I have a confession to make. (This is the day for it, isn’t it?) For many years, I found it hard to pray on Yom Kippur. This was partly because I was conducting services, worried that we were running late, wondering if the person who had the next honor had arrived yet. It was partly because I, very humanly, resisted admitting that I had done anything wrong during the previous year. But I found it hard to pray mostly because from time to time, I had the feeling that the prayerbook was asking me to say things I didn't believe.
The technical term for this is cognitive dissonance, the discomfort caused by trying to believe two contradictory ideas at the same time. I didn't have the problem all the time, but at key moments of the service, part of me would be leading the prayer and part of me would be saying Wait a minute. I'm not sure I believe that, I'm not sure I want the people out there to believe it, and I'm not sure I want them to think that I believe it.
The single most troubling moment came at what is probably the emotional highlight of the Rosh HaShannah service and almost as central on Yom Kippur, the prayer Netaneh Tokef: b'Rosh HaShannah yikatevun uv'yom tzom kippur yehatemun, it is determined on Rosh HaShannah and confirmed on Yom Kippur, who shall live and who shall die, who shall prosper and who shall fail. Now I know that's not how the world works. If there were, there would be no point in wearing seat belts, no point in watching what we eat, in fact no point in paying attention to traffic lights, since it was decided last September whether we would survive the year or not.
Every year that prayer would bother me, until about two years ago when I finally realized that I had been misunderstanding it my whole life. For the first time, I noticed that the prayer Netaneh Tokef comes in two sections, and my mistake had been in disconnecting the second half of the prayer from the first. The first half of Netaneh Tokef says that, when the books are opened on the Day of Judgment, the entries are in our own handwriting. I take that as a poetic way of saying that we are responsible for what happens to us. If we had not done A, then B and C would not have followed. Then the second half of the prayer goes on to say that, to a great extent, our fate is in someone else's hands. We have a limited say in determining what kind of year, what kind of life we will have.
Now that I can believe. That's something that I think we can all believe: that some of what happens to us in life is the result of choices we make and actions we take, and some of what happens to us, we deserve neither the credit nor the blame for. It was the result of luck or other people's decisions.
Just how important an insight this is came home to me some six months ago, when Rabbi Liben gave a really wonderful sermon on the last day of Pesach. He pointed out that there are really two sets of Four Questions in the Passover Haggadah. There is the familiar Mah Nishtanah, and then a few pages later, there are the questions that the four types of child ask, the wise one, the wicked, the simple and the inarticulate. And the Haggadah gives two very different answers to those two sets of questions. First it says, we keep Passover because we were slaves in Egypt and Pharaoh treated us cruelly until finally God rescued us. And then a few pages later, it says our ancestors used to worship idols and gradually they came to believe in the One True God, and that faith kept us going through all the years of Egyptian bondage.
Do you see the difference, the crucial difference, between those two responses? In the first, we see ourselves as victims. We see ourselves as passive, powerless, dependent on other people. Things happen to us: Pharaoh treats us badly and then God comes and rescues us. That would parallel the second half of Netaneh Tokef: on this day it is decided what kind of year we'll have. But in the second answer, as in the first half of Netaneh Tokef, we're not passive, we're not powerless. We play a role in our own redemption. Things change because we change. The story of our lives is written in our own handwriting.
This is one of the challenges Yom Kippur sets before us: can you acknowledge that some of what has gone wrong in your life is your own fault? because only when you do that can you claim the power to set it right. Without that, you're depending on others to come in and save you. The redemption will not be complete until we take our share of the responsibility for making things different.
Some years ago, I read an article on physical therapy for people with spinal cord injuries. It said that people who had caused their own injuries, by falling asleep at the wheel of a car, by diving into the shallow end of a swimming pool, did better than people who were innocent victims of someone else's mistake. That puzzled me. I would have expected it to be the other way around. This was shortly after my book about bad things happening to good people had come out, with its message that you could cope better with life's misfortunes if you realized that it wasn't your fault, that you weren't a bad person who deserved this. And here was a study that seemed to say the opposite. What the article went on to suggest was that people who saw themselves as innocent victims felt powerless, at the mercy of circumstances. Somebody else got me into this; somebody else is going to have to get me out. But people who felt responsible for their predicament felt that they also had the power to do something about it. They were participants, not victims.
I remember some years ago being asked to take part in a panel discussion on racial and interfaith relations in a nearby suburb where there had been some unpleasant incidents in the schools. In the course of my remarks, I suggested that there were things the African-American community could do to improve the image their white neighbors had of them. The black member of the panel took issue with that. He accused me of blaming the victims. He said the problems were caused by white racism and the problems would not go away until the white community rid itself of racial prejudice. He asked me if I talked that way to my own community, telling them to change the way they behaved so that there would be less anti-Semitism. I told him You're darn right I do. I told him that my understanding of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is that much of it is the result of hate-filled crazy people, but some of it is fueled and reinforced by the behavior of some Jews and by actions taken by the Israeli government, and that if we stopped doing those things, there would be less anti-Semitism and it would be less acceptable and less effective.
I told him about the midrash that compares some anti-Semites to dogs and others to flies. The Rabbis are trying to tell us that you can't argue with mad dogs. You can't try to see things from their point of view. They're sick. All you can do is stay away from them and depend of the authorities to take care of them. And some bigots and hate-mongers are like that. But others are like flies. They're unpleasant but they're not crazy.
They only come around where there is dirt, and you can eliminate them by eliminating the dirt. I told the panel member how historically Jews had tried to control the dysfunctional, embarrassing behavior of other Jews by articulating a sense of shame, a sense of ess passt nisht, that's not nice, and how that worked because virtually everyone in the community respected it. I said to him that, if I didn't believe that, I would have to conclude that Jews were powerless to do anything to reduce anti-Jewish bigotry.
I went on to say that I certainly wasn't going to minimize the existence of racism in the white community, but I thought that what he was saying was dangerous. He was saying that, when it came to race relations, whites had all the power and all the responsibility and blacks had none. Did he really believe that? Did he really want to position himself as a powerless outsider, a passive victim, on an issue of so much importance to him and his family? I said to him I'm not asking you to admit that blacks deserve the treatment they get. That's ridiculous. I'm just asking you to acknowledge that some of the record is in your own handwriting, that some blacks are victimizers and not only victims. Until you recognize that, you're saying that the bad guys have all the power and the good guys don't have any.
I would apply the same test to the frustrating, stalled peace process in the Middle East. Do you know why there is no progress in making peace between Israel and the Palestinians? Because each side insists on seeing itself as the victim. Each side sees history as the story of what has happened to them, and denies that any of the record is in its handwriting. And therefore there is nothing they can do to change the course of events. All the change has to come from the other side.
Israel says that the obstacle to peace is the refusal of the Palestinians to crack down on terrorism and accept their existence as a Jewish state, and while that is certainly not incorrect, it overlooks things that Israel has done to reinforce that attitude. And in a mirror image, the Palestinians insist on painting themselves as victims, -- victims of 1948, victims of 1967. Ask them about the airplane hijackings, ask them about the murder of Olympic athletes in 1972, ask them about the bus bombings in Jerusalem, and all they can talk about is what Israel has to give back to them to make up for all the injustices. That's why both sides are always looking to someone else to impose a solution. Since they didn't cause the problem, why should anyone expect them to solve it?
Do you know what that sounds like? It reminds me of when I was the Rabbi of this congregation, and families would come to me with their problems: husbands and wives, parents and children. I would listen to their problems, and I would ask them OK, what has to change for you all to be able to get along better? And they would answer She has to change! He has to admit I'm right. And I would say You have no power over him. You only have power over yourself. What can you do to make things different? And they would think for a moment or two and say If he admitted I was right, I would forgive him.
Do you see how this works? As long as we insist on seeing ourselves as victims, as long as we insist that everything is somebody else's fault, whether the issue is politics or family feuds, we define ourselves as powerless and we give other people the choice of solving the problem or leaving it unsolved, changing things or letting them remain as they are. When you do that, you place your well-being, your happiness in someone else's power. That is usually inaccurate and almost always ineffective. Only when we accept part of the responsibility, only when we recognize our handwriting on part of the record, can we hope for the redemption to be complete.
I know a lot of you have been waiting throughout this holiday season for me to say something about the problems President Clinton finds himself in in Washington. I've been reluctant to comment on it, because I wasn't sure what there was to say beyond what has been said in the papers. I wasn't about to come out in favor of adultery, and I wasn't inclined to pile on a man who already has so many people criticizing him. But I think the point I'm making today applies here. The path out of his dilemma requires two insights: first, that he is not just a victim of political enemies. His behavior has gotten himself into this mess, and if nothing else, it proves something I have long wanted to believe, that you pay for everything you take in this life in one currency or another. But the second point is that he is not nearly as bad a person as his enemies and the media frenzy have painted him. He did wrong, but there has been an unmistakable case of media overkill in focusing on what he did wrong. For President Clinton as for all of us, some of the record is in his own handwriting, and some of it was done by others without his being responsible.
Let me extend this analysis into one more area. It's no secret that right after Yom Kippur, we will take down the tent and send it back to the company we rent it from. It's safe to predict that next week we won't need all those extra chairs in the auditorium, not for the holiday of Sukkot, not for Shabbat services. You want one of those prestigious luxury boxes in the first nine rows? You don't even have to come early next week; you just have to come. A substantial majority of you have decided that, while Rosh HaShannah and Yom Kippur are important to you, during the rest of the year your Jewishness will be marginal to your life, -- not only synagogue attendance (that's far from the most important thing about being Jewish) but what you do at home, the meals you serve, the books you read and the conversations you have, the Shabbat and holiday candles you either light or don't bother to light.
Some of it is our fault, and we don't deny it. We haven't been able to make Judaism compelling enough, not the part that happens here on Hartford Street and not the part that happens at home. We haven't succeeded in making the connection between the existential questions you ask about life and the resources of wisdom in Jewish texts. You sent us your children for six hours a week, sometimes at considerable inconvenience, and we didn't always know how to fill those six hours so that we could send your children back to you proud, excited, knowledgeable Jews. We let you down, and we admit it, not only on Yom Kippur when we confront our failings, but throughout the year, and we're working hard to change that.
But I would ask you to recognize that you've let us down too. Too often, you saw yourselves as consumers of Judaism at Temple Israel rather than as producers of Judaism. Too often, instead of demanding excellence of your synagogue, you asked how little can I get away with? Too often, you let the work be done by too few people and then complained that it wasn't being done well. Maybe you were right to reject a lot of what we asked of you, but I'm not sure you were right for the right reasons. I suspect that too often you didn't give it the consideration it deserved before you said No.
Let me give you a rough analogy. Seven years ago, when our daughter married a young man from South America, Suzette and I began to immerse ourselves in his native culture. We studied Spanish. I went to soccer games with Isaac and took him to Red Sox games at Fenway park. First impressions were not that great. At half time of the soccer game, I would say to him This is about as exciting as watching paint dry. These people have been running back and forth for forty-five minutes and nobody's come even close to scoring a goal. And after three innings at Fenway, he would say to me What kind of game is this? We've been here for an hour and the right fielder hasn't touched the ball yet. He could have taken the night off and not affected the game.
But because each of us had a commitment to try to take seriously what was important to the other, we stuck with it and learned how to appreciate parts of the game that weren't evident at first encounter.
My friends, I would ask the same of you. If you're going to neglect Jewish prayers and practices, at least do it out of considered opinion, not out of laziness. You owe it to yourself that the Judaism you reject should be Judaism at its best, rejected out of thoughtful consideration, not some shallow, poorly understood substitute. You owe it to yourself to ask If this is so important to so many people I respect, what am I missing that it's not important to me?
Yom Kippur doesn't work if you keep insisting you've done nothing wrong and everything is someone else's fault. If you mumble your way through the confessionals, saying to yourself No, I didn't do that; I'm not guilty of that, then you'll be no better a person next year than you were last year. Yom Kippur doesn't work if you spend the day telling yourself I'm fine; it's everybody else who has problems. The goal of Yom Kippur is not guilt. The goal is power, the power to make your life better precisely because some of what is lacking in your life is your own doing. Whether it's your marriage, your job or your spiritual life, you claim the power to make it better only when you recognize your own handwriting on the indictments.
My friends, if we had only the second part of the prayer, telling us that life is what happens to us due to forces beyond our control, then our Yom Kippur prayer would be nothing but pleading, groveling, begging God to treat us kindly. Then the burden of our prayers would be my health won't improve until doctors find a cure for my condition, my marriage won't improve until my spouse changes, my relationships to people around me won't get any better until the people around me become more reasonable. And we would walk out of shul feeling more helpless than when we walked in.
But if we accept the first half of the prayer, if we are able to see ourselves as more than victims, if we can see ourselves as authors of the Book of Life, not only as subjects, as masters of at least part of our fate, if we are prepared to see ourselves as having created a big part of the life we are living, then our Yom Kippur prayer becomes I can change my life: God, show me where and how I can change it. And then we walk out of shul at the end of the day cleansed, affirmed, empowered, eager to take on the world in the New Year, so that next year, when the books are opened, we'll be able to feel proud of what we find written there in our own handwriting.