FROM THE RABBI’S STUDY
These High Holy Days Really Are Different
Rabbi Robert N. Levine, D.D. Senior Rabbi
These High Holy Days certainly will be different. Our whole staff is working extremely hard to ensure that our High Holy Day experience this year will be interactive, uplifting, and celebratory for our Rodeph Sholom family. We will never forget these services and will talk about them for years to come. Together we will feel the profoundly comforting presence of God and community and will reaffirm what a uniquely special congregation is Rodeph Sholom.
This has been reaffirmed, yet again, by the wonderful outpouring of love and support you have conveyed since the announcement of my retirement as Senior Rabbi effective June 2021. Your words fill Gina and me with gratitude. As my letter made clear, I will be available to Rabbi Spratt, lay leadership, and you in my role as Rabbi Emeritus.
However, I will admit to feeling wistful as I contemplate the words I will write and speak to my beloved congregation this year. Without question, there is a sense of urgency in my brain and in my soul. Over the past thirty years, have I been successful in conveying the core message of my rabbinate and of Jewish tradition to our community? So if some of what I will teach this year sounds a bit familiar, that is by design. These are not Levine’s Greatest Hits, but, rather, these are, in my judgement, insights we all need to deal with today’s daunting adversity and to pursue meaningful, giving lives.
In a sermon entitled, I Can’t Go On, I Will Go On, I invoked the last minutes lived by a man named Stewart:
The hospice nurse arrived with some morphine. The pain was not eased.
“You need to be hospitalized,” she urges. He ignores her. He wants to rise and walk but he can’t. Most of all he wants to live.
“You may not have much time,” the nurse continues, “your wife is standing right here. What do you want to say to her?”
He does speak to me. But he says the words so softly and so quickly I could barely hear and I certainly can’t remember what he said. Then the ambulance arrived carrying him to Cavalry Hospital where he dies soon after, peacefully.
We were married fifty-two years.
What reasonable person could ask for more? And yet, if I had one wish, I would ask for five more minutes.
Wouldn’t we all want five more minutes to tell them one more thing, to thank them or ask for forgiveness?
Doesn’t the pandemic create such urgency? Today, we are incredibly aware, particularly those like myself in advancing years, of how fragile is our mortality, how precious our life.
A great rabbi once taught his students, “Repent one day before you die.”
“How do we know when that is?” the students pushed back.
“That’s the point. Treat every day as if it might be your last.”
If it were, what would you want to do or say?
In a Rosh Hashanah sermon, I offered this quiz:
Name the last three people who won the Academy Award for Best Actor and Actress.
Name the most valuable player in both leagues for the last two years.
Most of us will not remember these names. They fade from mind as soon as they appear. Try this:
Name one person who would be there for you the moment you asked, no questions asked.
Name one person who inspired you to be more than you felt you could be.
We should strive to be unforgettable for all the right reasons, to help others believe in life’s possibilities, in our ability to make a difference to someone else’s well-being.
Elie Wiesel was once asked, how is it possible to overcome despair?
With soulful eyes Wiesel responded, “You want to know how to overcome despair? Help others overcome despair.”
The prophet Isaiah reminds us every Yom Kippur that this is the purpose of our fast:
To deal bread to the hungry.
To bring the homeless poor into our own homes.
To help the oppressed go free.
Our fellow citizens cry out for help, march for justice, yearn to hope again. These High Holy Days will be different, but their message will be vital and inspirational. There is something we can do to overcome despair. Ours. And theirs.
Gina, Judah, Ezra, Maya, Katie, and Eli join me in thanking our remarkable congregation for who you are and what you stand for. We wish you a healthy and meaningful 5781.