Rabbi Joshua Hoffman Sermons

Yom Kippur 5769 – 2008 by Rabbi Joshua Hoffman

When I stumbled upon the notable pollster, John Zogby, and his new book, The Way We Will Be, I was offered a glimpse into the minds that find so much significance in our casual musings. In this reflection of one man’s work with opinion polls, the author draws some thoughtful and certainly optimistic conclusions about American social behavior in the years to come. Pollsters like Zogby spend thousands of hours culling and analyzing information we provide them through interviews. Corporations spend inordinate amounts of money to learn from this data, so they can better meet our needs and desires. 

Since then, and certainly more so these days, the opinion polls on presidential elections, Coca Cola or Pepsi, or who will be the next American Idol seem ever present. We’re fascinated and even transfixed on the infinite amount of data that tracks our interests and our opinions on any imaginable subject. What are we looking for in these statistics? And why should they matter? 

We even have examples of polling in the Torah. Moses descends the mountain with the tablets of the Ten Commandments. He sees the camp in a frenzied dance around a molten calf as they shout, “This is our God! This is our God!” In anger and frustration, Moses hurls the tablets at the foot of the mountain, grinds the calf into powder, and shouts out in the middle of the camp, “Whoever is for YHVH come with me or perish!” A choice must be made, go with Moses and survive....or go with the other leader (maybe Aaron, or another person to be named later) and die. Wouldn’t you know it, as if Gallup, or Newsweek, or Zogby was there, the crowd divides....Moses and the Levites kill some 3000 people... a gruesome and terrible story indeed. 
Moses offered a choice - he took a poll, and for the first time in the Torah, the people have a choice to make about their leadership, should they go with Moses, the one we all know is the expected winner or see what happens next? 

As Zogby points out and somewhat like Moses’ story, we all want to be on the winning side. No one wants to stand on the side of the golden calf. Our opinion counts, especially when it mirrors the majority. We all want to be the winners and polling seems to tell us who the winner is or will be. 

There is an allure to polling, some might even call it prophetic. It’s modern day fortune-telling, a high-tech form of divination. Give someone a pile of raw data; a little practice in putting the facts together, sprinkle in some luck, and any one of us could start a polling agency. What if I believed that the Dodgers will win the World Series? But, sadly the statistics don’t seem to agree. Just see recent years when the Dodgers barely made into the playoffs. The held a record barely over 500. Manny’s no Kurt Gibson, but Joe Torre and Tommy Lasorda are both Italian! Should I believe the statistics or my growing passion and excitement for the possibility of the coveted title returning to the Dodgers after so many years? Does it really matter what I think here? None of these statistics will tell me whether they will win. Alas, only time will tell. 

There is something convenient and comforting in the belief that someone with the right information can predict what will come next. We want to shed some light on the future; we want to hear that tomorrow will be better, that our prayers will be answered, that our good deeds will be rewarded and our shortcomings forgiven. For some, it is even more rewarding to know that what we think is somehow in line with others. In short, polls do matter. 

The irony is that if the polls show your chosen candidate is behind, there’s a higher chance you won’t even bother going to the election booth. The most troublesome outcome of all this is that we come to believe our voice doesn’t matter – we construct a world fearful that our choices, our contributions, our care and dedication don’t matter. Find a statistic and it will show you, the power of one voice rarely gets heard. 

But a pollster is not a prophet. For Zogby and others, the difference between fortune-telling and prophecy is clear - the future is not yet written. No amount of polling, even with the smallest margin of statistical error, can ultimately make the future happen. When science spills into faith and belief, we should remember, the future is not yet written. This is the message of Kol Nidre - our fate is not yet sealed. 

For us, the scales of justice are weighing upon us tonight. We gather here to remind ourselves of our humanity, the frailty of our existence, and the delicate balance upon which our world totters each and every day. Tonight we shed the skepticism and misguided desire to know what everyone else thinks and listen to a prophetic voice, one that emanates from within us and around us. 

Much like the U’Netaneh Tokef prayer we recite three times during these Days of Awe, the prophetic voice is manifest in three forms, Teshuvah (Repentence), Tefillah (Prayer), and Tzedakah (Righteous action). 

A story is told of the young prophet Elijah who goes out into the world after graduating from prophet school full of energy and excitement to perform some miracles and changes some lives. He meets a young woman crying on the outskirts of her tow, and asks her, “Why are you crying?” “No one will marry me!” she sobbed. “How can that be since you are so beautiful?” Elijah said as he deftly pulled out a mirror to show her. “I guess I really am beautiful!” The woman smiled. She went back into her town and told everyone the story of the mirror that miraculously showed her beauty. The townspeople dismissed her enthusiasm. “It was just a self-affirmation.” But in time and with her newly-acquired positive outlook she found a mate. Elijah returned to the woman sometime later to find her even more distraught than before. “I cannot bear children,” she whimpered before the new prophet. “Take this prayer and say it daily.” In time, the woman was blessed with a child, a son. “It was just a relaxation exercise,” muttered the townspeople upon hearing the good tidings. 

Elijah returned later still and found the family forlorn. “What is wrong now?” “We are destitute with no hopes for any income to support ourselves. All we have is this jar of olives and oil.” Elijah instructed them to grab as many buckets and pails they could find and pour the jar into the buckets. The oil kept flowing from the single jar and the family was able to sell enough oil to support themselves again. “It was a miracle!” the family proclaimed. “It was just a jar of concentrated oil.” The townspeople were skeptics. 

Some time later Elijah came to the town and found the woman screaming for help. “My son! My son is very ill!” Elijah ran to the home, ran up to the boy’s room to find him not ill, but dead, and stood over him. In a moment, the boy was revived. “It was a miracle!” The parents were astonished. “It was just CPR!” The townspeople were clearly a hard group to please. Elijah was at this point furious. “Four perfectly good miracles I performed! I’m not returning until you can appreciate a good miracle when you see it!” And in a fiery chariot, the prophet Elijah was swept up into the heavens, only to be seen on occasion and in disguise. 

In this story told by Mitchell Chefitz, Teshuvah is the ability to look past the “just” moments and see the healing power of connection, forgiveness, and growth. Teshuvah is in the “Aha” moment, when we discover a deeper truth about ourselves, our abilities and limitations, and the beginnings of a path toward change. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel writes, “The words the prophet utters are not offered as souvenirs. The prophet not only conveys; he reveals. In speaking, the prophet reveals God...The authority of the prophet is found in the [Divine] Presence his words reveal.” (p.22) A prophet helps us tune into the frequency of justice and compassion. The prophet speaks the truth over and again. It is within our ability to heed the call that makes for change. 

Tefillah- Prayer is not a supplication for a future act beyond our control. It is the act of remembering the prophetic voice - words that call us to act as if we already know how. “Aleinu L’Shabeach L’Adon Ha’Kol - It is upon us to give praise to the Master of all Creation.” We say the words. We repeat them over and over because it is not just enough to evoke memory of what they mean, we have to hear the words spoken in our own prophetic voice. “May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my soul be acceptable to you Adonai.” Words uttered at the conclusion of our silent prayers are not meant to be empty postulates of how we ought to behave, nor are they merely submitted to the universe for divine approval. We are not asking when we say, “Al Chet Sh’Chatanu Lefanecha - For these sins we have committed before You, God.” that God somehow removes the burden of our deeds from us. We beat our chest because it is only within us and not another to ease the burden of our own failings. Prayer is as, Rabbi Heschel teaches, “Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living. It is all we can offer in return for the mystery by which we live. It is gratefulness that makes the soul great.” 

Finally, Tzedakah, righteous action, is the real and only expression of the future we can hope for. By giving to another, by ensuring our legacy of wisdom, experience, wealth, and love endure beyond us, the prophet calls us to action. We read the words of Isaiah tomorrow to remind us that our prayers and postures are totally meaningless without some form of action behind them! “Why, when we fasted, did You not see?” they asked. “No, this is the fast I desire.” says God. “To unlock the fetters of wickedness...to let the oppressed go free...to share your bread with the hungry, and to take your wretched poor into your home...” (Isaiah 58:3,6-7) We cannot rest comfortably in our chairs on this day and sway with fervor and resolve to move our prayers into action - unless we fulfill the prophecy with our hands and our deeds. 

It is sad to say, but if we look around, it isn’t too difficult to see how much is broken in our world. Time and again, we find ourselves falling short as a nation, as a community, as a family, as an individual. In the eyes of a prophet, our neglect is too much to bear. Were there a voice coming from God today, it would scream for our destruction. Compound that voice with the tools of instant communication, and it becomes a non-stop, streaming feed of drama and pain, of hunger and homelessness, of war and turmoil. And maybe it is easy to turn away, to give in to the pacifying conveniences that mask and divert our attention from these woes. The voice of the prophet is the sad and honest truth that we are imperfect, our world is imperfect, and God’s presence in this world is fractured. 

In the words of Abraham Joshua Heschel, ‘a prophet takes us to the slums instead of showing us a way through the elegant mansions of the mind.’ “To us,” he writes, “a single act of injustice--cheating in business, exploitation of the poor--is slight; to the prophets, a disaster.”(pp.3-4) Prophets don’t merely predict the future, they reflect our present and urge us to respond to the uncertainly we face right now, not tomorrow, or in some distant future. 

It may sound depressing. In fact, I often hear so many turn away from religious life because it is filled with such harsh realism. Unlike a fortune teller, the prophet is a voice for the present; prophetic wisdom always shares a message of hope. And yet, found somewhere between faith and reason, this need for a prophetic voice touches our very core. Today, we don’t need fortune tellers, we need prophets. Ba’yom HaHu Yiheyeh Adonai Echad u’Shmo Echad. On that day, God will be One and God’s Presence will Be Universal. For the prophet, that day and that time can be right now. 

As the Sages have taught “We are not prophets, but we are children of prophets.” We are not prophets - the ones who speak God’s words - but we have received God’s word from our ancestors. Teshuvah - may we discover the prophetic wisdom calling us to action every day. Tefillah - may our voices harmonize with the calls for justice and righteousness, kindness and compassion. Tzedakah - may our hands and feet go out into the world to make today the hope for the future. Teshuvah, Tefillah, Tzedakah - our treasured gifts, and our promise on this Yom Kippur.

* This document, or any portion thereof, may not be reproduced without the written permission of the author.