Post by Rabbi Neil on Sept 14, 2021 22:38:19 GMT
After Abraham goes to Mount Moriah to offer up his son, Isaac, to God in the Akeidah that we read tomorrow morning, Torah next says that Sarah died. According to a number of commentators, the two are connected in that Sarah died from the shock of hearing what her husband did. The Maharal of Prague gives a slightly different take on that, though, saying, “It seems that because she heard that Isaac was almost slaughtered – that such a small thing kept him from being slaughtered – for this reason she was shocked.” And he adds something which resonates very powerfully today – “This is the way of humanity: to be shocked upon hearing that only a small thing kept a person alive.”
If we follow his reading, it’s not that Sarah is shocked at her husband specifically, but at the realization that all life hangs by a thread, especially the lives of her loved ones. Her physical death becomes an outward manifestation of the death of the world she knew, a realization that leads to something that Aviva Zornberg calls “theological vertigo.” That is the loss of stability, the existential realization that we live constantly on a precipice, teetering precariously between life and death at every moment. That feeling may sound very familiar. That awareness that we might randomly be infected with a virus that could take us or our loved ones at any time – that constant living on edge, that theological vertigo, that’s not a healthy emotional place to be, and yet it is a place that many of us have found ourselves for an uncomfortably long time. We are rattled by the lack of order in the world, by the lack of justice, that we had pushed out of sight from the comfort of our own homes. We are mocked by death, taunting us, bringing us to the edge of existence. We are dis-eased.
How do we come to the High Holy Days, searching for atonement, looking to be written in the Book of Life, when we know that so many people in Santa Fe will not be written in it? How can we talk at the end of the Ne’ilah service of the certainty of being sealed in the Book of Life when we have lived for well over a year with constant uncertainty of who shall live and who shall die? How can this journey of atonement be meaningful when so many people struggle to find any meaning in our lives at the moment? The answer, I believe, is that the journey of atonement closely mirrors the journey of grief, and I believe that many of us are currently living in a state of semi-permanent grief. If, therefore, we can acknowledge that journey of grief, and experience it fully, we can also journey through atonement, and come through this High Holy Day season comforted and even invigorated.
One model of grief that I find very helpful is the Kübler-Ross Grief Cycle. In that model, people who grieve go through five stages, for differing lengths of time, and sometimes even returning back to stages that they had already experienced. Those stages are Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Although there are some who question this model, I have found it particularly relevant in my pastoral work on many occasions. I believe that this model of Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance is also an extremely good model for atonement, and my five sermons in this High Holy Day season will explore each one to try to help us create a meaningful journey of atonement in a unique and challenging time of loss.
The first stage in that cycle is that of Denial. We see denial in the world all around us, and I believe that there are two overarching forms of that denial which are essential for us to address if we are to truly engage in t’shuvah, in repentance, in returning to God. The first form of denial is where we deny change because we cannot accept the loss of what was. The more intense the loss, the more intense the denial, which I believe is partially why we now constantly see anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers, COVID deniers, and more. As the existential terror of a pandemic and of irreversible climate change becomes more extreme, so do the denial responses. We don’t want to leave our comfortable lives, we don’t want to have to let go of what was once good and might not be as good again. We don’t want to accept the loss of the old ways.
The other form of denial is different, though – the denial that we cause harm. I believe that many of the social clashes that we see nowadays are between those who acknowledge that our society’s way of life was built on harm and continues only through the perpetuation of harm, and between those who deny that such harm exists or is significant. Those who recognize the harm that is an inherent part of our society then deride those who deny it but often do not significantly change their lifestyles themselves, partly out of convenience and partly because vilifying others allows us not to have to focus on our own faults. We make slight changes to our lifestyles and then deny that the harm is done in our name - we point fingers at others in order to avoid having to address the harm we ourselves cause. “We have sinned” – ashamnu – then transforms into “We may have sinned a little, but they have sinned a lot.” We therefore create a net of denial, a bubble of self-righteousness that allows business-as-usual to continue. That bubble leads to collective denial of the necessity of total social overhaul, and it allows us to deny the pain we cause to others so that we do not hate ourselves. Recognizing that denial is key to t’shuvah. The first step of t’shuvah, of repentance, is acknowledgement of how we convince ourselves that we are better than we are. It’s breaking down the denial of the terrible things that we do, to ourselves and to others.
Thinking back to the commentary on Sarah, especially during a pandemic, we also need to dispense with the denial of the fragility of life if we are to honestly stand before God. Jewish tradition is well aware of that fragility, actually. For example, in the Babylonian Talmud we read a fascinating narrative in which the Angel of Death instructs his servant to kill a particular woman, but the servant kills the wrong person with a similar name! Rav Beivai bar Abaye then challenges the Angel of Death whose response demonstrates not only that sometimes innocent people get swept away without a plan, but also that the Angel of Death can take people away randomly despite God’s plan for that individual. We do everything we can do deny that randomness, but now more than ever, we need to be open to it, to the fragility of our lives. This is why we go from the certainty of being sealed in the Book of Life on Yom Kippur to the fragility of the succah only five days later, subject to the whims of the elements that cannot be controlled, because our tradition denies us the illusion that our comforts are permanent. We can control ourselves, but our control over the world is far more limited than we realize, but we deny that so that we might hold onto a sense of normalcy in our lives. “It’s over – we’ve got the vaccine!” one person told me, only to realize months later that even that moment of seeming control was a denial of reality. Shaul Magid writes, “By acknowledging the arbitrary, Jews concede that not everything that happens to them is the result of their covenantal relationship with God. By acknowledging this, they must then navigate how and when the arbitrary works, and what its criteria and limits are.” In other words, it would be very comforting if we believed that God were always in control of everything, that there is a master plan, that suffering has an ultimate purpose that sometimes is hidden beyond us but which we are assured is positive even if we cannot know what it is. And while our tradition does sometimes talk with that comforting voice, at other times, particularly during a time of plague, it also talks in the voice of the arbitrary. It discomforts us. It refuses to accept our denial of the arbitrary, just as it refuses to accept our denial of the harm we do to others. It refuses to allow us to be comforted because one cannot atone from a position of comfort and belief in our own goodness.
Talmud understands that people tend to deny the reality of suffering. In Tractate Ta’anit, we are told that “when the community is immersed in pain, a person may not say, “I will go to my home and I will eat and drink, and peace my upon you, my soul.”… Instead, one must suffer along with the community… and one who suffers with the community will merit seeing the consolation of the community.” When others suffer, we cannot deny their pain, we have to share it with them - if we deny the pain of others, we cannot atone.
So, we have to strip away the denial of reality if we are to increase our chances of physical survival during this pandemic, and we have to strip away the denial of the harm we do if we are to increase our chances of spiritual survival during this High Holy Day season. We cannot atone if we deny that we make mistakes as surely as we cannot survive a pandemic if we deny that it exists. We have tools to help us through both situations – liturgy and prayer, vaccines and masks. These allow us to hold onto something during uncertain times and increase our chances of successfully navigating the difficult times.
What this pandemic has shown us, and what the High Holy Days constantly remind us, is that every one of us right now lives on the precipice of existence and non-existence. We are not on solid ground. We are unsettled. If we are to atone, if we are to change, then we have to experience loss – the loss of who we were so that we can create a new, better version of ourselves. The first stage through that loss is working past the denial that we need to change. That is why we are here. Tonight, we face our denial of the need to change, of the fragility of life, and of the harm that we do to others and to ourselves. And tonight, as we start our process of atonement, we step beyond that denial so that we might face our true selves, our full selves, and atone. May God guide us as we shed our denial, as we face the reality of the world around us, face the pain we have caused others, and as we face the true, terrifying reality of ourselves, so that we may step forward in atonement, and let us say, amen.
If we follow his reading, it’s not that Sarah is shocked at her husband specifically, but at the realization that all life hangs by a thread, especially the lives of her loved ones. Her physical death becomes an outward manifestation of the death of the world she knew, a realization that leads to something that Aviva Zornberg calls “theological vertigo.” That is the loss of stability, the existential realization that we live constantly on a precipice, teetering precariously between life and death at every moment. That feeling may sound very familiar. That awareness that we might randomly be infected with a virus that could take us or our loved ones at any time – that constant living on edge, that theological vertigo, that’s not a healthy emotional place to be, and yet it is a place that many of us have found ourselves for an uncomfortably long time. We are rattled by the lack of order in the world, by the lack of justice, that we had pushed out of sight from the comfort of our own homes. We are mocked by death, taunting us, bringing us to the edge of existence. We are dis-eased.
How do we come to the High Holy Days, searching for atonement, looking to be written in the Book of Life, when we know that so many people in Santa Fe will not be written in it? How can we talk at the end of the Ne’ilah service of the certainty of being sealed in the Book of Life when we have lived for well over a year with constant uncertainty of who shall live and who shall die? How can this journey of atonement be meaningful when so many people struggle to find any meaning in our lives at the moment? The answer, I believe, is that the journey of atonement closely mirrors the journey of grief, and I believe that many of us are currently living in a state of semi-permanent grief. If, therefore, we can acknowledge that journey of grief, and experience it fully, we can also journey through atonement, and come through this High Holy Day season comforted and even invigorated.
One model of grief that I find very helpful is the Kübler-Ross Grief Cycle. In that model, people who grieve go through five stages, for differing lengths of time, and sometimes even returning back to stages that they had already experienced. Those stages are Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Although there are some who question this model, I have found it particularly relevant in my pastoral work on many occasions. I believe that this model of Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance is also an extremely good model for atonement, and my five sermons in this High Holy Day season will explore each one to try to help us create a meaningful journey of atonement in a unique and challenging time of loss.
The first stage in that cycle is that of Denial. We see denial in the world all around us, and I believe that there are two overarching forms of that denial which are essential for us to address if we are to truly engage in t’shuvah, in repentance, in returning to God. The first form of denial is where we deny change because we cannot accept the loss of what was. The more intense the loss, the more intense the denial, which I believe is partially why we now constantly see anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers, COVID deniers, and more. As the existential terror of a pandemic and of irreversible climate change becomes more extreme, so do the denial responses. We don’t want to leave our comfortable lives, we don’t want to have to let go of what was once good and might not be as good again. We don’t want to accept the loss of the old ways.
The other form of denial is different, though – the denial that we cause harm. I believe that many of the social clashes that we see nowadays are between those who acknowledge that our society’s way of life was built on harm and continues only through the perpetuation of harm, and between those who deny that such harm exists or is significant. Those who recognize the harm that is an inherent part of our society then deride those who deny it but often do not significantly change their lifestyles themselves, partly out of convenience and partly because vilifying others allows us not to have to focus on our own faults. We make slight changes to our lifestyles and then deny that the harm is done in our name - we point fingers at others in order to avoid having to address the harm we ourselves cause. “We have sinned” – ashamnu – then transforms into “We may have sinned a little, but they have sinned a lot.” We therefore create a net of denial, a bubble of self-righteousness that allows business-as-usual to continue. That bubble leads to collective denial of the necessity of total social overhaul, and it allows us to deny the pain we cause to others so that we do not hate ourselves. Recognizing that denial is key to t’shuvah. The first step of t’shuvah, of repentance, is acknowledgement of how we convince ourselves that we are better than we are. It’s breaking down the denial of the terrible things that we do, to ourselves and to others.
Thinking back to the commentary on Sarah, especially during a pandemic, we also need to dispense with the denial of the fragility of life if we are to honestly stand before God. Jewish tradition is well aware of that fragility, actually. For example, in the Babylonian Talmud we read a fascinating narrative in which the Angel of Death instructs his servant to kill a particular woman, but the servant kills the wrong person with a similar name! Rav Beivai bar Abaye then challenges the Angel of Death whose response demonstrates not only that sometimes innocent people get swept away without a plan, but also that the Angel of Death can take people away randomly despite God’s plan for that individual. We do everything we can do deny that randomness, but now more than ever, we need to be open to it, to the fragility of our lives. This is why we go from the certainty of being sealed in the Book of Life on Yom Kippur to the fragility of the succah only five days later, subject to the whims of the elements that cannot be controlled, because our tradition denies us the illusion that our comforts are permanent. We can control ourselves, but our control over the world is far more limited than we realize, but we deny that so that we might hold onto a sense of normalcy in our lives. “It’s over – we’ve got the vaccine!” one person told me, only to realize months later that even that moment of seeming control was a denial of reality. Shaul Magid writes, “By acknowledging the arbitrary, Jews concede that not everything that happens to them is the result of their covenantal relationship with God. By acknowledging this, they must then navigate how and when the arbitrary works, and what its criteria and limits are.” In other words, it would be very comforting if we believed that God were always in control of everything, that there is a master plan, that suffering has an ultimate purpose that sometimes is hidden beyond us but which we are assured is positive even if we cannot know what it is. And while our tradition does sometimes talk with that comforting voice, at other times, particularly during a time of plague, it also talks in the voice of the arbitrary. It discomforts us. It refuses to accept our denial of the arbitrary, just as it refuses to accept our denial of the harm we do to others. It refuses to allow us to be comforted because one cannot atone from a position of comfort and belief in our own goodness.
Talmud understands that people tend to deny the reality of suffering. In Tractate Ta’anit, we are told that “when the community is immersed in pain, a person may not say, “I will go to my home and I will eat and drink, and peace my upon you, my soul.”… Instead, one must suffer along with the community… and one who suffers with the community will merit seeing the consolation of the community.” When others suffer, we cannot deny their pain, we have to share it with them - if we deny the pain of others, we cannot atone.
So, we have to strip away the denial of reality if we are to increase our chances of physical survival during this pandemic, and we have to strip away the denial of the harm we do if we are to increase our chances of spiritual survival during this High Holy Day season. We cannot atone if we deny that we make mistakes as surely as we cannot survive a pandemic if we deny that it exists. We have tools to help us through both situations – liturgy and prayer, vaccines and masks. These allow us to hold onto something during uncertain times and increase our chances of successfully navigating the difficult times.
What this pandemic has shown us, and what the High Holy Days constantly remind us, is that every one of us right now lives on the precipice of existence and non-existence. We are not on solid ground. We are unsettled. If we are to atone, if we are to change, then we have to experience loss – the loss of who we were so that we can create a new, better version of ourselves. The first stage through that loss is working past the denial that we need to change. That is why we are here. Tonight, we face our denial of the need to change, of the fragility of life, and of the harm that we do to others and to ourselves. And tonight, as we start our process of atonement, we step beyond that denial so that we might face our true selves, our full selves, and atone. May God guide us as we shed our denial, as we face the reality of the world around us, face the pain we have caused others, and as we face the true, terrifying reality of ourselves, so that we may step forward in atonement, and let us say, amen.