Here is an embarassment of riches, I hope. My high holy day drashot from this past season, given in Fairbanks, Alaska:
Drash Erev Rosh HaShanah 5767
Given by David Novak
Or ha Tzafon, Fairbanks, Alaska
And so we begin.
5767 has come upon us. And unlike other new years where there are balls dropping in Times Squares and people partying with champagne and blowing horns, singing words to songs that nobody understands, we mark the passing of another year by coming together in community.
The other new year comes in the deepest dark of winter, an odd time to think about a new beginning. Sure it's January and the kids are going back to school and the winter break is over. But other than that, can we speak to what is really being marked? We try to infuse it with significance, mostly, I think, by making resolutions as in:
This year I'll finally lose that weight.
This year I'll finally learn that foreign language.
This year I'll exercise more, eat less, wash the car when it's dirty, replace the windshield, eat fewer Doritos, watch less TV, be a nicer person, etc etc etc.
You get the idea: they are resolutions that get to the underlying tension in our lives: there are parts of our lives that we want to change, but it's darn hard to do so. And all too often, we find that the power of our entrenched habits take on a life of their own, making change feel like climbing to the top of Denali in January.
Our tradition recognizes that change is difficult. Our tradition also recognizes that the human condition, being what it is, needs a time in the year where we have that space to be introspective, to look fearlessly at our lives, our relations with other people, and our relations with God.
There is no ball descending in Pioneer Park.
We are together in our synagogue.
A new Jewish year is not a turn of the calendar; it is a turn in our lives.
We begin, tonight, at the beginning: with each one of us as individuals.
In our lives, we take care of what's important.
We rebuild the rotting deck so no one gets hurt.
We take the truck in for a tune-up so it doesn't stop running.
We winterize so we don't freeze to death.
Yet what we're willing to do for our home or our vehicle we seldom take time to do for ourselves. Think how absurd this is.
Today we mark God's creation of the world. We proclaim: Today is the birthday of the world.
_In the story of creation, throughout the recitation of the day by day creation, after all of the many varieties of species of plants and animals , there is only one that is made in God's image. Human beings.
There is only one creation that God calls not "good" but "very good." Human beings.
We are unique in creation.
And we are unique in our complexity.
Which is why there is a season on the Jewish calendar that marks time, to be sure, but also gives us time to be reflective. When we wake up in the morning during the month preceding Rosh HaShanah and during these days of awe, we awake not merely to another day, but to the miracles of our being with heightened awareness.
That intensifies now that Rosh HaShanah is here. To be sure, we celebrate, we gather around each other's tables, we come together in community. Yet on a personal level, Rosh HaShana is the beginning of ten days of deep contemplation about our lives.
We don't just mark time, we make time matter.
Which is why tonight I will ask you to use the gift of this time to think about your life.
Begin with the realization that each of us has only this one life. There will be no other. This is the body we've been given to live in, the soul that is breathed into us, the personality that we inhabit.
Ask yourself: do I value the gift of my life? Do I appreciate that this is the body that will carry me throughout my life?
Ask yourself: with all the possibility that exists, am I reaching mine? What am I doing and what would I like to be doing? What is keeping me from getting there?
And most importantly, ask yourself, fearlessly and honestly, if you are the person that you would like to be. When you look in the mirror, what do you, and only you see, knowing that others don't see?
What are you keeping inside, perhaps near the surface, perhaps deeply buried, that needs to be illuminated?
This is a time of returning, but before we can turn to other humans and turn to God, we must first be willing to turn to ourselves.
We must be willing to be honest with ourselves.
We must acknowledge what is real in our lives for that is the jumping-off point for the potential for change.
And so we begin 5767 with a poem:
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
With thanks to Sister Mary Boyd for the Mary Oliver poem.
Drash Erev Rosh HaShanah 5767
Given by David Novak
Or ha Tzafon, Fairbanks, Alaska
And so we begin.
5767 has come upon us. And unlike other new years where there are balls dropping in Times Squares and people partying with champagne and blowing horns, singing words to songs that nobody understands, we mark the passing of another year by coming together in community.
The other new year comes in the deepest dark of winter, an odd time to think about a new beginning. Sure it's January and the kids are going back to school and the winter break is over. But other than that, can we speak to what is really being marked? We try to infuse it with significance, mostly, I think, by making resolutions as in:
This year I'll finally lose that weight.
This year I'll finally learn that foreign language.
This year I'll exercise more, eat less, wash the car when it's dirty, replace the windshield, eat fewer Doritos, watch less TV, be a nicer person, etc etc etc.
You get the idea: they are resolutions that get to the underlying tension in our lives: there are parts of our lives that we want to change, but it's darn hard to do so. And all too often, we find that the power of our entrenched habits take on a life of their own, making change feel like climbing to the top of Denali in January.
Our tradition recognizes that change is difficult. Our tradition also recognizes that the human condition, being what it is, needs a time in the year where we have that space to be introspective, to look fearlessly at our lives, our relations with other people, and our relations with God.
There is no ball descending in Pioneer Park.
We are together in our synagogue.
A new Jewish year is not a turn of the calendar; it is a turn in our lives.
We begin, tonight, at the beginning: with each one of us as individuals.
In our lives, we take care of what's important.
We rebuild the rotting deck so no one gets hurt.
We take the truck in for a tune-up so it doesn't stop running.
We winterize so we don't freeze to death.
Yet what we're willing to do for our home or our vehicle we seldom take time to do for ourselves. Think how absurd this is.
Today we mark God's creation of the world. We proclaim: Today is the birthday of the world.
_In the story of creation, throughout the recitation of the day by day creation, after all of the many varieties of species of plants and animals , there is only one that is made in God's image. Human beings.
There is only one creation that God calls not "good" but "very good." Human beings.
We are unique in creation.
And we are unique in our complexity.
Which is why there is a season on the Jewish calendar that marks time, to be sure, but also gives us time to be reflective. When we wake up in the morning during the month preceding Rosh HaShanah and during these days of awe, we awake not merely to another day, but to the miracles of our being with heightened awareness.
That intensifies now that Rosh HaShanah is here. To be sure, we celebrate, we gather around each other's tables, we come together in community. Yet on a personal level, Rosh HaShana is the beginning of ten days of deep contemplation about our lives.
We don't just mark time, we make time matter.
Which is why tonight I will ask you to use the gift of this time to think about your life.
Begin with the realization that each of us has only this one life. There will be no other. This is the body we've been given to live in, the soul that is breathed into us, the personality that we inhabit.
Ask yourself: do I value the gift of my life? Do I appreciate that this is the body that will carry me throughout my life?
Ask yourself: with all the possibility that exists, am I reaching mine? What am I doing and what would I like to be doing? What is keeping me from getting there?
And most importantly, ask yourself, fearlessly and honestly, if you are the person that you would like to be. When you look in the mirror, what do you, and only you see, knowing that others don't see?
What are you keeping inside, perhaps near the surface, perhaps deeply buried, that needs to be illuminated?
This is a time of returning, but before we can turn to other humans and turn to God, we must first be willing to turn to ourselves.
We must be willing to be honest with ourselves.
We must acknowledge what is real in our lives for that is the jumping-off point for the potential for change.
And so we begin 5767 with a poem:
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
With thanks to Sister Mary Boyd for the Mary Oliver poem.
posted by Rabbi David Novak at
Monday, October 16, 2006
