G’mar tov. Shanah tovah.
At this time of year, the turning of the seasons, the turning of our hearts, there is an image in the Book of Exodus that I try to keep close in mind. It is the moment when Moses is high up on a mountain, his arms outstretched in both directions, each one of tired hands being held up by someone on either side while a battle rages below.
What is it about this image that moves me so?
This moment follows on the heels of our people’s march to freedom from slavery in Egypt. It should be a time for celebration, but instead the Amalekites spy us, suspicious, and war breaks out almost immediately. Our people, newly freed, engage in a battle for their lives. And then this curious line emerges, almost floats up from the Torah scroll: “v’hayah ca’asher yarim Moshe yado v’gavar Yisrael - And it was that whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed - v’ca’asher yaniach yado v’gavar Amalek - but whenever he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed.[i]”
It seems that Israel’s victory or defeat was directly connected to Moses’ ability to hold his arms aloft with the staff of God in his hand. What an immense amount of pressure that must have been on our new leader.
When Moses’ hands grew heavy, his brother, Aaron and his nephew, Hur, Miriam’s son[ii] appeared at his side with a stone to place under him so that he could sit and rest his legs, and then they each grabbed an arm and held it high until the sun set and the battle was won. Throughout it all, we hear no objection from Moses, a signal that he knows he cannot do this alone.
It is this image that captures my heart so on a night like this, on Kol Nidre: the image of vulnerability as strength. Moses was strong enough to accept help from others and together, they saved their people.
This image speaks to so many because Moses feels so relatable up on the mountain in that moment for we have all had our experiences when we have strained to keep holding our arms aloft. The stakes are different for sure but when we’re exhausted spiritually, mentally, physically, when the tired is all over us from head to toe, mustering the strength to keep going while the battle rages below can be elusive, if not entirely absent. The world needs us. Our kids need us. Our parents need us. The work is calling. So is the homework to be checked. And the dishes in the sink. And don’t forget the state of our world and the issues that keep us up at night. There is so much to do… and yet the shoulders slouch. The arms feel impossibly heavy. Surely, no one can do this on their own... And when a hand finally comes to help hold up our own in the toughest of times, it can feel like the hand of God.
Can we admit when we are like Moses on that mountain and need help? Are we brave enough to say I can’t possibly keep my hands up any longer?
I’ll be honest. When it comes to certain aspects of my life and my work, I admit that I lean more towards perfectionist than not. My work ethic likely stems from my upbringing as the child of two parents neither of whom graduated from high school, but who lovingly did everything possible to make sure that I could and so much more. So, I swung that pendulum as forcefully as I could in the opposite direction, determined to do it all. I didn’t want to be dependent on anyone. I wanted to have all my options open. I piled degree upon degree – and oh so much debt. I felt an obligation to strive and to reach. For them. For me. My arms were outstretched. Being vulnerable to the world though was something I did not want to be. I had seen vulnerability play out poorly around me. Asking for help always felt like a last option.
And that ultimately never goes well, does it? When things fell apart because in life something always does, the fall was much steeper, and the crash much more destructive than it needed to be because I naively tried to steel myself against any failure. The relationship that crumbled, the interview that didn’t pan out, the “constructive” feedback. All of it threw me more than it should have. But, eventually, over time, with lots of failures to learn to bounce back from, a partner who knows me better than I know myself sometimes and who holds my arms up when they falter despite my doubt, and some therapy, too, I was able to better understand my compulsive need to act and achieve and began to learn to let it go. It’s a practice I consciously continue to work on. The practice of telling myself: I am enough.
From the school of Brene Brown: “Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth. Perfectionism is the belief that if we live perfect, look perfect, and act perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment, and shame. It’s a shield. Perfectionism is a twenty-ton shield that we lug around thinking it will protect us when, in fact, it’s the thing that’s really preventing us from taking flight. Perfectionism is not self-improvement. Perfection is, at its core, about trying to earn approval and acceptance. Most perfectionists were raised being praised for achievement and performance (grades, manners, rule-following, people-pleasing, appearance, sports). Somewhere along the way, we adopt this dangerous and debilitating belief system: I am what I accomplish and how well I accomplish it. Please. Perform. Perfect. Healthy striving is self-focused—How can I improve? Perfectionism is other-focused—What will they think?”[iii]
To steal another phrase from Brene Brown, I am now “a recovering perfectionist and an aspiring good-enoughist.[iv]” And I know that I am not alone. So many of us feel like we need to keep our arms up unaided for way too long. The blockbuster of the summer hit on this same trope, especially for women. Even stereotypical Barbie struggled to figure out the human condition; even she, when exposed to humanity, did not feel pretty enough, accomplished enough, good enough. What a world we live in.
We shouldn’t need courage just to love ourselves as the imperfect selves that we are, but that, as we know, is the real world. We need to be brave enough to let go of who others think we should be and who we think we should be. I thought I needed to go on a never-ending quest to prove to someone (Who? Myself? I don’t know.) that I had made it whatever “made it” means, and that I needed continually to prove that I deserved to be wherever I was: at the table, in the classroom, on the bima. The truth I now know is that we can both be growing, changing, making mistakes and learning, and be enough without contradiction. What I know for sure is that we cannot do it alone. We must be like Moses and accept help when our arms are ready to drop, and we must be like Aaron and Hur ready to step in and support.
The heartbreak of living – it can chip away at our self-worth. The loss of love. The job rejection. The cherished friendship that has fallen apart. Depression. Trauma. Illness. Death. Despair at the what the world around us has become. We can feel broken by it all. But heartbreak also has the potential to grow us in astonishing and messy, but beautiful ways.
The psalmist sang: Karov Adonai l’nishb’rei lev - God is close to the broken-hearted[v].... But our society seems to scream back: There is no room for your brokenness. While society may not leave room for heartbreak, let us be assured that Judaism does. That is why we are all here after all. Look on all sides of you. No, really. Look. Some of us may look put together, but most of us are struggling in our own ways. There is brokenness in this room. And we do not want you to hide it. If there is any place where you do not need to hide it, it is here.
For this is God’s house and God knows us… Isaiah, the prophet taught us that these were God’s words: “Can a woman forget her baby?... I could never forget you. See, I have engraved you on the palms of My hands.”[vi] That’s chen in Jewish tradition – that’s grace. We may think of grace as a Christian concept and value, but its origin is ours. We have sung of it repeatedly over these holy days: Adonai, Adonai, El Rachum v’chanun… Chanun… Chen… We are calling out to the God of grace. Chen is unmerited, unconditional love that is ours. What God feels towards us is what I felt looking into each of my children’s eyes the very moment after they were born. They had done nothing in the world except breathe, and yet I couldn’t love them more. They were and are and will always be enough. As we are in God’s eyes.
In our call to God, in Avinu Malkeinu, we sing “ki ain banu ma’asim” – we sing “For we have no deeds.” What that means is that we know that we are showing up here tonight in front of Avinu, our loving parent, Malkeinu, our guiding Sovereign with absolutely nothing but our brokenness and our hearts splayed open. And God loves us anyway because we are enough.
Do you believe it?
Enoughness is a hard concept. Perfection, sure, we can all agree that the idea of perfection deserves no place here. But satisfied, warm, I-am-loved enoughness – too many of us struggle just to accept that. So many of you have sat on the couch in my office with your own version of I-am-broken. And in those moments, I want you to lean into the gorgeous midrash that teaches that we have two pockets each with a note inside. When you say you are broken, I want you to reach into the pocket, the one right there and pull out the note that was written for you in this moment. Bishvili nivra ha’olam, “For me, the world was created.[vii]” Because it was. Yeah, you’re broken and just like the other note says, you are but dust and ashes and it’s all true for all of us. We will fade from this world, yes, but it is also true, as Rebbe Nachman teaches, “The day you were born was the day God decided the world could not exist without you.[viii]” We are all broken and necessary and beautiful and whole – the world was created for us.
Perhaps the image of broken yet whole is most effectively played out in our beloved story of Jacob when he wrestled with an angel. He wrestled all night long until the angel cried, Let me go. Jacob responded, I will not let you go until you have given me a blessing. And that should be our mantra for this life. Struggles and moments of wrestling are inevitable, but it is what we do next with that struggle that matters. Are we able to learn from the struggle? Will we demand blessing from even from the darkest moments of our life? It can be terrifying because yes, sometimes those blessings come to us couched in pain. Vayizrach lo ha’shemesh… v’hu tzolea al y’reicho,[ix] the sun rose upon Jacob as he limped away, his hip wrenched from its socket. The text tells us this to say, yes, struggles can scar us, but they don’t have to define us – what does define us is the next step we take.
Maybe you have heard of Kintsugi. Kintsugi is the Japanese art of mending a broken ceramic bowl with gold. If you participated our Women’s Retreat held in our parking lot due to Covid a few years ago, I am sure you remember breaking your beautiful bowl and putting it all back together with golden glue – and it was still beautiful, maybe even more so, after it was lovingly and painstakingly placed back together by your careful hands. The idea was never to hide the cracks, and we do not need to hide ours either. When we paint the cracks in the bowl with gold, we gift ourselves the opportunity to come to the astonishing realization that the bowl is still a bowl even though there was a moment when all we saw were its pieces.
Our life is made up of difficult moments, hips wrenched out of sockets, bowls shattered into pieces, hearts broken open, but over time, we along with the loves of our lives in the form of friends and family and faith glue ourselves back together and we understand that we are still us no matter what has happened to us. And sometimes some of the cracks stay and it's okay for there is a crack in everything.[x]
Yom Kippur is a full body experience from sound to touch meant to send light through the cracks of our souls. The sounding of the shofar is one way we are meant to remember that brokenness and wholeness go hand in hand. The shofar is just as much the sounds of wailing and heartbreak as it is the sounds of hope and strength. Tekiah is that whole note. Shevarim lets out three wails. Truah is broken with its nine staccato notes. And on Kol Nidre, this night, we have no shofar at all. Now is the time for the quiet we need to begin to heal, and glue, and glean blessing. Yom Kippur ends at Ne’ilah with a long drawn out tekiah gedolah. We return after all that unraveling and breaking to realize that in the end, we are still in one piece. The shofar calls over these ten days of awe lay out a spiritual journey for us – a journey of tears and change and ultimately of self-acceptance.
To be open to what these days are all about, we must wake up our hearts, allow them to break with sacred truth as we do with Vidui, our confession. And as you may have noticed, every year, I insist on adding in towards the end of Ne’ilah our final service of these holy days what can be called a positive vidui. After the necessary ashamnu-we were guilty, bagadu-we betrayed, gazalnu-we stole… we also make space for ahavnu-we loved, bechinu-we wept, gamalnu-we were kind. We can make mistakes, and still be mensches. We can be broken and still be whole. We are always growing and we are always enough.
Our people have walked some of the most difficult journeys in existence. And our Judaism has shaped us to transform our trauma into healing. Our remembrance of our enslavement becomes the basis for our empathy. Our displacement throughout the centuries becomes our moral imperative to help the refugee. Our destruction during the Shoah leads us to the declaration and promise of Never Again, both for the Jewish people and for all peoples.
And it is true, too, with our own darkness and trauma and insecurity and strife. Like Jacob, when dawn breaks, what blessing will we take with us to help us walk into our next day?
Every two years, I have been blessed to bring our Temple Isaiah 11th and 12th graders on a civil rights tour of Alabama and Georgia. I am excited about our next trip this coming January and also excited about an adult version of this trip heading down to the south in December of 2024. On our last trip, we were privileged to have a guide with us named Scott Fried.[xi] On the very last morning of our trip, Scott shared his story with us, how he contracted HIV in 1987 and how everyday he has worked to affirm his own value in the world. Scott is a renowned HIV/AIDS activist as well as community educator. Through his work with teens, young adults, and beyond, he teaches the sacred message that we must use whatever time we have been gifted on this earth for radical love and compassion, including most importantly towards ourselves. Scott ends every gathering or lecture or trip he leads with these words, which he asked us that morning to repeat after him line by line. And I will now ask you to do the same.
Can we admit when we are like Moses on that mountain and need help? Are we brave enough to say I can’t possibly keep my hands up any longer?
I’ll be honest. When it comes to certain aspects of my life and my work, I admit that I lean more towards perfectionist than not. My work ethic likely stems from my upbringing as the child of two parents neither of whom graduated from high school, but who lovingly did everything possible to make sure that I could and so much more. So, I swung that pendulum as forcefully as I could in the opposite direction, determined to do it all. I didn’t want to be dependent on anyone. I wanted to have all my options open. I piled degree upon degree – and oh so much debt. I felt an obligation to strive and to reach. For them. For me. My arms were outstretched. Being vulnerable to the world though was something I did not want to be. I had seen vulnerability play out poorly around me. Asking for help always felt like a last option.
And that ultimately never goes well, does it? When things fell apart because in life something always does, the fall was much steeper, and the crash much more destructive than it needed to be because I naively tried to steel myself against any failure. The relationship that crumbled, the interview that didn’t pan out, the “constructive” feedback. All of it threw me more than it should have. But, eventually, over time, with lots of failures to learn to bounce back from, a partner who knows me better than I know myself sometimes and who holds my arms up when they falter despite my doubt, and some therapy, too, I was able to better understand my compulsive need to act and achieve and began to learn to let it go. It’s a practice I consciously continue to work on. The practice of telling myself: I am enough.
To steal another phrase from Brene Brown, I am now “a recovering perfectionist and an aspiring good-enoughist.[iv]” And I know that I am not alone. So many of us feel like we need to keep our arms up unaided for way too long. The blockbuster of the summer hit on this same trope, especially for women. Even stereotypical Barbie struggled to figure out the human condition; even she, when exposed to humanity, did not feel pretty enough, accomplished enough, good enough. What a world we live in.
The psalmist sang: Karov Adonai l’nishb’rei lev - God is close to the broken-hearted[v].... But our society seems to scream back: There is no room for your brokenness. While society may not leave room for heartbreak, let us be assured that Judaism does. That is why we are all here after all. Look on all sides of you. No, really. Look. Some of us may look put together, but most of us are struggling in our own ways. There is brokenness in this room. And we do not want you to hide it. If there is any place where you do not need to hide it, it is here.
For this is God’s house and God knows us… Isaiah, the prophet taught us that these were God’s words: “Can a woman forget her baby?... I could never forget you. See, I have engraved you on the palms of My hands.”[vi] That’s chen in Jewish tradition – that’s grace. We may think of grace as a Christian concept and value, but its origin is ours. We have sung of it repeatedly over these holy days: Adonai, Adonai, El Rachum v’chanun… Chanun… Chen… We are calling out to the God of grace. Chen is unmerited, unconditional love that is ours. What God feels towards us is what I felt looking into each of my children’s eyes the very moment after they were born. They had done nothing in the world except breathe, and yet I couldn’t love them more. They were and are and will always be enough. As we are in God’s eyes.
Perhaps the image of broken yet whole is most effectively played out in our beloved story of Jacob when he wrestled with an angel. He wrestled all night long until the angel cried, Let me go. Jacob responded, I will not let you go until you have given me a blessing. And that should be our mantra for this life. Struggles and moments of wrestling are inevitable, but it is what we do next with that struggle that matters. Are we able to learn from the struggle? Will we demand blessing from even from the darkest moments of our life? It can be terrifying because yes, sometimes those blessings come to us couched in pain. Vayizrach lo ha’shemesh… v’hu tzolea al y’reicho,[ix] the sun rose upon Jacob as he limped away, his hip wrenched from its socket. The text tells us this to say, yes, struggles can scar us, but they don’t have to define us – what does define us is the next step we take.
Maybe you have heard of Kintsugi. Kintsugi is the Japanese art of mending a broken ceramic bowl with gold. If you participated our Women’s Retreat held in our parking lot due to Covid a few years ago, I am sure you remember breaking your beautiful bowl and putting it all back together with golden glue – and it was still beautiful, maybe even more so, after it was lovingly and painstakingly placed back together by your careful hands. The idea was never to hide the cracks, and we do not need to hide ours either. When we paint the cracks in the bowl with gold, we gift ourselves the opportunity to come to the astonishing realization that the bowl is still a bowl even though there was a moment when all we saw were its pieces.
Our life is made up of difficult moments, hips wrenched out of sockets, bowls shattered into pieces, hearts broken open, but over time, we along with the loves of our lives in the form of friends and family and faith glue ourselves back together and we understand that we are still us no matter what has happened to us. And sometimes some of the cracks stay and it's okay for there is a crack in everything.[x]
Yom Kippur is a full body experience from sound to touch meant to send light through the cracks of our souls. The sounding of the shofar is one way we are meant to remember that brokenness and wholeness go hand in hand. The shofar is just as much the sounds of wailing and heartbreak as it is the sounds of hope and strength. Tekiah is that whole note. Shevarim lets out three wails. Truah is broken with its nine staccato notes. And on Kol Nidre, this night, we have no shofar at all. Now is the time for the quiet we need to begin to heal, and glue, and glean blessing. Yom Kippur ends at Ne’ilah with a long drawn out tekiah gedolah. We return after all that unraveling and breaking to realize that in the end, we are still in one piece. The shofar calls over these ten days of awe lay out a spiritual journey for us – a journey of tears and change and ultimately of self-acceptance.
To be open to what these days are all about, we must wake up our hearts, allow them to break with sacred truth as we do with Vidui, our confession. And as you may have noticed, every year, I insist on adding in towards the end of Ne’ilah our final service of these holy days what can be called a positive vidui. After the necessary ashamnu-we were guilty, bagadu-we betrayed, gazalnu-we stole… we also make space for ahavnu-we loved, bechinu-we wept, gamalnu-we were kind. We can make mistakes, and still be mensches. We can be broken and still be whole. We are always growing and we are always enough.
And it is true, too, with our own darkness and trauma and insecurity and strife. Like Jacob, when dawn breaks, what blessing will we take with us to help us walk into our next day?
Every two years, I have been blessed to bring our Temple Isaiah 11th and 12th graders on a civil rights tour of Alabama and Georgia. I am excited about our next trip this coming January and also excited about an adult version of this trip heading down to the south in December of 2024. On our last trip, we were privileged to have a guide with us named Scott Fried.[xi] On the very last morning of our trip, Scott shared his story with us, how he contracted HIV in 1987 and how everyday he has worked to affirm his own value in the world. Scott is a renowned HIV/AIDS activist as well as community educator. Through his work with teens, young adults, and beyond, he teaches the sacred message that we must use whatever time we have been gifted on this earth for radical love and compassion, including most importantly towards ourselves. Scott ends every gathering or lecture or trip he leads with these words, which he asked us that morning to repeat after him line by line. And I will now ask you to do the same.
I value my life.
I value my mistakes.
And even though I make mistakes,
I am enough.
To you, my dear congregation… and to me for every sermon we deliver we are also delivering to ourselves… I hope you know that the world was created for you. And that you will accept help when your arms are heavy. And that you will wrestle blessing from your struggle. And that you will admire the gold holding you so beautifully together. You made mistakes…. I made mistakes… and Baruch HaShem, may we know that God loves us anyway and that we are and will always be enough.
G’mar tov. Shanah tovah.
[i] Exodus 17:11-12 and surrounding story
[ii] The relationship of Hur to Miriam is up for debate with some texts connecting him to her as her son and others as her husband.
[iii] Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection
[iv] Ibid
[v] Psalm 34:18
[vi] Isaiah 49:15-16,18
[vii] Rabbi Simcha Bunam of Peschischa
[viii] Rebbe Nachman of Breslov
[ix] Genesis 32:32 and surrounding story
[x] Inspired by Leonard Cohen’s Anthem
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