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Rosh Hashana 5767 (With Thanks to Merle Feld and Kaye Lindauer) Let me tell you the story of Murray. Every year for as long as he can remember, Murray Leibman has been asked by his shul to be the volunteer cantor on the High Holidays. But let’s hear the story in Murray’s own voice: “When they first asked me to be the cantor here for the holidays, it was easy. I had the voice, I knew the prayers. I was just a kid… But they needed a cantor – in those days they had no money to hire one – so I did it (pause)… I would sing and tremble… my kishkes, my guts --- everything was in it. I never thought of it as work. And no one helped me. Everyone said – ‘Murray, being a cantor… is not…a profession … it’s … old men do it… or you volunteer – for Yom Kippur. A cantor is not a profession… an engineer--- that’s a profession. From that you’ll make a living. But a hazan--- no.’ (pause) Now I see, a profession wasn’t what I needed. When I was in high school, I had this incredible voice, so the old hazan trained me – to do parts of the service. I’d never have moments like that. I just wanted to live in those moments – to stretch them out. Such a different place—not basketball, not television, not going to the movies. I was in a different world and I wanted to stay there. It was what I was meant to do. But I didn’t know that. I thought --- to be an engineer—a professional – I have success in my hands – it’s not so bad… but every Rosh Hashana, this gets harder to do. Peel off the layers of shmutz. I feel sick – I think—this year I won’t be able to do it. I’ll open my mouth and I stand next to that shining boy the old hazan trained – I feel so dirty. I tell myself, ‘Murray, this is crazy! You don’t lead a sinful life. You lead an ordinary life. Ordinary.’ (pause) But how do I cut through the dead skin, this thick calloused skin, to see if there’s something --- light, quivering, deep inside, something… luminescent. Every year I take my hand I reach into my gut, I want to pull out something pure, an offering to God. To say – Murray Leibman is still alive, he’s still alive down here, he’s looking for You! But I reach inside and I’m scared – is there anybody there? “Hello in there, is anybody home?’ They blow the shofar, and I think—is anybody home in there? The real me is getting smaller as I get older. The real me is getting little with a high pitched voice and how can a hazan have little high-pitched voice? And there’s this other person, who keeps getting bigger – he’s taken over – he is in the driver’s seat. He’s the one who goes to the meetings, and flies first class—the engineer, the big consultant—he’s the one who gives the secretaries all the work to do, he’s the one—you know – goes out to lunch with the guys… but the Murray, who’s all the way inside, Murray, the once-a-year-part-time-hazzan… he has no one to talk to. There is no one to check up on him—like I used to do with my mother—I’d call in the morning, or go on the weekend? There’s no one to check up on him… Once a year, I go looking … is that Murray still there?” I know many of us here today can identify with Murray. We look at ourselves as the new year comes upon us. We never feel quite ready. We are not sure where we are in life. We look for the little person inside our bodies. We want to grow. We want to begin again. And exactly what is new about the new year? Are we new? Have we changed? Think about it. What did you bring with you when you came into synagogue this morning? Did you bring your tired self? Did you bring someone frustrated with life? Did you bring your worries? Or did you bring someone rested and refreshed? Were you able to clear your mind? Or is your mind still clouded by the you of the workplace, by the you of the home, by the you behind the wheel of your car, by the you in relationship to others? And now in synagogue, are you a different person? Does this space make you a different person? And if your answer to that question is no or maybe which I suspect it might be, I hope my remarks will help you to seek in the synagogue the kind of difference I am talking about. Robert Bly has said that most of us go through life without adequate models of where we are heading. We don’t know what we want. In a world of multiple choices, we can no longer look up to old men and old women and say securely that that is what I want to be. A hundred years ago grandparents and uncles and aunts lived in the same house or nearby and there was a mingling of young men and old men in the workplace, on the farm, in sports, or in the home. A son went into his father’s business. We looked up to our elders. Most of us are on our own now and tradition and community don’t have the same claim on our psyches the way they used to. It is not like that in other cultures. Robert Bly tells one such story about the initiation of young boys in the Kikuyu tribe in Africa. When a Kikuyu boy is old enough for initiation, he is taken away from his mother and and brought to a special place the men have set up some distance from the village. He fasts for three days. On the third night he finds himself sitting in a circle around a fire with older men. A bowl of blood is passed around so that the boy can taste the blood of his elders. The old men share stories and songs and lessons from the old tradition; the boy is now not just a member of his parent’s house, he is full-fledged member of the community. And those community peoples—the priest, the head of the tribe, the younger assistants—become the models for the boy so he can begin to imagine what he will become. In the midst of ritual, he has become a different person. In the synagogue, we enact this ritual; we imagine ourselves as a different person. The synagogue beckons us to make a personal connection so that we can feel infused with a new spirit and create a new self. This room is filled with metaphor and symbol that call on us to be different. But it requires imagination. It requires us to play on the stage and to let loose the binds of workplace and home and to embrace the words and symbols and melodies that are present in this room. The synagogue is a stage and you have to be a kind of ham actor to be a kosher Jew. One word that we use in synagogue is the word “melech,” the king. We are continually beseeching the king in our prayers. The king is the focus of our attention from the beginning of the service until its end. The first word of the morning service is bolded in our siddur “HAMELECH” (page 134). We say he reigned, he reigns and he will reign. The king has arrived. And make no mistake that the aron hakodesh is the symbol of the respository of all kingly powers. In the old Temple, there was a holy of holies, a dwelling place for God that was hidden by a curtain and was forbidden to everyone except the High Priest on Yom Kippur Day. The aron of the synagogue is that same holy of holies and becomes the focal point of this room when we come to pray. The King is admittedly an old fashioned image. We don’t live in a country where a king rules. We don’t have palaces in the United States to visit where kings used to live. Many of us struggle with the metaphor because it doesn’t adequately describe our experience and besides in our school lessons we were taught to be suspicious of kings. We deposed the king of England in the American Revolution and our constitution was constructed so that there were checks on power and term limits set so that no human king could rule forever. To stand before a king these days is like being in the presence of a bit celebrity Our interest in him is one of curiousity, that is all. A British royal doesn’t instill inside of us that kind awe or trepidation any more than any famous person who has his face on the cover of People magazine. So if Rosh Hashanah is about our focus on the king, we are going to have to find some new meaning in that term. So I am going to suggest boldly this morning that the king is us. Not that we should worship ourselves, God forbid, but that in each us there is a King that sets the course of our lives when we wake up every morning. There is a King in us that sets priorities and manages time to do the things that are most important for us. The King is a dominant voice in our heads that tells us to live by the traditions of our ancestors. It is the dominant voice in our head that tells us to be fair or to be just or to be compassionate. It is the dominant voice that tells us that we are doing something wrong. It is the dominant voice that directs us to hold on to our core values whether they are about family or Judaism or the practice of compassion or getting the most out of life. It is the dominant voice that directs us forward. Many fairy tales begin with a king. And the king is usually old or weak and worries about who will replace him. In the fairy tale, there is a test, often set up by the king himself, so that the prince will find the treasure or battle the dragon or marry the beautiful princess, so that the king he can ultimately step aside and allow the prince to take his place as the new king. Think of the story of Cinderella where the king worries that the prince will never marry and organizes a ball so that he can find his true wife and continue the monarchic legacy. Or the story of the “Three Feathers” where the old king sets up a contest between his three sons, the winner being the wisest of the three who ultimately will rule the kingdom. The motif of the fairy tale is out with old king and in with the new king. In some fairy tales, like the story “Iron John,” the king is under an evil spell and must be liberated so that he can re-claim his former glory. In the tales of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, the king is in hiding and must be found or the king is a wicked king and needs to be replaced. I think fairy tales have a lot to teach us about our Jewish concern with the kingly part of ourselves that gets lost during the year. There is a benevolent king in each of us that has grown weak. Where he once played the dominant voice in our heads setting priorities, telling us what we must do (not what we should do), we somewhere along the way tuned him out. Or the reception grew weaker. Or there was too much static on the line. The dominant voice told us to spend more time with our family. The dominant voice told us to be more patient and we promised that we would be less angry. The dominant voice told us that we should be more giving. And did we continue to listen to that dominant voice, the king in our head that told us what we must do to be virtuous, what we must be to do successful in life, what we must do to be part of the human community? What did our heart tell us and what did we actually do? I suspect if you are like me, somewhere along the line, maybe a month or two after last Yom Kippur, or maybe a week or maybe several days, you got so busy that you stopped listening to the voice. Or the voice was intermittent. Or the voice was drowned out by another voice. Once upon a time, there was a kingdom where the king was old and weak. That kingdom is you at the end of the year ---what happened to all the promises? what happened to the dominant voice? --- and the king is within you speaking in a voice that you can barely hear. That is the way I would suggest we interpret the emphasis on hamelech-the king in our synagogue experience. It is not that we are concerned with God’s kingship so much during the holidays; it is that God is concerned for the King in each of us. During this time in shul, there is a heightened attention to the dominant voice in our souls. We need to turn up the volume. We need to give extra chizuk-strength- to the voice in each us that tells us what is right and what is good. To be able to articulate what we want in life is the ability to tap into energy of the strong king. Out with the weak king and in with the new. And when we look at ourselves in the synagogue with these eyes, we are a different person. There are three aspects of the Rosh Hashana service in the synagogue that bring out the King in each of us. The synagogue is your throne room starting with the “aron,” the repository of all the values that we care about. The words that beseech us to “love your neighbor as you love yourself,” “to not hold a grudge,” “to be truthful,” to be considerate and compassionate, to observe holy time, and to excel in virtue – they are all contained behind the golden door. And how is the scroll dressed? As a king with a robe and a crown. We bring it through the room and we touch it and give it our affection because we want its goldenness. We want its vitality, we need its vitality to strengthen the king inside ourselves. The Torah is the plaything, the golden ball, that contains the energy that we all seek --- we are constantly told that it gives us life, it renews us and when it is dressed in white on the High Holidays, the Torah beckons us with its royal presence. Out with the weak king and in with the new. If you listen closely to the melody of the High Holiday services, you will hear the sounds of a royal march, a coronation, a steady rhythm and a dramatic return to a dominant chord. That music also taps into the King within each of us. It should not only elevate us as synagogue music ought to do; it should penetrate us. We only hear it once a year. It is processional music that ushers in the vitality of the new king in each of us. We hear it and our resolve is strengthened. Our core values are uncovered or made stronger. Of course the major sound of Rosh Hashanah is the shofar – that crude, primitive instrument that harks back to the days of ancient warriors and ancient shepherds, a relic of the Jewish primitive past. And it is the cry of the shofar that penetrates our souls more than any other sound that we hear in the synagogue. And it is the sound of the King approaching. Sure – we can pledge in words that we will be better people; we won’t lie; we won’t fight with our spouse; we will be kinder to strangers – it is all going to be different now, but really when you get right down to it—our promises to behave differently are going to be caught up in the web of old habits and prejudices, cynical thinking and selfishness. And so what does the shofar do for us? It not only announces the return of the King, it also prepares us for the war ahead. It is only through struggle that the dominant voice can be heard. We Jews do not shirk from struggle. Golda Meir once said that the meaning of life is not found in moments of complacency but in moments of struggle. Struggle doesn’t have to be negative. It can be exhilarating. In his new book Yearnings, Rabbi Irwin Kula doesn’t use the word struggle to describe what we do. He calls it dealing with the sacred messiness of life. Let’s face it, we don’t all have clean kitchens. Have you looked in your garage lately? It is the same thing with life’s meaning. Rather than teach absolute truths, Jewish teachings invite us to dance with life’s dualities and contradictions – Life and Death, Joy and Sorrow, Hate and Love. That’s sacred messiness! Rabbi Kula tells about the one day while looking at his daughter’s messy room -- the hairbrush left on the windowsill, the clothes stuck in the corner, papers on the floor and earrings on the dresser—the kind of mess that drives a parent crazy. In a moment of reflection Rabbi Kula thought, “you know it is just like Talia, she is always overflowing.” It was a moment that illuminated for him the the verse in psalms: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…The Lord sets a table for me… My cup runneth over!” You see for us our messes are the treasure boxes of our souls. We are constantly going through the layers of our lives, gently sorting out the tangles of what’s important to us again and again. Our most chaotic periods can be catalysts for understanding. Our daily frustrations, when we bring them to the surface and wrestle with them, can imbue our lives with meaning. So the sound of the shofar comes to prepare us for the struggle to come. Holiness will come when we finally go to war with our own messes. Out with the old king and in with the new. It occurs to me that this is yet another reason why the king-hamelech is mentioned so frequently on Rosh Hashanah. Rosh Hashana recalls the day the world was born. On this the world’s birthday, we don’t read from the first story in Genesis about the six day invention of the universe. On Rosh Hashanah, God is not given credit as the Creator of the World but as melech ha-olam, the King of the World. And the shofar celebrates His coronation. And yet never in the Torah story is God described as a King. That is because the shofar service reminds us not of the neat, ordered world created by stage directions of “let there be light” -- it recalls the creation of the world as described as a sacred mess, the creation story as told by the book of Job. It is there that God turns to Job and says, “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations… who closed the sea behind the doors when it gushed forth out of the womb… when I made breakers and set up its bars and doors.?” The shofar is the sound of one who struggles to confine and channel the chaos of a life that is always in flux—it is the cry of the King in each of us that is holding back the assault on our fortress of values and promises. We seek to hang on to what is most important and, through its sound, we have strengthened the new king. We are different people. Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner explains that Rosh Hashanah is also the remembrance of Adam’s original stature in the world at the beginning of creation. Adam is commanded to rule the earth and then through sin, he becomes a servant, working by the sweat of his brow and struggling with his own mortality outside of Paradise. However, once a year the shofar calls him back. Even though he has left that spiritual level of Kingship long ago, a remnant or a trace of him still remains there and when the Shofar is sounded he is reminded of his former self. The shofar is the loud sound that boosts the dominant voice within. Our prayers say that the kol dmma daka, the thin silent sound becomes the sound of shofar gadol, the great shofar, on Rosh Hashana. I am reminded of those little bars on the cell phone when the reception is shown as loud and clear. Through the muffled conflicting sounds of the year, the dominant voice comes through, the reception is strong and its volume is loud. It is not enough to recite the promises of better living. As Elvis Costello would say, “we must pump it up until you can hear it!” You know we don’t blow the shofar on Shabbat. When the bliss of Shabbat conflicts with the celebration of cosmos and chaos on Rosh Hashanah, we don’t sound the warning and bring out the warrior. The laws of Shabbat trumps Rosh Hashanah. It is almost as though the rabbis, through this law, are saying, “Better to delay the coronation of the King one day so that we can enjoy the idyllic world of the Moshiach encompassed in Shabbat.” Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shlomi says in his shul when Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbat, he asks the people to scream instead. The cry of the shofar is the primal scream in each of us—being forced into the world in all of its sacred messiness, gulping air for the first time, defending ourselves against the chaos and struggling to make the meaningful life work. Don’t worry. I am not going to ask you to scream this morning. In addition to the symbols of the aron and the shofar, the music and words of our prayers, there are two other ways that we are different people when we are inside the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah – they both happen in the Torah service. As you know, the name for the honor of being called to the Torah is called an “aliyah” which literally means “going up.” Now it could mean that one literally steps up on the bima but I take it in a metaphorical sense. When you are called for an aliyah, you are called by your private Hebrew name. It is not a name that is used outside of the synagogue. It is a name that is private, kept inside the clan, recited only four times in your life – once at your birth, once at your wedding, once at your funeral and, of course, whenever you are called to say blessings before the Torah is read. In ancient cultures, you were given a secret name that was known by only yourself, your parents, and the priest. And whoever could call you by your name wielded great power over you. Think of Rumplestilskin. When your name is called, the Torah beckons you with its great power; it exerts a power over you like no other. The Torah calls the kingly voice within you to pay attention to its words, to live by its deeds and you are compelled to bless it for it is the vitality that will make you strong, hayay nata btocheinu, and bring back the dominant voice for the new year. Out with the weak king, in with the new. Our aliyah is like going up to the throne and demonstrating our resolve before others that the king has returned! In looking at today’s reading, the word melech only occurs once at the end of the story – in the name “Avimelech,” my father is a king. The story we are told of Abraham and Sarah is one of people grappling with their values. You may not necessarily agree that Abraham had to send Hagar away from his house, but the moral of the story seems to be that sometimes in life we have to make hard choices. Abraham had to choose between two women and in the end he chooses the bride of his youth. He chooses the path of “shalom bayit.” It is the lesson of “Happy wife, Happy life.” So right after the story is ended and we know that Hagar is safe under God’s protecting care, we are told that Avimelech, a local chieftain, praises Abraham and says “God is with you in everything that you do.” It is the voice of approval but when we read it as addressing ourselves, we can read it as the voice of self-affirmation. The voice of Avimelech, the king within. Now I am not saying that Abraham is the greatest of all the patriarchs. He has his share of messes, but we can give him credit for struggling and in that he is like us. We need to follow our dominant voices -- out with the old king and in with the new. Let’s return to poor Murray. I hope he can locate the little Murray and let his voice be heard this Rosh Hashanah wherever he is. In my research for the sermon this morning, I did a lot of reading of fairy tales – fairy tales about kings. They usually begin “Once upon a time there was a king who was sick or old or yearned for a Queen or worried that he would have no male heirs…” And in the course of the story, the prince or sometimes a messenger has to pass a series of tests and at the end a spell is broken and a new king emerges or the king’s bride gives over her powers to make the dead king come to life. And usually there are talking animals and a gold ring comes into play. And we learn at the end of the story that we are the revitalized king – and despite the shmootz of life – we can live happily ever after. So may it be for us – that we may welcome the return of the king. For our sakes, for the sake of the welfare of our world and for the sake of the little Murray in all of us. Rabbi Jonathan Perlman |