Erev Rosh Hashanah 5780

Bridging the Distance

As I was preparing for Rosh Hashanah this week, I was thinking about my own childhood memories of the holiday. Not only because the High Holy Days bring back so many memories for all of us— in general, of going to synagogue with loved ones, of the prayers, and specific High Holy Day melodies that are so familiar to us this time of year. But also because I have realized how different the High Holy Days are now for me, today, from when I was growing up.

Most of my family moved to the United States, after the Iranian Revolution hit, in the late 1970s. And there was a rush of Persian immigrants that came to various parts of the US. But—and up until today, Los Angeles is home to the largest Persian population in the world, outside of Iran.

But when these immigrants first arrived, my parents, and grandparents, and extended family, they had no synagogue to belong to. My great-uncle once shared that he showed up his first year, at a prominent synagogue in Beverly Hills, and they asked him for his High Holy Day tickets.

 'Tickets?'— he said confused

'Tickets for what?'

 'Sir are you a member?'

 'A member?!' he repeated. 'A member of what?'

This was a new concept for him.

But as time went on, more and more Persians came to LA fleeing their home country of Iran and in eminent need of a synagogue to go to and pray in time for the High Holy Days. My great-uncle, tells that he even approached several synagogues, to see if he could rent out their parking lot, to setup tents there to pray— in Persian melodies and language, for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

But— they were told—that the parking lots were needed "for parking cars."

 "Never-mind anyways," my great-uncle says as he continues telling the story. "It was over 90 degrees in LA in September. God didn't want us fasting in the scorching heat." 

That was his humor, and in a moment of great loss being distanced from his homeland for the first time, and now having to face a new country and reality, all the while trying to find a place for his community to pray in. So a few people got together and decided to reshift their focus and to work hard on finding a place—in time for Rosh Hashanah.

 What would they do? They would rent huge ballrooms, the various hotels in the LA area and all the Persians would gather there, together.

 And so, when I think back to my own childhood memories of the High Holy Days, they were spent in a hotel ballroom.  

I was born only a few years after, the end of the Revolution, and these memories, of massive amounts of Persians, all over the hotel rooms and lobby, filled with familiar faces: aunts and uncles, cousins, 3rd cousins —4th cousins twice removed. These are my memories.

 But as time went on, and cousins grew up, and some grandparents passed away, and people moved to different parts of LA, and of the country, we became distanced.

That is we don't see each other anymore and even when we do come together on occasion, like a wedding, it is rarely all of us together—at the same time, like those sweet days….

 And I bring this up because in so many ways the High Holy Days in general—are about closeness and distance.

 That is repairing the distance, and attempting at—closing the gap that often comes between us within our relationships; the relationships we share with other people. As well as our relationship with God, and ourselves.

 In the time of the Torah, repairing relationships mainly had to do with our relationship with God, and it was achieved through animal sacrifice. On Yom Kippur, for example the day is refferred to as Kippurim—which in English refers to the process "by which guilt or impurity—is canceled out."

 And in the Torah portion on Yom Kippur, we read, of the sacrificial rites: of the bull of sin offering, and of the goat of sin offering—not only commanded for the High Priest’s to make on account of their own reparations—but also for the entire people of Israel.

And though— it might be difficult for us to understand today,

and imagine the life of our ancestors in the ancient world

and the emotion of an ancient Israelite in offering sacrifices. It is important to note that animals were rarely slaughtered. A person might have owned only one or two—certainly just a few. Therefore, the offering was truly an economic sacrifice

 In fact, even the Hebrew word for sacrifices: korban and comes from the root karov which means—to draw close. And so, by offering some of their most prized possessions: an unblemished goat, a perfect bull, our ancestors were exercising true sacrifice—giving up something precious for the sake of getting closer to God. 

After all, that is the English meaning of the word atonement—which comes from the words "at one." Yom Kippur is the day in which an estranged person, through atonement, becomes at one with God again.

And, by the time of the prophets they insisted that sacrifices alone would not reconcile and bring us closer to God. And that sins are only forgiven if the person who sins experiences a change of heart, leading to a change of ways.

And sin in Judaism is an important concept to understand.

 According to Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman, the word “sin” is the application of religious terminology to the negative side effects of ordinary human behavior.

 But he argues, that the word “sin” seems to go so much deeper than that.

 He writes:

"People make mistakes, do wrong, commit errors, and so on—but they are not, on that account, “mistakers”, “wrongers” and “errorers” the way people who sin are suddenly— “sinners.”

 In other words, the way that term is extended suddenly implies ownership of the sin by the sinner as if the sin were part of the sinner's very begin. And in these terms, the word sin has some kind of moralistic judgement on a person's character. 

But that is not Judaism's definition of sin. Or as Rabbi Hoffman puts: "Judaism does not want  human beings to be thought of as “sinners.” He continues that rather, in Judaism there is the understanding that even though we sin, we can also do good. And that in Judaism sin is elemental—that it is an element of human character—and that we are not inherently sinful

And this is true. We believe that we are born with a yetzer hatov and a yetzer harah the inclination to do good  and to do bad. And that human beings have a choice. We have agency. We decide our path. And because we decide our path, we are held accountable for our choices.

At the same time, the way we approach repairing our sins, has changed since the time of the Torah. Even by the time of the prophets they argued that sacrifices were not enough but that we have to take action to turn away from evil conduct and to return —shuv—to God.

And this idea, of returning and changing our ways, lead to the rabbinic doctrine of teshuvah, the act of repentance, the steps that we traditionally follow today.

 By the time we get to Yom Kippur, according to Mishnah Yoma we are repenting for sins against God. But—the sins that we have committed against another human being—those are not forgiven on that day, until we have taken the steps, to try and make amends, and to ask those that we have wronged for forgiveness.

And in simplified form, Rabbi Maggie Wenig explains, these are those steps: "The offending party is obliged to make restitution, to confess, and ask for forgiveness as part of the process of teshuvah (repentance). And once those steps have been taken, the offended party is obliged to grant m'chilah (forgiveness)."[1]

 All the while, our tradition recognizes how difficult it is to make these repairs.

 Rabbi Maggie Wenig—in explaining teshuvah—points out how vulnerable the act of confessing our sins and asking another for forgiveness—can make us feel. Because, she explains, in doing so, we are acknowledging that someone else—the person we have offended has a power over us.

And the challenge— goes both ways because the person who is granting the forgiveness is also being asked to surrender the power they have over the person—who has offended them. Therefore, according Rabbi Wenig, when someone is unwilling to forgive you, they are actually unwilling to surrender the power they have over you.

Nevertheless, our tradition urges us to take a step words mending the distance, instead of holding the pain inside.

 One rabbi even says, that grudges are akin to a person who drinks poison and expects that the other person, dies from it.

And another midrash explains beautiful the task at hand in the days before we reach Yom Kippur.

The midrash portrays God as a King, a King who in the month preceding the High Holy Days, decides to visit all of the cities and villages in His Kingdom.

As He passes through, parading through each of His towns, a person might be able to approach Him, and greet Him, and maybe even invite Him, over to their house for a meal. But by the time Yom Kippur comes, the King is already back in the palace. Of course, you can still visit. But it will be that much harder, for you to travel all the way to the palace, and even when you get there, to pass through all of the King's guards, and find a way to meet with him.

In other words, it is easier to understand Rosh Hashanah in the face of Yom Kippur. To understand that on Yom Kippur, we are dealing with sins against God, we are trying to fix our own stuff. The stuff that is preventing us from being our true selves and is keeping us at a distance from God. But with the shofar blasts, in the month of Elul, and on the days of Rosh Hashanah we are being called on—to make other repairs first.

 Tonight it is Rosh Hashanah, and on Rosh Hashanah we celebrate the birthday of the world.

When I was a student in Hebrew school, our teachers would give us some birthday cake, put a hat on our heads and we would sing Yom Huledet Sameach— the Hebrew happy birthday song for the birthday of the world.

But Rosh Hashanah is so much more than that. Today is not the day God created the world but actually it is the 6th day of creation—the day that God created Adam and Eve. Tonight, we begin celebrating the fact that something, somehow, some entity bigger than we can ever comprehend created humanity. God created human beings and put us on this earth.

And we are being called on, to celebrate and to honor our creator, and our world, and our universe, through acts of kindness in repairing the pain that is causing distance between us—within our relationships, down here on earth. We are being asked to have compassion, to make sacrifices, compromises to at least attempt to bridge the distance and to make our time on earth more meaningful more beautiful. Because life is better when we are all together. When we are all enjoying moments such as these—right now right here as one people.

Perhaps that's why we recite our sins in the plural, even on Yom Kippur—because even though we make decisions individually we are in this— together. And—our tradition also understands that sometimes it is difficult—or nearly impossible to bridge the distance in some relationships. Sometimes we try, and we are not forgiven. Sometimes, the person who has hurt us doesn't take the step, to make repairs to become close to us again. And sometimes, some relationships are better kept, from a distance. But as long as we have made an effort to meet God halfway to make all of the changes we can make to do all that we can that is within our control to make—then by the time Yom Kippur comes we can ask that God help us in resolving all of those things that are not in our control.

As the gates of heaven close during Neilah on Yom Kippur, we read in the liturgy Atah noten Yad— 

            You reach out your hand.

            You extend your right hand

            to receive us back in love.

            We are not far above beasts.

            For you singled out humankind from the beginning,

            and You gave us the power to turn…

 In the meantime, let us make our own Rosh Hashanah memories this year, let us make the efforts and take the steps towards teshuvah so that when the final days comes we can honestly say, to God and to ourselves that we have tried to make a mends, we may or may not have succeeded in restoring those broken relationships—in our lives. But we've walked a few steps towards goodness, and righteousness—towards God. And now—as the gates of repentance are about to close, God reaches out to us with a helping hand to say: you tried and—you are not alone in My world.

[1] We have sinned, 235