The Sense of Danger Must Not Disappear: Yom Kippur 5780
/Rabbi Jessica Kate Meyer
A girl stands on the ledge of a window. She looks down. She’s terrified. She grips the window frame tightly.
The girl on the ledge knows she must jump, It’s time to fly. But she looks down and recoils from the edge.
I should probably tell you now..the window wasn’t a real window. It was a stage set window. And the harrowing drop? It was 4 feet... maybe.
The girl wore a proper harness attached to a rope that stretched over the rafters and into the grip of 2 strong high school techies. The fact that they were hs students aside, let’s assume that she was safe, and the risk of making the leap out of the window was...so minimal. She was supposed to be Peter Pan after all.
But she felt sheer terror, and had no faith in harness, rope, or techie. She wouldn’t budge. The next half hour involved many tactics of persuasion, promises, assurances, bribes. Until finally, one of the directors, growled: “Enough. Enough coddling. Just jump!”
A verse by the poet W.H. Auden comes to mind, perhaps you know it
The sense of danger must not disappear:
The way is certainly both short and steep,
However gradual it looks from here;
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.
This verse reminds me of another timid leaper--our Biblical ancestor Jacob, who ran away from home after stealing his brother’s blessing. After the first day wandering on his own, he laid down to sleep on a rocky mountain top. This was years before he had a family, years before he fought an angel and received a new name.
As he lay there with a rock for his pillow, God revealed a ladder to him in a dream. Its legs rooted in the earth, and the top reaching the heavens. It was awesome. Angels sprinted up and down the ladder as Jacob lay there dumbfounded. (I imagine him still lying down, taking in the enormity of it all)...God appeared, at the top, and gave Jacob the guarantee of a lifetime, one we all long to hear: וְהִנֵּ֨ה אָנֹכִ֜י עִמָּ֗ךְ׃
“I am with you: I will protect you wherever you go...I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you..”
We interpret this dream as a transformative moment for Jacob. He woke up and realized God is in this place and he did not know it!
But In the midrashic compilation, Vayikra Rabbah, the rabbis say: Jacob missed the central message of the dream. When God shows you a ladder...CLIMB. Get on it. The ladder wasn’t Divine architectural whimsy, a set decoration, this was God inviting Jacob to leap. To stop gazing from a comfortable distance, and to get off his tuches and leap onto the ladder.
Jacob, until this time was known for sitting in tents like a Biblical couch potato, and deceiving his family members. God says: “Jacob! You are at an inflection point. You have left home. Are you going to keep on as you were, or are you going to change? Jacob, leap onto the ladder! You can climb up and reach for something bigger than yourself, something ineffable. You can climb down, and amend your actions in the world…Both directions will work on this ladder. But first you need to leap.”
Jacob was terrified; of heights, of falling down. He lacked faith--maybe in God, or in his own balance, or in his own ability to change... לא האמין ולא עלה.
Remember, this was the sturdiest, most charmed ladder you’ve ever seen. Legs firmly planted in the ground, arms reaching to the heavens. No flimsy, folding, rickety step-ladder. And God promised him--I will protect you! The rabbis say God even coddled him a little: ואתה אל תירא עבדי יעקב “And you, don’t be afraid, my servant Jacob.”
Even with all of this assurance, Jacob couldn’t overcome his fear. He looked, but he refused to leap. The morning arrived, the ladder disappeared, and he had not moved.
Our rabbis weren’t impressed. As much as they love Jacob, he received a demerit for this one. I imagine this is why we don’t read about Jacob on the High Holy Days. We read about his grandparents, his great-aunt Hagar, and his father Isaac, but not Jacob. Today we read about Aaron’s sons, who leapt a little too quickly. But we don’t read about Jacob. The High Holy Days are not time to sit back and watch from a safe distance. It’s a time to leap. And perhaps this is the real reason why Jacob’s name יעקב comes from the word ‘heel’. He dug in his heels when he should have lept.
The sense of danger must not disappear:
The way is certainly both short and steep,
However gradual it looks from here;
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.
Look if you like, but you will have to leap. Our tradition doesn’t say leap without looking, doesn’t encourage impulsivity. It says take time to look--take the whole month of Elul for introspection, to practice חשבון הנפש/soul accounting. And then the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur--we assess and confess where we have come up short of who we want to be. In our relationships with those we love and with those we struggle to love, in personal and civic responsibility. This process takes time. Teshuva is not a hasty enterprise. We acknowledge where we’ve failed to ourselves, we apologize to those we’ve wronged, and we identify how to change our behavior. This isn’t quick.
But then we arrive at Yom Kippur, the climactic day of this whole teshuva process. we afflict ourselves with fasting, and abstaining from bodily pleasures. We communally and publicly confess our wrongs. We squeeze our bodies and our souls -- so that we leap.
It’s not a foregone conclusion that we will leap. We can spend years in synagogue (or not) on Yom Kippur, fasting and abstaining on this day..,in order to check a box. It’s much easier to coast through a ritual without letting it work its magic on us.. Much more challenging to go inside.
The ultimate prayer we pray together today is neila. Trust us, you don’t want to miss it. Neila, the only prayer service of it’s kind all year round. The word ‘neila’ means: the locking. It refers symbolically to the locking of the gates--of prayer, of compassion, of change. As the sun sets, we imagine the heavenly doors beginning to close, (because we all need deadlines), and as they close we realize If we’re going to leap. The time is now.
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Our ancestor Jacob did not leap, and when the morning came, the ladder was gone. The gate to heaven and to his unconscious, had closed.
If Jacob, who had a sturdy ladder, with assurance from the Eibishter, from God Herself couldn’t leap, what hope is there for us schleppers? Do we even know what we’re leaping towards? And if we do leap, do we know what the next step after looks like? Maybe once upon a time we had a vision of our own life’s ladder, a clear sturdy ladder, and in the last few years, that vision took a beating--(maybe through loss, or divorce, attacks on our democracy, by acknowledging the reality of climate change). Maybe now we don’t even know that there is a next rung up or down.
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The Kotsker Rebbe tells a story that I heard about from Rabbi Kushner, who heard it from her father, Rabbi Kushner.
In every generation, souls are born into this world by descending from heaven to earth via a cosmic ladder. In our generation, as soon as we landed in the world. God pulled the ladder, hid it. Like one of those retractable attic ladders. We looked this way and that, but it was gone. Some people just gave up, and didn’t try, saying: ‘how can i climb without a ladder?’ Others tried a few times to leap up, and they fell on their tucheser. After a few attempts and falls, they stopped leaping. But there were a few wise ones. They knew that there was no way up, but nevertheless, they persisted and said to themselves: ‘there’s no choice but to leap. We will do our part and put in the effort. And if God wants, She will lift us the rest of the way, For these, God’s compassion ignited, and She lifted them. They leapt, and she restored their ladder.
These leapers did what the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr, ע׳ה described when he said: “Faith is taking the first step even when you can't see the whole staircase.”
Sometimes we’re the generation with no visible ladder, and our only hope is to leap, as ridiculous as it feels. And sometimes we’re Jacob, gobsmacked by the beauty of a ladder, but in our privilege, we think we have the luxury of not getting on the ladder.
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Jacob waited 20+ years before he got a second chance, a second vision. This time--he leaped. He wrestled with a force stronger than himself and he won. Real transformation took place. He received a new name--no longer the one who grabs another’s heel or digs in his own, he is now the one who wrestles with the Divine and human, (both ends of the ladder), and succeeds.
And that girl in the window? And in case it wasn’t painfully obvious…’that little girl--is me’
The director growled: “Enough coddling. just jump!”
And she did. I did. It was terrifying. All off balance, limbs flailing. I shrieked and the expression on my face was one of horror with a hint of delight. I only remember that expression because it was captured in that split second by a photographer for the local paper. I see that photo, and I remember what it looks like to leap.
Here we stand on Yom Kippur, our bodies strained, our voices lifted.
We’re pushing ourselves to the edge. Will we leap?
Listen to the words of the poet, W. H. Auden
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The sense of danger must not disappear:
The way is certainly both short and steep,
However gradual it looks from here;
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.
Tough-minded men get mushy in their sleep
And break the by-laws any fool can keep;
It is not the convention but the fear
That has a tendency to disappear.
The worried efforts of the busy heap,
The dirt, the imprecision, and the beer
Produce a few smart wisecracks every year;
Laugh if you can, but you will have to leap.
The clothes that are considered right to wear
Will not be either sensible or cheap,
So long as we consent to live like sheep
And never mention those who disappear.
Much can be said for social savior-faire,
But to rejoice when no one else is there
Is even harder than it is to weep;
No one is watching, but you have to leap.
A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep
Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear:
Although I love you, you will have to leap;
Our dream of safety has to/disappear.
-- W. H. Auden