Kol Nidre
5774/2013 – Our Failures
Rabbi
Joseph R. Black
Temple
Emanuel – Denver Colorado
My Dear Friends,
Several years ago, the NY Times printed the following transcript of an ACTUAL radio conversation between a U.S. naval ship and Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland.
Canadians: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the south to avoid a collision.
Americans: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the north to avoid a collision.
Canadians: Negative. You will have to divert your course 15 degrees to the south to avoid a collision.
Americans: This is the Captain of a U.S. Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.
Canadians: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course.
Americans: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER U.S.S. LINCOLN, THE SECOND-LARGEST SHIP IN THE UNITED STATES' ATLANTIC FLEET. WE ARE ACCOMPANIED BY THREE DESTROYERS, THREE CRUISERS AND NUMEROUS SUPPORT VESSELS. I DEMAND THAT YOU CHANGE YOUR COURSE 15 DEGREES NORTH. I SAY AGAIN, THAT'S ONE FIVE DEGREES NORTH, OR COUNTER-MEASURES WILL BE UNDERTAKEN TO ENSURE THE SAFETY OF THIS SHIP.
Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call[1].
None
of us would argue with the laws of physics.
You can’t move an immovable object.
Sometimes we need to acknowledge that there are things in our lives that
are out of our control. Yet all too
often we enage in acts of self-delusion – we try to convince ourselves that we
are immune from the realities of everyday life.
We don’t like to be wrong – we’re stubborn like that. And yet, the truth is we are here tonight
- on this Kol Nidre eve – because we know that we are not perfect. We do
make mistakes – we have failed, we have missed the mark set before us.
At
the beginning of this service, we heard Cantor Heit chant the hauntingly
beautiful Kol Nidre. This prayer speaks about our failures – our
inability to carry out the commitments that we all take on ourselves. And so – this is why we come here tonight -
both out of habit and out of a compulsion to acknowledge our weaknesses, our
imperfections and our failures.
Tonight,
I want to talk about failure. All of us
fail – even though we don’t like to admit it.
We fail in our jobs, our relationships, our goals and visions for how we
want to see ourselves. We fail our
spouses, our children, our parents and our friends. Most of all, we fail ourselves. To be human is to
fail. Not all of our failures are catastrophic,
some aren’t even noticeable – but they are very real, nonetheless.
Failure
is an integral part of our humanity – but I believe that it goes beyond our
mortal selves – for even God fails.
Think
about it:
·
In
the book of Genesis – there are two creation stories – one which details each
day of creation and one that tells the story of the Garden of Eden. But then, God sees the evil in the world and
realizes that the first attempt was a failure.
Humanity is not following the path set before it. And so God begins again – first with the
flood, and then again with the Tower of Babel.
On two occasions, Moses is informed that God wants to destroy the
Israelites after some spectacular failures – but Moses prevents this from
happening.
·
In
the Hindu faith – one of the primary manifestations of the god Shiva is that of
destroyer of the world - clearing it of imperfections – so it can be recreated
again.
·
In
Christianity – Jesus never finishes his task of bringing the Kingdom of God to
earth – his death - his failure to
deliver – becomes the basis of redemption
·
In
Greek mythology – the gods are constantly battling one another for
dominance….some win and some fail.
If you look at every major character in the
Bible – most of them have spectacular failures:
·
Adam
and Eve fail God’s test and are expelled from the Garden of Eden
·
Moses
fails to heed God’s command and is prohibited from entering into the Promised Land.
·
Abraham
lies about Sarah in Egypt and almost sacrifices his son on Mt Moriah
·
Lot’s
wife is turned into a pillar of salt
·
Isaac
is deceived by Rebekah in order that Jacob might get the birthright over Esau
·
Jacob
is deceived by his sons when they tell him that Joseph is dead
·
Joseph
goes through a series of failures when he incurs the wrath of his brothers, is
sold into slavery and then thrown into jail.
·
King
David fails when he seduces Bath Sheba and has her husband killed
·
The
list goes on and on……
If
we look at our national heroes, we see a similar pattern:
·
Abraham
Lincoln lost election after election before he finally became our sixteenth
president
·
Susan
B Anthony failed time and again as she pushed for the right for women to vote
·
Steve
Jobs, Theodor Herzl, Albert Einstein, Golda Meir and so many other important
figures of the past century failed spectacularly at some point in their lives,
And
of course – over the past decades we have seen failures of epic proportion in
our leaders: From Nixon to Clinton,
Weiner to Spitzer – the list goes on.
As
a nation – we are obsessed with failure.
Stories of celebrities acting out are front page news – they sell
magazines and boost the ratings of television programs. One only need to see the amount of coverage Miley
Cyrus and George Zimmerman have received in recent days – and how that coverage
has overshadowed important world events - to see that this is true.
Why
are we so obsessed with the missteps of our celebrities and leaders? I believe it is because we like to be
distracted - and in no small way - we like to remind ourselves that, no matter
how famous, successful or wealthy someone is – they fail just like we do.
Unless
and until we spend time with ourselves-
confronting the agonies of our failures- we cannot comprehend or fully
experience what it means to be truly alive.
Our failures and flaws – and the way we deal with them – are not fatal –
rather they are tests of our own
humanity. And we are being tested all
the time:
·
The
everyday tests of life are not graded in order to determine whether we pass or
fail.
·
The
everyday tests of life are not about reward or punishment, they are about
character.
·
The
everyday tests of life are cumulative. They determine our personality, our
morality, our humanity. Each test that
we face paves the way for the next one and the next and the next…. And it is
only through the passage of time that we can measure their impact upon us.
As
we go through our daily lives we constantly make choices about the way that we
interact with others and conduct our daily affairs. Sometimes the tests are very simple:
·
Do
we say hello to our neighbors as we leave for work?
·
Do
we return the extra change that the cashier has given us by mistake?
·
Do
we pay full attention to the person sitting in front of us - when what we really are thinking about is what
we are going to have for lunch in 10 minutes?
·
Do
we rush through the yellow light even though we could have stopped?
Sometimes,
the tests are more difficult:
·
Do
we declare to the IRS that extra income we received by selling our car for
cash?
·
Do
we avoid making that phone call to our sick friend?
·
Do
we cut corners in our work or scrimp or reduce the quality of our output to
make a few extra dollars?
Too
many of us have lost track of this essential fact. Ours is a society that values results over
reason, profit over potential and winning over everything else. Often, because of this, when people come face
to face with the prospect of failure – they don’t know what to do.
Some
people think that it is worse to fail than to cheat.
A story is told of a young Irishman named Murphy who applied for an
engineering position at a firm based in Dublin. An American applied for the
same job and both applicants, having the same qualifications, were asked to take
a test by the Department manager.
Upon completion of the test both men only missed one of the questions. The manager went to Murphy and said, "Thank you for your interest, but we’ve decided to give the American the job."
Said Murphy: "And why would you be doing that? We both got 9 questions correct. This being Ireland and me being Irish I should get the job!"
The manager replied: "We have made our decision not on the correct answers, but on the question you missed."
Murphy: "And just how would one incorrect answer be better than the other?"
Manager: "Simple. The American put down on question # 5, ‘I don’t know.’ You put down ‘Neither do I.’
Think
of all of the sports heroes who have been recently disgraced because of their use
of banned substances. Lance Armstrong
is a prime example. In many sports, doping was so endemic that it
was a pre-requisite for success.
Cheating
has become commonplace on High School and College campuses around the
country. If you want to know prevalent
it is, all you have to do is try this simple test: Go to any internet search engine and type in
the words “term papers for sale.” You
will find hundreds of sites designed to sell term papers and dissertations to
students. Interestingly enough, there
are just as many sites set up for teachers to detect and catch cheaters. My guess is that the same companies that sell
the term papers also sell a product that tells the teachers how to catch the
cheaters. Think about that for a
moment….. Cheating and fighting cheating
has become big business.
Students
who learn to cheat in school go on to cheat in life.
Why
is there so much cheating? Because we
are afraid to make mistakes! We equate making a mistake with failure, and
failure is perceived as a weakness. As a
result “Win – at any expense!” has
become the mantra of a generation.
This
is no small problem. One of the most
terrifying statistics I have recently seen is the fact that suicide is the
third leading cause of death for those aged 15 to 24 in our nation[2]. The Third
leading cause of death…..
Why
are so many young people taking their own lives? What are the messages we are
broadcasting that might be contributing
to this terrible statistic? Why are we
not shouting from the rooftops that this preventable tragedy must be addressed?
What
must we do? I don’t have all the answers
– it’s a much bigger question than can be addressed in a Kol Nidre sermon – but
I will say this:
We need to learn for
ourselves, and then teach our children, that mistakes are not tragic - they are
inevitable, they are a necessary part of life.
When
our daughter, Elana was in middle school, we went to sixth grade parents’ night
at the beginning of her school year. There, we met with each of her teachers
and learned about the expectations that were set out for all of the
students. One class, in particular, drew
my interest. Her art teacher explained how
each student was required to create a sketchbook of their own drawings. There were only two rules for use of these
sketchbooks.
1.
You
have to draw at least a half an hour a week.
2.
You
can’t erase your mistakes -- you have to leave them on the page.
What
a wonderful concept! It goes far beyond
art lessons.
·
You
can’t erase your mistakes – you have to look at them so that you don’t make
them again.
·
You
can’t erase your mistakes – instead you need to understand them and use them as guideposts for future progress.
·
You
can’t erase your mistakes – but you can show them to other people in your life
so that they might be able to learn from them as well as you.
The
truth is, we all should carry around some kind of metaphorical sketchbook. We could see both our progress and our
mistakes. Instead of running from our failures – we can learn from them – we
can grow from them. Life is not supposed
to be smooth. Everything will not always
be perfect.
I
recently came across the following poem:
The Guest-House
This being human is a guest-house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary
awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows, who
violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest
honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet
them at the door laughing, and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has
been sent as a guide from beyond[3].
One
of the main reasons that we are here tonight on the Kol Nidre Eve is to
acknowledge the fact that we are all tested – and that we are all flawed.
Our
tradition provides us with a mechanism to deal with and learn from failures:
Tomorrow
morning we shall recite the Unetaneh Tokef Prayer where we pray the ancient and
chilling words: “Who shall live and who
shall die….” At the end of the prayer we say the following:
U’teshuvah, U’tefillah, U’tzeddakah ma-a-vi-rim
et roa ha g’zerah.”
And Repentance, Prayer and Charity, temper God’s
severe decree.
These
three concepts – central to what this day of Atonement is all about – teach us
how to understand and accept the daily tests, the successes and the failures we
experience.
TESHUVAH
Yom Kippur teaches us that failure
is important - because it leads us to repentance. Teshuvah - repentance
- is the way to get beyond the sticking point.
In the Torah, Jacob cheats Esau and 20 years later he goes to meet him
with gifts and apologies. Teshuvah means turning - re-turning
to a place where we can begin again.
That is what these holidays are all about. God does not demand perfection. If God did, then there would be no need for Rosh Hashanah
or Yom Kippur because in a world where perfection is mandated - there
could be no repentance - all would be in black and white. We, however, live in a world with varying
shades of grey.
TEFILLAH
Confronting
our failures is not easy. It can be
lonely and frightening. Because of this
we have Tefillah – prayer.
Prayer certainly is not a cure - but it is a method of transforming ourselves and our lives. It provides us with a way of reaching out and
connecting to something greater than ourselves.
Prayer tells us to slow down - to look around us, to appreciate the
world that God has given us. Since prayer is a communal experience, when we
come together in prayer we realize that we are not alone. Prayer/Tefillah moves us outside the realm of
our failures by forcing us to come together and admit that there are things
that we lack in our lives.
The
real questions of prayer are not: "Can I pray?" or Should I
pray?", but rather, "What should I pray for?" and How will I know if my prayers have been
answered?"
The
answers to these questions are strangely simple. "What should we pray for?" I'll tell you. Pray for a sense of gratitude. Pray that you might be grateful for all of
the good that happens to you. And
while you're at it, pray that others might do the same too.
You'll
know that your prayers have been answered when you feel a sense of satisfaction
- of gratitude for who you are - not what you have; What you can do , not what you own. You'll know that your prayers have been
answered when, instead of hiding from your failures, you cheer on others’
successes.
TZEDDAKAH
And
finally, we come to Tzeddakah. Tzeddakah
is not merely “charity”. It is best
understood as acts of righteousness – of working to perfect this all too imperfect
world in which we live.
Tzeddakah is essential for coming
to understand the meaning and purpose of the tests that we undergo every
day.
·
To
have a life filled with Tzeddakah is
to act and live with a sense of responsibility.
·
To
have a life filled with Tzeddakah is
share what you have learned with others.
·
To
have a life filled with Tzeddakah is
to take the gratitude that we have discovered from prayer and to apply it to
the world in which we live.
·
To
have a life filled with Tzeddakah is
to acknowledge that if we have learned anything from our failures then we must
share that knowledge with others.
My
friends, when we come to terms with our failures – and with the necessity to
understand and assimilate them within ourselves, the next step is to to look
around us and see the fact that all of us have failed – at some
point in our lives.
How
many of us are holding grudges against family members and friends who have
failed us? How many relationships have
been poisoned by our stubborn unwillingness to see the same flaws in ourselves
that we condemn in others?
Every
year – on Yom Kippur – I say the same thing:
Now is a time to both ask for forgiveness and grant forgiveness to those who are
estranged from our lives.
I
know how difficult this can be. I know
that there are some actions that truly are
unforgiveable….but not all. All of us
are tested. We all fail some of the
time.
We
also are all mortal – why wait until it is too late to make amends? The time is now – there may never be a better
moment to mend a broken relationship. We
never know what tomorrow may bring.
My
friends, tonight we stand before God.
All pretense is gone. All of our
defenses are down. We stand together as
a community who acknowledges that we are all flawed. Let the awareness that we are not alone give
us comfort and the ability to work even harder
to learn from our failures and our flaws.
And in the process of doing so, let us make ourselves, our congregation and our world just a little more holy.
AMEN
– Chatimah Tovah – May we all be inscribed for blessing in the book of Life.
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