Rosh Hashanna 2022
I am going to start my Rosh Hashanna sermon talking about something I don’t usually think about: tornadoes. But we’ll get there in a moment.
Before we get into tornadoes, let’s take a look at a very interesting experiment that was done in South Africa between 1956 and 1962. 436 South African high-school and college students were tasked to imagine they were future historians. They were to write an essay predicting how the rest of the 20th century would unfold. They were given the instructions this way: “This is not a test of imagination — just describe what you really expect to happen.” In other words, predict, don’t imagine.
Being early 1960’s South Africa, of course everyone wrote about apartheid. Roughly two-thirds of black Africans and 80 percent of Indian descendants predicted social and political changes that would bring an end to apartheid. But only 4 percent of white Afrikaners predicted the end of apartheid. How did they get it so wrong?
It turns out that the optimistic students’ predictions were more like fantasies. The study noted that “Those who were the beneficiaries of the existing state of affairs were extremely reluctant to predict its end, while those who felt oppressed by the same situation found it all too easy to foresee its collapse.”
What is going on here is simple: we have expectations and fantasies about how things are supposed to work. More than a few times, we are wrong and our world seems unstructured and chaotic.
So what does this have to do with tornadoes? Well, knowing that we tend to predict what benefits us the most a follow up type of experiment asked the people of a small Texas town what the probability would be that they got hit by a tornado. Knowing what you know now, almost everyone in town thought that it would never happen there. And then it happened: even when the town was actually hit by a tornado, everyone believed that the chances were still very low, that it was a fluke, or that they were still unlikely to be hit because the law of averages said it could never happen again. Well, it did. Some time later, the town was struck yet again. It was then, and only then, that the town woke up. They had discovered the ‘two tornado rule’ – that it takes two tornados to wake up from wishful thinking, fantasy, and believing that the universe is tailor-made for us and us alone.
Even in the face of a random disaster, even the most realistic person will ask ‘why is this happening to me?’ We expect the world to be organized and predictable. We have built walls around our lives to protect ourselves and those we love. And when disaster happens, we are left to wonder just how many of those walls are really just illusions of being in control.
Consider the true story of a young man who is a congregant of a colleague.
A couple of summers ago, this young man was on a work assignment. Driving home, he heard shots fired in the distance, but by the time he could register what was going on, a stolen U-Haul van T-boned the passenger side of his car. It spun out of control and then it was quiet.
Thanks to the miracle of air-bags, he walked away from the car. A little shaken, but not broken. Still, just to be sure, the hospital performed a CAT scan. Not surprising there was no concussion, no internal bleeding, but there was something strange. The scan revealed a brain tumor that was asymptomatic at the moment but would have been a huge problem in a few years.
My friend asked him how he was doing and his life is filled with questions: “What if he had not put on his seatbelt that day? What if there had been a friend in the passenger seat, or if the car had hit the driver’s side and not the passenger side? Had he been a split second ahead, he might not be alive today. But then again, had he been a split second behind, if the stolen van had missed him entirely, there would have been no MRI. Had there been no MRI, the tumor would have remained undetected and there would have been no life-saving surgery – a cascade of unknown scenarios. A sequence of chance events that could have gone one way or the other, events that forever altered the direction of his life. An interminable series of impenetrable “what ifs.” Gratitude mixed with mystery mixed with dread, all prompted by the realization that our lives can be upended at any instant.”
The chaos in the world sometimes works to our favor and we miss the tornado. Sometimes we don’t. I think this morning of the 19 children and 2 teachers in Ulvade, Texas who we killed by an 18 year old who woke up angry about something one morning and bought an assault rifle and, that afternoon, wiped out an entire second grade class of children while the police who responded did nothing but stand around paralyzed with fear. So many ‘what ifs.’ Another tornado. Yet what was true at the beginning of the summer is not true now. Where in May, people never thought it could happen to them. But now, a mere couple of months later, we recognize the chaos.
In fact, today is a day rooted in chaos. Rosh Hashanna is called יום הרת עולם – the birthday of the world. And if you remember your Torah stories from Genesis, the world was not simply summoned into existence from nothing although many people imagine the biblical story to say exactly that. It arose from something that the Torah calls תֹ֨הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ – often translated as unformed and void but more correctly translated as ‘disordered chaos.’ The story of the world’s birth begins with utter chaos and unpredictability. The story of creation, our creation and the nature of the world around us not simply a nice story about how God created the beauty of the world. No. It is about how God prevented our part of the universe not to devolve into chaos once again. God is the great dam-builder. God, the Torah is telling us, is the one that brought order to chaos and yet, despite those efforts, chaos still leaks through. Like the strongest dam or the best-built ship, there is always something that gets through and threatens to collapse it or sink it all.
I think that is why the Untane Tokef was written. Although it is written and often understood as a poem suggesting that God has already written down the fate of each person, it is nothing of the sort. It is, rather, a series of questions: Who will live and who die? Who by fire? Who by water? And so forth. The subliminal message here is that chaos and unpredictability are still part of the matrix of existence and even God can’t fix that.
The chaos we have seen over the past few years is legendary. But what is amazing to me is that, despite all of our progress is so many things, the chaos reflected in the Untane Tokef is still as real today as it was when it was written: pandemic, war, hurricane, flood, fire, earthquake – every day another B-movie plot is written.
Judaism is founded on these chaotic moments, when things could have gone right instead of left, up instead of down. Sarah being blessed with a child after years of being barren and giving birth to Isaac who would become the foundation for the Jewish people. Hagar being cast into the wilderness and then saved at the last second. Or Isaac being bound on the altar, unsure if the angel will arrive in time or at all. And, of course, Joseph’s brothers looking for their brother in wilderness only to chance upon a man who saw Joseph only moments before and guided them to him thus beginning the most important story in Jewish history. The cast of characters in our Torah and Haftarah readings are individuals, no different than all of us, forced to pivot over and over. And, once again, we are forced to pivot.[i] We are formed upon chaos and built upon unpredictability because that is the stuff we are made of. Untane Tokef simply reminds us of it. And yet…and yet that is not the entirety of the poem.
The poem ends with hope. But it is not the kind of hope that says everything will be okay. It doesn’t say that God will take care of all of our tzoris. In fact, the main part of the poem doesn’t even mention God at all. It simply says, ותשובה ותפילה וצדקה – teshuvah/repentance, acts of tefillah/prayer and acts of tzedakah/righteous giving annul the severity of the decree. The poem is telling us that if we simply sit around and wait for everything to gFhuss18eftet better, we will be sitting for an infinitely long time since without us, the world would simply devolve into a forever chaotic place without a hint of goodness, morality, ethics or holiness. We are all that’s standing between order and chaos.
Teshuvah, repentance, is the first bulwark against chaos. It is the breaking down of barriers between ourselves and those we have wronged and who wronged us. It is the Jewish way of saying that we are all on this journey together and we can either tear each other apart or live together constructing something more healthy. We don’t have the love the person we are forgiving or repenting to. All we are asking is that we all recognize that our horizons need to be beyond the immediate and understand that the end of the line is coming faster than we think.
Or, as Carl Sandburg wrote in his poem ‘Limited’
I am riding on a limited express, one of the crack trains of the nation
Hurtling across the prairie into the blue haze and dark air go fifteen all-steel coaches holding a thousand people
(All the coaches shall be scrap and rust and all the men and woman laughing in the diners and sleepers shall pass to ashes.)
I ask a man in the smoker where he is going and he answers: ‘Omaha’
Repentance reminds us that we are not simply going to Omaha. Our destination, ours and the people we wronged are going far beyond Omaha. Getting there together in peace – even if there is no love or even respect – is better than the chaos of hate and the disarray of distrust.
The second term, tefillah is confusing. Though it is most often used to denote ‘prayer’ it is a strange word because its root has nothing to do with prayer but rather with judgement. To do tefillah is to constantly stand in judgement of ourselves. What does this mean? It means to judge ourselves by the notions we know to be ethical, good and, more broadly speaking, in the service of the fixing of world and holding back the chaos.
This is the antithesis of the way too many Americans look at religion in America today, isn’t it? This religion is wrapped up in fancy productions, the worship of guns and the talk of hating everyone who isn’t white and like you, along comes Untane Tokef, whispering in our ear that God is found in the acts of goodness and not in the bombastic bloviations of so-called religious people who long ago forgot the meaning of prayer. Tefillah is the action of remaining human when the impulse is to be anything but.
Finally, Tzedakah, which is also one of those words whose meaning we often only partially understand. Most people will know it as ‘charity’ – not incorrect but not its full meaning. Tzedakah is more expansive than that. Tzedakah is bringing righteousness into a world lacking righteousness. Tzedakah is keeping our finger in the dike keeping out the chaos.
This is reflected in the rabbinic meditation on Abraham. Our Sages compare him to a man on a journey who sees a birah doleket, a palace ablaze in flames. The traveler wonders if it is possible that the palace lacks an owner. Just then, the owner of the palace calls out from the blaze, “I am the owner of the palace,” and the traveler understands that he, the traveler, too has a part to play in extinguishing the fire and containing the chaos. Abraham, and by extension every Jew ever since, is called to respond to our world in need of rescue and repair, to put out fire wherever in God’s world they are ablaze.
Tzedakah is the ever-ongoing search for order and peace in a world of chaos. And yet, these days, it is more often understood as a prelude to punishment.
Consider the story General Robert E. Lee. A young soldier was brought to him charged with some offense. He was so afraid that he was shaking. General Lee looked at him and said, “Don’t be afraid son, you’ll get justice here.” The young soldier replied, “That’s why I’m shaking, sir.”[ii] Justice is often seen exactly this way: as a punishment.
But justice is much more than that. Tzedakah is not the effort to make everyone the same under threat of arrest and punishment. But rather the effort to inspire others to reach heights of holiness through acts of love, mutual respect, honesty, integrity and inspiration. Tzedakah is not about prisons and pain. It is about real equanimity where all are truly understood to be created in God’s image. Or, as a friend of mine wrote, “God’s miracle is not in the thunder and lightning but in people sheltering others from the storm.”
Repentance, prayer and charity are the three things that help us help God hold back the chaos. Seems pretty easy. But chaos never ends. Someone, somehow, something will break through our secure little worlds and remind us that just below the surface of everything good is a world out of control. God may have created the physical world out of תֹ֨הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הו – utter chaos – but chaos was only the building blocks of the universe, not necessarily its end. If we are here, then the world is God’s message to us that we are supposed to be here. Unatane Tokef tells us what we can expect – unpredictably – but also tells us that how we navigate it – with holiness, moving ethically, speaking justly, and acting reflectively, is how we help God keep the chaos from overwhelming us all. The chaos will still be there but our response need not be one to run away and ignore it.
In July 2021 a young man named Max Lewis was on subway in Chicago. It was a stray bullet fired by a stray shooter in a stray direction in a country that has no problem with stray guns. He got shot through the subway window but not die immediately. Struck in the neck by a bullet, Max was rushed to the hospital, and though he regained consciousness, having suffered a high spinal cord injury, he couldn’t talk, he couldn’t use his arms or legs, he couldn’t eat, and he couldn’t breathe except with a ventilator. To speak, the speech therapist came in with a letter board. Max could only move his eyelid – one blink for “yes,” two for “no.” The doctors explained to Max the severity and irreversibility of his condition; this would be a matter of “when” not “if.” His friends prayed outside his room as his family stood at his side. One blink at a time, Max communicated to his mother by means of the letter board. “I’m ready to die. I’m ready to go home. Please pull the plug. I can’t live this way.”[iii] M Max, in a response to this chaos took holy control in the last moment of his life and he, in front of his family, recited the Shma. Max’s final act in this world was the empowered choice to determine the terms of his death.[iv]
תֹ֨הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הו – the chaos of the tornado we are certain will never come but comes twice and lies just beneath to surface of all we know. A moment between life and death. Between peace and war. Between fire and water. I am not telling you anything new. Rosh Hashanna knows that you know. Untane Tokef knows that you know. But what must be repeated year after year is that we are not helpless nor powerless. How we live and that we live is ultimate act of chutzpah in the face of the chaotic universe. God wants us all to be chutzpadik. And that means standing on the edge of chaos and being a partner with God who looks upon us and declares, וַיַּ֤רְא אֱלֹהִים֙ אֶת־כָּל־אֲשֶׁ֣ר עָשָׂ֔ה וְהִנֵּה־טֹ֖וב מְאֹ֑ד[v]
God saw all that He had made, and found it very good
Holding off the chaos is ‘very good’ – pushing back the darkness with our light is our highest good. Let this new year be a year when our prayers make a difference in our lives and in the lives of others, where our repentance heals the cracks in the overwhelming forces of chaos, and in our acts of justice bring balance to a world so desperately in need of it. We can’t do it alone. It is our Jewish effort. Not to make everyone Jewish, but to make everyone the kind of human that God can look upon each of us and smile.
Shanna Tova – may we all have such a good year.
[i] <https://americanrabbi.com/the-blink-of-an-eye-by-elliot-cosgrove/>
[ii] -Laurence W. Veinott, www.northnet.org/sermons.
[iii] I am indebted to Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove for this moving story
[iv] University of Chicago student Max Lewis dies days after hit by stray bullet on CTA Green Line – Chicago Sun-Times (suntimes.com)
[v] Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, electronic ed. (Stuttgart: German Bible Society, 2003), Ge 1:31.
