“L’chaim – To Life”

Yom Kippur 5765/2004
Rabbi Judith Schindler

When I was a student rabbi, I was given an unusual opportunity. I was working as a Chaplain Intern at New York Hospital and was invited to observe open heart surgery. With some trepidation, I accepted the offer.

The night before the surgery I could not sleep. I imagined myself fainting at the sight of blood. I saw myself passing out and disrupting the doctors. In order to calm down and be prepared, I even tried watching the surgery channel on cable television, but to no avail, I still could not sleep. The next morning I woke up early, got to the hospital, put on doctor’s scrubs, and entered the operating room.

Had I known what I was to see I would not have been anxious. For what I saw on that day was nothing short of a miracle. I watched hour after hour as the surgeon operated on a patient’s heart, painstakingly applying veins taken from his leg, thus enabling his life to be extended.

Several days later, as I was visiting other patients on the cardiology floor I suddenly saw that very patient, whose open heart surgery I had witnessed slowly making his way down the hall. I was awestruck, amazed that a body could go through such a traumatic surgery focused on a person’s most vital organ, and in just days, the body had begun to heal.

There are times, such as these, when the human body’s swift ability to heal inspires immense awe. And then there are the times when the healing process is far slower and tests our relationships, our patience, and our faith.

When our physical heart is ailing, we know where to go… to the best cardiologist we can find. But when our souls or spirits are wounded and in need of renewal, many of us are at a loss. Some of us suffer in silence, others turn to psychotherapy or to books of self-help, but for all of us, this night of Kol Nidre can provide a path towards healing. The goal of Yom Kippur is to move towards wholeness: to look deep within ourselves and to acknowledge the ways in which our hearts are torn, to fix what can be fixed, and to put back the pieces so that can create lives of beauty.

Just as an EKG can reveal the damage done to our physical hearts, our liturgy unveils the wounds that have scarred our spirits in the year that has gone by. The confessional prayer we just uttered reminds of the ways that we have both wronged and been victims of wrong.

We have hurt and been hurt by selfishness, stubbornness, insensitivity and anger. In the silence of this sanctuary we confront our pain. Some of us have been devastated by death, by divorce, or by the diagnosis of an illness. Some of us have unfulfilled yearnings: to conceive a child, to attain a meaningful job, to find a soul mate with whom to share our lives. For many of us, the days of this past year have been long and difficult to endure.

Our Orthodox brothers and sisters find meaning in their suffering. The Talmud teaches that it was only through suffering that Israel obtained three priceless and coveted gifts: the Torah, the Land of Israel, and the world to Come. The Zohar added, “Suffering befalls a righteous man on account of God’s love for him. God crushes his body to strengthen his soul.”

This past summer, I spoke at an uptown church about the history of Judaism. After the lecture which captured our moments of persecution, one parishioner raised her hand and asked, “Tell me Rabbi, does your people find meaning in their suffering?”

At first I was taken aback, “What purpose could we possibly find in persecution?” Yet quickly my mind grasped the questioner’s intention. In having watched Gibson’s offensively violent film, “The Passion of the Christ,” I learned that there are Christians who glean profound religious messages from suffering. As Christians encounter life’s inevitable adversities, many identify with the pain and passion of their religious leader.

Unlike our Christian neighbors or even unlike our Orthodox brothers and sisters, as a liberal Jew, I challenge this notion. For I find no meaning in suffering. Our experience of being broken is simply part of life’s path. We are not chosen to confront pain. As I told that woman from the church, “The lessons we learn from adversity are not from the suffering itself, but from continuing to carry on. We find God through our journey to wholeness. “

We find God as we confront our brokenness and put back the pieces. We find God as we embrace the lives we have. And we find God as we reach out in compassion to one another.

The story is told of Michelangelo’s statue of David – a world-renowned masterpiece. Michelangelo carved that famous figure out of a block of marble ruined by the sculptor Agostino Di Duccio. Agostino felt he failed when he cut too large a slice out of the side. One hundred years later, Michelangelo caught sight of that stone and saw that possibilities within. That marble block considered ruined by one sculptor, was redeemed by another.

Like that sculpture, the broken pieces of our own lives can similarly be restored. The Kotzker Rebbe taught, “The only whole heart is a broken one.” Failure enables us to appreciate success. Despair makes us more sensitive to those who are struggling. Difficult times give us a strength and faith we never knew before.

Rabbi Lynne Landsberg, a rabbi, whom I have always admired, was in a near fatal accident five years ago. You may remember that we read her name before the Mi Sheberach for many months. As she was driving her son to religious school on a wintry Sunday morning, her car skidded out of control on a patch of ice. While her son fortunately escaped injury, Rabbi Landsberg was thrown into a coma for six weeks. For the next two and a half years, she would require twenty-four hour care. The nurses were her hands, her fingers, her brain. I was touched when she told me last year, that the first time she ever traveled alone, was to my father’s funeral in November of 2000.

In a recent issue of Reform Judaism magazine, Lynne wrote about her experience. She explained that before the accident she was the queen of multitasking. In the morning before departing for work, she would listen to messages, feed her cats, and dress her son. On the drive to the office, she would return phone calls and dictate letters and speeches on her secretary’s voice mail.

“I no longer can do a hundred things at once;” she now explains, “I can do only one thing at a time. I am no longer out in the world as Lynne Landsberg, the rabbi or the regional director or the social action expert; I am mostly in my kitchen just learning how to be a functioning human being.”

As Lynne slowly returns to the rabbinate and reflects on her journey to wholeness, she notes that refuat haguf, the healing of her body, has come more quickly than refuat hanefesh, the healing of her soul. “My continued healing,” she wrote, “is dependent on my emotional ability to mourn the old Lynne Landsberg and to embrace the slowly developing skills of the new Lynne Landsberg. No longer do I measure my successes by comparing them to my former achievements. It cannot be a matter of what I have lost, but what I have gained: an understanding of how much good is in each and every day and each and every person.”
As we confront our losses, many of which pale in comparison, we, too, must not constantly elevate what was, but instead we must come to celebrate what is. Like Rabbi Landsberg, despite our pain, we must celebrate the good in each day.

Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen tells the story of when her grandfather gave her a first kiddush cup when she was just a child. He taught her to say the toast, “L’chaim -- to life.”

“Is it to a happy life, Grandpa?” she asked him.

“No, it is just to life! Neshuma-le, my sweet soul. “

“Is it like a prayer?”

“Ah no,” he told her. “We pray for things we don’t have. We already have life.”

“Is it written in the Bible, Grandpa?”

“No, Neshume-le,” he said, “It is written in people’s hearts. L’chaim! Means that no matter what difficulty life brings, no matter how hard or painful or unfair life is, life is holy and worthy of celebration.”

This same message is given in tomorrow morning’s Torah reading. God warns us that even in the Promised Land we will encounter battles. Even in the land of our destiny, we will face hardship. Yet even so, God wants us to hold fast to what we have.

“Hachayim v’hamavet natati lifanechah – Life and death, I place before you,” God says, “Blessing and curse, u’vachartah bachayim -- choose life.”

The lesson of our people’s history is not in our persecution but in our perseverance. Whether in the midst of celebrations of independence or in confronting poverty and pogroms our people have chosen life. They have lifted their cups and said, “L’chaim.”

As we confront our personal pain we must do the same. Even though our life circumstances might not be easy or ideal, on this day of Yom Kippur, we affirm that we, too, continue to choose life.

Our healing on this day can come from hearing our people’s history of perseverance, our healing can come from seeing the strength of others who have walked paths of hardship, and lastly, our healing can come from the hands and hearts of those around us.

The Talmud teaches, “Just as a prisoner cannot free himself from jail, so does one who is ill need others to free him from his pain.” The rabbis of old who were healers and could cure illness could not heal their own selves, nor can we. We need others to help us heal. When in despair, we need others to listen to us, to lift us from our sadness, and to reach out to us with compassion.

Because there is no better place of healing than within community, Temple Beth El has recently created the Susan Kramer Healing Center, named in memory of the late wife of our beloved past Executive Director. This center will enable those who feel broken to find wholeness through groups of support, through services of healing, through spirituality, and most of all through connections with others.

Through the doors of this Healing Center you will find people who care, people who share your pain, who have walked the journey you are walking through death or divorce or illness. There will be parenting groups for parents of kids of all ages – because parenting a child through the terrible twos or through the tumultuous teens and into adulthood can be stressful.

It is my hope that throughout the years, with your input, this healing center will grow and evolve to meet the changing and diverse needs of our community. And it is my prayer that many of you will support the programs – not just because you need healing, but because you want to help others heal along the way.

We need one another to heal. This truth was evident even during our darkest day of our history – during the Holocasut. The story is told of a cold night in a Ukranian work camp, when suddenly the prisoners were called to evacuate their barracks. Any person remaining would be shot.

There was immediate pandemonium as people pushed their ways through the doors screaming the names of their relatives and friends. They ran towards the darkened field, where before them stood two huge pits.

A harsh and cold voice pierced the air, “Each of you dogs who values his miserable life and wants to cling to it must jump over one of the pits and land on the other side. Those who miss will get what they rightfully deserve.”

It was clear to the inmates that they all would end up in the pits. Among the thousands of Jews on that Ukranian field was Rabbi Israel Spira. He was standing with a friend he had met in the camp -- a free thinker with whom he had developed a deep friendship.

“Spira, all of your efforts to jump over the pits are in vain.” The friend said, “We only entertain the Germans and their collaborators. Let us sit down in the pits and wait for the bullets to end our wretched existence.”

“My friend,” said the Rabbi, “One must obey the will of God. If it was decreed from heaven that pits be dug and we are commanded to jump, pits will be dug and jump we must. And if God forbid we fall into the pits, a second later we will reach the World-to-Come.”

The Rabbi glanced down at his feet, the swollen feet of a starved and diseased fifty three year old man. He looked at his young friend, a skeleton with burning eyes. As they reached the pit, the Rabbi closed his eyes and commanded in a powerful whisper, “We are jumping!”

When they opened their eyes, they found themselves standing on the other side.
“Spira, we are here, we are alive!” the friend called out. “For your sake I am alive; indeed there must be a God in heaven. Tell me, Rebbe, how did you do it?”

“I was holding on to my ancestral merit. I was holding on to the coattails of my father and mother, and my grandparents and my great grandparents of blessed memory,” said the Rabbi, his eyes filled with tears. “Tell me, my friend, how did you reach the other side of the pit?”

The Rabbi’s friend replied, “I was holding on to you.”

No matter what trials we face, we too can cross over the pits before us by holding on to one another. While we cannot stop our hearts from being broken, we can put back the pieces and become stronger. We can learn from the generations who came before us what it means to persevere. And tomorrow night as the gates close and we breathe a sigh of relief that these days of intense awe are over, we can lift our glasses in celebration of what we have and we can say, “L’chaim.”


MI SHEBERACH MUSIC

As we move forward on our journey towards wholeness and embrace the lives we have, we now take time to pray for the healing of body and soul of those we know and love who are struggling with illness. We now silently say their names in our hearts…. With our hands we reach out to one another, and with our voices we reach out to God. Baruch Adonai rofeh hacholim – blessed are you O God who brings healing to the sick.