Yom Kippur Morning 2023
Rabbi Cy Stanway
I want to share a true story[1] with you:
In 1975, in Cologne, Germany, there was an ambitious high school student who loved jazz music when no one else around here seemed to have any interest. And so at 16 she basically became a concert promoter, and she got some quite high profile musicians to come to perform for West German audiences.
But in 1975 she didn’t realize that she was going to change the jazz world. Keith Jarett, one of the most well-known solo improvisatory jazz pianists in the world, was doing a European tour and she persuaded the Cologne Opera House to host him. With 1400 seats, it would be one of the largest ever concert jazz performances in Germany, as well as one of the largest audiences that Jarrett had faced.
Like many musicians, Jarrett was a perfectionist who wanted things just so, and he had requested a highly specific kind of piano for this performance. But when he got to the venue and met the young promoter he was displeased.
First of all, it wasn’t a grand piano, it was a baby grand. It was terribly out of tune. Some of the keys didn’t work. The higher keys didn’t resonate properly and sounded tinny and, on top of all that, one of the pedals didn’t work. It sounded like the pianos many of us have in our homes languishing. Nice for furniture, I guess, but not for a professional pianist who is also a perfectionist.
This piano was a disaster. And after giving it a try for a few minutes, Jarrett knew this was untenable. And so he told the 16 year old that there was no way this would work. With his manager by his side, he turned around and walked out. As he left the 16 year old, turned concert promoter, ran after him and begged, yes, begged him to reconsider. 1400 paying customers would not have been happy if he didn’t show up.
Somehow, she convinced him and he agreed to come back. Hurriedly, the technicians repaired the piano as best they could but most of the problems remained. There was nothing else they could do in such short time.
Jarrett and his manager had previously planned to record this concert – They almost didn’t bother, but they thought that, since the technicians have already been booked and paid-for, what harm can recording it be? It might be fun to recall this catastrophe one day. It didn’t turn out that way. In fact, what happened was pure magic.
The recording of that concert is, I am told, the best-selling solo album in jazz history. People there said it was magical — the level of focus that Jarrett brought to his craft was mesmerizing as, on the fly, he adapted new ways of playing to cover up for the problems of the piano. It was specifically playing on an imperfect instrument that made him stretch and made his music soar. An imperfect instrument played on an imperfect night – and it made musical history.
Kind of sounds like Yom Kippur, right? I mean, what is Yom Kippur other than a day for imperfect people who are all imperfect instruments living imperfect lives with other imperfect people living in an imperfect world and trying to create a more perfect and meaningful life? And the symbol of all that imperfection is the 26 hour fast.
But why fasting? Well, if you have ever gone to religious school you probably heard an answer like this: ‘The purpose of fasting is to bring one to repent, and true repentance brings about a change in actions. However, repenting without fasting is not enough.’[2]
On a more spiritual level, someone once suggested that ‘Fasting is an opportunity for each of us to observe Yom Kippur in a most personal way. It is a day of intense self-searching and earnest communication with the Almighty. This search requires an internal calm which derives from slowing down our biological rhythm. Fasting on Yom Kippur provides the key to our inner awakening.’[3]
These are both reasonable explanations and they are offered simply because the Torah is intentionally vague about Yom Kippur! And when things are vague, Jews try to fill in the holes! We assume we fast on Yom Kippur because that it was we have always done and are expected to do. But the fast is crying out ‘darsheini’ – figure me out!
The truth is that the Torah never specifies fasting for Yom Kippur. It says simply, ועינתם את נפשותיכם – ‘you shall afflict, or restrict, or impoverish, yourselves and your souls.’ By the time we get to the later prophet Isaiah, fasting on Yom Kippur seems to have been already a common practice. But the Torah doesn’t say this directly. With vague language, the Torah says: עניתם. Control, restrict, practice self-denial. On Yom Kippur, stretch yourself to do something difficult.
My father-in-law, of blessed memory was always insightful. Almost certainly over coffee and bourekas and bulemas, Turkish treats that overflowed at Stella’s home, we got into the discussion of the geography of the Talmud and the later literature. In Babylon, the birthplace of the Talmud and in Europe, the birthplace of the commentaries and later codes, life was rough. The winters were brutal (yes, even in the desert) and the summers were intolerable. And yet, despite all this, Jewish masterpieces were written. But it goes deeper than that. It is not so much despite all the difficulties, but rather, because of all the difficulties. It is the difficulties, the challenges, that elicit creativity. And to add an exclamation mark to it, my father-in-law asked the rhetorical question, ‘how many great pieces of literature and philosophy come from the tropical paradises of Fiji and Aruba?’ No doubt he was being a bit chauvinistic, but it seems true that great works of art come from struggle and brokenness, extreme seasons and difficult lives.
As a colleague noted, ‘Fasting at the beginning of the year may be an annual reminder to us that the presence of some level of adversity is necessary for us to thrive. of course, too much adversity, too much challenge, wears us down. Rebbe Menachem Mendel of Rymanov, a 19th century Hasidic master noted that the Talmud (Berakhot 5a) says that salt can make meat more palatable, and salt is therefore a good metaphor for the character-building aspects of suffering. And the Rebbe of Rymanov says: this is actually even a better metaphor than the rabbis of the Talmud realized.
Yes, a small amount of salt indeed makes the meat more palatable. But too much salt makes the meat completely inedible. A little adversity is healthy; too much adversity is destructive.’[4]
We have all experienced adversity. Some of us have been overwhelmed by it. Some of us have trundled through. But no matter the intensity of the adversity, we were all formed by it one way or the other. And where did we find the strength to go on? Almost always there were others who helped us out of the pit. Martin Buber’s idea of the best relationships were the ‘I-Thou’ relationships. When we were someone’s ‘Thou’ or someone was our ‘Thou’ things weren’t so dark. The struggle was still real but the simple fact that we knew we weren’t alone made all the difference. We often emerged from the darkness and took much more creative control of our lives. The Yom Kippur fast is our symbol of suffering, affliction and discomfort and through the prayers of this day and the reflections of these hours become different people, in a fashion. The outside looks the same but if we take the messages of his holy day to heart, our insides are altogether different. And that is what makes each of us truly beautiful.
Elisabeth Kubler Ross was the insightful psychologist who immortalized the five stages of death and dying. She worked with thousands of patients who were all in at least one stage of dying. “The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
She tells this story: “Over the years, I have learned that every life circumstance, even a crisis, can nourish your soul. Recently, the farm and home that I have loved so much for so many years burned down in a horrible fire. Everything that I owned, without exception, was lost. There was even speculation that foul play was involved.
At moments like this, we stand at a fork in the road. If we take one fork one way, we collapse, we give up, feeling hopeless and defeated. We focus on the negatives, losing ourselves in the “problem.” We point to our unhappy circumstances to rationalize our negative feelings. This is the easy way out. It takes, after all, very little effort to feel victimized.
We can, however, take the other fork. We can view the unhappy experience as an opportunity for a new beginning. We can keep our perspective, look for the glimmer of growth, and find an inner reservoir of strength.[5]
I am not suggesting that we ought to be chasing after adversity and terrible life moments. Those moments will find us whether we want them to or not. Yom Kippur, the fast, this holy day is an open and honest admission that there is never going to be an easy year. It is not surprising that the greeting for this year is ‘shanna tova’ – may you have a good year, and not ‘Happy new year’ – for a good year is something we can help create. A happy one, maybe not so much. Maybe fasting is our way to start out a good year by saying: We know that we’ll face challenges in this new year. May they be the kind of challenges that make us grow. Because our souls soar when we do hard things. Our minds are fully activated when we do hard things. We’re more likely to connect more deeply with others when we do hard things. Our lives are often like the broken-down piano. First we balk but then something stirs in us and the music we create is profound.
And in fact, when we do so, we are often imitating God. The ancient Rabbi Alexandri is quoted as saying in the Midrash, “When a common man uses a broken vessel, he is ashamed of it, but not so with the Holy One. All the instruments of His service are broken vessels.”[6] Because of course, the instruments that God uses to accomplish God’s work are — each of us.
[1] I am grateful to https://americanrabbi.com/adversity-famous-musician-meets-infamous-piano-by-robert-scheinberg/ for the story and the idea for this sermon
[2] https://time.com/4958211/yom-kippur-fasting-water/
[3] https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/why-fast/
[4] https://americanrabbi.com/adversity-famous-musician-meets-infamous-piano-by-robert-scheinberg/
[5] https://www.homileticsonline.com/members/installment/2564
[6] Psalms 34:19
