Rosh Hashanah & Yom Kippur Sermons
The Art of Change
by Rabbi Elyse Goldstein
Q: How many Jews does it take to change a light bulb?
A: 30. One to change the bulb & 29 to give contradictory advice to the person changing it.
Q: How many Orthodox Jews?
A: This light bulb has never been changed and never should be!
Q: How many Conservative?
A: Call a committee meeting to decide if men and women can change it together or if openly gay people can change it at all.
Q: How many Reform Rabbis?
A: Don’t worry, anyone can change it whenever and however they want to.
Q: How many Reconstructionist?
A: One to wish they were doing what the Orthodox rabbi does, one to wish they were doing what the Reform rabbi does, one to wish they were doing what the Renewal rabbi does, and one to discuss intellectually what Mordecai Kaplan would have done.
Q: How many Jewish Renewal rabbis does it take?
A: It depends: One if it's an eco-kosher bulb that isn't going to be lit from nuclear power. Two, as long as a man and a woman rabbi have equal turns putting in the bulb. Three, one to change it, one to do a Buddhist mindfulness practice during the change, and one to document it in a best-selling book called "The Jew in the Lightbulb."
Q: And how many congregants does it take to change a light bulb in the synagogue?
A: Don’t you dare touch it-my family donated that light bulb!!!
People are stubborn about change. Oy, change is really hard. We either deny we need the change, run to make the change unprepared or regardless of the outcome, procrastinate about making the change, or tell others why they need to change and we don’t.
Now I hate that stereotypical stuff about “a woman’s perogative is to change her mind.” I think its important for everyone to be able to change their minds. Woodie Guthrie wrote, “If a day goes by that don’t change some of your old notions for new ones, that is just about like trying to milk a dead cow.”
Well I’ll admit I’ve milked my own share of dead cows, and I bet many of you have too.
But I’ve been forced many times in my life to rethink something I was sure of. I am always so impressed by people who are able to do a 180 degree turn on convictions they once had. People who convert to Judaism, for example, change whole belief systems. People who once couldn’t, under any circumstances, accept gay relationships turn and rejoice at a sibling or friend’s gay wedding. People who, years ago, could look me straight in the eye and say “I could never accept a woman Rabbi” may even be sitting here tonight.
There is tremendous discomfort that comes with outgrowing an opinion. It’s not like an old shirt that’s too small, or an old dress that's too short (well, maybe today no old dress is too short, but anyway...) In our consumer culture we are great about throwing away old clothes that don’t fit, we just toss them out or [better] bring them to used old clothes drop-off. But when it comes ot throwing away old beliefs, old habits and old expectations that don’t fit, those we cling onto a little more stubbornly.
I think my family’s sabbatical around the world three years ago was a paradigm shift for me. I remember people’s reactions. They’d ask us, how did we convince our kids to change their routine, to leave their schools and their friends, and to go to all those exotic places? And now, three years later, to tell you the truth, I ask myself: how on earth did we do it? How did we embrace the unfamiliar, expect the unexpected, experiment with ourselves? How did we shake off old preconceived notions about ourselves, our abilities and likes and dislikes, and our relationship to the world? I’m finding it hard to believe myself how much we learned the skill of change. I remember a movie a long time ago called The Accidental Tourist in which a travel writer never leaves his living room, and helps people travel to far away exotic lands but never stray too far from a familiar McDonalds or KFC. His job was to help people find something wherever they were that looked and smelled like home, something that didn’t test their limits or force them to think differently.
In the last couple of years of my life, starting with the sabbatical trip, and up until this past month, I have been forced to think differently, and to tell you the truth, it’s been hard. Why? Why is change so hard for us?
First, the human disposition and the human body doesn’t like change. It took us millions of years to evolve to who and what we are now. Cro-Magnon man didn’t wake up one day and say, “gee, I’d like to move on and become Neanderthal Man.” Look at your kids- when they reach puberty, it's a big change and it makes them moody and tense. One day your body is flat and geez the next day it has all sorts of curves and dangerous lines and bulges and hair. As much as we might crave excitement, we generally like to know what comes next. As much as we love to travel, we like to come home to our own beds. We are creatures of habit. It comes from our reptilian brain. We crawl back into our caves when we sense danger- and danger is the natural outcome of change. When things are in flux, they are unpredictable. They are out of control. They are frightening, as much as they may also be exhilarating. Change is hard because it is at once both terrifying and stimulating; it unnerves us at the same time as it excites us. When things are unmoving they are solid and grounded; and that is tremendously comforting. When things are moving, they are fluid and interesting but also unpredictable. That makes change very difficult to manoevre.
Second, change brings with it an inherent sense of threat, even if it is change for the better. Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs helps to explain this. When something happens and we feel we might be threatened, we revert to checking what he calls “lower-level needs”. We ask questions about our safety, like, “how does this change affect my finances?” We worry about belonging, we ask “will we still be a part of the family or our friends like before?”; we grow concerned about our esteem and wonder if we still will be respected; but most of all, we get anxious about our identity. Change forces us to ask: “what does this mean about who I really am? If I sincerely believed or behaved x before, and now I’m willing to believe or behave y, am I the same person? Will I recognize myself if I change?” Even when we see change as opportunity, rejuvenation, progress, innovation, and growth it can just as legitimately be seen as instability, upheaval, unpredictability, threat, and disorientation. So who needs the confusion?
Third, change brings with it a kind of disappointment. Maybe a sense of failure at leaving the old job or leaving the old relationship or even leaving the old neighbourhood. Maybe a feeling that we couldn’t “make it” in the old ways. Maybe a feeling that we were wrong about something when we’re usually right. Think of a friendship that has changed in your life. You’ve moved apart, because each of you has changed; or you’ve moved apart because one of you has changed and the other hasn’t. It’s natural to feel a sense of sadness. Maybe if we tried harder. Maybe if we worked harder. So we keep milking the dead cow and then one day we discover we are exhausted from the effort, and the space between us is bigger than the closeness we once had, and at that moment of realization and change how can we not be disappointed?
And fourth, all change brings with it a sense of loss. I’m sure you all are familiar with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ stages of grief. They are also true for stages of dealing with changes in our lives. We hedge; then we hide; then we collaborate. At first we are shocked- can this change really be happening? Then we deny: no, let's go back to our old ways, let's try again. Then we get angry: who are you to force this change on me? Why should I accept this change? Then we bargain: if you don’t change, I won’t change. Then we get depressed: I guess it’s really going to happen, and I’m upset about it. And then finally, hopefully, the acceptance stage: we find the way forward. I’ll manage the change, and even grow from it.
Dr. Dean Ornish, the director of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California, has written about comprehensive lifestyle changes that can reverse even severe heart disease. What I’m most interested in is that he found paradoxically that radical, sweeping, comprehensive changes are easier for people to make than small, incremental ones. For example, he says that people who make moderate changes in their diets get the worst of both worlds: they feel deprived and hungry, but they aren't losing enough weight to see the results. Small changes are harder and less satisfying, he says.
OK that's for diet. But what about life changes? Sometimes radical, sweeping, comprehensive changes are the only ones we can make; we are practically kicked in the head by circumstance or bad luck or a doctor or a loved one’s threats until we make the change.
I think Yom Kippur is meant to be that kind of kick in the head. With the fast, and the white clothes, and the intensity of the Kol Nidre, and the length of the day tomorrow, I think Yom Kippur is meant to show us we can make radical, sweeping changes. Yom Kippur is the time we ask ourselves not if we can change but if we will change. Yom Kippur doesn’t gently remind us, actually hits us in the face with a brick by the time we are done fasting and praying. It’s dramatic and acted out in hours of liturgy commanding us to look inside over and over again. Benjamin Franklin said, “When you’re finished changing, you’re finished” and Yom Kippur repeats Franklin’s message to us constantly and consistently until sunset tomorrow when the shofar grabs us by the kishkes and shouts at us- next year will not be the same as this one, now, will it?
It’s a paradox that Judaism can inspire us to change. After all, religion is supposed to be a stabilizing force in the world, the one unchanging value that doesn’t bend with the wind. People’s attraction to right-wing religion is that it seems to slow down the rapid pace of change in the world. In fact, right wing religion, including Judaism’s own right wing, poses itself as the only “authentic” thing left; the one thing has has “never changed.” But we know that’s just not true; we don’t sacrifice animals anymore and we’ve built a modern Jewish state where you can even fax your message to the Western Wall. Judaism’s glory is that it has, in fact, responded to modernity time and time again by adapting and adopting. That’s why, I believe, Judaism’s own skills of change can be so instructive to us as individuals. Judaism holds out the skill of changing without losing your self-identity. The idea of teshuvah is proof; teshuvah doesn’t make us a different person; it makes the person we are already better. If a person can’t change then Yom Kippur is an exercise in futility. Teshuvah reminds us that as hard as change is, it’s our destiny, and our obligation.
Let me close by speaking personally with you, so you will know that I know how hard change really is.
For the last six months I have had to personally face my own “change” demons. Many of you heard our president Marcel Weider speak about this on Rosh Hashanah, or you received a notice by mail or e-mail that Kolel has moved into the BJCC. Not just moved, however. We aren’t renting space here- we have become a part of the JCC family and the JCC system. We have joined into a partnership and this required a huge change in my thinking, and in the Board's thinking, and it demanded an extraordinary amount of flexibility. I sincerely believed that the building at Yonge and Eglinton was the best thing for us, the best way to reach people, and the right address. I was convinced that after six years there we shouldn’t change. I didn’t want to change. I was comfortable on Eglinton, owning a big building. Like so many other Jewish organizations, I had an “edifice complex.” I went through all the stages, Maslow’s and Kubler-Ross’ and the special “Goldstein” stages that I made up myself. The Kolel Board and the BJCC Board went through the stages, too, and when organizations go through radical changes it amplifies the angst that individuals go through. Henri Bergson wrote, “To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.” In contemporary parlance we say we “re-invent” ourselves all the time. But we really don’t. We change our hairstyle or our address or this little thing or that. But if anyone here has really reinvented themselves, they know what I am talking about. Kolel moved into partnership with the BJCC so it could recreate itself. No one quite knows how that re-creation will look down the road, but a person who loses 100 pounds doesn’t know how they’ll look down the road either- they just know they will feel better. We’ll still present great classes and programmes, incredible Israel and other Jewish education trips, we’ll continue to do tikkun olam projects, and of course we’ll continue, G-d willing, to offer these high holy day services.
But change we did, and while it was not easy, it was opportunity, rejuvenation, progress, innovation, and growth. It was healthy and challenging and expanding and frightening all at the same time. Charles Darwin wrote, “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” Organizations which adapt and grow are organizations which prosper and survive. The ones left behind stagnate and become stale; their offerings and services and programmes are redundant and predictable. And so too with people.
Yom Kippur challenges us not to become redundant and predictable in our own lives. It challenges us to change ourselves so we can change the world. Self first. Other second. World as a natural outcome. We do tikkun olam better after we’ve done tikkun on ourselves.
The light bulb joke is funny but true. Jews have been stubborn about change, and that has kept our tradition alive. But our ability to change just may be the key to our survival. Our greatest teachers have embraced it. Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav used to say, “"If you won't be better tomorrow than you are today, then what need do you have for tomorrow?" We say at this time of year “Shana tovah” -the Hebrew word shanah is from the same root as shinui, which means, literally, a change.
Shanah Tova- May it be a good change.
Gmar Chatimah Tova.
