Sermons and Divrei Torah
Missing Pieces
by Rabbi Elyse Goldstein
(Sermon - Yom Kippur 5762)
N.B. This sermon began with the reading aloud of THE MISSING PIECE:
A Children's Story by Shel Silverstein.
So many missing pieces in our lives, and somehow, we all manage
to stay glued together. Perhaps I wax emotional on this Yom Kippur
evening, 5762, being the year of the tenth anniversary of the
yartzeit of my sister, who died suddenly at the age of 40. Or
perhaps, like many of you, recent world events have caused me
to turn inward and reevaluate my priorities, hold my children
a little tighter, call my friends a little more often. Something,
something so intangible and at the same time so keenly felt has
been taken out of all of us, out of the whole human family, in
the past two weeks, and yet we roll on. At this time of year,
on our holiest night of nights, we pause in wonder as it seems
the whole world seeks a way to mend its brokenness, and to find
its missing piece.
Jewish tradition gives us much wisdom about that brokenness. The
ultimate simcha– a wedding– is concluded with the breaking of
a glass, symbolizing the crashes, the disappointments, the gaps
and the holes, the hearts easily broken. At the most joyous of
times, we break something, acknowledging that our history and
our individual lives are full of shattered dreams, and that we
pray this new couple will, like our community, find the strength
to put the pieces back together.
The Bratslaver Rebbe said, "There is nothing so whole as a broken
heart." Think about how many Jewish things are more whole when
they are incomplete! When Challah is prepared for Shabbat, it
is kosher only after a small piece of the corner is broken off
and burnt before baking the rest. And a Sukkah, because it must
have three walls instead of four, is flawless only when it is
flawed. Despite the missing wall, the Sukkah stands firm, and
through the three walls we look to our neighbour's Sukkah and
see that theirs, too, has a wall missing. And at eight days, the
foreskin is taken off a Jewish boy, and somehow the Covenant is
held together by this small missing piece.
Our tradition recognizes these simple truths: first, we are made
larger when we make ourselves smaller.
The Rabbis teach that when the first set of tablets containing
the Ten Commandments was broken, the crumbled pieces were placed
back into the ark of the covenant for safe keeping, until a second
set could be made. Then Moses returned up the mountain, and the
new set was carved. When this second set was to be placed into
the ark, the people wondered what to do with the first, broken
set of tablets. Shouldn't they discard them? Wouldn't it be blasphemous
to have the left-over, smashed fragments in the ark with the perfect,
intact set? No, the Rabbis teach, God told the Israelites to keep
the broken set right next to the whole set in the holy ark, for
the damaged set were also written by the finger of God. Second
truth: We are all broken fragments of something sacred.
Third truth: the more you lose of yourself, the more you gain
for yourself. The more you give of yourself, the more you get
more back for yourself. I love the midrash which has Ima Shalom,
arguing with a heretic about the verse in the Torah in which Eve
is "taken", or created from Adam's 'tsela', correctly translated
as his side. "Your God is a thief, to take a piece from Adam!"
says the heretic. "You are right," answers Ima Shalom. "I had
just such a thief come to my house last night. He took away my
brass goblet, and in its place, he left a gold one." "You are
right," says the heretic. "I should have just such a thief in
my house every night!" Haven't we learnt this lesson this past
week, waiting in two hour lines to give blood? The blood I'm missing,
now worthless to me, is life to someone else. The money I give,
now useless to me, is survival for someone or something else.
You give brass, you get back gold.
Fourth truth: We would never understand the blessing of having,
if we never experienced not having. I am reminded of the Chasidic
tale of a man who goes to the rabbi to complain that his house
is too small for himself and his wife. "I can help you make your
house bigger," says the Rabbi. Do you have a cow?" "Sure" says
the man. "Good" says the Rabbi. "Go and put your cow inside the
house, and come back to me in three days." The man doesn't get
how the cow is going to make his house bigger, but he trusts the
rabbi, so he puts his cow in the house, and now it really feels
small. In three days he returns to the Rabbi, and the Rabbi says,
"Did you put the cow in? Good.Now, do you have goat?" "Yes" says
the man."Go and put the goat along with the cow inside your house."
The man puts the goat in and comes back to the rabbi three days
later. "Rabbi, I can't breathe in that house!" "O.K." says the
rabbi. "Do you have any chickens?" "Yes, I have ten chickens!"
cries the man. "Good" says the Rabbi. "Go and put in all ten chickens
next to the goat and the cow, and come back to me in three days."
Finally the man comes back, terrified of what the rabbi will tell
him to put in next. "Now, take out the chickens, and come back
in three days." The man does as he is told, and they all can breathe
a little bit. When he comes back, the rabbi says, "Now take out
the goat." The house is beginning to feel roomier already, thinks
the man. Three days later the Rabbi says, "Now take out the cow,
and tell me how your house feels." The man comes back after three
days of just him and his wife in the house, and says, "Rabbi,
you are a miracle worker. The house is definitely bigger now."
Sometimes we have to feel how small everything in our lives is
to see how big it really is.
The circle in the Shel Silberstein story searches and searches
for it's missing piece, but the paradox is the search takes it
to some beautiful places and to some lovely things; the search
makes it stop and smell the flowers, makes it pause and appreciate
and admire and talk to worms. Fifth truth: The missing pieces
in our lives continually teach us, they speak to us and guide
us.
There is a Kabbalistic tradition that when you build a new house,
you must leave one small thing always and forever unfinished;
a corner unpainted or a beam showing. (Now I know you all feel
better for that piece of your house you've always noticed needs
some work...) This unfinished piece, the tradition teaches, is
to remind us of the work in the world that still must be done,
tikkun olam, the repairs of our lives that must be made in order
to have a better society. And so we look up at the unpainted corners
and remember what it is in the world that we must do. The unfinished
piece speaks to us each time we pass it.
For Jews, there are sources of strength as we roll on our journey,
searching for our missing pieces: they are the community, and
God. The sure knowledge that everyone has a small piece missing
is why we do yizkor together tomorrow morning, why we find solace
in the little sighs and muffled tears of the strangers behind
us. All of us have places at the table missing this year, maybe
from death, or from illness, or from distance; maybe from separation,
or maybe from anger. Some of us hold the sadness of failed relationships,
disappointments from our children or our parents or our spouses,
a year made more difficult because of work or illness or the fear
of the unknown. On Yom Kippur we acknowledge that we are all incomplete,
and we need each other to fill in those aching spaces. I love
the Zen parable of the mustard seed, which so profoundly illustrates
our commonality: A woman, having lost her firstborn child, wanders
the street, so beset with grief, pleading for some magic to bring
her child back. Finally she comes to the wise master and pleads,
"give life back to my child." The wise one says, "First go down
to the city, and bring me a mustard seed from a home that has
never seen sorrow." The young woman goes down to the city, from
door to door. "I need a mustard seed from you, for surely no sorrow
has come to your home" she says at the entrance to the first.
"Let me tell you about how hard I have tried to have a baby and
never did" says the mistress of the house. At the next door, she
learns of the divorce of the two young lovers; at the next home
she hears about the illness of the youngest child; and so on and
so on, hearing the stories of each house. She begins gradually
to come inside each house, and to stay and exchange stories, and
then a cup of tea, and soon a pleasant memory emerges, and then
a smile, and then even, a laugh. Finally, she returns to the master.
"Do you have the mustard seed for me?" he asks. "No" she said.
"But I no longer seek it. I thought only I suffered and only my
pain mattered. There is no home which sorrow has not touched."
Unetaneh tokef, who shall live and who shall die? Whose circle
will be whole and whose broken? The ending line says: uteshuvah,
utefilah, utzedakah, ma'avirin et ro'ah hagezeirah; that teshuva–changing
our behaviour–, tefila–connectedness to God– and tzedakah–righteous
action– change the harshness of our fate. It does not say that
teshuva, tefillah and tzedakah will change our fate altogether;
for we are forever human. But we ameliorate the harshness of human
destiny through behaviours and attitudes which help us to roll
along. We do teshuva when we allow ourselves to be transformed
and changed by that rolling. And we shape our fate through tefillah,
connectedness with something bigger than ourselves. And tzedakah
fills in so much of the gap, for we can feel absorbed and isolated
about our own missing pieces, or we can reach out and use our
pain in "rachmones", in compassion, to someone else in pain. Elie
Wiesel uses his pain. A person with cancer starts a support group.
A divorced woman holds the hand of a divorcing friend. A child
who has been ostracized in school befriends the new kid. A person
finished saying kaddish continues to make the minyan every morning
so others can say kaddish. An infertile couple helps another couple
through the maze of adoption. Yom Kippur makes us hungry, both
literally and figuratively, for that kind of sharing; that kind
of reaching out. It should make us wiser to our own responsibility
to practice it.
Sixth truth: though each of us has a piece missing in our lives,
we have also experienced wholeness. We have been blessed to know
love, and sweetness, and joy; the tenderness of a touch or a word
that has changed our lives, a closeness if even only for brief
moments or few encounters. Would we have traded that if we knew
it was only to be ours for short while? Would we have willingly
said, "Don't give me that piece if one day it will be missing."
I believe we would still choose to keep rolling. This is what
New York and Washington and Jerusalem have done, and the Jewish
people over and over again, and you and me in the face of our
small houses and fractured tablets and sides of ourselves taken
away. Kol Nidre is about the promise of next year in spite of
the broken promises of last year; the promise and the prayer to
roll on, into the New Year, and be grateful for the flowers and
the beetles who speak to us all along the way.
Shana Tova.
Sermons and Divrei Torah
Additional Resources
Elul: Period of Preparation
Yamim Noraim: Days of Awe
Rosh Hashanah: Introduction
Shofar Symbolism
The Custom of Tashlich
Yom Kippur: Introduction
G'mar Chatima Tova...
