A Prayer For the Wounded; A Prayer From the Wounded
Rosh Hashanah 5779
Shana tovah,
My sisters and brothers, I want to thank you for inviting me
to join you for these days, especially for these days when, if you’re like me,
you know it is important to be here but perhaps you’re not sure why; you know
you want something out of it, but perhaps you’re not sure what. Even my father, am avowed secularist who
never belonged to a synagogue, would make it his business to be in synagogue
for the High Holy Days. Why? It was
important.
We come for a variety of reasons. Maybe for comfort, maybe for
inspiration. Maybe it’s to remind
ourselves of who we are; or to discover who we might be; and maybe it has
something to do with that awesome Out There or that intimate In Here we don’t
understand but sometimes name “God.”
And let’s be honest – these are, to say the least, crazy
times. No matter what your politics, and
no matter where you look, what we see suggests that things are more weighted
this year, and that the work of Rosh Hashana -
to hide? To regroup? To change? To change the world? – is even more
urgent.
So we come with all of that on our minds, not sure exactly
what we want but hoping for some guidance, and what do we find?
A great big book.
A book written in a foreign language, and with a translation
no less alien. And while there are differences
from page to page it can be hard to tell them apart, or to find an arc, or
narrative, or sense of direction. It’s
not surprise, then, that Jews are constantly coming out with new editions of
the Machzor, the High Holiday Prayer book: Maybe if we get the book right,
we’ll get the we’ll get the praying right.
Or maybe not. The
late Abraham Joshua Heschel said that we were getting it backwards, “We don’t
need a revision of the text, we need a revision of the soul.”
That sounds like an overwhelming challenge, that we must
revise our soul before we can begin to make sense out of the prayerbook, but
what he meant, or part of what he meant, was simply that the work of
encountering this book begins with an act of attunement, of being willing to
open ourselves up to the magnificent strangeness of the liturgy.
Shall we try?
Let’s take one of the most common Jewish prayers, the
Sh’ma. It’s said in almost every
service, so perhaps you are familiar with it, but if not that’s ok. It is named for the opening line – “Sh’ma
Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Ehad” – “Listen up, Israel: Adonai is our God;
Adonai is One.” But as some of you know,
there is more to it than that. It is
made up of three different passages from the Torah: To love God, to follow
God’s teaching, and to remember that God is the liberator of slaves.
In that passage on
the Teaching, it says, “V’samtem et divrai eileh all l’vavchem v’al nafshechem”
– “Place them, these my words on your heart and on your soul.” (p. 77)
That sounds very nice as it rushes by, but what does it
mean?
We are not the first to wonder. Almost 2,000 years ago rabbis asked the same
question, and one of them answered by way of a play on words. Don’t read it as samtem – place them – but
sam tam – a perfect medicine. These my
words are a perfect medicine for your heart wounds.
Does that make you roll your eyes?
I must be honest with you: if all this meant was “Torah is
good for what ails you,” I don’t know what I’d do with it. I’m suspicious of what sounds to me like
simplistic piety, and I certainly don’t have any access to a vision of a world
in which everything is made nice by Bible verses. If someone tells me that all I need to do is
have faith in “God’s word” they’ve lost me.
But our teacher here is much tougher-minded than that, and he offers a
parable to explain his vision of the world:
“Imagine a father who wounds his child.” Why? As a
punishment? Out of anger? The author of this teaching, this midrash, doesn’t
say. He goes on, “The father then gives his child a poultice to put on the
wound, and says, ‘My child, keep this on you, and you’ll be fine – you can eat,
and drink, and go swimming, whatever you like. But it won’t heal the wound, and
if you take it off you’ll be in danger.’”
That’s us, the midrash suggests. Each one of us has been
dealt a blow that threatens not our flesh but something deeper, and in need of
some sort of medicine to keep the corruption at bay.
But what is that blow?
What do you think? Is it
lust? Greed? Desire?
By way of an answer, this anonymous rabbi turned to a story
way back at the beginning, and since we’re celebrating the Creation of the
World – even if we don’t believe in it – it’s appropriate for us to turn back
to that story, too.
Genesis 4:1-8
Now the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore
Cain, saying, “I have gained a male child with the help of the LORD.” She then
bore his brother Abel. Abel became a keeper of sheep, and Cain became a tiller
of the soil. In the course of time, Cain brought an offering to the LORD from
the fruit of the soil; and Abel, for his part, brought the choicest of the
firstlings of his flock. The LORD paid heed to Abel and his offering, but to
Cain and his offering He paid no heed. Cain was much distressed and his face
fell. And the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you distressed, and why is your face
fallen? Surely, if you do right, There is uplift. But if you do not do right
Sin couches at the door; Its urge is toward you, Yet you can be its master.”
Cain said to his brother Abel … and when they were in the field, Cain set upon
his brother Abel and killed him.
I have to tell you that this is the midrash (Kiddushin 30b)
that led me to fall in love with reading Rabbinic texts, because look at what
it is saying: “Why did Cain kill Abel?
Because he was angry. Why was he
angry? Because his sacrifice was rejected.
Why was his sacrifice rejected?
We. Don’t. Know.”
Just as we don’t know why the father in the parable wounded
his son, we don’t know why God rejected Cain’s sacrifice. We’re all taught as children that there
must have been something wrong with it, or with Cain, but there’s nothing in
the Biblical text to that extent.
Now, the proposition that Cain might offer a sacrifice, and
that it would be perfectly good, and nevertheless God doesn’t accept it is
grossly unfair. It’s even
scandalous. But I am here to tell you
that that doesn’t matter, not to the rabbis and not to us. Our only question is, is it true?
Is it true that sometimes you can offer something of
yourself to the world and it gets rejected?
That you can try and do everything you think you’re supposed to and
still things don’t work? That the
recognition that you most want is withheld?
This is what it means to be human, the rabbis said. That’s what it’s like to live in the world:
sometimes what we most want doesn’t happen.
And while the pain that causes is bad enough, the problem is what that
pain and the subsequent ego-wound did to Cain, and what it might do to us.
So I ask again: Is that true? Is it true about us? Does our experience of a painful world
sometimes make us smaller than we’d like to be, angrier than we’d like to be,
more defensive or more offensive than we’d really like to be?
Is it true about others?
Do we see that in the world around us: lashing out or closing off
against others when the real threat is the one that’s inside the self? Would the world be a better place if we all
had that sam tam, that perfect medicine, on our hearts and on our souls?
Maybe this is what Heschel meant, about changing ourselves
so that we can encounter the prayers.
That we can look at that page, at that piece of the Sh’ma, and think –
yes, I have a wound right here, and I could sure use a bandage.
What would happen if we had a way of reminding ourselves of
this, that we’re struggling with an ego wound, and maybe it would be a good
idea not to allow ourselves to be led astray, not to lash out?
If we were able to remind ourselves that others, too, are
struggling with their wounds – would it change the way we encountered them?
Even if we don’t know what to do with words like “God” or
“Torah”, even if we don’t believe anything about them, would that make a
difference, do you think, if every now and then – once a week, once a month,
even a couple of times a year – when we came to the Sh’ma and saw those words,
we took just that moment to bring to mind our struggle.
Would we be better able to be in the world, to be the kind
of people we need to be?
And now see where we’ve come – we thought we had to change
ourselves to meet the prayer, but we find that in meeting the prayer, it
changes us in return. Perhaps, even if
that’s the only thing we payed attention to in this whole big book, that would
be enough?
Is that enough? Given
the challenges facing us, however you define them, can it make a difference?
I think the answer – I think the answer offered by Rosh
Hashanah, in particular – is yes.
Because if the Torah taught offers us Cain as a warning, it also offers
us Abraham as a possibility.
In our Torah reading we encounter Abraham, today and
tomorrow; in some ways he’s the “hero” of Rosh Hashana. We’ll spend some time
tomorrow talking about those stories - and you should know right now that
they’re not easy and they’re not pretty, though perhaps that’s alright for Rosh
Hashana, to focus on the difficult. But
just as we look to the first humans to find out about our humanity, we look to
the first Jews to find out about that part of our identity.
Abraham, we say, is our Father, and even if he was not
perfect, God used him to bring this whole enterprise into being. Why did God pick him? At first we don’t see him do much on his own
– he goes where God sends him, he takes care of his clan – until just before
our reading.
The LORD appeared to him by the terebinths of Mamre; he was
sitting at the entrance of the tent as the day grew hot. Looking up, he saw
three men standing near him. As soon as he saw them, he ran from the entrance
of the tent to greet them and, bowing to the ground, he said, “My lords, if it
please you, do not go on past your servant. Let a little water be brought;
bathe your feet and recline under the tree. And let me fetch a morsel of bread
that you may refresh yourselves; then go on—seeing that you have come your
servant’s way.” They replied, “Do as you have said.” Abraham hastened into the
tent to Sarah, and said, “Quick, three seahs of choice flour! Knead and make
cakes!”
I want to point out three things about this passage,
particularly as it was read by the rabbis:
1) Our sages
understood from the fact that we read of the strangers right after reading that
God appeared to Abraham that Abraham went to greet the strangers while God was
talking to him; that he had actually put God on hold, as it were, to attend to
the human beings before him.
2) They
imagined that he didn’t just happen to see strangers, but that it was his
practice to sit in a tent open on all four sides, actively looking to see who
might need hospitality.
3) And,
based on the text preceding this, they imagined this particular event happening
just as Abraham was recovering from his own circumcision, his own most intimate
wound.
What were the rabbis telling us about Abraham?
While the ego-hurts that come to us as our birthright can
make us want to lash out or close ourselves tight, to protect ourselves in our
vulnerability, Abraham found a way to open himself up to the stranger even at
his most vulnerable. Rather than
protect himself he extended himself.
Wounded by life – as we all are – the Abraham of the Rabbis’ mind found
that poultice, that perfect medicine, that allowed him to turn to those
potentially scary strangers, at least at this moment, and that welcome made all
the difference in the world. All the difference to the world.
My sisters and brothers:
We have come here from all kinds of backgrounds and for all
kinds of reasons. But all of us would
like to see the world better in the coming year, and ourselves better in the
coming year. And what the Tradition has
to offer us is this: Cain was wounded, Abraham was wounded, and we are wounded,
too. But the difference between Cain and
Abraham was in their ability to deal with that blow, turning to fear and anger
and violence, or opening the heart even more.
We know which way we want to go, and which way the world needs us to go.
Let’s close by returning to Heschel. By following his advice, we have already
begun the work. By opening ourselves up
a little to the prayers and the texts and the teachings, we have allowed them
to work a little bit upon us, to change us just a touch. In spite of our hurts, we have become just a
little more open. We have begun to sense
that sam tam, that perfect poltice, and having done that we can begin to share
it and ourselves with others. Sweeter
than honey, it is; may it be yours throughout the year.
