Tikkun Ha-nefesh: Healing our Souls; Sermon for Kol Nidrei 5768

Tikkun Ha-nefesh: Healing our Souls

Sermon for Kol Nidrei 5768

The biblical story of Kohelet, Ecclesiastes, is a tale about a man who has everything… except happiness. He succeeds in amassing great wealth and wisdom, the highest values he can imagine, and still he is unsatisfied. He tries soaking his flesh in wine and indulging every worldly pleasure, and this, too, leaves him unfulfilled. His conclusion, “Utter futility! All is futile!” There is no lasting value in anything, he declares, because the same fate awaits us all. 

Kohelet looks at the world and sees wickedness alongside justice, and evil alongside good, and concludes with disappointment that God will not solve our problems for us. Saint and sinner alike, will die.

Most commentators, ancient and modern, find Kohelet morose and pessimistic. I do not. I see him as a realist. And though his final analysis doesn’t seem to bring him peace, I think Kohelet has a valuable lesson to teach us: Too much of any one thing is not good. Wealth is better than poverty, he decides, and wisdom is better than ignorance, though excessive pursuit of either won’t bring fulfillment. Live life and enjoy it, make a good name for yourself and guard your tongue, he says, and all the good fortune that does comes your way, view it as a gift from God. Sounds like sage advice to me!

The masters of the Zohar, the great compendium of kabala, shared Kohelet’s belief that God will not solve our problems [for us]. They also agreed that we don’t live in a perfect world. But they were not pessimistic about our fate. They believed that we have immense power to effect tikkun, to set the world right, and they taught that we must begin with ourselves. As Rabbi Simcha Bunim taught, “You cannot find peace anywhere save in your own self… When we have made peace within ourselves, we will be able to make peace in the whole world.”

The most important teaching of the kabala is that we are part of one great chain of being, that everything is connected. Every act, every deed matters because it affects everything else. So when we mend something in the world, we repair something in ourselves. And when we fix something in our selves, we repair the world.

On Rosh Hashanah I spoke about some of the serious imbalances in our world, and how they stem from imbalances in our lives. I shared some of the ways our reckless consumption is degrading our health, our environment, and threatening the very future of life on earth. God willing, it is not too late to fix what we have broken. We must be hopeful and believe that this is so. But we must not wait. We must begin in earnest to do the work of tikkun.

Tonight I would like to talk about fixing our selves, tikkun ha-nefesh, repairing our souls, and share with you several ways we can go about this. First a little background about kilkul, my sense of what is broken, and then three ways I think we can effect tikkun.

We are in need of repair. Most of us will agree our lives are out of balance. We are living the life of Kohelet, constantly testing the extremes in search of satisfaction, and too often failing to achieve it.

Dr. Wendy Mogel was a psychologist with a successful practice in Los Angeles. Her work provided significant challenge, responding to families that came to her in distress. Many days this required giving parents “bad news,” about their children’s psychological profile. But there were also “good news,” days when she was able to report to parents that their child’s tests revealed problems within normal limits.

Over time Mogel began to detect a strange new pattern. Increasing numbers of children were testing in the normal range but simply weren’t thriving. They were constantly complaining about a variety of ailments from tummy aches to unfair treatment by teachers, coaches and peers. At home there were constant battles over homework, and never-ending negotiations over goods and services. These usually sounded like this: “Well Lindsay has the latest i-pod… or, Brittany’s parents let her get her ears pierced… or, all the other kids are allowed to stay up and watch TV! 

None of these families seemed to be suffering from any clinical disorder that Dr. Mogel could diagnose, yet all seemed off course, out of balance, and chronically unhappy.

Mogel’s conclusion: these children were victims of their parents’ success, of a culture of excess and overindulgence in which parents were failing to set appropriate boundaries. As a result, their children weren’t learning to set boundaries for themselves. If no one ever says no to us, how can we learn to say no to ourselves? And then, when the inevitable happens, when someone has the audacity to say no to us, be it a parent, a teacher, or even “the law,” is it any wonder we rebel?

This past year I received a phone call from the superintendent of Montgomery schools. He wanted to discuss recent incidents of anti-Semitism at our High School. When we met, I insisted these events were really symptoms of a larger problem. Such hatred, I argued, is sprouting from the seeds of competition and alienation we are sowing in our children’s souls. I saw this when our younger daughter was completing high school. The students were whipped into a frenzy about tests and scores in one huge competition to get into the right college, to get the right job, to earn the right salary, to be winners and not losers in the game of life.

On Rosh Hashanah I related how the Zohar sees the world as a place of abundance, of sufficient resources to sustain all life. Our children are receiving the message that there is not enough to go around; that the person sitting next to them is the competition. If she scores higher than I do, she’ll get my place at Harvard; he’ll get my job, my income, my success, and rob me of my life and my happiness.

Isn’t this the world in which we live? A place of winners and losers where our neighbor has become our enemy? Is it any wonder that sometimes our schools and campuses erupt in violence? Should we be at all surprised when those who feel like outcasts or losers want others to suffer for their pain?

The first tikkun I would like to suggest is tikkun yachasim, repairing our relationships.

Too often we are treated or treat others as objects, as tools to accomplish tasks, only to be discarded when they are no longer useful. Many companies treat their machines better than their employees. After all, it can be less costly to replace a worker than a piece of valuable equipment. Even husbands and wives readily dispense with one another if their needs and desires are not fulfilled. How else can we explain divorce rates upwards of 50%?

If we hope to be valued as human beings, we need to start seeing each other differently. The Zohar imagines the corresponding attributes of God as faces. Only when the faces are turned toward each other is there harmony and balance in the world. In a stunning interpretation of the psalm, “Hinei ma tov u’ma naim, how good and how pleasant when brothers dwell together in unity,” (ps 134?) the Zohar teaches that the divine faces line up only when our faces are turned to one another; only when we see each other as brothers and sisters down here on earth. This is the kind of tikkun one rabbi spoke of when he “asked his pupils how they could tell when the night had ended and the day had begun.

“Could it be,” asked one of the students, “when you can see an animal in the distance and can tell whether it is a sheep or a dog?”

“No,” answered the Rabbi.

Another asked, “Is it when you can look at a tree in the distance and tell whether it is a fig tree or a peach tree?”

“No,” answered the Rabbi.

“Then what is it?” the pupils demanded.

“It is when you can look on the face of any man or woman and see that it is you sister or brother. Because if you cannot see this, it is still night.” (Spiritual Literacy, p. 502)

The Hebrew word for the pupil of the eye, ishon, is derived from the word, ish, which means man or person. What’s the connection? When you look another person in the eye, you can see your own reflection, literally and figuratively. What a significant tikkun it would be if we could learn to see our selves in one another’s eyes, and to see it as the face of God.

Another tikkun for the soul is to develop the value of histapkut; sufficiency, or knowing when we have enough.

I have friends and family members who grew up with very little by middle class standards, but never thought of themselves as poor. Surrounded by family and friends, they enjoyed the fellowship of their synagogue community, and felt enriched celebrating the cycles of the seasons and marking the passages of life. Without knowing it, they lived the teaching of the Sages that to be rich is to be happy with what you have. Today we have so much more, but on the whole, we seem less happy.

A recent edition of Time magazine included a chart comparing average food portions today with those 20 years ago. A bagel was once 3-inches in diameter and contained 140 calories. Today it is 6-inches round and has 350 calories. The average blueberry muffin was 1.5 ounces and 210 calories. Today it is 5 ounces and 500 calories. Drive around Somerset County and compare older houses in nice neighborhoods to new ones being built today. Have our families grown in size over the last 30 years that we need double the square footage to house them?

A really significant tikkun for our souls would be to cultivate an ethic of sufficiency; the ability to say dayenu, enough! One good reason for this was expressed by a bumper sticker that read: “Insatiable is Unsustainable.” It is true! One of the primary purposes of Jewish law is to help us control our appetites, limiting the foods we can eat and the urges we can indulge. Our health and the balance of the world demand learning to live within limits!

Another good reason to learn to say dayenu is it’s the only way we will ever feel rich!  If enough is never enough, our focus is never on what we have, only on what we lack. If this is the case, how are we ever to feel grateful? Dayenu is more than a song at our seder, it is an important tikkun for our souls!

The final tikkun I would like to discuss is one I particularly struggle with myself, and that is managing our time.

The latest census reveals that we are working longer and longer hours. One in every 8 people now leaves home before 6 am because of the increased demands of our jobs. And because of computers, blackberries, and e-mail, we are never completely off-duty. Even when we are off, we are often on the run.

One of the most beloved passages in the Hebrew Bible is the 23^rd psalm. It speaks of God as a shepherd who loves and cares for us, his sheep, bringing us into verdant green pastures, where we can lie in the cool grass and rest, leading us beside still waters where we can be refreshed and renewed. Such an inviting picture of tranquility and peace, a slice of heaven on earth! Yet what is our primary association with this psalm? We read it at funerals and memorial services! Do we have to die before we can enjoy this kind of peace and rest? Shouldn’t it be possible to enjoy such pleasure in this life? And not just on vacation?

I remember as a child being allowed to play. My parents didn’t schedule play dates for me. They didn’t fill all my afternoons and weekends running to structured classes and supervised programs. I played with children in my neighborhood, on the playground in Queens, and up the street when we moved to the suburbs. Nor did my parents push me on the fast track to Ivy League schools. They let me be a child, and I believe we should give this gift to all our children. This is the conclusion Wendy Mogel reaches in her important book, The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, which I recommend to every parent.

One of the most famous passages from Kohelet is in chapter 3, “To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven.” Read in context, Kohelet meant to say that there are limits to our lives. It’s certainly true. But that doesn’t prevent us from reading his words as an expression of possibility, as well. Within the boundaries, there are limitless possibilities for the way we can choose to live and experience life. We don’t have to be slaves to anyone, not even to ourselves. We can find a reasonable balance between work and rest and play.

Do you remember the old advertisement for Club Med? It described their vacations as the antidote to civilization. We Jews have our own antidote to civilization and all its encumbrances, and it can help heal our souls like a tonic to an ailing and worn-out body—Shabbat! One of God’s greatest acts of creation was an act of non-creation, carving out an island in time as a refuge for our souls, a taste of paradise.

Our challenge is to accept this gift and to learn how to use it to achieve tikkun nefesh. Our traditional Jewish brothers and sisters know something that has escaped most of us non-Orthodox Jews. We tend to think that of prohibitions of Shabbat restrictions on our freedom. It is exactly the opposite! They liberate us from the shackles of our tools and allow us to respond to the rhythms of our souls. Shabbat is a tikkun that makes possible many other tikkunim. It offers us time for relationships, time for appreciation, to grow in mind and spirit, time to feel our connectedness to God and to all things, time just to be; and that is a real blessing!

I conclude with a story about a traveler who was making a long trek in the deep jungles of Africa. To assist him on his journey coolies were engaged from a local tribe to carry his supplies. The first day they marched rapidly and went far. The traveler had high hopes of a speedy journey. But the second morning these jungle tribesmen refused to move. For some strange reason they just sat and rested. On inquiry as to the reason for this strange behavior, the traveler was informed that they had gone too fast the first day, and that they were now waiting for their souls to catch up with their bodies.

We desperately need to slow down to allow our souls to catch up with our bodies, to become whole again, to find rest and peace and healing. May this be our blessing in the New Year that lies before us. 

V’cheyn yehi ratson!