KOL NIDREI

5770

While driving recently, I noticed on a car in front of me a bumper sticker that simply asked a question: “Got hope?”  Just the day before during a conference call with President Obama, he told over 1000 rabbis that our nation is filled with fear at a time when more than ever we need hope.  There is a Midrash, which tells us that G-d does not want sacrifices, what G-d wants is hope.  When we lose hope, we lose our free will.  When we lose our free will we lose the essence of being human. 

Our prophets encouraged our ancestors during destruction and exile to have hope, Reb Nachman of Bratslav challenged his hasidim to never lose hope and our own Rabbi Heschel taught us to know and understand that despair flies in the face of what it means to be a Jew.  The beautiful melody to “Ani Maamin, I believe with perfect faith” was written by a chazzan on a train to Treblinka.    And, of course, the national anthem of our State of Israel is HaTikvah, the Hope.  How significant is this given everything the Jewish people have been through and all that we have suffered?

Having hope is not being naïve, foolish or Pollyannaish and does not require us to suspend critical judgment or repress our frustration with what may be going on in the present.  A person, who has been diagnosed with a disease, experienced the loss of a loved one or who has suffered financial crisis is not expected to deny these realities or pretend that everything is going to be just fine.  Hope gives us the strength to live in moments of difficulty and affects how we experience the challenges in our lives; it does not make them go away.  Recently, I officiated at the baby naming of the great grandchild of Holocaust survivors who, at one time, thought that they would never see another day yet alone three more generations of their family.

Leonard Fein speaks about how in Israel, in spite of everything, in the face of all the violence and rejection that Israel has experienced, there is hope.  Our Israeli brothers and sisters are anything but naïve.  They are the most realistic of people and the most hopeful.  It was our hoping for thousands of years to return to our land that gave birth to Israel.  The song, Shir Shalom, Song of Peace, as Fein points out, is filled with hope for the future.  Dr. Izzeldin, the Palestinian physician who lost three children when his home was bombed during the recent Gaza war, continues to promote peace.  He is frequently  challenged by both Palestinians and Israelis as to how he can still be so hopeful?  Hurt and loss are not to be glossed over; anguish and anger do have a place.  Wisely, Jewish tradition ritualizes grief and mourning highlighting our wounds so that we can care for them and heal them.  Jewish mourning begins with tearing a garment or a ribbon for the purpose of reminding us that the tears in our hearts can heal.  Judaism permits us to argue with and even scream at G-d knowing that at times this is what we must do.

It is humbling when we meet individuals and families who are experiencing serious challenges and difficulties but who maintain a positive and hopeful attitude.    It is inspiring when we witness those who take personal tragedy and loss and, over time transform it into tikkun Olam doing so much good with what originally was sad and painful.  Gerta Klein teaches that suffering and pain should never be wasted.  Hope is what creates the possibility for our pain and sadness to give birth to loving and life affirming experiences.  This is not a sermonic comment; this is a factual statement.  In the midst of our tears and mourning, to honor our loved ones who have just died, we do tzedakah and encourage others to do so as well.

On Kol Nidrei night, we especially are to be hopeful.  The rabbis command us to be joyful during the meal before our fast.  How is this possible given the awesomeness of Yom Kippur and all that hangs in the balance?  We are told that every Jew is to have confidence that Yom Kippur will be successful, that he or she will be forgiven and therefore, we sit down to eat with thankfulness and optimism.  Some even suggest that we should drink a l’hayyim before we come to shul.   

Mel Fisher, quoting his father-in-law, Louis Lerner, shared with me that if a person does not have any dreams, how can one’s dreams come true?  Jay Michaelson, writing in the Forward, talks about our struggle with our evil inclination, yetzer harah, and our good inclination, yetzer hatov.  We must have confidence that our goodness, self-discipline and responsibility can prevail.  To do so we have to dream of this happening—that the good forces that are in each of us will rule the day.  Our dreams are what we hope for and desire.  We have to dream that we can resist what it is within us that prevents us from being the best we can be.  We have to dream that we can devote our lives to fighting hatred and injustice.  Father Michael Graham reminded us last fall in this sanctuary, that to be truly humane when there is so much human created darkness is only possible if we have faith that we can be humane.  We must hope that in times and places where this is no mentsh that each of us will be the mentsh.

What we dream of and hope for is closely related to what we pray for.   Would I want your prayers to be answered?  Would you want mine to be?  Imagine, G-d forbid, living in a world where the answer to these questions is “no.”  I have hope that each of us is able to create prayers that deserve to be prayed: prayers for our families and us and prayers for all Israel and the entire world.  Prayers for forgiveness, compassion and healing, prayers for consolation, strength and livelihood, parnasah, prayers for tzedakah, justice and joy and prayers for inner peace, peace in our families and peace for Israel and the entire world.  When we pray for everyone’s goodness and well-being we put wings on our words and then they can carry us, even make us soar, through the year ahead as to what we do with our lives. 

I hope that we, over time and with work, will put our selfishness and greed, our resentment and anger, our jealousy and envy, our fear, insecurity and pettiness aside.  If I did not have such hope, I would not be able to be a rabbi.  If I did not have such hope as a Jew, I could not observe Yom Kippur.  If I did not have such hope as a human being, I could not live.       

Recent studies show that younger Jews in calculating their personal balance sheets rank immaterial needs more significant as to what is success—for example, family, friends, being kind and generous.  This should make all of us feel hopeful.  Many families including those not hurt badly from the economic crisis are stepping back and reevaluating what is truly important.  Many of us are thinking seriously about how much we have, how much we consume and how much we waste.  Doing this is hopeful.

The Catholic Church commemorated the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s beliefs, discoveries and knowledge.  This transformation of Galileo from heretic to hero is a source of hope, yet another confirmation that fundamentalism and literalism are not prerequisites for being religious.  We can learn, evolve and be people of deep faith and belief and live as critical thinking, analytical, scientific, rational and creative people in our post-modern world.  How human beings have advanced over the millennia in so many ways gives us hope that morally and ethically we can do the same.  Our ethical stature as human beings can be equal to or even surpass our technological accomplishments.  Our moral consciousness can be as strong as our physical appetites.  Our spiritual selves can govern our lives as much as our material desires.  But do we have faith in ourselves that this is possible?

As Jews, we celebrate not the full moon but the very first tiny sliver of the new moon.  Why?  To teach that when we can barely see any light in the dark sky we are to be hopeful that the moon will wax full.  In the temporal moment, it is barely illuminated and visible.  The temporal moment, however, is not all there is.  There are many such barely visible slivers of light in our lives that we are to have hope will wax full.  How many Jews throughout the Jewish world on this Kol Nidrei evening including right here in our own congregation, in so many different ways, are struggling, hurting, worrying, praying for relief and a change of mazal; how many of us need such hope this Kol Nidrei evening?  

You know something about eggs?  Contained within an egg is the future even though we cannot see it through the shell.  This is why we have eggs at our seder tables: to remind us that our liberation from Egypt was hidden within our slavery just as spring is hidden within winter and just as the full moon is contained in the night sky when there is no moon.

A source of great hope is believing that our lives can have meaning and what we do makes a difference.  One of the main purposes of these High Holy Days is to connect us to our inner strengths, the reservoirs of knowledge, love and faith within each of us.  If we do not have hope that we can do this, that these qualities exist within us, we will never do it and we will sink in the temporal quicksand of our lives.  One of the greatest sadnesses is that not enough of us genuinely believe in our own inner goodness and richness.  At the core of Yom Kippur is the message to each of us that we can make a difference, that our lives have significance and that we must never underestimate ourselves as to how important and precious we are to G-d and how much each of us counts.  A Hasidic teaching tells us that when someone, not only but especially a young person, thinks and feels that no one cares whether “I am here or not” and “I do not matter,” G-d cries and the angels weep. To G-d and the angels, every person counts immeasurably.  The same should be true for all of us. 

As long as we dream of a better world, we will not yield to injustice and there can be a better world.  As long as we dream of being liberated from greed, selfishness, callousness, from selling out and settling for the status quo, we can better ourselves.  As long as we dream for ethical and moral greatness, we can become ethically and morally great.  Are these our hopes?  Are these our prayers on this Kol Nidrei night?  If these are our prayers, then each of us can confidently want each other’s prayers to be answered.  Theodore Hertzl stated: “Every person’s every act begins with a dream, a hope, and ends with one.”  Rabbi Heschel reminds us: “Do not commit the sin of forgetting even for just a moment that I, even I, especially I, can change the world.”  You, I, we must never commit this sin; we must never forget that we can change the world.  We must never forget that it is our responsibility to teach our children from the moment they are born how much their lives mean to the Jewish people and the entire world, how much each of them count, how much each of them can contribute and how much each of them can change the world for the better.

Many of us are familiar with the song “Ani Maamin.”  Actually, it is Rambam’s 12th principle of faith.  It states: “I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah and even though the Messiah tarries I eagerly await the Messiah’s arrival everyday.”  Do you know where this moving and stirring melody comes from?

It was composed by Reb Azriel David Festig, a Hasidic chazzan, in a cattle car to Treblinka.  The melody came to him and he joined it to the words of Ani Maamin upon which he had been meditating.  He began singing and then everyone stuffed into that train car began singing.  Reb Azriel David explained that the melody came to him from the depths of anguish and despair but it is the melody of faith and hope; it is the melody of the Jewish soul.  Reb Azriel David then said that he would give half of his portion in the world to come to anyone who would escape the cattle car and take this melody to his rebbe, Rabbi Shaul Yedidya Elazar of Modzitch who had been taken to Vilna and then via Japan to the United States.  Two young men volunteered and with much cooperation from others successfully separated the boards of the train car enough to jump out. 

After the war, one of these two made his way to New York and gained an audience with the Rebbe of Modzitch.  He told the rebbe that his companion died in the jump from the train but he was able to survive the war and now is fulfilling his promise to Reb Azriel David.  He sung for the rebbe Ani Maamin with the melody from the cattle car to Treblinka.  The rebbe weeped throughout this survivor’s singing and then said that this song the Jews sang on the way to their deaths will be sung when the Messianic Era arrives bringing justice, compassion and peace to all the Jewish people and the entire world.  This is the song of hope; it is the song of the Jewish soul; it is the song telling us that we can change ourselves and we can change the world.  Be it in a crowded train car or in this sanctuary tonight, be it with Chazzan Azriel David or with our Chazzan, be it in the hearts on that train to Treblinka or in our hearts this Kol Nidrei night, it is our answer to the question on that bumper sticker: “Got hope?”  This is our answer.  This song, this melody is our answer.