Only You Know
Rosh Hashanah 5764
A retired rabbi loved golf more than just about anything. Daily he was drawn to the green, addicted to his game, so much so that come Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, he feigned sickness, sent his family off to services without him, and snuck out to the empty green. It was a glorious day, and the vast green was his alone; he set aside his guilt and teed up.
A host of reproving angels gathered to gape at this sacrilegious rite. God came to join them, and with a slight smile playing on his lips, said, "Watch this!"
The rabbi swung, his form was superb, the ball flew, and with exquisite aim, it fell, divinely, into the hole.
The angels were in a rage. "What are you doing, O Lord, giving this heretic a hole in one!" they cried.
God winked. "Just wait."
Grumbling, the angels looked on as the rabbi's face lighted up with ecstasy. He turned to his right to exclaim, but only trees met his gaze. He turned to his left, but there were only trees there too. Behind him lay nothing but trees. A shadow passed over the man's face, as he realized the awful truth: There was no living soul he could tell. (As retold by R. M. Gafni, in Soulprints.)
This is a story about temptation, challenges, perceived successes, failure, and the need to share our emotions with others. But most of all it is a story about a rabbi who doesn’t know who he is. It’s about a rabbi who is hiding from the world. It’s a story about the need to be honest with ourselves.
This is going to sound strange, but this rabbi’s challenge might in fact have been the same challenge that Avraham faced with the Akedah. Let me explain:
The story of the akedah is familiar. God commands Avraham to sacrifice his only son Yitzchak. But how could Avraham do it? How could he take his son to the altar and sacrifice him?
Explains Rambam in the Guide to the Perplexed the very fact that Avraham was willing to take his son to the altar proves that Avraham had received this prophecy from God with absolute certainty and clarity. If Avraham was not absolutely sure what God was telling him, then there is no way he would have been willing to sacrifice his son. As Rambam writes, “If a prophecy was obscure then no prophet would have been willing to do that which was repugnant to nature. And so Avraham would never have agreed to perform such an act unless he was absolutely certain that God had spoken to him.”
Rambam is arguing that Avraham was only able to perform this act because he heard a clear, unambiguous commandment from God. Only someone who has heard the word of God directly could prepare themselves to do the unthinkable act that Avraham was about to do.
The great Izbicer rebbe is bothered by Rambam’s approach. Asks the Izbicer, if Rambam is correct then, what was the big deal about what Avraham did? Can you imagine anyone not listening to the word of God? If God says something to you, then of course you have to do it.
So the Izbicer offers a new interpretation of the Akeda. The challenge of the Akeda was not that he had to force himself to obey the clear teaching of God, but that he had to obey God even though the teaching of God was not clear. (Cited by Jerome Gellman.)
Ikar Ha-Nisayon mei-hakeda machmat shehayah mefurash le-einav ha-lav lo tirtsach, u-mah gam lishchot et beno, the fundamental challenge of the Akeda was that Avraham had already received one explicit teaching from God—Thou shall not kill, and certainly not his own son.
Yet, now Avraham was hearing another teaching. Now he was hearing a second, contradictory teaching. The voice of God was telling him to kill his own son. Ve-hayah navukh be-libo ve-hayah yakhol lifshot ha-safek le-kol tsad. Avraham was confused in his own heart, he could have justified himself by deciding this dilemma in either direction. It wasn’t crystal clear what God was saying to him. But deep down he really knew what God wanted—and that was the challenge.
The challenge of the Akeda was for Avraham to be true to himself. He could have found a way to justify whatever he did. He had different ways to rationalize his behavior. Yet, deep down he knew which commandment of God was clearer, which commandment needed to observed. The whole challenge of the akedah was: Would Avraham be honest with himself?
This is the question that we should be asking ourselves on Rosh Hashanah. Do we know who we are? Do we know what we believe in? Do we know what our goals are? Are we being honest with ourselves?
This past November, we spent Shabbat at the University of Michigan protesting the Palestinian conference on campus. The campus was polarized with many students opposed to the conference, and many others supporting it. It was a tough time for a lot of the Jewish students on campus. They were being asked to make difficult decisions about who they were and what they believed in.
We spent Friday night talking to a group of students in the Chabad house and it was a wonderful evening connecting with the actively involved students on the campus. But then we decided to go for a walk on the campus. We walked down fraternity row, and somehow we struck up a conversation with a Jewish kid who had been drinking a little bit. This boy had never been to Hebrew school, told us that he never went to the Hillel. But he got really excited when he heard that we were rabbis. His whole face lit up and he started talking to us seriously. Then, his friends came over and said, “Come on, man, let’s go to the party.” And he said, “No, you guys don’t understand, I’m talking to rabbis. I’m Jewish. This is incredible.”
That student in that moment knew who he was. He didn’t want to go the party. He wanted to talk to us because he realized he was Jewish.
That’s what these Days of Awe are all about. They are about reminding us that we can’t run away from ourselves. We can’t deny our true selves. They are a reminder to allow ourselves to connect to God and our destiny.
What is the very last passage that we read on Yom Kippur? It is the reading from the prophet Yonah. God says to Yonah, Kum lekh el ninveh.” Get up! Go to Ninveh. Fulfill your mission. Go and prophesize.
Yonah tries to run, to escape God. Va-yakam Yonah livroach. Yonah arises; not to fulfill his mission, but to flee—to run away from God. But of course, we know that that is an impossibility.
This theme is reinforced through the central prayer that dominates the yamim noraim—the alenu prayer. Alenu was a prayer originally composed to be read before the shofar blowing. It is a prayer that appears in every mussaf that we say on these days.
In Alenu we declare, she-lo asanu ke-goyei ha-aratzo,she-lo sam chelkun ka-hem ve-goralenu ke-khol hamonam. You did not make us like all the other nations. We are unique. We have our own lot on this earth. Ve-anakhnu korim u-mishtachavim u-modim. Our mission is simple. It is to call out to the world about the greatness of God and the greatness of His world. It is to spread the light about God in the world.
That’s our mission this Rosh Hashanah. It is to recognize that God is calling each of us. It is to be true to ourselves; to allow ourselves to fulfill our role before God.
There was once a great rebbe named Reb Shlomo Chayyim of Kaidanov. Before he died, he gathered his children around him and said. “Don’t think of your father as a ‘tzaddik’ or a ‘rebbe.’ But at the same time, I wasn’t a hypocrite. I tried to live my life as a Jew.
This coming year, may we all try to be Jews--true, honest, Jews.
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