Choosing To Remember the Oys and Joys©
Rosh Hashanah Day 1 - 5782-2021
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| Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash |
It’s a serious question, and I know you think this is an impossible scenario, but I imagine it might be possible in years to come. In 2004, the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind dealt with this very scenario. The main character, Joel (played by Jim Carrey) learned that his ex-girlfriend, Clementine (played by Kate Winslet), had all the memories of him erased by a company called Lacuna.
Joel is angry and hurt, and he decides to get back at her by doing the same thing, but, as part of the process, he is forced to re-experience all the memories he shared with his ex-girlfriend Clementine. I don’t want to spoil the plot too much, but you can imagine what may have happened. It was easy to erase the hurtful memories, but what happened when he got to the good memories? Would he erase them?
Let me say, when I started writing the sermon I was supposed to give today, I attempted to erase the bad memories of the past year and a half. Another pandemic sermon, are you kidding me?!? At the beginning of the summer, erasing the pandemic from the High Holy Days looked like a possibility.
We were ready to sing, “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow, yesterday’s gone,” but the Delta variant waved its hand and said, ‘You may want to forget about yesterday, but I’m still here!’
I was tempted to call that fictional company, or to ask if Pfizer if they were working on a memory loss pill to forget those days.
As much as we all want to move on without looking back, to forget the past year and a half, I want us to resist that temptation.
Today, Rosh Hashanah, is called Yom HaZikaron, the Day of Remembrance. We often think of Yom Kippur as being that day, mainly because of Yizkor. Yom Kippur is a heavy day - some might say somber.
Rosh Hashanah is the happy day; the services might be long, but at least you get rewarded with a big family meal, the sound of the shofar, apples and honey, exotic fruits, and more!
But this day is actually a bit heavier because remembering can be painful. Today is called Yom HaZikaron, the Day of Remembrance.
We read this in the book of Leviticus 23:24:
דַּבֵּר אֶל־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לֵאמֹר בַּחֹדֶשׁ הַשְּׁבִיעִי בְּאֶחָד לַחֹדֶשׁ יִהְיֶה לָכֶם שַׁבָּתוֹן זִכְרוֹן תְּרוּעָה מִקְרָא־קֹדֶשׁ׃
Speak to the Israelite people thus: In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall observe complete rest, a sacred occasion commemorated with loud blasts.
Rashi, the famous medieval Biblical commentator, says that the memory that we are reminded of is the binding of Isaac, and the ram that was offered in Isaac’s place. It worked out for Abraham and Isaac in the end, but that moment was painful. Abraham and Isaac never speak after the Akeidah, and, according to the midrash, Sarah dies of a broken heart thinking that her only son was sacrificed.
Imagine if Abraham and Isaac took that memory loss pill?
They could leave behind all the pain of their past, and move on, unencumbered into the future, but something far more important would be lost - the lessons learned.
If I took this memory loss pill, I would forget the losses, but I would also forget the lessons I learned, lessons of hope and renewal.
I officiated at many sparsely attended funerals; offered the Vidui, the deathbed confessional over the phone; ran many Zoom shivas; but if I forgot those moments, I would also forget the other moments, like the Simchas: the baby namings, the britei milah, the Simchat Bats, the Bnai Mitzvah, and the weddings, and how I found God in these moments.
I want to focus on the weddings. When the pandemic began, some of the weddings I had been asked to perform were postponed indefinitely, and I don’t blame them! We will celebrate after the pandemic they said, but after the pandemic never came, so some of the couples said, what are we waiting for?
Now, for those who are married in the room, if I told you, you can only have 20 guests, there will be no band, no DJs, much fewer flowers, would you choose this for your wedding?
In this case, these couples chose the present moment over the unknown future. They were some of my greatest teachers of the pandemic. They taught me to choose love over fear, to choose partnership over solitude, with all the messiness it entails. Couples who sacrificed their dream weddings for intimate and safe ceremonies.
Reflecting on the last year, I realized that I officiated at more weddings last year than I did during any previous year, and some of the couples are here today, including our Cantor and his wife Caissa!
There was one wedding in particular that I wanted to share. I received a call, “Rabbi, we were going to have our wedding after the pandemic, but after the pandemic isn’t happening. We want to have a small, safe, and intimate wedding, and we want to do it in two months, can you perform it?”
In addition to the wedding being so close, it was also a Sephardi wedding, which I had never performed before.
I’ve performed some destination weddings over the years, but no location was as exotic as this wedding: the groom’s parent’s backyard. We set up a chuppah under a tree, and twenty masked guests.
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| Photo by Samantha Gades on Unsplash |
I quickly realized I had a lot to learn, because Sephardi weddings are different - no veiling of the bride, no circles to walk. The father of the bride, whose family came from Baghdad, gave me his father’s wedding spice box. When the couple is under the chuppah, they begin the ceremony by blessing the spices, just like we do at Havdallah. The spices are a holy version of smelling salts. Smelling salts wake us up abruptly so we can forget the past a little bit to start the new week.
The purpose of the B’samim at the wedding ceremony is different though. According to Jewish mystic teachings, we are not only body, but also soul. The wine that couples share at a wedding are for the body, but the spices they smell are for the soul.
This couple had it right - they were in the moment, one of the most important moments of their lives.
This is one of the lessons of Rosh Hashanah - we must live by appreciating every moment, by learning from them, whether they are joyous or sad.
This year of weddings led me to fall in love with the Jewish wedding ceremony once again.
Jewish weddings are not all about Simcha. In fact, it is the ceremony that is most similar to these holidays, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
There are many different customs surrounding weddings, but one of them is that we fast, and some couples say a vidui, the confessional prayer, before the ceremony. Both the bride and groom wear white symbolizing a fresh start, a new life together.
At the end of the ceremony, the groom broke the glass. The custom of breaking the glass at a wedding comes from the Talmud (Berachot 31a). In the story, the rabbi breaks the glass at the end of his son’s wedding to sober people up.
They taught - in times of unbridled joy, one must also experience a small degree of sadness and trembling.
Perhaps I could add my own teaching to this - even in times of sadness and trembling, there should be some joy.
As I thought about the weddings I performed, and the funerals, I realized how similar they actually were.
A midrash says, why do we mourn for seven days? It is compared to the seven days of festivity after a wedding. What they have in common is that they are deeply emotional and intense days. This is the beauty of Jewish ritual - it helps us cope with moments, especially life-changing and intense moments. During both experiences, you are surrounded by a community of people who love and care about you, and yes, a lot of food.
And they have something else in common - they are both an ending and a beginning. Before marriage and before a funeral, we lose something - at marriage, we lose complete individuality; at a funeral, especially of a spouse, we lose partnership. At the end of both rituals, we take our next steps into the unknown that is the future - the couple walks down the aisle with their friends and family cheering. At the end of a funeral, the mourner walks down another aisle, sometimes alone. This time, their friends and family are comforting them.
Our endings are new beginnings; that is what Rosh Hashanah, this day, is all about.
הֲשִׁיבֵנוּ יְי אֵלֶיךָ וְנָשׁוּבָה חַדֵּשׁ יָמֵינוּ כְּקֶדֶם׃
Take us back, God, to You, And let us come back; Renew our days as of old! (Lamentations 5:21)
Kedem comes from the word Kodem, which means, to move forward.
We cannot change the past, but we can choose how we remember it so we can take even holier steps into the future.
I left the couple in their parent’s backyard and went home. Six months later, I received the following letter:
“Dear Rabbi Baum,
It has been six months since you have helped make one of our dreams come true: a beautiful wedding ceremony surrounded by our family and closest friends in the backyard of the home we hope to raise our family in.
As we reflect on the last six months, we want to thank you for the time you put into meeting with us for online sessions before the ceremony, the guidance you provided us, and the beautifully delivered speeches during the ceremony. You truly helped make our wedding all the more unique and special.
The last six months have been a glorious whirlwind with my partner moving in and beginning our lives together. We learn something new about each other each day.”
Now, imagine if they put that Simcha off for the perfect moment.
We need to stop waiting for perfect moments, and try and make the moments we have, no matter happy or sad, as perfect as we can.
We are in this moment where all of us want to forget this past year and a half. We distract ourselves with anything we can to forget; we had Zoom happy hours, maybe too many; we watched every movie we could on Netflix; we planned exotic vacations in our heads, many that will never happen.
We cannot change the past, but we can help find the joy that we may have experienced despite the heartbreak, and use it as fuel to power us into this next year.
That’s what today is about, Rosh Hashanah, going back so we can move forward, Kadima.
During the wedding ceremony, we read seven blessings that seal the couple as one, and we evoke Adam and Eve’s name:
שַׂמֵּֽחַ תְּשַׂמַּח רֵעִים הָאֲהוּבִים כְּשַׂמֵּחֲךָ יְצִירְךָ בְּגַן עֵֽדֶן מִקֶּֽדֶם
Let these loving friends taste of the bliss you gave to the first man and woman in the Garden of Eden in our earliest memory, MiKedem.
But, if we read the creation story, we know it wasn’t all bliss. There was shame, loss, conflict, and pain also.
Adam and Eve showed their heroism by taking that journey forward out of Eden, with the baggage of heartbreak, and the taste of bliss, to the unknown future, together.
If you said to me, rabbi, I have the ability to go back in time and end this pandemic before it began, I would say, yes, absolutely, without hesitation - do it. But that isn’t possible. But if you offered me the pill to forget the last year, I would say, no thank you.
We sound the shofar on Rosh Hashanah to help us remember, but also to spur us on into the future.
Now, it is time for us to move forward, Kadima.
Kadima - let us gather up sad moments, but also the holy sparks of joy that helped us persevere, to gather up the strength it will take to move into the future.
Kadima - we cannot return to the past or change it, but we can move forward with hope. Let’s start creating together this year at Shaarei Kodesh. Over these high holy days, I will share some ideas of ways we are going to innovate while at the same time, bring our past with us.
Kadima - we’ve made it here, whether we are on person or on Zoom, we are here, today, at this moment. We are bound together right now, and we have the choice if we want to relive these moments by coming back to each other day after day.
זֶה־הַיּוֹם עָשָׂה יְי נָגִילָה וְנִשְׂמְחָה בוֹ׃
This is the day that the LORD has made—
let us exult and rejoice on it. (Psalm 118:24)
And let’s try and treat every day, whether sorrowful or joyous, as a gift.
Shanah Tovah U’Metukah
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