Yom Kippur 5782 (2021): Reflections.....

 9/20

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….

Living in coronavirusworld: first visit to Brooklyn in over 5 months

8/27

Live Music, Industry City

After tense conversations, the professional athletes agree to return to their seasons after another two days off (Less for baseball.) In New York City, the Mets and Marlins took the field, stood in silence, hats off, for 42 seconds (Jackie Robinson’s number) then left the field with only a “Black Lives Matter” banner on home plate. This has been an unprecedented demonstration. In the past only something like 9-11 halted games.  These athletes have expressed their frustration as men and women.  And of course, nothing but derision from  the White House and calls for  more law and order. 

Of course much of the Republican convention was in direct violation of the Hatch Act which forbids the mixing  of government and politics, especially it's buildings. With dramatic  displays of flags and use of the White House  as if it were his personal property the President has essentially declared l’etat c’est mois and produced the first fascist convention in history. Still networks seek to cover it as if it were normal. He has even “joked” about “12 more years.”   We hold our collective breath but need to be organizing, 

I’ve learned of a new venue to play live music, though it’s an hour away in Brooklyn.  But I have to check it out.  It’s in a place called “Industry City” a massive complex of factories and warehouses from the early twentieth century when the Gowanus Bay had become an active part fo the shipping industry. Of course fallen into abandonment and neglect as the seventies turned into the eighties. With the toxic waste waters fo the Gowanus Canal blocks away. Between the bay and historic Greenwood Cemetery. Now in a process of rebirth. The Industry City Courtyard 5/6 is an open space ringed by artesenal food and drink businesses. They skirt many bar/restaurant regulations because they are legally agricultural outlets. The food places feature products direct from the farms. There are at least two distilleries crafting their own spirits, a brewery or two making craft beer and an ice cream creator. It doesn’t get any more Brooklyn than that. 

At one end is a stage by a place whose specialty seems to be  infusing everything with fresh ginger. The open mic, which cannot be advertised, because, per regulation music, like alcohol, can only be “incidental,” is a project of a friend of mine from Greenwich Village’s legendary “ Bitter End.”  The Bitter End has been closed since the virus hit and cannot reopen with no space for street music and no food service. It’s the last standing remnant of 1960’s Village.  The mural behind the bar shows many of  its famous performers like Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt,Woody Allen. And Bill Cosby, surrounded by recently added jail bars. It is the grail of any singer-songwriter and I had on my bucket list to get an actual paid booking at the Bitter End. I have a sense of pride in having  done that twice, having my first CD release party there and later a birthday gig. Not to mention my Rabbi friend’s high holy day services. The End is in bad shape financially with no visible way out. There’s a go fund me campaign for $100000 under way. My friend is planning a benefit. The prospects of losing the Bitter End are almost unthinkable, yet another covid19 victim. The Bitter End has got the virus, just not yet died.

So my friend has found place in this newly gentrifying corner of Brooklyn. He opens the night. I follow using his “house guitar” which he thoroughly sanitizes before passing it on to me. I put my own “mic condom”on, prepared for safe song. I’ve had a rough reentry into live music at Bar 9 with my weekly near panic attacks. I’ve got 20 minutes here. I choose my material carefully. All “safe” songs. No one here has ever heard them before. I ease into my set, notice someone nodding their head in time. The applause is warm. Someone is recording me. With each affirmation, I open up more. I feel good when I’m done. My friend appreciative I’ve made the long subway journey. As the next performer, an Asian woman with a dark side of indie sound finishes, the rain begins. Time to go back to Manhattan, Harlem, home This was my first trip to Brooklyn in over  months. 

Yom Kippur 5780

10/9/19

with my friend Rabbi Steve Blane

On a cold rainy day, I make  my way to the Bitter End for Congregation Sim Shalom's Yom Kippur service with my good friend,  Rabbi Steve Blane. His usually on-line congregation gathers once a year during the High Holy Days to be together in person for a service filled with jazz-oriented music. And the warm and generous spirit of my friend Steve.

I'm thinking about the retimes I've performed here..the honor of being booked at this Village icon. Before the service, I look at the mural behind the bar of famous people who have performed here. And see that Bill Cosby's been put "behind bars." Just desserts, for the former Jello spokesman.

Soon the Yom Kippur band will begin to play and we are underway.  (The video of the whole service can be viewed at https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=sim%20shalom%20yom%20kippur&epa=SEARCH_BOX) Soon enough, it was time for my sermon. This is what I had to say....

the Sim Shalom Yom Kippur band

Cosby behind bars

So this is Yom Kippur 5780. The days of awe are all but done. I hope  that this  has been a good time for you of refection, of getting your  life into perspective, of taking the opportunity to start anew. Even as arbitrary  and constructed a s a new year is, even in  a religion, hey, always take the chance for a fresh start, or even do over.

The goal here today is to feel ourselves at one....at one with God..and that would  seem to include each other as well? And as we're learning, it includes  even creation itself. At-one-ment.

But it also has this sense of atonement...as in atoning, as in confessing ...and paying for your sins. Which means confessing...an owning up to..a facing of.  And of asking for forgiveness. As a Christian pastor, I feel we have a lot to learn from my Jewish brothers and sisters about forgiveness. As one in need of forgiveness, the  Jewish tradition teaches that you can't ask God to forgive what was done to another  human. You must seek it from that person. And also that you can't forgive what wasn't done to you. 

One of our most sacred  practices as Christians is the sharing of communion, of bread and wine as a moment of being "At one with"...We used to have a rule that if you had anything against another person, or someone against you, you had to  leave the altar and not come back until you resolved it. 

What of we tried that here?  Like on Rosh Ha Shanah, Rabbi Blane said during these next 8 days, if you've got something you need to repair with someone, one way or another, go deal with it and don't come back  next week if you haven't finished it yet. So think about that a minute.  And if you need to go take care of something, we'll wait for you, right Rabbi Steve? 

Okay...the other part of forgiveness...when you have something against someone else. Forgiveness is something we ultimately do for ourselves..it's a letting go. To stop letting someone who has hurt you define who you are by your hurt. To move beyond victimhood. As a friend of mine once said, forgiveness is giving up for all time the hope for a better past. 

Now notice, I'm not talking about reconciliation. Forgiveness is not letting bygones be bygones, it's letting go. About letting you live more freely. It does nothing to make the relationship better. That takes a process of naming and claiming and listening and working through and then slowly rebuilding. As a friend once said, no reconciliation without reconstruction. 
That takes work.

I have to shift here a moment and talk about one of my favorite Bible characters...Jonah. Rabbi Steve tells me he's traditionally on the agenda for Yom Kippur in the afternoon. I wonder why?

Jonah is of course a prophet. But there's something unique about him. And it's not the whale. He is, as far as I can recollect, the only Biblical prophet sent to another country, another people.  In Heschel's classic understanding of a prophet, a prophet came from a people to speak to that people motivated above all by love. 

God didn't want Jonah to speak to his own people, regardless of how much they might have needed it. He was told to go to Nineveh, one of the  enemies of the people Israel. And to  let them have it. And Jonah's like, uh, no... I want nothing to do with those Gentile pagan enemies of my people.

And so he tries to run away and you  know what happens next. He gets out of the whale (or big fish) and God gives him a second chance and off to Nineveh he goes. 

(Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah “shayneet” – a second time. That tells us that God is a God of “shayneets” – renewed opportunities! (Remember that phrase!) When we admit our mistakes, often God will forgive us and allow us to try again. That’s very good news, isn’t it? I’ve needed more than a few “shayneets,” and even some “sh’leesheets” – third times, and on occasion some additional times beyond that! So, just maybe, sometimes we ought to be willing to give others a second chance, too?)

So away he goes. Preaches. And whoa! They actually  And  Jonah is like no way. What's the point of being a prophet if the bad guys get away with it! God has to give him a lesson with a broom tree for him to get it.

So what am I saying?
Sometimes we need second chances.
Sometimes we need to offer second chances.
(Getting heavier..) And I believe that in our days ahead, God is going to call us to our own Ninevehs to talk to people we don't want to talk to and accept the fact that they may even change their mind and we'd have to not be able to dislike them anymore. Are we ready for that possibility?

I really do believe that if we're going to  get through this moment, it's going to take something like that Jonah journey.

Anyways, think about that this afternoon while you're fasting. May your fast go well. And L'shanah tovah. 


Steve and I sing his song, "Spark" and then with the blowing of the shofar, the service is ended

all of us....