Congregation Netivot Shalom

Rosh Hashanna, First Day

Sep 5, 2013 / 1 Tishrei 5774

Howie Miller

First of all, I am honored and grateful for the opportunity to speak with you on the high holidays. While I suspect this won’t be the funniest drash you’ve ever heard, my hope is that it won’t be the longest either.

Immediately after David Stein asked me if I was willing to do it, I started to think of topics. I first looked at www.got-drash-cheap.com, as you do but didn’t see anything that jumped out at me. I talked it over with my wife Lisa and I decided I wanted to share something personal about me. I was motivated by a desire to forge a deeper connection between me and the community that continues to help me navigate my spiritual journey.

Then I met with Rabbi Creditor. He gave me about half a dozen topics. I took them and disappointingly shared them with Lisa saying, but I wanted to discuss something personal, I wanted to share something about myself. Lisa looked at me and started to laugh she said: Howie, I have no doubt that no matter which topic you choose, you’ll find a way to make it all about you.

So while meeting with Rabbi Creditor, one topic in particular stuck in my mind. While we are celebrating the birth of the world, the question “What does it mean to be a Jew in this world” had particular resonance.

Of course each of us has his or her own answer to the question, but there would also no doubt be some overlap. Regardless of our differences though, for most of us, our answer as well as our thoughts, perspectives, choices, decisions are all informed by our yiddishkheit or Jewish essence. It’s always there, whether it was infused during our youth or it was adopted later in life. Our Yiddishkheit is the product of generations, perhaps millennia of collective Jewish experiences and learnings.

There are so many ways to approach the question of what does it mean to be a Jew in the World today. Some answers are meaningless unless contextualized in our modern times, others are as appropriate today as they might have been a thousand years ago.

I’d like to share with you what it means to me to be Jewish in the world today. Bear with me as it’s still a work in progress. And yes, this is when I start talking all about me.

Before I share with you how I answer the question today, I’d like to share with you how I might have answered it growing up in the shtetl we call New York.

In my NY commuter town of Orangeburg, NY you were either Irish, Italian or Jewish. We all got along relatively well, but you always knew where you belonged. So I was raised a very traditional, East Coast conserva-dox Jew, which I believe is the contraction form of the term conservative-paradox. We drove to shul every Friday night and Saturday and we kept a kosher home with three sets of dishes: Meat, dairy and the one for the chicken chow mein take out. When I was young there wasn’t much discussion of why we did what we did. Why we celebrated the yom tovim, the holidays, and why went to shul. This was just the way it was. It was the way our parents, grandparents, great grand parents, and so on did it.

I also grew up in a house that rang with the sounds of Yiddish. My father didn’t learn English until grade school and my mother picked it up from her parents. But for me, other than grandma’s bubbemeises, classic eastern European curses and nuggets of timeless wisdom, we kids weren’t taught Yiddish, nonetheless from these experiences we developed a yiddisher kupp -- a Jewish head.

In those days, it seemed to me that to be a Jew in the world meant to carry the weight of history on our shoulders. It meant go to Hebrew school, be active in B’nai Brith keep kosher, meet a Jewish girl, make Jewish grand children, be sarcastic, speak with an accent and support Israel – all because countless hardships were suffered and innumerable lives were dedicated and lost to ensure that I now had the ability to be Jewish. I never directly rebelled against these Jewish strictures. I was a good (read boring) kid.

Despite my boring youth, as some of you know, I’ve been lucky enough to have had a few careers and to have lived in a few different places around the world. I’m convinced this was my way of rebelling. All through my rebellion though, the Jewish force was strong within me. I continued to practice as before, if anything, I got a little stricter about certain observances. But my answer to the question –what does it mean to be a Jew in the world - wouldn’t have changed much. I would have given you an answer that still focused on what it meant to be a cultural Jew.

As I travelled from place to place, I wasn’t part of a structured Jewish community and I didn’t have access to Jewish teachers. What I did have, though was time and books. I was intrigued by western and eastern philosophy. I read books on existentialism, Kabbalah and Daoism. I learned and read with my yiddiser kupp and as a consequence, my seeking informed my yiddishkheit. It lead me to re-evaluate my Jewish practice and what it meant to me to be a Jew in the world. It gave my Jewish practice meaning. Finally, when asked why I do what I do, why I observe the way I do, I had an answer.

Last week, when I sat down to answer the same question what does it mean to be a Jew in the world today, the first words I typed on my computer screen were: “I believe to be a Jew in the world means to have the joyous obligation to be both present at each and ever moment and to be a super hero on a personal mission to heal the world.” As I sat back and re-read these words, I was struck by the sound of “joyous obligation.” It’s a poignant juxtaposition sort of like bitter-sweet. Obligations don’t often involve joy. However, these Jewish obligations of being present and transforming the world do. They promote, sustain and spread joy.

Geraldine Brooks, a Pulitzer prize winner who chose Judaism later in life, explained what it meant to her: “reciting the ancient Hebrew blessings encourages me to notice the small gifts of daily life—the dew on the grass, the new moon, the swift grace and subtle hues of sparrows. Slow down, take a minute, bless the bread and be grateful. This, I tell myself, is what Jews do. This is who I am.”

She further noted: “The world is a tangle of the beautiful and the ugly, the cruel and the gentle, the funny and the tragic … it has always been this way and … it is our business to mend it.”

I would like to encourage every one here to join me in asking ourselves, what does it mean to be a Jew in the world today. Your answers may surprise some of you. Others, not so much. But no matter how you answer the question, the process of asking it will provide a window into your neshumah, your soul (as G’ma Becky a l'shalom used to call it).

I encourage you to ask yourself this question frequently to kind of take your own spiritual pulse. To see if you are on the track you want to be on, to ensure that you are following your dharma.

The 18^th century Rabbi Zusya of Hanipol was quoted as saying: “When I die and go to the world to come, they will not ask me, Zusya, why were you not Moses? They will ask me: Zusya, why were you not Zusya.”

What it means to be a Jew in the world today is to be always asking, and answering, the question what does it mean to be a Jew in the world today, perfecting yourself and the world around you.

Oh yeah. Lisa was right.

Shannah Tovah.