Shana Tova and Shabbat Shalom

We meet again at the dawn of a new year - 5764. We look back and see the year that has passed.

I wish I could stand here and talk to you about what a great year it has been - what enormous successes we have had as a community, among individuals and as members of a larger nation and world.

But, alas, this year - things don't feel that wonderful.

And, unfortunately, they don't feel that wonderful in small, despairing and uneventful ways - not as a result of trauma or catastrophe - although some of us may have indeed suffered those. This year is not like two years ago when we had just witnessed the worst terror attack on American soil ever and we were all united in our shock, anger, fear and desires to help one another.

No - this year we haven't suffered major trauma - Thank God. But we have experienced a different kind of trauma - one of despair - individual and collective frustration and despair.

I look back at this past year among our community and I see the following:

Several of our members continue to be under or un-employed - not just for the short-term, but going on two, three years.

We have members whose health problems are not acute crises, thank God, but make daily living painful and compound other existing problems. There are those of us who suffer under the double burden of chronic health issues and significant financial hardships.

We have children with illnesses or learning challenges whose parents must make one more appointment with a specialist, one more meeting with a teacher, one more request for special help in already overburdened and overscheduled lives. Parents who tell me that they are simply tired - just tired.

Many of us are mourning losses - parents have died, other friends and family members. Many in our congregation are coming to grips with the reality of being the middle of the sandwich - caring for aging and ailing parents or shepherding them through illness and sometimes into death while simultaneously caring for our own children.

And then we need only to look at a newspaper or turn on the TV to see that indeed - the world is a mess: Scandals in churches, scandals in corporations, scandals in government all against a backdrop of war and international strife. Indeed, whatever your initial feelings about the war in Iraq, we now see that cost of war - no matter how right or wrong it is to fight it - is always way to high; both in terms of economic impact on our own country and in loss of life among both American soldiers and the Iraqi people.
The deepening military and national quagmire that Iraq has become provides us with less a sense of security and trust in the world than that which we had before it began.

And when we turn to other parts of the middle east, it seems surreal that only three years ago we were celebrating the closest steps to peace ever accomplished and looking toward a new horizon of co-existence between our Israeli brothers and sisters and their Palestinian neighbors only to have those hopes dashed not once, twice, but repeatedly, again and again by those stuck in their own despair and unable to see beyond.

We have members who tell me that they have stopped watching the news or listening to the radio - knowing full well that that is only a temporary solution to the daily doses of bad news.

And no amount of willful ignorance blunts the pain when - as happened to me this summer - I learned on one day of not one, but two friends, young parents, diagnosed with various forms of cancer and putting their lives and the lives of their children on hold while they geared up to battle their diseases.

In short - these days - it is very easy to get depressed.

And unlike in the aftermath of September 11th - it is a depression most of us bear on our own - a lonely and quiet depression. Major tragedies - like that of September 11 - bring bright responses. No - I wouldn't want to go back to that day or any day like it ever again. But I do remember the feelings of hope and togetherness as we watched the heroes of NY trying to rescue those caught in the buildings.

Here in our area, the outpouring of support - financial contributions and blood donations - for the victims of the Station Nightclub fire was breathtaking. Even in our own congregation - never have I believed in Godliness and Holiness so clearly as when I witnessed the response of this community to Julia Levine's Leukemia diagnosis.

Profound darkness breeds profound light. Rabbi Harold Kushner in his book "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" points out that one evil act often breeds thousands of acts of redemption in the caring and support of loved ones and friends, in the response of communities. And that is all true and well and good and as it should be.

But what about now; what about when the evil isn't so apparent; and the darkness so ordinary and normal that - like Plato in his cave beginning to believe that the shadows on wall are reality - we have forgotten what it is that we can no longer see?

These times are known by the Chasidic masters of our traditions as periods of the absence of God - times when God's face is not turned toward us, but rather away from us. And all we feel is the cold shiver of our loneliness.

Tragedy is awful yes - but ongoing pain and despair is much more insidious and it is then - times like now - that we have to work even harder to banish the darkness. Each one of us must recommit to burning a brighter light. The darker the world gets, the more incumbent it is upon each human being to bring out the light. God's hidden face requires human acts of revelation.

But how?

And that is really the question I wrestle with this holiday season, have wrestled with for a good part of the past year. How do we keep on keeping on when it doesn't feel so easy sometimes to get up in the morning?

I have found two possible paths that may offer guidance:

Rabbi Nachman, one of the great leaders of Chasidic Judaism lived in a time of much darkness and despair. The Jews of his native Ukraine in the 18th century were very, very poor and often oppressed. His was the world of the shtetl where life was hard and hard lived.

Nachman recognized his time as a place where God's absence was often felt much more than God's presence. Faced with growing darkness Rebbe Nachman prescribed acts of Tikkun - repair to his followers, acts that would bring back the light. For this rebbe and his followers, the answer was found in acts of joy. Singing, dancing, laughter, silliness were the prescriptions Reb Nachman gave his followers.

More accustomed to hearing about laughter and silliness on Purim that at the Holy Days, we are apt to call Reb Nachman's message trite and naïve. Indeed, I feel trite and naïve even sharing it with you.

We don't want to be told, "Put on a Happy Face," "Smile and the world smile's with you" or "Don't worry; be happy." Because today, we often just don't have the energy.

Rabbe Nachman's answer - act joyfully - resonates as something I would like to be able to do, someplace I'd like to be able to get to - but still I am left wondering how.

This leads me to the second path:

As some of you know, I attended a four-day silent retreat this past spring. Based on the training of Buddhist mindfulness practice, this was a retreat for rabbis to learn a little about meditation, practice it and explore its possible uses in Jewish community.

Mindfulness practice teaches us to explore - non-judgmentally - where we are in any given moment. What am I thinking, feeling, experiencing right now? It teaches us to let go of the stories we tell ourselves, the worries for the future or obsessions with the past and focus on the moment, right now.
And it teaches us that suffering and pain are separate entities. Pain is real - pain is what happens when we are hurt, when we are lonely, when we lose something. Suffering, according to Buddhist teaching, is what happens when we tell ourselves stories, worry, obsess, cast blame and look for scapegoats about the pain.

It seems then that the end of suffering requires nothing more than a mind shift. If we stop telling ourselves the stories of our pain, we will suffer less. In fact, if we stop telling ourselves stories we will soon come to realize that the biggest cause of suffering in the world is a belief that we have some measure of control over our lives - that we can somehow prevent pain or injury or loss or illness. And the sooner we come to accept what we all ultimately know - that there really is nothing in this world we can control - the better we will feel.

But - stuck where I have been - where many of us have been - living with a constant low-grade fever of suffering, this too sounds trite. "You mean all I have to do is not think about my pain and I'll feel better?"

We all know it doesn't work that way - not that simply.

Both these responses to pain and suffering - Nachman's joyfulness practice and Buddhist mindfulness practice are in fact quite trite and silly. But they are also somehow true and deeply relevant to this High Holy Day season for me.

For from the Buddhists we learn an ultimate truth - we are not in control. In fact we are so not in control of things that there is only one thing we can actually DO anything about - and that is our very next step. The next best action is the only step we each individually can make.

And not being in control and only having to decide on the next best action gives us enormous freedom - the freedom to respond to that next moment in joy and love - to put into practice what Rebbe Nachman teaches. If all I really have is this very moment in time, then it is my choice to respond to this moment in any way I want to - and why not make it a loving and joyful choice?

No - I won't find a cure for cancer tomorrow, and I won't find jobs and money for those who need it, and I probably can't avoid pain and heartache and chances are I can't do anything about the terrorism and fighting that will continue in the Middle East. But what I can do is realign my hopes and desires to meet the world with a loving and joyful face.

If the Teshuvah that we are called to do this season is a turning back, a realignment of our intentions, our Kavanah for living, then deciding to make the very next moment a joyful one is the ultimate act of Tikkun - repair. Our loving and joyful faces illuminate this world and begin to slow the growing darkness.  

Before my surgery this summer I was filled with anxieties. I was dreading the surgery itself and the difficult recovery I was told to expect. I hated the idea of being sick and needy. I was worried about Avi and his reaction - I was concerned for David. And I was worried about the next chapter unfolding in my life - the anticipated adoption of our daughter Sharon. Would I be well enough to care for her? Would I be able to welcome her? Will I be a good parent to her? And of course - timing being what it is - would I be able to handle it all and be here for Rosh Hashana, let alone our two B'nai Mitzvah we celebrated already this fall?

At some point, filled with dread and despair about the chaos that was encroaching my well-ordered life, I began to laugh. The fact is, I couldn't do anything to change the reality of any one thing happening this fall - but I could change my reaction to it - and as I started to see the humor and the absurdity of my situation - what rabbi has surgery and adopts a child right before the High Holy Days? I started to laugh.

And that laughter - like Sarah's in this morning's Torah portion - helped me bring back light in my world - and see the light around me like that in the face of my little girl.

And as each little light shines, small as it may be and as deep the gloom, that is one more chink in the armor of darkness. Turning our faces toward each other in joy and love, we combine our light for greater brightness, ultimately paving the way for God's return into this world.

Putting our intentions in line with our greatest hopes and desires is the redemptive act that will make it possible for the gloom to diminish, for the light to return and ultimately, for God's presence to again be felt in this world.

May our work this season create loving and joyful hearts and may we soon find each other's light as we brandish our own.

Rabbi Elyse

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