SERMON
EREV
ROSH HASHANAH
“ANGER”
For
a number of months now, friends, colleagues and even some acquaintances of mine
have been pointing out to me that I seem to be angry. In some cases I have
thanked them for noticing it and mentioning it to me, and in others I have made
light of it, shrugged it off, and even denied it. After all, if I have been
trying to deny it to myself so that I wouldn’t have to deal with it, why would
I admit it to them? But this is the eve of the New Year, the beginning of the
Days of Awe, the Ten Days of Repentance. If there were ever a time when denial
was not acceptable, this is the time. And if there were ever a time when I would
need to look at what has been making me angry and to deal with it, this is the
time.
At
first I caught myself, stopped myself, and said, “No, this is not the time to
air my own dirty laundry, to share my personal agonies, to burden the
congregation and community.” But then I thought, “I am supposed to be a role
model for this community. If I can take them through the process that we’re
all supposed to go through during this time, even if it is my own process, with
even one of the things I have to deal with during this sacred time, then maybe
they can learn from it, either from my successes or from my failures, and use
what they learn to avoid and profit from the mistakes that I have made.”
Then
I heard my sarcastic inner voice speaking to me. I knew which voice it was
because it always begins by quoting someone or something, usually making fun of
me. This time it uttered two different, but equally nasty, quotations. The first
one was, “No one is ever completely useless because he can always serve as a
horrible example.” That was uplifting and reassuring. And I knew it was aimed
at me. Here I am, I thought, willing to share my deepest feelings in the
interest of helping others, and what I get is a sarcastic slap in the face from
my own inner self.
The
second quotation was from Sam Levenson, one of my all-time favorite Jewish
comedians, who is quoted as saying that we should learn from the mistakes of
others because we probably wouldn’t live long enough to make them all
ourselves. At least Sam wasn’t being quite so sarcastic. But, I thought, if I
really am as angry as I am told I am, then I really shouldn’t be surprised if
there is sarcasm embedded with the anger.
I
think it’s only fair to tell you that I have come to the conclusion that if I
were not as involved in so many different social issues and for that very reason
more aware of the concerns that these issues raise, I might not be so angry. It
seems to be a function of seeing how bad things really are on so many different
fronts all at once and wondering what happened to all the people who had, or
were supposed to have, responsibility
for making sure that some of these horrible things didn’t happen.
Having
said all of this, I want you to know that I’m not sure that it really matters
for my purposes tonight to discuss at any length what I am angry about. What I
am angry about is probably beside the point. What I believe really matters is
what I do with the anger, no matter what makes me angry. What comes to mind is
the conversation between God and the reluctant – and apparently not very
bright – prophet Jonah where Jonah tells God how angry he is about the loss of
a gourd and God puts him in his place by sarcastically and rhetorically asking
why it was all right for Jonah to have pity on something he had nothing to do
with – a gourd – but not all right for God to have pity on God’s own
creations – the residents of Nineveh, all of whom seemed to need pity.
In
other words, God is simply telling Jonah to be more careful with his anger. And
that is what has made me want to be so open about this with you tonight.
Those
of you who were caught up in the frenzy about Star Wars a few years ago will
remember the diminutive character Yoda, the teacher and mentor to the Jedi
knights. While Yoda seemed to be a highly-evolved spiritual character, one who
believed mightily in “The Force,” he was also as completely self-aware as it
was possible to be. And one of the things he tried to teach his impatient
student, Luke Skywalker, was to be in touch with his anger in such a way that it
could not control or direct his actions or his life.
Yoda
never told Luke not to be angry. Yoda accepted anger as one of life’s
realities and, based on that working premise, he tried to teach his students to
turn their anger to good ends. Otherwise, he taught, the anger would destroy
them from the inside, and cripple their ability to do the good that ultimately
would have to be done. That acceptance of an unpleasant reality was such a
Jewish approach to things that I’m surprised that it didn’t get more play in
Jewish writings as the Star Wars series unfolded.
In
the world of Jewish thinking, we are taught that we are always caught in a
dynamic tension between two impulses or urges – and they have names. One is
called the yetzer tov, the inclination
to (do) good, and the other is the yetzer ha-ra, the inclination to (do) evil. Judaism acknowledges the
existence of both of these urges and even goes so far as to suggest that without
the “evil urge,” the world really could not exist. So it’s not a question
of good overcoming evil, as seems to be the underlying premise in the Harry
Potter series. Instead, it seems to be a question of finding appropriate ways of
channeling the evil that won’t go away into areas where, at worst, it can do
no harm, and at best may be turned to good ends.
Let
me give you an example from one of my favorite areas of anger, politics. For the
most part, no matter how angry I get at a politician who is incompetent or
worse, it is not my goal or my job to “get them,” “get even with them,”
or worse. It is, or should be, my goal to help find a way either to get them to
do their job properly or to get them replaced by someone who can and will do the
job that needs to be done. If I were to channel my anger that way, doing so
would accomplish the same worthy ends without doing unnecessary damage.
We
have all known people whom we thought could profit from taking anger management
classes. Some of us may even have done so ourselves. But until now, I never made
the connection between something as psychological or sociological as anger
management and Rosh Hashanah. But I have done so now, and I’ll show you what I
mean.
When
we undertake this introspection process, this evaluation and stock-taking
process, that is, the first part of the High Holy Day process, we are supposed
to acknowledge the mistakes we have made during the previous year so that we can
name them and begin to figure out how not to repeat them. One of the areas that
is included in this evaluation process is how we behave when we get angry. It is
a no-brainer to say that we often treat people differently when we act or react
out of anger than when we act out of some other, more positive feeling. When we
act out of anger, we often say or do things that we then regret saying or doing.
Anger management is supposed to help us be aware of our anger early enough in
the process so that we can channel it better, and thus treat people better, and
thus live lives that are filled with fewer regrets. This is exactly the process
in which we are supposed to engage here and now. Looking at our behaviors and
trying to learn how and why we went wrong, especially so that we don’t repeat
the mistakes over and over again, is one very important part of the whole High
Holy Day process.
One
of the things I have already learned in going through this process is that my
anger is really more complex than just raw anger. There is a large component of
frustration in it that comes from trying to address serious social problems,
either alone or with others, for what I consider to be really long periods of
time, and coming up with very little, if anything at all, to show for it. Like
many people, I think, I feel outnumbered, outmaneuvered, and outsmarted by
people whose intentions seem to be just awful, and who seem to have the
resources and capacity to run circles around my efforts to set things right.
Often it seems like I take one step forward and two steps back, and as you well
know, that can be very frustrating.
Without
going into detail, let me rattle off just a few of the areas where my
involvement over the past year has produced more frustration than results: the
waging of unjust wars, especially since two of the three children closest to me
in my life are now in the military, one on active duty as a Marine in Iraq and
one in the Army in Texas waiting to be deployed to Iraq in the relatively near
future. In addition, there are immigration issues, scandals in our government,
the death penalty, ongoing genocides, especially in Africa, reproductive choice
issues, the ongoing scourge of AIDS globally, global warming,
public education, health care in this country and abroad, with special
focus for me on Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular disease, Multiple Sclerosis,
stem cell research. That’s just on the national or international scene, and
I’m sure I’ve missed more than I’ve stated.
Closer
to home is the combined battle for fair wages at the Woodfin Suites in
Emeryville and the immigration issues that have arisen in that struggle. Here in
And
none of this even begins to talk about the issues we face as a congregational
community that has undertaken its own introspection over the last year and now
is beginning to deal with the issues that our own stock-taking as a community
have raised.
It
seems that the more we do, the more there is to do. And we, here in the Jewish
community, always seem to be asking you for more, while at the same time I am
not sure we are offering as much in return as you need.
In
conversations with many of you over the course of the last year I have come to
realize that I am certainly not alone in my feelings of frustration or anger.
But that knowledge has been small comfort, and it has definitely not done
anything to lessen the level of the feelings I am experiencing.
In
case I have not been clear, I don’t want to be angry. I don’t like being
angry. Being angry takes too much effort and energy, and it doesn’t seem to
get me anywhere. In fact, if it does anything, it takes away from the energy
that I have or I need to address the issues that stubbornly seem to stick
around. But because I can’t seem to find any real satisfaction from the
efforts I have made, I get even more frustrated and angry because I think it
must be my fault that, with my education, my skills, and my enthusiasm, I should
have seen and produced more and better results. It’s a vicious cycle, one in
which the folks on the dark side seem to take special pleasure.
Yet
I don’t have a sense that my commitment to any of these things is diminished
or diminishing, and I am just as willing to keep on doing what I have been
doing, if for no other reason than to try to keep things from getting even
worse, if I can’t make them any better. That is, after all, what the end goal
of this process is all about: that no matter how hard the task or how
frustrating the process, we are still expected to do our part, to hold up our
end of the bargain, to learn from our mistakes and to persevere because we are
taught that our efforts will eventually bear fruit, that the kind of society we
dream of and work for is within the realm of possibility, despite all the
setbacks, but only if we continue to do our part.
I
am reminded of the quotation often attributed to Edmund Burke, the late 18th
century writer, where he says something like, “The only thing necessary for
the triumph of evil [in the world] is for [enough] good men to do nothing.” It
doesn’t matter that he apparently never said it. What matters is that it’s
true, and that we need to make that thought a permanent part of our psyche.
So
now you know to some extent why I am angry. And you also know how I perceive
that anger from a Jewish point of view. What I also want you to know is what I
propose to do about it, also from a Jewish point of view. First, I want you to
know how sorry I am for anything I may have said or done, or not said or done,
as a result of my anger and frustration in this last year. And I want to ask
your forgiveness, here, now, in front of each and every one of you for any hurt
that I may have caused as a result of this anger and frustration. And, whether
you forgive me or not, I want you to know that I am going to try to learn from
the mistakes that venting that anger the wrong way has caused. I am going to try
to learn ways to channel that anger more productively in the weeks and months
ahead, to confront my own yetzer ha-ra
and to use it for positive ends.
At
the same time, I want to suggest something else. If you are not angry about the
state of the world that you live in, you should be! If you are not embarrassed
about the lack of good leadership and the abysmal quality of the leadership we
have, and if you are not appalled by the litany of injustices that appear daily
on our televisions, in our newspapers, in our email inboxes, and in other
places, and if you are not so fed up with it all that you are moved to act to
change things for the better, then you are simply not paying attention, and that
is not acceptable.
I
know how difficult and challenging life is for many of you now because you tell
me. I know of your heartbreaks and your illnesses, your broken dreams and your
faltering hopes because you have trusted me enough to tell me about them. And I
have tried to listen, to care, to nurture, and to offer support in whatever way
I can as best I know how. And I know that it is often not enough. This, too, is
frustrating and personally disappointing.
I
realize that I haven’t given you much to work on so far. But I am guessing
that dealing with your own anger and frustration – especially as one of the
issues that we need to address in this New Year – has not been front and
center on your radar screen. I want to suggest that if it’s true for me, then
it’s probably true for you. And if any of us is to move forward in any sort of
a healthy way – and why else would we go through this labor-intensive and
difficult process? – then this is one of those things that we cannot avoid any
longer.
So
here we stand, together, on the eve of yet another New Year. As you know only
too well, what we choose to do in the year ahead will be part of the legacy we
leave for those who come after us. I would like to think that if we put our
hearts and minds together, as a congregation, as a community and beyond, we
could, together, leave a legacy that would contain one of the most vital
elements for the survival of humanity, the legacy of hope. I would like to think
that in this ten-day period of soul-searching we could find ways to commit
ourselves once again to a greater good in a world not dominated by fear and not
reactive to the things that provoke and produce anger and frustration. I would
like to think that, among the things we deal with this year, both on an
individual and a collective basis, would be the things that anger and frustrate
us and the ways in which we could learn to deal with them in better, more
positive, healthy and effective ways. I would like to think that during these Yamim
Nora’im, these Days of Awe, we would once again feel awe at the
possibility of partnering with the Divine on a quest to stare down anger,
frustration, fear, and hatred, so that we don’t have to feel like we are in
this alone, and so that we could join together to bring about a new day, not
just for us, but for all the world.
Frankly,
I am worried that things may have gotten so bad that they are simply beyond our
ability to repair. But if I succumbed to that anxiety, it certainly wouldn’t
be a very Jewish response. Instead, I stand before you and in front you to ask
you, to plead with you, to beg you, to urge you to join me more actively than
ever before as a congregation and community in addressing the issues that face
us, locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. At Rosh Hashanah no
one is off the hook. The very least we can do, and do together, is to try. Our
world literally depends on it.
Amen.