Sermon: Yom Kippur 5777 - Deborah Kahn-Harris

Sermon: Yom Kippur 5777 – Deborah Kahn-Harris

Written by Writings & Sermons by others — 12 October 2016

אַחַת | שָׁאַלְתִּי מֵאֵת יְהֹוָה אוֹתָהּ אֲבַקֵּשׁ שִׁבְתִּי בְּבֵית יְהֹוָה כָּל יְמֵי חַיַּי לַחֲזוֹת בְּנֹעַם יְהֹוָה וּלְבַקֵּר בְּהֵיכָלוֹ

One thing I ask of the Eternal One; this I seek – that I might dwell in the house of the Eternal One all the days of my life, gazing upon the Eternal One’s delightfulness and visiting God’s palace each morning.

There was a moment, a mere few weeks ago, when in the full flow of morning prayers I had a sort of epiphany – strange word I know for a rabbi, but a useful one all the same. We were singing these words, this short extract from Psalm 27, which is traditionally recited during the month of Elul as part of our preparation for the High Holidays. And it sort of just hit me, square between the eyes, the way that the melody changes gear, cries out at the moment of שִׁבְתִּי, the length of the musical notes stretching out, the lack of repetition of the this central phrase of the verse – שִׁבְתִּי בְּבֵית יְהֹוָה כָּל יְמֵי חַיַּי I might dwell in the house of the Eternal One all the days of my life – focusing all the emotion of the song, of the praying, on to these six, short Hebrew words.

My Hebrew truly isn’t all that it could be. I know that probably sounds ridiculously self-effacing coming from an ordained rabbi and Bible scholar, but it is true. You can ask my husband. He can speak Hebrew; I can translate it off the written page. He can hold a conversation; I can parse verbs neatly in the order of a grammar chart. So when I am praying all too often the Hebrew words are more mantra than meaningful, more what I know I am supposed to be mouthing than words with significance. But every so often the meaning of them leaps off the page at me, hits me with full force, and I find myself thrown momentarily, slipping into another space where my kavanah, the intentionality of my prayer, is thrown into sharp relief and I believe completely, almost irrationally in the words that I am praying.

And that is what happened one shacharit at Leo Baeck College; I can’t actually remember who was leading the prayers, only that it was one of our rabbinic students. What I do remember is that I quite abruptly realised that what the psalmist craved was what I craved, too – to dwell in the house of the Eternal One all the days of my life. I found it almost shattering, that self-realisation. I am not a person prone to overly pronounced sentimentality or moments of spirituality – to be honest I find even the word, spirituality, off putting. I know it sounds curmudgeonly of me and, with apologies, I all too often associate spirituality with bouts of enforced hand clapping and vacant looking expressions of ecstasy.

Notwithstanding my general attitude towards spirituality, I can say for certain that that morning the psalm moved me; it pushed me away from my conscious self; it impelled me at a deeper level to strive to make a connection between these six fleeting words and the life that I lead. שִׁבְתִּי בְּבֵית יְהֹוָה כָּל יְמֵי חַיַּי What would it mean for me to dwell in the house of the Eternal One all the days of my life? Did I know the answer to that question? As I stood winding the straps of my tefillin back into place ready to put them away for another morning, I heard myself humming the melody over and over again under my breath and I realised that perhaps, not so surprisingly, I knew. I knew the answer to the question; I knew where to find the house of the Eternal One.

Another shacharit service, this time Rosh Hashanah. As we read the morning blessings together from the new draft machzor, I found myself pausing at the blue line in English above each blessing – ‘when I am jealous, envious or greedy, help me accept what I have’, blessed are you our living God, Sovereign of the universe, You provide for my every need; ‘when I recognise my own insignificance, cover me with Your strength’, blessed are you our living God, Sovereign of the universe, You clothe the naked; and so they go. Each blue line gives a helpful modern take on the blessings of old. And then I came upon this blue line, ‘when I am confused about being a Jew, show me the meaning of my life’.

This blue line, too, stopped me in my tracks.

When am I confused about being a Jew? Aside from all of the time, of course. When I am confused about being a Jew, show me the meaning of my life? Would that help me to be some sort of less confused Jew, if I knew the meaning of my life? If I am confused about being a Jew, I suspect I am even more confused about the meaning of life. What do we mean by meaning – purpose, direction, substance, belief? Something else altogether? And the blessing to which this sentiment is associated – blessed are You our living God, Sovereign of the universe, You crown Israel with glory – what has that to do with the meaning of life?

And yet if there is a day when we, Israel, seek to be crowned with God’s glory, it is today, You Kippur, when we seek God’s forgiveness and mercy. For Yom Kippur is the Jewish moment to contemplate the meaning of life and reflect on our human existence, the day for almost endless self-reflection, internal analysis, and the search for personal and communal worth. It’s a kind curious thing we, Jews, do. At the moment of our deepest self-reflection, at the confession of our sins, we do not shut ourselves away in a box, separated from the closest human contact by a lattice work grill, neither do we take ourselves away to a high mountain pass with only the bar headed geese for company as we meditate. No, we cram ourselves together in large numbers in our synagogues, in marquees and school halls and hotel ballrooms and sports facilities and even convention centres, anywhere really where a mixed multitude can gather for an entire day without interruption and together we pray, pour out our souls, and confess our sins.

As we come together, this disparate band of individuals, out of the bonds that tie us to each other we create a community. We then proceed in something akin to unison to offload to God that we are confused and lost, lacking meaning in our lives, and thus we sin, consciously and unconsciously, acts for which we proclaim ourselves to be truly sorry. Where so much the modern Western sensibility focuses on the atomised individual, their discrete experience, their particular interests, their peculiarities and desires, the Jewish world is built on this bedrock of community.

That is why my family and I come to Alyth. This community is our bedrock, the foundation of our Jewish lives. If I must spend a day confessing my misdeeds and sharing the burden of the wrongdoings of others, then I know that here, I am safe. For prayer of any sort to work, whether confessional, petitionary, declarative, or any other sort, at root we must feel secure. Secure not in the sense of being at peace with ourselves, perhaps indeed far from it, but secure in the sense that we are being held by the people around us, by the words of the liturgy, by our own belief in the potential of what we are doing.

So it is no accident that both of the experiences I have shared with you happened at shacharit at the twin centres of my own my prayer life, Alyth and Leo Baeck College. At both places the centrality of Jewish prayer is foundational to the building of communal life. Even more so, at both Alyth and Leo Baeck College services are not stagnant, but constantly and consciously engaged not in creativity for its own sake, but in striving to find a form of prayer that will be meaningful and engaging. That’s why my family and I were able so seamlessly and powerfully to able to bring our son to the Leo Baeck College morning prayers to lay tefillin for the first time, followed days later by his bar mitzvah in Kollot. And in each place we felt part of something larger, we were part of community.

At Alyth the multitude of prayer options gives space for each of us to find a niche, while rarely being far from the whole. We may attend different services, but then join together for kiddush or, as we do today, attend one of the many options that allow us to flow in and out of each other’s company until at the end of the day we become like one giant river bound together by its tributaries. At Leo Baeck College, where I am Principal, we are too small for multiple options. Instead we support each other in the styles of service we each feel able to offer. In doing so, we learn from each other, grow stronger in each other’s company, and find new ways of accessing our prayer life that we didn’t always know possible. In both places the discipline of regular prayer builds a sense of commonality, helps us create an image of the community, of the world, that we want to construct, want to be part of.

I know for many of us, today (or maybe today and Rosh Hashanah) may be the only day in the year we come to synagogue. I can only recommend otherwise. Come weekly, come often. Daily prayer is the greatest gift I have ever given myself. And if weekly is not enough for you, join us at Leo Baeck College for daily morning services. The College belongs to us all; it is at the heart of our Reform Jewish world.

Communal prayer binds us each to the other, but it also fuses us, personally and collectively, to God. We create in the spaces between us and around us and through us, above us and below us, we create in those space the bonds that connect us, the בֵית יְהֹוָה the house of the Eternal One, the house of God.

When I am confused about being Jew, when I am lost or needful, when I confess my sins and when I celebrate life’s milestones, when I long for the house of Eternal One, I know I need only sit in your company, in a service here at Alyth or at the Leo Baeck College and my sincerest desire is fulfilled. For in the company of community life, here God dwells, we together form God’s palace and to gaze upon each other gathered here today, that is delightful, and I am reminded yet again simply of this: