What does it mean to ‘choose life’ if, at the same time, our fate is in the hands of God? – Sermon for Rosh Hashanah

Written by Rabbi Elliott Karstadt — 25 September 2020

Our tradition is full of claims that death is a punishment for sin. In the words of the Talmud, ein mita belo chet – there is not death without sin – and in the words of the central prayer we will hear in our musaf service, We pass before God like sheep and God decides who gets written in the book of life and who gets written in the book of death. Who shall live, and who shall die, by fire, by water, by plague.

When the city of Jerusalem was set to be destroyed by the Babylonians, God instructed an angel to go amongst the Israelites. The angel was to write the Hebrew letter tav in ink on the foreheads of the righteous. This was so that the angels of destruction would know to spare them. The letter tav is the first letter of the word tichyeh (‘you shall live’).

The angel was to write a letter tav in blood on the foreheads of the wicked. This was to ensure that they would not be spared the annihilation that was to be their punishment. The letter tav is also the first letter in the word tamut (‘you shall die’). The rabbis say that the letter tav is the final letter in the seal of the Holy Blessed One – it is the last letter in the word emet (‘truth’).^[1] Thus, the sentences  ‘you shall live’ and ‘you shall die’ are both encapsulated by truth.

Central to the Jewish funeral service is the prayer Tzidduk Hadin, literally translated as the ‘justification of the judgement’. The prayer contains a number of stock phrases, one being ‘the Eternal has given, and the Eternal has taken away, may the name of the Eternal be blessed’ (Job 1:21). Another is also the standard traditional Jewish response upon hearing of a death: baruch dayan emet (‘blessed is the true judge’). The inclusion of these statements in the funeral service reinforces the words of Un’taneh Tokef, that whether we live or die over the course of the next year is a result of God’s judgment.

If we are uncomfortable with this theological assertion, we might be comforted by the knowledge that the rabbis of the Talmud were also uncomfortable with it. What about Moses and Aaron? They ask. They both died, and yet they must have observed everything in the Torah – what would they have to repent for on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur?

And yet, even these exemplars of Jewish life were not perfect, and the rabbis are forced to conclude that Moses and Aaron faced death because of their own sins.

Indeed, many will assert that ‘God works in mysterious ways’ – that we might not really know about what it is that will bring us down, but ultimately the decree of death will be justified.

Who this year? Who by fire? Who by water? Who by plague? Who by hunger? Who by thirst? Who by virus?

Rabbi Marc Saperstein (one time principle of Leo Baeck College) recounts how, one year on Rosh Hashanah, he became aware of an eleven-year-old sitting at the front of his congregation, whose mother was dying. He did not want her to leave the synagogue that afternoon thinking that it was somehow her mother’s own fault that she was dying. And yet this could be our conclusion of hearing the words of our musaf prayers.

This is the situation in which many of us, if not all of us, find ourselves this year, a year that has taken so many, disrupted our lives in such profound and troubling ways.

We might cling to the promise that teshuvah utefillah utzedakah ma’aravin et ro’a hagazeirah – that repentance, prayer, and acts of justice will avert the evil of the decree.

But, we might also object: Was it because we did not repent enough? Was it because we did not pray enough? Was it because we did not do enough acts of justice? I do not think these are the questions we should be asking. Many of us simply reject the idea of a God who sits in heaven writing names in two giant ledgers – one for life and the other for death. There is another deeply ingrained Jewish tradition – the imperative to ‘choose life’.

On this interpretation, we are the authors of the divine books. We are not simply characters who might be bumped off by the unseen author at any moment. We have the power to shape our lives; maybe not in big ways, but in our own way.

This might sound like trying to make it easy – a nice, friendly theology that avoids the idea of judgment. But facing up to the reality of our responsibility for our response to the world can be much more difficult than putting our faith in a divine judge.

There is a Chasidic story about Rabbi Meshulam Zusya of Hanipol, whose students found one day in uncontrollable weeping. His students tried to comfort him: ‘Rabbi, you are as wise as Moses, and as kind as Abraham!’ they said, the implication being that they were sure Zusya would be judged well when he came before God’s court. The rabbi replied: ‘When I die, they will not ask me “why were you not as wise as Moses” or “why were you not as kind as Abraham?” Rather, they will simply ask me, “why were you not more like Zusya?”’

When we pray the words of the un’taneh tokef, that we pass before God like sheep to be judged, do we imagine a divine eye being cast over us as we each troop by one-by-one? If we do, from which direction do we imagine it? If we envisage that we are the ones looking up, being judged, wondering whether God likes the look of us this year, it can make us feel powerless – like we are not in control of our own lives. If we envisage that we are looking down on ourselves, as we pass before God, then we might ask the question, ‘do I like what I see?’ This is the same question that Zusya asks: do we think that we are living up to the best version of ourselves?

Rosh Hashanah (and Yom Kippur) gives us the opportunity to ask ourselves how we want to be remembered. Dressed all in white as we are today, on Yom Kippur we will take this to its extreme and anticipate our own deaths. We allow ourselves that self-indulgent but spiritually crucial activity of envisaging what our friends and family, our community, might say in the eulogy of our lives.

As US Supreme Court Judge, Ruth Bader Ginsburg put it in 2015, when asked how she would like to be remembered: ‘I would like to be remembered as someone who used whatever talent she had to do her work to the best of her ability. And to help repair tears in her society, to make things a little better through the use of whatever ability she has.’

Bader Ginsburg died just a few hours ago. Having campaigned and fought for women’s rights her entire life, she may have been dismayed in recent years at the state of the world. But, as she herself said, it was not effective to get upset or frustrated – just to continue to do what she could.

And this is a lesson for all of us – not to mourn that we are not Moses or Abraham, or even that we are not Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but to do what we can to be the best version of ourselves. And my hope is that this is for the good of the world, rather than to its detriment.

This year in particular, we have to see the words of un’taneh tokef metaphorically. In the words of Rabbi Joseph Meszler from Massachusetts, ‘there is no literal book of life in heaven …’. Rather, ‘the prayer highlights that we are all mortal, and we never know when we will die. Therefore, there is urgency in doing the activities that give life meaning: teshuvah, tefillah and tzedakah. They may not change whether someone lives or dies, but they do affect how you live and how it feels to be alive.’

So, I think I can accept that both ‘you shall live’ and ‘you shall die’ are fundamentally grounded in truth. It is a deep human truth that death is inevitable. It is not something we question. Rather, the question is, did we do our best to live our most authentic lives?

As the medieval Jewish philosopher, Bahya Ibn Pekuda wrote: ‘Days are like scrolls, write on them what you want to be remembered.’

[1] b.Shabbat 55a