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Click here. Rabbi Karp's Sermons ... ROSH HASHANAH
EVENING 2002 When I was growing up in New York City, our school year ran from the first Monday after Labor Day to the last Friday in June. How I dreaded those first Mondays after Labor Day! September 8, 1958 was one of those Mondays. It was my first day in the third grade at P.S. (Public School) 89. My teacher was Miss Taravella. She was young. She was beautiful, and her personality was as sweet as sugar. No sooner did I walk into that classroom than she captured my heart with a boyhood crush that I would hold for her throughout that year and beyond. By the end of that day, Miss Taravella had given us a homework assignment. Now you have to remember that back in those days students received written homework everyday, and double over the weekend. Well, this assignment was to write a composition, and I wanted to write the best composition ever to impress my newfound love. The topic seemed new and novel to me. Little did I know that I would be writing such compositions September after September for years to come. What was the topic? “What Did You Do On Your Summer Vacation?” I share this with you now because tonight I feel a little like I did on that first day in Miss Taravella’s third grade class - without the boyhood crush. I just finished the first of what will be a series of mini three month summer sabbaticals and I feel almost a need to share with you “What I did on my summer vacation,” though I must emphasize that a sabbatical is not a vacation; it is a time set aside for learning and renewal. Now don’t fret! I am not going to show you travel slides, especially since we didn’t do that much traveling. Nor I am not going to bore you with a catalogue of recreational activities. Rather I wish to share with you some of those things which I learned through my sabbatical experiences. For my sabbatical was indeed an experience in learning; both active learning and passive learning; learning that I had planned for and learning that just revealed itself along the way, sometimes in unexpected places. I wish to share with you some of what I learned, not to demonstrate that my sabbatical was worthwhile, for I have no doubt that it was, but rather because some of the things that I learned along the way might prove useful at this time of the High Holy Days, when we Jews are expected to take stock of our lives and consider how we can fine tune them, tweaking their spiritual rather than their material qualities. First off, let me state that I entered this sabbatical with my own vision of what it would be like. I set an agenda of goals for myself, striving to achieve enrichment in each of the following areas: intellectual, cultural, spiritual, physical, and family. And on top of that, I had also hoped to have enough time to reduce some of the clutter of my professional life, paper-wise in the office, email-wise on the computer, and project-wise in my community activities. I saw myself getting up in the morning, going to the gym for a leisurely work out and a sit in the sauna, going back home and doing some reading, some writing, some work around the house. I saw myself spending more time with Helene doing such things as teaching her how to ride a two-wheeler. I saw myself taking trips up to Madison to be with Shira. I saw myself going to Iowa City once a week, to attend a class at the University, and afterwards, going over to Josh’s group home and taking him out to dinner. I saw my family going each Friday night to another synagogue, to see how other congregations celebrate Shabbat, hoping to pick up hints along the way as to how we can enrich our own services. Yes, there were many things I saw myself doing and accomplishing. Thus the first lesson of my sabbatical. “The best laid plans...” My sabbatical did not turn out as I had envisioned it. Yes, there were parts that did, but much of it was quite different. That does not mean that it was less of a sabbatical than I anticipated, for it wasn’t. It was just a different sabbatical than I had anticipated. And that was OK. So I wanted to spend more time at the gym, but Helene needed to go to cello lessons smack dab in the middle of the morning every day. So I planned on having more time to myself, but learned instead precisely why my mother used to be so joyous when summer vacation drew to a close and I was back in school. Each and every one of us have a vision of our own lives, just as I had a vision of my sabbatical. We are filled with our dreams and expectations; our goals and destinations. But life, it seems, has a mind of its own. We expect to travel one road, but life takes us down another, and there is little we can do about it. We need our dreams and our visions, our expectations and our destinations. They give us direction. They focus our energies. They provide us with something to live for. But in the end, they can only counsel and advise us. They cannot command us. Only life itself commands us, and we need to be able to respond to it. We need to be open and flexible. We cannot be wedded to our visions, for sometimes life has other things in store for us. We can, if we choose, wallow in the frustration of our unrealized dreams, or we can reset our course, following new dreams, traveling in new directions. If we are ever to find happiness, we cannot lose ourselves in the “could-have-beens” and “should-have-beens.” Rather we need to constantly figure out how we can make the most of what we have and how we can live most fully in the situations and in the conditions that life hands to us. Our time is so precious - my sabbatical flew like a bird - so let us not waste a moment bemoaning what isn’t. When I told colleagues that I was doing a sabbatical at home, some questioned my sanity. Indeed, for folks like rabbis it can be very difficult to disengage and remain local. In fact there were more than a few in our own community - in my own family - who had serious doubts about my being able to live here and separate from the Temple building, nevertheless from the job. It is not easy drawing boundaries. When you are so used to saying “Yes,” it is hard to say “No.” But I knew that if my sabbatical was to have half a chance, I had to learn how to say “No.” “No, I will not be going to that meeting. No, I will not be participating in that class or that program. No, I won’t be visiting people in the hospital. No. No. No.” Of course, there were times when boundaries had to be crossed. These were times of true crisis, such as when Pearl Deutsch died and I officiated at her funeral, or when Dorothy Harris of Burlington died, and I drove out there to do her funeral. But it is an act of self defense not to permit such dramatic instances to turn into that ever treacherous slippery slope. Drawing boundaries is only half the picture. The other half is respecting boundaries. And for that I owe the members of this congregation a debt of gratitude. I knew that you had needs; that you had pressing issues you wanted addressed. There were those who were concerned about their children’s Fall Bar and Bat Mitzvah services; Susie and Vic Rothbardt were planning a wedding for my first “official” day back; there were those who were hospitalized, and sometimes worse. Yet in spite of your needs, you respected my space, the boundaries which safeguarded my sabbatical. Boundaries are not just for sabbaticals. Our lives are filled with boundaries, many of which we not only disrespect but we often do not even recognize. Boundaries protect us, and they protect those we love. They exist for the purpose of creating a certain balance in our lives. A modern person wears many hats; fulfills many roles. To consider them all at once can be dizzying. We are workers. We are parents. We are spouses. We are friends. We are volunteers. We are neighbors. We are citizens. We are private selves. The list goes on. When we permit each to bleed into the other, all we wind up being is overwhelmed. If we were to decide to do one thing this year to truly improve the quality of our lives, then perhaps that thing should be setting and respecting boundaries. Let us tell all those forces that tug on us, “Thus far shall you go and no further.” This time is work time. This time if family time. This time is private time. This time is community time. And so forth. When we are at work, let us be at work. When we are at home with our families, let us be truly at home. The centerpiece in the planning of my sabbatical was a course that I took at the University of Iowa. It was a graduate course in the English department’s non-fiction writing program. It was a workshop in the writing of literary non-fiction. What is “literary non-fiction”? It is taking the literary style - the art - usually associated with the writing of fiction and applying it to the writing of non-fiction. I have written a lot of non-fiction over the years (though there are those who might dispute the non-fictional character of it), but this was a type of non-fiction writing unlike any I had ever done. I found myself in a class with seven other students, all of them university trained in this art. I have to tell you, it was intimidating. When I registered for this course, I envisioned it as a part lecture, part reading, part writing type of classroom experience. I was wrong. It was more of a jump into the deep end of the pool type of experience. Right from the get-go we were expected to write two pieces of our own and to critique, both in writing and in discussion, the works of our classmates. Very quickly, I learned that there are two ways one could tell a story. The technical terms are writing with “referential clarity” and with “experiential clarity.” When one writes with “referential clarity,” they tell their story, doing a good job of presenting the facts and figures. This is the goal of a good newspaper article. However, when one writes with “experiential clarity,” one goes beyond merely stating the facts and strives to place the reader inside the experience of the events being shared. When a writer has accomplished this, then they have achieved the goal of creating literary non-fiction. Living and sharing experiences. That is not just the goal of good writing. It is also the goal of good living. Life is about experiences. The good writer creates them for the reader with words. We create them for ourselves with actions. Sometimes it seems so much simpler and safer for us to live our lives on the sidelines. We can be such good spectators, living vicariously through the players on the field. We can cheer for the side we think is right, as their victory becomes our victory, their defeat, our defeat. We can Monday morning quarterback along with the best of them, self-righteously proclaiming how if we were playing the game, we would have done it better. But a meaningful life is not a life lived vicariously through others. It is not a life preoccupied with the judging of others. A meaningful life is one in which we commit ourselves to action as well as opinion. It is a life of experience, of stepping off the sidelines and getting into the game. If I have learned but one truth in my almost 53 years of existence, that truth would be that this world offers us more than enough opportunities to do things, to get involved, to be a builder, to be an agent of change; that not one single individual on the face of this planet need be left with nothing that they can do to make our world a better place in which to live. There is more than enough work to go around. If you see something you are unhappy about or dissatisfied with, don’t just gripe about it. Do something about it! If you see something that is important to you, and you want it to grow and prosper, don’t just bask in its reflected glow. Join in and commit your energies to keep it going and growing. Experiences, experiences, experience! The life which is fulfilling is the life of involvement; the life of experiential clarity; of living experiences from the inside out. While my writing course was intended to fulfill my intellectual agenda, I pursued another course of study which was meant to meet my cultural agenda. Now don’t laugh when I tell you this. I took voice lessons. I shared that fact with very few individuals, and none of them from the Temple. In fact, as I envisioned it, after a summer of weekly voice lessons, come this Rosh Hashanah I would knock your socks off by regaling you with a beautiful surprise solo, putting to rest once and for all time all those snippy comments about my needing to move away from the microphone when the Cantor sings. Well, if you haven’t noticed, I haven’t sung my solo. It is not for lack of study, that I can tell you; and so can the members of my family, who were quick to determine when and where I could practice. Every Tuesday morning, my voice teacher, Ron May, and I would gather round the piano in my living room, do the warm ups, he would introduce some new exercises, and then we would work on my pieces. I would seek out that place where my breath meets my vocal cords. I would drop my jaw and raise my soft palate. And believe it or not, my singing did improve. Week by week, I made great strides; well, at least that is what Ron told me. But you know what? The more I improved, the more I realized how very far I had to travel. The better I got, the less ready I was to perform that solo. Was it cowardice, was it insecurity, was it compassion that led me to that conclusion? I prefer to think of it as wisdom. Not the wisdom of discretion being the better part of valor, but the wisdom of recognizing our weaknesses as well as our strengths. Our culture worships winners. Just a few months ago, we all were enthralled by the Olympics, but who remembers those Olympians that did not walk away with gold or silver or bronze? Some of the finest athletes on our planet, but if they weren’t winners..... This type of thinking impacts upon each and every one of us. It drives us to dwell on our strengths; those areas in our lives where we can be winners. And it cows us to hide from our weaknesses; to avoid coming face-to-face with those aspects of our character and abilities which are less than stellar. But the truly wise do not only possess a full awareness of that which they do well. The truly wise also, and more importantly, have a good understanding of that which they need to work on. Ironically, that is what these High Holy Days are all about; confronting our shortcomings and planning to strengthen them. Yet so many of us sit through the services, read the words and pay little attention to the message. “Not me!” we think. “Must be talking about somebody else.” If we cannot sing the solo, we make believe the music doesn’t exist. The wisdom of knowing our own limitations is not to be found in avoiding them, but in addressing them. For spiritual enrichment, I decided to use this sabbatical to visit other synagogues on Shabbat. Each Friday night, my family and I journeyed to another community, ranging as far west as Des Moines, as far east as the Chicago suburbs, as far north as Madison, and as far south as Peoria. I was really looking forward to this experience, for being in this pulpit every Friday night, I never get the chance to see what is happening in other synagogues. I have been dying to know what other congregations do to make their Shabbat services more spiritually meaningful. For I am a goniff, a thief, I admit it. If I learn of something that another congregation is doing to enhance its services and I like it, I’ll steal it. I’m not proud. Well, this is one of the aspects of my sabbatical that didn’t exactly turn out the way I expected it to. Why? First of all, I had not considered the fact that if we were traveling for Shabbat services, we wouldn’t be home. That is not as silly as it sounds. For if we were not home, we were not having Shabbat dinner at home. We were eating in restaurants. While eating in restaurants is nice - and we ate in some great restaurants - such dinners were not Shabbat dinners. It is funny how one can take Shabbat dinner for granted. When I think of all those Shabbat dinners that our family rushed through in order to get to services on time, I marvel at how much I missed them. It was truly an instance of not fully appreciating what you have until it is gone. But the absence of a Shabbat dinner was not the only reason why these Shabbat experiences did not turn out as I expected. Another disappointment was that I did not find what I was looking for. I did not experience any new or different practices that led me to say, “Aha! We ought to do that in Davenport!” If anything, I walked away from these services feeling good about all that we do in ours. Our Ritual Committee is constantly exploring ways to make our services more personal and meaningful, and it has paid off, especially when you see what else is out there. This is not to say that my sabbatical Shabbat experiences were a total bust, for they weren’t. Indeed, I found them extremely valuable in ways I had not anticipated. Each service had a personality all its own. Some were in larger congregations, and some were in very small congregations. Some services were conducted by rabbis and cantors and some were lay led. Some had a lot of congregational singing and some didn’t. I have to tell you that I found it fascinating, and a bit unnerving, that the two services which I found most spiritually moving took place in small congregations and were led by congregants. Now some may think that was because of the sermon, or lack thereof. But that was not the case. In fact, the strongest point of the rabbi-led services were the divrei Torah, their remarks on the weekly Torah portion. No. Rather there were two attributes which made these services so moving. One was the music. These services tended to have a lot of music, and that music was inviting music. It was the type of music with which the congregation could sing along. And they did. Indeed, they were a testimony to the power of music in prayer. The other attribute was, for lack of a better term, a certain sense of spiritual honesty. It was clearly evident that those who led these services were there to pray, and in turn, so were those in the pews. And together, they were able to create an effective worship community. This is not to say that rabbis and cantors are not spiritually honest. Heaven forbid! It is just that we rabbis and cantors can get so wrapped up in the “performance” aspect of the service - in putting on a good worship show for the congregation - that we can forget to pray ourselves, and it shows. We can become so focused on the mechanics of the service and so controlling of what happens in order to make sure that everything goes “right,” that we can find ourselves leaving little room for the spiritual flow of the moment. We can be so concerned about how our congregants will judge us, and as a result, we become so careful about what we do, that we can end up being too tightly wound to create space for God in our prayers. These lay leaders, on the other hand, did not bring with them all that baggage. They had the prayer book, they had the service, they had the structure, but they were also able to go with the flow and to let the worship moment carry them. As I traveled from synagogue to synagogue, and this contrast was becoming clearer and clearer, I began to understand that we rabbis and cantors have a tendency to seriously underestimate the spiritual character of our congregants. We feel this need to control the worship service - we think, for the good of the congregants - but we do so in ways that are ultimately spiritually stifling. And it is not just in the worship the service that we do this. We do this throughout synagogue life. Our egos tell us that we are indispensable, and we mold our congregations in such ways as to make us indispensable, or at least to perpetuate that myth. Dr. Leonard Kravitz, one of my beloved teachers at the Hebrew Union College, used to say, “Nobody votes himself out of business!” But then he was quick to add that it is precisely the mission of a rabbi to do just that, to vote him or herself out of business, to bring his or her congregants to a point where they don’t need the rabbi to do it for them; that they can do it themselves. Unfortunately, somewhere along the road, far too many of us rabbis, and cantors as well, have forgotten Rabbi Kravitz’s teaching. But those special Shabbat services this summer have done much to remind this rabbi of my teacher’s words. And it was not just those services. It was also what was happening here in our own congregation. For almost three months, services went on without me. Indeed, week in and week out lay service leaders were giving divrei Torah and teaching about the weekly portion. There was adult education that went on without me. Some Bar & Bat Mitzvah tutoring went on without me. And, of course, there were all sorts of meetings that went on without me. In the midst of all the board discussions about whether or not I should receive a sabbatical, the biggest issue was not whether or not I deserved it but whether or not the congregation could survive it. If I have contributed to that mythology of my own centrality to the life of this congregation, then I have indeed strayed from Rabbi Kravitz’s wisdom. And if so, then we all need to start working on ways to better empower you, the congregants, in the conduct of this congregation’s ritual, spiritual, and educational life. For the more that you can do, and the more that you do do, the closer we all will draw to God. By the way, in case you were wondering, during this sabbatical Helene did learn how to ride a two wheeler. Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the father of Reconstructionist Judaism, one wrote of an artist who paints his masterpieces with his face close to the canvas, concentrating on each and every one of the small details. However, every once in a while that artist needs to step back from the canvas in order to gain a finer sense of the bigger picture; to gain a sense of perspective. Only after having done so is he ready to step back into the canvas and resume his work. These past three months have been for me a stepping back from the canvas. And I have treasured what I have gained from it. These High Holy Days can offer each and every one a valuable chance to step back from the canvas of our lives; to gain a broader perspective of our work in progress. May we, too, draw great benefit from this most precious of opportunities. AMEN |
