Think Cosmically and Act Locally (Yom Kippur 5777)

Imagine going to the mailbox tomorrow and mixed in with all the junk mail and political leaflets you find a strange letter. It’s an invitation to help design a message that will be read by people ten thousand years from now. You would probably think it was a prank or an investment scheme, but this is exactly the invitation that was sent out in 1990 to a unique group of geologists, linguists, astrophysicists, and artists. An arm of the US Department of Energy was putting together an exclusive committee to accomplish one seemingly simple task: deliver a warning message to people ten thousand years in the future. The Department of Energy would place these warnings around the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, a facility they were building deep in the earth under New Mexico to safely and permanently store leftover radioactive material. Such waste remains incredibly dangerous to humans for hundreds of millennia.

The fear was that someone thousands of years from now, who had never heard of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant would decide to go digging and unearth something radioactive. We saw in Raiders of the Lost Ark how digging up mysterious ancient materials can be deadly. It can melt your face. This risk is fairly easy to communicate to our children and grandchildren. A sign that says “Danger!” with the skull and crossbones and the radioactive symbol should do the trick. With that, we could be confident that people 100 years from now would get the message that this site is not a playground.

But the assembled team of artists and scientists was not tasked with building a warning marker that would last a hundred years. They had to think on an entirely different scale. They needed to find a way to get this message out to people ten thousand years in the future. Think about that for a minute. Could our ancestors ten thousand years ago have written a message that we would understand? Ten thousand years ago, they had just invented a revolutionary new technology called farming. They had just figured out how to cultivate barley and wheat. Saber-tooth cats and woolly mammoths roamed the earth.[i] Writing wasn’t invented until five thousand years ago. And we barely understand some of the earliest written languages. If people ten thousand years ago had painted a warning sign on a cave wall, there’s a good chance we wouldn’t understand it today. Languages change. Beowulf was written a thousand years ago in English and despite what my English teacher told me, it’s nearly incomprehensible to the modern reader. How can we write a message and even begin to hope that it will be understood thousands of years from now?

Some of the team members suggested using symbols. Everybody knows the skull and crossbones is the symbol of poison. That is until you learn that it originated in the Middle Ages when it was associated with the crucifixion of Jesus[ii] and was a symbol of both death and resurrection. It was only in the 1850s that it came into use as the symbol for poison.[iii] Even the language of symbols change. The committee had to consider this question: Given these limitations, how could they communicate a message to the future? They recognized that our descendants of ten thousand years will be as foreign to us as the early farmers of wheat and barley seem now.

I love thinking about this project.[iv] It pushes me to think on a scale so far beyond where I normally reside. It’s hard to picture one hundred years in the past or the future, let alone ten thousand. But I think even the experience of trying to think this way is a valuable human endeavor. It’s an attempt to understand our existence on the most global scale.

Why are we here? Not here on earth, but why are we here today? Why do modern Jews continue to gather to partake in this ancient ritual of Yom Kippur? What brought you here? What do you hope to get out of this? Perhaps part of the point of the High Holy Days is that they expose us to big ideas and big questions that we normally avoid. They help us stretch and shape our brains to the ultimate questions of life and meaning. Maybe, one reason you are here today is to practice a new way of thinking.

The High Holy Days ask us to think on a global scale. They scoop us out of the everyday and plunge us into the big mindedness of the infinite and the eternal. We, who are used to dividing our days into working hours and mealtimes, into classes and alarm clocks, are suddenly shaken by the unsettling sound of the shofar into concerns that are more cosmic. The Rosh Hashanah liturgy declares, “Today is the birthday of the world” and calls our minds to the beginning of everything. And on Yom Kippur we imagine God enacting a rehearsal of a messianic judgment of the world. So on Rosh Hashanah we imagine the world’s beginning, and on Yom Kippur we imagine its end. And suddenly we are thinking on an unfamiliar scale. Like the members of the Department of Energy committee, who had to force themselves to stop thinking in decades or centuries and teach themselves to think in millennia, the High Holy Days are a lesson in thinking on the grandest of scales.

We see this kind of thinking play out in one of the most memorable and challenging prayers of the High Holy Days -- Un’taneh Tokef. Over and over again on these High Holy Days we will read these words:

On Rosh Hashanah it is written down, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed:How many will pass on and how many will be created,Who will live and who will die.

We have come here to consider our actions, to think back over this past year and to imagine how we might be better in the next. And yet, we are constantly reminded by the Un’taneh Tokef prayer that we are mortal creatures -- that our lives will end. If not this year, then at some point. I came here to think about how I can be a better student or spouse or friend, but this prayer keeps distracting me with the troublesome reality that “nobody lives forever.”

And then the prayer makes it even more specific. We don’t just wonder who will live and who will die. We know that some will die by fire and others by water. Some will die by hunger and others by thirst. No longer are we thinking about the abstract reality of our own death, but the dark, intimate details of it. It’s difficult to read these words this week, to hear “who by water” and not think of the countless lives washed away by Hurricane Matthew. We know that this is a reality in our world, even if it is one we spend most of our time trying to avoid thinking about. Does the hurricane make these words more real? More terrifying? More incomprehensible? More true?

This Yom Kippur, my heart goes out to a family who belongs to a synagogue where I previously worked and who, about a month ago, lost their house in a devastating fire. Thank God, nobody was hurt, though they lost nearly all of their possessions. I cannot stop wondering, how will their community read the words “who by fire” knowing that it was almost them? For them, for all of us, the words of Un’taneh Tokef call us to think on a scale we would rather not explore.

And one might get lost in that kind of thinking. The fire or the flood could come at any time, so what is the point in changing how I act? So if the message we have been told is that Yom Kippur is about changing our daily behavior, why is Un’taneh Tokef constantly reminding us that we’re going to die? On the cosmic scale of Un’taneh tokef, it’s hard to see life’s meaning.

And yet, we do feel that life has meaning. We cannot think only on a global scale because we see the person sitting next to us who narrowly avoided the fire. And we can comfort them. And we can rally around them, as my former congregation did, by raising money to help them rebuild. Our lives seem short when we look at them from the cosmic throne, but from where we sit now, they seem long and full of purpose. And, when read closely, Un’taneh Tokef reflects this reality too. In order to fully appreciate this subtler message, let’s take a moment to delve into the prayer’s history.

It’s hard to trace the origin of Un’taneh Tokef. Its history is shrouded in a medieval legend, according to which, this prayer was written at a time of Jewish persecution and distrust between Christians and Jews. But the prayer was actually written much earlier, in the 7th century, probably by a liturgical poet named Yannai. Yannai’s story is the opposite of the medieval legend. He lived under Byzantine rule of the Promised Land, at a time of great religious creativity and cross-pollination between Jews and their Christian neighbors. We find, in fact that Un’taneh Tokef is very similar to a Christian prayer, composed around the same time. Perhaps Yannai heard one of his Christian compatriots reciting this beautiful poem, and he thought that he would compose a uniquely Jewish version. But he had some work to do to translate the Christian theology. You see, their version deals with the end of days -- the Final Judgment. There is no way out for the reader; no exit hatch when judgment comes. But this seemed absurd to Yannai. He believed in daily repentance, and a yearly Yom Kippur -- a time for both judgment by and also return to God. Thus, the last line of the Hebrew prayer was added to the Christian version. For Jews, the prayer would be incomplete without “u’tshuvah, u’t’fillah, u’tzdakah ma-avirin et roah hagezeirah -- but through repentance, prayer, and acts of justice, we can transcend the harshness of the decree.” The Jewish message is that human beings are capable of t’shuvah, t’fillah, and t’zdakah. Despite the fact that our lives are short, despite the fact that we know we will die, we still repent, we still pray to God, and we still engage in acts of goodness and justice in the world. We can see the cosmic scale and still we choose a different path -- a path of upright action and care and compassion.[v]

The story of Un’taneh Tokef, and of the High Holy Days is summed up best by the musical Hamilton. And if you thought I was going to go this whole week without talking about Hamilton, you don’t know me that well. In the final act of the show, the cast sings this stunningly simple distillation of Un’taneh Tokef: “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” We cannot get too caught up on the “who lives and who dies” part of the prayer without also asking ourselves, “What stories will they tell of us when we are gone?” Will they speak of the ways we cared for others. Will they speak of the ways we fought for justice? Will they speak of the way we looked after this earth? Who lives? Who dies? Who tells that story? Rabbi Noa Kusher, in interpreting Un’taneh Tokef, writes, “‘Given that I am going to die, given that my death is a fact, what will I make of my life.’ [this is the] question… at the very heart of the prayer.”[vi]

In a few minutes, we will pray the words of Un’taneh Tokef together. What would it mean to pray it with these thoughts in mind? To know that it is reminding you that you will die someday. But also to know that it is asking you how you will live. It is asking you to stand up in face of cosmic truths and declare that you have an important story to tell.

After we pray these challenging words together, we will read from the Torah. We will read that all the Jews stood gathered to affirm the covenant. The text says that the covenant was made not just with the Jews who were there that day, but even the ones who weren't, with every generation that would follow. And so the Torah reading calls us to think again on a gigantic scale. Now, rabbis like to look for a keyword in a text, a word that is repeated in a passage and hints at its meaning. There is one word that is repeated over and over and over in the Yom Kippur Torah reading -- Hayom -- today. It appears 12 times. This is a covenant for all time -- a cosmic event -- but it is also for us, today. Jewish scholar Deborah Lipstadt explains, “We do not control life and death, but we can control the kind of life we lead. The choice is up to you -- HaYom -- this day.”[vii] She encourages us not to get lost in “who by fire and who by water” and forget that what matters is what you do with today. While we can think about the biggest time scales, all we can really shape is haYom. Or, as America’s favorite astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, says “While you are invited to reflect on the past, and imagine a future, do not lose sight of the fact that we are prisoners in the present, forever transitioning from our past to our future.” What he is saying, what the High Holy Days are saying, is to think cosmically, but act locally. With all of the past and future to get lost in, we can only shape today. What story will they tell of today?

Think back to that eclectic committee trying to design a message to last ten thousand years. They came up with wild proposals. They talked about reshaping the landscape to look threatening. They talked about genetically engineering cats to change colors near nuclear material. But the plan that the Department of Energy ultimately decided to go with was simply to erect large granite monuments with warnings in seven languages. And why? Well, partially, how can we possibly know the future? After all, Nils Bohr once said, “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future.” But also because of Hayom -- because of today. Building a warning sign that can last ten thousand years is expensive, and there are people alive today who are at risk of exposure to our country's nuclear waste. Towns like Apollo, PA, where cleanup of the discarded nuclear material could cost as much as $500 million dollars.[viii] We don’t have to look ten thousand years into the future to find people affected by our actions. All we have to do is look around. Hayom -- today. Wanting to protect our grand children’s great, great, great grandchildren is a noble and worthy effort. But we cannot let it distract us from the work we have to do today to care for those less fortunate and those who feel the immediate impact of our choices. The High Holy Days call us to think on two scales simultaneously - We must think on the grandest, cosmic scale, while at the same time not losing sight of today.

Rabbi Danny Zemel reinterprets the last line from Un’taneh Tokef.[ix] He reads it as “but repentance, prayer, and charity, help the hardship of the decree to pass.” Our actions are not a cure, a salvific way to change the decree. They are a comfort in the face of what we know is true. We know our lives our short. Some tragically so. But the comfort, the strength, the purpose, comes from knowing that in the meantime, what we do today matters. Hayom -- today. What story will you tell?

[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_human_prehistory

[ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifix

[iii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_and_crossbones_(symbol)

[iv] I first learned about this project from my favorite podcast, 99 Percent Invisible: http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/ten-thousand-years/

[v] I am grateful to my teacher, Larry Hoffman, who shared this teaching with our Tisch Fellowship cohort. A version of this material is expanded upon in his book on Un’taneh Tokef, Who by Fire and Who by Water from Jewish Lights Publishing.

[vi] Who by Fire, Who by Water, ed. By Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman. Page 66.

[vii] Learn Torah with 5756 Torah Annual: A Collection of the Year’s Best Torah, ed. By By Joel Lurie Grishaver, Stuart Kelman. Page 372

[viii] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304868404579194231922830904

[ix] Who by Fire, Who by Water, ed. By Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman. Page 79.

High Holy Day Sermon's 5775

Two Goats and Two Wolves: Yom Kippur Morning Sermon 5775

I was paying close attention to the Torah reading today, because Yom Kippur has high stakes, and I want to make sure we do it right. Luckily the Torah portion gives us detailed instructions for how to observe Yom Kippur, or at least how the very first Yom Kippurs were observed.

So I was paying close attention, and I read that to do this right, I’m going to need two goats. The Torah says I should change into a white linen tunic, with linen pants, and a linen sash and a linen turban, and you all will bring me two goats, two identical goats. And then we’ll place them up here on the bimah, and we’ll draw lots to see which will be for Adonai and which for Azazel. The Goat for Adonai, we will keep here, on the bimah (Howard, you’d hold it, right?), and the one for Azazel, we’ll place our hands on his head, and confess our sins, and then we will open the door and send him away, to wander down Westchester Drive, carrying our sins on his back.

If this tradition sounds weird to you, you’re not alone. It sounds weird to me, too, and it’s no wonder why we no longer do it. Even our ancient commentators thought it sounded weird. Animal sacrifice was a normative part of Judaism during the periods of the First and Second Temples. The Talmud deals regularly with the minutia of the sacrificial cult even though sacrifice was no longer practiced by the time that text was written. Yet even in the Talmud and other texts, the custom puzzles the commentators. Who or what is Azazel and why does he, she, or it, need a goat?

Azazel is only mentioned here in the Torah, so it’s hard to say what it means. The Mishnah thinks that perhaps Azazel is a place. Rambam says it is a high mountain. The Septuagint translates it as “escape,” implying that the goat is set to free. Modern biblical scholars argue that Azazel was likely the name of a demon or a demigod, and we see references to him in early post-biblical literature and midrashim. Perhaps Ibn Ezra, the 12th century commentator sums it up best when he cryptically says, “the truth is a matter of mystery.”

To all these commentators, the practice of the two goats on Yom Kippur stands out as strange and worthy of note. But regardless, it’s a powerfully evocative ceremony. The priest stands dressed all in white linen, ready for the Yom Kippur offerings. Two goats are brought before him. It’s made very clear in the Talmud that these goats must be identical. It must be impossible to distinguish one from the other. The High Priest produces an urn containing two lots. On one, the words “For Adonai” are written. On the other “For Azazel.” The priest puts both hands in the urn and pulls out the lots, indicating which goat will be offered up to God and which will be sent to Azazel. He ties a piece of crimson wool around the horn of Azazel’s goat and another around the neck of the one Adonai. The goat for Adonai becomes part of the sacrifice that the priest performs at the altar. He offers it up to God, the same as any other sacrifice. But after that, he returns to the other goat, he places his hands on its head, and confesses all of Israel’s sins. Then the animal is taken away without a blessing or any further ritual. It is sent off into the wilderness, escorted by another priest. What happens next is unclear. In some versions the goat is just sent out to wander in the wilderness. In other versions, it is taken to the top of a craggy mountain, and either the priest lets it fall or pushes it off. In any event, the goat is never seen or heard from again.

The ceremony is puzzling but haunting. There is grandeur and magic in it. It is dripping with symbolism, which is, I think, what makes me envious of it this morning. It seems like today we could use a striking ceremony like this to add meaning to our observance. But since we probably can’t get anyone to lend us their goats, let see if we can imagine what the function of the ceremony might be.


Today is the day of extremes. Life and death, good and evil. Everything hangs in the balance. And we feel this tension inside of us. If we were perfect, if we were people who never sinned, then we would not need a Yom Kippur. But nobody is perfect. Everyone misses the mark. And everyone arrives at this day and takes stock. We acknowledge what we have done wrong and strive to be better. We know that there is good in us, and that there is evil too, and we strive to aim for the good, to overpower our baser urges. A Native American elder described his inner struggle, saying, “Inside me there are two powerful wolves. One wolf is kind and good. The other is mean and evil. They fight each other in my heart all the time.” When asked which wolf wins, he responded, “The one that wins is the one that I feed.” This year, we pray that we will feed the kinder wolf.

There is a Jewish term for this. The Rabbis believed that within each of us live two inclinations, a yetzer harah – an inclination towards evil – and a yetzer hatov – an inclination towards good. Like the wolves, they battle inside of us and we choose which to listen too. We are like the classic cartoon of Donald Duck with an angel and a devil on our shoulders. And it’s an apt image, because in the cartoon, the angel is a tiny Donald, and the devil is a tiny Donald. Both are expressions of him, and he must choose which side of himself to listen to. He is both his yetzer harah and his yetzer hatov.

The two goats are like our yetzer harah and our yetzer hatov. First, they are identical. It’s impossible to tell them apart. And there are actions that we do where we cannot tell which inclination is driving us. What in one instance might be a mitzvah, might in another be a sin. Take for example gossip. Lashon Harah, or the evil tongue, is strictly forbidden in the Torah and rabbinic literature. The rabbis are clear: saying something about someone else – true or untrue – is a sin. Yet there are times when it is required. For instance, if someone is entering into a business relationship with someone you know to be untrustworthy, you are supposed to warn the person. And honest testimony in a court of law is a mitzvah. The same act can be a sin or a commandment. Let’s imagine I said, “He’s a crook.” If I say it to a friend, it’s Lashon Harah. If I say it to a potential client, it’s a warning. If I say it to a judge, it’s a mitzvah. The exact same words. The two inclinations inside of us are identical, just like the two goats, and we have to listen very carefully to know who is speaking. We have to carefully consider our intentions. Is what I’m saying for my benefit, or the listener’s? Will it harm someone if I say it? A friend has three questions she tells her children to think about before they speak: “Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?” The two goats remind us that all of our actions are suspect on this day. All must be considered. Maybe there were sins we disguised as mitzvot. Maybe there were difficult decisions we had to make for which we are beating ourselves up but which we made for the right reasons. Just as we cannot tell at the start of the ceremony which goat is destined for God and which will be sent to Azazel, we do not always know how our actions will turn out. Situations we entered into with the best of intentions turned rotten. In dark places, we were able to do some good. The two goats call us to examine our actions deeply, for we know they can look the same.

The Hebrew word Yetzer – intention --- comes from the some root as yatzor – to create, to form. The priest stands before the goats and in the moment before he reaches his hands into the urn, either goat could take on either role. There is an infinite amount of creative potential in the moment. It’s like Schrödinger's famous thought experiment about the cat in the box: The moment before you open the box, the cat can be simultaneously alive or dead. What enormous potential. Every day, every decision, every moment, we get to choose. And before each choice, there is infinite creative potential. Will I choose to listen to my yetezer harah or my yetzer hatov, my kind wolf or my angry wolf? Judaism says that in every decision there is a reset, a chance to do good. Maybe yesterday we leaned a little too heavily on the yetzer harah. Today there is just as good a chance we could choose good. In every decision, we are Yatzor, re-created anew. Perhaps last year, the goat on the left went to Azazel. But this has no bearing on this year. Every year, we choose a new.

Rabbi Eli Schocet tells a story of his childhood. He grew up in Chicago, where his father and his grandfather were both rabbis. One Shabbat afternoon when he was a young boy at his grandfather's home, a big Cadillac pulled up. Three burly guards stepped out with a well-known Jewish gangster. The man walked in and laid an envelope on the rabbi's table filled with cash. "This is for my mother's yahrzeit.” Then he left.

It is a special mitzvah to give charity on a Yahrzeit in memory of the loved one. But Eli was angry at his grandfather. "How can you accept money from that man? And on the Sabbath of all times?"

His grandfather softly answered, "Don't you understand what happened? This man is a criminal who lives an ugly life. But for one brief moment he looked on a calendar and saw that it was his mother’s yahrzeit. He remembered his mother’s dreams for him, that he grow up to be a Jew, that he grow up to be a mentsch. For one brief moment, he wants her memory to live within. That was a sacred moment, and I did not want to take away from it."

The two goats stand there, reminding us of our immense creative potential, the yatzor in each of us. Perhaps last year we were not the people we wished to be. Today, as every day, God reminds us that we stand like the two pure goats, waiting to choose to be for Adonai.
                                                       

And then the lots are cast, the decision is made. One goat goes for Adonai, and the other for Azazel. And so it is with sin and mitzvah. When we listen to the yetzer harah, we are like the goat sent to Azazel. We wander in the wilderness alone and afraid. We are on a high mountain, and the rocks below are jagged and menacing. Maimonides says that the function of the goat for Azazel was symbolic, meant to “impress the mind of the sinner that sins must lead him to the wasteland.” In ancient times, on Yom Kippur, the whole Jewish world faced toward the Temple but their sins were sent away, out the back door, to wander through the treacherous wilderness alone. What a powerful, visual reminder that yetzer hatov draw us into Jewish life while our yetzer harah separates us from the community and puts us in moral, and sometimes mortal, danger. Perhaps this is the meaning of the Unataneh Tokef prayer, when we say that today is the day we decide who shall live and who shall die. Who shall be like the goat who lives for God and who shall live for Azazel, and walk the treacherous path alone for the rest of their days?

When we choose to listen to our yetzer hatov, we are like the goat for Adonai. We are drawn closer to God. Why would we want to leave? What can we do to stay this close to God? Pirke Avot says, “Mitzvah Goreret Mitzvah – One good deed leads to another.” When we feel the radiance of listening to our yetzer hatov, it makes us want to listen more, to feed that wolf more. We come to synagogue on this Yom Kippur, ready to feel that closeness. We are ready to be forgiven of the mistakes we made in the last year, the times we missed the mark, so we can be like the goat for Adonai, drawn close to God. This is the function of Yom Kippur, to let God wipe the slate clean, so we can draw back to God. The word for sin is “chet.” It literally means “to miss the mark.” When we sin, it pulls us away from God, and T’shuvah – repentance – is our opportunity to return. The high priest would only enter the Holy of Hollies, the innermost part of the Temple on one day a year – Yom Kippur. On this day, when he and Israel were forgiven for their sins, he would enter into God’s inner sanctum. At no time in the whole year is humanity closer to God than on the day of repentance. When we repent and are forgiven, we feel closer to God, and that nearness urges us to do better, to try harder, to feed to the good wolf more.

The goat that is sent to Azazel is called the scapegoat. He carries the sins of the people. This is actually the root of the term, but I think we misuse it today. Today, to scapegoat someone is to blame them for your problems, to offload responsibility on to them. It’s a negative. Anyone who has ever had someone at work who gets blamed for the team’s mistakes knows that this is not a position of respect. But in the Torah, there is honor in the ceremony. The community comes together to recognize the goat as a sacred vessel for their misdeeds. This is not an excuse or an easy-out. It is a necessary ritual, commanded by God, to relieve the Jewish community of the burden of their sins. And why would we need such a vessel? God knows we have a habit of holding on to things, of carrying them with us longer than we should. The scapegoat ritual allows us to let go. We watch our sins walk off into the sunset. We see them leave. We look at the goat, acknowledge what we need to let go of, and then we let it go. This is why I wish I had two goats here today. Yom Kippur needs a ritual like this. Rosh Hashanah has tashlich, but Yom Kippur does not. There is no visual symbol, no physical reminder that we need to let go. So our prayers will have to do. Our job over the next 8-or-so hours is to figure out what we need to let go of and figure out what how we are going to let go. The machzor reminds us that God remembers what we forget, and God also forgets what we remember. God has already let go. The slate is wiped clean. Our job today is to make sure we also let go, so that tonight, we can step forward into the new year, refreshed and rejuvenated, knowing that when we break the fast, we will resolve to start feeding the good wolf.


G’mar Chatimah Tovah – May we be sealed for a blessing in the book of life!

Cultivating an Attitude of Gratitude: Kol Nidre Sermon 5775

One of my responsibilities as the educator at camp this past summer was to teach the youngest campers about prayer. We would begin by learning about blessings. I would teach them the traditional Jewish blessings for seeing the wonders of nature, figuring there’s no place in the world where they would have more opportunities to say these blessings than at summer camp.

There are two blessings for seeing a miracle in nature. The first is what you say when you see a big miracle, like mountains, seas, or even lightening. It goes:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ, אֱלהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעולָם, עוֹשֶֹה מַעֲשֵֹה בְרֵאשִׁית.
We praise You, Eternal God, Sovereign of the universe, who makes the works of creation.

The second blessing is what you say when you see smaller miracles like beautiful trees and animals. It goes:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ, אֱלהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעולָם, שֶׁכָּכָה לּוֹ בְּעוֹלָמוֹ.
We praise You, Eternal God, Sovereign of the universe, that such as these are in Your world.

This led me to a little game I played all summer. When I would see something beautiful in nature, I would ask myself, is this miracle big or small? Which blessing should I say here? Is that sunset a big miracle? Is the way the rain makes patterns in the reservoir a small miracle? What about this stunning vista or that gnarled, ancient tree? Even just asking the question tuned me in to the many miracles surrounding me. It didn’t matter which blessing I chose, because I had labeled what I was seeing as a miracle. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel writes: “Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement… [to] get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible. To be spiritual is to be amazed.” For me, these blessings were away to achieve “radical amazement.” They gave me a language to identify moments that seemed miraculous. Blessings are a way of expressing gratitude, and having the language helped me to find moments to be grateful.

Thinking Gratitude
I’ve had gratitude on my mind lately. It started with my blessings game, but it picked up in earnest when a classmate taught me a new prayer practice. During t’fillah at school each day, she pauses during the hodaah prayer and will not let herself sit down until she has listed 5 things for which she is grateful. I thought, I could do that. Here are some of the things for which I have expressed thanks in the past few weeks:
·       It is Thursday and the week is over
·       Being home for dinner every night this week
·       A group of peers to support me
·       Annie’s delicious Chicken Piccata
·       A terrific student pulpit
·       My favorite Korean restaurant re-opened
·       The fall TV line-up is back
·       A lunch without a meeting where I can just sit
·       A restful and productive weekend.
·       Comfortable shoes.

My gratitude ranges from the mundane to the profound. There are themes that continue to reappear. Mostly, food comes up a lot. And Annie. And my friends. It’s only been a few weeks but already I can feel a difference in my life. This 30 seconds of gratitude is one of the more spiritual parts of the prayer service for me. It is a moment to say thanks. What I am thinking about on this Kol Nidre evening is how I can spend the upcoming year continuing to cultivate an attitude of gratitude.


The science
The scientific literature on gratitude is unanimous – people who feel gratitude are happier, healthier, and more resilient. One study asked participants to keep a journal. A third of the participants wrote a list of five things for which they were grateful, a third listed hassles or frustrations, and a third wrote down something neutral. Those who kept the gratitude journals reported exercising more regularly, feeling better physically, and being more optimistic about the future than people in the other two groups.[1]

Gratitude also has an effect on personal goal attainment. Studies found that participants who kept gratitude journals were more likely to have made progress toward important personal goals, be they academic, interpersonal, or health-based.[2]

Expressing gratitude can also have a profound impact on children and adolescents. One study found a correlation between feelings of gratitude and avoidance of risky behaviors like using drugs.[3] Studies have also found an impact on test scores and performance in school.

In Judaism
But none of this is news for Jews. The Jews are a thankful people. In fact, the name Jew comes from the son of Jacob and Leah, Judah. When Leah had her fourth son, she was grateful and said, הַפַּעַם אוֹדֶה אֶת־יְהוָה (Gen 29:35 WTT), “This Time I will thank God,” and thus she named him Judah. From Ohdeh – I will thank. And so, from that moment on, the people of Judah, the Jews, became a people of gratitude. A people who knew how to say thanks.

And we have a very special tool for marking our gratitude: blessings. Rabbi Dov Heller, calls blessings the “technology for helping us develop gratitude.”[4] They encourage each of us to develop an “attitude of gratitude.” An attitude, which scientists confirm will make us happier, healthier people.

Gratitude is not something we only acknowledge a few times a year. Rather, according to the rabbis as well as scientists, it is a daily practice of self-improvement. The Talmud instructs us to say 100 blessings each day. If we are awake 16 hours of the day, that means we are saying a blessing about once every ten minutes. Can you imagine finding something to be grateful for every 10 minutes, something deserving of a blessing? Hard to imagine doing this for one day, let alone the rest of your life, but the attitude of gratitude developed by living in such a constant state of blessing would give you a new appreciation for the many miracles that surround you.

A story is told of a boy who had just eaten a delicious sandwich for lunch and said to his mother, "Thank you very much." But his mother said, "You should not thank me alone, for I only prepared the food." The boy wondered, "Whom should I thank?" He thought to himself, “The bread comes from the baker. I will thank him.” So the boy went to the bakery and said, "Mr. Baker, thank you for the wonderful bread that you bake.” The baker laughed and said, "I bake the bread, but it is good because it is made from fine flour, which comes from the miller who grinds it."

"Then I will thank the miller," said the boy, and he turned to leave.

"But the miller only grinds the wheat," the baker said. "It is the farmer who grows the grain."

So the boy went off in search of the farmer. He walked to the edge of the village, where he saw the farmer at work in the fields. "Thank you for the bread I eat every day."

But the farmer said, "Do not thank me alone. I only plant the seed, tend the field, and harvest the grain. It is sunshine and good rain and rich earth that make it grow."

"But who is left to thank?" asked the boy, and he was confused, tired, and hungry again, for he had walked a long way. The farmer said, "Come inside and have dinner with my family, and you will feel better."

So the boy went into the farmhouse and sat down to eat with the farmer's family. Each person took a piece of bread and then, all together, they said, "We thank You, O Eternal, our God, Ruler of the universe: You cause bread to spring forth from the earth."

Suddenly, the boy realized that it was God whom he had forgotten to thank. [5]

Bread does not just spring forth from the earth. So many hands go into making it. God’s hands and human hands. The process of saying blessings for the miracles in our lives helps to trace them to their sources, both immediate and distant. Our blessings reveal to us the many hidden hands that form the miracles of our lives.


Gratitude combats Insufficiency
Acknowledging miracles gives us a sense of contentment, and combats the insufficiency we all sometimes feel – the sense that we don’t have enough or that we are not enough. Pirke Avot says, “Who is rich? Those who rejoice in their own lot.”[6] There are two mindsets in the world: scarcity and abundance. Scarcity says “I do not have enough.” People who live with scarcity feel like there is an insatiable hole in their lives, and nothing they do will ever fully fill it. People who live with abundance look around and say “Look how blessed I am.” Whatever they have feels like enough. This is the message of Dayeinu on Passover – any one of the miracles listed would have been enough. How lucky are we to have experienced not one, but all of them. Each is part of a larger path to redemption, but when we separate them out, we can see them as a multitude of miracles, not just one. This is the value of a daily gratitude practice, breaking down the miracles of our daily lives into their component parts, until we can begin to move from a place of scarcity to a place of abundance. Bread is not just one miracle, it’s dozens of miracles baked into tiny loafs. How can anyone who thanks God for the miracle of bread not see the abundance in their life?

17 years ago my family was in a rough place. My grandfather had just been diagnosed with lung cancer. Neither of my parents was particularly happy at work. And I was in middle school (need I say more). The conversation at our dinner table each night had been reduced to a litany of complaints. My mother started to worry about the effect this was having on all of us. One day my Mom watched Oprah interview woman about how keeping a gratitude journal had helped her cope with cancer. “Some days,” she said, “all I can write is ‘I got up and got dressed today’ but those days even that can feel like a miracle.” This woman’s story touched my mother deeply and she saw it as a way to combat the scarcity we were all feeling. That night, at dinner, she announced that we would begin the meal by going around the table, each saying one thing that we were grateful for, something we have done at every meal since. I believe deeply that this practice of gratitude has transformed my family. I believe it has made us happier. I believe it has made us more resilient. In my mother’s own battle with cancer, this practice of gratitude has been one of the key powers that has kept her spirits up and her outlook positive, even on grim days. Cultivating an attitude of gratitude has helped my family weather seemly impossible storms.

Jewish Living is Grateful Living
The first words that a Jew utters upon waking are Modeh Ani l’fanecha – “I offer thanks before you.” From the very first moments of our day, we are grateful. Before we sit up, or put on our glasses, the lens through which we should see the world is one of gratitude.

And this mood carries us through our day. Nearly one third of our daily prayers are on the theme of gratitude. We experience gratitude at meal times – both before and after we eat. The Talmud says that someone who eats without blessing is like a thief. One must not take food without giving thought to how it came to be. In this way, every meal is an opportunity to cultivate an attitude of gratitude.

The Enemy of Gratitude is Habit
Yet despite the regularity of these blessing, we must not allow them to become rote, routine, and devoid of meaning. The enemy of gratitude is habit. It is easy to blindly say hamotzi without noticing the miracle that bread springs forth from the earth (with lots of help). The Medieval philosopher Bahya Ibn Paquda says that we are surrounded by such a “superabundance of divine favors” that it is easy to become accustomed to them and stop noticing them completely. We begin to see these divine favors as essential parts of our being, not miracles that exist outside of us. If I see the food I eat only as a necessity of my daily life, I fail to acknowledge it as miraculous gift that appears at my table. An attitude of gratitude reawakens us in to the superabundance of miracles that surround us. The blessings for nature, or the blessing over bread, or the blessing we say after we go to the bathroom are opportunities to remember that even in the ordinary, there is wonder. Blessings shake us from our complacency.

A Year of Living Gratefully
So what do we do with all this? How do we create a uniquely Jewish practice of gratitude? I propose on this Yom Kippur that we each resolve to make this a year of living gratefully. Just like in the scientific studies, we need ways to record our gratitude. To change our lives, gratitude has to be a daily practice. And from our Jewish tradition we know that ritual makes things permanent. The more we have a specific time or way to do something, the more likely it is to happen. Here are a few suggestions:

  1. I invite your family to join mine in starting each meal with gratitude. It’s like an out-loud gratitude journal that you share with the people you love. Or try a keeping a journal. Or, I read about one woman who is keeping a “gratitude jar.” Each night she writes something she is grateful for on a slip of paper and puts it into the jar, and next year, at Rosh Hashanah, she will open it again, to relive all the gratitude she felt this year.
  2. Set a number. Don’t just try to find one thing you are grateful for, find five. One may not be enough to tune us in to the superabundance of miracles. This is why my friend’s Amidah practice has been powerful for me, and I was fascinated to see the number five paralleled in the scientific literature. Our tradition encourages us to find 100 things to bless in a day. I bet we could each find five. I read about a woman who counts blessings instead of sheep. When she wakes up in the middle of the night and has trouble falling back asleep, she starts to think fondly about each of her children and then each of her grandchildren, one by one. She blesses them and sends them gratitude prayers. She says “I never make it through the whole list before I’m peacefully asleep again.”[7]
  3. Be specific. As I said, habit is the enemy of gratitude. If we are to cultivate a sense of “radical amazement,” we are going to need more than just “thank you God for the food I ate today.” Maybe this is why there are so many different blessings in Judaism – a different blessing for apples and potatoes – so that in thinking about which blessing is required, we consider the miracle more closely. This was certainly the function of my “big miracle/small miracle” game. It was about more than just naming something as miraculous, it was about saying “What about this is miraculous?” As you keep your journal or jar, or share around the table, I encourage you to be specific. As one scientist put it:
    1. While you might always be thankful for your great family, just writing “I’m grateful for my family” week after week doesn’t keep your brain on alert for fresh grateful moments. Get specific: “Today my husband gave me a shoulder rub when he knew I was really stressed." Opening your eyes to more of the world around you can deeply enhance your gratitude practice.
  4. Relationships rely on gratitude. Scientists have found a high correlation between successful marriages and the amount that a couple expresses gratitude towards each other. Dr. John Gottman suggests that in successful relationships, positive expressions like smiles, compliments, laughter, and expressions of appreciation and gratitude outnumber negative expressions like complains and frowns by 5 to 1! Take an opportunity each day to tell your partner one thing you are grateful for that day, just to make sure you tip the scales in gratitude’s favor.
    1. On that note, Annie, Thank you for being amazingly supportive these last 10 days. You are the biggest blessing in my life.


This Yom Kippur we ask God to seal us for a blessing in the book of life. If my research on gratitude has taught me anything, it’s that this work falls mainly on us. As my teacher, Sam Glaser puts it, “If you want more blessings, make more blessings.” Let this year be a year of blessing for all of us, but even more than that, may this year be a year when we notice the abundant blessings that surround us. Let it be a year when we take more time to say thank you to the people around us who are sources of blessing in our lives. Let it be a year when we notice miracles hidden in each day and thank God as their source. Let it be the year of abundance and not scarcity, of appreciation and not acquisition. So that, when we are here next Yom Kippur we will know that God sealed us for blessings in the book of life. Blessings which we noticed. Blessings for which we said thanks.




[1] http://gapsychology.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=309
[2] ibid
[5] Rossel, When a Jew Prays
[6] Pirke Avot 4:1
[7] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joel-michelle-levey/understanding-gratitude_b_888208.html