Sermon and Song for Shabbat Shuvah/Sabbath of Return at The Temple, Congregation B’nai Jehudah on September 30, 2022
Text and Video
Many thanks to Rabbi Stephanie Kramer for this special opportunity to speak at my home congregation, and to Michelle Cox, TTCBJ music director, for adding her exquisite and special touches on keyboard to the song.
I don’t know about you, but in our home, I hear the word “perseverate” a
lot. My wife Rhonda tells me not to perseverate at least once a week, but probably more often than that. Unfortunately, I am really good at it.
So, for those of you whose inquiring minds want to know, perseverate means “to repeat or prolong an action, thought, or utterance after the stimulus that prompted it has ceased long ago.”
I believe that perseverating is human. It can, however, be a burden. Sometimes we do hold on way too long to our feelings and thoughts that resulted from something someone said or did to us, and we just can’t seem to let go.
If I had been asked to contribute to Mishkan Hanefesh, the new High Holy Day prayerbook of the Reform movement, the confessional prayers would have had this entry:
“We ask forgiveness for the ways we have wronged you, Eternal God, by perseverating over small or large matters in our lives, and for the harm we have caused by not healing ourselves through granting forgiveness to others.”
Every morning, I receive a daily email entitled “Inspiring Quotes,” which shares statements from a wide variety of sources. Paul Lewis Boese, who owned a Dairy Queen franchise in Newton, Kansas for many years, began writing down, some 60 years ago, his own pearls of wisdom in a special notebook he always kept nearby. He was a regular contributor to Quote Magazine in the 1960s. This insightful thought was one of his offerings from 1967: “Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.” This explanation accompanied the quote in the email message: “When we are hurt, forgiving the people at fault can be incredibly difficult; we’re wired to keep defenses up to protect ourselves from more pain. But anger, resentment, and hatred are damaging emotions to hold onto, and a source of pain in themselves. Forgiving someone doesn’t have to mean reconciliation - it doesn’t change or condone the wrongs that were done - but it does help us let go of that negativity to make room to heal and move on. It ‘enlarges the future,’ as Paul Boese wrote in 1967. He reminds us that forgiveness isn’t an eraser; it’s a blank page, and a chance to write a happier future.”
When we recite the prayers of the High Holy Days, they are mostly stated in the plural. They say “We,” not “I.” We do need to begin the path to change within ourselves, but we are responsible as members of a community to help the people around us to be brave enough to enlarge their future, so that we will all find benefit, together.
In the summer of 2008, I was studying one of the Torah readings that described the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire that accompanied the Israelites along their journeys in the wilderness on the way to the Promised Land. When the pillar would lift, the people would move forward, and when it came down to rest, the people stayed in one place. I began to wonder if we, in our own lives, have a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night that guides us. And, if we do, what form does it take?
Around that time in 2008, I had attended a session at a convention at which we discussed the themes of the High Holy Days: forgiveness, repentance, atonement, and change. We spoke about how we need to let go of the past in order to move forward, just as the Israelites forged ahead when the pillar of cloud and fire gave them the appropriate signal.
I believe that we too, have signals at our disposal, especially at this time of year, that can morally and spiritually set us on our way. The teachings of our tradition and the prayers of the High Holy Days can inspire us to offer mutual support to one another, to forgive, and to change.
Rhonda once found this quote on a Lipton tea bag: “Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.” It is so easy not to change, and we do, all too often, hold on to the past in ways that probably don’t serve our souls or our character very well. Granting forgiveness and addressing how we can grow as a result might be challenging, and even difficult, but those pursuits can create renewed space in our souls. It takes courage to answer the call to leave the familiar surroundings of our comfort zone, the place where some interpersonal conflicts may remain unresolved. It is that movement, that leaving, that can open up for us the possibility to truly enlarge our future.
From the intersection of these themes, the pillar of cloud and fire, and the signs we receive during the High Holy Days to step forward into positive personal growth, a song emerged for me during that summer of 2008. The long title is “Why do we hold on to what we should leave behind?” I wrote the lyrics in the form of a conversation with God, and also as a prayer. For me, these words sent a strong message not to perseverate. For all of us, they can remind us to find in the wisdom of our prayers and our heritage the pillars of confidence we need to move forward, both individually and as a community.
My first cousin Eileen Dunnell, who lived in Overland Park for the last 15 years, died in late August at the age of 94. Rhonda and I feel fortunate to have been able to visit with Eileen in person several times since our move to town last year and to speak with her on the phone from time to time. One of the family stories she told us teaches a crucial lesson about forgiveness which is fitting for this Shabbat Shuvah, this Sabbath of Return. My brother, Rabbi Steve Karol, included this anecdote in his book, EMBRACING THE SUPERNATURAL IN JUDAISM. Here is the story in Eileen’s words as told to me and to my brother:
“Sometime in the early 1960’s (note: it was 1961), your mother and I had a falling-out and did not speak for several months. I cannot remember the exact reason, but I think it might have been when Temple Beth El did not renew the rabbi’s contract, and your parents left Beth El and joined B’nai Jehudah. My family stayed at Beth El. After a while, I had a very vivid dream in which our grandmother Pearl, who had died in 1952, came to me and said that this ill will was very disturbing to her. The next day, I called your mother, and we resumed our close connection.”
I present this song “Why Do We Hold On” as a beacon for the year to come. Dreams that can lead to reconciliation, treasured teachings, and wise insights from many sources can serve as pillars of strength as we step forward on our own, and as we move ahead into this new year, as one community, side-by-side, always together.
Why do we hold on? (L. Karol)
Based on Psalm 25, High Holy Day Prayers and Parashat B’ha-alot’cha
I can see where You’re going, will You let me follow?
There hasn’t been a time when You’ve led me astray
Can I trust how You tell me not dwell upon the past
To look ahead without regret to make tomorrow a better day
to make tomorrow a better day
CHORUS:
Why do we hold on to what we should leave behind?
Why do we choose our pain
over peace that we could find?
Forgiveness can lift a broken soul
and ease a worried mind
Why do we hold on, hold on,
why do we hold on to what we should leave behind?
There are signs all around us telling us to stay
To rest inside the goodness that guides us on our way
There’s a fire that is burning, giving light when darkness falls
My D’var Torah today for the Community Service of Spiritual Renewal for the High Holy Days at Village Shalom in Overland Park. It was an honor to be asked to join, in leading the service, by Rabbi Jonathan Rudnick and Lezlie Zucker, who create services of renewal before Chanukah and Pesach as well. The song of which I spoke is below
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Just after the beginning of the war in Ukraine this past February, my cousin Bill called me to ask if I had heard the “prayer for peace.” He was referring to the prayer we just read, which is included in the Torah service section in the Rabbinical Assembly’s Siddur Sim Shalom and Siddur Lev Shalem. When this prayer was recited on the last Shabbat morning in February at Congregation Beth Shalom, it was noted that the prayer’s author, Rabbi Nathan Sternhartz, was born in Nemyriv, Ukraine, in 1780. While war and strife have touched Ukraine many times since Rabbi Nathan’s birth, his words have resonated deeply as we have watched from afar as the Russian army advanced into a nation that it continues to claim for itself.
My cousin suggested that I might consider setting Rabbi Nathan’s words to a melody. As I reviewed the prayer, one particular section caught my eye:
For all who live on earth shall realize
We have not come into being to hate or to destroy
We have come into being to praise, to labor and to love.
I began to wonder, along with Rabbi Nathan, why we have come into being, especially with war, conflict and division seemingly overwhelming our attempts to bring peace, healing and unity into our lives.
Every year, the High Holy Days offer us beacons of light that can guide us to respond every day to the question, “Why have we come into this world?”
Building on Rabbi Nathan’s prayer, I realized that I needed to articulate my own answers to that question. And so, I began to compose my response.
I believe that we have come into this world
To learn, to teach, to give
To grow, to seek, to live.
To console, to heal to share.
To praise, to build, to care.
Thus was born the song I am about to sing, “Into this world,” which includes my own personal prayer based on the original meditation of Rabbi Nathan:
“God of compassion, give us the courage
To work for the day when all people are free.
Let justice flow like a river.
Let peace fill the earth, as water fills the sea.”
While there is much that we can do together to add to this world more love, compassion and peace, our tradition teaches us that we must begin with ourselves.
We try every day to remain on the path to bring out the best in our souls to offer the world. The High Holy Days present us with an annual signpost to take stock of where we are on our personal journey. This season of the year provides us with an opportunity to make our own course corrections if we have strayed from who we truly want to be. This time of renewal and return also offers us a chance to affirm that we do, many times, share the best that is in us with the world. Our own contemplation, our prayers, our relationships with the people closest to us, and our connection with the divine can serve us as sources of confidence and inspiration.
One of the most meaningful statements in our tradition about how we must begin our approach to renewal with ourselves comes from Rabbi Israel Salanter, one of the founders of the Musar movement nearly 200 years ago. He once taught: “When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn't change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I discovered that I couldn't change my town, so, as an older man, I tried to change my family. And I wasn’t always able to influence them. Now, as an old man, I realize the only person I can change is myself. I now understand that if, long ago, I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and we could indeed have changed the world.”
We should not take Rabbi Salanter’s reflection as a statement of regret, but as a declaration of resolve to begin our own path to renewal, and, then, to see each other as partners in bringing peace, justice and healing to the world.
During my Youth Group days at The Temple, Congregation B’nai Jehudah, half a century ago, we sang a song by Pete Seeger about how our partnership is crucial and necessary to improve our lives and to bring blessing to the human family. These words remind us to work together now, and throughout every year.
Here is how I remember singing Pete Seeger’s lyrics:
One person’s hands can't bring a world of peace
Two people’s hands can't bring a world of peace
But if two and two and fifty make a million
Wе'll see that world come ‘round.
We'll see that world come ‘round.
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Lyrics:
Into this World
By Larry Karol
February 2022
Inspired by “Prayer for Peace” in the SIDDUR SIM SHALOM prayerbook
