Mortality, the Unetaneh Tokef, and The Measure of Our Lives - , 5781

This summer, I drove 13 hours to visit my parents in Chicago for a few weeks. As part of the most vulnerable generation, they’d been largely confined to their home for the past four months. But while I was there, I joined my mom for her daily walks, and one day, we decided to walk by some of our dearest family friends’ house and see if they’d be up for a socially distant backyard visit. I’ve known this family – the Blaines - since I was four. Sue, the wife, is a retired engineer who used to oversee the machines at the Mars plant (which means her full-time job was making candy bars). And Jeff, the husband, is a psychotherapist. I hadn’t seen them for over a year. And as we were sitting in their backyard talking about how Covid had turned the world upside down Jeff asked me: Have you heard about WeCroak?” “WeCroak?” I said. “Yes,” he said, “it’s an app that reminds you five times daily that you’re going to die.” I started to laugh. But first, an explanation. WeCroak is a smartphone app that was inspired by a Bhutanese Buddhist folk saying, “to be a happy person, one must contemplate death five times daily.” “I have not,” I said, “Sounds macabre.” “It’s actually kind of wonderful.” Said Jeff. “You should try it.” “Well,” I thought, “It is 2020. Might as well.” And I downloaded it. Which means that five times a day, every day, since mid-July, I get a notification on my phone that says, “Don’t forget you’re going to die. Open for a quote.” The quotes range from J.K. Rowling to Emily Dickinson to Buddhist monks. Now, as you might imagine, this doesn’t always go over too well. There are moments when the notification arrives, I haven’t had my morning coffee, and I already feel not quite alive. There are other moments when I’m having a terrific time – on a boat with friends, in the middle of a long run, or having a glass of wine, when I think “Really, WeCroak? Really? Now?” I have, on more than one occasion, contemplated deleting it. But I haven’t. Because sometimes the notification arrives when I’m numbed out in front of Netflix, or complaining to friends on the phone, or feeling particularly pessimistic about the state of the world. In moments like those, being reminded of my mortality is just what I need to turn off the TV, stop complaining, or just reach out to a friend. It’s what I need to make a different choice in how I’m going to live. • * * ​ One of the best things about being a Reform Jew is that our liturgy matches our values. The Reform movement has spent the past two centuries editing and deleting and adding to our prayers so that they more closely represent what we believe; removing parts of prayers that refer to non-Jews in derogatory ways, are overtly sexist or say that other religions are idolaters. Theologically, we’ve also whitewashed prayers that waded too deeply into ideas of reward and punishment – making our collective vows a bit less troubling. Which is why I’ve always been surprised that we kept one prayer in its entirety. That prayer, the Unetaneh Tokef, is one we first say on and read again on , and I’m ​ sure you know it, even if you think you don’t. In fact, it’s so famous that Jewish rock star Leonard Cohen once composed his own version of it. You might recognize it. Here’s an excerpt. And who by fire, who by water Who in the sunshine, who in the night time Who by high ordeal, who by common trial Who in your merry merry month of May Who by very slow decay And who shall I say is calling? And who in her lonely slip, who by barbiturate Who in these realms of love, who by something blunt Who by avalanche, who by powder Who for his greed, who for his hunger And who shall I say is calling? Here’s the original: We shall ascribe holiness to this day For it is awesome and terrible. […] And all creatures shall parade before You as a troop. As a shepherd herds his flock, Causing his sheep to pass beneath his staff, So do You cause to pass, count, and record, Visiting the souls of all living, Decreeing the length of their days, Inscribing their judgment. On Rosh Hashanah it is inscribed, And on Yom Kippur it is sealed. How many shall pass away and how many shall be born, Who shall live and who shall die, Who shall reach the end of his days and who shall not, Who shall perish by water and who by fire, […] Who by famine and who by thirst, Who by earthquake and who by plague, […] But repentance, prayer and charity avert the severe decree Like many of you, I’ve never understood why we kept this prayer in our liturgy. Until this year. This year, it feels like a disarmingly honest, vulnerable description of the fear that we have been living with since March. Covid has forced the question of our mortality – and brought us face to face with a sense of arbitrariness of destiny. Covid has forced the question in a way that we haven’t experienced since 9/11 and made the answer to “Who by fire? Who by water? Who by plague?” clear. The “who” is all of us. ​ ​ ​ Many of you know that I interviewed a number of congregants about their parents’ stories for my Rosh HaShanah sermon on resilience. Only a few of those stories made it into the final sermon. But in the weeks that I was working on it, I listened to story after story of Holocaust survivors and refugees, what they lost, and how they managed to rebuild their lives after WWII. With very few exceptions, no one expected that their lives would be thrown into disarray so quickly, or that the chaos would be so total. One of the sons, now in his 70s said to me, “You have to understand – my family was happy, they had their lives, their jobs, they’d been in Poland for generations and then, it was like – ten minutes later – everything – the entire world was torn apart, and they had nothing.” It was that fast. While we are not contending with the Nazis – and to even hint at the analogy would be unholy – most of us have faced moments that threw our lives into disarray. A cancer diagnosis. An ALS diagnosis. A Parkinson’s diagnosis. The words: “I want a divorce”. The sudden illness of a parent or spouse. A miscarriage. The discovery that our spouse has been unfaithful. The suicide of a loved one. The loss of a job. We all, to varying degrees, have stood on the precipice the Unetaneh Tokef is referring to, and stared down at the unknown beneath us, wondering, how ​ will I survive this? And - why me? Why not someone else? There’s no good answer to that question. Rather – as Harold Kushner writes in “When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” the most critical question we can ask after a tragedy is not why me – but what next? Which may explain why the Unetaneh Tokef, after a litany of doom, gives us what seems like a way out: “But repentance, prayer and charity avert the severe decree.” For centuries, the took these words to justify a theology of reward and punishment – an if/then theology in which repentance, prayer and giving might change our fate and avert our inevitable deaths. But I don’t believe in that – and I bet you don’t either. Except – what if it’s true – but in a different way? What if transformation, prayer, and giving do change our fate? Not because they change if or when we die, but they change our lives until then. Because we can always be kinder, more giving, and more grateful. To quote Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso: “We may not be able to make our lives longer, but we can make them better, less bitter, more loving. We may find ourselves facing unintended circumstances, confronting situations not of our making. Those circumstances aren’t inherently meaningful, but we can make them meaningful; we can give them purpose.” Several years ago, one of my mentors, Professor and Rabbi Aaron Panken, died tragically at age 53 - in a single engine plane crash over the Hudson River Valley. Aaron was a pilot, who besides his first loves of his family and , loved nothing more than flying his plane. In fact, years earlier, when I was in Rabbinical School, as the then provost of HUC, Aaron was invited to spend the day on a Navy ship as part of Fleet Week. At the time, the military was looking for more Reform Rabbis in its ranks, and so they told him to bring a student for a day on a destroyer. Halle Berry and Hugh Jackman would be there, and a Navy Band, and all kinds of important dignitaries. Well, Aaron, for reasons unknown, decided to bring me with him, and as we were being escorted on a very fast, small boat from a dock in Hudson into the Atlantic, Aaron turned to me and said, with a twinkle in his eye: “this is almost as good as flying”. But that’s not what I remember most about that day. I don’t remember the movie stars or the music or the special cafeteria for high-ranking sailors. What I remember most is that at the end of the day, after being introduced to generals and majors, the acting chaplain brought us to meet a young Jewish sailor, who had just started his career in the Navy. He was a baby-faced kid, barely 18. When he was hauled into a room full of rabbis and generals to explain his responsibilities on the ship, he was literally trembling with fear and intimidation. As the kid was starting his navy-approved shpiel, Aaron gently stopped him. “What’s your name, sailor?” he asked. “Where are you from?” And then, Aaron asked Private Levy to tell us about his family, what he missed about home, and how he had ended up here. Half an hour later, the three of us were laughing and schmoozing as though we were old friends. Aaron had focused his incredible kindness on this least powerful, least “important” person in the room, while all the decorated Navy higher-ups disappeared. And in Aaron’s gentle presence, Private Levy was beaming, and I learned the single most important thing about being a rabbi – or maybe, just, a human being. I had forgotten all about this until, a month ago, I was reading an anthology about the Unetaneh ​ Tokef, and saw an article entitled: “The Eternal and The Ephemeral: The Stark Contrasts of the ​ Unetaneh Tokef” by Rabbi Aaron Panken, PhD. ​ In Aaron’s memory – I want to read his words, written several years before his death: “Unetaneh Tokef was always that one prayer I simply could not get through as a congregational Rabbi. Generally inured to sentimentality, I do not find myself breaking down at the drop of a hat. But this prayer: this was the one that was just too thick with meaning to be glossed over, or speed davened into oblivion. Year after year, my voice would crack, my eyes tear up, and in some years it was all I could do just to get through the parts I read aloud. It was impossible to stand before all these families I knew and loved and avoid the deep, intimate sadness provoked by the demanding litany of “Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die” in all its many variations. It was all too much – knowing the family over here who lost an infant daughter that year, the young woman over there struggling to survive what had been declared a ‘terminal’ cancer, the dear friends in the back row coping with the deepening dementia of parents…” He continues: “Our actions – the teshuva – self transformation – tefilah – prayer – and tzedakah – giving that we do, help us live in such a way that when we must suffer life’s darkest depredations, we will have ways of coping with them. Our actions do not change the outcome [of our lives] one iota, but they can alter our attitude, bolster our ability to withstand challenges, help us avoid unavoidable misfortunes, and see life’s value among chaos….And teshuva – transformation – tefillah prayer and tzedakah – giving – link our transient selves to what is eternal – God, and the kind of repaired world God compels us to create…[and] Therein lies the ultimate contrast; by reaching out to an eternal God, we who are temporary and vulnerable, can become a part of eternity; through our limited actions, we become limitless. Such is beauty of the offering that comes in the words of this prayer…In confronting our fears through the Unetaneh Tokef…we find hope.” ​ Aaron became a part of eternity through his kindness – to Private Levy and many others. He has been gone for several years now, but he remains present and limitless for me, and so many others because of who he was until he was gone – and the giving he could not help but do. He lives on in the example he set – his fate altered ever so slightly by the quality of the life he led while he lived it, and the lives he taught us all to lead. His memory is a blessing. Which is to say – Covid is only the first part of the Unetaneh Tokef of 2020. It is the who by fire, ​ ​ who by water – and who by plague. But there is more to the Unetaneh Tokef than this litany of ​ ​ doom just as there is more to our lives than our deaths. There is the part that says what we do today – and how - matters more. And that by living lives of gratitude and kindness, we tie ourselves to something eternal and lasting. This Yom Kippur, we don’t know our fates. We don’t know what will happen between this year and the next, or if we will be sealed in the tonight, or tomorrow. There are no guarantees. What we do know is this: we have today, and tomorrow, and every moment until there are no more, and in each of them is the possibility of transformation, kindness and generosity. Aaron ended his article on the Unetaneh Tokef with an excerpt from the prayer itself, and a ​ ​ meditation on transience. This is what it says: “Their origin is dust and dust is their end/At their peril gathering food, they are like shattered pottery/Like withered grass…” And then, the prayer suddenly changes course, to reflect on what is eternal: “[God] it continues, Your years are boundless and the length of your days endless…” [Pause] “You named us after you.” Tonight, on Yom Kippur, we remember all of this: that we are fragile, and transient and that there is also something of us that is eternal, and will last long after we are gone. That eternality is in how we live our lives right now. This year, may we live in a way that ensures that we will be remembered for the good.

G’mar hatima tovah – may you be sealed for a good year in the book of life.

© 2020 Rabbi Jordie Gerson