Rabbi Daniel Cotzin Burg
Yom Kippur, 5768

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once noted: "It takes three things to attain a
sense of significant being: God, a Soul and a Moment. And the three,” he said, “are always present.” Countless Yom Kippur sermons have been
devoted to the subject of God, and goodness knows I like to talk about the
soul. But today I want to focus on the third piece of Heschel’s classic triad:
today I want to talk about the moment.

There is a brief story from the Talmud, written in poetic form, which powerfully illustrates the potential of a given moment. Now, while the Torah is known for its minimalist language, the Talmud is a particularly verbose document. So, it’s worth paying attention, not only to the message of the story, but also the terseness of the language.

Rav Rehumi, who was studying at [the academy] of Rava in [Babylonia], used to return home on the Eve of every Yom Kippur.
One day he was so attracted by his subject [that he forgot to come home].
His wife was expecting him:
“Now he’s coming, now he’s coming.”
He did not come.
She became depressed.
A tear fell from her eyes.
He was [at that moment] sitting on a roof [in Babylonia].
The roof collapsed under him
and he died. (Ketubbot 62).

This complex and challenging story comes amidst a discussion as to how often one has to fulfill his marital obligations to his wife. Now gentlemen, you should know that according to Jewish law, a husband has these obligations but a wife does not (sorry guys), and his not fulfilling his end of
the bargain (quote, unquote) is grounds for divorce. There are two things that should immediately catch our attention upon hearing this story. First, given that marital relations are one of the five things one is not permitted to do on Yom Kippur, you may wonder what on earth Rav Rehumi was
thinking?! Of all the days to come home to your wife! And second, though the legal sections book-ending this tale may discuss the minimum requirements, as it were, for a camel driver vs. a sailor vs. a scholar, the tale of this student and his unnamed wife is distinctly human, reflecting the real pain experienced in relationships where work or other obligations have taken precedence over love and intimacy. Life is fragile, as we know, and so much depends on the moment. In a given moment, our choices can have a profound impact, even dire consequences, as did Rav Rehumi’s choice that fateful day. My intention is not to make us neurotic, we can’t go through
life desperately worrying about every little choice. And yet, the Torah tells us to “choose life.” How do we do this? By making lots of little lifeaffirming choices along the way. And not choosing, allowing ourselves to be distracted from loved-ones and family, from what’s really important, is a
choice just the same.

Life is filled with individual choices, but as Jews we are part of a communal tradition. The Jewish calendar, then, affords us opportunities, particular instants, to focus on making the best choice possible. These liminal moments are like sign posts designed to stand out against the ordinary
passage of time. Weddings, b’nai mitzvah and other life cycle events, Shabbat and Jewish holidays each force us to fight the inertia of everyday living. Yom Kippur, too, is one of those moments. It is a day on which to pause and reflect, a brief intermission near the beginning of the emerging year to contemplate our mortality. Heschel may be right that God, a soul and a moment are “always present,” but to loosely paraphrase Orwell: ‘Some moments are more present than others.” Rav Rehumi learned this lesson well as he sat on the roof in Babylonia, absorbed in his studies and neglecting his spouse. The beauty of the passage, the tear falling, the roof collapsing, the haunting and elegant symmetry of the story remind us that Yom Kippur is not just any day of the year. On this day we pray to be inscribed in the book of life while that other book looms in the corner of our minds. In other words, Yom Kippur is perhaps the quintessential liminal moment because it forces us to truly confront our mortality. And this is no small task, especially when we, so many of us, are afraid to die.

The fear of dying has prompted numerous responses, not the least which is to quell our anxiety through humor. I found one website with 213 euphemisms for death and dying. Here are some of my favorites: In addition to usual ones like, “he bought the farm,” or “she kicked the bucket,”
there is she’s “sleeping with the fishes, cooking for the Kennedy’s, joining the majority. He’s left the building, mailing in his warranty, pushing daisies, wearing concrete galoshes (Sapranos fans?), or appropriate in the computer age: “been reformatted by God.” We chuckle when we hear that Mark Twain once remarked, “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated” or that Oscar Wilde proclaimed on his deathbed: “It’s either the wallpaper or me. One of us has to go.” Of course we joke about death because it’s our way of coping with the reality of it. Raise your hand if you work in the health care industry [Look up]. When I was doing hospital chaplaincy during rabbinical school, I was amazed to find that nurses and doctors have incredibly dark senses of humor. Of course it makes sense: how else does one witness what you witness each day and keep your sanity? But when we (any of us) make fun, how often are we coping with the reality of death as opposed to disconnecting ourselves from that reality? Are there those of us who are simply in denial?

The Denial of Death, of course, was the title Ernest Becker’s Pulitzer Prize winning book in which he argues that the fear of dying is perhaps the primary force driving the human condition. The psychiatrist, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, puts it this way: “It is the denial of death that is partially responsible for people living empty purposeless lives; for when you live as if you’ll live forever, it becomes easy to postpone the things you must do. You live your life in preparation for tomorrow or in remembrance of yesterday, and meanwhile, each day is lost. In contrast, when you fully understand that each day you awaken could be the last you have; you take the time that day
to grow, to become more of who you really are, to reach out to other human beings.” It is not the Jewish way to deny death. Our tradition recognizes death as the necessary antecedent to life. And yet, even our sages grappled with their own anxieties about death. Rav Nachman once related that the moment of dying itself is as painless as “removing a hair from a cup of milk.” The fear of death though, he explained, is eminently more painful (Talmud, Moed Katan 28a). But one day, one extended moment, each year, we stare death in the face. Yom Kippur forces us to confront the reality of death, that today may truly be our last on this earth.

In point of fact, Yom Kippur is more than a reminder of death, it is a dress rehearsal. We fast, the dead have no need for sustenance. Sex, too, is a luxury of the living. We avoid pampering ourselves with life’s usual trappings: leather shoes, perfumes and long hot showers. Even our clothing changes. The traditional garment of Yom Kippur is the kittel. [Blum: And
for any of you who walked into shul today and thought: why is the rabbi wearing a bathrobe, now you know]. The notion of wearing white on the High Holy Days probably derives from Isaiah who encourages (1:18): “Be your sins like crimson, they can turn snow-white; be they red as dyed wool, they can become like fleece.” And Daniel, after three weeks of Yom Kippur-like abstentions, sees a vision of an angel [man] in linen garments (Dan. 10:5). Of course, the Torah tells us that the High Priest wore white, linen garments when he entered the Holy of Holies. White, then,
exemplifies our hope and prayer: to wash away our sins, to aspire, even, toward an angelic state of being.

But the kittel is more than just a white garment, a symbol of purity. Traditionally speaking, a Jewish man is married and buried in his kittel. It is the ultimate representation of the liminal, the profound transitional moment where we cease to be exactly what we once were and move into the next stage of our existence. And this is certainly true for one’s wedding day. When we marry, a part of us in fact dies. We give up, not the fact of ourselves, but our function as mere individuals. We become joined to another human being and begin life anew as a partner in that sacred trust. It is no accident, then, that the day of one’s wedding has much in common with Yom Kippur: many brides and grooms abstain from eating and say Viddui, the confessional prayer. They immerse in the mikvah as did the High Priest in the Temple, as do many Jews today before the Day of
Repentance.

For me, though, wearing this kittel is not simply a dress rehearsal for dying. It bears the memory of a death, a moment that clings to this garment along with other equally powerful memories of dancing and blessings and breaking the glass. In the year before we were married, Miriam served as rabbinic intern at the Jewish Home for the Aged in San Francisco. I managed to find a gig teaching music at a synagogue in the bay area, and approximately once a month we would fly north together for the weekend. On Shabbat, we would spend time visiting the residents of the home and that’s when we met Harold and Louise. Louise was a sweet older lady from whom disease had taken each of her limbs. A quadruple amputee, this fact was never evident in her demeanor. Pleasant as a breezy autumn day, you’dnever know that each day brought new challenges to her health. Harold was a slender gentleman with a full head of silver hair. He always dressed in a button-down shirt, slacks and a bolo tie and was the consummate gentleman.
He was utterly devoted to Louise, standing or sitting by her bedside throughout the day. They had no children, no other family, so Miriam and I would make a special point of visiting them on our weekends at the home. Sometimes I would bring my guitar and sing some Jewish songs. Once, on
Rosh Hashanah, we came to their room to blow shofar.

The first time that I wore this kittel was June 23rd, 2002. I had not seen my bride all day, and then there she was in all her radiant beauty. It was the first of many times that I cried that day. I remember, after the badekken (the veiling) and ketubbah signing, standing with the wedding party as we were about to walk down the aisle. Miriam leaned over to me and whispered, “I got a call this morning from Rabbi Marder at the Home. Harold and Louise both died today, within a few hours of one another.” On the same day that Miriam and I were to enter into a life-long partnership, Harold and Louise entered into eternity. The tears welled up again and we shared a knowing moment. No more words were needed, and I’m sure we both prayed as we walked down that aisle, for the rare privilege of meeting death together, in old age, just like Harold and Louise. The author of Song of Songs (8:6) writes that “love is as strong as death.” Perhaps it is only in death that the strength of our love can truly be known.

As I learned on my wedding day, liminal moments are not simply about where we’re going or where we’re coming from. Our tradition recognizes that as we contemplate transitioning from one phase of life to the next, we are challenged to look beyond the moment. It is my contention, then, that Yom Kippur is a paradigmatic example of a larger trend in our tradition. The role of the liminal moment, is to draw our eye outward and upward, to challenge us as we stand on the threshold of a new day, holiday or lifecycle event, to see beyond the moment into eternity.

Examples abound. Indeed, one of my favorite prayers is Birkat Hachodesh which announces each month before the New Moon. The prayer begins topically enough: “Yehi Ratzon milfanecha, May it be Your will, Lord our God and God of our ancestors, to reawaken in us joy and blessing in the month ahead.” But before you know it, we are off and running: “Grant us long life, a peaceful life with goodness and blessing, sustenance and physical vitality; a life of reverence and piety…” and so on and so forth. What began as a wish for the coming month quickly morphs into a hope and prayer for so much more.

But nowhere is this phenomenon, the expansive liminal moment, more evident than in the person of Eliyahu HaNavi. The Elijah of the Bible is a fire and brimstone prophet, drawing down God’s vengeance and dodging bullets in a constant cat and mouse game with the wicked Queen Jezebel.
But the rabbinic version of Eliyahu plays a very different role. My teacher Joel Grishaver likens the Elijah stories from the Talmud and Midrash to stories about Elvis Presley: “I was down on my luck. My wife left me. I started drinkin’ and then Elvis showed up and saved me.” Unlike the rest of humankind, except for Elvis of course, Elijah never dies; he is carried up to heaven in a whirlwind. Elijah, then, is the exception that proves the rule: Elijah doesn’t die to remind us that the rest of us do. And Elijah challenges us to overcome our fear of death by demonstrating that there is something to look forward to after we’ve shuffled off the mortal coil. And it is this Elijah, the one who lives eternally, shuttling back and forth from heaven, whom weinvoke at key Jewish transitional moments.

Five liturgical moments stand out for their references to Elijah the Prophet, particularly for his role in bringing about messianic redemption. Notice, then, that every instance at which Elijah appears is meant to bring us through and beyond the moment, to help us discover a grander purpose, greater possibilities. At every bris, we invoke Elijah’s presence through Kiseh Eliyahu, the chair of Elijah. The baby boy is placed on this special chair and twice the mohel or rabbi recites the phrase, “sibarti lishuatch HaShem,” “I await your deliverance, O Lord.” At Pesach, too, we ask for God’s deliverance. We place a cup of wine, the Cup of Elijah, on our seder tables. We recite the passage from Malachi (3:24): “Hinei Anochi sholeach bachem et Eliyah haNavi lifnei bo yom Hashem hagadol v’hanorah,” “Here, I will send you Elijah the Prophet before the Lord’s great and awesome
day.” Then we sing: “Eliyahu HaNavi,” and offer our prayer that the herald of the messiah will come soon to fulfill his destiny. On Passover, when we recall the moment of our deliverance from Egypt, from slavery to freedom and into the service of God, we look forward to an even greater deliverance – that of all of humanity from war, hunger and oppression.

At Havdalah, too, we sing Eliyahu HaNavi. As the sun dips low on the horizon and Shabbat begins to slip from world once again, we mark the transition with a ceremony of separation. Shabbat, at its best, is meant to be me’ein olam haba, offering us a foretaste of the world to come. Havdalah
signifies the hope that this is not a distant dream but a soon approaching reality. The modern liturgical poet, Rabbi Naomi Levy, can’t help but look beyond a given Saturday evening to the promise of a different tomorrow. She writes, “As the Holy darkness descends upon me, I offer this prayer to You, my God. May the peace and the holiness which I feel this night remain
with me always. May my fears give way to faith and may my pain soon give way to laughter. And may the lessons of the darkness fill my days with awe so that I may learn to experience You, my God, all the days and nights of my life.” What would our weeks be like if we ended every Shabbat with these words? How often to we engage the moment before it drifts away?

Even at the more frequent moments, the conclusion of our daily meals, do we call on Elijah. We chant, “HaRachaman, hu yishlach lanu, et Eliyahu Hanavi,” “May the Merciful One send Elijah the Prophet who will bring us good tidings of deliverance and comfort.” Eating is one of those things
which we can so easily take for granted. But, our Jewish tradition asks us not to, to mark this moment as an opportunity to thank and praise the One who made eating possible in the first place. Indeed, Birkat Hamazon has been called the “kitchen sink prayer,” a once brief benediction which has snowballed to include prayers for life, mercy, health, kindness and success.

But, the fifth instance of beckoning to Elijah speaks directly to our experience of Yom Kippur, and it is found at the conclusion of Neilah. Having made it through the day, the fasting, the five recitations of the shmoneh esrei, (more than any other day of the year), having beaten our breasts and asked for forgiveness and permission to renew our lives once more, we close the ark at long last and prepare to conclude the Days of Awe. But before the final shofar blast is sounded, we call out seven times: “Hashem, Hu haElohim,” “The Lord alone is God!” This proclamation is
found originally in First Kings (18:38-39). Elijah has just defeated the priests of Baal, the fire of the Lord descends and consumes the prophet’s burnt offering despite its having been drenched in water. We are told, “When they saw this, all the people flung themselves on their faces and cried
out: ‘Hashem, Hu haElohim,’ ‘The Lord alone is God! The Lord alone is God!’” Thus, at the conclusion of this, the holiest day of the year, we stand in the breach and call out to the Eternal One. At a moment, the moment, when we might otherwise be focused simply on saving ourselves, we invoke the memory of the prophet for whom each liminal instance is pregnant with possibility. The taste of messianic deliverance on our tongues, we enter a new year with the potential to blossom as individuals, as a people and as a society.

Two years ago, Anshe Emet launched a new funeral plan. Our hope was and is to respond as a community to our congregants in their most difficult moments. This year, we are adding an additional piece: a Chevra Kaddisha, a Jewish burial society. This is one of the most ancient and holy Jewish tasks and I am truly grateful to Dr. Harold Zarkowsky for his leadership and vision. Our rabbis regard burying the dead as the utmost kindness, chesed shel emet, because it is the only mitzvah which cannot be reciprocated; it is done purely out of love and respect. The Chevra Kaddisha is a sacred trust, a group of men and women who do not flaunt their membership publicly, but wait in the wings, content to do the necessary work of preparing a body for burial – they bathe the deceased, dress him or her in a kittel and other garments, and place the body into the casket for burial. Men work with men, women work with women. If you think that this challenging but immensely gratifying work might be for you, I would encourage you to join us for an informational meeting and learning session on Sunday, November 4th. See my article in this month’s bulletin for more information, or place your sticker in the appropriate space at the “Pledge Kiosk” before you leave tonight/today. No matter what, we hope that when, God forbid, it becomes necessary to bury a loved one, you will call on our Chevra. Kol Yisrael aravim zeh bazeh, say our Sages, “All Jews are responsible for one another.” Tonight as we look death in the face, as each of us grapples with the inevitable transition from this world to the next, we are reminded that we are not alone.

Among the most beautiful customs of the taharah, the ritual purification of a body, is the moment at which members of the burial society ask the deceased to forgive them for any inadvertent wrongs they may have committed during their preparations. Gathered around the body, having just placed him or her into the kittel and tied it for the last time, this is no dress rehearsal. Rather it is the ultimate liminal moment and denial of death is nowhere to be found. Rabbi Eliezer enjoins us: “Repent one day before your death” (Avot 2:15), to which his students ask, “But does one know the day of his death?” He explains, “Let him repent each day lest he die on the morrow.” For Rav Rehumi it was too late; sitting on that roof in Babylonia he never came to understand that the books we study are for the sake of the people we love, not the other way around. But for us this is hardly the case – we know what life, what our relationships demand of us. We know that the Kadosh Baruch Hu wants us to repent and live. The passage in the
Hagadah (from Malachi) that I mentioned earlier, the one that begins, “Here, I will send you Elijah the Prophet before the Lord’s great and awesome day,” does not end there. It continues: “He will reconcile the hearts of parents to their children and children to their parents…” (3:24). Elijah may represent the expansiveness of God, the eternal redemption inherent in the advent of mashiach, but it is not with these thing that we must begin. We begin, of course, with the moment.

There is a story (“The Touch of a Master’s Hand,” from Chicken Soup for the Soul) about an auctioneer that is desperately trying to auction off a scarred and battered old violin. The bidding starts with a mere $1 and is about to be closed at $3. Suddenly, at the last moment before the gavels falls, an older man shuffles forward from the back of the room and begins to play. And the most beautiful music pours out of that instrument. When the bidding finally closes, the violin has sold for $3,000. The human soul is like an unplayed violin. We are ever in danger of not recognizing our true potential. But Yom Kippur reminds us that if we are willing to look closer,
there is beautiful music to be played. And if there ever was a moment, this is it! We stand together today before God, bearing our souls as one community, concentrating on those things that we can do better, those relationships worth improving in the coming year. “God, a Soul and a Moment.” As Heschel observed, the three are always present. The question is, where will we be once the moment has passed?

Shana Tova, Shabbat Shalom. May we each be inscribed for good in the coming year.