Our Jewish Stories--Our Jewish Lives Part IV
Sermon, Yom Kippur 5766
Rabbi Bruce Kadden

On Rosh Hashanah I said that we are a people that loves to tell stories.  There is one exception, one time during the year where it seems, at least at first, that we do not tell stories.  That time is Yom Kippur.

As I noted last night, our liturgy does contain stories of death, the 10 rabbis who suffered martyrdom at the hands of the Romans and the story of Rabbi Amnon of Mayence.  But these were added relatively late to our liturgy.

On Rosh Hashanah, we read the wonderfully compelling and challenging stories in Genesis 21 and 22 of the birth of Isaac, the subsequent family conflict between Sarah and Hagar which leads to the expulsion of Hagar and her son Ishmael, and then the binding of Isaac.  The Haftarah for the first day is an equally compelling story of Hannah and the birth of Samuel.

On Yom Kippur, however, the scriptural readings are not stories, but from the Torah’s legal material.  Traditionally, on Yom Kippur morning, we read Leviticus 16 which explains the elaborate procedure for maintaining the sanctuary’s ritual purity, including the high priest’s confession of sins and sending away a scapegoat.  On Yom Kippur afternoon, the traditional reading is Leviticus 18, which deals with sexual morality. 

Reform Judaism has chosen other readings to replace these:  Deuteronomy 29 and 30 in the morning and Leviticus 19 in the afternoon; these passages also deal with legal matters and the covenant between God and the Jewish people.  It is as if there was a recognition that on a day such as Yom Kippur, a day devoted to fasting and repentance, the telling of stories was not appropriate.

There is, of course, one important exception to this pattern.  On Yom Kippur afternoon we read, as the Haftarah, the story of Jonah.  That we should read a Haftarah portion in the afternoon is unusual; in congregations that read Torah on Shabbat afternoon, no Haftarah is read.  But Yom Kippur, of course, is special, and perhaps to lengthen the service so that it would end after sunset, the rabbis decided to include a Haftarah. 

But why a story on a day that is not really for stories?  The rabbis recognized that as the day wore on it was important to begin making the transition from Yom Kippur to post-Yom Kippur.  This transition is most clear during N’eelah, the concluding service when we omit the Al Cheit, the long confessional, change the wording of some of the lines in Avinu Malkeinu so that we ask God to seal us in the Book of Life, and choose more upbeat melodies for certain prayers.

But I have a hunch that the rabbis also chose the story of Jonah to be read on Yom Kippur afternoon to begin the process of getting us back to living and thinking like we do the other 364 days of the year.  Jonah is an appropriate story because it deals with the themes of forgiveness and repentance.

The story begins with God telling Jonah to go to Ninevah “and proclaim judgment upon it, for their wickedness has come before Me.”  Jonah, however, flees in the opposite direction on a ship going to Tarshish, “away from the service of God,” the text notes.  God brings a storm, which endangers the ship.  The crew members frantically throw cargo overboard, pray to their gods and finally, when nothing else works, awaken a sleeping Jonah.  They cast lots and the lot falls upon Jonah; he admits that he is fleeing from God and tells them to throw him overboard. 

At first they refuse, trying to row to shore, but finally, they throw Jonah overboard and the sea calms down.  Jonah is then swallowed by a big fish, prays to God and is spewed out on dry ground.  Once again, God tells him to go to Ninevah and this time, lo and behold, he listens. 

Now, if the story ended here, it would be a perfect example of repentance.  After all, faced with the same choice a second time, Jonah comes through and obeys God.  That is what repentance is all about.  But as the story continues, it becomes apparent that although Jonah has changed his action, he has not truly had a change of heart. 

Indeed, when the people of Ninevah fast and repent and turn back from their evil ways, God renounces the punishment, but Jonah is not happy!  “Isn’t this just what I said when I was still in my own country?” he laments.  “That is why I fled…for I know You are a compassionate and gracious God….Please take my life for I would rather die than live.” 

Jonah cannot deal with his own success!  He did exactly what God wanted him to do and he convinced the people to do exactly what God wanted them to do.  What more could one ask for?  In modern lingo we would say that Jonah needs an attitude adjustment. 

God tries to do just that at the end of the story, causing a plant to grow and provide shade for Jonah and then the next day causing a worm to attack the plant so that it withers.  Once again, Jonah asks to die.

Well, God has had enough.  “You cared about the plant which you did not work for and which you did not grow, which appeared overnight and perished overnight,” God charges.  “And should not I care about Ninevah, that great city of more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and many beasts as well!”

And that is where the story ends.  God has the last word and Jonah is left to sit and ponder his indiscretions.  Although he seemed to have changed and to have learned his lesson for disobeying God, his change was only on the outside.  Inside, he had not changed one bit.  His repentance was superficial.

We often are like Jonah.  We reluctantly change our action, but do not change our heart.  We do something because someone else wants us to do it, because we are expected to do it, but we really do not want to do it.  That is not t’shuvah.  That is not true repentance.

I want to share a few stories of true repentance to help us understand what it is all about.  The first comes from Harold Gordon, a member of my congregation in Salinas and a Holocaust survivor. 

In his book, The Last Sunrise, he writes of being a young teenager when his family was uprooted from Grodno, Poland; he spent time in Buchenwald, Auschwitz and Dachau.  He had seen virtually his entire family gassed and burned; at one point during the war he made a vow that if God allowed him to survive the war, he would take vengeance and kill every Nazi that he could. 

He did survive, but rather than seeking to take vengeance, rather than continuing to be angry and hateful, he was able to let go of those feelings.  He wrote, “Putting aside the hatred for the Nazis that had been building in me while suffering in concentration camps for five long years and watching my entire family gassed and burned, living for the day I could take revenge…made everything else possible for me. 

Instead, after writing his story, he has spoken to school and adult groups throughout Northern California and in many other places, offering a message of love and hope, tolerance and understanding.  He tells his audiences that if he, who had every reason to hate and take revenge, could let go of these feelings then they should be able to do so too.  He has touched the lives of thousands of children and adults, many of whom have written to him to tell him how much they were influenced by his words.

Another story of t’shuvah is told by Mark Borovitz.  “In December of 1986, when I was thirty-five years old, I was arrested for the umpteenth time,” he writes.  “I has been arrested so often in those years that it’s impossible for me to recall the details of each incident, except that this time, something was different.  I wasn’t sure what it was until I reached the Van Nuys police station holding cell.  Then it hit me.  Once again, I was going to be separated from my six-year old daughter, Heather, but this time it was unusually hard to bear.  I had been on the run for three months before the arrest.  During that time, I was already feeling the loss of not seeing her, of not holding her or talking to her.  Usually, I anesthetized myself against the pain of missing her by drinking.  By the time of this arrest, I was already drinking about a gallon of whiskey a day, but it couldn’t alleviate the intense loneliness and sadness I felt.  I missed Heather terribly.”

Borovitz called his wife, but when she asked him which bail bondsman to call, he told her not to call anyone.  “The man upstairs is trying to give me a message,” he said.  “I have to sit here and figure it out.”  He figured it out with the assistance of the prison’s Jewish chaplain, Rabbi Mel Silverman, who helped him start “the long process of changing and saying goodbye to” his former life.

He writes, “When I read the story of Jacob in particular, I knew change was possible.  Jacob was a con man and a thief.  He had his dark night of the soul when he was preparing to go meet with his estranged brother.  Jacob decided to do T’shuvah (repentance).  His brother, Esau, accepted Jacob’s efforts and made his return easy.  Esau tried to repair the relationship.  The lessons for me were clear.  I had to do the work, and then life could be good.”

He did the work and turned his life around.  Today, Mark Borovitz is Rabbi of Beit T’shuvah in Los Angeles, the nation’s first Jewish Residential Recovery Center, and he has just published his inspirational memoir, The Holy Thief.  He is able to use his experience to help other Jews deal with addiction.

Let me share one more story about t’shuvah that comes from Chicken Soup for the Jewish Soul.  In 1991, Cantor Michael Weisser and his wife, Julie, moved to Lincoln, Nebraska.  Almost immediately they began receiving threatening phone calls and hate mail with anti-Semitic and racist messages.  Upon contacting the police, they learned that the material likely came from Larry Trapp, the Grand Dragon of Nebraska’s Ku Klux Klan. 

Despite being warned how dangerous he was, the Weissers decided to contact Trapp.  Michael called a hotline set up to recruit KKK members and began leaving messages.  “Why do you hate me?”  he asked.  He did this for weeks, when finally Trapp picked up the phone and began swearing at him, accusing him of harassment.

Michael remained calm, and, remembering his wife’s suggestion, asked Trapp if he could use some help.  “I know you’re in a wheelchair and I though maybe I could take you to the grocery story or something,” Michael said.

Trapp was silent for a while, then politely refused the offer and said goodbye.  Michael continued to call and one day received a call from Wiser who said, “I want to get out…but don’t know how.”

The Weissers arranged to meet Trapp, who expressed remorse for all he had done.  He soon resigned from the Klan and wrote apologies to many of the people he had harmed or harassed.  But that is not the end of the story.

When Trapp was diagnosed with a terminal illness, the Weissers invited him into their home to care for him since he had no one else.  Before he died, he converted to Judaism.

Now, I would not recommend that we go out and try to change racists and hate-mongers.  But I do think this story reminds us that a little bit of caring can make a difference. 

If someone as hate-filled as Larry Trapp can change, then maybe we can.  If someone as completely messed up as Mark Borovitz can change, then maybe we can.  If someone like Harold Gordon, who had every reason to seek vengeance can instead inspire others to love and care for one another, then perhaps we, too, can change.

These inspirational stories remind us just how powerful stories can be.  This year we will be examining the stories from our tradition and sharing stories of our own as we explore the theme “Our Jewish Stories – Our Jewish Lives.” 

Let me conclude with this Chasidic tale which teaches us the power of stories.

When the great Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Chasidism, saw misfortune threatening the Jews, he would go to a certain place in the forest, light a fire and say a special prayer, and a miracle would occur and the misfortune averted.

Later, when his disciple, the Maggid of Mezeritch faced a similar situation, he would go to the same place in the forest, and say:  “Master of the Universe, I do not know how to light the fire, but I am still able to say the prayer.”  And again the miracle would be accomplished.

Still later, Rabbi Moshe Leib of Sassov, in order to save his people once more, would go to the same place in the forest and say:  “I do not know how to light the fire and I do not know the prayer.  But I know the place and this most be sufficient.”  And it was sufficient, and the miracle was accomplished.

Finally, it fell to Rabbi Israel of Rizhin to overcome misfortune.  Sitting in his char, with his head in his hands, he said, “Master of the Universe, I am unable to light the fire; I do not know the prayer; and I cannot find the place in the forest.  All I can do is tell the story, and this must be sufficient.”  And it was sufficient.

Let us pray that our stories are sufficient.

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