Rabbi Marc E. Berkson – Kol Nidre – 5766
SAYING WORDS, BUILDING BRIDGES
Kol Nidre — 5766
Al chet she-cha-tanu l’fanecha…For the sin we have committed against you…
It is a formula we recite on this day each and every year. Basic to this part of the service called viddui, the confession, this formula becomes rehearsal for that day which is not rehearsal, for that day when we truly leave this world for the next. The words we say, the sins we then confess this day, beating our hearts with each sin, are to help us prepare to be inscribed and sealed in the book of life as we begin anew in this New Year.
Still, our mahzors, our prayerbooks, only give us a flavor of all the sins we commit. Tonight’s listing enumerated fourteen; tomorrow morning, we will recite fifteen. They have been taken from the traditional list of 44 sins, arranged, if you will, alphabetically. From aleph to tav, we recite a litany of sins, an alphabet of woes, a couplet for each Hebrew letter. And, each year, I am struck not only by what the viddui contains but even more so by what the viddui neglects. True, some have, tongue in cheek, suggested a more contemporary viddui. Take these possibilities from Nancy Sokoler Steiner:
For the sin of forwarding dumb jokes via email;
And for the sin of forwarding emails which insist that you forward them or suffer the consequences.
For the sin of watching shows where people vote other people off the show,
And for the sin of watching shows where mothers admit to stealing their daughters’ boyfriends.
And, no, I have not tried to translate Jerry Springer into Hebrew. It’s tough enough in English.
When I talked with you last year on Yom Kippur morning, I noted that no fewer than a quarter of the traditional forty-four sins for which we seek forgiveness have to do with our tongues and with the words they speak. The rabbis understood not sticks and stones; they knew, in just four words from the book of Proverbs, that “mavet v’hayyim b’yad ha-lashon,” that “death and life are in the power of the tongue.” From the “utterance of our lips” to “deliberate deceit,” from “wronging our neighbor” to the “confession of the mouth,” from “the impurity of our lips” to the “folly of the mouth,” from “deliberate lying” to “scoffing,” from “slander” to “hasty condemnation” to “the conversation of our lips,” the viddui surely makes clear, as Rabbi Sidney Greenberg once wrote, that “the tongue is in a very wet place and it is so easy for it to slip.”
But just as lies and slander and gossip and half-truths can destroy, so can their flip side. And the flip side of almost each and every one of these sins brought on by our tongues—that of silence. That is the sin missing from the viddui. Al chet shechatanu lifanecha b’shkeetainu…for the sin we have sinned against You by our silence….
And we have sinned. For we have been silent too long on the genocide in Darfur. Defined by the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention as measures “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, racial, or religious group,” genocide is clearly taking place in the Sudan. Our own government has defined it as such. What else can it be when the government of Sudan, through Arab janjaweed militias, has determined to destroy the black Sundanese population. Perhaps 300,00 have been killed and upwards of 2,000,000 displaced. “Never again,” we vowed after the Holocaust. Yet Stalinist purges in the former Soviet Union, cultural revolutions in Communist China, the killing fields of Cambodia, the horrors in Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo makes one wonder if, in the words of one survivor, “the lesson of Auschwitz is that you can get away with it.” And where is my voice, where are our voices?
We have been silent too long regarding the inequalities growing once again in these United States. Are not tax cuts a Jewish issue? For that matter, is not a burgeoning budget deficit also a Jewish issue—as is our growing debt to foreign creditors? And why the Jewish silence on the war in Iraq—a war begun under questionable pretenses, without sufficient numbers of troops, without a willingness to truly bear the financial burdens of nation building, a war in which we have abused, even tortured, prisoners; a war which has now wounded nearly 15,000 Americans and killed almost 2000 Americans along with untold numbers of Iraqis? Can there be one Jewish voice? Of course not. We should be hearing a cacophony of Jewish voices—and, instead, we hear silence.
Al chet shechatanu lifanecha—we have sinned against You by our silence. For silence, You have taught us, is not what You desire. We learn this each time we engage in study. For what else is Jewish study but dialogue first and then a conversation across the generations. True Jewish study is done in hevruta, in partnership with another. One sits across from the other and reads a Jewish text like a verse from Torah or a mishna. Reading aloud opens the door to first interpretations. Then, translating the text into English yet more. So the discussion has already begun. Different English words can be utilized to translate the Hebrew text. Thus, one might have to check to see what Rashi, the medieval Biblical commentator, had to say about a specific word. In time, other Biblical commentators like Ibn Ezra and Nachmanides and Maimonides might join the conversation. Thus, enter a true bet midrash, a true bes medrish, a true Jewish study hall, if you will, and you will enter a room filled with the buzz of a variety of conversations, of pages being quickly turned, of people arguing with each other, of previous generations brought back to life to join in the conversation. The language of the Talmud in Aramaic teaches us. It says “Ta shema- come and hear,” for learning. The contrast to a typical American study hall or library could not be starker. One has to sit quietly and read—heaven forbid that someone engage in a lively discussion of a text with another sitting nearby. If such began, a loud and stern “shush” would be directed to the offending person or persons. Too much noise would lead to expulsion from the study hall or library. The ideal setting for a non-Jewish study hall or library—to be ensconced in solitary study, perhaps in a cubicle or in a study carrel, surrounded by books and by one’s computer. In short, we Jews simply do not learn in silence.
Al chet shechatanu lifanecha—we have sinned against You by our silence. For silence, You have taught us, is not what You desire. We learn this each time we engage in prayer. For in traditional Jewish prayer, silent prayer is never really silent. Be it a whisper, a hum, a buzz, a low din—when we engage in silent prayer, we must still say the words just loud enough so that we can hear the words ourselves. Words, according to the Talmud, which stay in the heart are not words. It is as if by saying the words, we make them real. Notes Rabbi David Wolpe in his exquisite book In Speech and In Silence, “to think ‘I love you’ or to think ‘I am alone’ does not wrack the body quite the way that the words—recklessly tossed into the world, or painfully brought forth one by one—can make us shiver with the startling sound of our own truth.”
Yet more. The Hebrew term to pray is l’hitpalel. And a better translation of the Hebrew would be to judge oneself. To whom is prayer directed? To God, surely, but also to the one who is praying. In response to the question, “Is prayer heard?,” Rabbi Harold Shulweis responds with, of course, another question, “Are you listening?” You can only hear when you say the word.
Al chet shechatanu lifanecha—we have sinned against You by our silence. For silence, You have taught us, is not what You desire. We learn this each time we read Torah, each time we hear our story told. As Rabbi Schaalman taught us on Rosh Hashanah, when You asked Adam “Aiykah —Where are you?”, You wanted an answer. For it is the question You still ask of each of us.
Yet more, so much more. Think of the man God chose to lead our ancestors out from the House of Bondage to freedom in the promised land. God chose a man who was slow of speech and slow of tongue. Moses was more of the strong, silent type, someone who liked to let his actions speak for him. He tried to reject God’s call to him out of the burning bush; shepherd though he was, he did not want to shepherd the children of Israel. Unable to convince God of this, he then insisted on having Aaron serve as his spokesman. And the reason after forty years that he was not allowed by God to enter the Promised Land? He hit the rock to produce water for the people rather than speaking to it. It took Moses those forty years in the wilderness to learn not to be silent but to speak. The name of the last book of Torah—Deuteronomy—in Hebrew? Devarim—which means words. And they are the words of Moses, the one who once was silent, the one who did not speak. As Moses learned to speak out of his wilderness, so must we also learn to speak out of ours. Silence is not what God desires.
Which brings us to this Day of Atonement. These words in our mahzors, our prayerbooks, on page 421 which we will read tomorrow afternoon, set the scene for the ancient Yom Kippur ritual at the Temple in Jerusalem. “The ritual begins at dawn….” And what does he do when he enters the Holy of Holies? Is he silent in the presence of God’s words? Absolutely not. As the description on page 424 indicates, the High Priest would utter God’s holy name. And by uttering God’s name, he would make God real, so real that everyone in the Temple court would fall prostrate and exclaim, “Baruch shem kavod malchuto l’olam va-ed—Blessed is God’s glorious majesty forever and ever.” So did the invisible—God and name—become real.
Al chet shechatanu lifanecha—we have sinned against You by our silence. For silence, You have taught us, is not what You desire. We learn this each year we hear Kol Nidre, as we usher in Yom Kippur. Through its haunting chant, we asked that the rash vows and oaths we will make in this new year be null and void. When God speaks, God creates. The words become real. But we, as imperfect human beings, know that inevitably we will mess up, say something stupid, change our minds. So, to quote Rabbi Wolpe, “when we chant…Kol Nidre…, we are confessing, first and foremost, our distance from the Divine. Our shortcomings are manifest. We change. We vacillate. We cannot always trust our words. Having established that, we can proceed to the even more difficult task of examining our deeds.”
Our task is not one of silence, but of speech. Our task is not one of the heart, but of the voice. Without words—be they spoken or written or signed—we could never connect. Silent no more, we must put our words to work, speaking them to build the bridges that connect you to me and each of you to the other.
Three years ago, I shared with you this true story told by Rabbi Jack Reimer of a rabbi who, after a funeral, could not get the mourner to leave the grave. The rabbi tried to lead the man away but he would not go. The rabbi said, “The service is over now, you have to leave.” But the man shook him off, and said, “You don’t understand. I loved my wife.”
The rabbi responded, “I’m sure you did, but the service is over now. You have to leave.”
Again, the man shook him off and said, “You don’t understand. I loved my wife.”
As comforting as he could, the rabbi again said, “I am sure that you did, but, still, the service is over. You have to leave.”
The man shook him off again and said, “But you don’t understand. I loved my wife—and once I almost told her.”
So another story—not true in the same way, but truer still. Satan one day gathered all of his assistants together to discuss the best way of destroying the meaning of people’s lives. One suggested, “Tell them there is no God.”
“Nah,” responded another. “That won’t do much. Tell them rather there is no judgement for sin and they have nothing to worry about.”
“I’ve got an even better idea,” said a third. “Just tell them their sins are so great they will never be forgiven.”
Satan mulled over the suggestions and then concluded, “Nope, such things won’t make too much of a difference. Tell them simply, ‘There is plenty of time.’”
Tsunamis and tornadoes, hurricanes and floods, fires and flu, since we last gathered together, an earthquake in Kashmir. David Wolpe wrote his book after his mother had a stroke. At the age of 53, she had been in perfect health. She went upstairs, screamed out her husband’s name, and collapsed. A blood vessel exploded and shattered their lives.
Our mahzors, our prayerbooks, indicate that it is time for silent prayer. But silence is not what God desires. Let us instead take the words from our hearts and make them real by giving them voice. Go to those you love. Say, “I love you”. Apologize to them for all you have done wrong. Say, “ I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Instead of silence, let us hear this room fill with words—building bridges between ourselves. Then we will gather together again and, in our own stumbling and bumbling way, take the words in our prayer books to build that bridge to the One who so loves us, to the One who yearns for us to return.