Kol Nidre Sermon, 5764
October 5, 2003
Jim Levinson
The Search for One’s Soul
During the past year I’ve had a wonderful time with an adult
education class which over the course of ten sessions wrestled with
questions of Jewish identity, rituals, history, and also with prayer.
The last of these was in many ways the most challenging, and the
questions raised were, I’m sure, the same ones many of us
here are wrestling with on this holiest of nights as we are called
to open our souls to God:
- If we’re not sure that God exists, can we be Jewish?
- What purpose does prayer serve if we’re not even sure
that God exists?
My own answer to the question of whether we can be Jewish if we’re
not sure God exists has always been unequivocal and positive. Our
history is filled with Jews who raised the most fundamental questions
about the existence of God, or who were simply too busy creating
revolutions or psycho-analysis or theories of relativity to give
much thought to the question. If we ever defined these people out
of our religion, Judaism, unquestionably, would be much the poorer.
And dare I say that I believe God would agree entirely. Our heritage
indeed places a premium on wrestling with these very questions.
So why pray if we’re not sure God exists? I think this is
the more interesting question, but also the more difficult. Let’s
examine it.
For many Jews in America today, the idea of God is difficult for
some combination of at least four reasons.
- For some of us, the idea of a God out there
just isn’t concrete enough.
- For some, the idea of God implies the need
to submit to an unknown authority
and many of us don’t like that.
- Some of us ask, “How can there be an
all-powerful God if there’s so much evil
in the world?” and
- Others of us ask if we want to pray to a
God that seems to have been
appropriated by the vocal Christian Right? Do we want to associate
with a God who, in the words of our President, “told me
to invade Iraq”?
Each one of these reasons is legitimate, and if it’s any
consolation, at least the first three have been raised again and
again since the time of our earliest ancestors. Each could be the
subject of many High Holiday sermons.
But let’s do something daring this evening. Instead of my
trying to respond to each of these problems, instead of my trying
to talk you out of them, let’s accept them for the sake of
this discussion. Let’s accept the fact that for many Jews
the idea of a God out there just doesn’t work. Does that mean
throwing in the towel as far as prayer and worship and the High
Holidays are concerned? And, if not, where do we go from here?
Let me offer this evening one possibility. There is in Judaism
a belief in what is known as “tzelem Elohim,” sometimes
translated as the energy of God, or the spirit of God, or a “speck,”
a “particle” of God which is implanted deep within each
of us. Some of us speak of it simply as the soul. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik
described the soul as “the true sanctuary of God,” stating
that it is far more sacred than the Western Wall in Jerusalem. If
the idea of a God out there is just too amorphous, just too troublesome,
might we be more comfortable with that tzelem Elohim within ourselves,
the soul deep within us, or as one contemporary wisdom figure put
it, “our highest self?” Might it be more realistic for
some of us, in our prayer, to seek to be in touch with this soul
(even if we can’t find it in the anatomy text book) rather
than the elusive God out there?
If yes, however, this doesn’t make the task of finding the
soul within ourselves an easy one. There is a Rabbinic parable that
when God was about to plant a soul in Adam and Eve, the angels became
jealous and wanted to frustrate God’s plan. They asked God
why God would want these frail, fragile and finite creatures to
receive such an important blessing. The angels convened and argued
about different places where they could hide the soul so that these
first two human beings would be deprived of it.
One angel suggested the mountain tops. Another recommended the
bottom of the ocean. But the most clever among the angels advised
that those hiding places were not acceptable. This angel said that
there is only one place that the soul should be hidden. Hide it
inside of each person. It is the last place they will look for it.
So, if we accept this notion of a soul, and if we accept the need
for a search, how will we know when we have made contact? Some ways
we can know is when our eyes get teary, or when we feel a perfect
calm inside, or when the moment takes on a quality of the sacred.
We’ve all, I’m sure, had such moments. I’ve had
the great good fortune to have such moments myself. I’ve also
had the great privilege of being with some of you when such moments
have taken place. Sometimes it leads us to some course of action
we might not otherwise have taken, or to resolution of a conflict
within, or simply to a sense of gratitude. Our sages tell us, in
fact, that when that happens, we have had an experience of prayer.
In fact, one word for prayer in Hebrew is lehitpalel which literally
means “to look within.”
So, for those of us who feel a sense of dis-ease about prayer,
and therefore about worship in spaces such as this one, let’s
allow ourselves to engage in this search for our souls, this effort
to discover our truest and highest selves.
Another powerful advantage of thinking about the tzelem Elohim,
is that if it lives within us, that spark of the divine also must
exist within others – and, so, in the same way that we search
for our own souls, we might also look for that spark in those persons
close to us, or even, dare we suggest, within those with whom we
feel some enmity. Any of you who were here in June at the Bat Mitzvah
of Elizabeth Rodgers heard in her D’var Torah a magnificent
and eloquent statement of this radical idea, one worthy of Isaiah
or Gandhi – that the tzelem Elohim, the divine spark, surely
exists even within those we consider our enemies.
Let’s examine this idea of soul a bit more. If we find it,
if we discover our tzelem Elohim, what are some of the qualities
we might discover there? I like to think that one of them is hope
– not a hope to win the lottery or a pay raise, but a different
kind of hope – a hope for the courage and wisdom to face whatever
life brings, even illness, even depression. I find that idea of
hope for inner courage and wisdom ultimately far more satisfying
than prayer offered with some sense of entitlement, as if we were
dialing for cosmic room service to fulfill our every request. If
we are filled with hope from that divine spark within, we will be
able to assist with our own healing – expecting nothing, understanding
there are no guarantees, but buoyed by hope that can pierce the
darkness of despair. I spoke on Rosh Hashanah about a member of
our own congregation who did exactly that, relying on that divine
spark to get her through a period of terrible insecurity.
C.S. Lewis understood all of this well when he wrote that he prays
to God not to change God’s will, but to change himself.
And, I like to think that that very openness, that inner hope for
courage and wisdom and change, will trigger resonating responses
from the tzelem Elohim of others.
If we have any doubt, just reflect for a moment on our dear Edith
Schnabel, whose Bat Mitzvah we celebrated last week in this space,
a person who surely has found that divine spark within, even as
her outer body deteriorates, and whose best self, again and again,
helps the rest of us to be in closer touch with our own.
What other qualities might emanate from that discovery of the tzelem
Elohim within? Surely love, the kind of love in which one passionately
desires for the loved one what that loved one most wants for himself
or herself. And if we have hope and we have love, who knows, even
faith might follow.
Another quality which might emerge, I believe, is our capacity
to live fully in the present, to be grateful for the moment, to
fret less about yesterday, to worry less about tomorrow, and to
celebrate this glorious unprecedented moment right now – to
look around and see ourselves surrounded by kindred spirits in touch
with our ineffably rich heritage, to look around and see the children.
To look around and see Vermont.
Story of Golden Telephone
As we embrace the present, we also come to understand something
of life’s impermanence, of life’s persistent uncertainty
– meaning, by extension, that there is no joy we dare take
for granted. (Here again, we heard a magnificent statement of this
principle in the D’var Torah offered last spring by Leah Smart
Gordon.) What a gift that is – the opportunity to savor the
delight of each day, each moment – the laughing together,
the warmth of a beloved’s embrace, the exquisite blessing
of loving and being loved in return, the wonder of change itself.
To be able to seize the moment and make the most of it, to fully
live in and fully appreciate the now, is to be in touch with the
soul, to be in touch with the God within.
Our own Neal Weiner presents a compelling picture of spirituality
as a flower with multiple petals representing its many facets: nature,
tzedakah, rachmones, peacefulness, exaltation, humility or loss
of self, the invisible and ethereal, healing, personal renewal,
artistic expression and many more. All of these are interconnected.
Experience with any one can lead to the others.
But, Neal suggests, and I think he’s right, that at the center
of the flower, sometimes hard to see because of all those overlapping
petals, but holding the petals together is….whatever we choose
to call it. Perhaps we call it God, perhaps tzelem Elohim, perhaps
the soul. Not just another petal, but the central core, the source
of the nectar of this indescribably beautiful flower.
Let us seek to embrace, dear friends, on this holiest of nights,
both individually and collectively, this central core, however we
might name it; let us hold it close to our hearts, and let us open
our hearts to it.
When my parents were dying last summer, suffering from delirium
and dementia, experiencing pain and having no control over their
bodies, some insensitive and cynical individual might well have
approached me to ask, "So where is your God now?"
To such a question, I would have replied,
"God is here, in the divine spark that has been evoked in
four generations of family members who have gathered together, surrounding
my parents with unqualified love, and bringing comfort to one another."
"God is here as the divine spark of my children seeks connection
with the souls of my parents – in their whispered words and
their unconstrained tears."
"God is here in the baby, gurgling and cooing, on the bed
of her great grandmother, eliciting a smile that evoked untold quantums
of nachas."
"God was here also when, after the funeral, my daughter asked
that the coffin lid be opened one more time so that she might offer
her final farewell."
"And God was there when, the evening afterward, we sat around
and told priceless stories of them, and when we made a l’chaim
together as the children romped, and collectively we embraced life."
Amen
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