“Finding Ourselves”

Rosh Hashanah 5765/2004
Rabbi Jeremy Barras

In Lake Wales, Florida, by the singing tower, there is a bench beside a quiet pool of water. On the back of that bench there is an inscription, “I come here to find myself. It is so easy to get lost in the world.” Perhaps one of our greatest dangers we face today is getting lost in the world that we live in.
 
Archibald Mac Leish once stated during the Cold War, “We are prosperous, lively, successful, inventive, diligent – but nevertheless and notwithstanding, something is wrong and we know it. The trouble seems to be that we do not feel right with ourselves or with our country.” Still today his words ring true – although rather than blame our problems on the Communists, we today must deal with a relatively new disease called “global terrorism.” But is everything that pains our society a result of the terrorists who lurk within the cracks of our world’s infrastructure? In reality, it is not just our enemies that threaten our spiritual and emotional well being, it’s also ourselves. It’s the way we feel about ourselves as Americans. And perhaps even the way we feel about ourselves as Jews. We feel that we have lost our way in the woods and that we do not know where we are going – if anywhere.

Today the diagnoses of our national malady is that America has gotten lost in the world. But when we move from the American scene to the Jewish scene the problem is no less acute. For us as American Jews it is so easy to get lost in the world. Not too long ago in our history our major problem in America was that Jews did not want to perpetuate their identity. Judaism was associated with the old world. It was something foreign, something to be shed and discarded. There was a broader conscious and deliberate process of assimilation. Many of our people felt that they would solve the Jewish problem by dissolving the Jews. In short, they wanted to get lost in the world.

Then came the Nazi inferno that underscored the futility of escape as a solution. In quick order there followed the disenchantment with Communism that was revealed in all its moral and spiritual nakedness. Jewish loyalties long dormant were quickened by the rebirth of the State of Israel. And here in America, the end of World War II was marked by a growing religious consciousness. All of these had their profound impact on the Jew. Together they served to reverse the trend away from Jewish life and brought back to the fold many who had been on their way out. Jewish life in America has since flourished mightily in the last five decades.

Synagogues, Jewish schools and Jewish organizations are alive with numerous activities and programs. Yet from all of these signs of robust good health, for all our affirmation of our “Jewishness” and our desire to perpetuate it, students of the Jewish scene are deeply apprehensive about our spiritual future in this land of freedom. Why exactly do they raise concerns for our future? Because observation has taught them that it is possible to build synagogues and stay away from them, to pay lip service to a tradition and disregard it, to extol the heritage and remain unfamiliar with it. The Mishnah teaches that the First Holy Temple was destroyed because the Jewish people brought offerings to other gods. Even in the time of the Great Temple with all its majesty and splendor, the Jewish people demonstrated a proclivity towards straying from the institutions that are meant to safeguard and enhance their sacred traditions.
Earnest observers question our future as Jews because they see beneath the surface a dilution of the contents of Judaism, a slow but steady process of attrition eating away at the vitals of Jewish life. And that process endangers the American Jew of being stripped completely of his uniqueness – it allows him to get lost in the world in which he lives.

The problem of getting lost in the world is one that not only confronts us as American Jews and as Jews, but also as human beings. It is frightfully easy to get lost in the world. Life, like a careless laundry man, has a way of shrinking our ideals and hopes and bleaching the color out of our principles and values.
We come into maturity carrying the banner of youthful enthusiasm and noble goals only to suffer what the poet Shelley called the “contagion of the world’s slow stain.” There is a story entitled the Colonel’s Lady that sharply makes this point.

The wife of a rather self-satisfied English colonel suddenly achieves fame by writing a book in which she tells of her tragic loss of a great love. This exposes her husband to ridicule among their friends and he angrily confronts his wife and demands that she tell him who was the last secret lover of whom she writes so tenderly. At first she refuses, but when the colonel persists and even threatens her with violence, she breaks down and confesses; “You were that lover. You, when we were first married. When you were a wonderful, noble idealistic young man filled with lofty principles and noble visions - the man with whom I fell in love. But that young man died long ago. All I have left now is you, as you have become – a successful man as the world measures it, but a man without integrity or decency, a man for whom I have lost all respect – a man whom I can no longer love.”

We feel for that wife, we suffer for that Colonel. He has achieved success, but in the process got lost in the world. He has become infected by “the contagion of the world’s slow stain.” Who among us has been inoculated against this infection? Who can hear this story without drawing some painful personal parallels?

There is no single explanation why we get lost in the world, but surely one of the most persuasive reasons in our time is the addiction to the worship of success, the insatiable hunger for things, the sole consuming preoccupation with status. These things combine to blur our vision. They throw our sense of values out of focus. They tempt us to blink at the truth of an old proverb that teaches us that he who sacrifices conscience to ambition burns the picture to obtain the ashes. They cause us to confuse a man’s worth with his wealth, his stature and his status. We forget that what a man is infinitely more significant than what a man has.

In the bleak and dreary winter of 1929 there gathered around a conference table in Chicago’s Edgewater nine men who were beyond question the most successful industrialists of the time. The fortunes of at least one half of the world’s population hung upon their decisions. These nine men were Charles Schwab, President of the world’s largest steel empire; Samuel Insull, president of the world’s largest public utilities combine; Howard Hopson, president of the world’s largest gas company; Arthur Cutten, president of the world’s most powerful wheat speculator; Jessie Livermore, the biggest bear on Wall St.; Ivan Kreger, director of the world’s largest monopoly; Albert Fall, cabinet member of the Untied States; Richard Whitney, president of the New York Stock Exchange, and Leon Fraser, president of the bank of international settlements.

Twenty-five years later, Schwab was dead a bankrupt. Insull was a penniless fugitive from justice. Hopson went insane. Cutten died insolvent abroad. Livermore committed suicide. So did Kreger. Fall was in jail. Whitney just got out of jail. Fraser too committed suicide.

It is so easy to get lost in the world, and because it is, we Jews come here on the High Holy Days to the synagogue to find ourselves. For us, the synagogue pew is our bench by the quiet pool. For the quiet pool we substitute the life giving waters of our Torah and our tradition. If we are to find ourselves we must look at that which is greater than ourselves toward the Divine. This is the true significance of our prayer, “Remember us unto life, O King, who desires life and ascribes us in the Book of Life, a life lived for Thy sake.” We find ourselves when we discover that we are children of God who gave us life and entrusted it into our care. On this Day of Atonement we submit our lives to the judgment of God.

And as we prostrate before God we commit as well to searching wholeheartedly to find ourselves. As Americans, we shall see that our country will only find itself when she discovers the sources of her power and her greatness. Our faith must remind us that the strength of America is not her missiles, or submarines, or nuclear arsenal. America’s greatness does not lie in the number of its wealthy families, its superhighways, its mega shopping malls, or its security surveillance systems. The true essence of America’s greatness lies in her ideals, her passionate belief in the quality of men, the sacredness of each man. America’s greatness lies in her extraordinary capacity to share her extravagant bounty with the hungry of the earth, the poor, the naked and the homeless. America’s greatness lies in her ability to champion the cause of morality and justice both at home and abroad without considering the cost. In its finest moments, our country has known the truth of our Bible, “righteousness exalts a nation but sin is a reproach to any people.”

If we American Jews are not to get lost in the world we will have to take our Judaism seriously. Casual Jews too often become Jewish casualties. Taking Judaism seriously involves more than financial responsibility to the synagogue or other Jewish charities. It is not only a question of giving. It is also a matter of taking, taking what is rightfully ours, what a hundred generations of Jews have accumulated for us to enjoy.

I remember a few years ago I was at a Hanukah party at the home of a family who had several small children. When it became time to light the Hanukah candles, the father noticed that the children were not in the room. He looked up at his wife and said, “Where are the children? The only reason we are doing this is for them?” Certainly this is not the way we transmit the glorious heritage of our people to future generations. Even with small children, our true motives will ultimately be revealed in their eyes.

The performance and observance of our tradition cannot be accomplished with lackadaisical or insincere gestures. Rather, being Jewish demands emotion and authenticity. It means enjoying the rest and liberation from enslavement to the world that Shabbat offers weekly. It means enriching our homes with the poetry and pageantry of Jewish observance. It means anchoring our lives against the storms of the future with the faith of the Psalmist, “The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? `The Lord is the fortress of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?” Taking Judaism seriously means engaging in the most uniquely Jewish discipline – the study of Torah. Let us resolve to make sure by our personal commitments and actions throughout the year that we shall not get lost in the world.

We have become human beings who are so easily diverted from the high road of life to its back alleyways and backyards. These missteps are what we seek to correct on this Holy New Year. But even more so, this is a day to repair what has been broken, to retrace the steps that have gone astray, to undo the wrongs that we do to others and to ourselves.

And above all, this is the Day which whispers in each of us with divine insistence – your primary duty is to find yourself, do not get lost in the world!

Many years ago my grandfather delivered the following prayer on behalf of his is congregation:

Eloheinu v’Elohei Avoteinu – Our God and God of our ancestors:
On the gateway to a new year we have come before Your presence to seek you – and in seeking You seek ourselves. Above the din of a noisy world speak to us with the still, small voice of our spirit; if our lives have become shallow, deepen them; if our principles have become shabby, repair them; if our ideals have become tarnished, restore them; if our hopes have become faded, revive them; if our loyalties have become dim, brighten them; if our values have become confused, clarify them; if our horizons have become contracted, widen them – Be the North Star of our lives and may the compass of our conscience help us to steer an honorable course. Keep us O God, for our boat is small and the ocean is so very wide.

Kein Yehi Ratzon – Let it be God’s Will.

Amen