Erev Rosh Hashanah 5768

Our Jewish Year Cycle – A Free Pass for a Full Year

Meyer commented recently that it’s very easy to fall out of step with Jewish time.

That was coming from some one who once, as a boy, knew what Jewish time was, so that when he steps back into it (in this case we were talking about Shabbat), it at least feels familiar. But for most of you, it’s not familiar at all, because you never got a taste of it as children.

The culture we live in influences all areas of our lives.

The people among whom we live do their shopping and errands on Saturday.

Many school athletic events take place on Saturday.

There are appealing Friday night concerts, dances, films and other cultural events.

To live on Jewish time anywhere but in Israel or certain neighborhoods in NY, one has to go against a very strong tide.

Two years ago, I gave a Yom Kippur sermon about the value and beauty of Shabbat.

I encouraged each of you to take on some piece of Shabbat observance every week, such as lighting candles and saying Kiddush on Friday evening, not spending money during those 25 hours, or turning off the TV and radio.

The focus of my words this evening is our annual holiday cycle.

My hope is that if you would participate in an experiment and commit (or at least endeavor) to live on Jewish time for a year, or at least more in sync with it than you ever have before – (I’m talking about THIS year) -- it would awaken something in you –

it would feel familiar and right on some primal, soulful level, and you would be drawn to continue in that rhythm.

Why? Because I believe that, for Jews, it’s spiritually healthy and nurturing and “right” to integrate Jewish traditions into our daily lives, and to live on “Jewish time.”

This is not something I can rationally explain.

This is something I feel and believe based on my own experience, and on the experience of countless other Jews with whom I have lived in community -- in Israel, in Philadelphia, in Amherst, MA, and even a few of you here in Midcoast Maine.

The observance of Shabbat and the holidays are mitzvot, and as is true of most (ritual) mitzvot, one has to DO a mitzvah for a while in order to fully “get” it.

The word mitzvah, which in common parlance is used to mean “good deed,” actually translates as “commandment.” Hebrew words often have multiple meanings. The same root that means command, means “join” or “connect.”

By doing the mitzvot, we strengthen our connection to God and to the Jewish People.

People in the process of becoming Jewish often share with me their excitement as they discover and first experience our holidays. We are blessed with many joyous festivals and solemn occasions throughout the year. Our calendar is extremely rich.

Each holy day has layers upon layers of historical significance, to which each generation of rabbis and scholars has contributed its comments and innovations.

Many of our holidays have pre-biblical agricultural roots.

The holidays are one way in which we mark each season:

the spring, summer and fall harvests (Pesach, Shavuot, Sukkot),

the winter Festival of Lights (Chanukah), the sap rising in the trees at Tu B’Shvat, the farcical and cathartic holiday of Purim when we are getting sick and tired of the winter and a rowdy party lifts our cold, wet spirits (similar timing to Mardi Gras), the dry season of burning and mourning (the three weeks culminating in the Fast of Tisha B’Av).

It may be difficult for us in the North Eastern United States to relate to the agricultural aspect of these days, as the Jewish year cycle is based on the agricultural cycles in the Land of Israel. Thus, another reason to celebrate these holidays is that they keep us connected to what is going on seasonally in the Land of our ancestors, and the home of our Jewish souls on this earth.

Each holiday has a psycho-spiritual theme as well.

Most familiar to all of you are the Yamim Noraim that we are entering today -- the 10 Days of Awe -- which are 10 especially intense days inside a 60-day period of reflection, intimacy with God, renewal, teshuvah, (repentance or return) and atonement.

This period commences on the 1^st of Elul and takes us all the way through the High Holidays to Shmini Atzeret, the 8^th Day of Assembly, when God invites us to stay in His intimate embrace for one more day after the close of the festive week of Sukkot.

On Simchat Torah, we complete the fall holiday cycle by reading about Moses’ death in the last verses of the Torah, and we begin all over again with Genesis: “Bereshit Bara Elohim et Hashamayim v’et Ha’aretz” – “When God began to create the heavens and the earth…”

The annual cycle of Torah readings is another way in which we Jews spiral through the years. But that will be the topic of another sermon.

Our Holidays are not detached fragments – they flow into each other. There is a 7 week period between Pesach and Shavuot. It’s a mitzvah to count the days in between (the practice is called Sefirat Ha’Omer – counting the Omer), and to be conscious of the connection between these two major festivals, the first celebrating our liberation from slavery, and the second celebrating God’s revelation and teaching to us at Sinai – Matan Torah – the Giving of Torah.

There are 3 weeks of anxiety and admonition from the 17^th of Tammuz to the 9^th of Av. The 17^th of Tammuz is the day that the walls of Jerusalem were breached by Babylonian forces – and also the day on which the rabbis later said that Moses descended Mt Sinai, saw the Golden Calf, and broke the first set of tablets. Already when we reach the 17^th of Tammuz, we are bracing ourselves for the destruction of the Temple – the Collapse of our national and spiritual Center – on Tisha B’Av.

But we know that this will be followed immediately by 7 weeks of consolation – rebuilding our broken relationship with God -- leading to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

And, that after we do the challenging spiritual work of Elul (the month preceding Rosh Hashanah), which intensifies in the 10 days between now and YK, we will celebrate the harvest – what is referred to as Zman Simchateinu – the Season of Our Joy.

We will build little shelters, sukkot, representing not only the temporary dwellings our ancestors lived in when we were wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, but also God’s compassion for and protection of us during those 40 years.

So the Temple that falls apart on Tisha B’Av is reconstructed about 9 weeks later in the form of temporary, fragile sanctuaries, where, beneath the stars, a sense of God’s Presence is perhaps more easily accessible to us than in the comfort of our homes and synagogues.

Even the holidays that don’t have such obvious connections still seem to flow into one another once one becomes familiar with the rhythm of our Jewish year. After Tu B’Shvat, one is already anticipating Purim, and of course Pesach soon after that. We look forward with excitement to each opportunity to learn, connect and celebrate. Each holiday is like an old friend that we get to spend quality time with once a year, and when there is a community to celebrate with, we get to be with many old friends many times each year.

The only Jewish holidays that the vast majority of American Jews observe are these High Holidays, Chanukah, and Passover.

For those of you who are here today, skipping HH services is probably not an option. The eve of RH, the first day of Rosh Hashanah, and the 25 hours of Yom Kippur commencing with KN, are inviolable for you. No matter what else might be happening – a special training at work, a concert given by your favorite musicians, a special sports event…whatever you would normally put on your calendar and run to -- gets trumped by the High Holidays.

However, for many of you the other holidays feel foreign.

You were never exposed to them as children, or perhaps you experienced a pediatric version in Hebrew School, but never learned anything about what the other Jewish holidays mean on an adult level.

I hope that you will take a lesson from the gerim (Jews by Choice) among us, who come to most of the holidays – and in fact to almost everything that Judaism has to offer -- with what is known in the Zen tradition as Beginner’s Mind.

You may not know what these holidays are about, or know what to do when they come around, but I hope that you will not say to yourselves: “Those holidays are not for me.”

I do hope that you will be curious and adventurous, and come and learn.

When some one asked Franz Rosenzweig, the early 20^th c German-Jewish philosopher, whether he wore tefillin, he answered, “Not yet.” He saw himself as moving gradually toward an observant Jewish life, one mitzvah at a time.

I invite each of you this year to participate in at least one holiday that you have never experienced before (or not since you were a child).

Think of it like going out to a restaurant. Some people always order one of the same 3 or 4 dishes whenever they go out to eat because they are familiar with those meals and they know that they like how they taste. If these folks don’t have any dietary restrictions or food allergies, wouldn’t you encourage them to try something new every now and then, especially if it’s a dish that you enjoy? Similarly, I am encouraging you to expand your Jewish holiday repertoire. And the thing is, these are not risky, newfangled concoctions. There’s no danger of food poisoning. These holidays are your inheritance – a gift passed down to you by God, by your direct ancestors if you go back two or three generations (m’dor l’dor), and by hundreds of generations of creative Jewish thinkers.

This year, a small group gathered in our sanctuary for Tisha B’Av.

Over half of those who participated had never been to a Tisha B’Av service before. All of the first-timers, several of whom have a great deal of Jewish knowledge and experience, expressed how deeply moved they were by the beauty, the profoundly personal quality, and the vividness of the book of Eicha – Lamentations – which is chanted with its own unique, evocative trope.

Like all other rabbis I know, I tell every conversion candidate (every one on their path to becoming a Jew) that I expect them to participate in at LEAST one complete annual holiday cycle, participating in all the holidays as part of their preparation for the day of conversion. (If they miss one or two holidays, they can observe them the following year).

Each person is an individual, drawn to Judaism and the Jewish People for different reasons. I don’t have a cookie-cutter conversion process, just as I don’t use a cookie-cutter Bar/Bat Mitzvah process. However, I DO expect every one who chooses to become a Jew, to have experienced MOST of our holidays at least once, and Shabbat at LEAST two dozen times.

This year, I invite you all to imagine that you are beginning the process of becoming a Jew. Enter this year – (taf shin samech chet) - 5768 - with a beginner’s mind.

I find that when I visit some place with some one who has never visited that place before, I get a fresh perspective on a place or experience that I may have come to take for granted or that may have grown stale for me.

This is why it is so refreshing and energizing to be with young children. With them, we are able to experience simple things in life with new eyes, ears – and with delight at the newness of everything.

Some of you have confided in me that you are embarrassed about what you don’t know about Judaism. For adults who are successful business people, or who may be at the top of their field in medicine or law or science or some other area – perhaps a retired professor with a PhD or two -- it may feel very awkward to come to shul and not know what’s going on.

Please be assured that there is nothing to be embarrassed about, and that most of the people around you are just as lacking in Jewish knowledge and experience as you are.

If your parents never took you to services on Shavuot, and if they never went to a tikkun (an all night study session) on Shavuot, how are you supposed to know what the holiday is about?!

It’s never too late to educate yourself.

It’s never too late to taste something new.

How are you going to learn if you don’t start somewhere?

As one enthusiastic person (Hillary Waterman) said to me last month:

“I love reading Seasons of Our Joy (a wonderful, now classic guide to the holidays by Arthur Waskow). I’m learning a lot from it. But it’s much more meaningful and much clearer what the holiday is about when I actually experience it in community.”

Texts are of course central to Jewish Life, but still, there’s only so much we can learn from books.

While it can certainly be useful, interesting and even enlightening to read books about Jewish history, theology, and practice, one can jump into Jewish practice – be it lighting Shabbat candles, keeping Kosher, or celebrating holidays one has never celebrated before – without reading anything, and gain much from simply doing, especially when one engages in any of these practices within the framework of a community.

How-to books primarily engage our minds.

Jewish practices engage our hearts and souls as well as our minds.

As Jews, we are blessed with an exciting, meaningful, sacred reality that we can enter into without completely shutting out the secular life and culture that surrounds us.

We are blessed with an ancient, sacred rhythm to hear and feel and sing and dance to all year round.

We have the opportunity to live simultaneously in two civilizations, Jewish and North American.

It’s Wednesday, Sept 12, 2007 tonight, but it’s also a new moon, the new moon of Tishrei, the 7^th moon (month) of the year, which is also considered to be the Head of our Year – Rosh Hashanah. According to our tradition, this is the anniversary of the day that the world was created, 5768 years ago.

This evening a new year has begun for all of us. I invite you each to imagine that being Jewish is a new, exciting adventure that you are embarking on tonight. Imagine that you won a free season pass to a concert or theatre series (or the World Series, whichever is more valuable to you), and that that series is happening here, at the synagogue!

I’d love to see a crowd this size at every holiday celebration this year! I’d love to celebrate a full Jewish year with all of you.

And if you do it once, who knows, it might become a habit!

L’Shana Tovah Tikateivu – May you all be inscribed in the Book of Life, Health, Happiness, Sustenance and Peace for a GOOD NEW JEWISH YEAR