Living the life of the ever-dying

Yom Kippur Morning Sermon-5769

Rabbinic Intern

Rachael Bregman


We are all going to die. Not just us, but the people we care for as well. And, not only will our deaths come, but they will come on a time table not set by us, not according to our schedule. None of us want any of this to be true, but it is. We build our lives ignoring these facts. With great arrogance and flippancy we do things like plan for the future. We make commitments we cannot necessarily keep when we say things like, see you tomorrow. We don't know. But we insist on making this contract with God or whatever power there is in the universe which determines the length of our days. We agree to the following terms: Everyone in the world-especially me and those I care for the most- will die old. We will die peacefully. We will die in our sleep outliving the people we should outlive, having accomplished all that which we wish to accomplish. This seems to us like a fair death. We sign on to this contract but this agreement is one-sided. No one, no thing is signing on the other side of the page. And when this contract is broken, we get very, very upset. When someone dies young, suddenly, or painfully, we claim "this is not fair! This is not right" But no one other than us agreed to these terms. Since there is no contract-no rules have been broken we alone feel this is “unfair”


Our Yom Kippur liturgy is designed to remind us of the end of our lives. We recite the same psalms and say the same penitential and confessional prayers today which are said at the deathbed. We do much to feel like we are approaching death. We abstain from eating and drinking. Many do not adorn themselves in any manner, do not bathe or brush their teeth. We treat our bodies as if they do not exist. By the end of the day today, we will feel a bit closer to death. Some abstain from wearing leather and choose to wear only white. The white, cotton robes that Serge, Star and I are wearing are called kittels. In addition to Yom Kippur, these are worn in traditional Judaism at one's wedding, and in one's burial. We do all of this to practice for the day when we do stand in judgment before God, for the day that will inevitably come, when we die. We are forcing ourselves to ask, how have I lived my days thus far? Have I really lived at all?


We are about to read from parashat Nitzavim found in Deuteronomy. This text occurs at the end of Moses' life. He is giving the Israelites their final charge before entering Israel to conquer it. The people are re-committing to the covenant with God, not just for those who were there but for those not there as well, meaning for us too. The portion has a simple message; you will sin, you will err, you will make mistakes (we are people, this is what we do) but we can always return to God, we can always tshuv, turn, we can always change. The portion closes with the following lines:

יט הַעִדֹתִי בָכֶם הַיּוֹם, אֶת-הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֶת-הָאָרֶץ--הַחַיִּים וְהַמָּוֶת נָתַתִּי לְפָנֶיךָ, הַבְּרָכָה וְהַקְּלָלָה; וּבָחַרְתָּ, בַּחַיִּים--לְמַעַן תִּחְיֶה, אַתָּה וְזַרְעֶךָ.

I bring to bear witness of all of you this day, the heavens and the earth. The life and the death I give before each of you, the blessing and the curse. Each of you, choose life so that you may live, each of you and your descendents.


But how can we choose life? Death is inevitable. Opting out is not an option so what on earth does this mean?


I spent this past summer working as a chaplain in training at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center here in NYC working with the pain and palliative care unit. I spent a large amount of time this summer with dying people and their families. One morning, I went to work and went straight to see Andy, a twenty-seven year young man and his huge extended family. Cancer brought him from good health to his last day in three short months. By the time I arrived, he had already died. I spoke with his mother who just looked at me and said, but he was so young?!? It is so unfair.


I encountered much there that felt unfair: Vivian who had adopted her nephew into her family of two children when her sister died of the same ovarian cancer which was claiming her life. A two-year old child with intestinal cancer who only knew how to say the words "My tummy hurts,” Charlie, who just wanted to teach his grandson how to fish, and Michael, whose birthday I share, who lives in my neighborhood in Queens, who thought he had a toothache and win 3 short weeks, his face was so encased in tumors that he could no longer see, taste or smell.


During all of this, right before father's day, my Dad and were talking on the phone about his dad who passed away about two and a half years ago at the age of 85. He said he felt his father's death was sad, but fair. I wondered, what makes a death fair? His response was that death is fair if you have done all you want to do. “Death is never fair,” I replied “because there is always more we want to do-including just live another day.” My dad then revised his thought. “I think it was fair,” he explained, “because my father had said all he had needed to say.”


I think there is more fairness when that happens. The fairness is not about doing all you wanted to do because that is impossible but perhaps, death is more fair when someone dies knowing they have said all of their I’m sorries and their I love yous.


Have you said all of yours?


After that morning when Andy, the twenty-seven year old, died, one of the other chaplains, Jane, said to me, you know, the greatest lesson I take from this place is the constant reminder to live-the reminder to live my life the way I want to have lived it when I die. I thought a great deal about Jane's wise words. She was not talking about making a "Bucket List" of things to do like Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. And I think she meant more than just saying the right words before leaving this world. She meant, remembering to be who we want to be.



In today’s Nitzavim text, God says, “This life and this death I give before each of you, the blessing and the curse. Each of you, choose life so that you will live, each of you and all your descendents. God is not setting before us a choice of bodily living or dying. That is not up to us. The choice is in the kind of life we will live. The text makes an analogy-life is a blessing and death is a curse. This cannot be referring to actual life and death since we know of lives that do not feel like blessings, deaths which are not curses.

But there exists this tension between life and death, blessing and curse. We cannot pretend death away. By ignoring that there is an end to our existence, we could put off until a rainy day the person we should be now. But, if all we did was constantly face the reality of the limits of life, our deaths could consume us and would rob us of the essence of living.


The choice here is in how we walk this balance. In our text, we read the words,לְמַעַן תִּחְיֶה so that you will live. This could also be translated as, for the sake of being or in order that you will be. I feel the text is telling us-being is living and choosing it a blessing, living means choosing a life as the person you can be; as your best possible self.


Death means choosing anything else: complacency, laziness, and plain old stubborn refusal to change causes a kind of death and brings with it the curse of living a life unfilled seen mostly clearly in the death which feels so unfair. I never got to be the person I wanted to be, I never truly got to live.In my conversation with my father, he added the following: He still feels sad that his dad is gone, he still misses him. We all do. He told me, “There is more I would like to have done with him but that is the lesson that I have had to learn.”


Just as death can bring the reminder of this choice to the living, we the living can bring the fairness to death. When we do not let death remind us to live, to truly live, to be and become the people we know we can and want to be, then, THEN death is unfair.


Two words show up over and over in this morning’s Torah reading: Shav and hayom. Change and Today. The repetition of shav, turn, change reminds us again and again, we can always change. Just because I WAS one way yesterday does not mean that tomorrow I have to be that same way.


And hayom, today was not just said to the Israelite people then as they prepared to enter Israel, but for us as we prepare to enter the New Year. Today is the day, now is the time. Tshuv hayom, Change TODAY


At the end of the day today, we will stand before God and seek out God's forgiveness for our sins. We will pen the ark, this plain pine box reminiscent of a coffin. It causes us to remember, death is coming and e o not know when, where, how or even why. Staring into that openness, that abyss, we are reminded of the unknown of what lies beyond. That vastness asks us, When you look back on your life, how do you want to see it? Who do you want to have been? Who do you want to be that you are not yet being? Shav, shav, shav it repeats-turn turn turn-change now, right now, Today BE the person you want to be before the gates close.


The life and the death I give before each of you, the blessing and the curse. Each of you, choose life so that you may live, each of you and your descendents.

In Awe in the days of Awe

I guess they work, those high holy days. I am in Awe of the last 10 days of my life. This high holy day season has affected me deeply. Rosh Hashanah was lovely and I really enjoyed celebrating a new year with my new congregation. Yom Kippur, however, was something else all together different. The holiday moved me, changed me, shaped me.

First of all, there was writing the sermon. I wrote about death. If you would like to read it, it is posted here. The process of writing the sermon was frightening. Exploring the topic was challenging, and cathartic since I had spent much of the summer thinking about it. I was pushed to streamline my thoughts and to distill, distill, distill. I think I left out more than I put in!! Material for sermons for future years...

Delivering it was also terrifying. Knowing I would be bringing people to a place of discomfort was...well, uncomfortable to consider. Would I be strong enough to hold the discomfort in the room and then bring people back from that edge to a place of hope? Would I be able to do that??

The last incredible thing that occurred was my parents and grandmother (father's mom)made plans to come to my shul for Yom Kippur.

The whole thing...the way these pieces came together...it was just beyond words. My family was called to open the ark for one round of the confessional prayers. I stood before an open ark, wearing a kittel, my grandmother to my right, my father to my left, my mother standing beside my grandmother, declaring the sins of the congregation in a loud, booming voice, everyone wearing white, my grandmother wracked with sobs...

How do I express in words...I did it-I gave the sermon and it went well. I felt good about it and the feedback was profound...that sermon spoke to the congregation, touched people. I was riding on that train but I do not feel I was driving it. There was something powerful created in that church amongst the congregants and the clergy. We grew this gorgeous feeling together. It was not what I did or what they did, but what we all did. They brought their kavanah and their willingness to be open, vulnerable and brave before us. They trusted us. And we trusted them, brought our vulnerability and openness before them. Together we took a great risk and it was worth it-worth the discomfort and the fear to come out the other side somehow closer, stronger, braver, smarter, richer. The good stuff is never easy but boy, is it worth it.