Raya Meital and Josh Bell – Not to Miss a Moment

Raya Meital and Josh Bell – Not to Miss a Moment
September 13, 2007
First Day Rosh Hashanah 5768
Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

Introduction

For the birth of our three children, Menachem Yosef, Yonina Rachel and Tzeira Adina, I saw and held them shortly after their births. In fact, I was in the room for Yonina's, a rarity in those days. But for our first two grandchildren, Ariel Shlomit and Moshe Tzvi, it was some time before I saw and held them. Ariel was born during Pesach, March 31st, and her simchat bat was several weeks later in New York City. Moshe was born August 21st in Sharon, MA, and we flew in and out for the brit milah.  It was so hard to know that a grandchild was born, and to miss the hour, the days and even the weeks until I could hold and kiss them, and when I would do it again. I can only express my own feeling that the birth of our grandchildren was as existential religious experience. Our family that had been diminished by deaths was rejuvenating. Our family is part of the Jewish family. Through these births, the Jewish people, core of my existence, grew again. In holding them I could feel the miracles. It is a unique moment in time, in history. I share a part of that at each brit milah and baby naming/simchat bat of your children and grandchildren.

That made the experience of this summer so special. We arrived in Berkeley, California on Tuesday, July 17th, and Raya Meital was born Friday morning at 11:25. At four that afternoon I held her in my arms for the first time. With Ruby and me being with all of them for several weeks, each day was filled with their voices, sounds, kisses and presence. I felt that I had it all. I missed nothing. With Menachem and Liz's move, Ruby and I joined the "not so" exclusive club of transcontinental grandparents. But with the magic of YouTube and an electronic attachment to the computer, we can see and hear each other in real time. Borrowing a title from S.Y. Agnon's writings, this is "Chatzi Nechama," "Half Comfort."  It is better than Shutterfly and the telephone.

Let me switch subjects. With my musical interest elsewhere I will confess that if you had asked me before this springtime the following question, I could not have answered:

Who is Joshua Bell?

Either you are musically attuned, read last spring time about the episode to which I am about to refer, or you heard my brief and off-the-cuff referral to this in my Pesach Yizkor remarks. The purpose of this sermon is to connect the dots between the birth of Raya Meital, the episode in L'enfant Plaza in Washington, D.C. last January 12th, and Rosh HaShanah. Let me start with the latter, first, a few words about Rosh HaShanah.

I.

I would like to capture an essence of Rosh HaShanah which gets lost in the external trappings. That really depends on where you are sitting. If you are sitting down there, perhaps you follow the service, listen to the Cantor, wonder what I am going to talk about so you can critique it later, how long you are going to stay, will you get home in time to get dinner on the table, and greeting friends. If you are an usher, the office staff and other synagogue staff, Rosh Hashanah means a logistical challenge and you focus on those matters. If you are the Educational Director, you worry about the children's services. If you are the Cantor you worry about your voice, the ensemble, being in sync with Mary Ann, the other daveners and Ba'alay Keriyah. And I worry about all of you, all of the above, and my sermons. It really depends on where you sit.

Yet Rosh Hashanah is about none of that.               It is about life itself.
It is about renewal and continuity.
It is about beginnings and endings.
It is about what is in between the start and the end of life, and what we do with it.
Rosh Hashanah is the "time to consider time."
The origins of Rosh Hashanah in the Torah that led to the Rabbinic development as revealed in our machzorim focuses on the coronation of God as God, as the ultimate reality of existence. The religious answer to the question "Why are we here?" is that God our Creator gave us the gift of life. Rosh Hashanah is the celebration of our lifetimes.Our purpose in being here in synagogue, through our prayers and Torah, is to absorb the enormity of that gift. Here on earth and out there in the galaxies, nothing, no one else exists that has such a precious gift. We respond in our prayers:"Thank you, God."

The Rabbis teach in the Mishna that there are four Rosh HaShanahs: one in Elul, this one in Tishre, the one for trees in Shevat, and the Biblical one in Nisan. The Jewish vision is that we exist in multiple, coterminous levels of existence. This is glorious! It is majestic! Existence is never boring! Life is complex! Life is multiplicity! Life is a symphony of visions, sounds and experiences. That may be hard to hold on to with the daily demands of work, school, children, and the mundane trivialities of our homes and possessions. Rosh HaShanah demands that we look up from our Ipods, Imacs, Pc's and other electronic contraptions and look at the clouds, the flowers, at people, at newborns and children, at each other and say: "Thank you, God."

Just as we bask in the manifold colors and the hues of the glorious windows in this majestic sanctuary, so too, no two cloud formations are ever the same. When I brought Tzeira to New York to leave for Israel, we saw patches of color in the clouds. She said it was from a rainbow, but I asked, "where is it?" There was no rainbow, just blocks of color breaking through the clouds. No two fingerprints, no two voice prints, no two faces, no two snowflakes, no two flowers are ever identical. Each is different. Each is a variation on the theme of existence. Each blends and weaves itself into thetapestry of existence. That is glory and majesty of the gift of life. Looking at it, feeling its power, sniffing its aromas we say "Thank you, God."

That is Rosh HaShanah. Not the shtickaloch, as necessary as they may be. Rosh HaShanah is to come and meet God, the author and origin of our existence; take stock of life; and, say 'thank you.'

II.

Joshua Bell. He is one of the world's greatest violinists. A one time child prodigy, he has arrived as an internationally acclaimed virtuoso "He plays the same instrument every time. Called the Gibson ex Huberman, it was handcrafted in 1713 by Antonio Stradivari during the Italian master's "golden period," toward the end of his career, when he had access to the finest spruce, maple and willow, and when his technique had been refined to perfection." He bought it for a reported $3.5 million.

Someone proposed to this virtuoso that he, Joshua Bell, with that instrument, perform a stunt. Leonard Slatkin, music director of the National Symphony Orchestra was asked what did he feel would occur if one of the world's great violinists had performed incognito before a traveling rush-hour audience of 1,000-odd people? He surmised that of the 1,000, 35 or 40 would recognize the quality for what it is, 75 to 100 would stop and spend some time listening. There would be a crowd. They would toss into the case about $150.

Starting at 7:51 A.M. on January 12th, 2007, for 43 minutes in L"Enfant Plaza Station, in Washington, D.C., Joshua Bell played six classical pieces as 1,097 people passed him by. There were no crowds. Only twenty-seven people tossed money into his case, which had seeded with some lose change. The additional donations were $32 and change; this for a man who commands $1,000 a minute. Of the 1.097 people caught on a hidden camera, only one definitely recognized him. I do admit that I would have been part of the 1,096. One person, while not recognizing Joshua Bell, realized that something extraordinary was happening and stayed glued to his spot for nine minutes. He humbly threw $5 into the case. Interviewed afterwards some people said it was nothing special. Someone else said that he played too loud. The musician himself, having labored as hard there as he did in any musical venue, where he commands vast sums for his prodigious talent, was truly stunned each time he finished one of the six intricate and most sophisticated pieces. He said: "Nothing happened." From the most accomplished violinist, playing on an exquisite instrument, with decent acoustics in a place not designed for it, making the most beautiful classical music, nothing happened. When I read that one line, I was flabbergasted. Is that how we live? Are we so usurped by objects, are we so blinded by daily demands, are we so inured to the world, that when something transcendent occurs, we do nothing?

            Are we so shallow?

            Are we so blasé?

            Are we so blind?          

In the article in the Washington Post detailing all this, Gene Weingarten, writer of the article, quotes a line from a poem, "Leisure," by W. H. Davies: 

What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.

Somehow when I learned about this event, read this line, and thought about Rosh HaShanah, an integral connection was made. How can I, we, improve our lives, enjoy our lives, thank God for our lives, if, when confronted with beauty, audio, visual, personal, spiritual, we don't have the time to stand and stare? Rosh HaShanah, God's gift of life, teaches us, neigh, commands us, to stand and stare.

III.

There is one redeeming scene in the article which leads me back to the beginning of this sermon. I quote this short piece, with minor editing, in its totality.

"A couple of minutes into it, something revealing happens. A woman and her preschooler emerge from the escalator. The woman is walking briskly and, therefore, so is the child. She's got his hand. "I had a time crunch," she recalls. "I had a training class and first I had to rush my son off to his teacher, then rush back to work, then to the training facility in the basement." Her son is 3. You can see her son clearly on the video. He's the cute kid in the parka who keeps twisting around to look at Joshua Bell, as he is being propelled toward the door. "There was a musician and my son was intrigued. He wanted to pull over and listen, but I was rushed for time." So she does what she has to do. She deftly moves her body between her son and Bell's, cutting off her son's line of sight. As they exit the arcade, the son can still be seen craning to look. …The poet Billy Collins once laughingly observed that all babies are born with knowledge of poetry, because the lub-dub of the mother's heart is in iambic meter. Then, Collins said, life slowly starts to choke to poetry out of us. It may be true with music, too.""

This is the episode of a good Jewish boy, Joshua Bell, a virtuoso, impeccably playing the most difficult classical music before 1,097 of whom, only one recognized him, one other paused at length, and one child strained to hear the beauty.

Conclusion

When I held Raya Meital, named after my uncle who was an artist, and after Liz's grandmother, Raya meaning friend of God and Meital meaning  'waters of dew,' I held the poetry of life. Listening to her breathing I heard a symphony as precious and glorious as Joshua Bell's and I am sure that his reflects the breath of life. No matter how old I grow, no matter how many babies I hold, mine or yours, no matter how many difficulties of life I encounter, life will never choke the poetry out of me. What will life do to you?

What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.

Rosh HaShanah, Shabbat, Torah, God! want us, beckon us, to cherish the exquisite gift of life. It is delicate and it is fragile. But it is glorious and it is majestic. So when you held a baby, yours, someone else's, your child, your grandchild, and maybe I can dream, a great-grandchild, Ariel, Moshe and Raya have four greats who treasure them, listen to their breathing and look into their eyes. Ponder, explore and be caught in the rapture of the poetry and beauty of life. And when you see and hear a musician on the corner, at a train station, or even on the train, as I remember from my youth on the New York subway, maybe you will listen more closely to the music, and look more deeply to the person. Who knows whom you will see? Who knows what you will hear? Who knows what glory you will experience? Maybe it will Joshua Bell. Or maybe even Elijah.

L'Shanah Tovah Tikateyvu v'Taychataymu – May you taste of the glory and beauty of God's world in the year to come. And say "Thank you, God."                             

Amen.