Yom Kippur Morning
– 26 September 2006
What
are we all doing here today? I’m sure there are as many
answers to that question as there are individuals sitting in
this Sanctuary – but whatever our individual answers,
we are probably all agreed on one thing, we had to be here today.
Somehow Yom Kippur is an imperative calling us. And we are not
alone in this compulsion: We have gathered here today, like
the great majority of Jews the world over. Time differences
not withstanding, today, on Yom Kippur, we are all connected
together in this holy moment in time.
What is more, we are not only connected together across the
globe – the connection we share today spans more than
two thousand years, taking us back to Temple times. But nevertheless,
so much has changed. Although, like our ancestors before us,
we read the same Torah, we make sense of it in very different
ways. We are modern Jews. We live in the wide world beyond the
walls of this sanctuary and the Jewish community it represents.
And so, when, echoing the Book of Proverbs (3:18), we say during
the Torah service, Eitz Chayyim Hi – ‘It is a Tree
of Life’, we mean that like a tree, the Torah is organic
and ever-changing. For all Jews, but especially for Liberal
Jews, the Torah is not an inert relic of the past and we are
not archaeologists, excavating through layers of stone and dust
in search of the remnants of a long-since dead civilization.
Nor is it a stick carved from the ‘Tree of Life’
to beat people with. The Torah is a living teaching that has
always grown and developed, putting out new leaves, year after
year, as we the Jewish people has grown and developed. The Torah
lives in our lives.
But does the Torah really live in our lives? This morning of
Yom Kippur we shall read from the portion, N’tzavim, one
of the most momentous texts of the Torah, which was the parashah
on the Shabbat before last – at which time we read the
entire portion as part of our special Chay Czech Scroll Commemoration
service.
Towards the end of Nitzavim, we read at Deuteronomy chapter
30, verse 15:
R’eih! Natatti l’fanecha hayyom: et-hachayyim v’et-hattov;
v’et--hammavet v’et—hara.
See! I have set before you today Life and Good; and Death and
Evil.
R’eih! – ‘See!’ Just over four weeks
ago, we read the parashah R’eih that opens with the same
word. Based on the three Hebrew letters Reish Alef Hey, R’eih
is an imperative, a command. We are more familiar with another
one: Perhaps the most famous single-word quotation from the
Torah: Sh’ma! ‘Hear!’ or ‘Listen!’
– also found in Deuteronomy (at chapter 6, verse 4, to
be precise).
R’eih! Sh’ma! But: Why are we exhorted to ‘See!’
and ‘Listen!’? The immense significance of these
two imperatives becomes clearer when we examine them in the
context of another text in Deuteronomy, in the parashah, Ki
Tavo, at chapter 29, verses 1-3, where we read as follows:
Moses called to all Israel and said to them: / You have seen
all that the Eternal One did before your eyes in the Land of
Egypt, to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land;
/ the great trials, which your eyes saw, the signs and those
great wonders; / but the Eternal One has not given you a heart
to know, and eyes to see, and ears to listen, until this day.
This amazing statement comes just five verses before the beginning
of parashah, Nitzavim, which relates, as we shall see when we
read it again shortly, how the entire community stationed themselves
in the desert to enter into the covenant with God, forty years
after their predecessors had stood at Mount Sinai.
Let me remind you of the opening phrase:
Atem nitzavim hayyom kul’chem lifney Adonai Eloheychem
(Deuteronomy 29:9)
You stand today all of you before the Eternal One your God.
So, it was only then, on that day, when the generation born
in the wilderness stood ready to commit themselves to God, that
the Eternal One gave each and everyone gathered there ‘a
heart to know, and eyes to see, and ears to listen.’
What does this mean? Of course, they already had hearts, eyes
and ears – and let us note that a heart ‘knows’
rather than ‘feels’ because the heart was the centre
of thought, not emotion in biblical times. But, since what the
heart actually does, is pump the blood through our bodies, it
is clear that the mention of hearts, eyes and ears is not a
reference to physical, biological attributes. Whether or not
we can physically see or hear, just as our hearts can ‘know’,
so we can discern and pay attention. So, these verses in the
Book of Deuteronomy, the last Book of the Torah, which is set
in the wilderness, on the east bank of the River Jordan seem
to be suggesting that it was only after forty years in the perilous
wilderness, that whatever they already knew, and had seen and
heard, the Israelites were now equipped to know, see and listen
and so, cross the threshold into the land and direct their efforts
to establishing a new society. Experience is a great teacher
– and painful experience has the potential to teach us
the most if we are prepared to learn from it.
The narrative of the Torah suggests that at the end of their
forty-year trek through the desert, our desert wandering ancestors
were ready to meet the challenge of their lives. But it’s
not just about them is it? Let’s not forget: The Book
of Deuteronomy was written over 600 years after the Exodus at
a time when the reforming monarch, King Josiah, was determined
to remind the people of his day of their covenant responsibilities.
Again: when we read this ancient document, we are not archaeologists
engaged in retrieving the relics of the past; we are the members
of this same covenant-bound people.
As the text in Nitzavim reminds us (29:13-14):
V’lo it’chem l’vad’chem, Anochi koreit
et-habb’rit hazzot v’et ha’alah hazzot; /
ki et-asher yeshno po immanu omeid hayyom, lifney Adonai Eloheynu,
v’eit asher eynnenu po immanu hayyom.
Not only with you alone do I make this covenant and this oath;
/ but with those that stand here with us today before the Eternal
One our God, and also with those that are not with us today.
So, while it seems that we have come today to spend most of
our time reading and singing words – mostly written down
by previous generations, centuries ago – in fact, that
is not what we are really doing here today: R’eih! –
‘See!’ Sh’ma! – ‘Listen!’
These imperatives are directed at us. Like our ancestors before
us, we are standing before the Eternal One today. As we say
when we recite the blessings before and after reading a section
of the Torah, Baruch Atah Adonai Notein HaTorah – ‘Blessed
are You, Eternal One, Giver of the Torah.’ The Torah has
not simply been given already – to our forbears in the
wilderness; and it is not a given – like one of those
archaeological specimens – the Eternal One is giving it
to us today and every day – which means we are also receiving
it today and every day. But what is it that God is eternally
giving and we are eternally receiving? Not a set of edicts –
in all senses of the word ‘set’ – but a call:
R’eih! – ‘See!’ Sh’ma! –
‘Listen!’ Be ready, in other words, to discover
what the Eternal One is saying to us and showing us today –
right here and now.
With the advent of satellite TV and the Internet, our eyes
are now bombarded with images from across the globe –
as our ears are filed with a barrage of discordant sounds –
but rather than marvel complacently in our enhanced ability
to see so much, we are compelled to See! – Life and Good
and Death and Evil – and as the text before us goes on
to say, having seen, we are also compelled to make a choice:
U’vacharta bachayyim! ‘Therefore you shall choose
in Life!’ (:19). In other words, seeing is a prelude to
action. But that is not the end of it. Before we can act, we
must also respond to the call of Sh’ma! – and pause
to consider what we are seeing, so that we can make sense of
the messages we are receiving and work out how we should go
about choosing Life.
Sadly, we rarely give our full attention to anyone or anything.
In the words of the Psalmist, we ‘have eyes, but see not’;
we ‘have ears, but hear not’ (Psalm 115:5b-6a).
As we rush to and from each day, we don’t seem to notice
what is at stake: our lives flashing past us unnoticed –
even by us. The call of Yom Kippur beckons us not only to pause,
to stop dead in our tracks, but to look beyond the daily round
towards the horizon. Last week, someone came to see me to talk
about becoming Jewish. I will designate the individual in question
with the letter ‘K’. There was nothing particularly
unusual about the reasons K gave – although K’s
experience and circumstances were unique. Towards the end of
our conversation, K said: ‘I always like to walk home
from work along the cliff-top, whatever the weather, and gaze
out at the sea and sky and everything around me.’ For
K, each working day is very much like any other, but that same
scene is an ever-changing marvel.
Of course, it’s easy to sense the power of the imperative
to See! And: Listen! in the awesome vista of sea and sky, but
the challenge for all of us, is simply to notice what is going
on around us and let what we discern enter our hearts and transform
our lives. Interestingly, in the word R’eih! We hear only
one consonant – the soft ‘R’ of the Reish
– the other two: the Alef and the Hey are silent, and
so all we hear in R’eih! is the sound of the ‘R’
and the Serei vowel, the ‘ei’. By coincidence the
English equivalent: See! is very similar – formed as it
is by the sibilant consonant ‘S’ and the ‘ee’
vowel sound. What might we learn from the absence of hard consonants
in these two words, which communicate the same message: R’eih!
See!? They may both be imperatives – but their imperative
force is very paradoxical. It might be possible to command someone
to perform a host of deeds and tasks – to ‘keep
such and such’; to ‘remember so and so’ –
but is it possible to command someone to see something in particular?
Clearly, the obligation is simply to See! – To be aware;
what we see is up to us. It’s rather like the command
to Listen! Sh’ma! – where we don’t hear the
almost inaudible Ayin consonant, and so are left with the ‘a’,
beckoning us to pay attention – but not telling us what
we are going to hear.
R’eih! Sh’ma! See! Hear! - U’vacharta bachayyim
– ‘and choose in Life’. There are so many
commandments contained in the Torah, but really there are only
these three – ‘all the rest’, as the sage,
Hillel, said ‘is commentary’ – inviting us
to add our own interpretations; compelling us to make sense
of our own lives and the world in which we live. This special
day out of time, set apart from our everyday lives, gives us
each the gift of a brief moment to pay attention to what is
going on beyond the closed circle of our habitual ways and concerns.
May the experience of Yom Kippur prompt us to see, to listen,
and to live. And let us say: Amen.
Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah
Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue – Adat Shalom
Verei’ut
Yom Kippur Shacharit – 10th Tishri 5766 – 13th October
2005
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