Lose Yourself
Rosh Hashanah 5784
A few weeks ago, I dropped Noa off for her second year at Brandeis. Last year on Rosh Hashanah, I spoke about first year drop off — you might remember the mixtape I gave my parents at college drop off, the Apple playlist Noa made me, saying shehechianu. It was all very emotional -- and prompted a sermon.
But now Noa’s in year two — and I’m thinking drop off is going to be super easy. I mean, she has all of these friends, including a fabulous roommate.
She knows what classes she’s taking and has almost chosen a major, she knows where to get her favorite coffee in the morning, she knows what fraternities put on the best crowded basement parties after Shabbat dinner at Hillel. It’s so different from first year of college, when all of these were unknowns. But when I left Noa last year, there was one thing I did know — pictures and fairy lights were hung and I’d helped her set up her room.
This year, I took Noa and her roommate Julia shopping and then out for dinner — and when I left, Noa still had a lot to set up. On her own. We raise our kids in the hopes that they will grow to independence, and she is well on her way.
During my time with Noa and Julia, (while I was not helping to hang fairy lights), we talked about the leadership positions they now hold in various clubs and the new activities they hope to try this year.
And I thought about the following —when I left Noa last year, I said — “You have these four amazing years in front of you. Go try things. Go find yourself!”
A year later, I realize that “go find yourself” wasn’t actually the full message I was striving to communicate.
Because that notion of finding ourselves is based on an idea that if we fully understand who we are as individuals, in our most authentic form, we can decisively live based on that, and we will be happy.
Self discovery leads to happiness, according to that plan.
The instruction to “go find yourself” stems from the idea that the most important part of my life is what I want. But that can’t possibly be a healthy message for members of teams, for communities, for families, for society.
If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that when people are isolated, when people don’t have community, and when people primarily concerned with themselves, they become deeply lonely.
When ppl live in spaces where connections between individuals and communities are weak, suicide rates go up. We are living in an epidemic of loneliness — and it is one of the leading causes of both physical and mental illness. “Loneliness is as deadly as smoking 15 cigarettes a day and more lethal than consuming six alcoholic drinks a day, according to the surgeon general of the United States, Dr. Vivek Murthy.
Loneliness is more dangerous for health than obesity, he says — and, alas, we have been growing more lonely.”
Conversely, when we sense that we are part of something bigger, that our feelings and longings and intentions are shared, we flourish.
So this year, my message to Noa and to Julia and to all of us is this — don’t focus on finding yourself. Insead, focus on losing yourself.
Figure out how your voice is part of something much much bigger — part of a community or a movement that has been here before you and will be here far after you.
Lose yourself so deeply that you realize you are part of something more important than your individualism. Lose yourself in something worthy of sacrifice.
Losing ourselves to the point of being willing to sacrifice is a central message of Judaism, and a central message of these high holy days.
Ours is a story of a people who for many centuries have known that we were part of something bigger. We have created a structure for living, for tzedakah, for acts of kindness, for counting a minyan, for supporting the bereaved, for celebrating a birth or a wedding or bnai mitzvah — it’s a system that reflects how Jewish individuals form a Jewish community.
We need ten people for a minyan, we make shiva calls to support one another. At a bat mitzvah — we sing “simin tov u’mazel Tov” to the family and then “u’vcohol Yisrael — and to all of the people Israel — because a celebration for a family is actually a celebration for our entire community. In today’s society of individualism, this concept may feel counter cultural and even radical.
It’s for this reason that I insist that all of my conversion candidates come to shul every week, adopt a practice of kashrut, volunteer, take part in communal holiday experiences
Being Jewish includes seeing ourselves as a small piece of a larger puzzle. And the puzzle needs each of our pieces, even when it is inconvenient and taxing.
But sacrificing our individual autonomy can be a hard concept for us moderns. We are way more comfortable thinking about what Judaism inspires in us than what Judaism demands of us. We like to ask — how does Judaism, how does study, how does prayer make me feel better?
This is what we can call Judaism as a tool for our own individual growth — which is lovely and has benefits, of course. But a full and complete Judaism actually asks something of us — asks us to see ourselves as part of a bigger story.
Today, as we begin 5784, I want us to stretch, and explore the idea of self sacrifice through some of our central Jewish texts, with the hope that we can adopt the idea that losing ourselves actually speaks to our souls deeply and is a critical first step towards truly finding ourselves.
Torah is filled with mythic stories of our heroes losing themselves in something bigger: Noah spends months consumed in the minutia of building an ark, pouring himself into a journey to save the planet. Abraham leaves his home and travels to another place to start the Jewish people. Judah says “take me instead of Benjamin” in order to save his beloved father from more pain. Hannah prays fervently for a child, her deepest dream in the world, but then gives that very child over to train to serve God and the Temple.
Let’s pause and consider Abraham —
Lech Lecha — first Abraham is asked to give up everything in his entire life. Sacrifice your past and present for a future, God says. And Abraham does this. He moves to another land, leaving his past —
And then God tells Abraham that he will be a father of a great nation — and Abraham wonders — who is the child who will carry on my lineage? Maybe Lot my nephew? Or Eliezer my servant?
Or Yishmael? But no — God says the child is Sarah’s son, Isaac. And Abraham loves this child more than life itself.
Dr. Micah Goodman teaches that there is a Second lech Lecha moment that comes next. God says “Hey Abraham. You sacrificed your whole life for the future — your future, the future of the Jewish people. and now I’m going to ask you to sacrifice that very thing that you built your life for. Isaac.
So here we are in our story and Isaac is about to lose his life — Abraham is about to lose everything he has based his life on — his whole purpose.
While the story of the binding of Isaac can be read as a polemic against child sacrifice—which was common at the time of the Torah—it is still a horrifying story.
It is entirely impossible to put ourselves into this myth and feel like Abraham – literally willing to climb the mountain and sacrifice our beloved child for God. And a God who would test us in this way is a very difficul God for us to relate to. But I don’t actually want us to take energy to try to imagine that today. Instead, I want us to try to understand this story as a critical metaphor, a symbol for us. The akeda is a story that is here to inspire us to live our lives with the willingness to make sacrifices for something greater than we are.
It’s a story that–in spite of its enormity–encourages us to identify in our own lives which relationships, ideals, and communities we are capable of making sacrifices for.
Because once we know what we are willing to sacrifice for — maybe even die for — we also begin to truly understand what we are prepared to base our life around and live for.
There is a second story of sacrifice that I want to share today, that is found in the second book of Samuel. Dr. Micah Goodman refers to this second story as “Akedat David” and teaches that we can understand deep principles about sacrifice and Judaism through the lens of this narrative. I found it inspiring to study this story with him this summer at Hartman, and today I want to share some of my learnings.
Like the binding of Isaac — I don’t read this literally, but rather I read it as a piece of sacred folklore through which we can learn valuable lessons.
Here is how this story goes:
God incites King David to count the people -- to take a census. Yet, God is angry with David for counting the people, and so after the counting, David is overcome with agony and guilt.
Woaaa — so that sounds crazy. God invites David to count, then tells him he shouldn’t have counted, and makes David suffer guilt and rejection.
Interestingly, when this same story is retold in Divre HaYamim, the Book of Chronicles, God is replaced with Satan — So it’s the character of Satan who incites David to count the people. I know some of us may have thought Satan doesn’t exist in Judaismz there’s that billboard down the street “stay for the lack of hell.” It’s true, we don’t really have hell — but Satan does appear here and there in our literature. A topic for another sermon—
Back to David — what is really wrong with his counting? Our rabbis in the Talmud teach that the issue here is that David didn’t count in the right manner using the half shekel, but instead counted the people directly. So it’s as if he had the people who worked for him point and say one. Two. three. There is actually a teaching that we are never supposed to literally count people in this way — so when we look around the room to see if there is a minyan, instead of counting we say — Hoshi’a et amecha u’varech et nahalatecha u’r’im ve’nase’im ad ha’olam.
Each person becomes a word in this verse from psalms.
So David counted directly — that’s one of his mistakes. But that’s not all. Our rabbis also suggest that he didn’t count for the right reasons. Ralbag writes that David only counted the people to feel good about himself — that he specifically wanted to know how many people were in his army to glorify his own ego.
Ramban and others teach that had David been counting people for a higher purpose, he would have been fine. But he was counting to pump up his own sense of success, and that was not ok.
So David counted. He messed up.
Our text then says
Vyach lev david oto -- David had a heart attack. Or maybe he had a guilt attack or a panic attack. He’s terrified he has just sinned and God is really really angry.
David is now suffering greatly and so he prays to God and says : ha’averna -- David asks God to relocate his sin.
Ok, so let’s talk for a minute about sin or transgression.
Judaism teaches that to sin or to transgress is to miss the mark, to miss our target. And so to get back on the right course, we do teshuvah — we literally return to our path.
Another metaphor is that sin is like dirt, and in order to fix it, we have to clean it. That is what it means to do kapara — the same root as Yom Kippur. We use kapara throughout our liturgy, as we pray for God to clean our souls.
A third metaphor is that sin is like weight — a weight that we cannot bear. The goal is then to relocate the weight and put it someplace else, where it can be held and won’t overwhelm.
David says he cannot carry the weight of his sin, and he begs God to please relocate it.
So what does God do?
God sends the prophet Gad…
And Gad says “Hey David. We can relocate the weight, but only through one of three punishments — You have a choice. Your pain from your sin can be relocated through either:
7 years of famine,
or
Three months of war and defeat by your enemy
Or
A short 3 day plague.
None of these are any good! David thinks about it and he really wants to end his suffering, so he chooses the plague.
So first, David sins by counting ppl and seeing them as instruments in service of his own emotional needs.
And then he experiences overwhelming guilt and heart pain.
When this feels too intense, God agrees to relocate David’s pain and allows David to choose the vehicle for doing this.
And David chooses a plague that causes pain and death to many — 70,000 deaths, according to the text.
David counts. Then he chooses to have others suffer because of his mistake. Both of these transgressions highlight David as a person who only sees others as instruments for his personal agenda.
In this story, the plague only stops when David himself changes. When he wakes up and says “I’m the one who sinned and all these people — these real human beings — are now suffering! Make it stop! Take me instead of them.”
David’s shift is manifested in his new willingness to suffer himself. To sacrifice himself.
And here’s the key — when David has this realization — the plague ends and David does not actually suffer any more. The lesson here is this: it was David’s willingness to be selfless, to suffer personally instead of having his community suffer, to take on the weight of the plague himself, that enabled the plague to finally end.
Micah Goodman emphasizes that In these two stories, neither David nor Abraham actually have to make a sacrifice. But both of them are willing to — they are both willing to lose themselves and give enormously.
David’s story goes even deeper, resonating with us in this particular season — it’s a story about transformation. In the beginning, David thinks the people are supposed to be there for him — to serve him. but he comes to realize — no!
David is supposed to be there to help the people.
These ancient stories from our tradition can inspire us this year.
In truth, 200 years from now, very very few of us will be remembered as individuals. It’s a hard reality to hold, but it’s true. We are but dust, a phrase we repeat on these Holy Days. But while our names may not be remembered, there will be ripple effects from our actions.
Our actions, our commitments, our words, our contributions — they make a profound and lasting impact.
There are so many ways to do this.
I want to share a story about Karen Green, z”l, Jeff’s beloved first wife. Karen and Jeff knew a woman named Gail from their shul in CA whose husband got an infection. He was a musician and didn’t have health insurance and so he didn't go to the ER. He died suddenly, at home, leaving a young, devastated wife. Gail was alone, and jobless, and she was going to lose her rental apartment.
Upon learning about this, Karen told Jeff that they needed to invite Gail to live with them. Karen had only been in California about a year, and barely knew Gail, but she insisted that this was the right thing to do. Gail and her cat lived with Karen and Jeff for a year. A difficult year of depression, substance abuse, and fruitless job searches. Karen took in Gail not because it was convenient. Not because they were lifelong friends.
But because Karen saw herself as part of something bigger. Because Karen knew what she was willing to sacrifice for another human being who had been dealt an unfair burden. Because, as she would say, “this is what Jews do.”
Karen Green is no longer in this world, but Gail is, and her life is far better because of the sacrifices Karen made. In fact, Gail is now living in Texas and teaching preschool, though she might easily have ended up unhoused and alone.
This is just one story, and I hesitated to tell it today because not all of us would feel that we could lose ourselves and sacrifice in this way. Maybe it’s an example that’s too great — an aspiration too high. For some of us it might be. But for Karen it wasn’t.
And that can inspire us to find the places where we can sacrifice, where we can give up a little of our self for something greater.
Second real life story: This past summer, during my two weeks in Israel, I was able to join the protest movement four unique times — once at the airport upon arriving, twice in Jerusalem, and once in Tel Aviv. Day after day, week after week, in both pouring rain and in intense heat, thousands upon thousands of people show up. Old people, young people, kids in strollers.
People with walkers. Religious families dressed modestly and secular hipsters with tattoos.
All of these people hold Israeli flags, asserting that they see their personal destiny as part of the destiny of the Israeli people. They all join together at the beginning and end of these gatherings, singing Hatikvah, asserting that each and every one of them is part of the hope and the future of this nation.
Let’s be clear, these protesters are making significant personal sacrifices. Many professionals are taking vacation time or unpaid leave to attend weekday protests.
The brother in law of my dear friend, a member of the airforce pilot protest group — goes early every Saturday to set up — when we were in Tel Aviv, the heat was scorching, but he had been outside all day.
When I was at the protest in Tel Aviv, I was surrounded by 150,000 other people — the largest group of Jews I have ever been with in a gathering. Each protester is a speck lost in a crowd — but each speck is vital, essential to creating something bigger and preserving the Israel that we all dream of.
The Israeli people really get that. Each voice matters. And so they keep showing up. Here in America, we don’t actually know how to protest with this kind of unwavering conviction and sacrifice. But we have this chance now to learn from our Israeli siblings.
The thing that Karen Green knew and that the protestors in Israel know — and that I want us all to really focus on this year — is this universal truth: We belong to one another.
We are part of something greater and our sacrifices demonstrate our deepest convictions. Only in the process of truly losing ourselves–giving part of ourselves away– can we achieve the clarity to begin to honestly find ourselves.
This year, Let’s ask ourselves — what is my purpose in this bigger web of humanity, and how can I lose myself in our communal joys, struggles and yearnings.
Let’s fully invest in what it means to be part of a Jewish people that has wrestled and celebrated and yearned — really yearned — for generations. A people who will, we pray, wrestle and celebrate and yearn through many many many generations to come.
It’s a year to really ask — in what spaces am I prepared to sacrifice for the greater good — for the betterment of other humans, for the future of science or literature or the arts, for a dynamic and supportive and animated and living Jewish community,
for our shifting climate and its impact on our grandchildren, for those who are suffering, for democracy in Israel and here in the United States.
Let’s have the courage and conviction to lose ourselves within our shared humanity and interconnectedness — and as a result, find ourselves in that sacred process.
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