Sermon by Rabbi Denise L. Eger, October 3, 2005

Shabbat Shalom and let me take this opportunity to wish you a Happy
New Year.

As we observe this last Shabbat of 5765 together—our hearts are heavy as the fires burn around us. Our world has taken a beating—hurricanes and floods in the gulf coast, fires here in Los Angeles, war in Iraq rages and more and more American soldiers give their life along with thousands of Iraqi civilians, and the latest report from the UCLA Anderson Business school—that the real estate market is poised for a down turn. In another words—the real estate bubble may be close to bursting. This would surely bring economic ruin to many.

And of course our Governor yesterday had an opportunity to bring equality and justice to the GLBT community. For the first time ever a legislative body—the California Legislature passed a bill that would finally end discrimination to gay men and lesbians by allowing marriage. And Arnold just couldn’t rise above politics and expediency. He vetoed our equality. He vetoed fairness. He vetoed justice. He acted not just politically to calm his right wing flank—but when you subvert the rights of those who are discriminated against in society—he acted immorally.
All in all I am glad to have a New Year around the corner—because this one—5765 is ending on a difficult note.
But with all the storms, fires, wars, economic crises, and justice perversion that abound it feels as if we are reading from one of the most powerful prayers of the High Holy Day liturgy
During Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we will recite the Unetaneh Tokef prayer. It is also one of the most difficult to understand and make sense of.
I know you are familiar with many passages in this prayer…
On Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is decided, how many shall pass on and how many be created, who shall live and who shall die, who when their time comes and who before or after their time, who by fire and who by water, who by the sword and who by wild beasts, who by famine and who by drought, who by earthquake and who by epidemic…
And of course the prayer continues through a litany of calamities, tragedies and horrors…. To end with the words—Uteshuvah, utefillah utzedakah, Repentance prayer and charity avert the severity of the decree
At face value it is hard not to read this prayer literally. As we enter the New Year we are keenly aware that there are those who are not with us tonight who just last year prayed together with us. We have experienced many natural disasters—some within the last month. And with the tragedies that befall us, cancers, other illnesses, job losses that interrupt our day to day experiences—many of us ask where is God? Why did God bring this about?
But the Unetaneh Tokef prayer—is more than just a series of questions that imply God’s power to manipulate our lives at every whim.
If we look closely at the Unetaneh Tokef prayer we will see that there are six traditional main ideas to the prayer as enumerated by Rabbi David Golinkin .
1. God and the heavenly court judge all living creatures on Yom Hadin the day of judgment”
We understand this as Rosh Hashanah from the Torah
2. “one by one’ kol ba'ey olam , all who enter the world, pass before God kivinumeron , like a cohort of soldiers being counted, or like a shepherd counting his sheep and God decrees their destiny.”
In other words—God is personal—and takes an interest in human beings enough to take account of us.
3. “On Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed who shall live and who shall die, who by fire and who by water, who by earthquake and who by plague”
We all know that bad things happen in the course of life.
4.”but repentance, prayer and tzedakah “avert the severe decree””.
Jewish tradition teaches there are coping mechanisms for the things that happen
5. “ God wants the sinner to repent.”
6. “Humans' origin is but dust and his end is dust, but God is the ever-living Sovereign”.
In other words we believe that God is eternal.
Adding to the difficulty of the theology and not withstanding the modern difficulties with some of the theological interpretations, this prayer has strange origins. Traditionally, this prayer is said to have been composed by Rabbi Amnon of Mainz who lived just prior to the Crusades. The story as told in “A Translation of the Rabbi Amnon of Mainz Narrative
by Prof. Ivan Marcus” is as follows:
Rabbi Amnon of Mainz was one of the great men of his generation. He was handsome, wealthy, and well esteemed. The local ruler, the Archbishop of Mainz, kept insisting that he abandon his faith. He repeatedly refused. Finally, he said he needed three days to consider the matter. But once he left his presence, he felt enormous remorse, since he had let it be believed that he would even consider abandoning his faith. When he was sent for, he refused to go, so he was brought against his will to the bishop who demanded to know why he had not come on his own. Amnon told him why and said, "I shall pronounce my own sentence. Let the tongue that spoke and lied to you, be cut off." The archbishop refused and said, "No, the tongue I shall not cut off, for it spoke well. But the feet that did not come to me at the time you set I shall lop off, and I shall torment the rest of your body as well. This was done. His hands and legs were severed.
Rosh Ha-Shanah arrived. Rabbi Amnon asked his relatives to carry him to the synagogue just as he was and to lay him down near the bima. And it came to pass, as the cantor came to recite the Kedushah, the "Sanctification," Rabbi Amnon said to him, "Stop: Let me sanctify the great name of God." And he cried out in a loud voice, "uvchen l'cha taaleh kedushah, -- May our sanctification ascend to you!" at which point he spontaneously composed and chanted the Unetaneh Tokef. When he concluded it, his own end came, and he vanished from the earth before the eyes of all.
This gruesome story is the background of our difficult prayer.
But recent research shows that this story isn’t the actual origin of this prayer. Not only is there no record of a Rabbi Amnon in Germany at this time—earlier versions of this prayer were found in a very ancient Genizah fragment from the late eighth century, 200-300 years before Rabbi Amnon was supposed to have composed the poem!
Other scholarly evidence points to the fact that this prayer/poem –a piyyut in Hebrew- is similar to a Christian poem called the “Hymn of Romanus upon Christ’s Reappearance” which was written by a Jew who converted to Christianity in either the sixth or eight century. It shares a number of themes, motifs, and word patterns with this Christian hymn including trembling angels, God taking account the souls of people, the blasts of the horn, books being opened etc. No wonder we have such difficulty with this prayer—it is reminiscent of Christian theology!
But the origins of the Unetaneh tokef prayer while perhaps explaining the difficult language and theology still don’t help us understand how we ought to approach the words today –in our own context. After all it is part of our received tradition.
The prayers’ climax is the last section. It reminds of us of the 3 important ways we have to add our actions and our voice to the mix of God’s plans and God’s questions.
Repentance, Prayer, and Charity—help us change the decree. Through our attitude, our truly changing heart and mind we can learn to make the difference in how we respond to all of the difficult moments—be it death of a loved one or hurricane, fire or economic downturn. Through prayer—we give voice to our concerns and our worries and we strengthen our faith in God. Through Prayer we change the energy of the universe to vibrate favorably towards righteousness and hope. And finally through Tzedakah we bring justice and healing and yes, often bring about the repair of lives, tikkun. We can’t bring someone back from the dead through either of these methods—but we can ease the pain, and create more than just monuments to the deceased—we can do good in their name.
Golikin quotes Rabbi Marc Saperstein, a Reform rabbi and a scholar, who dealt with this problem in an article published in 1981. “He points out that the standard translation of the problematic sentence is not accurate and that the poet changed the wording of the Yerushalmi. The Yerushalmi says: Sheloshah devarim mevatlin et hagezeirah – “three things annul the evil decree”, whereas the poem says that three things ma'avirin et ro'a hagezeirah – “make the evil of the decree pass”” or as we say averts the severity of the decree.”
This is a very different understanding of the unetaneh tokef— If we use the translation as in the Jerusalem Talumd as proposed by Rabbi Sapperstein the three acts we can engage in –Repentance, Prayer and Charity don’t just avert any decree--- they annul it”. In other words, we have the power to overrule God.
This is in a long line of Jewish understanding that we Jews can and do change God’s mind. We have example after example of it, in the relationship between Abraham and God, Moses and God, even Joshua. Our prophets, Isaiah, and Jeremiah challenged the status quo of their time. We have a long tradition of struggle and of change. We argue and we wrestle with God. We actively try to argue our case and those of others. God wants us to speak up on behalf of others as well as ourselves.
Rabbi Saperstein explains further:
“ Death, sickness, impoverishment, tragic as they may be, are not identical with evil. They do bear a potential for truly evil consequences. They can poison, embitter, fill us with self-pity, destroy a marriage, blind us to the needs of others, turn us away from God. But the evil consequences of even the most fearsome decree are not inevitable. If penitence, prayer and charity cannot change the external reality, if they cannot arrest the malignant cancer, they can indeed ensure that the evil potential in that reality will not become actual and enduring, but will pass. They can enable us to transcend the evil of the decree.”
In fact one way we might understand the Hebrew of the ma-avirin et roa gezerah —is that the Hebrew word Maavirin—comes from the words avar—it means to cross over or to transcend and so these three mechanism—repentance, prayer, and charity help us transcend the tragedies that happen in our lives. They are tools for us to overcome difficult times. They help us move beyond our self—our wallowing in self-pity and help us transcend our own pain.
So as the world around us seems so painful, so difficult; As the hills behind us burn, and the Gulf Coast tries to rebuild after the devastation. We pray that this New Year will be one that helps us transcend our fears and the difficulties of our world. We pray that our teshuvah—our repentance is accepted and real. That we commit to changing our negativity. We pray that we might be strengthened by one another, comforted by one another, and lifted up on the wings of song and prayer. And we pray that in this New Year our gifts of tzedakah help us move beyond ourselves to repair the world. AMEN.