Rosh Hashanah 5771
The Rabbi, the Cantor, and the President of the synagogue were flying home from a conference when their plane crashed on a tiny pacific island. The three men crawled out of the wreckage only to be captured by a tribe of vicious cannibals. The chief of the tribe said to the men, “Gentlemen: by tribal tradition, you are lunch… but seeing that you are men of great distinction, we will grant you one last request.” The rabbi said, “In that case I would like to preach my greatest high holiday sermon – a two-hour discourse that ties together the entire Bible and finally solves the question of good and evil… but I never got to give that sermon because the cantor needed more time for Kol Nidre.” The cantor stepped forward and said, “In that case, I wish to give my most sublime rendition of Kol Nidre ever. Each 30 minute repetition is a tribute to one of the three greatest Hazzens of the early 20th Century. But I never had a chance to sing that Kol Nidre because the Rabbi here needed more time for his sermon.” “In that case,” said the President, “eat me first!”
The “dying wish” joke is, of course, part of a genre we love. The final request of a dying person is supposed to reveal something essential about their character. The question is: if you knew you were going to die soon, what would you want to do? In recent years, a number of popular books, websites, and films have tried to answer that question. It’s called “making a bucket list” – as in: “what would you like to do before you kick the bucket?” It has become very popular to make bucket lists… especially for other people. A number of books have been published in recent years beginning with Dave Freeman’s 1999 book titled 100 Things to Do Before you Die. The book is about events and sites around the world that are worth experiencing. Now there are hundreds of these books: 1001 Films to See Before You Die, 50 Foods to Try Before You Die. The funniest one I came across is called No Regrets. This one is too impatient to wait for death. Marketed to young women the subtitle is: 101 Fabulous Things to Do Before You're Too Old, Married, or Pregnant.
There are also a number of websites that provide suggestions and give you advice about writing your own bucket list. If you go to 43things.com, you can see what the most popular bucket list items are. The typical stuff usually involves travel, extreme experiences like skydiving, or accomplishments like writing a novel.
A couple of years ago, Rob Reiner made a movie called “The Bucket List” in which Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson share a hospital room when each man is informed that he has less than a year to live. Nicholson, who plays an obnoxious billionaire, and Freeman, a wise and intellectual auto-mechanic, make their bucket list and set off on an extravagant adventure around the world. As you might expect from a big Hollywood film, the two men have their trite epiphanies in the last few minutes and discover that what really matters isn’t all the adventure but family and friendship. The Bucket List is entertaining enough, but not all that profound.
I have to wonder what the proliferation of these bucket list themed movies and books and websites is about. What does it say about our culture and our society? What does it say about an enormous generation of baby-boomers entering retirement? What does it say about Gen Xers confronting a world with no clear answers or laid out paths? The philosopher Ernest Becker observed that we are the only creatures who are consciously aware of our mortality. And, it is this knowledge that drives us. In his book, The Denial of Death, Becker argues that we compensate for this dreadful knowledge by constructing what he calls “affirmation systems.” We see death as the ultimate failure, so we pursue success. We see death as ultimate emptiness, so we fill our lives with stuff. We see death as the end of feeling, so we crave pleasure. We see death as impotence, so we seek power. The bucket list craze is just another attempt at the denial of death. Checking things off the list – even if they are noble pursuits – is still about us trying to conquer the inevitable.
Judaism doesn’t see death as “kicking the bucket.” And Judaism doesn’t see life as the short journey during which we have to get as much done as possible. Judaism teaches us that our lives are a precious gift – a gift we did not earn, but one that comes with enormous responsibility and opportunity. In the account of Creation we read that God fashioned humanity out of the dust of the earth and blew into us “nishmat hayyim” – the breath of life (Gen. 2:7). The Torah means to teach us that our bodies are made up of the same finite stuff as the rest of the universe and will return to the earth from whence they came. But, at the same time, we possess a tiny mysterious bit of what God is. We call it many things: the soul, the spark of the divine, the image of God – it is that part of us that makes us who we are and that which lives on.
So death isn’t oblivion to be feared; but Judaism isn’t a morbid religion either. It is a religion that affirms life while reminding us that we don’t have an infinite number of tomorrows.
Once a year Judaism asks us to confront our mortality – but not with a bucket list mindset. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are a drama. A rehearsal. The prayers we recite tell the Jewish story of what happens to us when we die. Our ancestors imagined that when we leave this world we go before a Heavenly Court that reviews our lives. This drama is represented in the most important and emblematic prayer of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the U’netane Tokef. The prayer describes God as the ultimate Judge: “B’rosh Hashanah Yikateivu, u’ve’yom tzom kippur yechatemu”… “On Rosh Hashanah [the judgment] is written; and on Yom Kippur it is sealed: … who will live and who will die… who by fire and who by water…” – you know the rest.
In this heavenly court we find ourselves today, they don’t ask you if you ever went sky diving or climbed all the
14ers in Colorado . God doesn’t want to know if you made a million bucks or if you belong to the Mile High Club. The prosecutor in this court isn’t going to ask you how many items you checked off your bucket list. No. In this court, you’re asked to give an account of your life and how you lived it.
According to the Talmud, there is a final exam in heaven. The 4
th Century sage known as Rava says there are 6 questions you’ll be asked when you reach the heavenly court (see BT Shabbat 31)
. So what are they? What’s on the entrance exam to heaven? Before I tell you what Rava says, I’d like you to think about it for a moment. What questions do you suppose you will be asked on that day?
So, according to Rava, the first question is: “were you honest in your business?” WHAT!?! Of all the questions that could be on the exam, that’s the first one!? What about tzedakah? Did you give to charity? Where you generous? Were you kind to people? What about mitzvot? Did you keep Shabbat? Were you scrupulous about Kashrut? How can the first thing on the list be so mundane? But, it actually makes a lot of sense. Tzedakah (giving charity) is certainly a righteous act, but you can be very generous and still be a crooked SOB. I’m sure Bernie Madoff was very generous with other people’s money. And religious piety is certainly important too. God expects us to follow the commandments, but it’s possible to rest on the Seventh day and lie, cheat, and steal on the other six. You can be scrupulous about what you put in your mouth, and lie with every word that comes out of your mouth. So it makes a lot of sense that this is the first question. How you conduct your affairs says a lot about you.
The words in Hebrew are “nassata v’nattata be’emunah” – literally, did you give and take faithfully. It is talking about business, but much more than commerce. The question is: in your dealings in the world, in your interactions with other people, were you fundamentally honest and did you act with integrity? How we deal with other human beings is an essential requirement to be considered a decent person.
Interestingly, the question does not ask if you were successful in business – that’s a bucket list mentality. The 1st question is, were you honest in business?
The second question: did you set aside time for Torah study? How should we apply this question to our lives today? I want us to interpret it simultaneously in two ways. The first way is to take Torah in its broadest sense. To our sages the word Torah has always meant much more than the 5 Books of Moses. Torah means knowledge – so the question here is: did you set aside time for acquiring knowledge? We all know how easy it is to neglect our minds once we’re out of school.
But I also want us to take the question more literally – that it really means Torah. It means Judaism. I can tell you with 100% confidence that there isn’t a single person in this enormous room (including the people up here on the bima) who doesn’t need to learn more. I’m going to say something very challenging, but I believe it deeply: there is no way to have a meaningful experience of Judaism without learning. You may enjoy our services and you may love coming to hear the Cantor’s powerful voice; you might enjoy the company of other Jews; but the religion of our ancestors will not touch your soul or improve who you are if you don’t learn.
And, again, the point isn’t to read the entire Talmud or memorize the Torah… that’s a bucket list mindset. The question is: did you make time for Torah?
The third question you’re asked in heaven is: “did you engage in the mitzvah of being fruitful and multiplying.” After my wife Melanie and I had our first child we argued often about how many more children we were going to have. Melanie wanted to have a total of three children and I wanted only two. It seems that God decided that for us when we conceived twins. So it looks like we’re covered when it comes to being fruitful and multiplying! Wrong! That’s not necessarily true.
At first glance you might think this question is about having children… but it doesn’t ask, “did you have children?” So what could it mean? Our tradition teaches that a person can fulfill the mitzvah of being fruitful and multiplying in many ways – certainly by having children or adopting, but also by being a teacher, a mentor, or by being creative and putting something new into the world. The question isn’t about children; it’s about leaving a legacy. It’s about making a positive difference in the world. Not for the sake of fame or honor, but for the sake of advancing the human enterprise.
There is a legend in the Talmud about a man named Honi who was famous for performing all sorts of miraculous deeds. In one story, Honi sees an elderly man planting a carob tree (BT Taanit 23a). So Honi asked the man, “how long will it take for that tree to produce fruit?” The man answered, “seventy years.” Honi laughed, “do you expect to live 70 years to see the fruit of this tree?” To which the old man replied, “I may not see the fruit, but just as my grandparents planted carob trees for me, I now plant a carob tree for my grandchildren.” Honi snickered as he sat down to eat some lunch and fell into a deep sleep. He slept for 70 years and when he awoke he saw a man picking fruit from a carob tree. Honi asked him, “are you the man who planted this tree?” The man replied, “no, my grandfather planted this tree.”
Now, if you’ve ever heard this story at a Jewish fundraising event, this is usually where the storyteller will ask you to make a gift in order to leave a legacy to the next generation. And that
is correct – that
is what the tale is about. But it isn’t actually the end of the legend. The continuation of the story is that Honi goes back into town and tries to convince everyone that he is the famous Honi who had made miracles happen a couple of generations ago. But, no one believes him; so, Honi despairs and asks God to take his life. He would rather be dead than anonymous.
Honi is actually a failure because he didn’t understand the true moral of the story: that leaving a legacy is important,
but leaving a legacy in order to be famous is not –
that’s the bucket list mentality.
The question you’re asked in heaven – “did you leave a legacy? – is not about grandiose accomplishments. It’s about planting simple carob trees from which others will someday eat.
The fourth question you’re asked in heaven is: tzipita li’shuah. “Did you hold out hope for redemption?” This too is an unexpected question. We usually think of Judaism as a religion that places a priority on our behavior over our attitudes. We might expect this question to be about repairing the world – doing tikkun olam… not simply hoping for redemption. So why is hope so important?
The Torah teaches us that in the beginning, the world was “tohu va’vohu” – unformed and void, chaos and disorder… and God created the reality we know by making order out of the chaos. Yet we all have a sense that just under the surface of this world is tohu va’vohu. We see it every day – when we watch the news, when we see the injustices and violence in our world, when we confront the struggles in our own lives. It isn’t hard to despair in the face of all that chaos. But the story of creation also teaches us that after each day of creation, God looked at what had been created and said, “ki tov” – that it was good.
One of my mentors, Rabbi Ed Feinstein says that “good” is the most important word in the chapter. “This is the great revolution that began our faith,” he says, “The whole world sees chaos, terror, random death as inevitable. And this one little people, a people who suffered more than any other people, this people has the cosmic chutzpah to say ‘It doesn’t have to be that way! Come, be God’s partner. There is goodness in creating the world.’”
It is true that our world exists in the precarious balance between order and chaos, between good and evil. It’s tempting to become cynical – to believe that nothing can change, that there is no hope for a better world. It’s tempting to focus on ourselves and what we can grab in our short time on this earth. It’s also tempting to think that the only thing that really matters is making big changes to the world – that anything short of a revolution is pointless… again, those are bucket list ways of thinking. But Judaism teaches us that we have the power to bend the moral arc of the universe (even if only slightly) in favor of goodness and justice. In order to be partners with God in the pursuit of a more perfect world, we have to hold on to hope despite the odds.
The last two questions are related. The fifth question is “pilpalta b’chochma – did you delve into wisdom?” and the sixth question is “havanta davar mitoch davar - did you understand one thing from another?” On the surface these questions are about study and learning; but I think these questions are getting at something much deeper. First we have to understand what wisdom is. My teacher, Rabbi Elliot Dorff, always taught us that wisdom is the knowledge we gain through experience. It is what we learn when we pay attention. Wisdom is a way of living in the world.
And the 6th question is related. “did you understand something from something?” In your life experience, in the choices that you made, did you derive some additional understanding from what was presented to you? Did you accept the conventional wisdom or did you advance that wisdom is some meaningful way?
Taken together, these last two questions are about the choices we make in life. Interestingly, the question isn’t did you always make the correct choice? Again – that’s a bucket list mindset. They aren’t asking: were you right? We all make mistakes, we all make bad choices. These are questions about your process. Did you make thoughtful and deliberate choices based on wisdom and understanding?
In the Talmud, Rava ends his list of 6 questions with an interesting conclusion. He says, “even [if a person doesn’t have answers to these questions] if he/she had reverence for God, the judgment will be favorable.” I think Rava telling us something I’ve to which I’ve been alluding all along. Having the right answers to the questions isn’t what matters most. After all, each of us will have different answers to these questions. These questions aren’t about what you’ve accomplished or what you’ve checked off a cosmic bucket list. These questions are also not about being perfect or even righteous – that bar is too high for most of us; and it is a bucket list mindset. These questions are about being a decent person, a good person. They are about striving to be better; being better next year than you were last year.
In these days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we should all be asking ourselves theses questions: Was I honest last year, and I can do better next year? Did I make time to learn, and how can I learn more? Am I proud of the legacy I cultivated last year, and what will I do in the year to come? Did I live with hope this year? And, do I still hold out hope for a better life, hope that one day we will achieve a world worthy of the good God created? And, finally, were the decisions I made based on wisdom, and will the choices I make next year advance that wisdom to the next level?
So let’s kick the bucket list mentality out of our lives; and instead, keep these questions in mind so we can live more thoughtfully, more deliberately and improve a little every day. If we do, I believe the final judgment will be favorable
L’Shanah Tovah.
For more on the questions you're asked in heaven and a somewhat different take on the Talmud section I discussed, please read Ron Wolfson's wonderful book,
The Seven Questions You're Asked in Heaven (Jewish Lights, 2009)
Dr. Ron Wolfson wrote a thought-provoking and inspirational book that I highly recommend called The Seven Questions You're Asked in Heaven (Jewish Lights, 2009) based on these sources.
