Kol Nidre Sermon

Yom Kippur 5771

Getting Excited

Rabbi Larry Freedman

Temple Beth Jacob of Newburgh

This is the sermon I was supposed to give on Rosh Hashanah. That is why, in a moment, I will reference Rosh Hashanah. My thanks to everyone for pitching in last week and especially to Linda and Aliyah for giving the sermon.

When I was little, my mother would get us new clothes for Rosh Hashana which meant we had to suffer an eternity going to stores to get a new suit or new shoes. It was interminable trying things on. I hated it. I’m a boy. Trying on clothes with your mother is no fun. It’s a circle of hell. But my mother had this peculiar thing about new clothes so, whatever, I was stuck.

I am going to cut to the chase because my mother is here and I know she’s waiting for this: Mom, you were right. I was… I was wrong.

It turns out that rabbis for centuries have had a list of things one could do and should do to prepare for Rosh Hashana. One should hear the shofar each day during Elul, the month before Rosh Hashana. We sounded the shofar every Friday night for the past month. One should visit the graves of relatives, a custom that has moved here to the Sunday between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. One should seek forgiveness from friends and relatives and begin the process of reflection, preparing oneself for reflection during Rosh Hashana. One should have one’s tallit cleaned, change the Torah covers and prepare for a festive meal and clean the house.

And, and, one should get new clothes. Indeed some say it is an obligation for a husband to buy new clothes and jewelry for his wife. Of course, we live in an egalitarian era so gentlemen, pick up something for yourselves as well.

So my mother was right. Buying new clothes is a longstanding custom to prepare for Rosh Hashana. But I didn’t know that at the time.

Let me just tell you that there is only so far I am willing to go to humble myself before my mom. At some point I have to save face.

And I think here my only chance to save face is to say that I never really knew why we were being tortured. I didn’t know that this was a longstanding custom. My mom, as I remember it, basically said something like, you’re a year older, you’re bigger, nothing fits. She probably added something in there about how we get new clothes to match the new year. Maybe, but I don’t remember it.

Let me digress for just a moment and assure my mom that I have since grown fond of nice clothes and sharp shoes so if you want to hit up Woodbury Commons, I’m all for it.

The reason for getting new clothes is really not that complicated. It’s a new year and we want to look our best as we greet the new year. The synagogue fashion show that many people hate or secretly love is really just a version of the long standing custom of putting one’s best foot forward. We come together for a festive day, seeing family and friends we haven’t seen in some time, we have a good meal, we gather for prayer and we begin the intense process of self-reflection as we, in the language of the machzor, stand before God, ready to be judged. Who wouldn’t want to look his or her best for that? The notion that God doesn’t care what we look like certainly is true but we don’t dress up for God; we dress up for ourselves, to prepare ourselves.

Time for fresh clothes to match a fresh start. Time for a new outfit that doesn’t carry any baggage from the last year. Time to wear something that promises a good future.

It’s actually a nice sentiment, isn’t it? It turns clothes and shoes and jewelry from mindless consumerism into a spiritual expression. Our very clothes tell a story of what we are doing here tonight. Like an actor who truly feels a character after putting on the wardrobe for the first time, we can use our clothing to finally feel what the day is about: formal but festive, serious but joyful.

That’s a real spiritual moment. When one can take something in the physical world and use it to develop a more thoughtful expression, that’s spirituality.

That is what we do when we are here in synagogue and for many of us, we feel that. We embrace that spiritual moment that arises from being physically present, hearing the music, wearing our new clothes. But for some who are here and for many who are not here and who will not be here or any synagogue, this moment is not very enjoyable at all. No one told them what it all means. No one explained to them or re-explained over and over the deeper meaning of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and the power our customs and rituals provide. The High Holidays are more burden than joy. No one got them excited.

It’s not that we don’t try to help everyone feel a personal connection. The Jewish community across North America has built beautiful buildings, created communal institutions, religious schools. We have dedicated and warm volunteers and lay leadership all working to make Judaism vibrant. But we’ve also created forms and paperwork and appointments and committees and boards and dues. We’ve created membership with the positive goal of creating a happy community keeping itself going only to see it misunderstood as something offputting and elitist.

Into this mix comes Chabad. As I’m sure you know, Chabad has sent a young couple to be the shlichim, the emissaries to Newburgh. We already have Chabad in Poughkeepsie and in Goshen and now here in Newburgh so we’re moving up in the world.

Chabad is an acronym for chochma, bina, deah. Wisdom, understanding, knowledge. It is the second name of the Lubavitch sect of Hasidic Judaism.

In the late 1700s, there was a revolt against the stuffy, book driven elite expression of Judaism. It was a Judaism where uneducated peasants would scratch out a living while the elite yeshiva students studied complicated Talmud in order to draw closer to God. The Ba’al Shem Tov was the rabbi who rebelled against this and created the idea that joy and ecstasy were equal to study as paths to God. He created the niggun, the wordless melody and ecstatic dance that could transport a group upwards. He taught a life of joy in the mitzvot. This movement became very popular.

In time, the Hasidic movement created a number of groups that centered on a leader, a Rebbe from a certain town. Schneur Zalman also known as the Alter Rebbe was from a Russian town called Lubavitch and the group became known as the Lubavitchers.

Hasidism grew for almost 200 years until the Holocaust devastated them. A few groups survived and moved to America. Most stayed to themselves. What little they had seen of the outside world was enough. The Lubavitchers however took a different approach. The last rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson looked around and saw the world filled with holiness, untapped holiness. He believed, as we’ll get to in just a moment, that Jews had a special gift to tap into that holiness and bring it out into this world. And his Hasidim there in Crown Heights were just the type of Jews to go find other Jews and bring that holiness out. Shlichut, this role of being an emissary, became a defining aspect of what it meant to be Lubavitch.

These shlichim are highly motivated, highly energetic and focused on a singular mission. Find Jews and make them aware of how special they are and how they can use their unique gift. And they’ll do it for free. Well, free for a little while.

Chabad’s business model is simple. They give seed money to a couple who is expected to be self supporting in about a year. The shlichim can do this because they are willing to work very hard for very little pay. It also helps that they sometimes ignore zoning laws or fire codes or town ordinances or even, at times, courtesy to neighbors by turning their homes into the central meeting place.

They are also successful because they don’t worry about all the things synagogues like ours have to deal with. Since it is a one man operation, or one man and one woman, there are no boards, there are no committees, there are no members. All of a Chabad rabbi’s time can be spent focusing on individuals. They have nothing else to do and they want nothing else to do than be with Jews, sit with Jews, visit with Jews. We have a building where programs take place but then struggle to get people to come in. Wherever they go, that’s where the program is. A neighbor’s home, Starbucks, a borrowed office conference room. And they are much better at personal, pastoral care than anybody else. Where I might spend my days moving the program forward, tending to the institution, and making appointments for the next day or next week, they meet Jews.

They also have another advantage. They are unapologetic and in love with what they do with no constraints on their enthusiasm. I promise you, Chabad children know all about new clothes for Rosh Hashanah and they are psyched about it. Indeed, that kind of unbridled enthusiasm is what attracts many Reform Jews to Chabad. They get Jews excited. It’s difference with us.

At its best Reform Judaism found a way to bring Jewish living to modern Jews. But at its worst, Reform Judaism had the unintentional consequence of limiting Jewish expression and teaching our own people to hold back on too vibrant a display of Jewish living. We have made it comfortable for Jews to put their Jewish living up on a shelf, taking it down from time to time and then putting it away until the next time.

A lot of that has changed. Reform Judaism is more forward today, leading in social justice and reinvigorating Jewish living but it can’t be denied that the enthusiasm and zest we have can’t be compared to the zeal the Chabad shlichim have. Reform Jews may be proud of being Jewish but we just don’t have the same all consuming focus and drive Chabad has. I suspect there are a few reasons for that. Let me tell you about one of them.

Rebbe Zalman, the Alter Rebbe, wrote a major work on the nature of the soul and a mystical guide to self-improvement. The work is called the Tanya and after Torah it is perhaps the most important book for Lubavitch Chasidim. I’ll be teaching an adult education course on it this year.

It is in the Tanya that I find one source of Chabad motivation that may be surprising. The Tanya teaches and Chabad believes that the Jewish soul is better than the soul of the gentile.

You heard that right. The Jewish soul is better. Let me remind you that this is not a general Jewish teaching. This is a Chabad teaching. It is from the Tanya, their book, not ours, not anyone else’s.

How can a soul be better than any other soul? Reform Jews, I would say most Jews believe that at a basic human level, all of us are equal creations of God. We are all children of God, equal in all ways at our essence. The Reform Movement lays our whole interest in tikkun olam on the premise that Jews are called to help alleviate suffering regardless of who suffers because we are all, at our core, equal before God.

But the Tanya teaches that this is not so. Here is the logic. A man goes to his wife with idea of creating a child. He has great concentration in this matter and with one single cell sperm, he creates a child. Note that the Tanya doesn’t mention women or that she needs to contribute her own one single cell but come take the course with me and we’ll have fun discovering such things.

So we have a single cell from the man and from this cell develops an entire child. An entire child from one cell. The Tanya tells us to realize that from that single cell develops the most impressive and important parts of a child, like for example the brain as well as less important, lower level parts like a toenail. We all would agree that surely the brain and the toenail all originate from that single cell but we could not agree that they are all equally important. There is a hierarchy in the value of the cells a child has. Lung, high, appendix, not so much.

And this is why that if there can be different kinds of cells that come from the same origin and if all human beings are creations of the one God, if their souls are imbued within them from this singular God, it is possible that not all souls are equal in value. Some souls are like the brain and some souls are like a toenail. All are from the same source but not all have the same value.

Guess which one the Jewish soul is? If you are offended, don’t blame me. It’s not my teaching, it’s theirs.

The Lubavitchers have a very real and clear sense of God present in their lives right before them. They believe that there is the chance for holiness at every moment, a very real opportunity to create an aura of holiness, to bring a sense of the Divine down to this world and they, with the superior Jewish soul, are perfectly poised to do this. No one else can create that holiness the way a Jew can. This is why they can be so motivated. They have a superior ability to do something amazing. And only they have it. “With great power comes great responsibility,” goes the famous Stan Lee line and they believe it. This is why they go after any Jew they can find because that Jew also has a superior soul even if it is latent, even if it has not yet been inspired to reach its true full potential.

Their approach to non-Jews has softened in recent years. Where once they would ignore non-Jews, today they remind non-Jews of the Noachide laws, the seven rules of basic civility that God wants everyone to follow. And after assuring the non-Jew that he or she has a role in the world as well, an important role, they then turn their attentions back to the Jewish superior soul.

And they are very nice about it. They are friendly and charming and persuasive and warm and filled with yiddishkeit and totally and completely sincere as they help Jews and Jewish families increase Jewish living and increase joy in Jewish celebrations one mitzvah at a time.

And what could be better? After all, shouldn’t we also do that? A Reform synagogue should encourage our people to develop Jewish living, to take on a new mitzvah, little by little. A Reform synagogue should guide Jews and Jewish families to experience the joy and meaning of our heritage. Of course, we do it by welcoming and including non-Jews as members of our community and we presume women will have nothing less than equal status. We look to tradition but embrace Western education. But even with all that, we should consider spiritual growth and ritual growth as something good and positive. The children learn, why not the adults? What if someone in her 50s started saying Kiddush at home every Friday night? What if someone in his 30s decided to stay away from email in order to concentrate on his family all Shabbat long?

That would be good. That would be praiseworthy. It certainly is as much a goal in the Reform Movement as it is in Chabad.

The difference is that we create ways for eternal values to speak to each new generation in concert with modern life. Chabad uses modern technology to keep alive an 18^th century value system. We promote Jewish living through a central location that costs money to run. Chabad is more personal, not focused on their building focusing on free or low cost but somewhere, someone is donating or paying. Maybe a few wealthy donors will keep Chabad free for the rest or maybe donations will be requested in time. And let me digress to say that there is something noble and good with our system of having everyone pitch in. All our members can take pride in knowing their support through time, energy or money is what keeps this community going.

What Chabad does best is get Jews excited about being Jewish. What they don’t do well, in fact, it is not their goal, is to create Jews who live within their system. They don’t expect you to become Orthodox. They just hope you’ll do one more mitzvah.

What we do well is create a system all our Jews and non-Jews can live in but we don’t do a good enough job of getting people excited. We do have a goal of getting Jews and non-Jews excited about modern Jewish life and taking on more of it because, ultimately, it is good for our souls. Our ordinary equal-to-everyone-else’s souls. Building Jewish life in our own lives, in our own homes is good because it makes us better people and enriches our lives and brings a sense of spiritual connection. But we need to do a better job of bringing the excitement and joy. And we need to teach messages better so they’ll stick.

So come study with me this year and get excited. Take that first step of clearing your calendar and committing to some study for your own benefit. We will have a Taste of Judaism class which is three weeks and perfect for intermarried couples or Jews or non-Jews, members or not, who want to learn a little bit more about Judaism and Jewish living. In fact, this class is aimed primarily for non-members so let people know. We will study Tanya, Hasidic mysticism and take away teachings that fill our spirit as well as ideas that just might not work for us. We will have an adult Bar and Bat Mitzvah class this year and of course, come speak to me if you are ready to discuss conversion. Aside from formal classes, you can always call with a question or point to discuss. Just pick up the phone. You can join us for prayer, an hour of thoughtful contemplation. We have every Shabbat morning Torah study that is one part text and one part free wheeling discussion.

We have all these things so that you can get excited, so that your Jewish life is not up on a shelf but a vibrant part of your day. You don’t need a superior soul to be motivated. You just need your spirit fed, your soul nourished, your mind challenged and your life vibrant, connected with our people all over the world throughout time. Start with one thing. Try one thing.

And beyond formal study, there are any number of opportunities to gather with your friends and neighbors here at the synagogue as well as off site. I know it can be hard to take advantage of what we have here. People are busy and all that. Jewish study is something that doesn’t naturally register on most people’s calendars but you’ll see. It’s good to gather together. Take the first step and come in.

Rosh Hashanah has come and gone. Yom Kippur is here. I hope you have something new to wear for the season. If not, maybe something before Simchat Torah? I wish you all a meaningful experience while you are here in synagogue and a meaningful Yom Kippur while you are at home as well. Engage the message of the holiday to look into your soul and this year do something new for your soul, just like you should do something new for your body with those new clothes.