Why Are You Here Tonight?

Why Are You Here Tonight?
Kol Nidrei
September 21st, 2007
Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

Before entering into the heart of this sermon, I must make a few statements:
            It is impossible to say everything I wish to express in the format of this sermon.
            I really do hope that you will drop in on Sunday mornings at the school to chat
                        and make this sermon a conversation.
With those thoughts in place, let me find a beginning.
I.
I wasn't born religious.      I wasn't born observant.
Those are two different characteristics. They both define me.
At the age of eleven or twelve I announced that I wanted to be a Rabbi.
            My mother never let me forget it.
            I had no idea what that meant.
            I meant it to mean that I had discovered the joy of Judaism. I found faith.
            And I have never swerved from this path.
I grew up in a Conservative synagogue of the late 1950's and early 60's.
            Except for one year, I went to Religious School like most of our children.
            The synagogue was my second home.
            In its simple confines,
                        I became enchanted with our language,
                        I became captivated by our history, and
                        I became awestruck with the thought of God.
                                    Even when I struggle with doubts, I am still awestruck with God.
Despite what many people say about Ruby and me, they are incorrect.
            We are observant Conservative Jews.
            My theology and ideology is Conservative, not Orthodox.
            My growth, education, and faith are in the framework of Conservative Judaism.
            My religious center is the Jewish Theological Seminary.
I became this way because I took seriously the teachings of our faith.
            It wasn't easy growing up this way.
            I had to discover the content of my Jewish identity step by step.
            I added to my observances, sometimes gradually and sometimes quickly.
I know that I chose to become a religious, observant Jew.
            My parents did not force me.
            My Rabbi did not force me.
            I can't say that God forced me, either.
            If I followed the other kids growing up,
                                    I wouldn't have become the Jew that I am.
            It was a matter of choice.
            Everything we do is matter of personal choice.
            Career. Morality. Partner/spouse. Geography. Faith.
                        We are creatures of choice.
                        Sociologists call it "The sovereign self."

II.
Following this train of thought, let me begin again with a question:
                        Why are you here tonight?
                        What compelled you to come to synagogue this night?
            Perhaps it is nostalgia. You remember being in synagogue with your grandparents
                        I don't have that. My grandparents didn't go to synagogue.
            Perhaps it is because it was or is important to your parents.
                        I knew synagogue was important to mine, but they never "made me go."
            Maybe it wasn't important to them and you want to "make a statement"
                        about being different.
                        I was different but I was too young and innocent to be making a statement.
            Maybe it is important to your spouse or partner and you want to support and value
                        what he or she believes.
                        That Ruby and I shared this faith enabled us to get married.
            Maybe you want to set an example for your children.
                        We certainly wanted that.
            Maybe you just like it here. It's like family; like home.
                        Synagogue has always been my home.
            Perhaps it is out of a sense of "Jewish peoplehood."
                        After God, my next most important thought is always the Jewish people.
            Maybe it is for some amorphous "religious" experience.
                        I always seek to be moved religiously.
            Perhaps the beautiful shofar blowing evoked some deep spiritual longing.
                        The shofar always stirs my soul. It follows the notes upwards.
I would especially want to know what you would add to this list. Tell me on Sunday.
Everyone here tonight chose to be here in synagogue instead of any place else. Why?
Holding a machzor, reciting Hebrew or English, is a matter of your personal choice.
Everything is. Why are you here tonight?

III.
For me there was something else very unique, powerful, compelling. I learned the word mitzvah in its classical andsimple meaning. It does not mean "good deed," even if some mitzvot are good deeds. Mitzvah meanscommandment.

God is the commander, the mitzaveh.
He gives mitzvot.
I am the metzuveh, the one commanded.
God commanded me to implement in my life special actions. These are the mitzvot.
            Some mitzvot are clearly in the Torah.
            Many mitzvot were created by the Rabbis by interpreting the Torah.
            Others were created to answer the question: How does God want us to live?

I will confess that God did not speak to me in a personal revelation.
And clearly I am too young to have stood at Mt. Sinai.
My parents did not command me either. Neither could my Rabbi.
I had to choose to be, to feel, commanded. I had to choose God.
I had to personally accept to be metzuveh, to give up some of my personal autonomy. I had to feel obliged to God. That explains why I do what I do, and why I don't what I don't.
My sovereign self chose to be commanded.
Rabbi Eliezer Diamond of the Jewish Theological Seminary wrote a phrase which I borrow and quote: We will ourselves to be believers.
I willed myself to be observant, to be religious, to believe in God.
            The world gave me all the choices possible.
            Nobody forced me.
            Not even God.
My internal free will chose to hear God's voice through the words of Torah, through the words of the prophets, through the teachings of the Rabbis.
I chose to come here, talk to God, confess my sins, and seek to feel closer to Adonay.
I do so, I say this,  as a Conservative Jew, here, in a Conservative synagogue.

IV.
I can't remember the author of the quote: Religion is caught, not taught. That has always been the truth and the bane of my existence. I can teach you Judaism,
                        but I can't catch it for you or for your children.
The Religious School can teach and I can preach, but only you can catch, exemplify and transmit.

That is the challenge we face as Conservative Jews, as a synagogue for Conservative Judaism. Our Orthodox brethren feel the absoluteness of the Commander, the commandment and being commanded. Our Reform brethren feel the absoluteness of the sovereign self. Conservative Judaism maintains the commandedness from God to Torah and mitzvot, while we have choices how to implement any given mitzvah, or even how many.
            Yet this feeling is a matter of your choice.
            Your religious posture must be self designated,
                                    which also gives it the greatest power.
            Implementing Judaism in your lives must be self-elected.
            Only you can "catch our faith."
                                    Then you can be exemplars to your children and grandchildren.

Dr. Arnold Eisen, the new chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary challenged the Conservative Rabbinate to address this subject during these Yamim Noraim. This subject above all others, the self choosing to live active, religious, observant committed Jewish lives, to stand in relationship to God, to give quality and content to nameJew, will determine the vibrancy, vitality, and viability of American Jewry. This will determine our future. Each one of us, in our personal choices, affects Jewish destiny. Our individual and personal lives have global impact. Our sovereign selves are collectively, very powerful.

Appended to this sermon when sent on the listserv will be questions on the Theme of Mitzvah that Dr. Eisen has composed. I propose it to be the basis of our Sunday morning conversations. Parenthetically let me say that the argument  that you should "feel religious" first and then observe, is a recipe for religious paralysis. Be brave! Be bold! Forge forward! Meanwhile let me suggest a few things:

            Light Shabbat candles and imagine that your light ascends to God. Say a few extra words of your own. Stand together as a family. Bless each other.
            This week is Sukkot. While it might be too late to build your own, visit someone else's and feel the Israelites trek to Sinai and God's hovering presence.
            Light Yom Tov candles Wednesday and Thursday nights. Don't wait for Shabbat.
            Say Shema before going to sleep and when waking up. Just one line. Just for yourself. Talk to God at home.
            Give up one non-kosher food product, conscientiously.
            Come here on this Yom Tov and enter our Sukkah.
            Shake the lulav and etrog as a means of saying thanks for the food on our tables.
            Look at the Torah portion each week. It's on line.
            Spend some Shabbat time with your family rather than shopping or working.
                        Believe me, the garden and the mall will still be there!
            Come here and join your voice in song and prayer. It is powerful.
                        Create a happy, engaged, synagogue community.
                        Bask in this divine glow that directs our eyes & hearts to the transcendent.
                                                (Think – Josh Bell!)
Begin. Begin somewhere. Begin anywhere. But begin the journey. Even together.

Conclusion

I always wonder what happens after my sermons are delivered. I file them in notebooks. I have every one I ever delivered. What do you do with them? Maybe this sermon is just a personal exercise in expressing who I am. I really hope that it is more than that, that it echoes within you after tonight and stirs your thinking and feeling.

I wish to close by sharing with you a poem and a story.
The poem is by Rav Kook, a tremendous religious personage in the early 20th century in Palestine. It reflects me, my heart, my faith. Perhaps it will influence you.
           

Expanses, expanses,
Expanses divine my soul craves.
Confine me not in cages,
Of substance or of spirit.
My soul soars the expanses of the 
                                                heavens.
Walls of heart and walls of deed
Will not contain it.
Morality, logic, custom ---
My soul soars above these,
Above all that bears a name,
Above all that is exalted and ethereal.
I am love-sick—
I thirst, I thirst for God,
As a deer for water brooks.

Sinai, Elul, 5705

The story from Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, a Reform rabbi and author who served a congregation in Massachusetts for many years, is one of the American rabbis most skilled at deriving spiritual truths from mundane life experiences. It is a story of choice. It is a story about faith. It is a story about mitzvah.

When he wants to explain what love is, he recalls when his wife Karen was pregnant with their second child. And as pregnant women sometimes do, Karen woke him up in the middle of the night and told him she couldn't sleep – in part because she had developed a craving – for a Hershey's chocolate bar with almonds. 
As Rabbi Kushner tells the story,

 "She'd been schlepping this baby around in her belly, and I was getting off easy, so I figured it was the least I could do. Before she completed enunciating her request, I said, 
"Don't worry about a thing, honey." I put my Levi's on over my pajamas, threw on a sweatshirt, snow galoshes, and my down parka, hood, gloves and muffler. I ran down the few flights of steps to the car and to my chagrin, saw there were about three inches of wet sloppy snow all over the car. I cleaned it off, started the car, and then had this horrifying realization—I had no idea where I was going to find a store open in the middle of the night. I drove up Route 20 and remembered the Holiday Inn out on Route 495 had a candy machine. I can still picture the night clerk watching this car skid to a stop in a snowstorm, a man runs in, waves, pumps quarters into the candy machine, grabs a handful of candy bars, runs back to the car, and drives off into the blizzard. I got home and gave my wife the candy bars.

For about an hour on a wintry night, 
I, Lawrence Kushner, who normally has a very well-developed ego, 
did not have an ego. Instead, I was a servant of Karen Kushner's ego. 
I did not stay in a warm bed. I drove around looking for candy bars. 
Here's the crazy part.
Doing what my lover wanted made me happier than doing what I wanted. 
It was more fulfilling. It was transforming. 
By letting go of myself and serving someone whom I loved, 
I reached a state of humility and an otherwise unattainable fulfillment.

                                                            End of story.

I went out in the middle of the night for Ruby, though I can't remember what for. 
But that is my love for her.
I have done really crazy things for my children. But that is my love for them.
And chose to stand before God, give of myself, because that is the way I love Him.
And so I live a life of mitzvoth.

I pray for our choices.
I pray for our loves.
I pray for us.
I pray for God.
May we find Him. May He find us finding Him.                          Amen.

QUESTIONS ON THE THEME OF MITZVAH
Dr. Arnold Eisen, Chancellor, Jewish Theological Seminary

1. What actions do you feel obliged to perform as a Jewish human being?
Examples:
• Attendance at synagogue at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur
• Giving tzedakah to Jewish or non-Jewish causes
• Fasting on Yom Kippur
• Taking action: Darfur, Israel, issues in your local community
• Support for Israel
2. Are these obligations— if you consider them such—of the same sort or a different sort than the following?
• Providing your children with the basic necessities and a good start on life
• Taking care of elderly parents
• Sharing household duties with your spouse or partner
• "Being there" for friends or siblings when they need you
3. What do you recognize as the source of authority of the mitzvot you perform? More than one answer may apply.
• God requires this of me
• Conscience tells me what a good human being should do
• Gratitude to God or for my life
• Obligation to carry on the tradition of my ancestors
• Obligation to care for the Jewish people, especially in the wake of the Holocaust
• Responsibilities to my community
• Love of this tradition
• "This is what Jews do"
4. Do you approach the Days of Awe with awe? With dread? With joy that it is this time of year once again, that you have the chance to hear these melodies chanted again? With gratitude that you get a chance to start over once again?
5. What mitzvot do you think are the ones most pressing for you personally to remember at this New Year? Which are most pressing for your community? Which are most pressing for our society as a whole?