Rosh Hashana Sermon, 5768

by Rabbi Dr David Goldberg

‘In the month of Tishri’ according to Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, in a saying recorded in the Talmud (B. RH 10b) ‘the world was created.’  And so it is that Rosh Ha-Shanah is traditionally known as the birthday of the world.

That should be a cause for rejoicing.  After all, whether we are creationists or Darwinists – that is to say, whether we believe that the world was created by Intelligent Design, or are persuaded by the Theory of Evolution – and let me just add in parenthesis that it seems to me, on the basis of proofs, that the only viable stance for a Progressive Jew is to accept the findings of Science and modify our beliefs in a supernatural God accordingly – but whatever our theological stance, either as believer, sceptic, agnostic or atheist, surely the coming into being of the world and all life in it, is a cause for rejoicing.  What greater reason could the ancient rabbis have had for praising God the Creator?

And yet, some hundred years or so before Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, one of the famous disputes  between the schools of Hillel and Shammai  was whether it would have been better if man had or had not been created.  Finally, after two-and-a-half years of debate, both schools agreed that it would have been better if man had not been created, but since he had been created, let him investigate his past actions, and let him examine what he is about to do. 

Investigating our past actions  and examining what we are about to do.  That is the purpose of Rosh ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur, the ten-day period of reflection and introspection that we embark upon today.  It is, perhaps, the one time in the year when most of us actually do set a few hours aside to think about ourselves in relation to metaphysics – that is, questions of being, knowing, cause, essence, identity, ultimate reality, the meaning of life – all those high-falutin’ concepts summed up in the theme song for the original movie with Michael Caine, and so much better than the Jude Law re-make ‘What’s it all about, Alfie?’

And let us begin our annual consideration of ‘What’s it all about?’ by noting that however lousy we may consider the last year to have been personally, nationally or globally, evidently those two schools of Hillel and Shammai over two thousand years ago didn’t regard life as a bowl of cherries, either.  It was a devastating judgement on God’s creation – and the ancient rabbis totally believed in Intelligent Design - for them to conclude that, all things considered, it would have been better had human beings not been the crown and pinnacle of God’s six days of handiwork.

In other words, existence is not, and never has been, ideal and if it ever was, it was in the past.  For the ancient rabbis, the ideal time had been in the Garden of Eden, before the Fall.  For the ancient Romans, it had been in the days of the Republic, before the emperors ruined it.  For the great historian Gibbon in the eighteenth century, the ideal time had been the Roman Empire, before Christianity ruined it. Jews in 17th. century Poland harked back to the Golden Age in Spain before the 1492 expulsion. Post-First World War English schoolchildren, the adults reeling from the slaughter in the trenches, were taught that the ideal time had been the days of Victorian empire, with the Raj the brightest jewel in the imperial crown.  Their Indian contemporaries, the adults about to start the campaign of civil unrest that would lead to independence, were being taught that India’s ideal time had been under the Moghul emperors. 

And so it goes on.  Because we find the present full of cares and anxieties, and the future uncertain, we locate security in what was, not in what is or will be.  Undoubtedly in some pulpit in some synagogue today the rabbi is drawing a bleak picture of society’s breakdown, will cite the shocking murder of the eleven year-old recently gunned down in Liverpool, and will recall the good old days when parents stayed married and children were properly controlled.  Idly glancing  over some previous High Holyday sermons, I noticed that in 1993 I dealt with the case of Jamie Bulger, the four year-old done to death by two other children.  Three years ago, the tsunami was my topic.  In September six years ago, it was the Twin Towers attack.  In 1973, on Yom Kippur itself,  Israel was very nearly overrun by  Egypt and Syria.  When, we have to ask ourselves, was the present not fraught or without anxiety, and the past not rosier in retrospect?

To say that is not to allow for complacency.  Without too much thought we could name half-a-dozen issues that give us serious cause for concern: internationally, Iraq; Afghanistan; the potential for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons; the growth of fundamentalism; the ongoing Israel-Palestine stalemate, which is not only dangerous in itself, but is beginning to divide Jews much as the Dreyfus Affair divided French families.  And at home, the failure of multiculturalism; Muslim alienation; rising gun crime fuelled by drugs; barely controlled immigration; a binge culture that has seen the government, in something that I would not have believed possible from a party that calls itself ‘Labour’  legislate for 24-hour drinking and mega-casinos, and blithely preside over the greatest disparity between rich and poor in this country since Victorian times.

So, there are enough concerns to keep us worried, and our elected representatives busy, this year as in years past and undoubtedly in the years to come.  Let us turn, therefore, to ourselves, to our actions.  And first an apology if in the following remarks I shall be using the first person singular more than you might consider seemly in a sermon; but one can only speak from one’s own experience and hope that somewhere it strikes a chord with listeners.  Also, let me add that it was the revered Leo Baeck’s proud boast that he never used the word ‘I’ in his sermons. Many years ago an LJS member who had been a former congregant of his in Berlin confided to me that Baeck was the most crashingly boring preacher he had ever listened to!

So; the first thing that strikes me about these ten days of introspection is how quickly the year has flown by; but then it would for me, and looking out at the congregation, for most of us here today.  All of us over forty-five have to accept that we are more than halfway through our estimated lifespan, we are on the downward slope from the summit.  A year that is one forty-fifth or one sixty-seventh or one eightieth of a life is a whole lot shorter than a five year old  thinking ‘It’s so long to my next birthday.’ 

None of us exactly likes getting older, but people react differently to that inexorable fact.  I have known some men do silly things like dyeing their hair – even Osama bin Laden is not immune - or wearing a toupee and if they are rich enough running away with a woman thirty years younger, and some women do terrible things to their face and body with plastic surgery and if they are rich enough taking a toy-boy thirty years younger. But that is not confronting age – it is trying to escape from it.

Speaking personally, and especially since my own brush with mortality four years ago, I find that in many ways awareness of the speedily passing years makes life more vivid and immediate and makes me more determined to use and appreciate each day to the full and just get on with things.  Of course there are always the quotidian worries about children, and the usual irritations about locating a decent plumber who also speaks English, or cursing 4x4s blocking the roads. But generally speaking, I am less inclined to waste time bearing grudges, or becoming involved in the controversies, quarrels and competitive rivalries of one’s testosterone-fuelled years, because the hours are precious and there are never enough of them to read all the books and see all the plays and meet all the friends one wants to, or to get all the sleep one needs. 

A few weeks ago, Carole and I were down in Dorset and stopped to visit Wimborne, with its handsome minster church that dates back to the twelfth century.  Whereas a past Senior Rabbi or President of the LJS gets a portrait of dubious artistic merit  put up on a wall, the reward for having been a prelate in a historic church is that you get a carefully-engraved  floor stone or plaque.  Reading one to a long-serving Deacon of the eighteenth century, it suddenly struck me where the difference lies between his era and our own silly, shallow, acquisitive, get-rich-quick, celebrity-obsessed, instant gratification society.  His stone talked about him ‘departing this transitory life’ on such-and-such a date in 1756.  It was the word ‘transitory’ that struck me.  This deacon had been part of a Christian culture that regarded our mortal life as merely the prelude before the eternal life to come.  ‘The vestibule before the chamber’ as a rabbinic midrash describes this world in comparison with the world to come, making the same point that our troubled, finite life is a preparation for the eternal bliss that awaits us.

Now we no longer find such a theology satisfactory.  It fails to answer plausibly questions about God’s justice and the unfair suffering in this world. But whatever its inadequacies, it did place human life in a context that made people aware of their mortality.  Thus they led their lives and investigated their actions by the light of how things would fare for them on Judgement Day.

We no longer investigate our actions by such ultimate standards.  The concept of a Judgement Day holds neither threat nor fear.   For so many people, it has to be said,  the first thought would be: ‘What can I get away with?’

Given this modern climate of moral relativism in which we lead ever-longer lives, let me suggest the tough question that we should ask ourselves today:  Is it better or not that I have been created?   Has my being alive made any small difference for better or worse to a world that will keep on turning long after I am dead and forgotten? 

And from our answer, we will know whether we are confirming or rejecting Hillel and Shammai’s bleak indictment of humanity.  May honest investigation of our past actions influence for good what we are about to do in the new year ahead.

AMEN.

Rabbi Dr David Goldberg

Rabbi Emeritus

The Liberal Jewish Synagogue