Dear friends,
Until Terrible Tuesday, September 11, 2001, a day that will forever be seared in our memories and branded on our hearts and souls, until that day, I never ever completely understood the true meaning of Yom Kippur. I never experienced what Yom Kippur truly wants to communicate to us. I never fully grasped the great truths it has to teach. I never comprehended the power of this day and the hope it holds out to us and to all humanity. Now I believe I do. I more than regret the hurt and pain and losses of that Terrible Tuesday. If I could undo it, I would. We all would. But I do not regret the lessons we are learning from it.
I use two texts for my remarks this evening. The well-known Unetaneh Tokef prayer recited on the mornings of Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur is my first text. The second text, or the subtext if you will, the background text against which we can now understand Unetaneh Tokef and with it Yom Kippur, is Tuesday, September 11, 2001.
Tradition ascribes Unetaneh Tokef to Rabbi Amnon of Mayence, who composed it as he lay dying in martyrdom. He was carried into the synagogue on Rosh Hashannah, placed before the Ark on a litter, spoke these words, his last words, and died. Rabbi Amnon paints a picture of the awesome power of this day. Kee Hoo Nora V’Ayom. “How powerful is Yom Hadin, Yom Kippur, the Day of Judgement! It is a day of awe and anxiety,” he says! When its power is experienced, its consequences are unimaginable, far reaching, and life altering. How powerful is Yom Kippur meant to be? Ask, how powerful and far reaching was Terrible Tuesday! We will not grasp its real meaning for weeks or months or even years. The ripple effect may never end completely. But we do know that it has been and continues to be life altering.
“We behold Thee, God, as “Dayan Va’Ed,” as Judge and Witness… On this awesome, mighty, powerful day we are judged.” These days, the days following Terrible Tuesday, are not we all being judged and evaluated? Are not we all being summoned to stand up and be counted?
“U’V’Shofar Gadol Yeetakah.” “The great Shofar is sounded!” It summons us to Yom Hadin, the Day of Judgement! This year another sound-a horrible sound- the sound of explosion and shattering glass and bending metal and huge buildings imploding inward upon themselves and crashing down- a horrible sound rang out in New York and Washington and reverberated throughout the world. No one did not hear. No one is left untouched. We are all summoned!
“Hineh Yom Hadin! ”“Behold -The Day of Judgement!” For the entire world! For us as individuals! This year we are all called to judgement!
“All who enter the world dost Thou cause to pass before Thee, one by one, as a flock of sheep. As a shepherd musters his sheep and causes them to pass beneath his staff, so dost Thou pass and record, count and visit, every living soul, appointing the measure of every creature’s life and decreeing its destiny.” This year no one feels exempt from this awesome Day of Reckoning. This year we experience, as never before, and certainly not in my lifetime, that in so many unpredictable and unforeseeable ways our destiny, our fate, the quality of our lives and the length of our years, are not in our hands. We pretend that it is not so. We believe that we can control everything, including our own destiny. We believe that we can defeat every illness, control the environment, even banish death from the face of the earth!
Today we know it is not so. Go out the door and arrive at work. Who knows what will happen! Deal with it however we will. Call it God’s will! Call it fate or destiny or karma. Call it just plain luck or the roll of the dice. Bottom line, that comfortable and soothing illusion by which we live and that makes life bearable has been shattered forever!
How long and how well we shall live is beyond our understanding! “B’Rosh Hashannah Yeekatayvoon u’Vyom Tzom Kippur Yaychtaymoon.” “On New Year’s Day the decree is inscribed and on the Day of Atonement it is sealed.” “Kamah” How many and who shall pass away; and how many and who shall be born. “Mi Yichyeh u’Mee Yamoot.” Who shall live and who shall die. Who shall attain a full measure of days and who shall not attain it. “Mi Ba-Esh”-Who shall perish by fire “Oomee Vamayim”-and who by water! “Mi Bacherev” Who by sword “ooMi Bachayah”-and who by beast! “Mi Ba’ra-ahv” Who by hunger “ooMi Batzamah”-and who by thirst! Who by earthquake and who by plague! Who by strangling and who by stoning! Who shall have rest and who shall go wandering! Who shall be tranquil and who shall be disturbed! Who shall be at ease and who shall be afflicted! Who shall become poor and who shall wax rich! Who shall be brought low and who shall be exalted!
What a harsh truth! In light of Terrible Tuesday who could deny it! But who wants to live with it? Who can live with it? Who wants to carry this burden throughout one’s lifetime? Who wants to live every second, as we still are today, only 15 days after Terrible Tuesday, with the unrelenting experience that we find difficulty in focusing on life and concentrating, that we can’t get our acts together, that we walk around in a daze and feel a palpable pall hanging over everything, and feel subdued and like the life has been kicked out of us! Is there no remedy to our experience? Is that not the question we are asking? Is this not what we are now looking for, 15 days after our world collapsed? A remedy?
Rabbi Amnon offers such a remedy. His prayer does not end on the note that we should lie down and give up because we never know what tomorrow will bring. Yes, Rabbi Amnon is a firm believer in acknowledging the harsh realities of life for what they are. After September 11, so are we. But then, near the end of his prayer, he proclaims:
U’Teshuva, U’Tefila, U’Tzedaka Ma’avirin Et Roah Hagezayarh.
Repentance, Prayer and Righteousness Avert The Severe Decree
I know how we are reacting to these words. A typical rabbinical response! Just what we expected! Could have predicted it! What else would you anticipate from a Rabbi who has to give a sermon on Kol Nidrei Night? A pat formula that really does not address our pain and anguish! That is what I also thought-until I took a closer look. I could not believe that this Rabbi, who described our human situation and suffering so accurately, would then abandon us to a simple theological formula that makes no sense and leave us without any comfort. I went back to his words. I studied them
U’Teshuva, U’Tefila, U’Tzedaka ma’avirin et roah hagezayarh.
Repentance, Prayer and Righteousness Avert The Severe Decree
and I made several discoveries.
First and most important, in the phrase “Repentance, Prayer and Righteousness Avert The Severe Decree,” the words “avert the severe decree” are translated incorrectly. Rabbi Amnon was nobody’s fool. He knew full well, from the world around him, and certainly from his own life and death, that repentance, prayer, and righteousness do not always have the power to avert severe decrees against us, regardless of whether they come from God, from people, or from the world of nature! So what does Rabbi Amnon mean to say?
Rabbi Amnon wants us to know that Teshuva, Tefila, and Tzedaka-Repentance, Prayer, and Righteousness- have a very special and unique power. They have the ability to soften the harshness of life’s decrees, even when we can not avert them. They have the ability to make them bearable. If we live lives of Repentance and Prayer and Righteousness, whenever harsh decrees come upon us we will know and be grateful for the good lives that we were able to have lived because Repentance, Prayer and Righteousness were our guides.
Captain Timothy Stackpole, a New York City fireman who died on Terrible Tuesday, was laid to rest on Monday of this week. Previously he had been seriously injured in fighting another fire and could have retired. He chose not to retire because, he said, to continue in his job was the right thing to do. He died doing the right thing. He was known by his family and colleagues and friends as a man who always did the right thing. He built his life on that basis. His family and friends- these are their sentiments, not the sentiments of Rabbi Amnon or another theologian or clergy person-his family and friends all said they were comforted in knowing that he died doing the right thing. PAUSE
At any moment in our lives we must be able to look back and not feel that we wasted the precious time we were given. We must know that no caring word was left unsaid, no hug was not given, no kiss was held back, no embrace was withheld, no phone call not made, no letter not written. We must know that our lives were of a benefit to others and the good we did will last forever. We must know that we cared about more than ourselves and contributed to building a good world! And when awesome challenges come our way, we will discover that we do have the strength and courage and determination to stand up and be counted.
The real test in life is not how to avert the severe decrees. That may not be in our hands. When Yom Hadin, The Awesome and Anxiety Producing Day, The Day of Judgement, Terrible Tuesday-when such a day comes, it can not be averted. The real test in life is to live our lives so that we are equipped as best as possible to face The Day with courage and confidence and faith.
Rabbi Amnon would suggest that there are three components to building such lives of substance. They are Teshuvah, Tefillah, and Tzedaka.
Teshuvah-Repentance: Teshuvah is so much more than taking time once a year to say I am sorry and ask forgiveness for our misdeeds. To reduce it to this is to completely miss its essence! Teshuvah really means to return, to come back. To take a hard look at our lives, see how they really stack up, and once and for all get rid of all the junk that gums up the works. I could give you a long explanation of what this means. I won’t because I don’t have to, we all know it. The problem is not in figuring out what Teshuvah means; the problem is in getting motivated enough to do it! The ideal Yom Kippur experience would do that for us. Unfortunately, it doesn’t!
Tefillah-Prayer. Prayer in Jewish tradition takes place within the confines of community. There is strength and comfort to be found in a community being together to pray. There is a sharing of fears and anxieties and concerns that helps diminish the pain. There is the reinforcement of the values that sustain us in times of challenge. There is the solidarity of being together in tough times and the renewed hope that comes from knowing that we are not alone. There is the reaffirmation of all that we believe in and hold sacred and inviolable. There is the discovery that we do possess unexpected springs of strength and courage from which we can drink to sustain ourselves and go back out into the world to face whatever may come our way. That is what we get from being in schul together. That is also what Terrible Tuesday has taught us-synagogues, churches, mosques and all houses of prayer have been filled as never before! Services continue to be held every day in a variety of settings-from B’nai Shalom to West Orange High School to Yankee Stadium -and people are attending in large numbers-because of the support and strength they instill! That is why Rabbi Amnon recited his prayer in the synagogue, in the midst of his people, in his house of worship and not home alone.
Tzedakah-Righteousness. This does not mean just giving to charity. It means living lives that are guided by righteousness. It means doing the right thing-no matter how big or small. It means doing the righteous thing all the time-not just in response to a Terrible Tuesday when everyone comes forward in times of a national calamity. It means doing the right thing when there is no calamity and no one else is watching. It means that the more good deeds we perform, the stronger our character is, the better the world is, the more worthwhile our lives are, and the better equipped we are to face the harsh decrees whenever they appear, no matter how unexpected or unanticipated they may be.
My dear friends,
Rabbi Amnon used the words “U’V’Shofar Gadol Yeetakah,” “The Great Shofar is Sounded” intentionally because he knew that Yom Kippur was supposed to be a wake up call to all of us. Stop what we are doing! Look at ourselves and our world. Straighten out our priorities before it is too late! We had lost that message. We had reduced Yom Kippur to nothing more than an annual ritual of fasting, gathering in the synagogue all day, and rushing out the door at sundown after the Tekiah Gedolah to stuff ourselves at lavish break-the –fasts.
We did this every year-until this year when we really had one hell of a wakeup call! In the blink of an eye everything changed-everything around us and everything inside of us. Everything changed-how we view ourselves, our communities, our jobs, our synagogues and churches and mosques, our families.
There is no way to make sense of what happened out there, in the outside world.
But inside here, inside each one of us, something very powerful has happened. A confrontation with our own mortality! It has forced us to put our lives in perspective, and it is amazing so see what has resulted.
In the beginning, in the first few hours and days, we needed to be with each other. We needed to call and touch base and make sure everyone we knew and loved was okay. We needed to know where you were going, what route you were taking, and when you got there. We needed to know when you were leaving work and when we should expect you home. And oh, did we need to hold each other, talk to each other, touch each other and kiss each other. We rediscovered how precious each person is, and how important it is to let each one know what they mean to us.
As time moved on, another reorganization of priorities took place. The things we took so seriously, the things we argued about, stressed about, worried about-all of these personal issues that were consuming us-are hardly noticeable now. Many things we believed constituted a “crisis” before, turned out to be nothing more than trivial.
Columnist Linda Stassi described it this way, “In New York City it has been 12 days without road rage, 12 days without horns blaring, petty anger erupting over massive traffic jams, dopey kids cursing out loud, everyone else yelling into cell phones.
It’s been 12 days of looking each other in the eye, of doors being held open, cars being driven with care, people saying “thank you.”
It’s been 12 days without giving a hoot about Whitney Houston, Gary Condit, and Anne Heche. 12 days when celebrities who managed to get their rich backsides into rehab for “exhaustion” stopped being thought of as heroes.
We’ve seen what real heroes look like. Firefighters running into burning buildings, the National Guard digging through rubble, cops refusing to stop, construction workers laboring like animals at the 1300 degree core, and real animals-rescue dogs-with the pads of their paws burning off.
It’s been 12 days of people not measuring their own worth-and each other’s- by whether or not they could get into a “fabulous” restaurant. Instead those ritzy joints cooked for thousands of rescue workers-probably people who couldn’t get into those places 12 days earlier.
It’s been a time for us to say thanks to all those rescue workers-EMT’s, policeman, firemen, all the volunteers-who saw things no one should ever see.
It’s been 12 days when being cool was no longer so hot, when being a hot shot was not so cool anymore.
We have all just lived through 12 days of kindness and goodness in the midst of hell, and we’ll never be the same again. And maybe that’s not so bad.”
No, Linda Stassi, that’s not so bad at all. These are the kinds of changes that Yom Kippur wants to effect in us. These are the kinds of values that Yom Kippur wants to encourage us to incorporate into our lives through Teshuvah and Tefillah and Tzedakah. This is Rabbi Amnon’s remedy for the existential pain of human existence. It’s more than too bad that it took a Terrible Tuesday to teach us all this.
It’s more than too bad that it took a Terrible Tuesday to remind us of the painful truth that life can be devastatingly short. It’s more than too bad that it took a Terrible Tuesday to “press the reset button for society,” in the words of author Paul Stoltz, who believes that we will see “ a fundamental shift from the obsessive pursuit of net worth to a deeper pursuit of life worth.” There will be a wider emphasis on working to care for each other rather than working to consume stuff and build bigger homes. This, too, is not so bad at all.
That Terrible Tuesday had to happen at all is beyond our ability to comprehend and assimilate. We all wish that it would never have been.
That it took a Terrible Tuesday to make us “press the reset button for society” is tragic. That it took a Terrible Tuesday to make us reevaluate and change our orientation to life is tragic. That it took a Terrible Tuesday to make us move from an orientation of pursuing net worth to an orientation of pursuing life worth is tragic.
However, were we to lose what we have now gained from this unbearable cataclysmic event, that would not only be tragic; it would be unforgivable! It is almost as if we have been given another chance at life, another chance at averting the harshness of the decree, another chance to live lives of real substance and strength.
How do we hold onto this once in a lifetime opportunity? How do we maintain this precious, once in a lifetime, life-altering reorientation that has made us so much more human and humane?
Rabbi Amnon would say, and I would agree, Teshuvah, Tefillah and Tzedakah! Through Repentance and Return; through Prayer and Involvement in the Community; and through Tzedakah- living lives that make righteousness, kindness, gentleness, caring, understanding and sensitivity our number one chief priority, we can hold onto this precious life reorientation with which we unexpectedly have been graced. From the depths of despair and confusion into which we were plunged by the events of September 11 we can yet rise to the heights of which humanity is capable! We can still make of this year, whatever history may bring, an exceptional time of human rebirth and renewal. Amen!