One day last fall, the writer Jonathan Franzen decided he needed to get away. Now, if you or I felt like taking a little break from our routine, we might drive up to Ojai. Or maybe we’d take a long weekend in Big Bear. But Jonathan Franzen had a different idea.
He’d had a very stressful few months. He’d been working non-stop promoting a novel -- traveling, giving interviews, talking endlessly about himself. (I think he sold a few copies.) And he came to develop some bad habits: tobacco, caffeine, checking his e-mail, playing computer games.
As he wrote, “The more you pursue distractions, the less effective any distraction is.” So he upped the dosages. He started checking his e-mail every few minutes. His two drinks each night became four.
As he described it, “I was in a state of flight from myself.”
He played computer solitaire for hours, and became so proficient that one day he won eight games in a row.
And he knew: he had to get away. Far away.
He’d learned about an Island in the South Pacific, 500 miles off the coast of Chile. It captured his attention because in the 1700s, this was where a Scottish adventurer had been marooned for years -- and that tale of survival became the basis for one of the very first novels in the English, Robinson Crusoe. As Franzen writes, Robinson Crusoe is a “testimony to radical individualism”. It’s a story story of a man alone on an island.
So when Jonathan Franzen wanted to get away, that’s where he headed: to an island known locally as Masafuera, which means “Farther Away.”
It wasn’t easy to get to there. He flew to Santiago, and from there he took a small plane to one island, then a boat, then another boat -- a launch used by lobster fisherman -- for a 12-hour journey to this tiny island. There, a guide led him over craggy trails to a spot on the interior of the island, 3000 feet above sea level. And then the guide left him -- alone.
Finally, he was where he had wanted to be: No alcohol; no computer solitaire; no distractions at all. Just fog, and silence, and birds, and a copy of Robinson Crusoe. And an entire island, called Farther Away.
I think it’s fair to say that on this day we all know how Jonathan Franzen felt. We lead lives filled with distractions. You know what yours are: The phone you carry in your pocket; the iPad that seems to sap your attention; the trivial stuff that clutters your mind and keeps you busy. We all spend our days more or less in flight from ourselves.
Even at this time of year. We have the best of intentions for taking seriously the kind of learning and self-examination that should accompany this season. But the reality is that we’re too busy. With work, with children, with checking our e-mail, with Farmville.
And at some point we need to get away.
Let me save you the plane flights and the sea voyages and the hike. Because we have all arrived here, now, in our version of Farther Away. We’re here without a guide. And we’re alone.
The idea of being alone is part of the central metaphor of Yom Kippur, the ritual of the Kohen Gadol, the high priest, in the Temple. On Rosh HaShana the Torah readings we read were narratives from Breisheet, from Genesis, about our patriarchs and matriarchs struggling with each other and with God. But the passage we will read tomorrow morning has none of that. Instead, it is an elaborate description of a ritual. And we’ll hear even more about that ritual tomorrow afternoon during Musaf in the Avodah service.
The Torah reading describes in great detail the Kohen’s extensive preparation and purification, and how he then entered the Beit HaMikdash, the Temple. He has a specific job, and it’s a big one: He is to atone for the sins of the entire nation of Israel.
This is a singular moment: the the holiest moment of the Jewish year, when the holiest person steps into the holiest space on earth. It is the ultimate moment of humans connecting with God.
And in the middle of this description, there’s a pasuk that’s very striking. It says: v’chol adam lo yehiyeh baohel moed b’vo’o l’chaper bakodesh ad tzeito.
“And from the time he enters the kodesh – the Holy of Holies – until he leaves, no person will be in the Tent of Meeting.” (Lev. 16:17)
From the time he enters, until he leaves, the Kohen Gadol ... is alone.
And only then, when he’s alone, does it say: v’chipeir b’ado uv’ad beito u’va’ad kol kahal yisrael. “He will atone for himself, and for his household, and for the entire congregation of Israel.”
If you do a close reading of the text, it seems very challenging logistically. For one thing, he’s supposed to be carrying all this stuff: a panful of fiery coals in one hand, and a double handful of incense in the other. He’s already tired from lugging around goats and bulls for sacrifices. It’s just a lot to carry. Some of the midrashim suggest that he carried some of the stuff between his teeth, or on the tips of his fingers -- like when you’re coming home from Trader Joe’s with too many grocery bags and you using every part of your body to carry them all from the car into the house. But the text says, on this one occasion of the year when he is obligated to go into the Holy of Holies to atone for all of Israel and bring all this stuff ... he’s alone.
The text describes these expanding circles of people for whom he is responsible. That’s us, today. We all come to represent ourselves, and our households, and all of Israel. We come here today with burdens that sometimes seem impossible to carry. But for at least a few moments during these 24 hours, we carry them alone.
It’s not easy to be alone. And I say that as someone whose job is to sit around by myself, typing. Over the last couple of years I worked on a project that involved a lot of introspection, a lot of solitary time.
I would begin each day with the best of intentions. I’d start early and get a few paragraphs written, and then around 9:30 in the morning, I’d pause for just a minute to check my e-mail. And then I’d remember I had that gas bill to pay. Then the next thing I knew it was 4:30 in the afternoon and I was watching another video of a cat playing “Chopsticks” on piano. (I’m sure I’m the only one here who saw that. Except that it said on YouTube that 22 million other people had watched it. Probably all writers working at home.)
I love reading books about how writers work. I like hearing how they think about the big questions, but I’m just as interested in how people who work alone get their work done: how they organize their time; what kind of chair they sit in. A few years ago a friend recommended a very helpful book called The Clockwork Muse. The author Eviatar Zerubavel, a sociologist, has this piece of advice: You should never work in a room with a telephone. Because, he says, even if it doesn’t ring, the very fact that it might ring, is distracting to the mind.
Just the presence of the phone is a distraction. Even if it’s silent. And this was written a number of years ago, before everyone had a cellphone. Now, of course, there is no room where there isn’t a telephone. Anywhere. And the devices we use to write also double as TV sets, and videophones, and telephones that connect us to everyone in the entire world at every moment.
When I was writing my book, I found it so difficult to write with all of these distractions that a few times I went away. Some friends offered the use of their condominium in Palm Desert. I went for a few days. And I was delighted to discover that there was no internet at all. So for a day or so I got more work done than I had in months. And then on the second afternoon, I thought: I wonder if there is any wireless signal. And checked, and noticed this tiny blip. So I started walking around the condo, holding my laptop. And I found that if I stood in the southwest corner of the second bedroom, on top of a chair, and held my computer just above eye level, that I could get enough of a signal... to watch that video of the cat playing “Chopstick” on piano.
And isn’t that all of us today? Even when we’re alone, as we are supposed to be, and even when we have set aside the time, and the place, and even when we start with the purest kavanna – intention -- we have this instinct to avoid the really important work we have come to do.
And that’s why the other significant text of this day is the one we read tomorrow afternoon, the book of Jonah. It’s a profound text for so many reasons. But to me, the most profound is the very beginning:
Va yehi davar adonai. “And the word of God came to Jonah, saying. Arise, go to Ninevah. But Jonah arose and fled to Tarshish.”
It was very simple: Go to Ninevah! And he went to Tarshish!
If the God who created heaven and earth -- the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah -- came to you and said, “Go to Encino!” Would you get in your car and drive to Anaheim?
Jonah is a story of a man who flees from his duty, and flees from himself. He knows exactly what God wants him to do, but he flees from that task. He’s in a state of flight from himself.
Why do we read this book on this day? Because the people who compiled the Machzor understood that, This human characteristic: That even though we’ve gotten ourselves to this season, and we’ve bought our tickets, and we’re sitting in shul, and we’re going through the Machzor, we still avoid what we’re really supposed to be doing here.
Actually Jonathan Franzen, the writer on the island, had the same problem. There’s Another part of his story. He, too, had something significant he was avoiding.
A couple of years earlier, he had lost a close friend, another well known writer, who had committed suicide. And at the time, instead of dealing with that, instead of confronting his own anger at his friend, his own complex feelings, Franzen had thrown himself into his work and all of those distractions. He just didn’t deal with it.
But just before he left for the trip to Chile, Franzen visited the friend’s widow. And she gave him something: a small box, and inside it were some ashes – some of her husband’s remains. She handed him this box. And she said, when you get to where you’re going, find the right place, and please spread these ashes.
So on that island, as he contemplated Robinson Crusoe and radical individualism, he also came to terms with his friend, who was quite accomplished and brilliant, but also quite alone. In a way, he had lost his life to his own radical individualism. And at just the right moment, Franzen went to a rocky promontory, and he tossed the ashes into the wind.
And as soon as he did that, he felt ready to return home. This man who had so deperately wanted to get away, now he desperately wanted to get home, back to his girlfriend, back to his very busy and distracted life.
He took the lobster boat and the other boat to the place where he could catch the plane. But the planes were all full, and he had to wait three days. So he waited, in that place between one life, and the other.
And that’s us. We live our lives in that space between those extremes. Between our lives, full of distractions, and that other life, alone.
In that moment as he sat waiting to get back to the people he loved, Jonathan Franzen contemplated this idea of individualism. And he thought about all of the distractions he had fled. And then he pondered the greatest modern distraction of them all: Facebook. He points out that when you set up your profile on Facebook, there’s something called the Relationship Status menu. That’s where you get a choice: married, single, divorced. Or there’s another choice: “It’s complicated.”
It is complicated. But that’s why you can’t live purely distacted or purely alone. Because if you do, then you miss out on the complicated, painful, beautiful, complex interactions and relationships – the messy stuff that makes life worth living.
And that complicated stuff is what we’re here thinking about, on this singular, remarkable day.
In the holiest moment of the holiest day in the holiest space on the planet, the Torah says of the Kohen Gadol, “vchol adam lo yehiyeh baohel moed.” And no human being was in the ohel moed.
The Midrash asks: No human being? Wasn’t the Kohen Gadol himself a human being?
And the Midrash answers: No. In that moment, the Kohen Gadol wasn’t a human being. He was transformed into a heavenly angel.
He was an angel.
And that’s us today, on Yom Kippur: wearing white; refraining from our earthly needs and desires; coming to this holy place, at this holy moment.
What does it mean to be angels? It means that when you’re alone, you’re not alone. You have an awareness that you’re in the presence of God.
This is a day of Teshuva, of return. So when we flee from our distractions, it’s not to escape to an island. It’s to return -- to God, and to our best selves.
For 24 hours, we live as angels, with God.
And then tomorrow, at the end of Neila, when the shofar sounds, we emerge just as the Kohen Gadol did, and bring that best part of ourselves, and those holy encounters, out into the world, into our wondrous, distracted, and beautifully complicated lives.
Gamar Chatima Tova. Shabbat Shalom.