Rabbi Marc E. Berkson -- Kol Nidre -- 5767
Twelve Steps
More years ago than I care to remember, when I was asked to offer a message for the New Year's Journal of my student congregation in Marion, Ohio, I quoted the following from the Mishna:
If a man said, "I will sin and repent, and sin again and repent," he will be given no chance to repent. If he said, "I will sin and the Day of Atonement will effect atonement, then the Day of Atonement effects no atonement. For on Yom Kippur, God will pardon everyone who has sinned against Him; but He will not pardon a person who has sinned against another human being until the person appeases the one who was wronged.
I then wrote, “This statement touches upon one of Judaism's fundamentals. For Judaism is basically a religion of doing, a religion acutely concerned with one's actions and interactions in the here and now of this world. Such a religion always places the burden upon man. For example, the cleansing of one's sins at Yom Kippur is directly the result of that person's own efforts, not the result of any external processes.”
Now, beyond my own embarrassment at my use of sexist language over three decades ago, I am also amused at how young the author of those words sounds. And I cringe at the supreme confidence which emanates from my words. One simply has to apologize to those he or she has wronged and then one can move on to God. As if, through one's own efforts, atonement would be granted. As if seeking forgiveness and granting forgiveness were so simple. As if one could do all these things all by oneself.
Now, our tradition is quite clear about the order. You do have to seek forgiveness from others before you can ask God for forgiveness. The citation from the Mishna is attributed to Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah and is taken from the Tractate known as Yoma which deals with Yom Kippur. Yoma means the day, the day of Yom Kippur, and Rabbi Elazar's statement is based on Leviticus 16:30: For on this day atonement shall be made for you, to cleanse you, of all your sins, you shall be clean before the Eternal.
Still, as clear as tradition may be, I have found, as I have gotten older, that seeking and granting forgiveness is a much more complicated matter. In fact, it is painfully difficult. A few years ago, I shared with you the hard work involved. The Talmud expands the Mishnah’s short discussion, becoming more specific regarding one's responsibilities in seeking and granting forgiveness. Maimonides makes the process even more specific in his work, the Mishneh Torah. We must first recognize the sin and then confess that sin. Then we must express our regret and resolve not to repeat that sin. But the process continues when sin is between two people. The perpetrator of the sin must seek out the victim of that sin and ask for forgiveness--from the other, from the victim. And they will only know that forgiveness is complete when both perpetrator and victim find themselves in a situation parallel to the one in which the perpetrator blew it but now resists from repeating the wrongdoing. It is a fascinating process, a process of forgiveness that necessarily implies not forgetting the wrongdoing, the sin, but remembering it. Neither may forget the wrong done, neither the perpetrator nor the victim; by remembering it and not doing it again, their relationship is fully restored.
Yet, dependent upon the sin, the repair work is still more extensive. For if one has physically injured another, said Rabbi Yitzhak, one must make a compensatory payment and ask forgiveness. Not only is the injury to be repaired but also the relationship. This, then, imposes a reciprocal relationship between the victim and the victimizer, an expectation if you will. Rav Hisda insisted that one ought to seek forgiveness in the presence of others, in the presence of a community. And Rabbi Yosi bar Hanina added that one must beseech the victim, the injured party, for forgiveness three times if necessary. Again, note the reciprocity. An injured party who refuses to grant forgiveness after being asked three times in the presence of others then becomes the one considered the sinner. If the injured party had died, continued Yosi, then one should bring ten people and stand them at the grave and say "I have sinned to God and to this person whom I have injured." If money is owed, the wrongdoer must pay it to the victim's heirs. If heirs cannot be found, the money must be left in the hands of the community. In other words, seek forgiveness. Grant forgiveness. Then come before God cleansed, having restored our human relationships, now prepared to restore our relationship with God.
So, have you all done your work? Have you made a list of persons you harmed or hurt in some way over this past year? With that list, did you then seek to make amends? Did any of you seek out each individual to make things right? Even more to the point, how many of you, if forgiveness was earnestly requested from you by another, felt ready to forgive, able to accept that individual's apology? I know I have not. I have been far too busy getting ready for this day—writing sermons, preparing material to distribute, making sure parts and participants are in place—that I surely have not gotten ready for this year by doing all the real work I have to do. And, if my guess is correct that most of us have not, why are so many of us here? Is the work of seeking and granting forgiveness just too complicated and so we hope the service suffices? Then why is this night, those melodies, these words so awesome, so powerful, so urgent? What is it we come so desperately seeking?
Could Elazar have gotten it wrong? Mistakenly reversed the order? Maybe he had it backwards. Might we all be here in some sense seeking to do the opposite of what we have been taught? Be forgiven by God first, then go out and ask forgiveness from others. Perhaps to be able to forgive others, we must feel forgiven ourselves first. In fact, God’s forgiveness might empower us to seek forgiveness from and to grant forgiveness to others.
Thus two stories, both true, one from a book, the other from an acquaintance. Mark’s downward cycle began when he was just 14-years-old. His father died and he was soon selling stolen goods out of his locker in school. That was just the start of almost thirty years of thefts and hustles, of con games and check-cashing schemes, of gambling and of drinking and of drinking and of drinking. The years were punctuated by escapes from the law, by arrests by law enforcement officials, and even by prison time.
Nu, Mark could be just another small-time crook. But Mark’s last name is Borovitz, he is the brother of a friend and colleague of mine, and he, himself, became a rabbi at the age of 50. Rabbi Ed Feinstein of Valley Beth Shalom in California tells part of the story:
I met Mark in the early 1990s. I was the director of Camp Ramah, a big Jewish camp in California. Someone told me about this guy who had just gotten out of prison and was working in a rehab center that his wife had set up. He was supposedly a real character. He had a message, though, a strong message for kids. He was speaking to them about addictions and criminal behavior, and he had a lot to say about how to avoid making bad choices. Charismatic.
I invited him up to camp. At camp, kids aren’t used to sitting quietly and listening to a lecture. You really had to grab their attention. Well, Mark…grabbed them…for an hour. Mark would do a kind of rap. He spoke this language that I’d never really heard. Addiction is a hole in your soul.
We spoke and we connected. He started coming to Shabbat Morning Services….[In dialogue], I was stunned at the quality of Mark’s answers when [we studied the weekly Torah portion]. Here’s one example. The central narrative of the Bible is the escape from slavery. Mark [would ask] Are you a slave? And how do you know? What if you’re a slave and you don’t know it? To what are you a slave? Egypt is not a place in the Middle East, he’d say. Egypt is a place in your soul. It is those things you are attached to that rule you instead of you ruling them, instead of allowing God to rule you.
For Mark, Passover is the holiday. You’d think it would be Yom Kippur because it’s all about t’shuvah [repentance]. It’s not. His holiday is Passover because it’s all about the great struggle to escape from slavery and that the journey takes forty years across the desert. You don’t just go out of Egypt right into the Promised Land. It’s a struggle….You don’t just jump out of an addition, clean yourself up, and go, “Hey, everybody, I’m clean!”
And Mark chose these lyrics from singer-songwriter Joseph Arthur’s song “Innocent World” from the album Redemption’s Son with which to begin his book: God is my only friend./ No one else knows who I am./ Find a way out. Find a way.
At the same time that I was reading Rabbi Borovitz’s book this summer, an acquaintance from out of town called me to talk to me about an addiction. The acquaintance felt little self-worth and self-respect having neglected both family and work. And spiritual advice was sought. How did Mark become Rabbi Borovitz? Read his book entitled, appropriately, The Holy Thief. What became of the acquaintance? That phone call, those concerns, that spiritual advice was to lead to this sermon.
That spiritual advice had to do with 12 steps. And it has only been in the last 15 years or so that we Jews have stopped considering 12 step programs—pioneered by Alcoholics Anonymous back in the 1930s—as, in some way, non-Jewish. That misconception may well have begun with the fact that many such groups met and meet in churches (often because synagogues do not make themselves available). But we all know that addictions of various kinds—alcohol, drugs, food, sex, gambling—afflict the American Jewish community just as they afflict the larger American community. And consider the other Jewish qualities of 12-step programs:
1. true equality. Abraham Twerski, Rabbi and doctor and director of the Gateway Rehabilitation Center in Pittsburgh (and brother of Michel) tells of how he once came into a meeting room and saw two of his recovering patients sharing a conversation. Nancy was a very wealthy woman, who was no doubt driven to the meeting by her chauffeur in a luxury car. Edith, on the other hand, had to have an attendance slip signed by the group secretary so that her bus fare could be refunded by welfare for otherwise she could not afford to come to the meetings. Poles apart socially, these two women were completely equal within the confines of the room.
2. a true sanctuary. Rabbi Harold Kushner tells of sitting in a meeting of compulsive eaters. In that meeting, people would describe how they would eat a stick of butter at a single sitting or how they would filch food from a garbage can after the rest of the family had gone to bed. Nobody in the group would cry out “gross” or “yuck” or “is that sick.” As a woman said to him, “It’s the only place I go where I know nobody will hurt me.”
3. a true chevruta setting—In traditional Jewish study, you learn with a partner. A similar dynamic exists within the 12 step program. Your sponsor becomes your partner, if you will, helping you move away from the addictive behavior. Nancy, in the story above, may well have needed Edith’s help to stay sober.
And we are here tonight, all of us equal before God, all of us with a desire to apologize to others, all of us with a desire to forgive those who have sinned against us, all of us yearning to feel safe in this place which serves as our sanctuary. So tonight, this Kol Nidre, how the 12 steps can help us on our spiritual recoveries, to bring us closer to God and, through that closeness, closer to each other. Those of you familiar with twelve-step programs know that the first three steps call upon people to recognize that human beings are not omnipotent, that there is a greater Power in the world to turn to for help and support. It is in the very nature of our being human that we cannot be all-powerful. Thus, it is also in the very nature of our being human that we cannot do everything we wish to do all alone. And we Jews are taught that we need God’s help to overcome the evil inclination within us. For many people in 12-step programs, it is ne'r impossible to depend upon one's will power alone to elicit any change in behavior. As one addict wrote, “Without going into painful details, my life soon became unmanageable. I violated my own values and the trust of others. I became unreliable, dishonest, and highly preoccupied. I was using to live and living to use. The worst thing was that there seemed to be no end in sight.” One needs to depend upon a power beyond oneself.
Rabbi Joseph Telushkin offers an illustrative example of this difference on a most simple level. People who go on a diet may say to themselves, "I know I am not supposed to eat dessert. I know I really shouldn't reach for that second portion." And for several days at a time, they do just fine. Then, one day, when they are tense or tired or the food looks very good, they eat that dessert or second portion saying, "I know it's wrong, but it looks so good. Just once won't be so terrible." Yet other people, perhaps even some of these people on a diet, have a different form of dietary regimen. They choose to keep kosher. They say to themselves, "I know I'm not supposed to eat bacon or shellfish." And they do not--not for days and not for months, not even when they are hungry or the food is tempting or when they are tired or tense. That, according to Rabbi Telushkin, is the difference between depending upon your own willpower and making a commitment to God.
Please do not misunderstand me here. I am not asking you to keep kosher--that is definitely not my message for Yom Kippur. So perhaps another way to illustrate the difference between depending upon one's own power and depending upon God is to turn to these words from a woman named Yael, a recovering alcoholic quoted in Rabbi Kerry Olitzky's book Twelve Jewish Steps to Recovery. "Faith to me," she said, "means giving up the illusion of control I never had." All too often, time after time, we assume we are fully in control, able to do things all by ourselves. Yet, when we think we can do everything all by ourselves, we engage in idol worship for we have replaced God with ourselves.
A power greater than ourselves to which to turn for help and support--is that not the message of this day? That there is a God--that God loves us--and that God is waiting for us, begging for us to reach out.
Thirty years ago, in my youth, I imagined far too much power in human hands, not enough in God's. Some fifteen years ago, I would have insisted that Elazar had it backwards and would have absolved humans of most responsibility. For what if one does not feel forgiven, what if one feels oneself a failure, what if one has little or no self-respect--how then can that individual reach out to any other person, how can that individual believe him or herself worthy of another's forgiveness, how can that individual gain another's respect? Before we can forgive others, we must feel forgiven ourselves. And this seems, if you will, Christian.
We do not want God to forgive us, not yet. We know we have lots of work to do, lots of very hard work to do. But, as Rabbi Kushner has written, we want God to take us seriously. “God respects me even when I’m not sure I respect myself, God cares about what I do and that makes me feel responsible. God gives me more confidence, more hope, more strength than I would ever have without God.” Then, only after we have been liberated from the burden of trying to be perfect, of defending ourselves at every point, do we feel empowered to forgive others.
The middle steps of the twelve-step program reflect a similar understanding. For steps five, six, and seven call upon people to admit to God before they admit to themselves and to others the nature of their mistakes and to then ask God's help in removing, in growing beyond, these shortcomings. All of the traditional texts tell of God waiting for us, almost begging for us to reach out. "My hands reach out to the penitent," says God,” I reject none who give me their hearts." "Though you be far from Me, I will draw near and heal you--if you come toward Me!" Yet another Midrash: Make for Me an opening (of repentance), says God, an opening as narrow as the point of a needle, and I will make the opening so wide (for pardon) that camps full of soldiers and siege engines could enter it. Or the story of a king's son who decided to set out on his own. He traveled far and wide growing weary and lost distant from the palace. His funds gone, with no place to go, he sent back word to his father. Came the reply: Start the journey home and I will travel to meet you halfway. God is the monarch, we are God's people. And then there is Yael, the recovering Jewish alcoholic. "Judaism," she said, "teaches me to trust that I always rest under God's wing."
We know that God loves us enough to take us--and our mistakes--seriously. We know that God respects us even if we do not respect ourselves. And we know that God is with us, that we are not alone. So loved, so respected, God also demands that we do something to make up for our mistakes. That is what Elazar wants, expects, us to do. And that is exactly what the next two steps of the 12-step program demand: that we make a list of all persons we have harmed and become willing to make amends to them all and that we make direct amends to such people wherever possible.
Is that not why this night, those melodies, these words are so awesome, so powerful, so urgent? And is not God's forgiveness what we came here so desperately seeking? Fasting for 24 hours, we admit over and over that we have been weak and selfish, arrogant and cynical, malicious and spiteful, obstinate and dishonest. Al het she-cha-tanu l'fanecha--for the sin we have committed against You...and the sin we have committed against You...and the sin we have committed against You. With Kol Nidre tonight, we reminded ourselves that even with all our best intentions, we are still going to mess up again, we are still going to miss the mark again, that, yes, we will be back here again next year, that we are fallible, that we are human.
Still accepted by God, loved in spite of our faults, forgiven, if you will, for being human, we can now share these feelings of acceptance, of love, and of forgiveness with our parents and our children surely, but also with our friends and our neighbors, with our teachers and our students, with our colleagues and our congregants, with all those whom we have hurt, with all those who have hurt us.
The gates of judgement do not close until the setting of the sun tomorrow. Some say the gates do not close until Hoshannah Rabbah, until the last day of Sukkot. And the gates of repentance are always open. Safely sheltered by God’s love, now do the work God demands of you. Make that list of persons you have harmed or wronged or hurt in some way. Go to these people, your brothers and your sisters, and make amends. When they come to you seeking forgiveness, forgive them--just as God will forgive you.
"Faith to me," to repeat the words of Yael, the recovering alcoholic, "means giving up the illusion of control I never had." Then she added, "Only my own holiness is in my hands." Such can now be said by each and every one of us. The gates are open--let us enter and praise God.