What Endures When Everything Changes?
Rabbi Ron Shulman
Rosh HaShanah 5770
All summer long I had a feeling in my gut. I described it to some friends. I alluded to it around here. Some folks agreed with me, others weren’t sure. But the feeling in my gut made me uneasy.
I don’t know about you, but when I’m uneasy I do two things. I eat, and I think - sometimes at the same time, and often too much. When you’re uneasy you may have other ways of coping, but those are mine.
What has me unsettled? I keep meeting and visiting with people who themselves feel unsettled. Something is troubling us, and it isn’t just the obvious challenges of economic recession and financial strain, though they weigh heavily on us all. In fact, these may be symptoms and not causes of our concerns.
I’ll be curious to know if you share this unease. Do you feel emotionally isolated or alone, even when in the company of others? Do you find yourself unhappily surprised or frustrated by other people’s words or behaviors? Do little things that shouldn’t upset you? Do you react overly sensitive when someone you love, or someone you work with, or the synagogue, or the government, or a neighbor, or an association, or a club, or a store, or a product proposes a change to something you like? Are you, like me, someone who discovers sometimes that “new and improved” isn’t?
Reacting to a changing world, today it seems that almost everywhere we turn we hear and see people venting their emotions, expressing their fears, and most of all seeking validation. However things change around us, this is what we desire. We want to secure our personal places, and have our personal experiences honored.
Only 34% of American parents believe their children will be better off in the future. 57% fear their children will inherit a more difficult world than today.
My gut tells me we’re at the beginning of a significant transition, social change that may impact all aspects of our lives. We all know this mood of transition. Throughout our lives we move. We grieve. We begin anew. We come to a stop. We grow. We adapt. Our days are filled regularly with every sort of transition and reaction.
Even so, while eating and thinking about all of this, I also read some history. Sure enough my gut may just be right. By so many different accounts and experiences, we seem to be living at a time of a major shift, a time when the social order to which we are accustomed palpably begins to change.
Like our patriarch Isaac whose life was a transition from Abraham the founder of our faith to Jacob the father of our people. The generations we birthed are growing, as they must, to displace all of us, just as we did to our predecessors. Yet, in this generational transition we feel like Isaac who wasn’t a pioneer. While in the midst of a life retracing his father’s steps, Isaac gave way to his son Jacob. In hindsight, it’s Jacob’s greater legacy that endures.
A woman enters my study. Even though everything in her life seems relatively fine, she’s nervous. She feels upset and doesn’t know why. She wants to talk, but isn’t sure what she wants to say. “Rabbi,” she begins. “I feel like everything is changing. I’m not needed anymore. In my healthy and vibrant middle age, it feels like the world is passing me by. It seems like it is someone else’s turn, but I’m not finished with mine. My opinions are out of sync with much of what I hear. What I find unacceptable so many label as proper. I don’t trust the people others seem to admire. I feel like what I learned to be important is now just old fashioned. I don’t know where I fit. I don’t feel like I belong. And it doesn’t help that the world around me is falling apart!” I hear in her words more than the angst of middle age.
Which is why at the start of this New Year, I want us all to be sensitive to what we, or many of us at least, are feeling. We each want to be valued for the unique and precious purpose that is our life and our experience. In the turmoil of current days, we sense this about ourselves more and more.
Remember Walter Cronkite’s famous sign-off, “that’s the way it is?” He came up with that phrase because he could use it after any news item, happy or sad. All he had to adjust was his inflection.
Cronkite’s producer felt otherwise. He worried about mistakes in reporting the news. Maybe that’s not the way it is. But, the line endured. When Walter Cronkite passed away this summer, people remembered him as a 1972 poll labeled him. “The most trusted man in America.”
“Cronkite came to be the sort of personification of his era,” said veteran PBS correspondent Robert McNeil. “Very few people in history…are the embodiment of their time, and Cronkite seemed to be.”
So, who stands in Walter Cronkite’s place today as America’s most trusted newscaster? According to a very unscientific poll by Time Magazine, the overwhelming choice is Jon Stewart.
That’s the way it is! Time passes. Generations evolve. Things change.
We live through seasonal cycles of history. Every two decades or so we enter a new era, what the ancients called a saeculum. What we know as a generation. L’dor vador, from generation to generation. (That’s why we can wear the clothes we keep in the closet long enough for them to come back in style!)
Throughout the Bible we read of this generational cycle. Men at twenty years of age were eligible for war. After two full cycles, forty years after the Exodus, Joshua and the warriors of those generations lead Israel into their land.
In the Book of Judges we read, “The people served the Lord during the lifetime of Joshua and the lifetime of the older people who lived on after Joshua and who had witnessed the marvelous deeds that the Lord had wrought for Israel. Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died…and all that generation were likewise gathered to their fathers. Another generation arose after them, which had not experienced the deliverance of the Lord or the deeds that God had wrought for Israel…
…And the Israelites did what was offensive to the Lord.” That’s the interesting phrase. Something’s wrong. Something’s off. Something’s changing.
At each of these turnings, or transitions, in history we change how we feel about ourselves, about the world around us, and about the future. Four generational cycles ago, during the Great Depression religious leaders identified “a spiritual depression” among their congregants. Troubled by their financial woes, focused on the need to provide for themselves and their families, many people, many Jews, changed their familiar patterns of behavior.
Money was the presenting problem. Spirit was the real concern. The Great Depression was a low point for religious feeling in America. Tried by calamity, some people lost their faith in God, and in humanity. Many individuals felt less dignity and personal pride.
Jewish leaders hoped that the Great Depression would spark a spiritual revival. It didn’t. I find that ironic. When spirits are down, our life routines disrupted, that is precisely the time we need something more to believe in, something powerful to celebrate, a source for hope and renewal. The role of religion, certainly of religious community, is to remind us of that, providing uplift, encouragement, and support.
Many of us today also carry a spiritual burden, a lessened sense of our own dignity and merit. We ask whether our best efforts, our work and dedication, are worth it.
History reflects that once every four cycles, as if parallel to the four approximately twenty year phases of our life journeys from childhood to adulthood, from mid-life to elderhood, we enter a final era of challenge and change, after which the mahzor, the cycle of life, begins again.
And that’s where we are right now. That’s why we feel uneasy this time. This isn’t a routine turn, l’dor vador. This turning of the generations is different in its nature.
I cited Walter Cronkite’s death because it is a symbol of what we are feeling. We have arrived at the next moment. Given the shock waves of economic recession and financial strain, watching the upheaval in political discourse, and observing the weakening of social institutions, including the synagogue; we live our days enveloped by the constant commotion of social evolution. We feel strain between generations and world views, at home and in society.
We greet a new year moving further along into a new era. Feeling vulnerable, we want to hold on to comfortable people and routines. We seek out those who confirm our points of view. Self interest overwhelms common interest. We fight for what is ours, which only widens the gap between us and those from whom we feel distant.
That said, I think you and I are fortunate to be living at this time of major transition. First, we can be both witness to, and responsible for, what comes next. Second, our religious tradition supports us. The Jewish people have lived and survived, at times even thrived through so many previous transitions in history. If we focus ourselves this year, we can rediscover that at its core, Judaism represents enduring values that inspire and provide definition for identity and purpose in an ever changing world.
Our New Year task, therefore, is to reacquaint ourselves with three core Jewish values and to ground our lives in their meaning and fulfillment.
When we feel vulnerable, we look not only for what’s comfortable, but for what we can rely on. For centuries, no matter when or under what circumstances, Jews have depended on God as an anchor in stormy seas. I don’t mean our ancestors were all pious believers in God. Here and now, even we do not agree on what it is about God we profess.
Belief in God is an intellectual and personal choice. It is the choice of purpose over accident, of meaning over vanity. Philosophy, theology, curiosity, doubt all come down to the choice of seeing that “life’s mystery is God’s reality.”
As we confront the uncertainty of our future, we live with humble gratitude the awareness that our lives ought to be about what matters, what continues between the generations, and how we must take responsibility for the meaning of our days.
If your instincts lead you to believe that life is about something more than you, important though you are; if today you are looking to locate your place on firm ground in a world of shifting sands; and if you sense a purpose in all that keeps you busy; then you affirm the first core value of Judaism. You live in awe of God, Yirat Shamayim. As has every generation of Jews before, you declare: Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Ehad!
The whole and holy consciousness of Torah is summed up seventeen verses after Shema Yisrael by this phrase: “Avadim hayyinu l’Pharaoh b’Mitzrayim -We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt.”
To this day, thousands of years after our ancestors redemption, for we who are Jewish purpose is about acting as God’s agents seeking to redeem the world. We strive to do what’s right. We know the stories of our people’s journey through history. We rejoice in our heritage. We desire to transmit our identity into the future. We perform the rituals, deeds, and good acts of mitzvot.
If caring about others and the society in which we live together matters to you; if your conscience urges you to goodness; if you feel pain in others’ suffering and care enough to respond however you might; then the prophet Micah’s famous declaration is addressed to you.
“My people! What wrong have I done you? What hardship have I caused you? Testify against Me. In fact, I brought you up from the land of Egypt, I redeemed you from the house of bondage…God has told you, O man, what is good, and what the Eternal God requires of you: Only to do justice and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God.”
Rabbi Bunam taught his disciples. “Everyone must have two pockets, so that he can reach into the one or the other, according to his needs. In his right pocket are to be the words: ‘For me was the world created,’ and in his left: ‘I am but dust and ashes.’”
“I am but dust and ashes.” This awareness before God echoes Abraham’s words as he demands from God justice for the innocent people of Sodom. Living in awe of God, like Abraham, Micah, and Rabbi Bunam, we too act out the second core value of Judaism, Social Justice.
Finally, it is a vision of life larger than the current circumstance of these days that roots our lives with a sense of mission. This larger vision of our people comes from knowledge, from the study of sacred texts, from engaging with the wisdom of prior generations, and learning for today from history, from the experiences, memories, and insights of those who met and endured through previous times of challenge, transition, and even hope.
There are the deeds which yield immediate fruit and continue to yield fruit in the world to come, our sages tell us. When we care for loved ones, demonstrate compassion for the sick and needy, strive to treat all people with respect and kindness, we act in awe of God crafting a socially just community and world. Yet, our sages remind us, Talmud Torah k’neged kulam. The study of Torah is the third core value of Judaism, and our most prized.
Jewish learning provides us perspective and understanding. We have to know something about who we are, about where we’ve come from, and then acquire a base of knowledge to dream about the future. That’s how Jews always find inspiration to apply the values we cherish to the world in which we live.
Jewish values define our existence when they influence our choices and life patterns. Yirat Shamayim, a life lived in awe of God ought to inspire humility and respect. A life dedicated to Social Justice strives to reflect love and compassion. Talmud Torah, a life of learning should foster thoughtfulness and understanding.
In humility and with respect; in love and with compassion; in thoughtfulness and with understanding I know I’ll be fine. If that’s how I carry myself, if that’s how I treat others, if that’s what grounds me in the good and the right, I’ll live well in whatever times come next. More important, if these values are manifest around me, if others share them, we’ll all live securely and comfortably in a changing and challenging world.
These three values are not matters of opinion. They transcend the limits of our own experiences and preferences. We derive them from the wisdom and truths of our Jewish tradition. We discover them in the consequences of our errors and efforts to change. We recognize them in the hurt we cause others or the pain we, too, endure. We know them of conscience, of ancestry, and most certainly, of faith.
Therefore, here’s what I ask of you in this New Year. Think of your commitments and values in these terms. Embrace this historic moment of transition, a once in every four generation phenomenon of human social history. Live true to what you believe, but not unmoved, because in life change is the only constant.
Beginning a New Year, acknowledge both the repeating cycles of life’s patterns and the linear movement forward to progress and improvement. Guide your growth and change this year, living conscious of three Jewish values that support and uplift you. Be about these things, the values that matter most in life.
Imagine a world in which these values are prominent.
Yirat Shamayim. Live with a deeper appreciation for the wonder of life in God’s world.
Social Justice. Live with renewed dedication to making a difference in the lives of others.
Talmud Torah. Live with an open mind to the lessons of history, tradition, and all that you continue to discover.
Three core Jewish values are the firm ground upon which we stand as the world changes around us. All of our other values and principles derive from these: Yirat Shamayim, Social Justice, Talmud Torah. These are, and I trust will remain, the life foundation of the Jewish people, and help the world to change toward goodness.
Because…that’s the way it is!
© 2009 Rabbi Ronald J. Shulman
