Rosh Hashanah 2018 Day One - The Path a Person Should Choose

Shanah tovah.  It is so wonderful to see you all gathered here this first morning of Rosh Hashanah 5779.  As we sit here together at the start of this new year, the start of our annual cheshbon nefesh – accounting of our souls, I have a question for you:  “What should a person, what should you, what should I do with this thing, this gift called “life”?

That is the main thrust of what we are here to think about today, tomorrow, and throughout the holiday season.  While we say in our liturgy - Hayom harat olam – today is the birthday of the world and talk at length of God as creator and king of the universe, the truth of the matter is that that is not why so many people have taken days off of work and school to come to services today.  We have come to synagogue today to reconnect to our friends and acquaintances at the shul, to hear the beautiful melodies of the season, to find meaning in the thousands of words in the machzor, and to see what Judaism, what Jewish tradition has to offer us by way of how we conduct our daily lives.  

It is for this reason, to teach us how to conduct our lives, that the rabbis selected the Torah readings they did for this holiday, none of which have anything to do with the birthday of the world, the creation of human beings, or the annual coronation of God as King of the universe.  No, today and tomorrow we read stories about the first Jewish family, their problematic family dynamic, the consequences of that dynamic, how they tried to live up to God’s expectations and the mercy that God showed both when they met God’s expectations and when they didn’t.    

And in the background is a passage from slightly earlier in Genesis, the passage when God explains what it is that He has singled out Abraham to do.  In Genesis 18:17-19 God is deliberating with God’s own self as to whether or not to hide from Abraham that God was planning to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.  We read:   “Now the LORD had said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, since Abraham is to become a great and populous nation and all the nations of the earth are to bless themselves by him?  For I have singled him out, that he may instruct his children and his posterity to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is just and right, in order that the LORD may bring about for Abraham what He has promised him.” 

Four verses later Abraham lives up to God’s expectation as he argues for the innocent living in Sodom and Gomorrah.  Though the cities were still destroyed due to the lack of decent people living in them, Abraham fulfilled his role of fighting for that which is just and right. 

Thus we see that according to the text of the Torah itself Abraham and his spiritual descendants – that’s us by the way – have a very specific purpose – v’shamru derech Adonai la’asot tzedakah umishpat to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is just and right, to SHARE those things with the people of the world, and in so doing be a blessing to the world. 

This may seem like a very simple teaching, but after 20 years of being a rabbi I have come to realize it is actually one of the most profound teachings of the Torah, and one that makes Judaism distinct among world religions.  It teaches us that Judaism is a religion based both on belief or faith AND action.  It teaches us that God so strongly wants Abraham – and us - to fight for justice that it is deemed acceptable to argue with the Creator of the universe!  While some religious traditions demand submission, Judaism demands chutzpah.  It teaches us that we don’t wait for the world to miraculously get better, we work to make it better!    Finally, when God reveals that Abraham and his descendants have been given the “job” of doing what is just and right it tells us that God believes we have the power to BE good.  While some religions teach that human beings, fallen after the Garden of Eden can never be good and thus are in constant need of God’s grace, the Torah teaches us differently.  The entire Jewish concept of free will, chet – sin, teshuvah - repentance, and slichah - forgiveness, hinges on the belief that we as human beings are actually CAPABLE of doing as God asks of us.  This idea is expounded in Pirkei Avot – the Ethics of the Fathers 2:1 -  

רַבִּי אוֹמֵר, אֵיזוֹהִי דֶרֶךְ יְשָׁרָה שֶׁיָּבֹר לוֹ הָאָדָם,...

Rabbi [Yehuda haNasi] said: Which is the straight path that a person should choose for himself? Whichever [path] that is [itself] praiseworthy for the person adopting [it], And praiseworthy to Him from [other] people…. Keep your eye on three things and you will not come to sin.  Know what is above you: An Eye that sees, and an Ear that hears, and all your deeds are written in a book.

In Pirkei Avot Lev Shalem, Rabbi Tamar Elad-Appelbaum expounds on this teaching:  “What should a person do with this thing called “life”?  The question is personal and deeply human, and Rabbi weaves into it a double assumption about the world:  that each human being should be able to identify for him or herself a proper path in the world, and that each person also has the ability to pursue that path.  And so, addressing Jews of every time and place, Rabbi [Yehudah ha-Nasi] suggests that this path should be the path of our ancestors:  the path of Israel, whose very name in Hebrew (yisrael) evokes the notions of uprightness (yoshrah) and struggle (s’riyah).  It is this path that gave our forebears the strength to set out on their journeys, and it will also enable us to set out on the journeys we undertake for ourselves.…we can almost hear Rabbi saying aloud….:Become a person [mensch], become a Jew/Yisrael – seeking out the path of uprightness that will lead to dwelling in God’s presence.”

She continues:  “But how can one do such a thing?  What must one take along in searching for that path?  Here Rabbi comes right to the point, beginning with the most essential thing and daring to send out a clear, stirring message across the generations.  There are two partners in blazing that path, he teaches, and it is only when they work in tandem with each other that God’s glory will be brought into the world…. There are always two partners, Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi teaches.  First:  you, the individual – and this is what is meant by whichever [path] brings glory to the one who pursues it.  The responsibility for paving a path of decency and goodness in the world is not anyone else’s, but your own…The life-journey of the faithful Jew must always begin with the personal responsibility of accepting one’s unique destiny, undertaking to forge a path forward in life, and then – again and again through the years – attempting to refine and re-refine that path.”

That is what we are here to do today – refine once again our life paths.

Rabbi Appelbaum concludes:  “at each step of the way, one must learn to sense whether or not one’s deeds reflect glory from the human being who is doing them to God….Rabbi [Judah ha-Nasi] thus suggests that faith is a two-way street: for God above to believe in humankind’s ability to choose wisely, human beings below must believe that God harbors that belief in their ABILITY to choose wisely.”

And what if you are struggling to choose wisely?  What if you have decided to devote your free time to a particular organization or cause?  How do you know if it is the right organization to join?  One way is to keep in mind the teaching from Deuteronomy (Shoftim) – tzedek, tzedek tirdof – justice, justice you shall pursue.  The rabbis, thousands of years ago, taught that the doubling of the word justice means that in your pursuit of justice, you must act justly.  That is, if you are trying to “do good,” you don’t go about getting it through unjust means.  In Jewish tradition, there is no such thing as “the ends justify the means.” If you are thinking of doing something “good” by first doing something bad, don’t do it! 

Or what if you don’t know what to say or do in a particular situation?  I have relied many times on Bava Metzia 49a where we read that your yes should be as honest as your no.  This reminds me that if I receive an invitation to an event and I RSVP yes, then I should go even if I get tired that day.  I don’t talk myself out of it.  And if I say no but then feel guilty, I don’t change my mind either.  Yes is yes, no is no.  Another teaching I think about regularly from Midrash Yalkut Shimoni explains that the letters of the word truth emet each rest on two legs – imagine if you will an aleph, mem, and a tav, while the letters of the word falsehood – sheker – have only one leg – imagine now a shin, a koof, and a resh.  This teaches us that truthful actions stand firm while actions based on falsehoods do not.  The letters of emet are far apart – literally the first, middle and last letters in the alphabet, whereas the letters of sheker are bunched together.  This teaches that truth is hard to attain but falsehood is readily at hand. These are but two of many teachings we can rely on right in the siddur!    

If you are still unsure of what to do you can ask yourself if the path you’ve chosen is one that would bring pride to your parents, grandparents, children, friends, and spouse.  Ask yourself if your behavior brings honor to the Torah.  Is it a Kiddush ha-shem, something that brings honor to God, or a hillul ha-shem, something that brings dishonor to God?

In October I am going to have the pleasure of beginning a ten session course entitled Ten Paths to God designed by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of Great Britain.  In one of the videos that goes with the curriculum he says:  “…to be a Jew is to be asked to give, to contribute, to make a difference, to help in the monumental task that has engaged Jews since the dawn of our history, to make the world a home for the Divine presence, a place of justice, compassion, human dignity and the sanctity of life. Though our ancestors cherished their relationship with God, they never saw it as a privilege. They knew it was a responsibility….The Jewish question is not, What can the world give me? It is, What can I give to the world? Judaism is God’s call to responsibility.”

That is the reason we are here today – to recharge our spiritual batteries as we go into the world and live up to our responsibility.  We have a purpose that was given to Abraham and handed down from generation to generation for thousands of years to us.  We read the stories of Abraham and his family each year at this time to understand the challenges he faced in living up to that purpose, to know that we are part of that challenge given to humanity through Abraham.  We read the stories so that we come to realize that we can still consider ourselves good even when we make mistakes, and to remember that if God has faith in us to do that which is right and just, not only should we have faith in ourselves we should do whatever we can to live up to God’s expectations of us.  May it be so. 

Shanah tovah tikateyvu!