Sermon Kol Nidre 5771

Three senior Jewish women get together one afternoon. The first one sits down and goes, “Oy!” The second sits down and exhales “Oy!” And the third one says, “I thought we had agreed not to talk about the children!”

Children can bring us great nachas and they can also give us tremendous tsuris but, as in the case of all relationships, it can go both ways; we can give our children nachas or tsuris as well. Before we judge our children’s actions we have to ask ourselves, what do we give our children? What values and lessons should we impart to them as they live their adult lives; lessons and values that we hope will stay with them even after we are gone. Sociologists, educators and behavioral scientists all agree that the most lasting lessons taught by parents to their children are taught at home and are taught by actions and not by words. Do as I say and not as I do is a hypocritical cop out because children emulate the example of their parents. As parents we are role models for our children and they will more likely do as we do rather than as we say.

Back in 2002, our Temple and Temple Beit ha-Yam in Stuart shared a Scholar-In-Residence, Rabbi Jack Reimer. One of Rabbi Reimer’s main areas of interest is ethical wills. Ethical wills are first found in the Torah with the blessings given by Isaac to his son Jacob and by Jacob to his twelve sons and continued on as a significant part of a Jewish family life in the rest of the Bible and in the Talmud as well as medieval and modern Jewish life. Rabbi Reimer has written several books on the subject and has become somewhat of an expert not only providing the history of ethical wills but, in addition, a guide to writing your own. The title of one of his books on Ethical Wills is “So That Your Values Live On.” While a will is a final statement by a person regarding the sharing or apportioning of his or her property and other worldly goods to family and friends, an ethical will is a final statement by a person to his or her family, not of property or wealth to be left for the children but about the ethical ideals and practices that the person wants his or her children to continue. An ethical will is our last chance to leave our children a message of the values that we want them to maintain in their adult life especially after we are gone. It is our last chance to teach our children the ethics we have tried to impart throughout their lives. It is our last chance to leave our children with a legacy of critical life lessons that we hope will continue to guide them, sustain them and give them strength.

As Rav Kook taught us, we live in a world of chaos. This is not a world of ease and relaxation but of world of disorder, stress and fear. My generation grew up with the fear of nuclear war, which like a hurricane can be foreseen. This generation has grown up with the fear of terrorism, which is more like an earthquake able to strike anywhere and anytime without any forewarning. This generation not only lives in fear of terrorism but in fear of a total economic collapse as well. Small wonder that we have an epidemic of sleep deprivation, which is especially rampant among young people ages 20 to 50 that are trying to maintain their own homes and feed their young children. Recent studies have shown that one out of three adults suffer some form of sleep disorder leading to sleep deprivation. There are approximately 84 different diagnosed sleep disorders in today’s world. Sleep deprivation along with the many neurological problems it can cause is a sure sign of stress and fear and even depression. For an older person to have trouble sleeping is not so unusual, but for our young adult and middle-aged children to suffer sleep disorders is very disturbing. There are approximately 100 million Americans who cannot get enough sleep. What can we do about it? What lessons can we learn that we can impart to our children to give them more peaceful and healthier lives?

Many children are taught to say their prayers before going to bed at night. Every culture and every religion has their rituals and their sayings but they all come down to the same basic desires; protection and safety, peace and rest. About four weeks ago at our Thursday morning minyan service, I was asked if Jews believed in angels and I answered by saying that angels in Jewish literature are considered messengers of God, in fact, that is what the Hebrew word for angel malach means, messenger. But we do not believe in angels as divine beings that can intervene with God on our behalf. Then another minyanaire opined and said, “I remember as a child saying something about the malach that watches over me at night.” So I pulled out the Orthodox prayer book and sure enough in the reading of the Sh’ma that we are supposed to say at night, as we are about to go to sleep, there is a passage about the angel who redeems us and protects us. And at the end of the prayer it says, “In the name of the Lord, the God of Israel, may Michael be at my right hand, Gabriel at my left, in front of me Uriel and behind me Raphael and above me the Shechinah, the nurturing, loving, protecting presence of God.” In our Talmud, Rabbi Ben Zoma teaches, “Who is wise? One who learns from all people” as it says in Psalm 119, “I have learned from all my students.” That day, I learned something about Judaism that I had not known before and I understood the consoling and reassuring power of that nighttime prayer and how it could give children and adults alike a sense of peace at night and allow them to get the rest and the sleep they need. However, most of our children are no longer innocent children, they are knowledgeable and possibly skeptical adults. Belief in protecting angels will not reassure the majority of today’s young and middle-aged adults. There needs to be a profound paradigm shift in today’s society for that to happen and the prevailing paradigm in today’s society post 9-11 is the paradigm of fear. Charles Blow in OP Ed piece in the September 10th issue of the NY Times wrote about the current wave of fear. He stated that according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released last week the percentage of people who say that the country is safer now from terrorism compared with before Sept. 11, 2001, has reached a new low. He writes, “We seem to be experiencing a new sense of paranoia about these extremists and the threats they pose.”

Case in point; I am sure that many of you received this political propaganda in the mail before the recent primary elections. This is a picture taken at the height of the most recent Palestinian Arab uprising during 2001 and 2002, which is referred in Arabic as the intifada. In this picture, angry Palestinian Arab youth are throwing stones, clumps of concrete and other objects. Although we cannot see them, their most likely target were Israeli soldiers who were patrolling the occupied territories of either the West Bank or Gaza. Above their heads are the words, “Has there ever been a more important time to stand with Israel?” and over here in the upper left hand corner are the words ‘Paid for and authorized by Jeff Greene for Florida.’ Ultimately, Jeff Greene lost the Democratic primary election for the US Senate seat being vacated by Bill Nelson but what is so reprehensible about this propaganda is that Jeff Greene was trying to manipulate the Jewish vote. He promoted himself as a nice Jewish boy from Florida who had a Bar Mitzvah, taught at a Hebrew School, has lived in Israel, can speak Hebrew fluently and consequently is the best choice as our Senator because he will defend Israel better than his opponent. Jeff Greene was using our concerns for Israel, playing on our fears and counting on them to get him into the US Senate. What happened to the days when politicians spoke positively and reassuringly and said things like, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Our society is overwhelmed and consumed by fear. No wonder that we and our children cannot sleep well at night. And yet our leaders, and those who want to be our leaders, are not doing enough to alleviate our fears. Well we know, that fear is a dangerous thing to have because it leads not only to sleep deprivation but also to poor judgment, hasty actions, anger and hatred, division and ultimately destruction. As Rav Kook taught us, “In a time of tension, it is critically important not to divide, not to develop hatred, but to spread love and embrace.”

My generation expressed this sentiment with the phrase, “Make love not war.” In our daily prayer book, the Gates of Prayer, we find the same idea expressed on page 52. There we find a quote from the Mishnah, the first book of rabbinical law, where it says “these are the commandments whose fulfillment provides rewards in this world and in the world to come, honoring father and mother, welcoming guests, visiting the sick, rejoicing with bride and groom, accompanying the dead to the grave, comforting the mourners, and making peace where there is strife.” Make peace where people are fighting, make peace where people are struggling, make peace where people are hurting, make peace where people are afraid; make love not hatred, make peace not war. It is incumbent upon us to lessen the fears of our society; the fears of economic collapse, the fear of unemployment, homelessness and hunger, the fear of war or terrorism. We must not encourage fear. We must encourage understanding. We must not promote anger and hatred. We must promote peace.

We can help our children overcome their fears and teach them to promote peace in the ethical wills we leave them but why wait that long. Those words of the nighttime prayers reminding us that we have angels all around us and God’s presence above us protecting us gives us and our children comfort and a sense of security and the assurance that we are not alone but those prayers might not be sufficient for today. Our society is going through a very tough time right now. It is important for our children to know that they are not alone and that even though we may not be able to help them out financially, we are with them, standing with them, offering them our unconditional love and support.

We may have unresolved issues with our children. There may be a lot of hurt feelings and things left unsaid. While we know that our tradition dictates that we forgive a person once they approach us in true humility and remorse and ask us to forgive them but in the musar literature we find the ethical teaching that we should forgive someone even if he or she does not offer an apology. As we read in the Talmud tractate dealing with the laws of Yom Kippur, “If a person forgives others, he will merit forgiveness for his sins.” We have to let go of our anger at our children, let go of resentments, of our frustrations with them, let go of our desire to control their lives. We cannot and we should not try to control their livers but we must be there for them when they are in need, when they are afraid even though they are probably too proud and stubborn to express their fears to us. When the prophet Malachi spoke about the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord, the day when all the wicked will be judged and punished and all the righteous rewarded, he said that Elijah the prophet would return before that day to reconcile parents with children. Imagine that! Before the people of Israel and the world are judged by God, no less a personage than Elijah the prophet, God’s second greatest champion and advocate, will devote his time to reconcile parents with children. Messianic redemption is only possible when parents reconcile with their children; when there is shalom bayit peace in the family and in the home. In the stirring words of U’netaneh tokef, the prayer that asks us “Who shall be tranquil and who shall be troubled?” and that reminds us that our fate is sealed on Yom Kippur, we find the words declaring “Hineh yom hadin – This is the Day of Judgment.” With Malachi’s prophecy about Elijah and the coming messianic age, there can be no stronger indication that on this Day of Atonement and judgment we must reconcile ourselves with our parents and with our children.

Rabbi Reimer loves to tell this story about a guy who lived in New Jersey and would frequently travel on the NJ Turnpike. Every time he would get close to Exit 9, he would get angry. He would get so angry that his wife was sure he was going to have a heart attack. It turns out that many years earlier, a guy who lived off Exit 9 had been a friend of his and had betrayed his trust and had cheated him out of a very lucrative business opportunity. So for years afterwards, every time he would get near to Exit 9 he would remember the sin committed and experience intense anger. One day, he happened to run into somebody who had been a mutual friend of his and the guy who lived off Exit 9. So he casually asked him, “What do you hear from Chaim Yankel who lives off Exit 9 of the Turnpike?” And this friend tells him, “Oh, he died ten years ago.” He suddenly feels so ashamed and so foolish for wasting all that energy and time pointlessly holding on to anger and hatred. It is better to let go of old anger and resentments, jealousy and frustrations; it is toxic baggage, which cannot help or heal anyone or anything. Let go of your anger at your children and teach them the value of forgiveness and love and the lesson of making peace where there is strife. Before Elijah comes, reconcile with your children, make peace with your children. Teach them that they are not alone and that you love them. Maybe then, they can sleep at peace and finally get some rest.

They say that charity begins at home; so does peace. We say at the end of the tefilah, “As God brings peace to the heavens above, so may God bring peace to us and all Israel and all the world.” But let’s look at it more personally, as we reconcile parents with children, as we lessen our children’s fears, as we reassure our children of our love and devotion and try to help them get the rest and tranquility they so dearly need, and as we bring peace to our home and to our family, may that peace spread to all our congregation, to all our community, to all our country, and to all our world. And let us say, Amen