Aspiration Is Achievement
Rabbi Ron Shulman
Rosh HaShanah 5772
Recently, I was asked if I ever recycle sermons from year to year. I said I don’t, which is true. Though for the last few years as we’ve gathered each fall, I’ve focused on similar themes to provide perspective and encouragement in response to consistently troubling times. Today will be no different.
To my mind, offering insights rooted in Judaism to help us create a better mood with which to go forward into the year is a good goal for the time we spend together on Rosh HaShanah.
In 2008, I spoke about the shock waves of the economic downturn and the value of our lives. In 2009, I spoke about what endures when everything around us seems to be changing. Last year, I suggested that by strengthening our faith in what matters most, including God, we could overcome cynicism and the anxiety all around us.
Don’t worry. This isn’t a test of your memories. A sermon offers an idea or commentary for you to consider in the context of your own thoughts and emotions, and the life you are leading right now. That’s it.
Here we are again. In 2011, beginning the New Year 5772, the world around us is largely unchanged and feeling like its getting worse. We’re in a funk. (Can I use that word?) It means dejected, a bad mood, uneasy. These are difficult and discouraging days. Aren’t you glad you came today so I could tell you that?
Fewer of us than at any time in recent memory can afford the lives we are accustomed to leading. If we can afford our lifestyles, we’re still living cautiously. We are forced to prioritize what to pay for, and some of those choices don’t feel good. We cut down our support for the people and organizations most significant to us.
Those of us who thought we might retire need to work longer. Fixed incomes don’t go as far while the gap between economic levels grows wider. We learned last week that one in four children in Baltimore subsists in families living at or below poverty, a 20% increase in just one year.
We baby boomers, a generation known for our optimism and reinvention, are filled with worry and doubt about our future and our families’ well being into the future. 45% of our children and grandchildren under the age of 29 cannot find work after graduating high school, college, or graduate school. 5.9 million college graduates have moved home with their parents in order to live. So much of our energy is spent reacting to economic upheaval and challenge.
Don’t you want to hear something inspiring, something encouraging these days? I do! I want to say something inspiring, something encouraging!
Avinu Malkeinu, hadseh aleinu shanah tovah! God, renew us in life for a good year! In prayer, it is one of our most fervent and heartfelt statements. We really do want to greet a year of health and peace. We really do need some good news, a good year. Don’t you think so?
Avinu Malkeinu, hadseh aleinu shanah tovah! God, renew us in life for a good year! That’s our prayer. These words are the oldest expression of regret and hope in the Mahzor. Written after a time of drought and despair in second century Israel, and expanded in the eleventh to fourteenth centuries after crusades and other harsh events, they are our prayer this year. The Talmud tells us that Rabbi Akiba was the first one to pray these words seeking God’s mercy. Listen to all they desire.
Avinu Malkeinu, send complete healing to the sick.
Avinu Malkeinu, may there be sustenance for us.
Avinu Malkeinu, frustrate the plots of our enemies.
Avinu Malkeinu, rid us of disease, war, hunger, captivity, and destruction.
Avinu Malkeinu, inscribe us for life.
Avinu Malkeinu, make this a good new year for us.
We recite these words disheartened and yearning. Pundits tell us that our nation is going through a long and sustained period of unhappiness and pessimism. One of the longest we’ve ever known.
During the last decade following the horror of September 11, 2001, our children and grandchildren have grown up to know a world in which America has waged the longest wars in our history against terrorism, in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And the list goes on. We worry about so much, personal and global, of general universal and particular Jewish concern, of life at home, in our society, and about Israel in the world. Some days we’re not sure we’re up to managing all of it. We certainly are sure that our institutions, political and otherwise, are not up to responding effectively.
The new normal discussed all around us is that we must learn to settle for less; to make do with less; to do more with less; to realize that there are limits on our capabilities, on our resources, and even on our resolve.
I reject this. My message for this year is simple and direct. We won’t feel better until we expect more, and not less. We won’t be better until we are doing our best. I’m hearing words my father often spoke when I was a child. “Don’t tell me why it can’t be done. Instead, tell me how you’re going to do it!”
One of the people I most enjoyed working with years ago was a custodian, a man with whom I had nothing in common. He was a southern red-neck who went to Vietnam after high school. I went off to college and the rabbinate. He came back from his war service hardened of spirit by what he experienced there and then. I was shielded from the horrors of that war. He was physically and emotionally impacted by it. He cussed and drank and God knows what else!
We had little, if anything, in common, except for this. He respected every person he met, no matter their age, stage, or life situation. He was crude when talking about them, but he was a genuinely caring man. And, he believed that everything could be done. Everything could be better. It didn’t matter how hard he had to work or how much time it took to do more. With a smile on his face he used to say to me, “Rabbi, you worry about the miracles. I’ll do the impossible.”
Remember when we told our children there wasn’t anything they couldn’t do. Sure, it was hyperbole. We all know certain talents and traits are necessary for some things. We realize that we are not all equally endowed with those abilities or proclivities. Even so, our kids knew what we meant. We meant dream, imagine. Consider the possibility. Set your sights high, and your expectations even higher.
Today, if we set the bar low, we and they will underperform. If we set the bar high, they and we will reach for the sky and delight in all we attain. As a society, as a community, and as individuals or families, we need to recapture this same attitude and approach.
I want you to meet the Zionist author, Israel Zangwill. He lived from 1864 to 1926. Zangwill was widely considered one of England’s greatest wits toward the end of the 19th century.
The story is told about Israel Zangwill visiting in a hotel room with Theodore Herzl, the father of Zionism, the man who famously said, “If you will it, it is no dream.” While Herzl spoke, Zangwill lay back on the bed with his eyes closed. Herzl looked at Zangwill and said, “Don’t go to sleep, Israel.” Zangwill shot back, “The God of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps, but Israel himself sometimes does both!”
One of the best known Jewish figures by the start of the 20th century, Israel Zangwill once declared boldly, “Aspiration is achievement!” This is what we need to believe again at home and in the world. Aspiration is achievement.
I shared this vignette with our Krieger Schechter faculty before the start of school. I offered Zangwill’s phrase as our theme for this year given the context I’ve described to you from which our students are coming to school. The next day our schools’ athletic director Mike Foxwell came up to me and asked if he could put that phrase on the gym wall over the charts that monitor the students’ physical attainments and growth. We should all place that phrase above our challenges. We need to aspire toward greater good and purpose. Aspiration is Achievement.
Think about the stories our tradition puts before us on Rosh HaShanah. As is often the case, they reflect what our lives are all about at the beginning of this New Year.
Abraham has job security, though his Boss is very demanding. Abraham’s work is to turn a powerful, radical idea into a new reality, Ethical Monotheism. He works with others to build a society where goodness, ethics, and human dignity inform people’s behaviors.
As the father figure of the Jewish people, Abraham struggles to understand God. He seeks to pass on his beliefs to his son. He hopes to find security and safety among the other nations who live around him. He trusts that his legacy will endure for untold generations to come.
Sarah is raising her son, Isaac. He’s a playful kid, though Sarah feels his half-brother Ishmael is too rough on him. So, she sends Ishmael and his mother Hagar away. Sarah is jealous of her handmaid. It’s only human.
It’s a family drama we all recognize. It can be hard to accept people whose experiences are different than ours’. All Hagar wants is security for herself and her son. Now, she walks through a wilderness unsure where she’ll find sustenance, companionship, and a sense of well being. Let alone happiness. Hagar cries afraid her child will die.
As for Ishmael, it’s hard to know if he and Isaac, or their children, will ever get along. Then there’s Isaac. He carries a terrible burden. Son of the founder and brother of the outcast, Isaac is led to believe in God under the blade of a knife. You think your problems are hard?
They are. We each carry the blessings and burdens of our backgrounds and circumstances. I return to my message for this year. We won’t feel better until we expect more, and not less. We won’t be better until we are doing our best.
This is what we learn from the stories of our Biblical ancestors. No matter your worry, calm and confidence lie in achieving what Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, Ishmael and Hagar represent.
Like each of them, we want to lead good and productive lives. Whether we lack in health or wealth, in viability or stability, we seek well being and productivity to become content and confident, to realize blessing and goodness.
We desire to be treated with dignity among others. We each deserve the acceptance of all, the caring of some, and the loving support of a few.
And, we have to hope for tomorrow. We all aspire to live in better days, with purpose and meaning. We want the courage to do our part. We want to be encouraged by the contributions of others.
At this chaotic, worrisome, and unsettled time in the world, and for every person in this room, our New Year’s prayer is for goodness in our lives, dignity among others, and hope for tomorrow. Hear the words.
Avinu Malkeinu, aseh imanu tzedakah va’hesed v’hoshi-einu! God, with us create goodness, kindness, and redeem us. Let’s consider each goal.
Avinu Malkeinu, with us create goodness, tzedakah.
To create goodness in your life, do something significant this year. Reach deep into your heart. Consider what really matters to you. Remember that you are happiest when you are your best self. Your values and ideals can motivate and encourage you. Pay more attention to real things and less to the trivial. With God, create goodness.
Avinu Malkeinu, with us create kindness, hesed.
To achieve dignity among others, do something caring for someone else this year. Be kind to others like you’ve always wanted to be. Do good deeds for others like you’ve always wanted to do them. But you haven’t because you’ve been too busy, too distracted, or unsure how to approach them. With God, create kindness.
Avinu Malkeinu, redeem us, v’hoshi-einnu.
For redemption, to hope in tomorrow, do something hard today. Something you’ve needed to do or wanted to do. But, so far you haven’t because it’s difficult. Take small, reasonable steps. Understand, though it may go slowly, you will go forward. It can be done. Do something new and different. Do a familiar activity in a new way. Return to your dreams. Don’t let this year go by without focusing on a hope you cherish. Through our efforts, God redeems us.
The Torah narrative we read on Rosh HaShanah ends with words of blessing and promise. “I will bestow My blessing upon you,” says God, “and make your descendents as numerous as the stars of heaven and the sands on the seashore.”
You see, when all is said and done, in the presence of God and our loved ones, we can aspire to be more than we already are. Avinu Malkeinu, hadseh aleinu shanah tovah – God, renew us in life for a good year.
Aspiration is achievement.
© 2011 Rabbi Ronald J. Shulman
