Out of the Box
Rosh Hashana Morning: September 13, 2007/5768
Rabbi Jeffrey Summit

I recently had a harrowing experience. The wonderful people at Tufts Educational Daycare asked if they could bring a group of four year olds to Hillel to meet with me. The children had been studying about religion and they had a bunch of questions that wanted to ask a rabbi. No problem. I work with incredibly smart college students. Questions from four-year-old kids? A piece of cake. So I walk into the upstairs chapel and there’s about twenty cute little swiggly kids, barely able to stay on their chairs, and I haven’t even sat down before they start firing questions at me: Who made the first tree? Who made space? Who made bunny rabbits? (That’s easy; other bunny rabbits. They’re really good at that.) And then the great cosmological zinger: If God made the world, who made God? So, I have no idea what to say and I’m feeling totally inadequate and really thankful that I work with college students and not with four-year-olds.

So I try to explain God and creation, saying that in the Jewish tradition, there are some questions that are really important to us and some questions that we just think about less. Let’s take the example of the tree. While it says in the Torah that God created the world, trees included, the Jewish tradition talks much more about how we should live and act in this world, in relation to the tree. It’s important for us to be thankful for the tree and all it provides. If we eat the tree’s fruit, we say a blessing to show that we’re thankful. And when the tree turns colors in the fall, we celebrate the changing of the seasons at Sukkos, so we understand the cycles of life and rebirth throughout the year and I’m thinking “I’m dying up here! Somebody save me!! I have no idea of how to talk to four-year-olds!!”

And then, this one girl, who is sitting in the corner, who up to this point has been really quiet, raises her hand and asks, “Do you want to know how I think about God?” “Ah… Sure….” So she says, “I think about God like, you know, when you draw a box and you’re in the box and you can’t see out of the box, cause you’re all inside it. But when you get out of the box and you look all around, well, that’s God.”

So that’s what I want to talk about on this Rosh Hashanah morning, the day that the rabbis tell us, is the birthday of the world, a day of new beginning, when, we’re taught that so much is possible and the book of life is open before us as a new year begins. I want to talk about coming out of the box because, for all us, whether you’re a full professor or an nineteen year old trying to figure out what major to declare, we all get stuck in boxes and essentially, Rosh Hashanah is a time to understand that the world is not supposed to be a constrained, and constraining, place, Rather it should be a place of beginnings, of opening and rich opportunity. What does our tradition have to teach us about stepping beyond the constraints of our lives, so that on this new year we are freed for growth and new possibility?

So, we might as well start at the beginning. Not at the creation of the world (which I already told you I couldn’t explain to four year olds), but the creation of the Jewish people: Yitziyat Mitzraim. The exodus from Egypt. You know the story: we leave Egypt but our way is blocked and the Egyptians are in hot pursuit. But then, the Red Sea splits and we emerge safely on the other side. This is the classic “coming out of the box” story in our tradition; even the word for Egypt ‘Mitzrayim’ contains the root ‘tzar,’ which means “constraining narrowness.” The rabbis characterize that event as one of the great miracles in our history.

But what exactly was the miracle at the Red Sea? I think that many people miss the miracle when they try to understand the Torah literally. Every couple of years, you’ll open the New York Times, or the Jerusalem Post, and see some scientist attempting to explain what happened at the Red Sea by natural causes. They’ll talk about sandbar formation or windstorms that moved sand and suggest that’s how the Jews walked through the sea on dry land. These people so miss that point. You see, the Exodus from Egypt is the story of a miracle but it has nothing to do with low tide or sandbars. You know, the Torah says that a lot of the Jews didn’t even want to leave Egypt; they were so stuck that they couldn’t imagine their life in any way but as slaves serving the Egyptians. They were scared to leave the box, the security of their familiar lives, even as became used to living under servitude and persecution. The miracle of the Exodus is that our people were slaves and by courage, conviction and belief, by acting together as a community, by following Moses’ leadership, by stubbornly clinging to a vision that there was a better way to live, these slaves became free women and men.

And this story is not something that just happened long ago and far away. It’s the story of braking through barriers that we thought were real, or other people told us were impenetrable, but we found a way to go through them. It’s the story of the woman sitting here now who was told by her advisor that she would never get into medical school and is now a wonderful, successful doctor. It’s the story of a team that everyone said was mediocre who went on to win their next game, and then the one after that too. It’s the story of when you had a horrendous fight with a friend and thought you might never be friends again but you refused to stay in that dark place and figured out how to break through the silence and anger, and repaired the friendship.

My friend Rabbi Larry Kushner says that if God had a business card, all it would say was: “God.” And under that, there would be one line: Frees slaves. And then in small print, “Call any time.” Because this process of liberation, of refusing to stay boxed in, is essentially what God is about.

And it’s not just the ancient Egyptians, our enemies, who lock us in. Sometimes the people who love us most are the people who box us in and constrain us. Two weeks ago (but in truth, this story repeats itself every year), a Mom walked into Hillel with her son who was a freshman. And before the son could open his mouth, the mother is saying, “Rabbi, Jonathan (not his real name) was the president of his youth group and he knows how to read Torah and haftarah, and you should get him involved because…” The kid is clearly embarrassed and I’m thinking: look at him now, because you’re never going to see this guy again. So when his folks wander off I go up to the student and say, “Hey, I’ve met “the over-enthusiastic parent” before. You’re totally welcome here but you decide how and if you want to get involved.” And the guy sort of shakes his head and says, “I don’t know what I want to get involved in yet but I want to be the one who decides, not my mother.” Some people put us in boxes because they’re proud of us, or because they believe they know what’s best for us. And while we’re commanded to respect our parents, which I think means taking them seriously, ultimately we have to break out and decide what’s meaningful to do in our lives. One way to tell if someone really loves you, is if they support you to grow even if they’re scared about dealing with the changes that might be a product of that growth. But when people really love us, they understand that kind of support doesn’t make friends, or lovers or parents and children grow apart. It’s a gift of trust and belief, the strongest glue that keeps people together.

Some of the boxes we get stuck in are small, some are much larger. But we all get stuck acting in ways that keep us from being our true selves. The student who says, “Well, of course I’ll drink before the party. How else will I have a good time?” The parent who says, “I’m so busy at work. There’s just no way I can make it home for dinner.” The Jew who is always looking at the Jewish community from the outside, thinking, well maybe sometime I’ll get more involved.” What box do you find yourself in as this new year begins? Why are you stuck there? What might you do to get out? One of the cruelest boxes many people stick themselves in is the box “I’m ashamed if I make a mistake. I have to be perfect in whatever I do.” If this is one of your issues, it might be instructive to know that in the Midrash, the rabbis teach that before God created this world, God went though a series of “practice runs,” creating and destroying ten worlds before settling on the one we live in now. If it took that many tries for God to get it right, we certainly we should cut ourselves some slack when we’re boxed in by our expectations of perfection. No one like to fail but the problem with expecting perfection every time we do something is that it can hold us back from the real, messy, difficult work it takes to achieve happiness in our lives. Ideally, Rosh Hashanah provides a new beginning, a way to free ourselves of constraints both imposed by ourselves and by others, not just to reflect on what might be but to live our dreams and make them real.

And before I close, I want to say that while Rosh Hashanah is very much about our personal liberation, it’s especially important to remember that as Jews, we have a responsibility to engage in the larger struggles for liberation in our world. Because unfortunately, slavery is not just a metaphor. We know all too well that slavery didn’t end in Egypt or with emancipation in the United States. Actual slavery is still a fact in many countries and sexual slavery is frightening real today. Economic injustice, which in so many ways is economic slavery, keeps millions of people constrained and oppressed without hope or possibilities. As Jews, we are commanded never to forget the stranger, never to forget the slave because we were slaves in Egypt and the price of our freedom is that we can’t forget. I would argue that as a Jew, the spiritual issue is not: Do you “believe in God.” That’s an intellectual question that has little impact on the world. The true question is: Are you making God real in the world? One way to do that is by participating in the process of liberation, which I would argue, is one of God’s essential attributes. In our prayers, we praise God for raising up the downtrodden. We say, “Blessed are you God, who gives strength to the tired, feeds the hungry, frees the captive.” When we engage in these acts of liberation, we become God’s hands and strength and power. We are making God’s presence real in the world.

Traditionally, every day Jews say the blessing “Thank you God, for not making me a slave.” I hope this new year is one of liberation for us personally, for identifying the constraints that hold us back, keep us from people we love, from work that we value, from contributing to a world that so needs us to see our freedom as tied into all people’s freedom.