I have it on good authority -- my son, Benjamin told me – that when we face the heavenly tribunal, we will have but one question to answer -- were you you?
When I heard this, I was totally psyched. I've always been good at standardized tests. I even knew the answer right off, without studying or any kind of preparation. I have, after all, spent my entire life being me. There is not a day that I do not wake up as me, spend my day as me; I even sleep as me. And, if I can be so bold, I would venture to say that there is no one more me than me. I am the epitome of me. And don't despair for yourselves; I think we're all probably in the same position. We are all highly educated, accomplished individuals who have spent our lives being ourselves.
I walked around in this haze of happiness and security for a while, and then I thought -- what if that's not the right answer?
We like being ourselves. Even when there are things which we don't like, we like being ourselves. It's not wrong; on the contrary, it's important for us to be content and happy with ourselves, or at least to tolerate ourselves, because after all, we are the ones we have to live with -- where ever we go, we follow ourselves, and if nothing else, we have to make the best of it.
It's no surprise, then, that one of the characteristics we prize most in our society, one for which we strive in ourselves and demand in others, is consistency. It's an interesting conundrum; while we are the most adaptable of all creatures, we hate to change. While we are able to accommodate ourselves to the unknowable, to survive and even thrive in the most hostile of surroundings, we strive for the status quo, we strive for the known and the comfortable.
Think of what we do with our lives. As soon as we are faced with anything unfamiliar -- a new job, a new home, a trip abroad, a new partner -- we create, as quickly as we can, habits and systems to insulate ourselves from that change. We try to wake up at the same time, take the same route to work, visit in the same circle of friends. We even, if you can believe it, like to sit in the same seats, use the same nusach as we daven. And, oh, how we howl if any of this is tampered with.
And we should also recognize that we do not limit our desire for immutability to ourselves; we demand it in those around us. We decry inconsistency.
We want our leaders to "stay the course". The election last fall was fought and won, or lost, depending on your point of view, not on policy or beliefs or effectiveness, but on the basis of consistency -- were you strong, or did you "flip-flop." It seems we would rather have leaders -- who are, of course, just a reflection of ourselves -- who are more willing to repeat the same mistakes, stick to discredited views and beliefs, than change with the times.
We are disappointed when others do not act as "they always have," and we reward them when they do; we tell each other "you haven't changed a bit", and we mean it as a great compliment. When we go to the movies, we want to know that the writers, directors and actors will repeat their prior performances. We are offended by interpretations of music, and scandalized by the resetting of a play. We want our artists to deliver, consistently, the same thing, over and over again.
Perhaps that is one of the things that makes our liturgy so compelling; it doesn't change, from week to week or year to year.
And I think there is something even more basic. Not only do we not want to change, not only do we not want others to change -- we do not believe in change, we do not believe that it is possible.
We use it as an excuse. In ourselves, it is the common cry - I'm just like that; I can't help myself; I'm just being me. We engage in self-destructive behavior because we have always done it, and we know that we can't stop. We are compulsive, and we ascribe it to something in us which is beyond our control.
The truth is that transformation, whether we commit to it or others do, is a traumatic procedure; it is invasive surgery on our souls and beings. Very few of us can accept innovation in ourselves and in others because it's so hard.
With all our stasis, though, we are fighting against a tide, and we are losing, because evolution, sometimes violent evolution, is an essential part of our lives.
Change is not something we can avoid. The world changes around us, and we change. Despite our efforts and protestations, we get older, the people around us change, the facts that define us change. We can try to avoid change, we can accept change, we can embrace change, but one way or another, we change. We change schools, jobs, diets, political parties, attitudes. Everything about us is in a state of flux.
It may be trite to mention it, but we can look back at so many events, whether of the past month or the past years, and realize that we or others have been irretrievably transfigured. Hundreds of thousands of men, women and children lived in New Orleans eight weeks ago; how many live there today? Our children have grown and left home, leaving gaping holes in their wake. Our parents, brothers, sisters, friends have died, and part of us is lost with them. Who among us has the same relationship with Israel, with our friends and family in Israel, after years of Intifada and visions of terror in Israel have seared our very beings. We simply cannot be the same people.
Even where things don't seem to change, they do. My father, a surgeon, once told me that medicine had changed so that what he did in the last years of his career was almost unrecognizable from what he did in his early training. I asked him how that could be, when the human body hasn't changed, and he told me that everything else does; our tools, our understanding, our knowledge; it is almost as if the body did change. Let me be even more personal about it – I can no longer help my son with his chemistry homework, because chemistry, as he knows it, did not exist 30 years ago when I last studied it. Have the elements changed? Have the physical rules that govern the universe changed? Not at all, but our understanding of them has gone through multiple revolutions.
So here we are, dedicated to remaining ourselves in a world that constantly changes, and we come now to this day, this special, unique night and day. Today, these next 24 hours are dedicated to transformation; today celebrates change. On Yom Kippur, we step outside our normal constructs of time and into a timeless space, or as Jonathan Omerman used to say (or as I remember him saying), we move from temporal time to spiritual time; we change our clock. The reason is that we are here to culminate our decision to repent, and repentance is the most profound change of all. The reason is because we not only accept change; we have chosen to change. Into the inevitability of change, and our ambivalence about it, we add the thing which differentiates us – the ability to choose.
For more than a month now we have been changing our habits, in little ways and large. Our daily prayers have been enhanced with tehilim and the blowing of the shofar. We changed the standard endings to prayers for the past ten days. Our mahzorim our filled with vaguely familiar prayers; not really familiar, but a sense of déjà vu. We step into this very familiar space, look at very familiar faces, but there is something different about it, because our purpose here today is not the same as any other day in the year.
The world inside, and the world outside, is different. When I asked Benjy what he found most memorable from his year in Israel, what mental picture he would carry with him from all of the experiences he had, he told me that in Jerusalem, on Yom Kippur, the world stops in its axis. The streets are empty, the wind speaks softly, and sounds drop in their tracks -- the world literally seems to stand still, the sense of life hanging in the balance is palpable and tangible. And though we are a world away from ir hakodesh, we felt that all day, as we prepared for this time, and we feel that here, in this room.
These tangible differences reflect an internal message, an emotional timeclock which has suddenly clicked into place; today, we know, is a day in which we change our priorities. But there is something more here. Yom Kippur culminates our desire for Teshuva, but in doing so it symbolizes much more than that. It is an affirmation of choice. It is an affirmation that we can choose to change. It is not just that we understand that we change, the world changes, that we accept change. Teshuva means that we choose to change, we choose to repent.
But we have done this every year, year after year. So is it only me, or is there not something unsettling in repeating the same penitence year after year – have we not changed from last year? When we recite Ashamnu and beat our chests, aren’t we compelled to pause, and wonder why we have not learned our lessons? As we listen to the Shaliach Tzibur, isn’t there a nagging question, where have our intentions gone awry?
Today we have to ask ourselves if we are really serious about this teshuva thing – will we not only recognize the inevitability of external change, but will we also devote ourselves to transforming ourselves? If we come away as ourselves, if we come away from these 25 hours without having transformed ourselves, without having evolved, without having incorporated something new into our lives, have we achieved anything?
We often say that we devote this time of year to teshuva, to returning. But true teshuva is not returning; it is changing. Teshuva is implementing the choice to become new and different. Teshuva is not answering that we are who we are. After all, how do we know when we have repented? We know because when faced with the same circumstances, we do not make the same mistake. We have not returned; we have changed.
The Rabbis tell us that repentance is the most powerful of transformations - Teshuva cannot be understood within the normal framework of time and space, for through teshuva the past can literally be rewritten: Resh Lakish says that when one performs Teshuva, his former sins are counted as mitzvot. The true ba’al teshuvah becomes not just a better person, but a new person.
On the High Holidays we celebrate one of the central consequences of living in a universe governed by such a God - namely, that we have the ability to make a choice, that we are not stuck in our negative patterns, but we can fundamentally change ourselves and our world. The fact that we can change, that we are not stuck, is the reason why we approach the High Holidays with joy - because it's a wonderful blessing to be able to participate in the transformation of the universe by transforming ourselves, and observing and accepting the transformation of others.
We must strive to change ourselves, and this is the moment we must accept change in others. We must not only accept their apology, but we must believe, we must participate; that they will perform true teshuva, that when faced with the same situation, they will, we will, be different. We must be willing to extend ourselves and do more; we must not only change ourselves; we must change the things we care about, and accept change in those around us.
Many years ago, I asked Harold Schulweis what he meant by predicate theology, and he told me that it means that whether or not you believe in God, you believe in godliness. The question inherent in the tribunal’s question is not whether we are ourselves; the question is, can we emulate God, and create ourselves as we choose. Can we emulate the essence of God, can we say eheyeh asher eheyeh?
In the end, we have to answer the question not, who are you, but whom did you chose to be?
We are faced with a question today, and our answer depends on our ability to change, and accept it in others. May we make this choice over the next day, and may we find the answer as the answer finds us.