Opener: The story goes like this: In
an unnamed temple in an unnamed religious community, somewhere in the
east, maybe India, a great guru prepared to receive his people.
He sat on his great seat, his disciples all around him. So many
were the throngs of people who came to be in his presence that body
guards were needed and the people formed long lines, waiting hours for
a minute with the guru, to ask for his blessing. At the back of
the line, an older woman, dragging luggage with her as if she had traveled
from far away, waited for her turn. Seeing her fatigue, some of
the disciples approached her to offer her a chance to visit one of the
lesser teachers who sat just below the guru. No, she insisted,
she needed to see the guru himself. As she made her way through
the line and came closer, the disciples asked again. Each time,
she was steadfast in her resolve. Finally, it was her turn to
draw close to the guru. She gathered up her things and, with great
determination, moved close to the great teacher. Arriving at his
seat, she looked him squarely in the eye and said, “Sheldon, come
home!”
On Yom Kippur, we are instructed to
focus on different types of t’shuvah – of returning to our spiritual
home base and from that place seeing how our relationships have evolved.
For example, we have the idea of ‘bein adam l’Makom’ – the relationship
between a person and God. We have ‘bein adam l’chavero’
– the relationship between one person and another. Today, as
we approach the great liturgy of the Yom Kippur musaf, I want to tease
out another facet of t’shuvah, which is ‘bein adam l’mishpachto’
– the relationship between ourselves and the members of our family.
We open the machzor into the segment
of the day which pulls us back to the beginnings of our spiritual heritage,
back to the practices of the Temple priests. In addition to the
3rd viddui, or confessional, of the day, the Yom Kippur musaf
includes recitations of the Temple practices of the priests on Yom Kippur.
On that day, they would enter the holy of holies, the inner chamber,
of the Temple and utter the unutterable name of the One.
Rabbinic lore describes the preparations
of the priests as they approached this day. The high priest, we
are told, would go into seclusion for a number of days before Yom Kippur
in order to purify himself and to prepare himself for the day’s ritual.
He would then pray for the expiation of khet, that word that
we sometimes translate as sin. He would pray first for himself, then
for his household and then, finally, for all of b’nai Israel.
Our machzor slightly Reconstructs this ritual to include all dwellers
of the earth.
When the Temple priest entered the holy
of holies, it was to pray for himself and for his family. That
is where he began. On this day, we are instructed to examine our own
actions and to repent before those we have wronged. We are told
that even before we can approach God, whatever that may mean to us,
we must first mend our human relationships. For some of us, coming
home to our relationships with family takes courage and an open heart.
Lest I appear as something I am not, let me say that I address this
topic searching for answers myself, not as one with moral authority.
There is a teaching that comes from
the Zohar, the so-called Jewish Book of Splendor, which says that we
are to look for enlightenment in the market place. The implication
is that, in contrast to monastic or asetic religious traditions, we
are not meant to separate ourselves from the home or the community,
even on our holiest of days. This teaching says that the
answers to our questions are not off on a mountain top, but are right
under our own noses, right in our own homes. In the rabbinic imagination,
the Temple altar is embodied in our homes in our dining tables.
Within the messiness, pleasure and chaos of a family meal, is a spiritual
practice.
Family is our first and perhaps most
potent teacher about relationships. Family is where we first learn
trust and love. Think of a small baby responding to his parents
with a smile when they respond to his calls – even before he can speak,
he has learned about the social connection that is built on the primal
one. Family is also where we often first learn about pain and
betrayal. Ask anyone with a brother or a sister. And perhaps
it is as parents that we more fully comprehend what it means to be created
in the Divine Image. We learn the limits of our own power to protect.
We discover the imbalances in our own inner continuum of compassion
and judgment.
If we look at the very first family,
the archetypal family in the Torah – Adam and Eve – we can find
clues about the role of family in t’shuvah. It is interesting
to take a magnifying glass to the verses that talk about the interactions
between Adam and Eve, once they are discovered in their law-breaking
behavior. Immediately, Adam blames Eve, and she in turn blames
the snake. One Rabbi Berekiah quoted in midrash says, “as long
as there was only Adam, he was one, but when his rib was taken from
him, it was to know good and evil.” (Midrash Rabbah)
The rabbis play with the word ‘echad’ – one – and ‘yachad’
– together or in unity. They suggest that when it was only Adam,
he was at one with God – there was no separation - and so he
was protected from actions that went against Divine Command. It
was only with the appearance of Eve that Adam, and subsequently, Eve,
came to see themselves as separate from God. In other words, when
he was on his own, he was protected from the yetzer ha-ra, or inclination
towards “bad”, but as soon as he had family, he was forced out of
innocence into knowledge. In a footnote, the midrash continues
with the same line of thinking, “the immediate effect of Eve’s creation
was that Adam should sin.” It was the fact of human relationship
that made them vulnerable to khet – vulnerable to their own misguided
impulses. You might read this midrash with a modern, feminist
eye and think, “here we go again, blaming the woman.” If your
mind goes in that direction, I ask you to withhold judgment and look
underneath that reading of the text. I believe the suggestion
is that it is this way by design: we are meant to be in relationship
with one another, to make mistakes and thereby to discover the places
within us where the link to our Higher Self is weak. In fact,
remember the description of Eve in the moment of her creation.
She is described as “ezer k’negdo”. The word ezer
translates as helpmate or assistant. The word neged can
mean both facing you, and can also mean against you. So she is
a helpmate, a partner facing Adam and, perhaps, also challenging him.
This is a rich model for us in our relationships
with our mates and our family in general. The complexity in family
relationships comes from the very fact that we are both loving supporters
and also sometimes challengers with one another. The creation
story suggests that it is designed that way on purpose. It is
through our family relationships that we are called to confront our
own khet, our own worst misfires. It is also the context
in which we are supposed find the safety to see those parts of ourselves
most clearly, and, perhaps, to make repairs where we can.
Some time ago,
I was ordering something on Amazon and I got one of those screens that
says, “if you like this title, perhaps you would also like to consider
these . . . “ and then a short list of related titles followed.
One of them caught my eye. It is called, “Becoming a Healthier
Pastor” and it is a small volume written by a Christian minister on
the importance of family work in the clergy’s own family, before he
or she can be an effective pastor in his or her congregation.
I was so taken with this book that I ordered copies for our whole clergy
and staff. Like the high priest praying first for himself and
his household before he can pray for the congregation, this book suggests
that we have to take care of our personal relationships first, before
we can get on with the rest of our work. The author uses modern
psychological theory to explain about the complexities of family relationships
and then offers a rubric for how to begin to more healthfully position
ourselves in relationship to our families. He is careful to emphasize
that our purpose is not to do therapy on our family members or try to
change them in any way. Rather the process is one of learning
about our family members in an attempt to see them from a different
perspective, which might allow us to form different relationships with
them. In the latter part of the book, he begins to ask the reader
to consider his or her own part in creating the problems that exist
in his or her relationships with family members. He asks us to
consider our habits, our Pavlovian responses which keep us entrenched,
when we would like to be free. In a question I found particularly
devastating, he asks, “when your [mother, father, sister, brother,
spouse, etc.] behaves in a way that you are habituated in responding
negatively to, will you allow that behavior to keep you at a
distance?”
While there is so much historical richness
and literary beauty in our liturgy, in the end, we have to look for
the places where the liturgical practice
works on a practical level. How can this day be a day for strengthening
our vision and our resolve to find and face our real-life challenges?
After all, that’s why these practices were invented: for the purpose
of self-transformation, no matter how subtle. Here are three places
in the regular daily and Shabbat prayerbook which call out to us with
different meaning on this day:
Just a few moments ago we heard the
chanting of the Haftarah and its blessings. Many of us don’t
realize that the text of these blessings is speaking right to us in
our search for wholeness in our relationships. The fourth paragraph
of the Haftarah blessings (p. 575-6) is one of those places that the
Reconstructionist thinkers changed from the traditional text about the
Messiah. They grafted in a line from the prophet Malachi which
invokes the spirit of Eliyahu HaNavi – prophet and bringer of the
Messiah. Malachi says that when the hearts of the parents turn
towards their children and the hearts of the children turn towards their
parents, when peace flows through our relationships, then the Messiah
might come. It is a powerful message from our tradition about
how to bring about change in the world around us – that we start at
home. This text reinforces the order of the Temple rites on Yom
Kippur: the priest would pray first for himself, then for his family,
then for his community. What does it look like when the hearts
of parents and children turn toward one another? What stands in
the way of that turning?
The 23rd psalm is a text
we recite on Shabbat and in times of mourning. Yom Kippur is a
day with connections to both of those places. Today is known as
Shabbat Shabbaton – the Sabbath of Sabbaths and is also a day when
we contemplate death, abstaining from food and pleasure, shrouding ourselves.
The psalmist says, “ta’aroch l’fanai shulchan, neged tzorerai
. . . “ There’s the word neged again: something that is facing
you and/or that is against you. And the word tzorerai, containing
in it the notion of tzar - tzouris – disappointments, sadness,
loss and also the connotation of being bound up. This sentence
is sometimes translated, “you set a table before me in the presence
of my enemies.” I suggest that we can translate tzorerai, not
as enemies, but as the “ones I am entangled with.” So, the
sentence can mean, “You, God, set a table before me, that I might
face those with whom I am entangled.” Think of the image of
the dining table as altar and that idea that it is the very place we
are meant to encounter our biggest challengers. The table it set
for us, including the guests. It is up to us to see how we will
move through the meal.
Finally, we remember the phrase from
the morning blessings, “elohai n’shama shenatata bi, t’horah hi
– My God, the soul you have given me is pure . . .
“ No matter my actions, my essential self comes from the source
of all creation – that essential self is pure. The fact of this
phrase in the daily service – to be recited each morning --
is the proof of how easily we forget it. We need to recite it
every day in order to remember. So complex is the journey of being
a human, that we forget our essential purity. I heard this story
from a Christian minister: a couple in his congregation had a
3 year old daughter and a newborn baby. When the baby came home,
the daughter said to her parents, “I want to be alone with the baby
and you can’t be in the room. Immediately, the parents thought
she was about to act out her negative reaction to a new brother.
They were about to say no, but then remembered that they had a baby
monitor and could keep a complete and close watch. So, they agreed.
They let the little girl go to her brother’s cradle and quietly shut
the door, then turned the volume on the monitor all the way up and waited.
They planned to rush in as soon as the little girl started to tip
the cradle over. They put their ears close to the door, their
hands resting silently on the door handle ready to rush in. The
little girl drew herself right near to the baby. The parents listened
to her voice through the monitor; she said to the baby,
“Tell me about God. When I was a baby, I used to know, but then
I forgot. I want to remember.”
There is a Chasidic teaching which says,
“when you enter prayer, you must be prepared to die.” That
is to say, if prayer is meant to be a time of communion with whatever
God is, then you must be prepared to give up everything you believe
about yourself in order to fully encounter God. Indeed, death
is a vivid theme throughout Yom Kippur. In a sense, on this day,
we actively seek the death of our ego. This is pre-Freudian wisdom
constructed by our sages who understood the power of ritual to help
us access those parts of ourselves which we keep covered up most of
the time. This day is our day to be fearless in releasing
the armor of the ego, for the purpose of embodying the highest, most
godly attributes: Adonai, Adonai, el, rachum v’chanun, erech apayim
v’ rav chesed v’ emet, notzer chesed la’alafim . . . Adonai, Adonai,
The One of Compassion and mercy, open-faced and expansive in Lovingkindness,
forgiving until the thousandth generation.
Right now, as we enter our musaf and
invoke the memory of the Yom Kippur Temple rites, the gates of Forgiveness
are standing wide open. Later today we will find words in the
book which tell us the gates are closing, but that is later. Right
now, they are standing wide open. Let us remember our identity
as a mamlechet kohanim, a kingdom of priests. The priesthood was
not destroyed with the Temple. The priesthood is alive and well.
It lives in all of us on this day. We join together to seek forgiveness
for ourselves, for ourselves and our families, for ourselves and our
families and our people, and finally, for all dwellers of the earth.
May it be a full and meaningful fast
for all of us.