High Holiday Sermon/ Delivered Yizkor 5768

by Rabbi Joshua Heller

During these high holidays, we ask some very difficult questions. Have we lived righteous lives? How have we erred in the last year? Can we do better? Will we be forgiven? What will our fate be? Will we live? Will we die? Will we and our loved ones be blessed with health and wealth and love, or will we face suffering and adversity? We say metaphorically that the answers to all of these questions are being written in a giant book.

Visualize, with me, that gigantic book. The Book of Life and Death. How does God write in it? What implement does He use? Maybe you grew up imagining an elderly man with a long quill, dipping it in an ink well, and carefully calligraphing your name in the appropriate column of a long parchment scroll.

I suppose some of us imagine that God has moved to computers by now. He's got one of those cool big, flat screen monitors. All the angels have little handheld units like UPS delivery guys . They can track your good deeds wirelessly "That Mitzvah left Doraville at 7:50 AM, scheduled to arrive." "Attempted delivery of a sin but no-one there to sign for it." A few mouse clicks, the scan of a barcode and you are set. If you don't like your fate for the year- sit on hold with India and try to sort it out.

Or maybe it's like a standardized test- there's a scantron form with those little bubbles, and God has his number 2 pencil. God, if by some theologically improbable chance, You don't know the answer, pick "life."

Actually, the metaphor is incomplete.. Who really writes in the Book of Life? you and I do, each and every day. After all, it is our deeds, not God's that are recorded. God picks it up and reads it once a year, puts in a highlight, but WE are each the writing instrument that records our place in the book of life. You can be a pen, the quill, the mouse and keyboard. One of my favorite authors, Steve Goodier, put me on to the idea that we are are at our most effective when we are like a pencil. We are like pencils, writing our stories in the book of life. Like pencils, it is not by length, or color that we are measured, but by what we write, how we make our mark.

For that is our role, to have an impact on those around us. And it is not our outside, but that which is within us that ultimately makes that mark.

On Kol Nidre evening, our president, Deborah Jacobs spoke about each of us having a piece of someone else's puzzle. Indeed, each of us may not realize how we have an impact. Sometimes we write what seems like a footnote or a filler in the book of our own lives that turns out to be a key passage, a vital chapter in the life of another. For example, in the Torah, we are told that Joseph was seeking his brothers near Shechem, when he got lost in the fields. A "man"- the Hebrew word is "Ish"- finds him and asks what he wants "I'm looking for my brothers" ah yes, I heard they were going to Dothan. For that man, it was a chance encounter. He probably never thought about it again. For Joseph, it was life changing, because when he found his brothers, they threw him in the pit and sold him into slavery- that chance encounter led Joseph on the path to have his worst nightmares come true, but also his greatest dreams. Our sages (Midrash Tanchuma and elsewhere) teach that this "man" was actually an angel. We never know when we are serving as God's messenger.

The impact that we make is with what is on our inside, not our exterior. Are we filled with God’s will? Do we have love or bitterness inside of us? Fear or courage? Hope or despair? Selfishness or kindness?

We all know people who project one image but live a different kind of life. Picture the pencil whose exterior is shiny yellow, whose inside is darkest lead. A dad goes to school to talk to the teacher because the bigger kids keep stealing his son's pencil. "It's happened three times this week," he complains, "it has to stop!"

"Well, I'm sorry to hear it."

"Yeah, well, its not the pencils I mind, of course - I can take them easily enough from the office - its the *principle*!"

Conversely, sometimes the most beautiful soul is not in the most attractive body. The greatest mitzvot are sometimes done by those without social graces. In Chassidic stories it is often the humble woodcutter, or the simple girl who brings water from the well who does a mitzvah beyond what even the rabbi can attain. We err when we judge based on form rather than function.

Going further- it's not just what we write, it's how we write it.

If you've ever taken a standardized test, you know that you are supposed to use a #2 pencil. I never really understood that. What does the number mean? Couldn't you just take a #4 pencil and cut it in half? It turns out the numbers on pencils indicate the ratio of hardness to blackness, the proportions of clay and graphite. A #2 is right in the middle. #1 is darker, but softer. A #4 is harder, but leaves a lighter mark. Perhaps that's not surprising. Sometimes you make a more lasting, more meaningful impression with a soft word than with a harsh one.

There is another way that we are like pencils, writing in the book of life. Like pencils, we sometimes go through painful sharpening. We encounter events and experiences that threaten to grind us down, or break us.

Suffering can wear you down. Illness can wear you down. Family strife can leave you raw. Financial difficulties can strip away your safety and self esteem. The loss of a loved one leaves you missing a part of yourself. Self-pity can immobilize you.

Our Jewish tradition is full of responses to suffering, explanations of its place in the world. Some say that suffering leads to wisdom: Take the book of Job. Job undergoes every horrible misfortune possible- he loses his flocks, his children, his health. His wife and his friends turn against him with platitudes- God only forbids Satan from taking Job's very life! And it was all to settle a bet! . You might say "His suffering served a purpose"- it cemented his faith- we all learned a valuable lesson. But I can imagine Job saying "thanks, but no thanks- if this is what it takes to achieve wisdom, then ignorance is bliss." One rabbi was so incensed by the unfairness of the story that he declared that Job never was, and never came to be (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 15b). Perhaps we are wiser for Job's suffering, but I'm sure Job would rather have been in Philadelphia. And in the end God says to him "What do you know?"

Another response to suffering is that of Rabbi Nachum Ish Gam Zu

He was blind in both eyes, missing his hands and feet, his body was full of sores, and he dwelled in a rickety house. His bed was placed in dishes of water so that the ants could not climb over him. Not an enviable life. Reminds me of the sign tacked to a local telephone pole “Missing dog: three legged, missing an ear, mangy, answers to “lucky.” Rabbi Nachum, with everything bad that happened, said "Gam Zu L'tovah" -this too is for the best. He also felt that his suffering was his fault- he had once hesitated to help a person who was starving, and that person died in the brief moment of Rabbi Nachum’s hesitataion, and his suffering was punishment for that. You can say that all of your suffering has purpose. It is revenge for that which you did wrong. But I don't think that's true in a simple sense- we all know those who seem to suffer without cause.

Another passage in the Talmud (Berachot 5b) describes several sages who are struck with illness and other horrible suffering. When they are visited they ask each other: "Chavivin Aleicha Yisurin?"- do you appreciate your suffering? The answer is always. "Lo hen V'lo Secharan." “Neither them, nor their reward.” This is a powerful statement. We recognize that nobody wants to suffer. Healthy people may delay gratification, but they do not choose pain over pleasure gratuitously. We do not ask to be put through the grinder. But there is a powerful assumption inherent in the refusal- that there is a reward. “Neither them, nor their reward.” Perhaps something can come from suffering.

We do not choose whether we are to be sharpened, but we decide how we will react to the experience. The German philosopher Nietzsche wrote "What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. I don't know that that's literally true, but the following really did happen. I had a friend who wanted to put that quote in his high school yearbook. They made a typo: "what doesn't kill you only makes you stranger." Which I think is much more profound.

So what do we do when we are put through the ginder. Do we allow ourselves to be worn down and exhausted? Do we allow it to make us stranger? Do we declare that we are nothing but a nub, good for nothing? Even worse, do we develop sharp points and rough edges so that we jab at others, take out our distress on them, thereby spreading our misery to them? Are we like the drowning man who, flailing, brings down the lifeguard as well?

Or do we draw wisdom from our experiences, do we build up our capacity to make a positive impact on others? Do we take that sharpening, which exposes that which is inside of us, to make our mark in the world? I recently spoke to someone who, as a young woman, went through serious, life threatening illness. She was incapacitated for months, and is still limited in some of her activities. And then I received an email from her- she wants to be a part of our kesher or caring circles group. Even those of us who feel blessed can identify difficult and trying experiences- loss and conflict, pain and anxiety, and each of those experienceshas been an opportunity for growth. Perhaps the suffering that enters our lives has no meaning on its own, but we can choose to give it meaning.

For perhaps the ultimate example of sharpening making us all the more able to leave our mark, consider the life of Liviu Librescu. He was born in Romania. His father was murdered by the Nazis ,and he spent time in a Labor Camp and a Ghetto, and eventually made his way to Israel. He was an engineering professor at Virginia Tech. His research was well-respected in the field, but not earthshaking. Then, one day, a crazed gunman massacred students in the building where Librescu was teaching. Professor Librescu blockaded the door and saved an entire classroom full of students at the cost of his own life. He made his mark.

When we read the Unetaneh tokef prayer, we are told that the book of life hs written in it who will life and who will die. Who will die by fire, by flood, by earthquake, by plague and family. Who will be afflicted with anxiety, poverty, with mortgage balloon payments. Indeed, perhaps we cannot choose the words that will appear in our the book of our lives. Perhaps there are negative ones. Still, with our pencil, we can decide what words we want to highlight and underline, and which we want to blacken out. We can draw the pictures and connect the lines.

Sometimes, we even find that we have run out of pages in the book of our lives, that life has been drawn to a close before its time. We cannot determine how much more blank parchment is ahead of us. As tragic as this is, we still determine what will be written on the pages that we do have. Sometimes the boldest and best stories are written on pages that are torn and tattered, or end on the last page with a “to be continued”

How will you write in the book of life?

Like pencils, we have the capability to erase our mistakes, but we have to turn ourselves around in order to do so. None of us is perfect. And indeed, there are some tasks when even setting out, you know you are not going to be perfect, and that's why you use a pencil. I know a golfer who jokes that the best wood in his bag is his golf pencil. Everyone hates the people who do crossword puzzles or sudoku in pen. How can you be so sure you are going to get it right? I'm reminded of the prayer.

"Dear God- So far today, I've done all right. I haven't gossiped, haven't

lost my temper, haven't been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish, or over-indulgent. I'm really glad about that. But in a few minutes, God, I'm going to get out of bed and from then on I'm probably going to need a lot more help."

In fact, the Talmud, Pesachim teaches us that teshuvah was created before the world itself

Seven things were created, even before the universe itself- the Torah, and repentance, and the garden of eden, and purgatory. The possibility. No- the certaity- of failure is built into the rules of the universe itself. We were bound to eat that very first apple in teh garden of Eden just as surely as that apple will accelerate at 32ft/s/s if you drop it. And so therefore, built in right alongside it, is the prerogative for teshuvah.

Part of life is trying to do worthwhile things even if we are not good at them yet. We have to keep trying, and trying again to do right. We keep practicing. Only a very few of our failures in life are permanent. Often we get a second chance, a second act even when we don't deserve one. Just look at OJ Simpson. I was sure he was going to jail Yom Kippur of 1995, and now here we are again.

How do you do Teshuvah? The first thing is to turn around. To stop doing what you are doing. Before you can erase, you have to stop writing for a minute. We read in Unetaneh Tokef that Teshuvah Tefila utzedakah ma'avirin et roa hagezerah. They don't wipe out the decree, but they can make it fade away. So too, when you write with a pencil, you never truly remove the impression, but you can take away the color, the depth, and leave the space open to write anew.

And so, as we enter the Yizkor service, we prepare to remember those whose memories are dear to us. Some of them were blessed with long life. Some were blessed with a beautiful or handsome appearance. But that is not why we are here in this room. We are here in this room because of the marks, the words, that they made on us. Some went through suffering and were the better for it. Other went through suffering and were ground down. But all wrote in the books of their lives, and we read that book not just on Yom Kippur, the day on which the book of life is open, but every day.

And so let us copy those words, the acts, of those we remember here today, those that are worthy of copying. Let us place our paper over theirs and trace the bold lines of their righteous acts. Let us gently fill in the gaps and gray spots.

Like pencils, let us make our mark in the world, and remember that it is what is on the inside of us that makes that mark..

Like pencils, we know that we sometimes must go through painful sharpening. Let us not be whittled down, or become abrasive. Let us become sharper and more effective.

Like pencils, we have the capability to turn ourselves around and erase our mistakes. Let us never be afraid to stop writing and rewrite.

Like pencils, it is not by length, or color that we are measured, but by what we write. May we all be inscribed and sealed in the book of life for the coming year.