Yom Kippur: To Feed the Soul

To feed the soul, to take your fill of God….

Let me begin by wishing you each a g’mar chatimah tovah—a good inscription in the book of life and an easy fast.

Throughout the course of this year’s High Holy Days, we have taken the time together to explore important themes. On Rosh Hashanah we explored the idea of Opening the Heart and Opening the Mind. We learned that through our ability to open our hearts and minds to God and through the possibility of repentance, we would deepen our experience of forgiveness. We concluded that we had to smash away the hardness that often surrounds our hearts and we had to open our minds to greater consciousness filled with God and holiness. Through this work, we would perceive the world and ourselves in different ways, new and exciting ways. We might even begin to perceive the miraculous! We learned that free will was a critical component of Jewish belief and that each of one of us had the individual power to decide and choose our paths—the path of goodness and holiness or the path of immorality and curse.

Last night at the Kol Nidre service we learned together that the meaning of the service was to open our souls to God. That the sacred chant of Kol Nidre was our love song to God—seeking forgiveness for ourselves, and most importantly learning to accept that forgiveness and ultimately forgive others the wrongs they have done to us. Through this we would deepen our experience of the Divine and we would ultimately deepen our experience of love.

This is a significant and important process we have learned about together my friends. We have opened our hearts, and minds, and souls to be vulnerable to God. Willing to take God intoour lives, rather than shut God out. During our Kol Nidre prayer, our Kol Nidre service—we invited God in but how do we keep the invitation open? How do we keep God’s presence close to us beyond this Yom Kippur day? How do we invite God’s closeness not just once a year but all year long?

This morning in order to keep the openness we have discovered together, in order to keep the connection to the divine flowing—we have two more steps that are critical. One we will explore this afternoon at our Yizkor service, and that is the idea of being open to Memory.

But this morning we must speak to one another of the idea of feeding the spirit, feeding the soul.

Here we are on Yom Kippur morning. We are more than half way through our fast. Yom Kippur is a day of self-denial. We fast. We refrain from drinking. We deny ourselves the physical pleasures of sexual expression, of luxurious bathing and massage. We focus our spiritual practice on denying ourselves these acts, because of the nature of the work we must do together: The work of holiness, the work of opening the soul. We are not to be distracted by the dependence upon physical sustenance, or appearances, our lusts and passions. Rather, we use these spiritual gifts of self-denial, to open our soul to the experience of the divine. Rather than feed our bodies. Today, this morning we are to feed our souls.

And our souls do require care and nurturing. A soul requires sustenance. A soul needs to express itself, spirituality. It is not enough to merely open our soul to the idea of God, to accept forgiveness, to open ourselves to give love. But to maintain that openness our souls require strengthening.

But in our age, in our era—while there is great talk of spirituality – there is little practice of it. In fact, our society, does everything in its power to suppress the spiritual and real attempts to live a life of sanctity. We work so many hours there is no Shabbat. We have little time for reflection, prayer or meditation. And if we do pray, we are seen by others as odd, or by ourselves as awkward.
We are seen as needy and even nerdy.

There is great ridicule for the religious among us. There is contempt for the institutions of Judaism. And there is great scorn at those of us who use our faith to guide our morality. Whether on television, or in the movies, popular culture certainly has a disdain for the life of the spirit. The pervasive greed in our country works at odds with our values of justice and dignity for every human soul.

But the soul needs to be uplifted. The soul cries out for nurturing. The soul has a deep hunger that if left untended, can cause crisis and tzuris for each of us.

Yet, once the soul is open to God as we did together last night, then to sustain that openness, to sustain the flow of the spiritual, we must do all in our own power to keep the Divine near in our lives. Or as the great Jewish theologian Franz Rosenzweig said: To have found God is not an end but is in itself a beginning.

That beginning requires of each of us to feed and care for our soul. To nuture it through the life of the spirit, the Jewish spirit and Jewish tradition. . The soul, the neshama, requires feeding and care and Jewishly this includes, 3 most important tasks: prayer and study and the performance of mitzvot. And each of these Tefilah, Talmud Torah and Mitzvot—fortifies our soul for the journey of life.

This morning let us examine briefly each of these as a way to fortify and strengthen and yes, stretch our soul towards God .

Throughout Yom Kippur Day we are engaged in the process of Tefilah—prayer.
It is one of the major ways that we Jews give voice to our concerns and worries, thanksgiving and gratitude, to expiation of our sins and atonement.

Tefilah is part of the threefold formula we recite today during the Unetaneh Tokef prayer—uteshuvah, utefilah utzedakah, maavirin et roah hagezerah… Repentance, prayer and Charity averts the severity decree.

Tefilah helps us to build a relationship; A relationship with the Divine mind, a relationship with the Divine Presence. Tefilah links our soul to all others in prayer and ultimately to God. Prayer keeps our soul open and ready to receive. A Jew has many prayers and blessings to recite. The rabbis teach we are to say 100 brachot—100 blessings daily. This keeps God in our mind and in our hearts. Mindfulness, the Buddhist would say. The Jew would say elevating the mundane to the holy. And we here this morning would say –keeping our soul connected to God.

Through prayer, tefilah we build our souls together. The sounds of the words, the rhythms of the past, the very shape of the Hebrew letters, whether we understand them or not—each syllable, each phrase strengthens ours soul. It connects us to a past, a history. Each word of prayer and for that matter, each word we study of Torah, in our tradition, gives us roots. Just as the Psalmist taught us. Torat Adonai temimah, mishvat nafesh, God’s Torah is perfect, it revives the soul.

On this Yom Kippur morning we use our prayer to stretch out our soul, to keep it open and flexible waiting, asking, to be filled with holiness and forgiveness. We use our prayer to help us love. And if we go out from this Yom Kippur Day with the resolve to pray throughout the year—we can maintain this closeness to God.

Think of your prayers—as a kind of Jewish Yoga for the soul—Pilates for the spirit—Praying helps us keep our spiritual essence fortified. It builds our faith.

When we recite words of Torah, when we study words of torah, when we recite words of prayer, our soul is restored and strengthened.

The second way we Jews feed and nurture our soul is through Talmud Torah—the study of Torah. Spirituality doesn’t just happen – it is created through careful study and practice. The Zohar—the mystical book of the Kabbalah teaches the following:

One who does not study Torah lacks the Holy Soul which is created when the lips move in the study of Torah.” (Hakdamah to Zohar 12b)

For the mystics if there is no study of Torah—then the soul dries up. The soul is empty. The study of Torah literally keeps the soul alive, engaged.

The Kabbalist also teach:
One who neglects the study of Torah has neglected God, for Torah is one of the supreme manifestations of God (Zohar iii, 13b).

They understood that Torah is not just a scroll in the ark, with stories, legends, laws and myths but the Torah was really an extension of God; Extension of the Divine mind. When we study what it is that God requires of us… (to put it as Micah the prophet did) then we connect to the very essence of God and when we neglect the exploration of Torah we neglect God’s very being.

Finally, the Kabbalists taught:
And the one who toils in Torah and discovers in it new meanings that are true contributes new Torah, which is treasured by the congregation of Israel. (Zohar I, 243a).

The torah is not a fixed document in the mystical mind’s eye—but rather a tool for progressive revelation—the torah and yes, God, continually reveals new truths and understanding—new ways of looking at the world, new concepts, new ideas, evolution of thought. This elevates our being, elevates that household of Israel and every one of its souls.

Each of these important teaching from the Kabbalah, tells us the value of Talmud Torah—the study of Torah. A Jew’s vocation—is to learn – to study our tradition. And Torah here, mean not just the 5 books of Moses but the depth and breadth of our tradition: Study of Hebrew, the study of Jewish poetry, the study of Jewish law, the study of Jewish mysticism, the study of Jewish stories as well as the study of the Bible and Talmud.

We can tell that Jewish study is such an important component of satisfying the Jewish soul’s hunger—that to refrain from engagement in Jewish study is to refrain from God. It distances our soul from the Divine mind, the Divine Soul. When we omit Jewish learning from our lives, we harden our hearts to our past and deny our soul a future.

Many of you no doubt take all kinds of classes. From Yoga to Spinning, from art to acting to screenwriting. You are a learned group, with post graduate and professional degrees any Jewish mother would be proud of! But you do an injustice to your soul when you ignore the life of the spirit. You distance yourself from God when you neglect Torah study. On this Yom Kippur morning—the time has come to allow your soul to grow and strengthen through the engagement with our tradition.

Let this year be the year of growing with Torah. Let this year be the year you finally learn Hebrew--- Hebrew classes begin in October. Let this year be the year you join us for Torah study, or the Jewish Film Festival –Beginning Mon.night Oct. 20..

Or this afternoon following services. Our Student rabbi will lead a torah study in between the services. Come to Israel with me in January and study our past and our Jewish future. Meet your Israeli brothers and sisters. Walk in the footsteps of our ancestors. Do something Jewish to grow your soul, to keep it open, to keep connected to God.

Finally, we Jews nurture our soul, feed our spirit through the performance of mitzvot. Not merely good deeds—but commandments. We feed and nuture our soul through the performance of Jewish acts.

Last night, I shared with you two stories of the great rabbi and singer, Shlomo Carlbach—let me share one more teaching of Carlbach’s with you. He taught:

“The deepest Torah is that as much as you need strength for physical work, so you also need strength for spiritual work. Every time you do a mitzvah, the capacity to do another one grows inside of you. The angels say sometimes a person gets angry with another person for doing so little good, and does not realize that the other person lacks the strength to do more. It is up to us to welcome the little deeds that somebody does, as a way of opening him up so that he or she can do more.”

That is why today we must help each other build our souls.

Mitzvot train our souls’capacity for goodness. Each time we perform a mitzvah, each time we follow a commandment we invite holiness into our lives. Each mitzvah we do—large or small, each time we give tzedakah, each time we light a yarzeit candle and remember our parents or a lover on their yarzeit, each time we consciously choose to observe the ten commandments when we could have chosen otherwise is the way we keep our soul supple and connected to the Divine. Each mitzvah—each Jewish act, from lighting Shabbes candles, to refraining from doing laundry on the Sabbath as a conscious act and observance of Shabbat lets our soul soar closer to God.

Each mitzvah that we do helps us ascend to the soul-aspirations of holiness. Kedoshim tihiyu ki kadosh ani Adonai Be Thou Holy, For I Adonai am holy. Says the Torah reading this afternoon.

Holiness comes from God—and we Jews, connected to God through the opening of our soul, our heart and mind, connected to God through the gift of Torah and connected to God through the observance of Shabbat can invite holiness into our soul. And who knows that holiness, that openness of the soul, that connection to the Divine can make miracles of faith for you and for me as they did for Rose Goldstein.

A young girl stood near her father on the wharf of a Polish harbor, a steamer trunk at her feet. Out of her nine siblings, twelve-year-old Rose was the child chosen to be sent to the “goldeneh medinah” – “The golden Land” of America. Life in Poland was hard, hunger a constant visitor in her home. After much scraping and pinching her family had saved enough for a single one-way ticket to the U.S. And Rose the youngest of nine, was the lucky one chosen.
Her father hoisted the trunk on his shoulder and walked silently, his coattails flapping behind him. Rose could see the effort he was making to keep his emotions in check. The weight of living was apparent in the lines on his face. In the sadness of his eyes and the gray of his beard.

With an involuntary sigh, her father dropped the trunk on the deck and turned to his daughter. A gray head bent over an upturned innocent face, as the father gazed into his daughter’s unclouded eyes. How he longed to snatch Rose back home and hold her as he did when she was an infant. Instead he laid a trembling hand on her cheek.

“Rose, mein Kind” (My child), remember God is watching over you every step of the way. Remember God’s mitzvot and keep them well. Never forget that more than the Jews have kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept the Jews. It will be hard in the new land. Don’t forget who you are. Keep Shabbat, observe mitzvot, pray, study Torah, no matter what sacrifice you must make.’

Tatte, tatte, (Father, Father!)

Rose buried her face in the scratchiness of her father’s coat, her slender arms wrapped tightly around him as if to anchor herself to all that was familiar in Poland. A blast from the ship tore the two apart. Tatte, bent down hugged Rose again, squeezing the breath out of her in a hug meant to last a lifetime. Then he turned and walked down the gangplank, a stooped man, defeated by life’s hardships. As the ship steamed away from the shtetl life of Poland, a fresh sea wind blew on the passengers preparing to start life anew.

For Rose the journey was crammed with questions and uncertainty. Would her relatives really extend a welcome to her, or was she to be all alone in the new land?

How frightening was the thought of a new life without her loved ones. As the ship made its entrance into New York harbor, the passengers stood plastered against the railing, shouting and clapping as the saw the “New Land”. Rose stood aside, shy and unsure. Would the new land fulfill its promise of hope, freedom and riches? Would her relatives meet her there or was she now homeless?

Rose did not have long to worry. Her relatives were waiting for her, solicitous of their ‘Greenhorn’ cousin. She was soon safely ensconced in their home. With her mature appearance and demeanor, it was not long before Rose found a job as a sewing machine operator.

Life in America was new and strange. Polish mannerisms were quickly shed—along with religion. Modesty, keeping Kosher and Torah were abandoned, together with the outmoded clothing and accent. Rose’s relatives insisted religion was “old-fashioned”: an unnecessary accessory in America. Rose, however, never forgot her father’s parting words. She put on the new clothes her relatives gave her, cut her hair to suit the fashion, but never gave up on the Sabbath.

Every week without fail, Rose devised a new excuse for her boss to explain why she did not come to work on Saturday. One week she had a toothache; another week her stomach bothered her. After three weeks, the foreman grew wise. He called her over.

“ Rose,” he said, in a tone that indicated he only had her welfare in mind. “I like your work, and I like you. But his Sabbath business has got to stop. Either you come in this Saturday, or you can look for a new job.”

Upon hearing of this development, Rose’s relatives were adamant. Work on Sabbath, she must. They applied pressure; they cajoled, pleaded, and enticed. Rose felt like a leaf caught between heavy gusts of wind, pushed and pulled with no weight or life of its own. She was so young and vulnerable. She wanted to please her relatives. But her father’s words kept echoing in her head. What should she do?

The week passed in a daze for Rose. Her emotions were in turmoil. “On the one hand, Tatte is not here to help me be strong. I so want to please my new friends. I want friends. I want to fit into this new land,” she reasoned. And then just as quickly came another thought “on the other hand, how can I forget Shabbes? How can I give up the beauty Tatte taught me?”

“Rose, sweetheart, listen to us. It’s for your own good.” On and on went her relatives, until Rose’s determination wavered.

On Friday, Rose walked to work, lunch bag in hand and head stooped in thought. She sat at her machine throughout the day listening to the humming of the other machines as she absentmindedly went about her job of mass producing. Would it be so awful to do this tomorrow as well. Decision time was near.

What should she do—or was the question, what could she do? As the sun slipped over the parapets of the Lower East Side, Rose knew there was really no question. She was Jewish and she would keep the Sabbath. She would keep her soul—connected to her tradition and yes, to God.

Shabbat in America was not like the warm day Rose had known at home. This week was the worst yet. She lacked the courage to face her relatives and tell them of her resolve. Instead she left the house Saturday morning pretending to be headed for work. Back and forth through the streets of Manhattan she paced. Together with the city pigeons, she rested in Tompkin’s Square Park. “Tatte, this song is for you,”’ she whispered. The pigeons ruffled their feather. “Yonah matzah bo manoach . On it the Shabbat, the dove found rest…” There she sat among the pigeons, singing the traditional Shabbes zemirot, and prayers, with tears in her eyes and sobs between the verses. When three stars finally peeked out from the black sky announcing the end of Shabbat, the moon shone down on a weary girl and bathed her face in its glow. Rose had triumphed, but her victory would cost her dearly. She had no job, and had alienated her family.

“Baruch hamavdil” the blessing said upon the departure of the Sabbath, she prayed. It was now time to face the hardness of the world. Rose trudged homeward dreading the nasty scene to come when her relatives learned that she hadn’t been to work.

As she neared home, a shout broke into her reverie, “Rose! What…. What… I mean, how are you here? Where were you?

Rose looked up at her cousin, Joe, her expression woebegone.

“Joe, what will become of me? I kept the Sabbath and lost my job. Now everyone will be angry and disappointed with me, and oh Joe what will I do?” The words tumbled out together with her tears.

Joe looked at her strangely. “Rose, didn’t you hear?” he asked gently.

“Here what?”

There was an awful fire in the factory. Only forty people survived. There was no way out of the building. People even jumped to their deaths.’ Joe’s voiced was hushed, and he was crying openly. “Rosie, don’t you see? Because you kept Shabbat, you are alive. Because of Shabbes, you survived.”

Out of 190 workers Rose Goldstein was among the minority of those who survived. The infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire on Saturday March 25, 1911, claimed the lives of 146 immigrant workers present. Because it had been Shabbes, Rose Goldstein was not there. As her father had said, more than the Jews keep the Sabbath, the Sabbath keeps the Jews. (Small Miracles for the Heart, p. 188-193)

Rose’s observance of Shabbat , of her soul needs, kept her literally alive. Her beloved Tatte—knew the Jew’s soul must bound up with God’s soul. And requires care and nurture with brachot-blessing and prayer, Talmud torah, the study of Torah and yes, the observance of Mitzvot—embodied here in this story by observing Shabbat.

And Rose’s commitment to her soul’s care – literally kept her alive. How about with each of us? Will your soul sustain you in the days and weeks and year ahead?

On this Yom Kippur Morning… let us learn from Rose’s example. Let us learn that we can go from this Holy Season—with the tools to keep our divine connection open. That we can bring our soul, uplift, care, and yes, peace and renewal not just today but throughout the year. And let us be committed to continuing this work together. Not just now—but for the entire year. Make a commitment to yourself this morning. Take a class, come to a Shabbat, observe a mitzvah in your home… You will see—your own faith, your own soul will fly higher, and stronger in this in New Year.

Ken Yehi Ratzon So may this be God’s will and ours.

Posted by Eric at October 6, 2003 08:55 AM