Sermons and Divrei Torah
On Gratitude
(Sermon - Kol Nidre)
On writing in the New York Times about why he is an optimist, Thomas Friedman said, "A friend told me he knew why. He said it was because I was short-and short people tend to be optimists because they can only see the part of the glass that is half full, not half empty." I can definitely relate. Thats a benefit of being short. I'd rather be looking up at the half full glass than down at the half empty one.
It's hard to be an optimist in our world, though. We are so full of aches and pains, so tired and overworked, so stressed out about time and money, that the glass looms large and to fill it seems nearly impossible. To get up in the morning and to exclaim, "Hallelujah! I'm alive!" seems hokey. But the Rabbis of the prayer book had the right idea. In the very beginning of the morning service, every day, they put in what is known as the morning blessings. These are precise and graphic: thank you, God, for opening my eyes. Thank you for clothing me. Thank you for lifting my feet to take a step. Thank you for making my openings close and my closings open, so I can do my bodily functions in joy. I don't know about you, but the older I get, the more I want to say hallelujah in the bathroom in the morning for my openings and closings doing their thing correctly. After reading Naomi Klein's book No Logo I can't even get dressed in the morning without thinking about the exploited workers who made my shirt in some third world country, and I say a little thank you to them.
But gratitude is tough, because it doesn't let us feel sorry for ourselves, no matter how little we may have. One Mussar master, a teacher of the Jewish wisdom on morality, began a talk with a thump on the table and the words, "It is enough that a human being is alive!" Then he ended his talk right there.
Someone I know once registered for one of those New Age retreats. She went to the meditation sessions, and the self-actualization sessions, and the self-empowerment sessions, and the manifestation of your prayers session, and the how to get what you need session. She didn't find any of them silly or frivolous, until at lunch one day, a woman spread out her hands wide and exclaimed, "God! It is good to be alive!" How trite, the participant said. How obvious. Why did this woman have to be so public about it? Couldn't she just keep it to herself?
The Buddha said: "Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful." One of my favourite people is my friend's mother who is nearing 100. When you ask her how she is, she says, "I'm alive today. Thats a great start." If you ask her about her failing health or her poor eyesight, she sighs and says, "Its tough getting old. But doesn't it beat the alternative?"
There is so much we could complain about. We are such a kvetchy people. I want to invent a Jewish Board game called "You think thats bad??" Whose tsuris is worse? You got back pain? Well, I need back surgery. You didn't hear from your son in college for a week? Well I didn't hear from mine for two. But if we really looked at our lives, we would see how blessed we are. Most of us have enough to eat, and a roof over our heads. Thats more than half the world can say. Most of us have friends, and if we are really blessed, the love of a family. Thats more than many of the lonely people on the streets of this city can say. Most of us have some activities which give meaning to our lives. Thats a luxury much of the world can't even think about about. One of my favorite Chasidic stories is about a master whose disciples are constantly complaining about their troubles. So he tells them to put their troubles in a sack and bring the sacks to the shul. Everyone dumps their sack of troubles on the floor, the Rebbe mixes them up, and says, "Each of you take someone else's sack." Well after just a week, the disciples all come back begging for their own sack of troubles back. It could always be better, but, it could always be worse.
That isn't to say that many of our troubles aren't real. They certainly are. I know there are people sitting here tonight who have been dealt an unfair hand: they or someone they love is suffering from terrible illness, or has sustained a tragic loss, or can't get back on their feet, or can't find work or make ends meet. I would not want, G-d forbid, to devalue or diminish their heartfelt sorrow. But I want to ask if we cannot find a path for graitude even within our sorrow?
Practicing gratitude is an art. The Hebrew term for gratitude is hakarat hatov, which means, literally, "recognizing the good." Learning to see the good in your life, to see the glass as half filled, to work toward filling the other half because half is already done: recognizing the good in our lives should make us profoundly thankful.
Do we yearn for more spirituality in our lives? Thankfulness is a spiritual value. The more we practice it, the more spiritual we will feel. The more we say blessings- in whatever form, in whatever language, in whatever way- for all the good that touches us and rests down on us, the more we will see the good we can do for others.
Alan Moranis, a teacher of Musar who has taught at Kolel, relates an urban legend about the famous violinist Itzhak Perlman. One evening, Perlman was in New York to give a concert. As a child he had been stricken with polio and getting on stage is no small feat for him. He wears braces on both legs and walks with two crutches. Perlman crossed the stage painfully slowly, until he reached the chair in which he seated himself to play. But as he finished the first few bars of the first movement, one of the strings on his violin snapped. At that point Perlman was close enough to the beginning of the piece that it would have been reasonable to bring the concert to a halt while he replaced the string to begin again. But that's not what he did. He waited a moment and then signaled the conductor to pick up just where they had left off.
Perlman now had only three strings with which to play his solo part. He was able to find some of the missing notes on adjoining strings, but where that wasn't possible, he had to rearrange the music on the spot in his head so that it all still held together. He played with passion and artistry, spontaneously rearranging the symphony right through to the end. When he finally rested his bow, the audience sat for a moment in stunned silence. And then they rose to their feet and cheered wildly. They knew they had been witness to an extraordinary display of human skill and ingenuity.
Perlman raised his bow to signal for quiet. "You know," he said, "sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much beautiful music you can still make with what you have left."
Moranis continues, "We are all lacking something, and so we are all challenged to answer the question: Do we have the attitude of making something of beauty out of what we do have, incomplete as it may be?" If you've broken a string on the violin of your life, and you still have three more, then you have something to be grateful for.
Let's be honest. There is no limit to what we don't have, and if that is where we put our focus, then our lives will inevitably be filled with endless dissatisfaction, when what we seek is contentment. Rabbi Daniel Swartz writes, "The acquisition of things becomes the measure of all value, and we are thereby diminished... We do damage to our souls, to a society that might know shalom, might know contentment... Say "contentment," and some will think the very word subversive, for it suggests an end to acquisition." There is a frequently heard ad which asks, "What do you get the person who has everything?" suggesting the answer is, of course, another tchatke from their store. Yet this commercial really raises a profound question: what do we get the person who has everything? Something else? A bigger car? Another shade of lipstick? Or do we give them instead our gratitude for their friendship, a bouquet of thank you flowers, a phone call offering babysitting or errand running or a quiet chat over coffee?
We do not say thank you enough. We just don't. Not to our friends, not to our family. Not to our coworkers. We make our kids write thank you notes after their Bar Mitzvahs. They complain its meaningless. No its not- its a lesson in gratitude they should learn over and over again. Nothing means more to me-nothing, I assure you- than a phone call after the holiday or after a class or after a lecture saying "thank you, Rabbi." People think they've done enough when they pay their fee. Thats why I try so hard to get the congregation to say "yesher koach" after a Torah reading or after a dvar Torah from a member of the congregation. Thats the Hebrew way of saying "thank you, thank you for preparing and giving extra to make this a meaningful experience."
But thankfulness can only come from mindfulness. Its hard to be thankful when we walk through life unnoticing, unaware, unconnected. We know we are supposed to count our blessings. First we need to see our blessings. Then name our blessings. Then acknowledge our blessings. Then count them.
On Friday nights, particularly after a long and hard week, our family has a tradition of going round the table and naming the highlight of the week. We have to think of something good that happened. We do this before kiddush, before we bless the wine that signifies the sweetness of our lives. Even if one of us has had a really bad week, the others will encourage them and help them find one moment that was blessed.
Why were the Jews of the shtetl, poor, impoverished, oppressed, always willing to hope, always willing to believe there will be a better day, and we, so rich, so full, are not able to? How come our brothers and sisters in Israel live with the kind of daily hope that we can't muster, singing over and over again od tireh kama tov yiheh bashannah habah, you will see, you'll see how good it will be... next year. Are we pollyannas, wearing rose colored glasses? Or does Judaism demand of us a kind of eternal optimism, that keeps us saying "oyf simchas" at shivas?" In Hawaii we met a native Samoan who told us about his people. "We are Samoans. We are the happy people" was his refrain. Indeed the Samoans are known as "the happy people." Yet the name for "Jew" -Yehudah- comes from the same root as l'hodot, to thank- todah. Yehudim- the Jews-we are the grateful people. Would you know that? Not the kvetchy people- the grateful people. As Jews, we can teach the value of gratefulness to the whole world.
This is the lesson of the rhetorical question in Pirke Avot, "Who is rich? Those who rejoice in what they have." Not to be fully satisfied, not to think you can't do better, but to be content with what you have done so far and with what you have now.
Moranis writes, "When you live charged with gratitude, you will give thanks for anything or anyone who has benefited you, whether they meant to or not. Imagine a prayer of thanks springing to your lips when the driver in the car next to you lets you merge without protest, or when the water flows from the tap, or the food is adequate?"
When you live charged with gratitude, you will even praise inanimate objects. Remember: they too were made by a person, with effort and skill, somewhere. I pat my old van after a long day. I don't quite hug trees, but I'm awfully thankful to my computer for not crashing on me. Philip Toshio Sudo wrote a book called Zen Computer. He says, “When our tools work, we take them for granted. They’re functioning; thats what they’re supposed to do. But when the computer crashes...or the car’s brakes fail, we realize the extent of our vulnerability...the object sitting before us was not born on a store’s shelf. It came from a line of scientists, engineers, inventors, programmers, mathematicians, designers, manufacturers, all of whom built on the knowledge of those who came before them. It came from makers of plastic and glass, from packers and shippers, from the workers who built roads and rails and airplanes, and all their parents who brought them into the world and the teachers who taught them what they needed to know. All these people infuse each machine with their spirit...If we’re truly mindful, we begin to acknowledge the car for the role it plays in getting us from one place to another, the lightbulb for illuminating us in the dark, the icebox for preserving our food. We express gratitude for the telephone, the shovel, the pillow, the dish, the shower. Soon, we are thanking everything, and each other.”
Moranis relates how the Mussar teacher Rabbi Eliyahu Lopian was once talking to a student after prayers, and at the same time was folding up his tallis. The tallis was large and he had to rest it on a bench to fold it. After he had finished the folding, Reb Elyah noticed that the bench was dusty, and so he headed out to fetch a towel to wipe it off. The student to whom he was speaking realized what Reb Elyah was doing and ran to get the towel for him. Reb Elyah held up his hand. "No! No! I must clean it myself, for I must show my gratitude to the bench upon which I folded my tallis." How many of us can cultivate an attitude of thankfulness to a bench? That is living a life of true spirituality.
Gratitude opens the heart. Traditionally, we are supposed to say 100 brachot, or blessings a day. The term for "blessing" in Hebrew is bracha, which comes from the same root as the Hebrew word for "knee." To thank is to bend the knee. Think of it this way: the thanker bends a little, and the one thanked stands up a little straighter. Gratitude humbles the giver, and values the recipient.
Can we practice the art of saying grace this year? I don't mean the grace after meals- I mean living a life of saying grace. As G.K. Chesterton wrote, "You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink."
A story: David, a second-grader, was bumped while getting on the school bus and suffered a two-inch cut on his cheek. At recess he collided with another boy. At noon, while sliding on ice, he fell and broke his wrist. Later at the hospital, his father noticed David was clutching a quarter in his good hand. David said, "I found it on the ground when I fell. It protected me from anything worse happening. This sure is my lucky day."
This Yom Kippur, I am grateful to all of you for coming. I am grateful to my family, and to my coworkers, and to my true friends. I am grateful for my mind, and for my body, and I am grateful to God for the daily miracle of being alive. This sure is my lucky day. I hope it is yours too. 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...
