Rosh Hashanah Morning 5785 – Imperfect is OK

Written by Rabbi Nicola Feuchtwang — 7 October 2024

A little later this morning, during the Torah service, we will be reading a story which is probably more familiar than any other to the Jewish world:  the account of our ancestor Abraham, and how his religious zeal was so strong that he was prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac. Tomorrow we will read the chapter (which in fact comes just before the Akedah), describing how Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael away, perhaps initiating or maybe just reflecting, the millennia of tension between the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael.

 

For the whole of the last challenging year, at every Shabbat service, as we have prayed for those taken captive by Hamas, we have also been alluding to a different part of the Abraham story – how, when his nephew Lot was kidnapped during a regional conflict between rival tribal chieftains, Abraham dropped everything to risk life and limb, and travelled the length & breadth of the Middle East to secure the release of his kinsman, Lot.

 

I don’t know about you, but I have very mixed feelings about Abraham, our ancestor, our hero, the personality to which not only Judaism but our fellow monotheistic world religions of Christianity and Judaism all attribute our origins.  On the one hand, what amazing courage and conviction, to leave your homeland and everything you know because of a vision; to risk everything because of your devotion to honour and justice….  If I were in trouble, who wouldn’t want Abraham as their ambassador or military captain?

On the other hand, honestly, would you want him as your parent or your life partner?  A person so committed to his religious mission that it takes precedence over his children, his family, and sometimes even the truth?

 

What do we do, how should we react, when our heroes, role models, leaders,  don’t hold up to scrutiny in some areas of their lives?  How should our children, our students, our employees, react when we don’t live up to expectations? Should we pretend that we haven’t noticed their flaws?  Or try to explain and excuse them?  Or must we demote that person forever from their hero status – ‘cancel’ them, feel so betrayed by their imperfections that we are prepared to dismiss the good they have done, the importance they could have had for us.

 

Of course, these considerations are just as relevant to ourselves as individuals, especially at this time of year, at this time for reflection and heightened awareness of the extent to which each of us falls short of the sensible, righteous person we would like to be.  How easy to give up on the resolution at the first hurdle, to fall into despair that being ‘good’ is so hard that it’s not worth trying;  to feel that only perfection is good enough, and since that is not achievable, to settle for the status quo.

 

If I am ‘reading the room’ correctly, I sense that such a sense of despair and pointlessness is also part of the anxiety and real existential fear pervading us all at the moment, as we hear the news and worry about our friends and family in Israel, about the wider Jewish community, and indeed the world as a whole. What can any of us as individuals possibly do that can make any useful difference?

 

I have two tentative suggestions.

Perhaps one of the answers can be found in both of the Abraham stories we will be reading over Rosh Hashana (and I invite you to listen carefully as we read).  As Rabbi Elliott reminded us last night, when the divine messenger restrains Abraham from slaughtering Isaac, Abraham looks up and sees that ram, caught in the thicket – a much more appropriate sacrificial animal than a young man! It had been there all along (Midrash Aggadah even suggests that it had been there since the beginning of time, just waiting for this moment) – Abraham just hadn’t noticed before.

Similarly in the story of Hagar and Ishmael, they are dying of thirst in the wilderness.  Only when God ‘opens her eyes’ does Hagar see the lifesaving well of water which was not that far away. In her distress, she had not seen it.

Sometimes the resources we need are there, hiding in plain sight, waiting for us to find them, or recognise their relevance.

 

My second suggestion comes from a story or fable.

Last night, Rabbi Elliott and Rabbi Hannah shared the Aggadah about foxes trampling the ruins of the Temple, most of the rabbis weeping, yet Rabbi Akiva finding hope at a time of disaster.  The story I want to tell is not rabbinic or Chasidic, but has come to have almost holy status in the world of paediatrics, which was my previous professional life.  It was a favourite of the late Professor David Baum, and I was privileged to hear him tell it in his presidential address to the Royal College of Paediatrics & Child Health, just a year or two before his sudden death.  There are different versions, but it goes something like this:

 

An old man is walking along the beach at dawn. He notices a young child picking up starfish and throwing them into the sea. He asks the child “why are you doing this?”. The child answers that the stranded starfish would die if left out in the morning sun.

“But the beach goes on for miles and there are thousands & thousands of starfish,” counters the old man. “How can your effort make any difference?”

The child looks at the starfish in their hand and throws it into the waves.

‘It makes a difference to this one!’

 

If you need a Jewish text too, you already know it, for we sing it often. There is a well-known verse in Pirkei Avot:

Lo aleicha ham’lacha ligmor – velo ata ben chorin lehibatel mimena

He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say: It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it.[1]

Just because we can’t do it all, doesn’t release us from the responsibility to try, to do something.

 

One of the remarkable features of Jewish tradition is that we don’t completely whitewash our heroes, we generally don’t try to turn them into saints.  We tell their stories, warts and all.  Abraham was probably a rubbish husband; Moses had a speech defect and nasty temper.  King David did a number of things he shouldn’t have done (which we won’t talk about here).   They are still our heroes.

 

We don’t have to be perfect either – and we should not expect perfection in others.  Every one of us is flawed, and that’s OK.  Every one of us can learn to recognise our shortfalls, and work to improve.  Every one of us can play our part in making the world a better place, using what one of Professor Baum’s family calls their ‘starfish muscle’, by doing lots of little things for the people around us.

 

If we open our eyes, there may be resources available which we had not noticed.

I cannot change the world on my own.  But I can do my bit, I might be able to make a difference to ‘this starfish’.

 

Let us pray with all our hearts that the year ahead will be better than the last one, and better than we fear.  Let us help each other not to despair but to ‘open our eyes’ to better possibilities.  Let us not be paralysed by the immensity of trouble in the world, but exercise our starfish muscles:  if each of us saves a few starfish, then collectively we can do a lot of good.

 

LeShanah Tovah.

 

[1] Pirkei Avot 2:16