Rabbi Janet Offel
Erev Rosh Hashanah 5767
Changes
Twenty-five hundred years ago, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus wrote “the only constant—is change.” If this was true twenty-five hundred years ago—how much the more so today! When we think about just the past 10 years, we realize that many of the things that we take for granted today—the internet and cell phones, DVD’s and I-pods, were brand new or as yet still unknown. Remember early internet use? Waiting for dial-up and then drumming our fingers as a website slowly blanketed the page. And what about those early cell phones—the ones that had to be installed in the car, were as big as a forearm and weighed twice as much. DVD’s and I-pods, so ubiquitous today, were unheard of, and at least there were still a few record turntables around, even if the kids didn’t know how to use them. The company “Google” had not yet been incorporated, that came in 1998. In 1996, if you had used the term “to google” a now familiar verb in our everday lexicon, people would have looked at you as if you were speaking a foreign language.
Yes, the pace of change itself seems to be reaching warp-speed. And so, often, we crave the constants in our life all the more so. For generations, family, friends, community and our political and religious institutions have served as the bedrocks and foundations upon which our society is built. And even though those very institutions are not, perhaps, what they once were, they are still where we turn for support in a world that seems too often to be spinning out of control.
Here at
Temple Kol Tikvah, this past summer has represented a time for change, as
founding Rabbi Steven Jacobs retired from congregational life. Rabbi Jacobs has been a fixture, a constant in
the
There is a Hassidic story about Rabbi Eliezer Lippmann, who is said to have inquired from Rabbi Mendel of Kossov why the Messiah had not come and why the redemption promised by the prophets and sages has not been fulfilled.
Rabbi Mendel answered: “It is written: “Why has the son of Jesse not come either today or yesterday?” The answer lies in the question itself: “Why has he not come?” Because we are today just as we were yesterday.
As Howard Polsky and Yaella Wozner note in their wonderful anthology Everyday Miracles: The Healing Wisdom of Hasidic Stories, “the hidden implication in Rabbi Mendel’s remarks [is] that change is vital, even though you may be uncertain as to where you are going. Change shakes up old habits and routines and opens up new vistas… As long as there is change there is hope for transformation, and as long as there is transformation there is a possibility for the greatest transformation of all” the coming of the Messiah. (pg. 366).
Yet, change isn’t easy. When we are confronted with it, often all we want to do is run and hide. It is good to focus on the fact that change shakes up old habits and routines and opens up new vistas, but often all we know is that change makes us feel awkward or self-conscious, and causes us instead to focus on the loss. As positive as change may be, there are dozens of books on how to manage it. And what about all those self-help books, most of them purporting to help us manage our lives in times of stress and change?
In speaking with many of you over the past two months, I have witnessed the sense of grief and loss that some of you are feeling, and concern for the future of this synagogue. It is a legitimate response. Yet strikingly, others of you have used a completely different metaphor when speaking about this time in the congregation’s history: that of a new birth. Death and birth, endings and beginnings. Pretty powerful images! Can we use these images to help us move forward in this coming year in a healthy positive way, as individuals and as a synagogue community?
The story is told of an angry reader, who stormed into a newspaper office, waving a current edition, asking to see who wrote the Obituary column. In time, he found the cub reporter, to whom he said: “You see I’m very much alive, I demand a retraction!” The reporter replied, “I never retract a story, but I will tell you what I will do, I’ll put you in the Birth column and give you a ‘fresh start.’”
Our tradition is replete with images of endings and beginnings. They form a rhythm that guides us through the year. Shabbat is both a time to say good bye to the week that was, as well as a time to say hello to the week that is yet to be. On our Hebrew calendar, new months often overlap with the old: the first day of the new month counted as the last day of that which preceded it.
And these very holidays that we are entering into tonight, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, bid us as individuals to take stock of our lives, to examine our past and plan for the future. To take a chesbon nefesh, literally a soul accounting, creating a balance sheet of personal assets and liabilities, weighing our lives and searching for a greater concept of meaning than what we usually undertake in everyday lives that are filled with work, errands and daily toils. Taking time to look at who we were, who we are, and who we are yet to be.
For Kol Tikvah, the retirement of Rabbi Jacobs does not mean the end of the congregation. Here there is also the potential for a new beginning—the past is mourned even as new possibilities for the future are embraced. This coming year, 2007, is Kol Tikvah’s Bar Mitzvah year. What does it mean to become a Bar Mitzvah as a synagogue? What are the opportunities for the future, as the congregation enters this period in its communal life, anticipating an emergent sense of responsibility and maturity?
There is a parable by Rabbi Maurice Lamm about twins in the womb which I have adapted for this discussion tonight. The whole world, to these two siblings is the interior of the womb. They can conceive of nothing else. But they realize that life, as they know it, is coming to an end. What will happen to them? One of the twins is a true idealist, even at this young an age, embracing change and seeing it as an exciting opportunity for growth and development. The second is much more skeptical. Change upsets the apple cart, turning the world, as we know it, upside down, leading to frustration and dissatisfaction.
Knowing that the world as they recognize it is coming to an end, one sibling responds with excitement: “Just think of the new opportunities that will present themselves. We will have the opportunity to try new things, to do things another way. Sure, it may not always work out perfectly, and some things will certainly be different, but what a great time it can be!”
The other, fearing the worst, responds, “No, how can you say that? There is no future, and even if there is to be a new future, it will be so different that we won’t be able to survive. Our world, as we know it, is finished. The future is grim.”
Suddenly, the water inside the womb bursts, and the ever optimist sibling tears himself away. Startled, the skeptic shrieks, bemoaning the tragedy. Sitting in his morose state, he hears cries from the other side of the black abyss. “Just as I thought, all is lost. There is no future. What was, is no more. It is time to just call it quits, rather than face the other side.”
But what the skeptic doesn’t realize is that as he is bemoaning the loss of the world as he knows it, his brother sits on the other side, taking a breath of fresh air, hearing sounds that he has never heard before, already feeling his limbs stretching out beyond their previous boundaries.
For many members of Temple Kol Tikvah, this year in the temple’s history is a central experience. For some, this coming year will be a time of mourning, of adjusting to life without a beloved rabbi. For others, it is a new beginning, an exciting, vital time in which there is the potential for new ideas and visions. And yet for others, it is a daunting time, a point, perhaps, for looking towards the Promised Land but of sensing a gulf between here and there. We must all realize that everyone is going through this process differently. With maturity, responsibility and compassion, we need to respect and honor those differences.
My goal for this year is to guide you through this year of changes. To bridge the gaps between those who are experiencing a period of mourning and those who are embracing a new birth. To be here for all of Kol Tikvah, enabling you as a community to move forward—no matter what the unknown may harbor. To help you in this Bar Mitzvah year explore the who, what, where, why and how of synagogue life. And to listen to the heartbeat of this congregation, helping you bridge the space between what was and what is yet to be.
I realize that for many of you, this period of transition is not an easy one. But I also know that with a dedicated staff, enthusiastic volunteers and the support and encouragement of many of you, Temple Kol Tikvah has a wonderfully vibrant future ahead.
Shana tova u’metucha. May this coming year be a good one, filled with blessing and the sweetness of new life.