It can seem easy to get lost in the words of our liturgies, relegating them to perfunctory recitations and gestures—more muscle memory than muscle engagement and development.
Mi Chamocha is calling us to action. It is challenging us to unseat complacency, to wade through the muck and mire of inhumanity to reach the other side toward a more stable and assured road to stability and peace.
While inaction, in and of itself, is an action, we learned earlier that all words matter. Words can bring us together. Words can tear us apart. Words can comfort, and words can conspire to degrade those very values that we aspire toward in the coming year.
It is time, then—not just at this point in our service, but at this season of revelation, forgiveness and reconciliation—to take what we’ve learned and act on it in an intentional and mindful manner.
It’s easier than you think, and the model has not been so subtly laid out for you in our calendar.
5786, like every year before it, begins for Jews with an apology—not a specific apology, but a general apology.
If we purchase multiple items of frequent use, we are not left without. Or we prepare meals with a little more than needed—we do so “just in case.” We call these maximizing tendencies.
We use this time to apologize for that which we did or may have done for sure, but we also prepare to apologize just in case we need to in the future. And I, for one, would like to put my apologies in my personal character account, knowing that even tonight, I might say something or do something for which I may have to apologize.
We all know that Yom Kippur follows Rosh Hashanah and is connected by a span of ten reflective, circumspective days. One reason why is to help us reveal to ourselves those behaviors for which we want to repair, restore, rebuild, and re-buttress. Rosh Hashanah is the catalyst for a protracted apology.
An apology starts out with the one apologizing revealing what was done that requires forgiveness:
“I – fill in something you did – was wrong for – fill in with concise specificity – I understand that this hurt you, and I would like to move forward by – provide a practical, not ambitious, solution that could help the one you have hurt possibly return to wholeness.”
By apologizing in this manner, you are giving power back to the person who has been hurt. You are also ceding power that you may have gotten from your offense, which may help each of you reestablish the balance in your relationship.
On Rosh Hashanah we are accounting for everything in which we have invested—whether materially, emotionally, academically, relationally, or behaviorally. We are bringing our past failings to the front so we can take ten days to see if we have gone astray of our personal values.
When we get to today, we have discovered where we have either gone astray, missed our predetermined goals, failed someone or others, and we can now work toward forgiveness, reconciliation, or reparation.
Tonight, we begin reincorporating our 5786 values into our daily lives through a revised Virtues Set.
So we can be on the same wavelength: Core Virtues are fundamental qualities that represent moral excellence and contribute to a flourishing life—or, creating a mechanism for well-being in others and in ourselves. Core Values are aspirational, whereas Core Virtues are mechanisms of action—how we ethically go about performing our daily tasks. These core virtues are the building blocks of our character.
On Rosh Hashanah evening, I laid out five values that you revealed to me through the congregational survey. Tonight, I will reveal what I see as five of the ten core virtues of CBS that can help define your collective character in the coming year.
At the top of our Ten Sefirot of Virtues we find B’tzelem Elohim—with or in the image of the Almighty.
Knowing that we are agents of the Source of all that is in the universe continually reminds us that everything we choose to do matters beyond our earthly existence. You can say that we are God’s ambassadors.
We should not feel intimidated or inadequate but rather humble in our sense of vitality. The universe was not the same once we were brought into it. Everything and anything we do makes a difference beyond our understanding.
As long as we think and act with Chesed—compassionately and with a sense of altruism or generosity—we can accept that we are part of something much bigger than ourselves and that our community benefits from us just being present within it.
Once we acknowledge our place in the universe and in ourselves, we can project Emunah—trust—through our ethics and actions.
Realizing that all things are fashioned by a force beyond our comprehension, we connect with that force and its offsprings freely and trust that others will also help us in Pikuach Nefesh (saving a soul or preserving a life). Our souls help to direct our lives toward positive sustainability and progress. Without our lives and the lives around us, we cannot be instrumental in both stability and change.
All of these can build us toward a mechanism of appropriate or proper conduct—Derech Eretz (“walking the way”).
We take it on trust that we are conducting ourselves in a more ethical and moral way based on the outcomes we create.
Evil in, evil out. Selfism in, selfishness out. Garbage in, garbage out.
In a paper submitted to The Greater Good Science Center’s periodical this past September 3rd, Dr. Julie Suttie explored the power of trust across our lifespan. A recent study by researchers at the University of Utrecht and Hong Kong analyzed results from nearly 500 studies involving over two and a half million participants of all ages from countries around the world to see how being able to trust affected their life satisfaction and happiness.
They found what I feel was something we may have already known: “Being able to trust others increased well-being—and feeling greater well-being allowed someone to trust more.”
And some research suggests generalized trust won’t make you more vulnerable to scams, as long as you can still access another’s credibility before trusting them.
Those of you who remember the 1980s: There was a popular phrase during the disarmament of the Soviet Union—“Trust but verify.” This certainly may apply today in many instances.
You have indicated that one of the virtues needed to promote CBS’s stated values is to establish trust in ourselves, among each other, and in the institution itself. There will always be forces that may scam us into believing that some of us may not be trusted.
But I hope that we can express warmth, attentiveness, and responsiveness in much the same way a parent does to an infant. Doing so begins a relationship based upon trust and helps us get through the volatility that seems to surround us and attempt to erode trust.
Please turn in your Machzorim to page 42.
As you may remember, I started to build this 5786 message on a cornerstone of Hashkiveinu—“let us set down, lay down.” Let us place our worries on a mantle not to be admired, but to help us see how far we’ve come when Emunah, Chesed, and Derech Eretz guide us toward a more settled and happier life.
Let us lay down mistrust, dispassion, indifference, self-service, and plain bad manners/disrespect.
While at the same time, let us elevate trust, compassion, good conduct, saving souls, and see that we are envoys of godliness.
Let this be our playlist as we move through the days of the coming year.