Sermon for Yom Kippur morning 5783
October 5, 2022
Here we are at the last of my four High Holiday sermons on the four paragraphs that were composed almost two thousand years ago and inserted into the even older Kedusha blessing of the Amidah for use on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
These liturgical additions are traditionally attributed to Rabbi Yochanan ben Nuri, and date from the first half of the second century of the Common Era. This was the time of the Bar Kokhba revolt and the Hadrianic persecutions that followed it.
In other words, these prayers come from a time in which our people were experiencing persecution and mass murder as the forces of the Roman Empire fought to eradicate the Jewish connection with Jerusalem and the Land of Israel some six decades after they burned the Second Temple to the ground. The story of the execution of Rabbi Akiva and his students that we revisit later today in the Yom Kippur martyrology service is set in that time period.
And so, these prayers that we chant on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and that we have been discussing in these High Holiday sermons this year, represent the persistence of hope and faith and determination even in the direst of circumstances.
Even amidst all the troubles and worries that we face in our own lives today, we must always remember how fortunate we are to be comparatively safe, and comparatively secure vis-à-vis those genocidal eras of the past. And we can always be encouraged and inspired by the determination our ancestors showed throughout the centuries to maintain our identity, to maintain our religious heritage and to remain committed to building a better world.
As I shared with you on Erev Rosh Hashanah, some later commentators teach that these special prayers on the High Holidays, prominently featuring the exclamation --- UVECHEN/ THEREFORE --- were also intended to recall Queen Esther’s brave announcement in chapter 4 of Megillat Esther ---
וּבְכֵ֞ן אָב֤וֹא אֶל־הַמֶּ֙לֶךְ֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר לֹֽא־כַדָּ֔ת וְכַאֲשֶׁ֥ר אָבַ֖דְתִּי אָבָֽדְתִּי׃
AND THEREFORE I shall go to the king, though it is contrary to the law; and if I am to perish, I shall perish!”[1]
Today, on this most awesome of the Days of Awe, our tradition teaches that we too NAVO EL MELEKH --- we too go before MELEKH HA’OLAM – to confess our sins and plead our case to be graced with another year of life. We purport to do this despite the fact --- repeated over and over during these High Holiday services in the concluding lines of Avinu Malkeinu that --- אין בנו מעש'ם – WE HAVE NO MERITS – WE ARE UNDESERVING – WE HAVE NO DEEDS TO JUSTIFY US . Those are a few of the translations we find in various machzorim for the Hebrew אין בנו מעש'ם. Our machzor “On Wings of Awe” renders that phrase as “we have too few good deeds.” But that softens the language of the Hebrew phrase אין בנו מעש'ם a bit since “Eyn” doesn’t mean “too few”.
“Eyn” means none, zilch, nada.
As we should well know, since every Shabbat morning we sing:
אֵין כֵּאלהֵינוּ.
אֵין כַּאדונֵינוּ.
אֵין כְּמַלְכֵּנוּ.
אֵין כְּמושִׁיעֵנוּ.
Which means that “There is …
NONE like our God.
NONE like our provider
NONE like our sovereign
NONE like our redeemer.”
So, EYN BANU MA’ASIM --- WE HAVE NOTHING TO WARRANT OUR CONTINUED EXISTENCE AS LIVING BEINGS.
Indeed, given all the horrors that human beings have inflicted upon one another throughout history and to the present day, and given all the abuse we have heaped upon the planet that we live on and on the living species with whom we share it, and given all the ways in which we personally have at times been insensitive and uncaring to one another --- to both “our neighbor” and to “the stranger that dwells among us” --- given all that, you would think that
UVECHEN/ THEREFORE ---
We are beyond the possibility of redemption.
But, of course, that’s not the message that the High Holidays in general, and Yom Kippur in particular, come to teach. As the late chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks taught:
“The God who created us in [the Divine] image gave us freedom. We are not tainted by original sin, destined to fail, caught in the grip of an evil only Divine grace can defeat. To the contrary, we have within us the power to choose life. Together we have the power to change the world.”[2]
And yet, I’m chilled when, just yesterday morning as I was finalizing this sermon, I was reading about Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons in his vicious aggression against Ukraine, and about North Korea’s brazen missile testing over the skies of Japan.
We may not be experiencing the terror of the Hadrianic persecutions, or of the Shoah right now, but we – and all humanity – are nevertheless living right now in very dangerous times.
I don’t know if any of you have ever read the novel “On the Beach” by the Australian novelist Nevil Shute. It was published in 1957 and, two years later, made into a film starring Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner. It concerns the lives of survivors of a nuclear war living in Australia who are awaiting certain death from radiation sickness as winds slowly blow south from the aftermath of a nuclear war that had devastated the rest of the world.
When I was 12 years old, in sixth grade, my English teacher Miss Malta assigned our class to read “On the Beach” and then to go around interviewing at least five or six people of our choice asking them – “What would you do if you were in the situation of the characters in the novel?”
In writing the report, we were supposed to put at the top of each interview a quotation from the interviewee that summed up the content of the interview.
I was thinking about that book, and about that sixth grade English class assignment, when I was reading yesterday about the latest developments concerning Russia and North Korea.
Of course, back in 1972, when I had that school assignment, we were living in the midst of the cold war and its attendant nuclear threats. Little could anyone of my generation imagine that now, in 2022, over three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world might be drifting in that same dangerous direction.
But back when I, as a sixth-grader, interviewed my grandfather Harry Gray (born in Zhmerinka, Ukraine as Aron Grabelsky) for my English class assignment about “On the Beach” this is what my Grampa said to me:
“Where there is life there is hope.”
I’m sure he didn’t make up that adage on his own, but it has definitely informed my outlook on life ever since.
“Where there is life there is hope.”
And I suppose our Jewish traditions around the High Holidays have also informed my outlook all these years for, as we well know, that statement in Avinu Malkeinu that אין בנו מעש'ם is surrounded by the language of hope and faith – surrounded by the affirmation that God is ultimately judging us through the lens of compassion and mercy --- or --- to put it in more secular terms --- WE OURSELVES ARE NOT ONLY “UVECHEN” people -- we are NOT ONLY “LOGICAL CAUSE AND EFFECT” – people. We ALSO believe and, AND WE KNOW THAT WE SHOULD ACT ON THE BELIEF –
that mercy, compassion, generosity
LOVE/HOPE/PEACE/RENEWAL/COMMUNITY
[Note: Here I held up my service outlines folder on the cover of which I had years earlier written those words — "LOVE/HOPE/PEACE/RENEWAL/COMMUNITY — a suggestion which had been made to me and others by our colleague of blessed memory Rabbi Michael Remson.]
Might still make it possible for us to muddle through.
And so, although, eyn banu ma’asim --- although we have too few good deeds --- we nevertheless pray:
אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ
ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo
Our Parent, Our Sovereign!
חָנֵּֽנוּ וַעֲנֵֽנוּ
chah-nay-noo vah-ahh-nay-noo
be gracious to us and answer us
כִּי אֵין בָּֽנוּ מַעֲשִׂים
kee ayn bah-noo mah-ahh-seem
for we have no merit
עֲשֵׂה עִמָּֽנוּ צְדָקָה וָחֶֽסֶד
ahh-say eeh-mah-noo tzih-dah-kah vah-cheh-sed
deal with us charitably and kindly with us
וְהוֹשִׁיעֵֽנוּ
vih-hoe-shee-ay-noo
and save us.
And, by praying that “Avinu Malkeinu” should save us --- what we are really saying is ---- may we, flesh and blood human beings, summon up the dedication, the will and the integrity to fix this mess that we, the human race, have made of this world.
I had stated that my four sermons this High Holiday season would focus on the four additional sections of the Kedusha of the High Holiday Amidah ---
Uvechen teyn pachdekha --- Therefore, Adonai our God, make all your creatures awestruck by your greatness.
Uvechen teyn kavod --- Therefore, Adonai, share Your glory with Your people,
Uvechen teyn tzadikim yir’u viyismachu – Therefore let the righteous rejoice
And now, on Yom Kippur morning, we reach the closing section of this prayer,
Vtimlokh attah Adonai levadekha – Therefore, you Adonai alone will rule….[3]
The quote from the fifth chapter of the Book of Isaiah near the end of the blessing sums this section up for me:
Vayigba Adonai Tzeva’ot bamishpat (“Through justice the Commander of the hosts is exalted”); veha’el hakadosh nikdash bitzedakah (“through tzedakah, holiness flows from the holy God.”)
Okay then, those are, as it were, our marching orders --- let’s focus on pursuing justice. Let’s focus on giving tzedakah. That’s what WE can do. And that’s what will make our religious visions real.
**********
Rabbis need rabbis too – and my rabbi during the first few years after my ordination 25 years ago was Rabbi Ron Aigen, himself one of the first graduates of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College back in the early 1970’s. Sadly, he passed away unexpectedly at the age of 68 back in 2016, just a month before he was scheduled to retire after 40 years of serving Reconstructionist Congregation Dorshei Emet in Montreal.
But his teachings live on. As we conclude our focused study of the “Uvechen/Vetimlokh” sections of the Amidah --- this particularly heartfelt piece of liturgy that many of us may have just skimmed over year after year in synagogue on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur -- let me just share with you Rabbi Aigen’s commentary on this phrase “Hael Hakadosh Nikdash Bitzdakah” --- translated in our machzor as “through tzedakah, holiness flows from the Holy God. Or, as translated in the Mishkan Hafesh Reform machzor --- “The God of holiness [is] made holy through righteousness. Or, as translated in the Reconstructionist Kol Haneshama machzor – “God, the Holy One, [is] made holy by the reign of justice.” Or as translated in Rabbi Aigen’s machzor “the holy God is sanctified through righteousness.”
(And, by the way, you may recall, we used a screen shared version of Rabbi Aigen’s machzor for our first “Covid Era” all-virtual High Holiday services two years ago.)
So, here’s how my friend and teacher Rabbi Ron Aigen (zichrono livrakha) in that machzor commented on the verse --- Ha’el hakadosh nikdash bitzedakah:
He writes:
“Tzedakah”, literally “Justice” or righteousness, is an obligation upon every Jew. For Jews, giving to the poor is not merely an act of charity, but a mitzvah, a command to correct the injustices of the world, one person at a time. Affirming the holiness of God is not a matter of professing an abstract dogma or doctrine. This prayer, as amplified throughout the High Holiday liturgy with this quote from the prophet Isaiah, is a reminder that we are obligated to make God’s holiness a reality through acts of tzedakah. As we transcend ourselves by attending to the needs of others, we come to experience the transcendence of God.”[4]
That’s a start --- as we reflect on our situation on this day of judgement and resolve not to despair – and as we resolve to make each moment count as we engage with the challenges ahead.
Gmar chatimah tovah – May we be sealed for a good year --- and for the years to follow as well – we, and all Israel, and all the world.
Amen.
© Rabbi David Steinberg (October 2022/ Tishri 5783)
[1] Esther 4:16
[2] https://www.rabbisacks.org/ceremony-celebration-family-edition/yom-kippur-family-edition/#how-yom-kippur-changes-us
[3] The complete text of that section is as follows (This is from a different translation – the one we used at our Yom Kippur morning service is in a book that is not available in an online version that I could copy and paste):
וְתִמְלוֹךְ אַתָּה ה' לְבַדֶּֽךָ עַל כָּל מַעֲשֶֽׂיךָ בְּהַר צִיּוֹן מִשְׁכַּן כְּבוֹדֶֽךָ וּבִירוּשָׁלַֽיִם עִיר קָדְשֶֽׁךָ. כַּכָּתוּב בְּדִבְרֵי קָדְשֶֽׁךָ יִמְלֹךְ ה' לְעוֹלָם אֱלֹהַֽיִךְ צִיּוֹן לְדֹר וָדֹר הַלְלוּיָהּ:
קָדוֹשׁ אַתָּה וְנוֹרָא שְׁמֶֽךָ וְאֵין אֱלֽוֹהַּ מִבַּלְעָדֶֽיךָ. כַּכָּתוּב וַיִּגְבַּהּ יְהֹוָה צְבָאוֹת בַּמִּשְׁפָּט וְהָאֵל הַקָּדוֹשׁ נִקְדַּשׁ בִּצְדָקָה. בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' הַמֶּֽלֶךְ הַקָּדוֹשׁ
And You Adonoy will reign alone over all Your works on Mount Tziyon, dwelling place of Your glory, and in Yerushalayim, city of Your Sanctuary, as it is written in Your holy words, “Adonoy will reign forever; Your God, Tziyon, throughout all generations. Praise God.” Holy are You, and awesome is Your Name, and there is no God beside You, as it is written, “And Adonoy Tzevaot is exalted through justice and the Almighty, the Holy One, is sanctified through righteousness.” Blessed are You, Adonoy, the Sovereign, the Holy One.
[4] Rabbi Ron Aigen, ed., Mahzor Hadesh Yameinu, p. 41
