9/20
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| with Rabbi Steve at the Bitter End |
The Jewish High Holy Days are coming to an end. After a totally "virtual" celebration last year, this year congregations struggled to figure out exactly what they could do. All kinds of creative hybrid concoctions emerged. My friend Rabbi Steve and his Sim Shalom congregation (a pioneer in online worship) held a pre-fast dinner then Kol Nidre service at one of our favorite local clubs, Silvana. (Owned by an Israeli and African couple.) 
Kol Nidre at Silvana
On Yom Kippur, we returned again to the Bitter End, the iconic venue that has somehow survived the pandemic. Both services were live on ZOOM. In person attendance was significantly down. A lot of anxiety remains in the city. Here's what I had to say in Yom Kippur morning:
It’s good to be with you here today. I realize that it’s been two years since I set foot in the Bitter End. At a Yom Kippur service. It’s always an honor and privilege to get to share in this service with you and to get to share some of my thoughts.
I was thinking that I have been participating in Jewish High Holy Day services for 44 years now. First with colleagues, then friends, ultimately family and now here with you my Sim Shalom chaverim.
I’ve really come to appreciate the arc of these days. Celebrating a new year at just the right time. I mean this is when school starts again. The time when vacation is over and when people come back to work. New season for TV and Broadway and football. And given how we do with New Year’s resolutions, it’s always good to have a chance not go back and start again. Most especially in a year like this one.
And then the days of awe. A chance to review your life and make corrections. The spiritual liturgical narrative is even more serious than that….it’s when names are being written into the Book of Life. I love the drama of the repetitive warnings that the doors are inexorably swinging shut …. Here on Yom Kippur morning, the morning after Kol Nidre, midway through the fast, this service is kind of like the two minute warning. And as far as getting yourself into the Book of Life, if you’re not there yet, you’ve just got about enough time for a spiritual Hail Mary…well, maybe I could use a better metaphor.
The real content of that spiritual work has to do with repentance and forgiveness. I’ve appreciated learning that in Judaism, you can’t ask God to forgive you for something you did to someone who is still around. You have to go to them. It’s almost like if you really want to make Yom Kippur meaningful, you need to try to take a first step towards healing at least one relationship before you come here. And if you haven’t done that yet, well the fast isn’t over yet.
In Christianity, our defining ritual, perhaps our most important sacrament, is Holy Communion. I’m not about to try and explain that now. The point is, we used to have a part of our liturgy that told everyone that anyone who had anything against a brother or sister should leave the table and go take care of it before communing. (Not that anyone ever really left..) But it’s the idea….
What’s at stake here is repentance, t’shuvah, turning around, going a new way. In my tradition, we use a Greek word, metanoia, changing your heart, your spiritual being. If you think about it, metanoia is like the opposite of paranoia. Because the greatest impediments to changing, to repenting, taking that first step towards reconciliation, is fear.
In Christian scriptures, we have a saying, Perfect love casts out fear. (I John 4:18) But I’ve learned that the opposite his equally true, fear can cast out even perfect love. You got to get rid of paranoia to get to metanoia,.
I taught my boys that when you go somewhere and see someone you don’t want to see, it’s like they have an evil spell over you. The only way to break that spell is to walk across the room and offer your hand. Whether they accept it or not doesn’t matter…once you take the first step, the spell is broken.
In this divided country, now more than ever, we have to find the courage to take the first step, to simply learn to talk to one another again.
What I’ve learned from participating in the annual High Holy Day cycle has made me a better person, made me a better Christian.
Okay. Book of Life. What a time to be alive…we’re still in the midst of a killer pandemic…and yes, vaccines help big time…but we still die…there are wild fires, firenados on the west coast, hurricane after hurricane on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts…we just finished our endless war in Afghanistan right before the 20th anniversary of 9/11…I watched the Spike Lee film last night on HBO and relived that time when we had no idea what would happen next.....and how many mass shootings this year? More than one a day…so common they’ve practically stopped reporting them.
It’s like we’re living the unetenahtokef….., who by fire, who by water who by virus and who by a crazy man with an ak47….and as Leonard rewrote it,
Who in mortal chains, who in power
And who shall I say is calling?
We have more than enough to remind us of our mortality…..
I want to leave you with this….the one thing Covid…and losing friends… did was make me think of my mortality .
You never know, you know? So I decided to not leave anything unsaid. I made a list of everyone I felt I had hurt or wronged and not acknowledged it. And when we could see each other again, I started making appointments. I discovered something amazing…in most cases things hung more heavily on me than the the other person. The usual response was you’re still worried about that? I learned that there is a deeper well of grace and forgiveness in the world than we realize, and the most difficult person to forgive ourselves…
Maybe that’s the deepest mending of Yom Kippur…you can forgive yourself and live on…that’s what it means to be written into the Book of Life…
May your fast go swift. Leave nothing unsaid. Take the first step.And may this year be filled with sweetness and light….
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