call of the shofar, and its tug to restore the soul, bring us to Hayom Harat Olam – to return to the creation of the world and to our own creation and the blessing it bestows upon us.
Hayom Harat Olam. We gather to envision the potential of our lives and of the world, which God has created. The shofar calls us to the hope of these Holy Days, of this commemoration of our world’s creation, to awaken us to the joyous possibilities.
II. The joy of Jacob
This year you helped me celebrate one of the most joyous days of my life, my son Jacob’s Bar Mitzvah. It is a rare gift to realize, while it is in unfolding, that you are in the midst of the sacred. One of the gifts of that day was that I stood in the moment, as it unfolded, aware of the joy overflowing, in me, and through me, and around me. The combination of my family, friends, and our congregational community, encircling me in witness of my son’s coming of age ignited an immediate, abiding sense of joy for me.
Jacob certainly had a role in prompting that joy through his d’var Torah which focused on the sin of abstaining from joy. Jacob taught that when one person refrains from the joyous, that the whole community is diminished by it. When you abstain from joy, when you refuse to participate in, or recognize blessing you are committing a sin. We have many sins to account for during these Holy Days, but rarely do we consider the joy we have disregarded among them.
With the exception of periods of mourning, or grave tragedy, we are taught that each and every day is an occasion for joy. The psalmist proclaims: “This is the day that the Lord has made, rejoice and be glad in it.” (Ps. 118:24) Oneg Shabbat punctuates our Sabbath worship services every Friday night. Oneg – joyous celebration – setting aside time specifically for pleasure, fulfills a mitzvah, in and of itself. Simcha, another Hebrew word for joy, is not just icing on the cake for our Jewish celebrations it is an imperative. On Simchat Torah we lift the Torah from the ark and hoist it on our shoulders as we dance in ecstatic rapture. The lights of the Hanukkah menorah are not be used for reading, lighting a room, or any purpose, other than for the joy and delight of their light. We are commanded to infuse our lives with joy, precisely to align our focus to simcha.
Perhaps we need these commandments to pursue joy, to pull us back from our tendency to overlook the ordinary and extraordinary miracles that grace our days. Mired down by the annoyances and aggravations that so often interrupt us, we come to see the forces around us and within us as tearing us down rather than building us up.
III. Un“earth”ing joy through the Creation Story
Creation Texts and Simcha
Minor irritants, like misplacing a key, having to wait for an appointment, accidentally buying the orange juice with lots of pulp instead of with little pulp, can knock a whole day off course. All the more so, the major challenges and stresses prevent us from the Jewish imperative to seek joy. This hayom harat olam celebrating the world’s creation tugs at us to return to the simple and the magnificent joys in our lives, and in our world. Each one of us has touch-points: places, people, or activities that light that spark. For some it is running a marathon, others a quiet hour to read a book, or weekly lunch with the gang. One of the touchstones for unearthing joy in my life is studying Torah. (I am a rabbi after all)
As we welcome the New Year, I want to share the joy I find in the study of Torah, through exploring three texts on creation and considering what they have to teach us about the Jewish commandments on simcha.
A. Ibn Ezra on Bereshit: make joy from chaos.
The first text comes from the very first words of Torah: Bereshit bara Elohim et hashamayim v’et haaretz. The traditional translation is well known to all: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The translation is somewhat misleading because the word Bereshit is an unusual construct of the word beginning. Medieval commentator Ibn Ezra, seizes on that ambiguity to offer a different translation: “In the beginning of God's creating”(Ibn Ezra, http://www.js.emory.edu/BLUMENTHAL/GenTradIbnEzraRamban.html) What’s the difference between: “In the beginning God created,” and “In the beginning of God’s creating?” A major philosophical battle – “In the beginning God created” indicates that nothing preceded creation, creation ex-nihilo. Ibn Ezra’s translation leaves open the possibility that some substantive form existed at the beginning of God’s creating. Where that substance came from, divine or otherwise, Ibn Ezra does not address. Instead he focuses on how God’s actions transform a mass of nebulous substance, chaos and void, into an orderly universe.
What does this text teach us about finding simcha? Ibn Ezra’s interpretation suggests that God transformed pre-existing, primordial, matter into a universe of substance, beauty, and blessing. From this we learn that joy can emerge from chaos. When we feel overwhelmed by the chaos in our lives, we too can create substance, beauty, and blessing. From the nebulous void that rains over us, there exists a kernel that we can transform into joy.
This lesson is especially poignant in this year where so many lives have been thrown into chaos. A month ago “Newsweek” magazine declared that the recession is over. This week the Federal Government admitted that though the official measures that define a recession may be over, that the impact of recovery will not be felt on an individual level for months, and even longer. On a personal level at Temple Beth Or we feel this impact as a community with: a record number of people looking for work; with a public school system that can’t afford to buy books for their students; with high school graduates who have trimmed their list of colleges due to economic realities; and with the humble realization that no honest work can malign an individual’s dignity.
Ibn Ezra’s interpretation of God’s creating from chaotic, primordial substance suggests that we too might create a new reality of beauty and substance from our individual chaos. Somewhere buried in the void is a sliver of joy that has been obscured until now. Some who have lost their jobs are using this time to retrain in a field that they have always longed to pursue. Others have downsized their possessions, decreased their obligations, and profess that even when things improve they do not intend to return to their previous lifestyle. B’nai Mitzvah families have trimmed celebrations from filet mignon to pizza, from light shows and dance teams to amplified MP3 players; and the youth are having just as much fun. The sales of new video gaming systems are down and family board game nights are back. Young adults, not to be outdone, are flocking in droves to huge, community wide, late-night game board parties.
Though the slivers of joy that individuals are creating cannot restore what has been lost, they are bringing light to the darkness. We are learning that many of the best things in the world are free: love, trust, and laughter for example. And we are discovering new capacities from within that confirm our resilience and affirm that we can live full, and often more fulfilling lives with less.
B. Vayar Ki Tov: Perspective/Intention Matters
The second insight on simcha comes from a text repeated over and over in the Creation story: “Vayar Elohim ki tov,” “And God saw that it was good.” After each major category of creation God pauses to look and then declares: “Ki Tov – this is good.” Throughout the ages the rabbis have asked: why did God have to look at the creations in order to know that they were good? An all-knowing, all-powerful God would simply intuit that the creations were good. The renowned commentator Ramban explained this verse to mean not that God looked but that: “God confirmed them [‘them’ meaning the creations] in their existence in God’s will.” (Ramban, Genesis 1:12, Ibid). According to Ramban, God willed it, intended to create it, and then confirmed the goodness of its existence. Ramban’s commentary suggests that the experience of existence follows the intentions of the creator. When one begins from a perspective of seeking and creating joy, one will both find and establish joy in the world.
Perspective, and intention, how you look at the world and what you are looking to create in the world, determine what you will see, and if you will experience goodness and joy, on a daily basis or only occasionally. The phrase “count your blessings,” is more than just a reminder to be grateful for what you have, it is a philosophy for living with simcha set as North on your compass. When we view the world through eyes looking for simcha, we will find simcha, and we will have a part in the creation of simcha. If you seek you will find.
Perspective and intention can shape the way we perceive reality and see the world. Consider this simple exchange that Arlene Pike, temple’s president, and I shared this summer. We were attending the presidential health care town meeting at special invitation extended through the Reform Movement’s Religious Action Center. The packed auditorium held approximately 2,500 people. Looking across the sea of people I asked Arlene do you notice anything unusual in any of those sections over there. Nothing in particular she replied. Look again, I prodded, this time look for orange. She immediately spotted the one section to the right where in what seemed like a random coincidence about 30% of the people were wearing orange shirts.
If you can train your eye to look for orange, you can train your heart to search for joy.
C. Every instant is ripe for creation of joy
The Creation story teaches us that we can create joy even from the chaos of our lives. It teaches us that when our intention is to find goodness in the world, we will have a much greater chance of recognizing goodness. And the Creation story teaches us a third corollary lesson.
There are many people who live their entire lives, perceiving each day as one day closer to the day that they will die. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel teaches contrary to this philosophy that each day is a new creation in and of itself to be celebrated. God completes each group of creations with the proclamation we examined in the last verse: ki tov. For human beings God withholds the pronouncement that we are good, until after God bestows upon us the responsibility for the other creations. And then God adds not “this is good,” but “this is very good.” The process of creation does not end. The responsibility for the continuation of creation is transferred from God to human beings. Heschel then instructs: “every instant is an act of creation.” This very instant that we are experiencing, this worship service and your very act of participation in it, “is an act of creation.” Creation did not end with God’s completion of the universe; instead, it became the domain of humanity. Rabbi Heschel extrapolated from this, that “every instant is an act of creation.”
There is something very powerful and sacred in realizing the depth of God’s gifting to humanity the ability to create. It is a sacred trust, the only aspect of creation labeled: “This is very good.” Every moment is a new creation, a moment ripe for human shaping into “Hineh tov meod – this is very good.” Each day is ripe for opportunity for joy, if we but create and embrace that joy.
The lesson from Heschel’s text challenges us to combine the message of the other two texts and to actively recognize and engage in creation. With the hope that we can find joy even in chaos, and with the intention to continually look for opportunities to create joy, we can find the monumental in each moment, the creation in each instant.
IV. Intending to Create Joy
Rachel Wooten, a dear friend of Temple Beth Or, attended Jacob’s Bar Mitzvah and took to heart his message about joy and propelled it into a personal covenant. She made a pact with a good friend, who lives in Wyoming, that for forty days they would email each other every day with something joyful that happened that day. What followed was a remarkable shift for each of them in how they perceived themselves and the world. On good days, finding joy was obvious. It was the days when joy was not so self evident that Rachel found herself profoundly moved by her commitment to find joy. She tells how the ordinary, things that you would not normally notice, became breathtaking: like the day she was sitting in her study and saw a wine-red dalia in full bloom outside her window. Many days Rachel found that when she discovered that day’s joy, her whole attitude shifted. A day that was full of malaise became lighter, not such a burden. So, too, the anticipation of the daily email from her friend became part of the joy in and of itself.
Over the course of those 40 days Rachel reported that she began to feel a rhythm in her quest for joy. Joy became an element of her daily practice, and a lens that opened her day in an entirely new way.
Every moment holds within it the power of creation. Rachel Wooten heard a Bar Mitzvah offer a lesson about the sin of abstaining from joy. She transformed that message from Torah into an imperative to find joy and share joy. Her journey became a new chapter in the interpretation of that verse of Torah.
Each one of us has the capacity to create, to make our days a living commentary on how to find goodness and share joy. As we enter this sacred season, I invite you to transform these holy days into your own quest for joy. Find a partner and make a pact to share something you find joyous in each of the next ten days. Feel free to share your joy with me on my Facebook page, and I will share mine there as well.
The capacity to find goodness, the ability to see each moment as an instant of creation, is at the very crux of what it means to celebrate Rosh Hashana, as Yom Harat Olam.
Join me in seeking joy in this New Year. Join me in elevating the monumental moments of our days. Join me in lifting up every act of creation in the year 5,770 as a testament of joy, as a moment worthy of God’s proclamation: “This is very good.”
AMEN
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