Reunion
Rosh Hashanah 5766 Sermon by Rabbi Julie Schwartz
It is a story about a boy who is shipwrecked and left floating in the ocean with noone to share his life raft except for man-eating tiger. His amazing reflections as he navigates his way to survival and land are poignant and thought provoking. In this new classic, Life of Pi, the boy describes one very bizarre encounter when his boat reaches an island uninhabited by any people and basically populated, even swarming with lemurs. These little creatures move as one body, chattering constantly, looking around at the world as seeming extentions of themselves. They remind me of the flow of lemmings which march as one united group – that is until they fall off of a cliff.
The lemurs on this particular island have their own bizarre behavior which intrigues the young boy. As nightfall approaches, they move, again almost as one body, up into the treetops and none remains on ground. Now the trees are one chattering, cluttered sea of lemurs. The boy climbs up with them and then watches as his enemy and companion the lion rushes from the island and spends the night in the boat. Apparently the tiger has no intention of climbing a tree and sleeping there. The boy is relatively happy and well fed on the island. He is surrounded by fruit and by drinking water. The lion leaves him alone and the lemurs begin to feel like his fellow citizens. After having suffered through the privations of life alone, starving in the ocean, the thought of spending the rest of his life here with the lemurs – that does not feel like such a bad thing.
But then one evening, the boy stays on the ground a bit longer than the lemurs and he experiences the real reason that the animals must all band together each and every night and live in such intense, enforced community. When he touches the ground as darkness overcomes the island, his feet are burned by a fluid that seems to seep up from the roots of the trees. The ground changes at night from a marshy wetness into a poisoness oozing. The animals must stay together at night or they will all be killed. They cannot move away, they cannot create space for one another. Rather they must all remain in the same safe area so that they can climb the trees at the proper moment and avoid death. Think about it – this is truly an offer that they cannot refuse!
But we are not stranded on that island. We live in the United States of America. We can live anywhere in this country – the only requirement is cash in hand. We have opportunities to choose any community, any way of life, any religion. And still we are here. We are here in synagogue this evening. We have made the amazing decision to attend Jewish services and give over this time to religious observance. We have made a time commitment, a financial commitment, a soul commitment. Look God, we are here.
We have come here for our annual, most wonderful, most sweet reunion. Maybe you missed your high school reunion, maybe you missed this summer’s BBYO reunion, maybe you did everything in your power to miss your in-laws biggest ever 3 day reunion, but my friends, you did not miss Rosh Hashanah – we are here, we are all here for the great reunion. Ashreynu, how happy are we who have chosen to remain Jewish and who have joined together to celebrate our New Year. Ashreynu, say God and the angels in heaven, How happy are we to see those Jews, our Jews, still there, still eating sweet challah with raisins, and apples with honey, and wearing their new shul clothes, and joining by the hundreds in synagogue. They have not forgotten and they have not chosen to be elsewhere.
Can you not imagine that God – the God without a face, without a body, without any trace of human form – that however God can manage it, God is smiling right now. Look around you, fellow Jews, family of Jews, friends of Jews, my extended Jewish family, look around you. We can smile too and feel proud of ourselves for being here. Look around and see how many people you recognize. Look around and wave at them. Look around and see how many people who are new to you. Look at them and recognize the gifts of new friendships that are awaiting us all. Because as we gather here tonight, we don’t join together because we must. We are not here because of threat or coercion. There may be some element of bribery which is directly connected with having a good dinner but ultimately, we are at this reunion because we choose to be here. And so we have become one another’s chosen family.
Like any good family reunion, there is some planning behind the celebrations that begin this evening. We shared information about the arrangements, the timing, the parking! We made certain that there would be enough chairs and the brotherhood made sure that all of the chairs would be properly aligned and connected. Thank you for that hard work. We also worried about the other details – the magnificent music and organization of honors, the preparation of our congregational home and its lights, sound systems, and aesthetics. The only thing that we have not done as an extended family is join together and cook an enormous pot of chicken soup! And the goal of all that preparation is simple – we want everyone here at this reunion to feel comfortable, welcome, and fully included. Yet ensuring that everyone in this community truly feels that way, that can be so much more challenging.
We had a youngster enter late into our pre-school this year – he came from a family that had to leave its home in New Orleans. I am so proud that our congregation did not bat an eye before our leadership stated that anyone needing a religious school or a synagogue or a meal or a preschool would have those needs met immediately. But imagine being a very small person, uprooted from your familiar surroundings and suddenly being placed in an entirely new environment. How difficult that must be – but NOT. For this little boy was immediately at home – there were children his age, loving teachers, and toys. New playmates, safe big people, and toys – that’s all that it took for this new school to become his new home. How wonderful for him – what a mechayeh it would be if we adults could feel comfortable so easily, so automatically.
We struggle in finding our home, our community. We worry about being on the right page or dressed in the right way. We look anxiously around us hoping that we will see an empty seat by a friendly looking stranger. We pray not to be excluded and we pray that things will feel right here. We pray for a familiar tune to a prayer and we pray that the right prayers will be said in English or in Hebrew. We pray that no-one will mention if our children are not sitting nicely or if our dues are not paid up. We pray that we will look like we know what is going on and that we know the right people. We pray that in the midst of this very large sanctuary, we will find a sense of peace, of sanctuary.
And I tell you sadly that I cannot promise you an answer to any of those prayers but know that along with you I pray that all of us will feel some sense of comfort and family. Know that because you have chosen to come home for this reunion – you are already welcome in our family and God is smiling. I do know that if we can stretch to feel that sense of God’s great welcoming then we will certainly experience some small piece of welcome, inclusion in this place.
And then we struggle in exactly the opposite direction. We don’t want to be subsumed in to this family, we don’t want to be overwhelmed by this inclusion. We yearn to know that by joining in the reunion, we do not lose our individuality and our ability to make our own choices. That is the fear that may challenge us year after year. One wonderful member of our community shared with me her discomfort during services – she simply doesn’t like participating in responsive readings. She struggles with having words written for her that she is then expected to automatically say aloud with hundreds of other voices. What if she disagrees with the words – how will her own voice be heard?
And her question is only one of many, many questions on that same theme. Other may ask: How will I know myself if I am only one part of this larger community? Do any of my individual choices or actions really matter? Can I find acceptance and still remain distinctive? What must I lose in order to join? What will they want from me, ask from, beg from me? How good to have to be in order to stay a member? How good should they be for me to stay a member? And just how much is membership worth anyway? In dollars, in hours, in pieces of my heart and my soul?
My dear friends, again I cannot give you the precise answers to any of these questions. Each of us walks into this sanctuary as a distinctive child of God. Each of us has already given up some sense of control by merely sitting down in a chair for this service. But I do remind you of our tradition’s proud commitment to argument and dissent. We are a people that God will criticize throughout the high holiday liturgy for being stiff necked. Yet if God had wanted a less stiff necked people then there were other choices. Clearly that ability to stubbornly hold to an opinion or attitude is something that God not only tolerates but even appreciates. Our greatest Jewish heroes and heroines were not hesitant to be stand apart and even focus on the ways that they not going to be subsumed by the community’s will or even God’s will. While our tradition encourages us to find our voice amongst the words of the prayerbook or amongst the teachings of our heritage, we are never expected to find that as a limiting experience but rather a good place in which to begin.
And that is the power of this reunion – it is a very good place to begin. We spend the year running from task to task. We are delighted by the number of different things that we can manage at the very same moment. Employers would be appalled to hear an interviewee state that he or she can only do one thing at a time and that juggling many tasks is just not a strength. No, we live in an age of speed and only those who run the fastest seem to get ahead. We are appalled by people whose lives don’t read like resumes – what do you mean you are forty years old and you have not yet achieved multi millions, multi degrees, multi job titles, and multi wives! And all of us are guilty of this new sin – the sin of multi-tasking.
But we are here now and the challenge of this evening, this time of reunion is to do only one thing – to be here now.
By re-uniting with God, realizing you are capable of so much more, you become not just focused but renewed, re-energized, reinvigorated, relationship allows you to draw from more than what is currently apparent within yourself
Experiencing joy, energy, congruency, sense of source
Sense of internal integrity
Back to one