To not regret the past, nor close the
door on it.
Rabbi Robert Tobin
Kol Nidrei 2018 5779
B’nai Shalom, West
Orange NJ
Erev Tov. Kol Nidrei.
“God,
forgive the promises we made but could never keep. Forgive the promises that were made under
duress. We were forced. Or we were afraid. We were foolishly optimistic, or too
trusting. We did it to make something
better, or to stop it from getting worse. And it didn’t work. We became liars. We became promise
breakers. We became disappointments. We
became unreliable. Untrustworthy.”
Is
that who we are? Is that all others will
think or know or remember about us? Is that everything? Does it negate the
good? Does it call in to question all the promises kept? The responsibilities
met? The problems solved? The time spent?
Does breaking a promise break a relationship? Does it end love?
Sometimes,
yes. Sometimes no. Tonight we look in the mirror and know that
we have not done not only everything we could have done or should have done. We
have not done everything we promised to do.
We
need kol nidrei for the ones beyond
our control. We need yom kippur for the ones within our
control.
Tonight
I am not afraid of the year ahead. I am
afraid of the year behind. It is not the
future that we fear tonight. It is the
past. Tomorrow, in the unetaneh tokef we will look to the
future. For now, we pull the past into
the room with us. And the goal tonight
and tomorrow is not to close the door on the past, or to regret it. Tonight we
come to terms with it.
There
are so many ways that the past can continue to harm us. A grudge.
A resentment. Guilt. Genuine guilt. Anger.
Pain. What I didn’t do. What they
didn’t do for me. What I did. What they did to me.
The
most common is a bitter grudge. Kamsa
and Bar Kamsa. [summarize story here,
conclude how bitter grudges can destroy the world].
When
Nathan said to David [summarize story here briefly w/o detail], “you are the
man,” David accepted the accusation, the terrible losses that came from it, sat
shiva and then… somehow… got up and returned to rule his kingdom. How? Surely David could have argued. He could have lawyered up. He could have claimed royal privilege and
immunity from prosecution. But in fact, he couldn’t. It is because he was king that he couldn’t. The Torah commands that the king will make a
copy of the torah himself, read from it every day and carry it with him on all
journeys. Grudges only fester with their
twin sin: evasion. Avoidance. Denial. If
it needs to be addressed, address it.
Some part of it needs to be owned. Own it. Some part is reparable. Fix
it. Some part of it is educational. Name
it. Some part of it may rise again one day in temptation to thwart you.
Transcend it. Learn from it. The Torah contains not just the blessings, but the
curses as well. Not just the victories
against Moab, but the defeat under the King of Arad. The king brings all of
this with him every day.
When
Jacob wrestled with the Angel, he was intent on a blessing. He was afraid, as he prepared for what? To meet his estranged, powerful brother who
had every reason to resent and hate him.
Jacob had bought the birthright for a bowl of stew when Esau was
hungry. He had dressed up as Esau to
take the blessing from their father Isaac on his deathbed. What was Jacob
feeling that night? Confidence?
Vindication? Or fear? Guilt? Crossing the river and wrestling the angel in the
dark of night. Yes, he acquires a
blessing. But he is rendered lame for the rest of his life by the
encounter. You may win, but become the walking wounded.
When
King Hussein of Jordan came to Israel on March 16, 1997 to visit the shiva of a
murdered Israeli girl… killed by a Jordanian soldier in a terrorist attack…
what might he have felt? Guilt? Shame?
Evasion? Blame the other? Could he have
felt resentment for the loss in war in 1967? How do we move forward when such
horrible things really do happen in our lives?
He felt loss. He identified with
the father and the mother who lost their child, and felt pain. He had come to a place, with Rabin and
Israel, where the past was fact – not a battlefield to be fought over every
day. He was not the walking wounded.
The
worst pain that carries forward are the pains of betrayal or abuse. When we
were victims to another’s sickness. Again, guilt, shame, complicity –
self-accusation, self-debasement as a result.
The inability to find joy in love or trust when those things are taken
and the burden continues seemingly forever. But these too are pointers to
truths beyond our control. The pain of
betrayal shows the need for trust. The
harm in intimacy points to the desire for caring. These take a lifetime not to
forget, but to name and to transcend. I
am not what anyone else has done to me.
I am today, and today can be full and beautiful, safe and caring. I may have a limp, but darn it I can walk.
Think
of a time of loss. When you sat by the
one you loved as they died, or as you heard their eulogy. Were you at
peace? Was everything said? Was what
should be left behind learned from, named and carried forward?
Everything
we have done, and that we have experienced, has made us who we are in this
moment: a creation of God, taken from
hope and love and given life and opportunity to pursue time. We are each of unique purpose, and seek that
purpose in all that we have learned. Everything that has happened has given us
something that we need and can use as we look to our own future, and share the
present with those we are near. Your greatest pain and fear may help you to
understand another. Your toughest
diagnosis may help guide another being shocked by their own news.
Yes.
Kol Nidrei. Forgive us what we could not
fulfill. Let our guilt flow into our hearts, our hands, our minds as we seek to
learn to love better, do better and understand more from what we have done.
From what they did. From what was undone. From life.
Tonight
we promise, We will not regret the past nor wish to close the door on it. We
will know serenity and discover peace. God grant us full memory, whole hearts,
and from time to time a limp that allows us to carry on.
L’shanah
Tovah Tikateivu v’teichateimu.
No comments:
Post a Comment