Rosh HaShanah 5784: Back to the Garden

For 26 years, I've been nurtured by my life as your rabbi. In community with  you, and in service to you, I have grown. Together we've experienced sadness and difficulty, and come through them enough times to know that hope and joy are real. Many years on Rosh HaShanah I've stood here and reflected those qualities back to you, as a way to begin a good and sweet new year. It's what I wanted to do this year.

I was trying to write this sermon as if it were an ordinary Rosh HaShanah for me. But it's not. This is the year my father died. So many of you responded with chesed, with lovingkindness, in words and deeds. Your comfort has helped ease me into this strange year of mourning; and it continues to sustain me.Todah rabbah; I am grateful.

When we experience a deep loss, it feels like the world has changed. But I know the world hasn't changed, it's me who's changed. It's made it very hard to know what I should say to you this Rosh HaShanah. I want to point out paths to living with happiness and joy, despite how we've been affected by a pandemic, and the growth of political extremism and cultural divides; not to mention all of the difficult and challenging things that happen in our own lives. I want to give us hope that life remains meaningful and beautiful, even in the face of impending climate change and the coming of AI.

I need Rosh HaShanah, and these ten Yamim Nora'im, these Days of Awe and Reverence, and Yom Kippur too, in order to offer you, and myself, this joy, this hope, this meaning.


I've learned wisdom from other traditions this year as well, through two books that made a great impression on me. The first is The Book of Joy, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, may his memory be a blessing, and a secular Jewish man named Douglas Abrams. Those two great leaders, each in their eighties at the time, met for a week in Dharamsala to celebrate the Dalai Lama's 80th birthday. The book reveals two deep thinkers and spiritual leaders, compassionate people who treat each other and all beings with chesed, with love and kindness. They have both experienced great suffering and adversity in their lives, yet they're also mischievous old men who take great delight in life and in each other's company.


It turns out that, across cultures, personal happiness tends to follow a U-shaped curve through our lifespan. On average, happiness is high in childhood, then declines starting in young adulthood, all the way through middle age. And then, just as our bodies start to ache, and get tired, and creak, and our eyesight and endurance aren't what they were.. and as our elders begin to leave us ... amazingly, happiness and joy tend to increase again.

Now why would that be? Why would we get unhappier in the "prime" of life and become happier as we age?


It turns out that a lot of the time, we don't actually know what will make us happy. We think we do. In Western culture, it's individual pursuits: My career, my status, my possessions. But... these things don't actually make us very happy. Across cultures, around the world, what makes us human beings happy is "connecting with the people we love, finding meaning in life, and performing service to others."


And apparently, what helps us figure out how best to live is becoming aware  that our time on earth is limited. Our mortality helps us focus on what truly matters. So as we age, and our bodies remind us that we won't be here forever, more and more of us focus on connection and making a difference. And we get happier.

You don't actually have to get old to experience this. It's not aging itself, but rather having an awareness of our "time horizon," that helps us focus on what's really meaningful. So during the pandemic, when people of all ages were dying, researchers discovered  that "younger people's opinions about how best to live suddenly began to look like those of seniors: They turned toward family and friends, finding purpose in social connection and helping others."

Nor does it even take a pandemic. Those of us who are part of a religious community, or an activist community, or a volunteer community, already have built-in stepping stones toward happiness. We celebrate together, we enjoy each other's company, we comfort and support each other, we learn from each other; and we do tikkun olam, deeds that leave the world better than we found it. It happens organically, because community and service are built-in to the tradition.


Living with meaning is also supported by Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. Every year, they arrive to help us to discern what is most important, this year, and then commit to taking action. Like birthdays, anniversaries, and other landmarks in time, our Yamim Nora'im, our Days of Awe and Reverence, offer us a "psychological reset button." They create a "break [in time] that not only prods us to consider new directions in life, but also helps us make any changes more effectively" by "...allow[ing] us to separate ourselves from past failures and imperfections." So says Dr. David DeSteno, in an essay aboutRosh HaShanah that was in the NY Times on Wednesday.

On Rosh HaShanah, the shofar blasts wake us up to possibility. The prayer after each blowing of the shofar begins HaYom harat olam: Though it's translated in our book as "Today the world is born anew," what it really says is "Today the world is conceived.

The shofar calls us to re-conceive, to re-imagine the world. This is our yearly opportunity to envision Olam ha-ba, the World to Come, the world as its best self, so that we can keep on moving Olam ha-zeh, the world we live in, in the right direction.

We have 10 Days of Awe and Reverence to refine that vision. We wrestle with ourselves, figuring out what we will change in order to commit more fully to that vision; and we work on repairing relationships, in order to re-weave the frayed places in the fabric of family and community. We strengthen our connections so that we can support and encourage each other in working toward the vision.

Our Yamim Noraim conclude with Yom Kippur, when we gather again to commit to the year ahead, embracing the life we want to lead, with the intention to do it little bit better than how we did it last year.

These holidays help us to see our "time horizon" more clearly, too: "On Rosh HaShanah it is written, on Yom Kippur it is sealed: Who shall live and who shall die... who shall reach old age and who shall not." As the research tells us, we don't actually have to experience death to re-order our priorities; imagining the limits of our lifespan can accomplish the same thing. So the solemn awareness of our lives, brought to us by Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, also nudges us toward making our lives meaningful.

The second book is Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass. What a joy that was to read! Kimmerer is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, a distinguished professor of Environmental and Forest Biology, and a beautiful writer. As she tells it: She draws on the wisdom of both indigenous and scientific knowledge, to create a vision of a world restored, a world in which ecological communities are healthy, and so are the reciprocal relationships between humans and land and all that live here with us. She reminds us that the culture of materialism and consumerism that tends to fill our days is a johnny-come-lately to this continent: We're gathered today on the ancestral lands of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the five (later six) nations which lived here in the Northeast long before my ancestors came. I am grateful to the people who were partners and stewards of the land before us, and to the ones who are living now, practicing right relationships with the earth and teaching us that community and service are not only with and for our fellow human beings, but also with and for the more-than-human world, all beings.

Kimmerer is often asked what one thing she "would recommend to restore relationship between land and people. [Her] answer is almost always, 'Plant a garden.' It's good for the health of the earth and it's good for the health of people. A garden is a nursery for nurturing connection..."

So is it any wonder that the Jewish creation story begins in a garden?


According to an ancient midrash (that is, a Jewish story about the stories): God took the first human being around the entire garden of Eden and showed them all of the trees of the garden. And God said to the first human being, “See My creations, how beautiful and praiseworthy they are; and everything that I created, for you I created it. Use your intelligence, so that you do not damage or destroy My world; for if you damage it, there is no one who will do tikkun" - that is, repair - "after you." (Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7:13)

"Everything I created, I created for you," says God. Rosh HaShanah, the birthday of the world, reminds us that the earth, and everything that grows and flourishes on it, and everything that is taken from it, is a gift we've been given.  Rosh HaShanah encourages us to see through eyes of gratitude. These eyes enable us to see beyond the packaging, the advertising, the grocery store, and recognize that our food and our oxygen depend on relationships with other beings. Plants make food for themselves out of sunlight and water and air, and have enough left over to share with us. They recycle our carbon dioxide and create oxygen. All as gifts.

And as we are taught as children, the proper response to a gift is expressing thanks. Saying brachot, blessings, before and after we eat is one way we say "Thanks." There are, in fact, six brachot to say over food; and you have to know how the food grew to know which brachah to say. You have to see beyond the packaging.


The midrash about the Garden of Eden also reminds us that we are responsible for  the life-giving earth. "Do not damage or destroy it," God says. What were those rabbis thinking, all those centuries ago? Did they already have an inkling of how powerfully we could affect the ecosystem?


In the second chapter of Genesis, the human being is placed in the garden l'ovdah ul'shomrah. "To work it and to care for it," or "to till and to tend." But looking closer we see that L'ovdah -- avodah -- actually means "to serve it." And L'shomrah means "to protect it." Both Robin Wall Kimmerer's tradition and Jewish tradition teach us that we are to treat the earth and its gifts with respect; that we are to use our intelligence and our gifts to serve the earth; and when we do not, it is on us to do tikkun, to do the necessary repair. We are to treat the earth as we would want to be treated: With chesed, with love and with kindness.


You are part of a community here where the value of chesed is deep-rooted. Our very name – בְּרִית שָׁלוֹם Brit Shalom, Covenant of Peace - reminds us of our mutual responsibility for each others' well-being. In 1865, when President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, there were two small synagogues inTroy. They came together that April to mourn the murdered President, as did other religious communities in Troy. And the following March, in 1866, the two tiny synagogues put aside their differences and merged to form Berith Sholom, the  Covenant of Peace community.


I want you to know that at Berith Sholom, after several years of planning and figuring out the finances, faithfully shepherded all that time by Daniel Kirk-Davidoff, we have taken a beautiful step toward balancing our relationship with sunlight. Our electricity is now derived from solar panels. They were installed, in May, on the roof of the School wing.All of the lighting, all of the tech we use, and the air conditioning in the Benjamin Social Hall are now powered by ... sunlight.

So here in the community of peace, take this once-a-year opportunity to re-conceive the world. Envision how you want to live. Focus on what really matters; hear the voice of wisdom.

This Rosh HaShanah, search yourself. Name the things you want to change this year.

Then come to hear the shofar tomorrow, and come to tashlich, after lunch, when you can symbolically separate yourself from what you are ready to change, by casting crumbs or birdseed into the river. And then, if you wish, create more community: stay for the Jewish Sing circle that our congregant Celia Kutz is hosting- bring your instruments and voices to the riverfront after tashlich.

Use these 10 Days of Awe, of Reverence, to refine your vision. In the awareness that our time on earth is limited, what do you really care about? Focus on yourself, and also on your relationships with humans, with all beings, with the world. Practice chesed, kindness; do tikkun: repair what you can.

And then gather again on Yom Kippur, to commit to positive changes in the coming year. They may be small, and that's all right. Every step counts

And after Yom Kippur.. come back again. Celebrate abundance on Sukkot. Celebrate Torah and tradition on Simchat Torah. Create something new. Let us grow families and cohort sand chevras in which we share the vision:


Of a world that is sustainable, and sustained, by us and all living beings. A world that is communal and connected. A world where we learn from each other and from all our teachers. A world of gratitude and generosity, where we share our gifts and talents in service. A world which nurtures hope, life, and joy. A world where we meet each other and all beings with chesed: with love and with kindness.

I know that I have been changed by my father's death this year. I can acknowledge that none of the problems facing us are going to be solved in my lifetime. And yet I am clearer than ever that it is worthwhile to work on them - and that I need to nurture community, with you: community dedicated to Tikkun Olam, repairing the world, with chesed, as a way of living with joy and hope, even in a broken world. Come be part of the community.