Erev Rosh Hashanah 5785, October 2, 2024

Watch Rabbi Faryn's D'var Torah here:

Read along with Rabbi Faryn's D'var Torah here:

Some things I did to avoid writing my High Holy Days Drashot this year while telling myself I was “seeking inspiration” because when I tried to force myself to sit down and write them, I felt as if my soul was clawing at the inside of my skin:

• Went to the Bay for a “swim”, just to stare at the water and wonder of its toxicity

• Tried to harvest acorns for the purpose of making flour (to which I might be allergic?)

• Sought out time with my friend’s newborn baby on every possible occasion

• Went to a talk on joy in the hasidic tradition

• Attended many events to learn new High Holidays music even though I knew it was too late to change any of the music for our services

• Watched videos of cats cuddling babies on instagram

• Found minyans in which to davven, but only arrived once they were over

• Spent full days of work just responding to emails

• Moved

• Got installed as Or Shalom’s Rabbi

• Wrote a grant proposal

• Bought groceries, only to order in my meals

• Watched many, many, many seasons of the show “Veep”

And, I’ve got to tell you, I’m not sure if the inspiration ever really struck.

I’ve been feeling that way a lot this year. Like the spark of the creative that pulsed within me has been extinguished. That my hunger for learning has disappeared, despite the fact that I am far from satiated. That my spiritual practice is around some corner the next state over that I have not even located.

And I realized, it is because I feel that I have nothing to say. I have nothing to say. There is nothing that I can say that can even begin to touch the pain of what we are witnessing and experiencing on a global scale. My words feel empty as they fall from my mouth, dropping to the floor as full of death as the world I see around me.

What can one say in the face of mass death that only seems to beget more death, with no end? A mass death that feels intimately close, yet in reality, is so very far away?

When I attempted to go to spiritual direction in the months after October 7th, I shared that I felt as if my spiritual practice, too, had died. That I couldn’t get myself to engage in much of any solo practice, and if I even tried, it made me angry. That, instead, I was joy-seeking. Looking for indulgent, cathartic releases, mostly outside of the “spiritual” or “Jewish” realm. That, to me, contemplation or stillness felt like nothing more than escapism, yet snarkiness and disengagement felt utterly liberating. My spiritual director said, “Well, what if that is your spiritual practice in this time?”

So, I ask myself, what if my avoidance of drash-writing truly was the spiritual practice I needed in this time? That I needed in order to have anything to say?

What if I watched VEEP because I needed a safe and comical access point to help me grapple with the very real ways political leaders can be inhumanely cruel?

What if I watched videos of cats cuddling babies because I wanted to remember how we creatures have not only the capacity, but the inclination, to love and care for one another, even across inter-species difference?

What if I ordered in my meals because I wanted to remember the simple delights of being alive?

What if I spent time with my friend’s baby because I no longer take infancy or longevity of life for granted, and I needed a reminder of what should be the ever-apparent sanctity of all life, if only we were brave enough to face it?

What if I “swam”, danced, sang, inquired into joy because one of the only things I can find to do in the face of a mass death that, despite all our best efforts, will not end, is to try to touch something that makes me feel alive?

What if you are doing this, too?

The High Holidays season is (intelligently) designed to carry us from birth (Rosh Hashanah) to death (Yom Kippur) and to birth again (Simchat Torah), leaving us to enter the new year in the height of joy and abundant creation. But, last year, we unexpectedly closed out the season in death, and have remained in it since.

The book of death remained open all year and in it are tens of thousands of names that I don’t even think the Divine could have predicted, let alone written. We have lived the past year inside of some apocalyptic, never-ending Unetaneh Tokef–hovering between “who shall live” and “who shall die”–yet in which the Divine themself has seemingly been deposed by evil human despots bent on nothing but self-aggrandizement. It is as if the book of life and the book of death have been ripped from Divine hands and humans are scribbling furiously, terrified that if they stop, the book will, too, be stolen from their hands by someone who wants to see their name in it.

Is this the idolatry that we are again and again warned against in the Torah? The belief that we will somehow make better gods than the natural, unfolding yet incomprehensible and also sometimes seemingly unjust flow of the universe? That the only “true Judge” in a seemingly unfair world must be ourselves? Do we–human beings– truly believe that we can render judgments that are not rooted, at their core, in self-interest?

Well, if we are to live in a time where life and death judgements are held primarily in human hands–and this year, we certainly are– then I call upon us to do so in accordance with the injunction in last week’s Torah portion, the final Torah reading before Rosh Hashanah.

Through Moses, the Divine says, “On this day, I call heaven and earth to bear witness: Life and death I have put before you. Blessing and curse. Uv’charta b’hayim–choose life”

So, in a time of such death, what if all I have to offer you is to choose life? Choose life, not just for yourself, but for your neighbor. Not just for your neighbor, but for the stranger in your midst. And not just for the stranger in your midst, but for the foreigner. And not just for the foreigner you know, but for the foreigner you don’t know. And not just for the foreigner you don’t know, but for your enemy. (Pause) Most importantly of all, choose life for your enemy. For, as the ending to the aforementioned injunction goes, “choose life, in order that you and your offspring may live.” Our ability to choose life for all is directly tied to our own capacity to live and thrive and continue on. Only by choosing life when it is the hardest to choose do we ourselves live as well. Only by choosing life when it is hardest to choose do we–as a collectivity of all that is living–stand a chance of life triumphing over death. The books are in our possession. The pen is in our hands.

Moses too held the pen for a sacred and powerful book. It is said that God dictated the Torah to Moshe, and he wrote it down. However, the eighth to last line of the Torah states, “And so Moses, the one who served the Divine, died there in the land of Moab.” How, the rabbis asked, could Moses have written down his own death, and everything that followed? Their answer: Well, he wrote it in his tears.

Despite my desperate reaches for joy, for catharsis, for aliveness in this time, tears abound. Enough tears to revive the dead back to life, if only my tears held such power.

October 7th and the end to our High Holidays season last year left us in an inverted world, where death overtook life, in which we have been flooded again, despite Gd’s promise to never again flood the world, for this time the flood is composed of our own tears. May this High Holidays cycle serve as a lifeboat.  May this High Holidays cycle serve as a tikkun, repairing this unjust rupture and restoring (teshuvah) our world to life, in the way that teshuvah does.

This past year, the book of death was written by fear. This next year, may the book of life be written with our tears.