Rabbi Noah Farkas Sermons

About seventy years ago a couple by the name of Paul and Marie Lamfrom fled Nazi Germany with their daughters, Hildegrade, Eva, and Gert. They fled Hitler and sailed to America first to San Francisco and then up to Portland Oregon where they purchased a small distribution business. As any good Jewish businessman knows, when you're the middle man, you get squeezed at both ends. And that's what happened to Paul and Marie. Their suppliers began delaying shipments, which in turn upset the store owners. As the problem persisted they decide, it time to get out of distribution and get into the schemata business. Paul borrowed money and bough a small warehouse, where they opened a haberdashery. So they made hats. 

In 1948, Gert married her high school sweetheart, Neal Boyle. Paul brought him into the businesses where he took a liking to the hats and eventually took over. Gert and Neal lived a comfortable everyday life. Neal working at the hat company and Gert raising the children. The business was built up slowly over a couple of decade, but when Neal was in his forties, tragedy struck. He was felled by a massive heart attack, leaving Gert behind with three kids. Even in 1970, being a housewife was the expected occupation of most women. And she fulfilled her role well, sending her three children to parochial school, volunteering in her community, and generally keeping up a cheery disposition. But after Neal's death, Gert was thrust into a new reality. She could no longer be a Portland housewife but a widow. She now had a choice to make, and on December 7th of that year, she walked onto the floor of the warehouse where Neal's' employees worked, and spoke to the workers. She shuttered, and took a breath and said, "The work will continue," she stammered for a moment and uttered, "but I can't do it alone. I need your help." 

Imagine that. A woman who fled Germans as a young girl, who is raising three kids, and lost her husband whose business was about to go under, stood in front of her new employees, and the first thing she says as the boss is, "I can't do it alone. I need your help." 

There's much to learn from this story especially during this season of personal reflection. Gert's story bring to light something of a whisper that wafts through our community. This whisper, this thing that is often unsaid, is something that is masked by the glare of bright lights reflecting off boardroom tables, it's drowned out by the chatter of cocktail parties, and passed by quickly in shopping malls. It's the truth that the good life we show to others and that we believe is expected of ourselves is incredibly fragile. That despite the lofty goals we set for ourselves, our soulful aspirations, and transcendent intentions for our own lives, tragedy can strike at any moment. And if it hasn't happened to us it has happened to a family member or a friend or a friend of a family member. 

I said that Gert's story brings voice to this whisper because in the moments of brokenness when we should stand in solidarity and empathy with each other, when we can be united in the project of human living, we tend to shy away from asking for help. Gert could have sold the hat business, or she could have stood on the floor that winter morning in Portland and said, "The business will continue, I'll run it an nothing will change. I'm coping, don't; worry. I'm fine. It's ok." But she didn't say that, she said, "I can't do it alone, I need your help." 

Most of us, are not like Gert. Our society seems to be built on the notion that suffering and tragedy are abnormal. And we do falter, it's merely a personal matter that has nothing to do with our meeting in the board room, or in the whimsical chatter or a cocktail party, or in passing outside the mall. Instead we replace real human living with what Rabbi Feinstein calls the myth of Prozac. My teacher, Rabbi Neil Gillman, teaches that myths are the connective tissue between data points. They come to explain the world in terms we can understand. Reality needs explication and interpretation, and myths are the vehicle we use to link the data together to tell the story of ourselves. Myths are therefore instructive, they teach us about ourselves. This myth, the myth of Prozac, teaches us that life can be simplified and decluttered of it's most difficult moments. We are all gourmet cooks, we live in well designed living rooms, we wear elegant clothes, we shoot under 80 at golf, and always have the brightest of smiles on our faces. If you want to see the myth of Prozac up close, just look in your local supermarket on the magazine rack. Titles like, "Better Home and Gardens," "Good Housekeeping," "GQ", "Men's Health," and "Real Simple." The life captured in these magazines teaches that our rooms are washed in sunshine, that we can improve our golf score, that we can build a new deck, or make a gourmet meal in less than 30 minutes. You just have to open the cover and turn the page, the wisdom of the ancients is all here. Turn a muffin tin into a tostada holder! Brilliant! A magnet into a key stand! Amazing! Roast chicken becomes chicken salad! Eureka! All you have to do is read the magazine and your can boil all of life's wisdom into three letters. D. I. Y. Do It Yourself, all by yourself. It's easy, its happy, it's real simple. 

But the myth of Prozac has created a Technicolor version of our own lives where all the mothers are like Carol Brady and the fathers are John Wayne. Having a hard time with the kids, cheer up and wait for the commercial break! Not sure how to be provider? Man-up cowboy! And so we hide our pain and failures as if they are shameful things. When myths are then elevated to a social level, they create institutions that live out the essence of the myth. The myth of baseball creates stadiums with a home run deck in the outfield, or with pennants flying above the crowd. We think, that's where home runs go, right there. And that's why the playoffs are called the pennant chase. The myth of Prozac, however, creates institutions like the funeral parlor that puts the family in a private room to mourn the dead, away from the community. 

It creates a work environments where we are expected to balance our private and public obligations without any help. 

It threatens to create institutions like synagogues that make a mourner feel sorry for crying too loudly during a kaddish. 

This myth hushes the real part of living back into the shadows where we are only left to whisper, words of love, words of solidarity, words of blessing and hope. 

How many of us, think we can do it all on our own. That we can DIY our whole lives. I can't. How many of us, because of what is expected of us, feel awkward asking for help. I do. How many of us, feel awkward helping others? I do. I think as a community that we have become untrained for life's most important moments. Many of us lack experience when it comes to tragedy. We try to maintain our sense of pride, when we encounter the forces of moral luck. We don't ask for help, embarrassed that someone will see our messy house as failure to live the good life. Some of us just don't want to be a burden to others. Better to suffer alone, than to pull other people away from the party. I understand these feelings. I often feel that asking for help uses up some sort of social credit. 

When another falters, we don't want to embarrass them either. Many times we just look on from safe distance thinking to ourselves, "what a pity" A journey through another's suffering is intimate. And our society has told us that intimacy means individuality and individuality means privacy and privacy means leave me alone and I'll leave you alone. 

Unlike the myth of Prozac found in supermarket magazines, the Torah teaches us a different myth. Rather than shying away from the intimacies of real human life, the Torah readily shares the most penetrating of human stories, even the most darkest and most painful human stories ever told. The Torah is not book of simple life, it's the book of Real Life. 

The Book of Real Life shows us that children don't always get along. 

The Book of Real Life shows us that parent's struggle mightily to provide for their children. 

The Book of Real Life shows us that the generations don't always appreciate each other. 

The Book of Real Life shows us not to hide away pain or suffering. 

The Torah is not book of simple life, it is the book of Real Life. 

On Rosh Hashanah, as we turn inwards and look at our own real lives. We reflect on the days that have passed, how have we behaved? How have acted? How have we lived? Did we really live? We turn towards the Torah for guidance, and on her pages we find two of the most intimate and moving and personal stories ever told. And we are reminded of our own lives. The first is a narrative about a mother named Hagar who was exiled from the camp with her boy Ishmael. Mother Hagar was given but some bread and a jug of water and sent off into the desert. The two of them, walking together alone. Mother and son. When the bread was eaten and the water gone, she placed her son in the shade of the bushes and walked a short distance. She bellowed, in a voice that only a mother who has lost her son can. She croaked, "Let me not look on as the child dies!" 

This reminds me of going to the house of a bereaved mother when I was a rabbinical student. Her son, Nathan was on a college tour in New York with his grandfather, the mother's father. On a curvy road outside of town an 18-wheeler cut off their little rental car, swallowing it whole in the undercarriage. I got the call from my mentor rabbi at 9:00 and said he was coming over to get me. When he pulled up I got in the car, the woman who was hosting me for the summer came blazing out trying to find out what happened. The rabbi opened the window on my side and simply said, "it's Nathan, it's Nathan." I remember seeing the fading image of my wife Sarah in the rear view mirror of the car as we drove away. She was holding this woman, a mother herself, as she nearly collapsed. 

When we arrived at the residence there was nothing to say. The mom was sitting on the floor of the kitchen; she bellowed and croaked, saying I can't picture it. I can't picture it. 

The other story, we read on Rosh Hashanah is about our father Abraham who was commanded to sacrifice his child to God. They leave the camp and travel for three days. Leaving behind their servant the two of them, alone, father and son and ascend the mountain. "Abba," the son says, "Here is the fire and the wood for the alter, but where is the sheep?" And Father Abraham said, "God will see to the burnt offering my son." And they arrived at the place that God had chosen and Abraham stood over his son, and picked up the knife its metal glinting in the sunlight. 

When I served as a Chaplain in the navy during rabbinical school, I remember sitting with newly minted marine who was about to be deployed to Iraq. He was all shiny and full of muscle and sinew. His hair cropped like the jarhead he was. I sat with him and his parents to speak of his impending deployment. We were speaking about how to be in touch and when the best time to call each other is, and the father gets this stiffness in his jaw. I asked him what he was thinking at the moment, and he said he was remembering his father who served in World War II and his service in Vietnam. And he looks at his boy, and said, "I'm proud your going, son, but I am so afraid for you because I know the viciousness of war. It's a duty all endure, to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of our country. To know that we participate in a drama that is bigger than ourselves. But I am torn up inside." 

In my job I have the privilege and honor of sitting with families in their most precious moments. When life gets real. I see the Torah tell me of a mother who watches death crouching at the door, and the father who is torn between his son and his duty. What makes these stories sacred is that the Torah does not shy away from pain. There is no reason to legislate paradise. The Torah does not show us a perfect life, the Torah shows us Real Life. There are no Carol Brady's or John Waynes in the Torah, there are Hagars and Abrahams. The Torah is global. Because God is global. The Torah is not just the Book of the simple life, but the Book of Real Life. 

By bringing us into these moments, the Torah teaches us a truth we all know - that we all experience these moments of great pain and uncertainty. More than our search for mutual human prosperity, more than quest for coequal happiness, and even more than the mutual striving towards a common moral horizon, what unites us in the project of human living is that each of us will suffer and become lost in the dark storms of tragedy or uncertainty. Each one of us will grieve the loss of a friend or a lover, and each one of us will fail at some point in our search, in our quest, and in our striving for goodness. So now that we have lain bare and exposed this most intimate of truths, that our brokenness is a natural part of the task of living real life. Then let us find within this moment the deepest of truths and speak of it in plain language and in a clear tone. The truth is that despite the feeling of loneliness in the moments of crisis it is precisely in that urgency and in that emotional uncertainty that we find the foundation of true human solidarity. 

We all live, we all strive, we all fail and we all break. That is what makes us human beings, and that is what unites us as human beings. 

But Real Life does not stop there either. We cannot eddy out on the river of life into the weeds of moral luck. We must get back in the boat, with the help of others and push off the banks back into the current. If tragedy is the only part of living, then life is not worth living at all. Thankfully this is the message of Rosh Hashanah, and the message of the stories we read on Rosh Hashanah. In the natural universe we are the only creatures that we know of capable of sin, because as the rabbis teach us, in order to sin, you must have a conscience. We are also the only creatures capable of repentance, because in order to repent you must have a conscience. We can change. The work can continue, but we can't do it alone. And we need eachother's help.

In each of these stories, for Rosh Hashanah God provides an angel. "Fear not, Hagar, I have heard the boy's cry. Lift him up now, and I will make of him a great nation." Says one. "Abraham, Abraham, do not lay a hand on the boy, I will bestow my blessing upon you and your descendants and they will be like the stars in heaven and the sands of the sea." At the moments of crisis, the Author of Goodness, God, shows these distraught parents through their darkest hour. God turns their moments of suffering into the hopes for blessings. You do not have to do it yourself. Fear not, I am with you. 

The Torah' sanctity is in its conviviality. It lives with us and through us. It expects us to do the same. And at its core, the Book of Real Life teaches us only this: 

That our sufferings are not private. 

That our brokenness should unite us and not divide us. 

That at our darkest hour God expects angels to come to show us the way back to goodness. 

WE CAN BE THOSE ANGELS.

Each one of us can be an angel. 

Say it loud. I can be an angel. 

When another falters I will lift them up. I can be an angel. 

When another can't make ends meet. I can be an angel. 

When another is in the straits. I can be an angel. 

When Hagar cried, the angel showed up and she let her in. And when Abraham hesitated the angel cried out, "Abraham, Abraham!" and he said, "Hineini" Here I am. Help me. 

You have to let the angel help. 

Can I bring a meal? Hineini. Yes. I could use the help. 

Can I watch your kids for a spell? Hineini. Yes. I could use the help. 

Can I set up shiva for you? Can I pick up your dry cleaning? Can I clean out your fridge? Take you to a movie? Hineini, Hineini, Hineini. Yes. Yes. Yes.

At the moment of her husband's death Gert Boyle took a huge risk. She said, "The work will continue, I can't do it alone, I need your help." If there was something she did not know how to do, she asked for helped. If she struggled to balance her personal and professional commitments, she asked for help. If she felt weak, she didn't hide it, she asked for help. Her friends, came over and made dinner, they watched the kids, they cleaned out the fridge. Her employees showed her how to balance the books and fix sewing machines. Her families, her employees, they were her angels. In the years after Neal's death, Gert, with the help of her son Tim, got the business back on track. Because of her decision to bring others into her intimate journey of loss and struggle, she turned her families shop, called Columbia sportswear, into one of the largest providers of sports equipment in the world. Grossing over one billion dollars in sales. But she couldn't do it without angels stepping in and saying, "fear not I am with you. 

We need to be angels to each other. And we need to allow others to be angels for us. Do not be afraid or embarrassed, for I am with you. We are all Hagar in the desert, and Abraham on the mountain top. We can all be the angel who lifts up others and find moments of deepest blessings. 

And may we all inscribe ourselves into the Book of Real Life.

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