Of Roosters and Rebbes

I offer my blessings of congratulations to all of today’s graduates and their families, and my gratitude for allowing me to share this precious moment in your lives. I want to express a special note of congratulations to those, like me, who are the first in your family to graduate from college. Your accomplishment is a special pride to your entire family. And to the rabbis who will be ordained tomorrow evening, my blessings of mazal tov. I look forward to counting you as a colleague. (I am pleased to inform you that you all did pass my course. Proof once again that there is a merciful God in the world.)

My deepest gratitude to Dr Wexler, to Mrs Schechter and Mr Rattner, and to the leadership of the American Jewish University for bestowing this honor upon me. I am deeply moved and elevated by your kindness. 

To my “boss” at the Ziegler school, my colleague, teacher and friend, Rabbi Bradley Artson: Thank you for your inspired leadership, your learning, your friendship and support. You have opened our eyes and our hearts with your theology, your menschlichkeit and your vision. It is an honor to work with you. 

In my profession as a rabbi, in the world of the rabbinate, the highest accolade, the greatest honor, one can offer is to call another, “my teacher.” Elliot Dorff is my teacher. In my rabbinic world, he is the greatest model of the meeting of profound scholarship with deep, heartfelt compassion and kindness. His character -- his goodness and his ethics – together with his learning and his wisdom are blessings to us all. He is my teacher, and I hope that my career accomplishments bring him honor and joy.  

There are two other important people I wish to acknowledge. Thirty-nine years ago, I was the student speaker at the, then, University of Judaism graduation. I spoke harshly, with all the arrogance of youth and the rebelliousness of that era. There were people who were hurt by my words. To my teachers, Dr. David Lieber and Dr. Max Vorspan of blessed memory, I hope that these words this morning and the career that has proceeded this honor today are tokens of my sincere t’shuva.  

I am told that a major university somewhere on the east coast invited Kermit the Frog to deliver the commencement address. A grad student, sitting in the audience tweeted out: “All those years of hard work, and here I am being addressed by a sock!” 

I hope to do better this morning. 

To me, the greatest commencement address was offered by the Hasidic master, Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav in a well-known story he told -- 

Once, a family was cursed, and their son, their pride and joy, became convinced he was a rooster. The young man removed his clothes, and sat clucking beneath the family table. He refused to eat human food, only chicken food. He refused to speak. His parents beside themselves. They called in doctors, healers, therapists, wizards. No one could help. Finally, they invited the rabbi. The rabbi assured them he could cure the boy, but it would be unusual. He asked them not to question his methods. The parents readily agree, “Just heal our boy.” So the rabbi took off his clothes, descended down under the table, began clucking like a rooster and eating rooster food. The parents were truly astonished, having now a pair of roosters in the house. The rabbi and the boy spend the day together, clucking and eating chicken food. At one point the rabbi turned to the boy and said, “It hurt my throat to speak this way. Wouldn’t it be better for us to speak like people?”

“But we’re roosters!” exclaimed the boy.

“So we’ll be roosters who speak like people,” responded the rabbi. And the boy agreed. So they spoke. The rabbi said, “it’s cold here with no clothes. Wouldn’t it be better for us to dress like people?”

“But we’re roosters! Roosters don’t wear clothes” exclaimed the boy.

“So we’ll be roosters who dress like people,” responded the rabbi. And the boy agreed, and he dressed. And the rabbi said, “I don’t really like rooster food, wouldn’t it be better to eat like people?”

And the boy agreed. And finally, the rabbi said, “My back hurts. Wouldn’t it be better for us to stand and walk the world like people.”  And the boy agreed, and so he was cured. 

Like all good stories, this one has many meanings. Today, I want to read it as a parable about education and graduation; about a conversation between the young and the old, student and teacher, yesterday and tomorrow, and the healing transformation that can happen when generations find connection.   

It isn’t easy. We speak different languages. You who are graduating with a bachelors degree today, you were probably born in 1994. That’s the year the internet was launched. It’s the year Yahoo was founded. Amazon, e-Bay, and Craig’s List arrive in your first year, in 1995. You are the first human beings raised entirely on-line. Americans have always prized invention, innovation, and change. Thomas Edison and Henry Ford are American cultural heroes. But the internet has introduced a rhythm, a pace of change which is radically more rapid than ever before. Change is the dominant trope of our culture.  Google, launched in 1998 when you were 4, insists it isn’t a search engine, but an engine of change. The iconic hero of our age, Steve Jobs, prided himself not for any particular invention, but for initiating what he called, “a culture of disruption.” The emblem of this era we clutch to our hearts so dearly is the smartphone. The smartphone was invented by IBM in 1992, and was first released, yes, in 1994.  Whichever phone you happen to own, you know it will be replaced in six weeks, and obsolete in six months. Whatever ap you’re running, there will soon be a 2.0 which is better. 

Albert Einstein once observed: “We don’t know who discovered water, but one thing we know, it wasn’t a fish.” A fish is born into water, lives its entire life in water, knows nothing but water – and so knows nothing of water. You have spent your entire life swimming in a world of rapid change, startling innovation, a world which worships the new, idolizes the young, and has no little patience with all that was yesterday. (Ever hear of a product guaranteed to make you look older in only minutes a day?)  Change is so much part of your world, you don’t ever notice it.

What have we to say to you, we who cherish timeless truths collected in ancient texts? We who revere tradition, wisdom, that which doesn’t change? Can we even find a common language? 

We climb down under the table, to sit with you, and share what we know: There is much to be valued in new technologies, and in the social changes they have brought. The products of innovation and revolution are miraculous. But something valuable that is lost in all this -- something deeply important to being human. What is lost is a truth that is old and unchanging. What is lost are ways of looking at the self and ways of living that are conveyed not in ap’s and tweet’s but in the careful reading of very old books, and practiced in the conscientious disciple of very old traditions. 

With this graduation, you begin a journey that is career, profession, vocation. The destination of that journey is success. I have no doubt that you will be successful. You’re bright. You have had wonderful schooling. You’ve learned to work hard. You come from fine families. You will be a success, of that I’m certain. What worries me is whether the success that you’ve been trained to reach for is too small, too material, too superficial, too ordinary. 

I’m a rabbi now 35 years, and I have spent too many hours with men and women who reached mid-life and achieved all the aspirations of their youth. From the outside, you’d call them very successful. They enjoy all the material rewards our culture metes out to clever, industrious, shrewd, effective people. They have it all. But they sit with the rabbi complaining of the hollow emptiness of their success. It is as if they’ve woken up to discover they’ve missed life itself. They long for inspiration, purpose, meaning. When tragedy comes, they find they have little resilience, few inner resources to call upon. They’ve discovered often too late, that the task of life is not to get all you want, but to become the person you most want to be. 

Know that there is another kind of success. It is not born of utilitarian marketplace values -- achievement, advancement, acquisition. It’s not about conquering the world. It is about nurturing the soul. The journey toward this success often begin, ironically, in defeat, in failure. It is a personal Copernican moment, when the self is displaced from the center of the universe, and I find humility. I become aware that I am not the sole author of my destiny. I am not self-made. I am the product of myriad acts of self-sacrifice by others who created my world and assured my opportunities. I am indebted. And I am grateful. I become aware of my loneliness, of my deep need for an Other – not a workmate, a business partner -- but a soul mate, a friend, a Thou, who teaches me to love and to be loved. I discover that bringing an Other into the circle of self – in care and compassion and intimacy -- does not diminish me. On the contrary, it lends my life meaning. I realize that the bigger my circle, the deeper my concern, the greater my commitment, the more human I become. I sense that I am needed, that something is asked of me, and that my dignity is wrapped up with my readiness to respond, to be responsible, to care, to give, to engage, to help, to heal.  

This journey proceeds very slowly. A soul grows choice by choice, decision by decision. This journey doesn’t follow the linear logic of the marketplace, the economic logic of costs and benefits, of return on investment, but a moral logic, which more often than not, is paradoxical: you give in order to get; you sacrifice in order to gain; in empathy for the suffering of the other you learn the power of the self to heal; it is only in the selfless act will you ever discover the true nature of the self, who you really are. 

How do you measure your success? By what metric, on what standard do you evaluate your life, do you figure out how you’re doing? You will soon write out a resume for yourself. On one side you will list all that makes you marketable: Your educational and professional and civic accomplishments. Your degrees and honors. Your professional achievements. The recognition you’ve earned. All that’s important. But there is more to you. There is another side of you, so turn the page over, and ask yourself some simple questions: 
..To whom am I grateful? Who are my blessings? Who have I told how important they are to me?
..Who am I closest to? Is there someone you could call at 3 am and say, I need you, and they’d say, I’m coming. 
.. What are the causes and purposes that inspire me? For what vision have I worked, for what commitments have I sacrificed, what ideals define me?

What are the reward for cultivating a soul? Nothing material. No honors or accolades. Only what we call the deep sense of security we call redemption. Only the intimacy of love, the warmth of community, the confidence of integrity, a sense of abiding purpose, and the assurance that your life matters. Only the resilience to meet the inevitable failures and tragedies of life with courage and perspective. The Psalmist expressed it this way: 

Od yenuvun b’say-vah, d’shayneem v’ranaanim yehihyu 
Li’hageed ki yashar Adonai, Tzuri v’lo avlatah bo. 

The righteous shall bloom like the palm tree, and thrive like a cedar of Lebanon, Planted in the house of the Lord, they flourish in the courts of God. In old age, they shall still be fruitful, full of life and renewal, And will testify that the Lord is just, my Rock in whom there is no wrong. What are the rewards of cultivating a soul, the gifts of the soulful life? To live each day, up until one’s very last, with ideals, inspiration and creativity intact. To meet one’s finitude, one’s mortality, without bitterness or anger or regret, only gratitude for the gifts and blessings of life. To look back a life well lived. 

We Rabbis are strangers in a world that worships innovation, disruption, revolution. We have little to offer in your search for that sort of success. Ours is a wisdom that is old, rooted in the shared experience of generations of ancestors. And so we come and whisper gently: This culture you’ve imbibed, these prizes you’re so ardently pursuing, they’re chickenfeed. They will not nourish you. You will starve one day. There is something more substantial at hand, come and share it.

The images of success you aspire to -- they leave you naked and vulnerable against the cold disappointments of a harsh world. There is a wisdom that will warm and protect you, come and share it.

The way you’ve defined yourself, the path you’ve set for your life, has confined you, bent you over and made you small. It has lowered the horizons of your possibilities, limited your aspirations. You’re bigger than this and better than this. You are a soul, a neshama, you have divinity within you, and the promise of joys you have never tasted.  Rise up now and celebrate. 

Baruch sheh’hiyanu v’ki’manu v’hig’ianu lazman hazeh. 
Blessed is the One who has given us days to celebrate our lives. 
Congratulations to you all.