Before I speak I thought I’d share a story. It happened here in shul, just last night. As we often do, we had a group of college students visiting as part of their study of religious and cultural diversity. One option was to go to Thailand; the other option was to come to Anshe Sholom. So after tefilot I asked them if they had any questions, and there were three questions.
They asked why the kiddush grape juice was given to children Friday night in shul. So, fortunately, we spent about a month studying the article by Ta-Shma earlier this year and I explained all about במקןם סעודה איו קידוש אלא and the origin of that practice. They asked if the individual davening at the shtender in front of shul was training to become a rabbi. I said perhaps but it has nothing to do with where he’s standing.
And they asked why there were people who stood in the back of shul rather than come forward and take a seat. They stumped me on that question.
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The most dramatic moment of the year, the religious climax in our cycle of sacred days occurs in the final moments of Yom Kippur when we shout out “Shema Yisrael” and then, we cry, seven times: “The Lord is our God.”
!ה׳ הוא הא-לוהים
After a day of fasting and prayer, after many hours in shul spent holding a machzor alongside your neighbors, the palpable energy as we declare our allegiance to God is one of the highlights of the religious year. We feel ready to declare that !ה׳ הוא הא-לוהים. We feel it. We believe it. We declare it.
I always find those final moments of Yom Kippur so energizing that I feel as though I could fast another day if we could continue crying ה׳ הוא הא-לוהים.
It may be rather demoralizing to recall, as one of my teachers pointed out years ago—and I sometimes wish I could forget—that we are not the first ones to cry out ה׳ הוא הא-לוהים.
Eliyahu HaNavi staged a mass confrontation with the prophets of Ba’al on Mt. Carmel and thousands of spectators came to watch. The prophets of Ba’al sacrificed their animals and called for Ba’al to consume the meat. Nothing happened. Eliyahu taunted the prophets of Ba’al. “Perhaps he can’t hear you? Make more noise.” Of course nothing works. The sacrifice to Ba’al remains on the altar.
Then, Eliyahu wants to build the tension even higher. He has water poured on top of his sacrifice. And then he calls upon God to consume the sacrifice and flames from Heaven descend and Eliyahu’s sacrifice is consumed in fire. The thousands of spectators cry out: ה׳ הוא הא-לוהים!
What a moment of religious climax. What a personal triumph for Eliyahu who was utterly and completely vindicated in his religious guidance. Except, days later Eliyahu was fleeing for his life, ultimately escaping to the wilderness. What happened to his triumph? The moment of religious clarity and religious inspiration that Eliyahu was able to orchestrate had only a fleeting impulse on the people who participated and cried out ה׳ הוא הא-לוהים. How can we do a better job?
For a start, it is so promising that you are here. After Yom Kippur I stared at the calendar in disbelief: “how could there be a Shabbat in between Yom Kippur and Sukkot?!” I don’t remember there being one last year! But, in fact, this is nothing new; there is a Shabbat between Yom Kippur and Sukkot every year. And it’s a good thing, because this Shabbat allows us to take the spiritual insights and religious excitement of Yom Kippur and bring it into our regular cycle of Shabbatot. Can we fan that spiritual spark into a bright flame when we are in shul for only a few hours?
And this explains the custom, endorsed in the Shulchan Arukh, of constructing the sukkah on the very night that Yom Kippur ends. We are meant to take the energy of Yom Kippur and bring it outside the shul, even outside our homes, and direct it to the task of creating a space where we can literally be surrounded in a mitzvah.
The Torah portion we heard this morning is occupied with this same agenda. Moshe is preparing to die and he devotes himself to preparing the Children of Israel, not only for life without Moshe as a leader, but for the transition away from life in the desert. For forty years, we lived a miraculous existence, eating mannah from Heaven and traveling with God’s protective presence. That all came to an end when the Jewish people entered Eretz Yisrael. There, we had to fight our own battles, grow our own food, and sustain our faith in a world where God’s presence is not always palpable and where competing ideologies and lifestyles cloud our judgement and make it hard to sustain the fervor of religious passion and commitment.
It can be harder to say blessings before and after eating with consistency and devotion, when we’ve purchased, cooked, or grown the food ourselves instead of receiving it by miracle.
Having warned and cajoled and encouraged his students, Moshe switches, at the conclusion of his life, to poetry. Will the poetry of Ha’azinu sustain faith? Moshe is not optimistic—he correctly predicts rebellion and religious backsliding, but the centuries that have elapsed since Moshe have proven our people’s commitment to our mission and the destiny that we forged together with God at Sinai.
עֲלֵי־עֵֽשֶ ב׃ וְכִרְבִיבִ֖ים עֲלֵי־דֶ֔שֶ א כִשְ עִירִ֣ם אִמְרָּתִ֑י כַטַ֖ל תִזַ֥ל לִקְחִ֔י כַמָּטָּר יַעֲרֹ֤ף
“May my discourse come down as the rain, My speech distill as the dew, Like showers on young growth, Like droplets on the grass.”
Moshe hoped that his words could sustain and nourish the way that rain and dew sustain and nourish. And they have. It’s our job to make ourselves receptive to continue to receive this nourishment from the words of the Torah. It’s our job to turn ourselves into vessels that can receive and contain that nourishing water.
Sixty-five years ago, Rabbi Norman Lamm noticed a potent symbolism hidden in one of the details of the Laws of Yom Kippur as they are described in the Shulchan Arukh. Even though Yom Kippur is not a normal Shabbat or yom tov when we are commanded to eat a festive meal in a well-lit home, we still have the custom of lighting candles in our home before Yom Kippur, and these lights are supposed to be lit in our synagogues and batei midrash as well. In a time before electricity and easy methods of lighting our homes, Yom Kippur was a day of light in places of prayer and places of Torah study.
And Rabbi Moshe Isserles, the Rema—author of the Ashkenazi commentary to the Shulchan Arukh—goes on to note that the lights that we place in shul and in our homes on Yom Kippur are meant to remain lit throughout the day. If they are somehow extinguished early then as soon as Yom Kippur is over we light them again. How symbolic, Rabbi Lamm noted! The inspiration and illumination that we can experience at moments of heightened religious excitement need to keep burning more than for just one brief moment. If the light hasn’t burned long enough, we need to light it again when the holy day has ended. Religious inspiration can’t be just a spark of clarity and vision. We need time to benefit from the light and appreciate the truths that the light makes visible.
Rabbi Isserles concludes that if one’s light burns out too soon on Yom Kippur, not only do we need to light it again after Yom Kippur so we can enjoy its special light for a good long period of time, but we need to
commit to ensuring that in future years, we will light lamps and candles on Yom Kippur that burn longer and endure even after Yom Kippur is over:
,נֵרֹו הַכִּפּורִים יֹום בְמֹוצָּאֵי יְכַבֶה לֹא יָּמָּיו שֶ כָּל עָּלָּיו יְקַבֵל וְגַם
“One must commit that as long as one lives, one will not extinguish the Yom Kippur candles even after the day has ended.”
That’s where we are today. We are trying to keep that flame alive. With Moshe’s poem echoing in our heads, we are reinforcing our commitment to the Torah. With the sparks of Yom Kippur still keeping our homes and our shul illuminated, we step out into the new year committed to sustaining the greater awareness and sensitivity that we achieved on Yom Kippur.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 