Yizkor/Neila 5785
You can listen to Rabbi Deborah's sermon here or read it below.
We’re nearly there, we’re in a new year, we’re working our way towards the end of a day of introspection, of deep commitment to change. We’ve been honest, maybe even painfully so, about how hard things feel, how much we need the new, the hopeful, the different.
My colleague Rabbi Benny Minich pointed out that, because of a quirk in the Hebrew and Gregorian calendars, there hasn’t been been a Yom Kippur between the 7th of October last year and this one.
How amazing would it be to imagine that this day could cleanse us of the horrors that have taken place between last Yom Kippur and this one? Maybe even retreating into this time together has made that feel possible, or at least has restored our sense that something different, something better, might be ahead.
So what happens when we go back out there, turn on our TVs, open our phones, argue over the break-fast table this evening, and realise that the world hasn’t changed?
This afternoon we read the story of Jonah, who sees the people of Nineveh embrace change overnight, when he had no idea it was possible. I guess that was so memorable, so remarkable, that we’ve been telling the story for generations.
The truth is, you can’t make others change that quickly, that’s why it’s such an exceptional tale. Maybe we like it because we like the idea that the problems that others present to us can go away in a flash- after all we wouldn't need to change our ways if others could just accomodate our reality. But if we listen to the story carefully, we’re reminded the protagonist is Jonah, not the Ninevans. The story isn’t about changing others, it’s about changing ourselves.
We’re Israel. We were reminded of that last night by Cantor Zöe, people who wrestle. We get our name yisra’el from Jacob’s wrestling with the angel.
I want to take you into that moment for a minute...
Jacob is alone in the camp, on his way to meet his brother Esau. He encounters a ‘man’ who our tradition understands to be an angel, and he wrestles with this being and when the dawn is about to break he says “I won’t let you go until you bless me”
And the angel says to him “No longer will your name be Jacob but from now your name will be Israel because you have fought with human beings and with angels and survived.”
And then Jacob lets go.
Without his blessing.
Rabbi David Wolpe asks*- why does Jacob let the angel go?
"Because the angel gives him a gift greater than a blessing, he tells him he doesn’t have to be who he was, he tells him he can change. He’s struggled, and he’s survived."
The story contains a paradox. Jacob was alone in the camp, and yet he wrestled with a man- an אִישׁ ish in Hebrew.
How is that possible? He couldn’t be both alone and yet with a man.
Whilst the angel is a convenient answer, it’s not the only one Jewish tradition gives us. For some say that the angel was never really there, that Jacob wrestled with the only אִישׁ ish, the only man there- with himself.
And this, says Rabbi Wolpe, is. . ‘why the next day Jacob can go out and meet Esau, his twin, and make peace.’
If only everyone had that אִישׁ ish, to give them the ability to overcome the things that stand in their way. It is so so so easy to look at everything that is awful in the world, the hostility, the coldness, the inhumanity, and wonder what’s the point. To survive in a harsh world we have to become like that world.
But I’m reminded of the words of pirke Avot:
בְמָקוֹם שֶׁאֵין אֲנָשִׁים, הִשְׁתַּדֵּל לִהְיוֹת אִישׁ
b'makom she'ein anashim, hishtadel lihiyot ISH
In a place where there is no humanity, strive to be human.
That word ish is the same world that is used for the person who Jacob wrestled with.
Here's a little midrash for this Yom Kippur. In a place where there is no humanity, strive to be an ish, a changemaker. May we struggle to overcome the temptation to become part of what’s wrong, to resign ourselves to survival by assimilation to the worst of human tendencies. Jacob wrestled and he rose above his capacity for cruelty. The blessing was his to bestow on himself, to believe that he could change, could free himself from the person he no longer wanted to be. He didn’t need someone else’s permission.
A question for you as we enter this chapter of the new year- are you able to be that ish for yourself? To give yourself the gift of change, to know that you don’t want or need to wait for the world to become a warmer or kinder or better place to decide that you would like to be those things? Are we able to look at our world which feels at times like a place where there is little humanity, and strive to bring more of it in.
And can you, can we imagine, that others too have the capacity to change, to become people we can make peace with, overcome our demons with, and like Jacob and his brother, to build a future with?
Music 'if not now' Carrie Newcomer
---
*This sermon is published inside Emma Forrest's memoir 'your voice in my head' https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8603925-your-voice-in-my-head
