Getting
Ready for Yom Kippur. A Devar Torah delivered by Drew Kopf before the Congregation
of Plainview Jewish Center, Plainview, New York, Shabbat
Nachamu 5759; Saturday, July 24, 1999 on the 40th anniversary of his having become a Bar Mitzvah.
My last Shabbas
Devar Torah was about a year ago. I stood here on the Shabbas just before
Tesha B’Av and I presented the following thesis:
Tesha B’Av, the
day of mourning and remembrance for all Jews across the world, has roots that
can be traced as far back as Gan Aden, the Garden of Eden, and that it serves
as a yearly reminder, if not a constant reminder that Eretz Yisroel, the Land
of Israel, is ours to possess or inhabit only as long as we remain faithful
to Ha Shem through the observance of His mitzvahs, that is, by living a Torah-centered
or Torah-driven life.
This Shabbas we read the
Torah Portion of Ve’eschanan just a few days after the observance of
the introspective day of Tesha B’Av. In doing so, we begin a seven week
journey which will culminate in our observance of the Yamem Norahem; the Days
of Awe; The Ten Days of Repentance; The High Holy Days; the beginning of the
Jewish New Year; or better, for purposes of this talk, the New Jewish Year.
As we begin our approach to the beginning of this next new year, we see, laid
out before us, almost like a spiritual “Trip-Tick”, or perhaps
a spiritual steeplechase, a schedule of emotional undulations punctuated by
three major pilgrimage-based holidays, and several other celebrations and
observances. We will mark our major festivals with weeklong efforts to taste
the flavor of the passing seasons as the year of the world moves along its
never-ending and always renewing cycle.
If we have gotten anything
from our observance of Tesha B’Av this past week, or from the study
of the laws of Tesha B’Av, we should be ready, or at least more ready,
to begin our efforts to live our lives with meaning and purpose as outlined
by Hakodesh Barichu.
Today, therefore, can
be seen as a very important day. Today is the beginning of our getting ready
to begin our next year. With respect to the land of Israel, it can be seen
as a pivotal time, even if we are not living in the land per se. The world
is getting smaller-and-smaller. More-and-more of us are visiting Israel and
taking a far greater interest in the country than ever before. And, though
the State of Israel may not be as financially dependent on its supporters
around the globe as it had been, it does need our presence and active interest
as it endeavors to survive in its dangerous and unpredictable environment.
But, this Shabbas is also
important to each of us as individuals. I have been wondering about this Shabbas
called Nachamu for forty years. Forty years; as long as the Jews wandered
with Moshe Rabanu in the desert. It was my bar mitzvah Sedra and Haftorah.
I understood that with it we began this period of “comfort” which
followed the grieving and introspection connected with Tesha B’Av. But
why must this period be so long? Seven weeks? And why do we need it at all?
After all, we have ten days set aside for repentance of our sins; for squaring
our debts; for tying up the loose ends of our lives; for making peace with
those we may have wronged.
Rosh Hashanah is when
we ask to be written into the book of life for another year. Yom Kippur is
when we ask to be sealed in that book. The days in-between I always learned
were for taking care of those loose ends we just mentioned. If that is right,
for what purpose is Shabbas Nachamu and the seven-week period following it
intended?
Perhaps we are taught
too well when we are young? It reminds me of how young circus elephants are
trained. They are chained by their leg to an iron steak which is driven deep
into the ground so the little elephant could never pull it out or break free
until it learns that any attempt at flight will be fruitless. After a time,
the elephant doesn’t even bother to test the steak. And, as full-grown
elephants, a simple wooden steak and a rope, not a chain, are all that is
needed to keep them from wandering off. After a full year of life as an adult,
can we really get ready to make our peace before G-d and with our fellows
and within our own hearts in just ten days? I don’t think so.
The process of living
as a human being involves constant adjustment to things we learn from the
mistakes we almost made and from the mistakes we did make. We try to avoid,
of course, the fatal mistakes. But nary a day goes by with our doing something
we are or will be sorry for later. As we begin to get ready to start our New
Year, we will want to make sure that we begin our preparations to do so with
our spiritual ducks in a row. Tesha B’Av allows us, as a people and
as individuals, to strip ourselves down to our emotional core. It does so
in a similar way that the observation of the period of mourning for a loved
one will hopefully do in order to bring us the comfort we need to continue
on without them in our lives. I say similar since the mourning or grieving
in the period before Tesha B’Av is actually opposite to that of the
mourning done as an “avail”, one who has lost a loved one.
When, G-d forbid, a loved
one dies, our grieving is structured to go from intense mourning to less-intense
mourning. First, tearing ones garment or garments, seven days of withdrawal,
thirty days of certain restrictions, eleven months of publicly pronouncing
our continued faith in G-d in memory of our loved ones, to yearly Yartsiet
and Yiskor observances with candles and Kaddish. We mourn and grieve to purge
ourselves, as best we can, of the intense and conflicting emotions we feel
with the full knowledge that we will never be entirely rid of these feelings
connected with our loss. That is, we seek comfort knowing we will never again
be completely comforted.
Tesha B’Av grieving
starts with little sacrifices, such as not scheduling weddings, or not getting
a haircut, to finally fasting for most of or all of a day and to dressing
and acting like an “avail”, a mourner, by sitting on low benches
or on the floor until the day is done. By the end of the Tesha B’Av
grieving we have built up an emotional intensity in order to ready ourselves
for the comforting period that starts with Shabbas Nachamu.
I offer that this period
of seven weeks is as long as it is to allow us to make neither token, nor
merely verbal, nor last minute, nor easy corrections in our lives so we can
feel justified in asking Ha Shem for the gift of another year of life. But,
rather, I submit to you that we are expected to use this lengthy period of
seven weeks to take what we learned about ourselves during Tesha B’Av’s
emotional climax and apply our best efforts to making the necessary alterations
in our way of living (and we all know what we ourselves need to do for and
to ourselves to do that) so as to be ready for the highly charged journey
we will soon be taking from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur.
In seven weeks we can
read a book; maybe several.
In seven weeks we can contact every relative we have and square things up
with them; or try.
In seven weeks we can quit smoking, join a volunteer committee, and start
learning Hebrew or whatever we said we would learn and have been putting off.
In seven weeks we can loose fifteen pounds; start a program of exercise, launch
that creative project we have been putting off for so long, spend lots of
high quality time with our kids, our parents our spouses or ourselves.
In seven weeks we can stop complaining and start doing something to correct
what we feel needs correcting in us or in our community.
In seven weeks we can start practicing the good habits each of knows we want
to have.
Because, in seven weeks
from now, we will want to be emotionally ready, really ready, to stand before
G-d in this room and ask, from a position of strength for another year of
life. Perhaps this is what the period beginning with Shabbas Nachamu is for.
If so, may we all make the most of it. Amen.
Good Shabbas.
