We Will Be What We Never Always Were

If you’re a nerd like me, then you remember the sheer childhood joy of back-to-school shopping… and I don’t mean the new shoes. I mean the trip to the stationery store: all those pencil sets with matching erasers and sharpeners, all those empty folders waiting for labels and stickers, and, best of all, the blank notebooks full of promise. Each page clean.

Clean and empty, free of the grades and the mistakes of last year—like our souls at Rosh HaShana.

Except Rosh HaShana offers us no blank slate, no escape from last year’s missteps and sins. The Jewish new year precedes Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The first ten days, the first ten pages of our Jewish notebook already are filled to the margins with the inescapable truths of this past year of faults and failings and misgivings and regrets. We read this morning in the U’netaneh Tokef prayer: “v’choteiv v’choteim v’sofeir u’moneh, v’tizkor kol hanishkachot”—and you write and you seal and you record and you count, and you remember all that had been forgotten—“v’tiftach et seifer hazichronot, u’mei’eilav yi’kareih v’chotam yad kol adam bo”—and you open the book of remembrances, and what is written there proclaims itself, for it bears the signature of every human being.

Rosh HaShana might be the new year, the birthday of the world, but it is also Yom HaDin, the Day of Judgment, and Yom HaZikaron, the Day of Remembrance, and Yom HaTeruah, the Day of the Blast of the Shofar that wakes us from complacency and proclaims our deeds.

Pretty scary. God remembers everything! All our sins, all our missteps, all our negative thoughts—everything we did openly and everything we tried to hide.

And yet, at the center of a holiday that proclaims God our King, our Judge, our Prosecutor, and our Witness in a trial where our lives are literally on the line, we also call God the One who remembers. God remembers not only all those sins and failings, but the good deeds we did, the times we tried our best. And God remembers that we are part of a long chain of tradition that includes some pretty amazing people—not only the faithful Abraham who left everything he knew to follow God into the unknown desert, but ordinary people, too—our family and friends who preceded us and who surround us, encouraging us to be the best versions of ourselves that we can be.

Our High Holy Day prayer book tells us that God is constant in both reassuring and unsettling ways. God is eternally Malkeinu, our King. God rules over us in judgment, records all our actions, measures all our deeds, and remembers what we wish to forget. And God is eternally Avinu, our Father. God loves us unconditionally as a parent loves a child. God recalls our first words and keeps a photo of our first day of school on his desk, throughout the ages. God kvells over our accomplishments like a proud mother.

God’s constancy can offer comfort. In the Book of Numbers, we read, “God is not like a human being, to be capricious, or like a mortal being, to change his mind” (Numbers 23:19).

For some of us, though, all this constancy and steadiness can be unsettling. Is there room for change? What if our lives don’t fit into the mold? What if we want to reinvent ourselves?

Some of us are nothing like the children we were on our first day of kindergarten. Many of us change our names (or our nicknames) or our hair or our major. We move to a new place. We take up a new hobby. We work hard to change destructive habits and develop healthier ones. We stop going to shul. Or we go to High Holy Day services for the first time in years. We reshape and reinvent our identities. How does that change fit with the concept of an ever-present, ever-constant, ever-steady God who remembers all about us—good, bad, and in between?

Yeshiva University professor Joy Ladin is among those who find a God of constants and absolutes both challenging and dissatisfying. As a transsexual woman, Professor Ladin cannot fathom a God who requires us never to change. We don’t have to have radically changed our bodies and our gender identities to understand Professor Ladin’s message.

When we look at Rabbinic texts like the Talmud and codes of law, we see a God of absolutes. This is the God of the High Holy Day liturgy, changeless, presiding over the heavenly court with the infamous book in which all our deeds are recorded eternally. But, Ladin asserts, the God of Torah can be “impulsive, unpredictable, and constantly exceeding human categories of understanding.” Though the Torah assures us that God does not “change his mind” (va’yitnachem), we read in the story of Noah that God “regretted” (va’yinachem) ever having created human beings and so decides to flood the earth (Genesis 6:6). For hundreds of years, the Israelites suffered under Egyptian slavery, and then suddenly, va’yizkor, “God remembered the covenant with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob” (Exodus 2:24). And God transformed the people, in one radical moment, from slave to free.

Especially in the Psalms, we read of a Deity who can radically alter the shape of our lives and our identities—even the world in which we live. In her own writing, Professor Ladin focuses on Psalms as a source for thinking about transformation Jewishly. She sees in the Psalms a “really wild, imaginative energy.” God enacts “radical social transformation”: “He raises the poor from the dust, lifts up the needy from the refuse heap” (Psalm 113:7). God changes the shape of the earth: “Jordan ran backward, mountains skipped like rams, hills like sheep” (Psalm 114: 3-4). God makes the unexpected possible, changes our fate in the blink of an eye: “We are like a bird escaped from the [hunter’s] trap; the trap broke and we escaped” (Psalm 124: 7).

Professor Ladin revels in the radical shifting described in the Psalms: “[W]hen I read the Psalms,” she says, “[…] I don’t see steady-state categories.” And this is immeasurably reassuring because, as Ladin says, “no steady state is me.”

The God of Psalms—a God who can radically change anything and everything at any moment—is yet the same God who writes and seals and records and counts. We might find an always Eternal (capital “E”), constant God, imposing and restricting and even, as Ladin does, “boring.” We might worry over the chance to never have a clean slate, to never know the joy of a blank page, to never have the opportunity to be radically different than we were yesterday. But Judaism does not trap us into just one kind of God. Jewish tradition offers us the God who is eternally Malkeinu and eternally Avinu and yet a God who, in Ladin’s words, “isn’t everything all the time,” a God who can instead be “like this or like that,” a God who can be with us now, in this particular moment.

Our lives are like the Psalms. They twist and turn. They are emotional and specific. They can be, as Ladin describes some of the Psalms, “one ridiculously long sentence” in which each line makes sense on its own, and yet changes meaning once the next line is read. Every action we take, every new iteration of our identity, makes sense as an event in isolation. And it makes sense as a part of our ongoing, unpredictable life narrative. And it makes no sense at all if we expect ourselves to be always “the same,” constant.

When God tries to tell Moses exactly Who it Is who is sending him to Egypt to free Israel, God gives something that doesn’t sound at all like a name. What is your name, Moses asks, and God answers: Ehyeh asher ehyeh. In the Charleton Heston version of the story, this goes something like: “I AM THAT I AM.” But Biblical Hebrew has no present tense for the verb “to be.” And so what serves as God’s “name” here is perhaps better translated, “I will be what I will be.”

As we begin this new year, let’s take our inspiration from the God who remembers us and measures us and counts us and loves us and transform us. Let us let ourselves be what we will be. Let us remind ourselves, as Professor Ladin urges, that “God knows that I’m a spectrum of possibilities that’s going to keep being realized”—in unimaginable ways. Let us remind ourselves that this new year isn’t about clean slates or blank pages. It’s about a constellation of relationships and emotions and experiences that are both utterly the same and radically different than anything we could have expected of ourselves.



[This post was given as the Rosh Hashana sermon for Bates College Hillel in Lewiston, Maine. Many thanks to the amazing students there. Quotes of Joy Ladin are taken from the workshop presentation “Transformation as a Jewish Spiritual Path” at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah’s “Transforming Beitecha” conference, March 7, 2010 , which I attended. Psalms 113 and 114, part of the Hallel cycle, along with Psalm 27, traditionally recited during Elul (the month preceding the Days of Awe) were the Psalms Professor Ladin brought to her workshop for analysis and discussion.]

Wonder-Worker

Traditionally, every time a Jew uses the bathroom, she says a blessing thanking God for creating the human body, with all its passages and orifices. If even one of these passages or openings reverses its natural course, we cannot be sustained, we cannot stand before God, says this blessing. “Blessed are You, Eternal, healer of all flesh, and worker of wonders.”

My son is a wonder!

From the moments before his birth, as I worried about his mother’s well-being as she labored and pushed him into the world, through the first days of his life, as we watched him in the Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit under observation and again under a lamp to treat his jaundice, I looked at my son, praying to the God who is healer of all flesh and wonder-worker.

Thus far, our little nameless boy (until his eighth day) has been receiving attentive care and doing well on all counts, despite some scares. Though he did spend about a day in the NICU, the time there turned out to be merely a precaution. During that stay, we watched as the cardiologist examined his heart on a screen via an echocardiogram. Four chambers pumping, arteries delivering blood to all the tiny parts of this five-pound fourteen-ounce person. Wonderful. Under the blue jaundice lamp, our son squirmed and slept. When the nurse came to draw his blood to check his jaundice level, he used his muscles and his might to push away her hand! Wonderful.

It is so strange—and wonderful—to look into the eyes of this little stranger, a sojourner in this world with us. He trusts us completely and turns to us for food and for comfort and for care and for love, and we of course offer all to him freely. He is beautiful: a face just like his mother when she was a baby, a cute nose and big upper lip, a full head of dark brown hair, and magical blue eyes.

How can such a small creature motivate such big feelings? When I look into my son’s eyes, or watch him sleep, I feel how big a responsibility and how big a joy this next phase in our lives will be, as we take on the role of parents. And I have already let out the mama bear claws, refusing to compromise on his care, asking the doctors all the questions, demanding what he needs. I know I would do anything for him.

As I write this, our son is with us at home after receiving treatment for his jaundice, and as of right now, all indications are that his body is responding the way we would hope—all his passageways and organs are wondrously doing what they need to do. I will continue to pray that my son will be sustained, that all his passages and orifices will continue to function and to respond to all the efforts to improve his health as he transitions from the only environment he knew to a world where he will learn what it means to be a human being and a Jew and, we hope, a mensch.

We will welcome our son into the covenant of the Jewish people on Tuesday, surrounded by family and friends, and we will pray for his continuing development. I wonder who he will become.

How wonderful.

Where You Come From, Where You're Going

We have come from Egypt, through the sea, on dry land, with the water like a wall to our right and to our left. We wander in the desert, but we know where we are going: to Sinai, the mountain of revelation. We will stand there, all of Israel, to make a covenant with the God of our ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah.

We have come from slavery and degradation. We go to freedom and responsibility. We stand in relationship with the Jewish past, the Jewish present, and the Jewish future. We stand in relationship with God, Torah, and community.

[The following was sung to a beautiful tune by Cantor Joshua Breitzer.] Da me’ayin bata, u’l’an atah holech, da me’ayin bata, u’l’an atah holech, v’lifnei mi atah atid—HaKadosh Baruch Hu…

“Know where you came from, and where you’re going, and before whom you will stand in the future—the Holy One, Blessed be He” (Pirkei Avot 3:1).

These words of wisdom come from a chapter of the Mishnah called Pirkei Avot, the Chapters of our Fathers. It is a custom among many Jews to study these collected teachings from our Sages each year between Passover and Shavuot. We can mark the time of wandering with learning. We can spend the time of transformation enriching our minds and our hearts by learning more about how to live not as a “mixed multitude” of those enslaved to bitterness or idolatry, but rather, how to live as a people committed to love the Eternal our God and to love the stranger as ourselves.

This Shabbat, as we enter the fourth week of the omer, the count between Passover and Shavuot, it is customary to study Pirkei Avot, chapter 3, which includes the teaching: Da me’ayin bata, u’l’an atah holech, v’lifnei mi atah atid—“Know where you came from, and where you’re going, and before whom you will stand in the future” (Ibid.).

This teaching serves well as a preparation for Shavuot: it is important to remember our experience of slavery so that we truly understand our charge not to oppress the stranger. It is important to know that the wandering in the desert will lead to the Promised Land. It is important to remember, with humility, that it is God before whom we will stand in the thundering revelation at Sinai.

“Know where you came from, and where you’re going, and before whom you will stand in the future” (Ibid.).

In a similar teaching, Rabbi Eliezer advises, “[W]hen you pray, know before whom you are standing” (Bavli Brachot 28b). Indeed, in many synagogues, above the Ark are carved the words: Da lifnei mi atah omeid—“Know before whom you stand.”

Conventionally, we understand what this phrase means: Know that you are standing before God. Speak each word, take each action, conduct each relationship—in the knowledge both that God is with you, supporting you, and that God knows and sees and remembers all.

Over the past year, you have taught me to understand differently what it means to “know before whom you stand.” When we gather in this sanctuary to pray, we stand before God. But we stand, too, in Beth Am, a House of the People.

I stand before you.

I stand before a community formed by Jews willing to be flexible enough to merge several traditions into one Temple. I stand before families who have lived and worked in the valley for generations. I stand before people dedicated to learning Torah each month, bringing their unique perspectives to our study of sacred Jewish texts. I stand before non-Jewish spouses who raised Jewish children in beautifully mixed family traditions. I stand before parents and children and grandchildren who gather to hear the shofar and to light the menorah and to recall the Exodus from Egypt.

Before I came here, I had never heard of the Monongahela Valley or the steel mills or the coal mines or the Jews of Pennsylvania—and I only vaguely knew of the Steelers... I knew where I had come from: a Catholic upbringing, an “out” life with my partner Rachel, a meaningful and enriching conversion process, a strong love for Jewish learning, an urban home in Brooklyn. I didn’t really know where I was going when I came to this community! Would we connect? Would our worship together feel at once comforting and challenging, familiar and new? Would we learn together, and would we learn from one another?

Now, as I prepare to leave the valley and return to the city, I know where I come from: I come from Beth Am.

“True community does not come into being because people have feelings for each other (though that is required, too),” writes the philosopher Martin Buber. “[B]ut rather on two accounts [does true community happen]: all of them have to stand in a living, reciprocal relationship to a living center, and they have to stand in a living, reciprocal relationship to one another” (I and Thou 94).

Beth Am is—and has become for me—a true community. It is a place where people have feelings for each other: you are blood relatives and friends; you have opened your homes to one another; you have watched your children learn and grow and establish families of their own; you grieve together; you face the new year with collective anticipation. I have felt and I have been blessed by that feeling of warmth, from the moment you welcomed Rachel and I here to celebrate the High Holy Days with you to your continued well wishes for our baby-to-be.

And Beth Am is a place where each of us stands in relationship to a “living center”: the Torah we gather to hear and to study each month. Jewish tradition serves to bind this community in a way that personal feeling alone cannot. Dedication to Jewish tradition both ancient and modern keeps these doors open, keeps the Eternal Light burning, in this small community.

And Beth Am is a place where members and their families and the student rabbi all stand “in a living, reciprocal relationship to one another.” You have opened your homes and your hearts to me. You have shared your pains and your fears with me. We have discussed the meaning of Judaism and the presence or absence of God. We have studied challenging texts and asked what kind of God demands the death of an only, beloved child. We have watched films that ask us to consider what it means to repent and what it means to pray. We have sung songs new and old. We have meditated on our own personal struggles with bitterness and turned those struggles over to God for help and support. We have prayed for peace and healing.

I have learned to know before whom I stand.

I stand before each of you, blessed and grateful for the opportunity to serve as your student rabbi.

I stand before you humbled and awed by how much you have demonstrated for me the openness and the dedication related in this story:


R. Yose bar Judah of Kefar ha-Bavli said: To whom is he who learns from the young to be compared? To one who eats unripe grapes or drinks new wine fresh from his vat. And to whom is he who learns from the old to be compared? To one who eats ripe grapes or drinks aged wine.

Rabbi [Judah, the Patriarch] differed: Look not at the container, but at what is in it. A new container may be full of aged wine, while an old container may be empty even of new wine. (Pirkei Avot 4:27)



Beth Am learns from young and old, male and female, Jew by birth and Jew by choice. Like Rabbi Judah the Patriarch, a beloved teacher of the people Israel, this community does not judge the container but tastes the wine, to learn for themselves what it has to offer.

The first time I spoke with Phyllis on the phone, I knew and understood immediately that Beth Am rejoices in the opportunity to welcome and to nourish and to teach the next generation of Reform rabbis. “When we travel for a bar mitzvah or a bat mitzvah,” Phyllis said, “we often sit in the pews saying, ‘That was our student rabbi!’” The surprise and the joy and the pride in seeing how your community has enabled each student rabbi to grow bolsters me, and I know it will bolster next year’s student rabbi when he arrives to serve as your student rabbi in the fall.

“Look not at the container, but at what is in it.”

“Know before whom you stand.”

“Know where you come from, and where you’re going, and before whom you will stand in the future.”

I thank each of you for truly looking at what I brought to this community.

I thank each of you for pouring your own wisdom and doubts and questions into our time together this year.

I thank each of you for making me your rabbi.

I thank each of you for allowing me to know you.

I thank you for becoming a part of where I come from and where I am going.

And I thank each of you for helping us all encounter the Divine in this Beth Am, this House of the People.



[With gratitude and joy for the community at Temple Beth Am, Monessen, PA]