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Erev Yom Kippur Sermon 5765 by Rabbi Julie Schwartz
The disciple had been working with the Master Teacher for some time. Slowly he had progressed beyond the other students and shown an aptitude for the art. Others had recognized his abilities and he began to sense his own gifts as well. Instructors had advanced him from level to level until he worked with the master herself. The Teacher rarely spoke but allowed the student to watch all of her actions and to ask questions as necessary. The student recognizing his Teacher's preference for silence carefully chose his moments of inquiry. The student practiced each new skill that he observed in the Teacher. There was a lovely rhythm to their growth together. Finally after a great sense of comfort and trust was present between them, the Master Teacher spoke first to the student. "Now is the time for you to begin learning, my dear student."
"Now?" replied the student with wonder in the response. "But I have been watching you and learning from you for months. I have been asking you questions and you have answered me. I have tried out your methods and I have certainly begun to use your techniques. I thought that I had been learning, a great deal in fact."
"No, replied the teacher, "I have not yet shown you my best work. Come with me away from the public galleries and away from the goods for sale. Come with me back into my own private gallery. This is where my best work can be found."
Together they walked down a hallway to a door that was just next to the Master Teacher's private chamber. She unlocked the door and brought her student into a room that had walls on all sides. These walls were filled with work but...
The student stood in amazement. The two remained in silence for several moments. Finally the student ventured a comment. "Teacher, these pieces are all broken. Not one is finished properly. Not one is ready for sale."
"Yes," said the Teacher. "Not one of these is meant for sale. Others have already purchased the pieces in which they find beauty. But each one of these is more precious to me than any of those. From every piece here, I was challenged by the process and so I learned something new. These broken items have much more meaning, value to me. When you are ready to fill a room with pieces such as these, to no longer care about finished products nor the profits that may come from them, then you are ready to learn."
And that, my dear friends, becomes our question of this evening, of this night that begins our very long day, are we ready to learn? Each year on Kol Nidre, Avinu Malkeynu asks us that question. Would you perhaps be ready now to learn? How gracious, how loving, how amazingly patient is our God that we annually receive this opportunity, this invitation to learn once again. In a room that is filled with our brothers and sisters, in a space dedicated to our tradition, in a place that is now filled with remnants of our previous year's prayers, God gently, firmly gives us a day to consider the challenge of learning. The lesson before us is the only lesson that we will ever need. The lesson before us is the subject of menschlichkeit. And like school children once again, we decide the way that we enter this classroom and the way that we participate in our studies. And we decide whether we will allow true learning to finally occur - the kind that requires walls and walls showcasing our failures and our struggles.
We love the story of our Jewish tradition in which children learn the first letters of the aleph bet by licking off honey from the pages. Thus they link their first experiences in learning with the sweetness. We pray from that very first moment of education that all of their days in schooling will be just as pleasant. But we also know that we cannot make that a reality. Even the most remarkable school, the most caring environment filled with the most dedicated of teachers and eager of students, even in these magical institutions - not unlike our own religious school or that day school down the street - even in such wonderful places, we know that learning is not necessarily fun or sweet or easy each day. Our children are really quite brave and extraordinary as they walk into an environment each morning in which they have little control over their activities and others more powerful than they command their lives for hours at a time. They must reveal their inadequacies publicly, demonstrating to all around them just what they do not yet know. They are judged constantly and then labeled based on such assessments. And all of this without even a cup of coffee or a cookie to sustain them. We do not ask them if they are ready to learn or interested, we simply inform them that they must learn. And often, very often, the wonderful human desire to grow motivates them far beyond the dictates of lesson plans or standardized testing.
But we the adults, we find remarkable ways to avoid such difficult situations. Once we have passed the tests and gained the diplomas, the certificates, the licenses - we joyfully throw away the restrictions and restraints of the classroom and we pronounce ourselves complete. Noone can make me learn anything anymore. I am reminded of my final oral examination as I was becoming a supervisor of clinical pastoral education. I had actually failed the committee appearance on my first attempt and although that was a fairly routine occurrence in most people's progress toward certification, I had been badly bruised by the experience. I was not sufficiently familiar with failure and that meeting was a most painful one. So there I was a full year later, having been grilled thoroughly by five seasoned professionals for nearly two hours. Then for an additional half hour in private, they had discussed my performance and determined my grade. I confess to you now that I had spent that half hour waiting with another colleague and crying, absolutely certain that I had blown it again - and yet unable to figure out how. Wiping tears from my eyes, I was summoned back to the room for what I knew would be bad news. The leader of the committee quickly assured me that I had passed and passed with flying colors. I asked them to repeat the verdict, sure that I had heard wrong. Passed was the answer and they laughed as they spoke. Then the chair asked if I wanted to hear their assessment of my strengths and weaknesses and their recommendations for my next steps in learning. I was silent for a moment - still trying to catch my breath. She laughed again - and reminded me that since I had passed, I did not need to actually listen to them or their opinions ever again and I could officially stop learning if I so desired.
How wonderful to be given permission to stop learning, to stop placing ourselves in the vulnerable position of asking for assistance, for feedback, for support, for direction. How frightening! How dangerous! How hard it is to accept the reality that learning requires us to voluntarily accept failure and pain.
Yet pain is a most powerful and critical human experience. I am not speaking about the pain that we cause unnecessarily to others. And I am not speaking about the pain that comes from being in an imperfect world, made with imperfect bodies and filled with imperfect people. Rather this is the pain that comes from our own choices and movements and needs. Think first about the necessary experience of pain that comes from our very own bodies. When our bodies call out to us from hurt then we know to give proper attention to the vessels that serve as our earthly homes. There is no reason to allow those in chronic pain to suffer any more than can be safely prevented but in most cases pain is our bodies' way of speaking to us - telling us that we need more rest, less alcohol, more regular exercise, a visit to the physician or a kinder life style. Our hearts too give us information from pain. When we hurt from unkind words said or from relationships broken then our hearts have a chance to tell us what we need interpersonally. Do we need to avoid mean people even if they could be enticing to us? Do we need to choose differently in our love life, in our work life, in our play?
And pain can be a discipline for our souls. Our children begin their education with the taste of honey. We began this new year with the taste of honey. And now it is time for us to be hungry for a day as well. It would be wonderful if we could continue the year with honey each and every morning. But tomorrow morning is not a time for such sweetness. It is a time to feel the limits that come from discipline. If we are to grow in our lesson of menschlichkeit then we must place upon ourselves the restraints, even the pain of discipline. We go without tomorrow but it helps us have perspective when later days will call upon us to go without other, less tangible items. Our stomachs may hurt from a day without food but that may feel much less uncomfortable than the moments when we squirm as we let go of our arrogance or our selfishness. We are professionals at finding ways to avoid pain. While our commercials for health clubs may pronounce, "No pain, no gain," we all know that the pills that are being sold in the very next commercial that claim easy weight loss without any sweat -- those are much more alluring advertisements. We adults can hardly remember a time when we felt the sting of rebuke because we rarely give another the authority, the opportunity, the respect that is required to hear and accept that we deserve such a painful response. Our schools are swamped with parents who interfere in their children's educational process so that their offspring will never be punished, never have too much homework, never be waiting for a moment before their wants are met. And while educators tell us that these parents are damaging their ability to teach children self control and patience, their parents are actually involved in a far more dangerous action. Such parents are attempting to prevent themselves from feeling any pain. Frightened of the their own accountability and the restrictions of discipline and boundaries, they - we - attempt to remove appropriate limitations and consequences from all interactions. We do our best to create a world in which we are never at fault or responsible. But in order to successfully place the blame on everyone else, we end up with a system of no-accountability. So we have no fault insurance and we also have very high insurance rates and over- filled prisons and far too many people who search for ways to bring lawsuits against others so that somebody else will pay! We have read of prosecutors who advocate for unusual sentences in place of typical jail time. They ask judges to impose public apologies upon individuals who are found guilty of non-violent, officially victim- less crimes. These public apologies - often printed in the newspaper or posted in other public places - are controversial. Some officials are aghast at the public humiliation and shaming. Yet one sociologist pointed out that the long-term effects of such punishment are certainly less damaging than locking up an otherwise non-violent first offender with others much more dangerous and those who could certainly help to create a hard core criminal. To apologize in any situation requires a related experience of humility. To formally admit my errors to another, to then give that other the power to forgive me, that places me in a posture of dependence. As I speak aloud the ways that I have failed and I need to grow and I need you to give me another chance, I allow you to be my teacher. And the teacher then has the right to determine the duration of the lesson, the practice required and the means of assessment. And each of us has the responsibility to be fair, loving teachers to the other.
Did you catch that very critical word hidden in my last sentence? The key to being a good teacher, a teacher whose students become worthy colleagues - the key is through love. Loving parents teach their children through patience and kindness and allow for painful experiences as well. But they love them through the pain. Loving teachers support their students in the scary moments, give them a chance to tolerate the necessary anxiety of facing those things that we do not yet know. Loving travelors on our shared human journey do not ignore the opportunity to help others grow but acknowledge that there are times when struggle is not only helpful but required and then tend to the other's tears as the lesson is learned.
Tears in fact are a key component to growth. Tears indicate that a chemical reaction is occurring in the body. Tears release necessary ingredients for healing and change. The rabbis speak of the process of preparing for Yom Kippur in the days of the Holy Temple. We will read of that account during tomorrow's afternoon service. All of the priests join with the Israelites in readying the High Priest to enter the Holy of Holies, the inner court of the Holy Temple. This most holy man of Israel would be washed, dressed, and hear the confessions of all those around him. Then the priests who were attending him would hear his confession and remind him of his heavy obligations to seek forgiveness from God for the entire people. As this last solemn adjuration was made to the High Priest, he would break into weeping. He would recognize his basic limitedness, he would cry for his own sins and his unworthiness. He would become the ultimate student, one ready to meet his Teacher, our God. And our God would meet him in love.
I am reminded of a religious school teacher who invited her students to consider an important question as Yom Kippur approached. She asked the children that if all of the bad people in the world were the color blue and all of the good people in the world were green, what color would each of them be. One boy answered quickly - Teacher, he said, I would be streaky!
And so we are, my brothers and sisters. We are not all bad and we are not all good. I do tell you, that after coming to know so many of you in the past several years, that we have many very, very good people in this congregation. I meet and learn from so very many good people who are so much farther along in this journey of learning and growing than am I. But we are on average, at best, streaky. We are like the man who ventured into the sanctuary on Yom Kippur and heard the congregation reciting words from the confession. The congregation read together, "We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done." And he sighed to himself in relief, "Thank goodness, I have found my crowd at last." If you are here for this Holy Day in both body and spirit, if you have joined this congregation for this holiday in order to take seriously God's invitation to grow then you have found your crowd. We are all learners here. We are all engaged in the sometimes sweet, sometimes frightening, sometimes painful process of learning. We have the most loving of all teachers and we understand that we may hurt even as we soar.
We read in Exodus 25:10 the rules for constructing the Holy tabernacle. This will become the sacred space for our Ten commandments, for the tablets of the Law. The building plan for this project is very clear and tells us that it is to be 2 1/2 cubits in length, 1 1/2 cubits in width and another 1/1/2 cubits in height. A medieval commentator questions these unusual measurements and notes that none of them are whole numbers. Each contains a fraction, a broken figure. Thus even the Ark which would be our most sacred space was constructed with an element of broken-ness so that we would be able to see that the imperfect, the not yet whole can contain holiness. We are given a sense of hopefulness and inspiration from this picture. And it is repeated again and again in our tradition. Remember we never throw away the shards of the first broken set of commandments. Rather they are placed within the ark alongside the whole ones. Thus we recognize that even the broken pieces can teach us, can lead us, can be share their holiness with us. God does not reject us, God's creatures who are always in the process of becoming. God shares holiness with us even before we reach toward growth and wholeness and the Divine. In fact that is the most remarkable of all gifts - that even before we consciously choose to be involved in the journey of lifelong learning, God has already planted a sense of the Divine presence within us. There is an optimism there from God, a wonderful smiling feeling that radiates confidence in our abilities to learn, to choose to learn, to choose to accept the invitation of this Yom Kippur observance.
We will not come to synagogue tomorrow with the taste of honey on our lips. But we can come to synagogue tomorrow ready for the words of Torah, for our tradition to be sweet in our lives. It is a gesture of a most remarkable Teacher that we have an annual "back to school" day - a day when all of us return to this classroom and the very same curriculum, and the very same textbook, and we all begin on the very same page. And it is a gesture of a most generous Teacher that, should we accept our role as life-long learners and tolerate the risks and burdens and even pain of the study then our Teacher joins us for another year in which to grow. May the voice of the school bell be disguised as the voice of the Shofar and let rejoice together as we hear it calling us on to life.