Shul. Weather or Not!
Yom Kippur 5773
Shmuel Herzfeld
On Yom Kippur God helps us by removing the stumbling blocks in our path. We have to respond to that help from God by not holding back our own commitment to Him.
Deep down we want to fully commit to Hashem. But we are hesitant. Human nature is to be afraid. To hold back.
You know who taught me this lesson. A thief I never even got to meet.
When I would go the gym, I would always keep my stuff in the trunk of my car. But then I got nervous because I realized that the trunk to my car doesn’t actually lock. There is a keyhole, but any key opens the trunk. So I said, I will abandon my car trunk and move my valuables inside the gym. I never should have abandoned my car.
The VERY first day I tried this new strategy it failed. I put my stuff in a locker and put a lock on it. I returned exactly 25 minutes later and my lock was gone. So was my smartphone and my wallet. I called the police. We started searching the facility since we thought that maybe the thief had thrown my wallet in the trash. After around 20 minutes of searching, the manager came running up to me and said someone from your house just called and said that your wallet was returned to your home. The policeman looked at me and said, “God is good. No, God is great!”
The thief had taken my phone but he had decided to return my wallet and credit cards. He had gone out of his way and had driven 15 minutes to my house just to return the wallet.
Why would the thief steal a phone but then go out of his way to return the wallet?
A lot of people have shared with me their theories on this one. But I think that this thief felt bad about having to steal my phone. He wanted to do the right thing so he returned my wallet. The thief was wishy-washy. He wanted to return everything, but he only went halfway.
Human nature is to hold back from a total commitment. We often do things halfway.
This is the first message I want us to to consider this Yom Kippur: lets not hold ourselves back when it comes to our commitment to Hashem.
Yom Kippur is here to help us realize that life is not just about commitment—it is about total commitment. By definition, commitment means total commitment. But we often make the mistake of thinking we can make half a commitment.
As Yom Kippur ends we tell the story of Yonah. God told Yonah go to Ninveh and tell the city to repent. Yonah doesn’t want to listen so he runs away and he boards a ship to Tarshish.
The text tells us that the sea was stormy so the sailors determined that God was punishing Yonah so they picked up Yonah and threw him into the sea. Once Yonah was thrown into the sea, the waters calmed down.
But the Midrash fleshes out this story. Says the Midrash: “The sailors first lowered him into the sea up to his knees and the sea calmed down. So they raised him back up. The sea then became stormy again. So they lowered him up to his neck and the sea calmed down again. So they raised him back up. The sea became stormy again. So then they threw him entirely into the sea.” (Pirkei De-Rebbe Eliezer, chapter 10.)
The sailors knew that Yonah was the problem. Yonah knew that he was the problem. But the sailors had trouble committing to what they knew God wanted them to do. They were wishy-washy. They knew what was expected of them but they couldn’t commit.
But the sailors very quickly learned this lesson of commitment. The text tells us that after the sailors witnessed this lesson of God’s direction over the stormy sea, they made a resolution: “Vayiru haanashim yirah gedola et Hashem vayizbachu zevach la-Hashem vayidru nedarim. The sailors feared God a great deal and they made sacrifices and they took vows upon themselves” (1:16).
The rabbis understand this to mean that having been taught this lesson the sailors immediately made a major commitment to God. “They feared God,” means that they immediately threw away their idols and converted. “They made sacrifices,” means that they immediately circumcised themselves. (Pirkei De-Rebbe Eliezer, chapter 10.) They took vows upon themselves means that they made promises, i.e. they took upon themselves a total commitment to Hashem. From the sailors on the ship we learn the lesson of commitment.
Everyone in our shul wants to do the right thing. But sometimes life gets in the way. On a daily basis, stumbling blocks disturb our path. As the year moves along, we begin to see more and more stumbling blocks. On Yom Kippur Hashem removes our stubbing blocks.
This story about the thief who went halfway is a little bit funny, but it is mostly sad. He's not a bad guy. He thinks he has to steal for some reason, but at least, he has a guilty conscience.
Maybe I could have helped him if he had just come by my office and asked for help. But I can't help him, because he didn't call.
Most of us don’t bother to call out to God for help. But on Yom Kippur God calls out to us.
Normally when someone makes a commitment it comes from a person deciding on their own that they want to commit. But on Yom Kippur, it is different. On Yom Kippur God comes out to meet and helps us take that extra step of commitment to Him. As the Haftorah for Yom Kippur says, “Harimu michshol mi-derekh ami, lift up the stumbling block from My people’s path.”
Yom Kippur is not only a day without stumbling blocks, it is also a day to help us throughout the year. It gives us the strength to pass those obstacles and continue on our path.
Yom Kippur inspires us to realize that when we have a goal to serve Hashem we can surpass our stumbling blocks.
The story about Yonah illustrates this idea. Yonah’s commitment at first was only lukewarm but then he calls out from the depths of the belly of a fish to God and he is answered. We can all call out from the depths, even when it's dark and we are trapped in the belly of a fish. Such is the greatness of Yom Kippur. God removes our stumbling blocks so we can call out to Him and commit.
Why am I sharing this? To inspire us to be more committed to prayer and the practice of Judaism.
There is an old joke in the rabbinate. Whenever it rains, I say to my kids, “The forecast calls for scattered congregants.”
But this year lets make it a point of pride in our shul that we go against the trend. Lets use the symbol of rain as an example. When it rains, we will take it upon ourselves to especially come to shul. This way we will demonstrate that our commitment to Hashem is waterproof.
Because I want to help you, I have some shtick for you. I have printed up ponchos for you with the logo of our shul on it. You can stop by the office and get your poncho. You know what the poncho says on it: “Weather or not.” Weather or not! Our commitment to Hashem and to His ways is not dependent on the weather or the obstacles in our path. We commit with all our heart to what God wants from us.
So Yom Kippur is God’s way of helping us return entirely to Him. On Yom Kippur God removes the obstacles in our path. But we have to respond to God’s help by not holding back and not committing halfway.
Yom Kippur gives us one more message about commitment. Yom Kippur teaches us about the benefits of committing to God. We commit to Hashem, “Weather or Not.”
Yom Kippur is more than just a day to help us carry out our commitments. Yom Kippur is also a reminder that if we carry out on our commitments, if we commit with all our heart to service, then we can literally transform the world with our actions. We were all created for greatness, and Yom Kippur reminds us that if we take our commitments seriously we will achieve greatness.
The night before Yom Kippur as the High Priest, as the Kohen Gadol was preparing to serve on Yom Kippur day in the Temple, he was given the Book of Ezra to read.
Why was he specifically given this book to read? Ezra was the figure who led the Jewish people up from Babylon. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik writes (Machzor, 595): “The Book of Ezra was specifically selected because this narrative would provide him with the courage to carry out his mission…. The elders wanted to impart the message to the Kohen Gadol that one person can alter history with commitment and the strength of his message.”
Now we might think that that person who can alter history with the force of their commitment is only the Kohen Gadol and since we are not the Kohen Gadol, therefore we are off the hook. Such an approach is dead wrong!
Do you know who was the most important person in the Yom Kippur service?
It wasn’t the Kohen Gadol.
The most important person was an unknown man who was called ish iti, or “the designated man.” This is the name that the Torah actually calls him, “the designated man” (Leviticus 16:21).
The fate of the entire Jewish people rested upon this ish it. He was the man who was designated to lead a goat out to the wilderness. The goat—sair le-azazel--symbolically carried our sins. It had a red string upon it that would turn white if we were forgiven. This designated man ran with the goat through ten stops along the wilderness. If he didn’t reach his destination then our sins would not be forgiven.
Rashi teaches us that he is called an ish iti, a “designated man” because he was designated for this position before Yom Kippur.
I have a lot of questions about this person. Why does this designated person have no name? Who was he? We don’t know anyone in history who was designated as an ish iti. We will never know. The Kohen Gadol is famous. We know all about him. But we have no idea who the ish iti was.
I think that the answer is that this because we are all the ish iti. This designated man represents all of us for we have all been designated by God for greatness. The fate of the Jewish people rests upon all of us contributing to our community. We are all on a journey. Some of our journeys have more than ten stops, but we are all on a journey. God picked us for our journey and we must complete that journey for our own sake, four family’s sake, and for our people’s sake.
Our families and our communities and our society depend on us following the example of the ish iti.
As the ish iti went out on his journey from the Temple the yakirei yerushalayim (the eminent men of Jerusalem) would escort him. There would be booths set up all along the way for him. “At each booth they would say to him, ‘Here is food and here is drink. And they would accompany him from that booth to the next booth. Except for the last booth, for the last escort could not go with him to the precipice.” (Yoma 6:4-5)
The ish iti is is the most important person. Without him, the people would not have forgiveness. He was more important than the kohen gadol.
The ish iti is all of us. We are the designated person. Designated by God for greatness. We have our stops, our obstacles, and our journeys. But our commitment to Hashem requires us to serve our community and serve our community with a total commitment.
Yom Kippur is here to inspire us to keep our commitments and to remind us that we have help along the way.
Hashem gives us Yom Kippur. He removes our stumbling blocks and asks us in return to commit to Him. Our friends and our families will escort us in our efforts to commit. We just have to do the last mile on our own.
This is what we are going for on Yom Kippur. We are going for success. And it is possible.
With the right commitment, we can complete our journey. We are the ish iti.
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