How Promising

Once upon a time,
(an actual time, in the eighteenth century),
in a place where our ancestors once lived,
(the town of Berdichev in the Ukraine),
a tailor came before Rabbi Levi Yitzhak seeking advice.
It was Yom Kippur, you see,
and the tailor had just finished his day of fast and prayer.
But he feared that, so soon into the new year,
he had already transgressed,
for his prayer was disrespectful to God.
“Disrespectful?!” Rabbi Levi exclaimed. “What did you say?”
The tailor reported:
“Master of the Universe! The sins I have to confess are only minor ones.
Maybe I kept a little leftover cloth for myself,
or maybe I enjoyed a bite of bread without blessing first,
but You! Your sins are far more grievous!
Why, you have robbed mothers of their innocent children,
and deprived helpless children of their mothers!
Let’s make a bargain:
If you forgive me,
I’ll forgive you.”…

How we identify with that tailor!
Our actions, for the good and for the bad,
seem utterly insignificant in the face of the tragedies we witness.
How can we forgive in the face of that haunting image:
a child, drowned, his family seeking refuge?

How can we forgive when we walk the streets of a City
where extreme poverty huddles over the heating grates
next to luxury buildings
housing immeasurable wealth?

How can we forgive cancer, or mental illness?
How can we forgive Harvey or Irma, Jose or Maria?
How can we forgive Katrina, for that matter?

“Fool!” Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev rebuked the tailor and his chutzpah.
“You were too lenient with God!
I would have demanded that God forgive the entire world
to account for all [God’s] transgressions!”
So much in our lives, in our nation, in our world,
is out of order,
only a radical act of teshuva, of repentance and repair,
could possibly set things straight.

So said the Berdicher Rebbe.
It would be very easy to take that anger and despair and turn it outwards.
Personally, I feel like throwing the infamous Book right back at God and saying,
“Return! Repent!”

Part of me wants to be self-righteous and critical of “Them.”

God. Politicians. The Big Bad. Whatever or Whoever is causing all this.

And part of me feels like I think my two sons must feel
every single time they whine those three words
uttered by children to their parents since time immemorial:

“But you promised!”

Nine times out of ten, neither I nor my wife ever actually promised
whatever it is our kids are demanding.

But the desperation, the sense of deprivation,
the feeling of betrayal our sons communicate:

I feel that.

No one ever promised me a perfect world,
devoid of suffering,
but I want and need that so desperately.

We need things to be better,
to be other than what they are.

To transgress limitations.

But God, You promised!

We begin Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement,
not in prostration but in pragmatism.

We recite the words of a much-contested, formulaic legal statement,
preserved in Jewish minds and hearts with an immortal melody
that hits us in the kishkes.

Kol Nidre.

• נִדְרָֽנָא לָא נִדְרֵי

“Our vows are no vows.”

“Let all of them be discarded and forgiven, abolished and undone;
they are not valid and they are not binding.”

A statement of a desperate people,
bound by powers beyond our control,
coerced by anti-semitic laws and policies
into making promises that denied our history and our humanity.

We don’t want to make promises we can’t keep.

After all, we don’t like how it feels
when what has been promised never comes to pass for us.

Our ancestors have a mixed record when it comes to promises.

There’s plenty of that Ukrainian tailor in Jacob, for example,
when he literally feels God standing above him,
sees a ladder teeming with actual angels,
awakens uttering a declaration of surely seeing God in that ordinary place…
and then taking this conditional vow:

“If God will be with me,
and will keep me in this path I’m walking,
and will give me bread to eat,
and clothing to wear,
and I return whole to my father’s house,
then the Eternal shall be my God […]” (Genesis 28: 20–22).

God, you will totally be my God…

if you prove to me that loyalty to you means something.

Maybe this is cynicism.
Maybe it’s pragmatism.
Maybe it’s self-protection.

Jacob wants to believe in his new experience.

He wants to believe in a God who can turn a rock into a stairway to Heaven.

He wants to believe in a sudden change from danger to safety,
from uncertainty to security.

And don’t we all.

But promises are tricky, and vows are serious.

There’s a whole tractate of the Talmud
dedicated to vows and oaths and promises,
and to their definitions, boundaries, and stipulations.

What happens, for example, when a vow contradicts a mitzvah?

Intent matters, even more than the precise terms employed
(no, “I vowed never to use lotion again;
I said nothing about moisturizer!”). (see ibid 9:1 and 13).

Sorry, buddy.
A promise is a promise, right?
The word neder in Hebrew doesn’t precisely mean promise.

It means vow.

Which I guess is more serious, more consequential,
more sacred a term, in English, than promise?

A vow, in Judaism,
is a promise you undertake
with the full knowledge
of the consequences of failing to fulfill it.

A neder holds you to your words
by appealing to your relationship
with a God Who takes language seriously.

A vow is fulfilled…
because you fulfill it.

Because it is what is demanded of us.
Because it’s what we do.

We shape our Jewish vows in language that is careful and cautious,

because we want our words to mean something,
because we want our promises to hold.

In some ways, a vow is a promise we know we can keep —
or we wouldn’t have made the vow in the first place.

Such a promise of certainty, of surety, of confidence,
rings hollow in my ears during these High Holy Days,
vibrating alongside the jarring words, Unetaneh Tokef.

“Let us proclaim the sacred power of this day,
for it is awesome and full of dread.”

These are the Days of Judgement and of Atonement,
days for honest self-reflection,
and days on which we face the reality of what is possible in this world.

“On Rosh HaShanah it is written;
on Yom Kippur it is sealed:
How many will will pass on, and how many will come to be?
Who will live and who will die?
Who after a long life and who before their time?
Who by water and who by fire?”

The list goes on relentlessly,
recording and retelling and reminding us
of all the things over which we have no control.

As if we need, in these times, reminding.

I confess, I’m often guilty of focusing on this aspect of the prayer alone.

I’m guilty of forgetting to pause for the poignant, final line:

וּתְשׁוּבָה וּתְפִלָּה וּצְדָקָה מַעֲבִירִין אֶת רעַ הַגְּזֵרָה

But repentance, prayer, and charity annul the severe decree.

Transgression — aveirah, from the root ayin,-bet-resh —
can be annulled, transgressed, passed over —
ma’avirin, from that very same root.

A root shared with ivrim,
Hebrews.
Jews.
Us.

People who transgress.

People who cross over.

People who get past.

What are we traversing, these Ten Days of Awe?

We’re traversing the landscape
between what is possible and what has potential.

Between what we know it is safe to promise and what has promise.

Between pragmatism and cynicism and despair and … hope.

Once upon a time, I was a critical theorist.

I read a lot of heady texts
and wrote about them in complex sentences full of jargon.

And every once in a while, I draw on one of those theorists for wisdom.

Brian Massumi’s Parables for the Virtual is one of my go-to texts.
Massumi distinguishes between possible and potential.
What is possible, he asserts, exists on a predictable grid.
There are a limited number of “solutions” to any given “problem.”

Potential, on the other hand, is linked to tendency and habit,
which flow from but are not limited by past feelings and actions.

When we ask, “What is possible?”
we limit ourselves to those known solutions,
those predictable outcomes.

We are safe and secure in knowing we’ll get
more of the same.

When we ask, “What has potential?”
the solutions are limited only by our imagination, our creativity.

We work with the materials we have but in new and surprising ways.
We have the potential to change the grid, the game, the system, the world.

Putting your faith and your energy and your resources in any project
that has potential
requires hope.

And hope is scary.

Hope is letting go of my son the first time he climbed a ladder by himself.

Hope is dropping your child off at college.

Hope is entering the interview room.

Hope is reaching out to a new friend when you’re in despair.

Philosopher Ernst Bloch once reflected,
“Hope is not confidence.
If it could not be disappointed,
it would not be hope.”

Hope is not a guarantee, nor a promise.

A promise, in Modern Hebrew, is הַבְטָחָה,
from the root betach:
Peace, tranquility, certainty.
As in betach! Of course!

Security.

Not the same as hope, a word most of you know:

Tikvah.

As in HaTikvah, Israel’s national anthem.

Despite the despair we have known,
we Jews are a hopeful people,
seeing potential in an imperfect world.

Our world falls so very short of its promise.

Where shall we turn?

Do we point fingers? At politicians? At corporations?

At some Big Bad?

At God?

Or do we turn, as the Israeli national anthem urges,
penimah, within ourselves?

And if we indeed turn within ourselves, what shall we find?

Perhaps nefesh Yehudi homiyah,
a Jewish soul that yet yearns.

If we turn within ourselves,
we can acknowledge that part of ourselves that knows
the world is not fair the way it is.

That part of ourselves that wants things to be otherwise.

That’s hope.

In many ways, that is the beginning of teshuva.

Repentance, yes, and also, response.

I can respond to the world around me,
situation by situation,
relationship by relationship,
person by person.

A colleague of mine offered this alternative Unetaneh Tokef
to all of us this year (Rabbi Joseph B Meszler, Sharon, MA):
“On Rosh Hashanah it is written, on Yom Kippur it is sealed:
That this year people will live and die,
some more gently than others
and nothing lives forever.
But amidst overwhelming forces
of nature and humankind,
we still write our own Book of Life,
and our actions are the words in it,
and the stages of our lives are the chapters,
and nothing goes unrecorded, ever.
Every deed counts.
Everything you do matters.
And we never know what act or word
will leave an impression or tip the scale.
So if not now, then when?
For the things that we can change, there is teshuva, realignment,
For the things we cannot change, there is tefilah, prayer,
For the help we can give, there is tzedakah, justice.”

Repentance, prayer, and charity.

Response, introspection, and giving.

I don’t want to point fingers anymore.
I don’t want to live in despair.
I don’t want to think about all the bad things happening in the world.
But I do want to live in hope.

I do want to live unlimited by what is possible,
putting faith in what has potential.

There’s a kind of promise inherent in being a rabbi
during these High Holy Days.

I promise to guide each and every one of you
through an experience with tradition
that touches you in ways that are both comforting and challenging,
in the best ways I know how.

Our time together has the potential to change each of us.

I always fear the promise,
but relish in the potential.

Because I take the words of our liturgy seriously,
and I believe that this day is indeed Awesome.

Tonight, as we begin our fast,
I humbly offer you this promise:

I will forgive you, if you will forgive me.

And I will hope, if you, too, will hope.

Rabbi Nicole DeBlosi is Senior Jewish Educator and Reform Rabbi at the Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life.