Yom Kippur and Baseball, comments my colleague, Rabbi Alan Lew, are like competing religions. When Kol Nidre coincides with a crucial Playoff, or World Series game, as it often does, you can see the drop off in shul attendance, even on the holiest night of the year. And what else would you expect? Baseball is a religion of winning. You rally around your team, and when they do well, you get to bask in its glory. Yom Kippur, on the other hand, is about losing.
Barely a week ago, on Rosh Hashnnah, we rejoiced, " Hayom Harat Olam: Today the World is Born." Life seemed rich with new possibilities. But today, we confront our limitations: our false steps, our fears, and our failures of nerve, our missed opportunities, disappointments, and yes, even the specter of our own deaths. As Kurt Vonnegut wryly puts it, "Maturity is a disappointment from which no remedy exists."
And so, for one day, we confront the abyss. We starve our bodies. We recite Yizkor for our departed, the Eileh Ezkerah in memory of our martyrs, and the Vidui, the confession of sins, just as we are commanded to do when we prepare to die.
It is traditional to wear a white kittel today, to remind us of the shroud in which we will be buried. The morning Torah reading begins with the death of Aaron's sons. And near the beginning of the Musaph Amidah, we recite once again the words of the Unetaneh Tokef prayer, as we did on Rosh Hashannah: Who shall live, and who shall die. But today, the words seem even more frightening then they did last week, because today is Yom Kippur. Who wouldn't rather watch baseball?
And yet, here we are. We choose to be here because we believe that Yom Kippur, this rehearsal of death, atones; that it actually prepares us to live better, more thoughtful lives. We perceive that there are things we need to learn about ourselves, and that death itself is our teacher. Today, we seek wisdom, the one attribute we possess that increases, rather than diminishes, with our years.
A friend of mine passed away recently, and I want to share with you this Yom Kippur the wisdom that I learned from her. I am telling you her story, with her family's blessing, not only because it is about courage and honesty in the face of death, but also because it is also about teshuva and forgiveness, and the kind of wisdom towards which facing our death can lead us.
I met Temma just over a year ago, although she had been living with cancer for a long time. She knew it would take her life, and that no therapy could prolong it by more than a few painful months. So Temma chose instead to forgo any further treatment, and to take control of her death.
She had a husband who loved her deeply, and a wonderful daughter in her twenties. Temma discussed everything with them. No subject was taboo. Taking control was her weapon against despair. Intimate relationship issues, the kind of subjects that often get buried and pushed aside until its too late, were attended to. Temma planned her end as much as possible. Which funeral director, which plot, even which burly cousins should be responsible for covering her grave with earth. It would be a simple graveside funeral; she did not want a procession of speakers. As for shiva, well, she would leave that to her family to decide, for she would already be gone.
There was nothing left to do but wait. She wanted to enjoy the relatively pain-free time she had left with her family and then, when the end neared, she would check into the hospital, where her pain could be liberally controlled with medication during her final days. It was a plan. A sad plan, but a clear, well thought out, and a courageous one, none the less. But you know what they say about the best-laid plans…
Shortly before Passover, the doctors told Temma and her family that the cancer was spreading fast now. This was the end game: she could expect to live six more weeks. The words had the finality of a death sentence and as prepared as Temma and her husband had been for nearly two years, they struck them like a thunderbolt.
I sat with them in the hospital a couple of days later. "Rabbi," she said to me, sitting up and feeling pretty good, "We've done our work. But what I need you for is the spiritual piece of it. Tell me, what do you think happens to me after I die?"
Not even Rabbis have stock answers to questions of belief. For me, the answers are never static; they are always shifting. So I told her only of what I was certain at that moment: that I believed that the soul returns to God from whence it came. I wasn't sure if the soul retained the unique consciousness that makes us you or me, but certainly, I affirmed, something of us survived. She was skeptical even of this rather tepid assertion of eternity. "I'm too concrete a thinker for that," she said. "When you're dead, you're dead." In days to come, we would speak of this again. Temma would ask me more difficult to answer questions, such as, "What should I be thinking about now?" Or, "should I be afraid?" She was searingly honest, analytical and brave. I'm sure I learned as much from her questions as she learned from my answers.
After a couple of very painful days at home, she checked herself into the hospital to die, according to the plan. But she didn't die. Such was the hide and seek nature of her cancer that Temma sat in her hospital room looking great, and once again feeling pretty normal. "I can't decide," she said, "whether to hook myself up to an intravenous drip, and pass quietly, or go out for a nice dinner."
So Temma checked out of the hospital and went home again. Passover led to Shavuot. Shavuot led into early summer. The six weeks predicted by her doctors had long passed. Temma received visitors while reclining in a comfortable chair, casually dressed, and impeccably coiffed and manicured, as her pain continued to worsen, waiting to die.
She had her good days and her bad days. Often she was bored, bitter about still being alive. "Why am I still here?" she would ask. "I am in constant pain. I am ready to go. I should be dead. Why is this dragging on this way?' Her family's grief was compounded by her unwillingness to take hold of the preciousness of the days that were still hers. But lingering had not been in Temma's plan.
I urged Temma to consider what she still might accomplish with her time, about the preciousness of even a single day. But she insisted that she had said all of her good-byes to the important people in her life; that there was nothing left to do. And yet, I felt, there must be more: some insight, some tikkun- some repair, that was still within her reach.
One day, Temma smiled at me and said, "I think this weekend I might have come to that insight you keep thinking I'm supposed to have. Maybe this is what I've been waiting for to let go. What do you think?" Her parents had come from out of state to visit her. It was the first time they had seen her in a very long time, because Tina had felt estranged from them since she was young. "And Rabbi," she said, "they were so wrapped up in their own needs. Everyone in the house knew that I am dying except them. Then it hit me like a flash. I was right year ago when I cut them out emotionally, when I decided that I could not expect to receive the love from them that I needed. Their trip confirmed it for me. I have no need for regret- I had made the right decision. Do you think that's it Rabbi? Do you think that's the insight I was waiting for?"
"Perhaps," I said, as I smiled back to her. But in my heart, I knew that wasn't it at all. I suspected she got the subject right, but hadn't gotten to the right conclusion.
June turned to July, and I was working for the month at Camp Ramah. Each week, I came back home to visit with Temma and her family. She could no longer eat. Week after week, her strong heart amazingly, inexplicably, continued to beat, although by now she was surviving on nothing more than ice chips. Yet her mind remained sharp and clear. And gradually, as her body wasted away, so did her bitterness at still being in this world, replaced by an awe of the mystery that still held her to it. And we continued to ponder, for what purpose?
One day at camp, I checked my cell phone only to hear a distressing phone message from Temma's husband. "Please come," he said. "Temma may only have only a couple of days of consciousness left, and she wanted to see you." I dropped everything, and got in my car. Driving quickly, I prayed that she would still be conscious, because I urgently needed to talk to my friend before the end. Fortunately, it was a false alarm, and Temma was tired, but awake when I arrived. "Temma, I prayed the whole ride home that you would still be here," I said, "because I had to tell you once more that this journey of yours does means something, and that it doesn't end with death, and that there is something waiting for you on the other side." I had become convinced of that over the months, and I had to share it with my friend Temma. "You really think so," she smiled weekly. " You drove all this way to tell me that? Wow."
Sometimes, when I visited, I would read psalms to her. Near the end, I began to sing. "Esa Eynai el Heharim. I look up to the mountains. From whence comes my help? My help comes from the Lord, creator of heaven and earth." Sometimes, we would just sit. She could sense my slow, measured, meditative breathing. "Oh Rabbi, " she would say, " I don't know what you're doing but it feels so peaceful…like its coming from another place."
Camp came and went. It was August now. I kept bringing up the subject of Temma's parents, suggesting that there was still unfinished business there. Was this the missing piece, the thing yet undone, that was keeping Temma tied to this life?
She was too weak to get out of bed now. It was clear, after these many weeks and months that the end was near. At Temma's request, her parents were coming back, and arriving the next day. "Maybe its time to stop being angry about who they are not, and just accept whatever love they have to offer you."
"Perhaps, Rabbi. I'm not angry anymore. Things are what they are...We'll see what happens when they get here."
I thought of the woman who was ready to die five months before. "Isn't it amazing," I continued gently, "that even at this late date, even now, you can still have a day with an important agenda ahead of you?"
"Yeah..." she smiled, "it is."I was leaving town again, for a weeklong conference. "Would it be selfish of me to pray that you will still be here when I get back," I asked, as I held her hand. "I'm afraid it would," she answered, and we both new that this was the last time that she and I would speak. "Thank you," she said, "for helping me to make this a spiritual journey. Neither of us expected that to happen, but it did." She smiled weakly. And then she said, "this story… it's a good one. You're going to tell this one someday, I know."
Two nights later, Temma suffered a stroke. Her father held her hand and brushed her brow through the night, singing to Temma the songs that he had sung to her as a child. Unable to speak, she weakly gestured for him to continue. The next afternoon, Temma finally let go. She died just as she had planned, in her own bed, surrounded by her family. But how could she have known at the beginning of this journey that at its end, she would lay cradled in her mother's arms?
She died on Tisha b'Av, a day of mourning and fasting seven weeks before Rosh Hashanah. The ninth of Av, our only full fast day besides Yom Kippur, a day that commemorates the tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people through our long history. In the morning of Tisha B'Av, so overwhelmed are we by a sense of estrangement from God, that we pray without tallis and tefillin, bereft of the signs that normally assure us of Divine covenant and connection. We sit on low benches, or on the floor, as if sitting shiva for the destroyed Temple, mourning the loss of God's presence.
But by the Mincha service in the early afternoon, the Torah texts we read speak of reconciliation, and of God's abiding love, and we pick of our tallesim and tefillin once more. That was when Temma passed to the next world. I believe, at that moment, that she felt her parents' love, and God's love, too.
At her funeral, butterflies hovered above her grave. Her daughter asked me if I thought it was a sign from Temma that everything was O.K. Perhaps; I can't really know. But I would like to think so. Like the two deer on the front lawn of a home I visited last month. A young husband and father had died there the day before. And as I walked slowly up the driveway, I saw the bereaved family standing in hushed silence, completely still. Two deer had approached them, almost close enough to touch. The moment lasted, we looking at the deer, they staring back at us, a moment as if plucked from eternity. Later, the family swore that in thirty years, deer had never before been seen on the property. And now this. "It was Dad," smiled the daughter. " He was telling us that he's alright, and that he's found a friend." Perhaps these things mean nothing. Or perhaps they are meant to let us know that the deeds we do in life not only help to perfect this world, but they also perfect us, prepare us, for what is to come.
And so I learned from my friend Temma that it is possible to face even the specter of death with honesty and courage. I learned from her that it is possible, even in the final weeks of life, to forge a bond of friendship that will last a lifetime. I learned that every hour that God gives us is a gift. And I learned that God waits for our forgiveness, even until our final hour.
Rabbi Eliezer, one of the great sages of antiquity, taught his disciples, "Turn one day prior to your death." And his students said to him, "Master, how can anyone know what day is one day prior to their own death? And his response to them was, "Therefore, repent today, because tomorrow you may die (Shabbat 153a)." My friends, we usually think of Teshuva, repentance, as what other people need to do before we can forgive them. But there is a kind of teshuva, a kind of wonderful returning to our best selves, which, ironically, is our own inner work that enables us to forgive. Facing our mortality allows this perspective, because forgiveness is not about the future. Forgiveness, in a lovely turn of phrase, "is giving up the hope of a better past."
When the Biblical Patriarch Abraham dies, at the age of one hundred and seventy five years, the Torah tells us: "And Abraham breathed his last, dying at a good ripe age, old and contented; and he was gathered to his kin." And then we hear something really quite amazing. The Torah says, "His sons, Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah." When had Ishmael shown up? This was the rejected son, who was banished years before. The text dropped any mention of him several chapters earlier. And now, here the two brothers are, together. Think of it. Here is Ishmael, at the cave of Machpelah, burying his father next to Sarah, the same Sarah who had treated him so cruelly, ordering him from their home years before. Such is the power of death to allow us to let go of even the deepest wounds, and to forgive. And, although the text does not tell us this explicitly, I would like to imagine that Ishmael returned at his father's tent while Abraham was still alive. I would like to believe that it was Ishmael's presence, and their reconciliation, that allowed the old man to finally leave this world, contented, as the Torah describes.
My friends, some of us will die, like Abraham, at a ripe old age. Some of us will undoubtedly suffer the pains of illness, while others will go peacefully in their sleep, yet, without the opportunity to make amends. As Rabbi Eliezer reminds us, we do not choose the hour of our death. And yet, we do not have to wait for it in order to learn its wisdom. Yom Kippur gives us that opportunity now, today, to look inside our souls and to do the work that needs to be done. Forgive now. As long as there is breath still in you, it is not too late.
L'Shanah Tova Tikateivu v'Techateimu: May we be inscribed and sealed for life in the coming year, and may our days be filled with meaning and with love.