Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove
Yom Kippur 2006

Very rarely, I am told, do I remember specifics. Who is coming for dinner, which kids have what activities when, where I am supposed to be at what time. For instance, on occasion my wife will remind me (the morning of) - that I have to be home early that night as she has an evening meeting.  I look at her surprised, at which point she recounts to me the three times over the last few weeks that I have been given this information.  A few weeks ago, frustrated at having to repeat something for the tenth time, she blurted, “Elliot, what is it like to go through life and everything you hear, you hear for the first time?!”  I graciously conceded that indeed there must be times when being married to me can be a maddening proposition, and that I sure do hope her love for me overcomes her exasperation with me.
   
The rabbis of the Talmud coined a phrase for the afflictions built into any and every loving long term relationship, “Yisurin shel Ahavah,” the chastisements or sufferings of love.  And so whether it is my wife and me, parents and children, siblings, extended family and friends, or God and humanity, our relationships, both those we have chosen and those that have chosen us are all marked by elements of love, commitment and loyalty right alongside frustration, irritation and exasperation. There is, after all, a bittersweet paradox embedded into every relationship of substance.  Our love and affection stem from an acceptance of a person in all of his or her limited humanity and yet it is those very limitations that are the very sources of our vexation.  After all, just because our love is unconditional and ongoing certainly doesn’t mean that it is never tested.

Just recall the story of one such couple, Max and Sadie.  After a lifetime of marriage together, Max came home to his beloved Sadie, absolutely sullen.  “Sadie,” he announced, “You have been at my side for years.  We started at nothing, we built the business together, our dreams were realized with success beyond what either of us ever imagined possible. Well Sadie, today the markets crashed, and we lost it all, our investments, our savings, our homes, our retirement, everything, Sadie, we don’t have a penny to our name.  Dearest Sadie, do you love me, will you still love me.”  Sadie took it all in, and turned to her life partner.  “Max darling, I’ve loved you since the very beginning, I have always loved you, I love you now and I will always love you…I’ll miss you….”

As a rabbi, I am privileged to be present with families at moments of celebration and sadness.  I have watched relationships begin and end, some welcoming new life, others mourning profound loss. These are all important and defining moments in our lives, but today, I want to focus not so much on beginnings and endings but on what happens in between. Because the character of a relationship is ultimately measured over the long haul, when the crowds, clergy and cards aren’t present.   By dint of being human, each one of us is bound to a complex web of relationships, we are brothers and sisters, parents and children, husbands and wives; each of us is connected to people to whom we are beholden for biological, moral or historical reasons, or for the more basic fact that we really love each other. Our relationships are complex, they are messy, they are tough and most often we can’t or won’t walk away from them. 

And yet, today, on Yom Kippur, we look at these relationships and we know that there are things about each other that are exasperating.  The angst of a long term relationship between two imperfect human beings is to be found in those aspects of the relationship or of another person that you would like to change, but can’t.  Each of us can point to things about other people that we would like to tweak, but we inevitably we run up against a wall.  There comes a time when a person won’t, can’t, or simply resists change.  Two siblings, bonded forever biologically, but view their worlds, their family, very differently.  A parent, who is faced with the ongoing care of a child, a grown up,  post college child, driven by both a desire to love and support, but also push a young adult to self-sufficiency and independence?  What about the adults caring for older parents?  Statistically, this is the largest growing population in America; nearly half of baby boomers have children living at home and elder care responsibilities, either in their own home or from a distance.   We are surrounded by people whom we love, whom we respect, whom we wouldn’t walk away from, but oh how we wish they would, for the love of God, we wish they could feel the consequences of their actions just once because maybe if they did, then maybe, just maybe they would be prompted to change their ways.  There is a bittersweet irony in the realization that it is those relationships that are of the deepest and most enduring character that are also the very relationships we feel most powerless to change.

And if you feel this way about someone, then let me tell you, you are not alone.  Because it is this precise anxiety of being inextricably bound to a person, who falls short of your ideals, and yet leaves you powerless, which is the way God feels about all of us.   On Yom Kippur, as the focus of our attention shuttles back and forth from our own relationships, to our relationship with God, we also need to realize it is actually the very frustrations and torment which we feel between each other that is precisely the way God feels towards us.

Let me explain.  The Torah, the Hebrew Bible is on a certain level, a story of unmet expectations.  I will always remember my Bible teacher in rabbinical school, Yochanan Muffs, who, on the first day of class began by asking us who is the most tragic figure in the Bible.  My classmates and I made all the obvious suggestions - Saul, Jacob, Samson, Michal, and Job.  Eventually he stopped us, shaking his head and very quietly proposed, (in the name of his teacher Saul Lieberman) that it was God. God was more tragic than them all.  From Adam and Eve, to the tower of Babel, to the flood to Sodom and Gemorrah, to the wilderness wanderings, to the divided Kingdoms of Israel, the Torah is a psychological portrait of a god who is tragically exasperated with a humanity to which he is inexorably bound. Even worse, the rabbis of the Talmud (Sanhedrin 38b), share that at the time of creation, the angelic retinue actually counseled God against creating humanity, knowing that our deeds would forever fall short of Divine expectations.  But God went ahead, in spite of their protests, and ever since God has tolerated a humanity, with the “I told you so’s” of the angelic host ringing in his ears. 

God it would seem, like us, is also caught in a series of paradoxes.  Created in God’s image, there are high expectations for all of us, and yet we continually fail to live up to our God given potential.  God created humanity armed with intelligence and choice and thus also capable of rebellion and sin.  God bears a covenantal commitment to us, but wakes up every day positively splenetic over the tsurus we cause.  God loves us unconditionally, yet sits there listening to the persistent chorus of angels, the voice in God’s own head asking, why do you put up with this?

My favorite midrash of this High Holiday season describes a day in the life of God.  It explains that the Divine day is divided into thirds.  During the first third God studies Torah, in the second third God is a cosmic matchmaker bringing lovers together. In the third part of the day, God is divine judge and cosmic administrator.  And, the midrash explains that upon walking in to preside over the court of judgment, God recites the following blessing:   “May it be My will that My love for humanity overcomes My exasperation with them!”  I love this midrash, because it suggests that it is a struggle for God to overcome our glaring deficiencies and every single day God has to pray for the strength to do so.   What is true for us, is true for God, when you really love someone, every day requires a prayer to face the challenge of human shortcomings.

And if this is God’s predicament, then God’s comfort is found in the fact that on Yom Kippur God’s self referential prayer is answered. What actually happens on Yom Kippur is not so much that God wipes away our sins or that we somehow become incapable of sin. After all, we will be just as human and flawed tomorrow as we are today.  Rather, the gift of Yom Kippur, seems to be that today, God accepts us for who we are, mercy overwhelms judgement.   Neither the quantity nor the quality of our sins precludes us from being received back by God.  Today God will accept us for who we are, and today God will accept us back if we have a willing spirit.  The rabbinic promise uttered by God to Israel is “Open unto me the door of repentance, be it even as narrow as the point of a needle, I will open it so wide that wagons and chariots can pass through.” (PDRK 163b)  The promise of Yom Kippur is that if you are willing, God will, under all circumstances, accept you.

This idea is embedded in a Hasidic parable that tells of a king who in a fit of rage against his son, exiled him from his kingdom.  The son wandered alone through the world.  And in time, the Kings’ heart softened, and his ministers were sent to find his son and ask him to return.  They found the young prince, but he answered them saying he could not return to the Kingdom, he had been too hurt and his heart still harbored bitterness.  The ministers brought back the sad news to the King.  The King told them to return to his son with the following message: “Return as far as you can, and I will come the rest of the way.” 

Today, is the day of return, it is the day to feel the embrace of a compassionate God.  Again and again over the day we recite God’s thirteen attributes of compassion:

“Adonai, Adonai, ever present, all merciful, gracious, compassionate, patient, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, treasuring up love for a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, and pardoning the penitent.”
 
Spoken first at mount Sinai after the heresy of the Golden Calf, these verses signal God’s repeated willingness to accept us back, no matter how egregious our failings.  Our sages explain that “Adonai” is written twice because God loves us both before we sin and after we sin.  God may be exasperated with us, but today of all days, God reaches deep, moves from the seat of judgement to the seat of mercy and offers the conditions by which repentence can take place.  And granted these conditions, we, individually and collectively, turn to stand before God, frail and vulnerable ready to acknowledge all our shortcomings, because we know God will accept us.  By opening up to us endless compassion, by accepting us, we are promted to respond, we give up our pretentions and we move toward God, we return, we do teshuvah.
   
If we are to really absorb the message of the day, then we too need to adopt the Divine tactics of mercy. It is incumbent upon each of us to follow God’s lead and create the conditions so that those around us, are prompted to return. It is the model of God’s unconditional love for us that also must be our guide as we seek to be God- like in our efforts toward reconciliation. After all, today, of all days, is the day that we strive to reach higher and deeper than we would normally be capable, to seek to emulate the divine posture, to forgive, to reconcile, and to bring growth and healing to our relationships. 

Because I will tell you something. Normally, we do just the opposite.  Normally, when we want someone to change or respond differently, we do just about anything BUT create the conditions under which someone will WANT to change.  Just think about all the unhealthy outward signs of someone who seeks to change others.  We nag, we scream we lecture, holler, cry , rescue, beg, bribe, coerce, accuse, trap, entrap, set straight, provoke scold, bargain with, insult, threaten and much worse.  We vent, we beat our chests, we condemn, we dictate, we command, we complain, we keep home, we lock out, we placate, we provoke, we make jealous, we make afraid, we search their dressers, we search their email, we question their hearts, we question their motives.  We claim our tactics are aimed at changing people, but in the end, surprise surprise, not only do we find that people’s positions are hardened, but we wake up to find ourselves at the mercy of the very shortcomings that frustrated us at the start.
   
The divine tool for effecting change in a loved one is acceptance.  It is an insight which, I have to admit, may strike you as somewhat counterintuitive. After all, how will someone change, if you don’t tell them to change?   Well I do know that nobody, not me, not you, no one can change in a toxic environment.  To persistently tell someone of his need to change is a strategy fraught with pitfalls for both parties.   Because the moment it comes out of your mouth, you are implicitly or explicitly communicating your dissatisfaction and objections to that person.  And nine times out ten this results in that person closing up and shutting down, verbally, emotionally and certainly to the possibility of change.   And apart from the sheer futility of such an enterprise, there is a corrosive and debilitating effect that these words have on the person uttering them. 

It should not be lost on any of us that Jonah, the prophet of Yom Kippur, is the most successful prophet of the entire Hebrew Bible.  He goes to a city, they repent and God’s wrath is stayed. No other prophets, not Jeremiah, not Ezekiel, not Isaiah get the results Jonah got.  And what does he tell the people, what words of admonition and rebuke does he impart to the sinful city?  Well, actually, none.   He simply proclaims: “In Forty days, Ninveh will be overthrown.”  Jonah knew what any modern day therapist will tell you, that when seeking to change someone’s ways it is far more effective to alert them to the future consequences of their actions rather than berate them for their present sins.   Sometimes by insisting that people solve their own problems, not only are we freed from bearing the weight of their misdeeds, but they themselves are better positioned to confront their own deficiencies. 

For a dialogue to begin, you have to be able to validate a person, you have to acknowledge where he or she is.  It neither means you have to agree with a person, nor do you have to give that person what they want, but you do need to accept and acknowledge both where they are and what they perceive their needs to be. 

You need to be able to tell your son that you understand that he takes no pleasure in living at home, living on the family pay roll, and, you need to be able to communicate what your needs are as well, that at 65 years old, you are a very different person than you were 20 years before and you expect a different relationship, financially and emotionally. A woman needs to be able to hear her husband voice the fact that it is hard for him to care for her mother when he is contemplating his retirement, and that to hear those words is not a comment on his love or commitment to his mother in law.   When a spouse confronts a life partner with his or her shortcomings, it should be done both open to the possibility that those shortcomings do not grow out of malice or ill intent, AND that there are consequences to those actions of which he or she may not be aware.  A mother in our community shared with me that the worst two years of a woman’s life are when she is fifteen and her daughter is fifteen.  This may be true, but maybe it is in this very insight that may trigger the necessary empathy by which reconciliation between parents and children can be possible.

These conversations need to happen, they need to happen today, and they need to happen ideally, every day.   But they can only happen when we begin them with acceptance, not accusations, with validation and not vindictiveness, and most of all, with love.  When it comes to reconciliation, style is substance and we need to learn to approach our most sacred relationships with care and concern.  It is hard, it is hard for God, and it is certainly hard for us.  But unless you are willing to create the conditions by which dialogue can take place, unless you are willing to accept a person for who they are, in all their flawed humanity, then change will remain painfully and persistently elusive. 

Rabbi Nahman of Bratzlav’s most famous story is probably the parable of the turkey prince:  There was once a royal prince who was convinced he was a turkey.  And the prince sat beneath the royal table naked, poking at bones or crumbs.  The worried king called upon the royal physicians, to treat the prince, but nothing they did made any difference and the prince continued hopping around the palace as a turkey should.

One day a sage volunteered to help, offering to cure the Prince.  “Where are your medicines asked the surprised King.”  “I have my own ways your majesty,” answered the wise man.  “Allow me seven days with the Prince.”  The king reluctantly agreed, since there was no other hope. 

The sage was brought to the prince and immediately undressed and sat under the table sitting opposite the prince. Now the prince had company.  “Who are you?”  asked the prince, “and what are you doing here?”
   
And the sage said “I am Turkey, and you, what are you doing here?”

“I am a turkey too,” said the prince, happy to have a friend.  So they sat together for quite a while. 

After a number of days the sage signaled the kings’ servants to throw him two shirts.  The sage put his shirt on and before the prince could object, he said “What makes you think that a turkey can’t wear a shirt? “ So the prince put on a shirt. And so it was with the pants.  “What makes you think that a turkey can’t wear pants?” the prince emulated the sage until they both were completely dressed.

Next the sage stopped eating the off the floor and ordered a meal to brought to the table.  And the sage continued “What makes you think a Turkey can’t sit at a table?” So the prince sat at the table.  This went on and on until eventually the sage left the prince acting, well, positively princely. The king rejoiced at seeing the prince return to his former self.  And when in time, the prince became a great king ruling over that entire kingdom, no one beside he knew that he was still a turkey.”

Sometimes I think about the sermons I gave years ago, at the beginning of my rabbinate, before I was married, before I had kids, before I was juggling so much.  I know I told those poor communities that each of us possessed the power to radically transform who we are, our loved ones and the relationships we are in.  I suppose that still may be true, but I am not sure it is altogether desirable and certainly not preach-able.  Rather, I think what we really need to do, what is in our grasp to do, is to create the conditions by which people are empowered and inspired and stirred to make the changes which are theirs to make on their own.  We need to appropriate the divine insight that for human beings, change is contingent on acceptance.    We, like God, can continue to love, without insisting on solving other people’s problems.  We can invest in each other, but insist that people take responsibility for themselves.  We need to make no apologies for who we are and what we expect, but we also need to let people know that the door is always open should they seek to return.  And yes, we need to be able to be able to get down on the floor and validate other people’s struggles if there is any hope of their sitting at the table.  It is hard, God knows. But that is our task and this Yom Kippur and we commit to the work at hand.