“Yom Kippur: Our ‘One More Day’” A Sermon for Kol Nidrei 5784

Five times a day my phone alerts me to a message; that message says “Remember: You are going to die.” No, this is not a threat, it is a promise, a reality. The app, appropriately entitled, “We Croak” is inspired by a Bhutanese folk saying: ‘to be a happy person, one must contemplate death five times a day.” The invitations come at random times at any moment, “just like death” says the promotional materials. With each warning comes a quote about death from a poet, philosopher or notable thinker. I learned about the app recently, as I was researching for this sermon, and I’ve only just started using it. I haven’t found most of the quotes all that helpful, though there have been some good ones:

From American poet and essayist Jane Hirschfield: You may do this, I tell you, it is permitted. Begin again the story of your life.

From Victor Hugo: It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.

The app is not meant to maudlin. It encourages you to pause and take a moment for contemplation, reflection, meditation, conscious breathing.

The goal of the app is to encourage us to think about our lives – even for a moment. It can get us in the midst of a hectic day, at a down moment, or even in a laugh. It encourages us to pause, reorient ourselves to what matters most.

The app tries to give us, in regular doses, what we may feel when tragedy hits, when illness strikes or comes close. We pull our loved ones tighter. We say we are not going to take anything for granted. We’re going to follow up on those promises we made to ourselves. We may even stay in that space for a little while, but then we tend to slip back into our daily grind, lose sight of our purpose, take much of life for granted.

Yom Kippur is our annual “We Croak” day.

We deny ourselves food and drink and other basic physical pleasures (including sexual relations). We recite the vidui, confessional prayers, in every service on Yom Kippur. The only other time one recites the Vidui is in anticipation of death. Yom Kippur is a rehearsal for death.

On this day, we stand face to face with our mortality. The day is designed to encourage us to consider the most difficult questions of our lives: What is my life about? Will I achieve my dreams? When I am gone, will I be remembered for having done something worthwhile? Has my life mattered? By confronting death, we hope to learn better how to embrace life.

The search for life’s meaning is not a new one. It has been going on since the dawn of humanity; indeed, it is part of what makes us human. More than 2000 years ago, a man going by the penname Ecclesiastes wrote a book exploring the purpose of life; it is included in our Sacred Scriptures and the tradition is to study it during the upcoming Festival of Sukkot. The Book of Ecclesiastes is the musings of a man trying to find meaning in life when things do not add up as he had imagined. He amassed great wealth and power in his life, but as he nears the end of his days, he comes to the realization that those things will do him no good because, as we know well, “you can’t take it with you.” What purpose is there to life, he wonders, when we will all die eventually, while the world carries on? There is, after all, “nothing new under the sun.” Ecclesiastes devotes himself to searching for ways to live forever – through accumulating wealth, through study, through fun, even through acts of piety. In the end, he discovers that nothing lasts. “Utter futility!” he cries. The great irony of Ecclesiastes’ life is that in his quest for eternity, he misses out on exactly what he is seeking: meaning. The goal of living is not to escape death – the goal of living is to live. But it wasn’t that Ecclesiastes was so afraid of death itself. As Rabbi Harold Kushner describes him, Ecclesiastes is “a man desperately afraid of dying before he has learned how to live.”[i]

The overwhelming perspective of the Book of Ecclesiastes is so negative that the rabbis debated whether it was appropriate to include in our Bible. They made it acceptable by attributing it to King Solomon and by adding a coda about revering God and following the mitzvot. Still, buried within his negative outlook are positive gems about how to find the meaning in life that, sadly, eluded him.

Following his now famous poem about parallel experiences in life, “To everything there is a season,” Ecclesiastes concludes: “Thus I realized that the only worthwhile thing there is for them is to enjoy themselves and do what is good in their lifetime; also, that whenever a man does eat and drink and get enjoyment out of all his wealth, it is a gift of God.” (Ecc: 3:12-13)

Enjoy life, do good and appreciate all that you have.

This lesson was articulated most profoundly by a leading Conservative Rabbi of the 20^th Century, Milton Steinberg in an essay he wrote entitled, “To Hold with Open Arms”:

“After a long illness, I was permitted for the first time to step out of doors. And as I crossed the threshold, sunlight greeted me… so long as I live, I shall never forget that moment… And everywhere in the firmament above me, in the great vault between earth and sky, on the pavements, the buildings – – the golden glow of the sunlight. It touched me, too, with friendship, with warmth, with blessing…

In that instant I looked about me to see whether anyone else showed on his face the joy, almost the beatitude, I felt. But no, there they walked – men and women and children in the glory of a golden flood, and so far as I could detect, there was none to give it heed. And then I remembered how often I, too, had been indifferent to sunlight, how often, preoccupied with petty and sometimes mean concerns, I had disregarded it….

It rang in my spirit when I entered my own home again after months of absence, when I heard from a nearby room the excited voices of my children at play; when I looked once more on the dear faces of some of my friends; when I was able for the first time to speak again from my pulpit … to join in worship of the God who gives us so much of which we are careless.

…I said to myself that at the very first opportunity I would speak of this….only to remind my listeners, as I was reminded, to spend life wisely, not to squander it.”[ii]

Spend life wisely. Sounds like it shouldn’t be too hard, but it is for too many of us. We’re so busy searching for something – success, fame, perfection – that, like Ecclesiastes, we miss out on living. I once read an interview with an 85-year-old woman from the hill country of Kentucky. When asked to reflect on her life, she said, “If I had my life to live over, I would dare to make more mistakes next time. I would relax. I would be sillier, I would take fewer things seriously…. I would eat more ice cream and less beans… I’ve been one of those persons who never went any place without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat and a parachute. If I had to do it again, I’d travel lighter.”[iii]

“Enjoy happiness with a woman you love all the fleeting days of your life that have been granted to you under the sun –all your fleeting days” urges Ecclesiastes. (Ecc 9:9)

Enjoyment of life is enriched by sharing it with others. Whether it’s the love of a spouse or partner, a child, a parent, a sibling or a dear friend, love makes our lives worthwhile. Even on our worst days, when we feel as though we have failed in some significant way, a hug or word of reassurance from a loved one is helpful; even though it cannot make everything better, it reminds us that we are loved and valued.

But love takes nurturing and attention. All too often, love can be taken for granted and neglected. Pay attention to the confessions we will utter in our worship. How many of them relate to our interpersonal relationships? What do we offer in our private confessions? Not listening to one another, spending too much time away from home, dumping our anger on those closest to us; not showing enough appreciation; fighting with siblings; talking back to parents, the list goes on and on. Yes, it’s human nature and we are not perfect, but if we do not attend to our relationships, we will lose out and the meaning of our lives will be diminished.

Thinking about this sermon, I was reminded of a book I read many years ago by the author Mitch Albom, most famous for “Tuesdays with Morrie.” In this book, “For One More Day” Albom recounts the experience of a man that he met named Charlie. A lot of things had gone wrong in Charlie’s life and at one point he was in such a bad way that he decided his life just wasn’t worth living. He jumped off the water tower in his hometown and somewhere between life and the death he had anticipated, he had a vision of his dead mother. He got to spend one day with her during which he finally came to understand her and his father and all their relationships, things he never understood in his life; he got to say things to her he had never been able to say. Obviously, Charlie didn’t die, since he told Albom his story two years after this experience. Did he really meet his mother again? Who knows but whatever it was, the experience was very real for Charlie, and it changed him. He got help and rebuilt the shattered relationships of his life.

Yom Kippur is our “One more day.”

This is the day that calls us to make things right with those with love, with those with whom we are in relationship. As the Talmud teaches, “For sins between one person and another, the sincere observance of Yom Kippur will not atone until we have appeased that person.”[iv]

Our relationships, while significant, are not the only sources of fulfillment in our lives. We need to find meaning in the ways in which we fill our days. Ecclesiastes urges us “Whatever is in your power to do, do with all your might.” (Ecc. 9:10) We all need to find that something that gives us a sense of meaning, of personal fulfillment, of accomplishment, to which we can dedicate ourselves. For some it may be a career; for others volunteerism; for others, raising a family.

On this day we pause to ask ourselves: Do I end my day feeling as though I had made a meaningful contribution to the world and to my life? And if the answer is no, then it is time to make changes. Certainly, some people have to work in jobs that they find less than personally fulfilling in order to pay the bills and there may not be an option to change. In such cases, our jobs do not have to define us. We can seek personal fulfillment outside of our professional lives. Volunteerism can add meaning to our lives – there certainly are innumerable opportunities to make positive contributions on a local level and beyond.

Some people are more fortunate and have the opportunity to make a change — to leave an unfulfilling job and seek another, to stay at home or go back to work, to retire – but they are frozen in place by fear: fear of change, fear of adapting to something new. In such moments, let us remember that the choice is in our hands: we can carry on the same and look back at our lives one day with the bitterness and regret of Ecclesiastes, or we can take his advice and pursue what we really want with all the power that is within us so that we can reflect on our lives with pride.

A leading scholar of the early 2^nd century, Rabbi Eliezer, taught, “Repent one day before your death.” A disciple asked, “Rabbi, does anyone know when he will die so that he can repent?” R. Eliezer answered, “All the more he should repent today lest he die tomorrow, and then all his days will be lived in repentance.”[v]

Yom Kippur calls out to us – Hayom! Today! This is our day to decide how we want to live the rest of our lives. It is the day on which we ask ourselves the most difficult of questions: Does my life have meaning? Will I be remembered for having done something worthwhile? And if we are not satisfied with the answers, then let us find the strength to make the necessary changes: to rebuild broken relationships, to seek ways to add meaning to our days, to set aside time to help others, to learn something new, to stop and smell the roses, to spend more time with loved ones, to live more wisely, with few regrets or missed opportunities.

On Rosh Hashanah we celebrate the birth of the world; on Yom Kippur we contemplate our deaths. Our lives are compressed within these ten days. So, too, one day, will our lives be compressed on the tombstones of our graves, where our names will be etched, perhaps the most meaningful relationships of our lives will be included or some other phrase that characterizes us. Always included are the date of our birth and the date of our death. The thing that matters most? The dash between those dates.

A woman named Linda Ellis who had written poetry as a child, but ended up working in the corporate world, wrote “The Dash Poem” in 1996. It was read on a syndicated radio show and became an overnight sensation, changing her life completely. The poem became the lesson of her life. It is easy to understand its allure; the message of the poem resonates with all, most especially for us at this season:

The Dash Poem (By Linda Ellis)

I read of a man who stood to speak
At the funeral of a friend
He referred to the dates on the tombstone
From the beginning…to the end

He noted that first came the date of birth
And spoke the following date with tears,
But he said what mattered most of all
Was the dash between those years

For that dash represents all the time
That they spent alive on earth.
And now only those who loved them
Know what that little line is worth

For it matters not, how much we own,
The cars…the house…the cash.
What matters is how we live and love
And how we spend our dash.

So, think about this long and hard.
Are there things you’d like to change?
For you never know how much time is left
That can still be rearranged.

If we could just slow down enough
To consider what’s true and real
And always try to understand
The way other people feel.

And be less quick to anger
And show appreciation more
And love the people in our lives
Like we’ve never loved before.

If we treat each other with respect
And more often wear a smile,
Remembering this special dash
Might only last a little while

So, when your eulogy is being read
With your life’s actions to rehash…
Would you be proud of the things they say
About how you spent YOUR dash?[vi]