Spiritual Winkles, Rosh Hashanah Sermon 5765, by Student Rabbi Joel Fleekop

In Jewish folklore men and women go in search of many things. They look for wisdom and for treasure. They search for great teachers and for true love. But in no story recorded in the Talmud, in no hassidic tale of the Bal Shem Tov does anyone go in search of the cure for wrinkles.

But that is exactly how some of our best minds now spend their lives. Engaged in the never-ending battle against wrinkles. A battle that has led to development of weapons like moisturizers, botox treatments, and of course the weapon of mass wrinkle destruction, the face-lift. The war on wrinkles has become so important that profiling the lives of its soldiers, plastic surgeons, has been warranted worthy of a reality TV show.

I have watched this program and I have seen the prime time makeover shows. I have witnessed the incredible difference that they make. And I think we should follow their lead. On this Rosh Hashanah morning we should as a community resolve to join the fight against wrinkles.

We should join the fight against wrinkles, but not the ones on our faces. No, we should fight a battle against a different type of wrinkle, the wrinkles that develop on our insides. The wrinkles that obscure the beauty of our spirits.

These wrinkles are not caused by the sun. And laughter certainly does not cause them. No these wrinkles are caused by something else. They are caused by the cynicism that afflicts our minds, hearts and spirits. They are caused by the cynicism that paralyzes our hopes, dreams, and desires.

But the effects of cynicism are not immediately apparent. Like the development of wrinkles on the skin, internal wrinkles don’t appear overnight, they are slow in developing. You can only notice them by looking back and seeing how things once were. So I ask you now to think back to your childhood. To the way you saw yourself, the way you thought of others, and the way you viewed the world.

Think back to when people used to ask you what you wanted to be. It was such an exciting question. A question full of potential. A question that made your face light up with hopes and dreams.

Now think about your response. I think it is safe to say it had very little to do with expected salary and benefit packages. It is my guess that your answer had a lot to do with what talents you saw in yourself, the things you really cared about, the things you loved.

But then as you grew up you encountered cynicism, a force that can be as powerful and devastating as love. It might have come in the form of a parent who forbid you to study music in college. Or a guidance counselor who laughed at your hopes of a career in marine biology. Or maybe it was you yourself who decided that you lacked the talent for a career in art. No matter how you encountered cynicism, it played a role in shaping how you now spend your days. It played a role in ending some of your childhood dreams. And by ending these dreams, it formed a wrinkle that now conceals a part of your true beauty. A wrinkle that conceals a part of your spirit.

But spiritual wrinkles don’t only come from letting cynicism affect the way we view ourselves. They are also caused by letting cynicism affect the way we interact with others.

This summer I spent an hour with my niece 3 year old niece in the park. She played on the swing. She went up and down the slide a few times, and played in the ball pit for a few minutes. But then she did something that impressed me even more than her ability to climb the slide ladder. She went over to a young boy in the sandbox and they began playing together. With shovel and bucket in hand, they spent a few minutes of their young lives open to one another.

But it seems that as we grow older these encounters become few and far between. We become increasingly closed to one another. We begin to question the motives of not only the stranger who approaches us, but also our friends and family.

That we become cynical about people and their motives isn’t really a surprise. Many may see it as one of life’s many lessons. After all, who hasn’t been used by someone they thought was a friend. Who hasn’t been hurt by someone they once called a lover. These experiences are so universal author Nick Hornby writes that “cynicism is our shared language, the Esperanto that actually caught on.”

But whether it is wise or not, cynicism keeps us from fulfilling our fundamental desire, our fundamental need to live life in community. And by going through life with this need unmet, a wrinkle is formed. A wrinkle that obscures our inner-beauty. A wrinkle that blemishes our spirits.

And finally there are the wrinkles that cynicism causes when we let it affect the way we view the world.

Anyone who has watched our religious school perform acts of Tzedakah knows that the human spirit contains a passion for tikkun olam, for improving the world in which we live.

The Israeli pop-singer Erick Einstein captures our youthful passion for tikkun olam when he confidently declares, “Ani vAtah Nshaneh Et Ha-Olam,” You and I will change the world. As the song continues he acknowledges that others have said these same words and failed, but again he confidently asserts that their failures don’t matter.

But history does matter. It matters that every Sunday the paper publishes an expose of a corrupt charity. It matters that after years of regulation we still pump pollutants into the air and water. And it matters that after billions of dollars and hundreds of programs, 25% of American children still live in poverty.

These cold facts make it very easy to become cynical about the possibility of things every changing. And even more cynical that our actions could make a difference. And so many of us stop trying to make a difference.

We force ourselves to ignore our passion for tikkun olam. And this decision too brings another wrinkle, a wrinkle that conceals a part of our spirits.

But unlike Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Grey, our spirits are not irreparably blemished. There are ways to reduce the signs of aging, to erase the wrinkles that cynicism has placed on our spirits. I’d like to share three effective treatments for internal wrinkle reduction.

The first is to give ourselves a mental exfoliation treatment. By scraping away the surface level of everyday thoughts, by releasing our minds, even for just a few moments, from the demands of work, schedules, and bills, we give ourselves a chance. A chance to reconnect with a part of ourselves that has long been ignored. A chance to once again expose the talents and passions that dwell in our spirits. Talents and passions that cynicism and self-doubt long ago forced us to abandon.

This high-holiday season, with its moments of reflection and contemplation is a great time to start this process of reconnection. But in order for the mental exfoliation treatment to be successful, we have to not only unearth our long forgotten passions and talents, but be responsive to them. There has to be room for them in our lives. And this means making changes, making tshuvah.

We make tshuvah with ourselves by acknowledge that we were wrong in ignoring the passions and talents of our spirits. We make tshuvah with ourselves by changing things. By blocking off a few hours, or maybe just a few minutes a week to paint, to reconnect with an inner artists. By nourishing a love for animals by getting a membership to the zoo. By digging out the saxophone from under the bed and releasing the musician that has for too long been held captive by the demands of everyday life.

These are small steps. But they are steps that can make a big difference in eliminating the wrinkles that now blemish our spirits.

The second treatment that can help eliminate spiritual wrinkles is to give our insides a face lift. Internal face lifts eliminate wrinkles not by pulling back skin, but by pulling back defenses. Defenses we have built around our hearts. Defenses that are designed to keep us from being hurt by others. Defenses that in reality keep us from being touched by others.

In the second chapter of Genesis, God forms a human being from the dust of the earth and gives the human life by breathing the Nishmat Hayyim, the spirit of life into the human’s nostrils, Just as soon as God has given the human being a spirit, God realizes that it is not good for the human to be alone. It is not good because our spirits long to be in communion with one another. To spend life surrounded by love, friendship, and fellowship.

God resolved this problem in the Garden of Eden by creating a companion for Adam, the first human. God has resolved this problem for us by surrounding us with people. But being near people doesn’t guarantee you or me an ezer k’nedgo. And the ability to trade a rib for the gift of human companionship came and went with the garden of Eden. No in order to receive that divine gift, we have to be willing to do something much more difficult than removing a rib. We have to uplift our hearts from their protective bunkers and open them to one another.

It is only when we do this, only when we allow ourselves to receive the divine gift of human companionship, only when we allow ourselves to be touched by others that our internal face-lifts are effective.

And finally there is the third treatment for internal wrinkles, spiritual botox treatments. As you may know, a conventional botox treatment eliminates and prevents wrinkles by deadening different parts of the face. A spiritual botox treatment works in exactly the opposite way. Instead of eliminating feeling, it brings it back. It frees the spirit of cynicism and lets you once again feel your youthful passion for tikkun olam.

Sounds great? But where do you get this incredible treatment? In order to receive a spiritual botox treatment you don’t go to a doctor’s office and get an injection, but rather you reach out to the world and inject yourself. Inject yourself into a neighborhood campaign to gather school supplies for needy students. Inject yourself into the creation of an office recycling program. Inject yourself into the debate over whose family values our nation should protect.

The specifics of where you decide to help do not matter. Even if you are not convinced that you are making a difference, which you are, it is still worth doing. It is worthy doing because your pursuit of tikkun olam makes a difference to who you are. It fulfills a need that lies in your spirit, and in so doing it frees your spirit of the wrinkles that obstruct its divine beauty.

Winning the battle against spiritual wrinkles will not be easy. Victory will be achieved only when we can release our minds, uplift our hearts, and most importantly free our spirits of cynicism. Victory will be achieved only when we commit ourselves to fulfilling and nurturing the hopes, dreams, and desires that together form our spirits.

Winning the battle against spiritual wrinkles will not be easy, but it is a battle worth fighting.

And if we truly dedicate ourselves to this battle, than maybe one day a mother will tell her child the story of how one Rosh Hashanah a community of Jews set out on a journey and found the cure for wrinkles.

Posted by Lee at September 20, 2004 06:00 PM