Question We Ask Ourselves
Erev Rosh Hashana: September 12, 2007/5768
Rabbi Jeffrey Summit

I want to start my sermon tonight with a story. I learned it from Martin Buber’s collection of Hasidic tales. If it’s not true, it should be: it’s a good story. A student is really nervous because he’s been asked to lead services for the first time in his life. While he’s a knowledgeable Jew and he’s certainly familiar with the Rosh HaShanah prayers, he’s never led services before. So he prepares and reviews but he’s still nervous, so he decides to go and speak to his rabbi. He says, “Rabbi, you’ve got to help me. I really want to do this right. I’ve practiced, I’ve memorized, I’ve prepared. I’ve gone through the entire prayerbook three times.” The rabbi just stops and looks at him deeply and responds, “That’s good that you’ve gone through the prayerbook three times but that’s not the issue. The question is “How many times has the prayerbook gone through you?”

Now, that’s a good question: a question that reframes the issue. The student thinks that leading prayer is about knowing the order of the service, being able to read the Hebrew fluently. The rabbi’s question suggests a totally different approach: In order to lead prayer, you have to genuinely feel the power and potential impact of the experience of prayer. The question is: How many times has the prayerbook gone through you?

This isn’t a sermon about prayer. This is a sermon about questions. Questions that can reframe how we look at our life, questions that can make us stop and consider where we are as we approach the year, that right now, is about to begin and unfold before us. In my ethnomusicology and Judaic Studies classes, I always make a point of talking about “stupid questions,” stressing that the only stupid question is the one you have and you don’t ask. The Talmud says that a bashful person can’t be a good student and the person who goes through school unable to ask real questions will go through their studies without having learned anything at all. Tonight I want to suggest that it’s like that with life as well. But of course I’m not referring to the questions we ask out loud in a class or discussion. I’m talking about the questions that we need to ask ourselves in order to move forward in our lives, into this new year.

While Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living, it was the rabbis of the Talmud and subsequent ethical writings who put together an ordered, structured way to conduct that examination. They called it a “heshbon hanefesh,” taking account of your very being. While it is important to examine our life and our actions every day, our tradition set aside a special time for that process every year; these ten days from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur. The rabbis believed that there is power and strength in community, so we all come together in a group, and turn out in large numbers, knowing that change is difficult and we will draw strength and support from one another. The tradition gives us a script, the traditional prayers, that acknowledge that we don’t always act the way we want to and it’s in our power, always in our power, to change. But if we don’t ask the right questions, we could remain stuck in old assumptions, stuck in the same box, with no way out. If we don’t ask the right questions, we won’t get the right answers and Rosh Hashanah gives us an opportunity to reframe our questions so that ideally, we’ll be motivated to make the changes so essential for our fulfillment, peace of mind and happiness.

What do I mean by questions that can reframe the way we look at our lives? While I feel a little self-conscious bringing you intimately into my own life story, I think I can best illustrate this with a story from my own experience. It’s the story of how I decided to become a rabbi. Now, if someone told me in college that I was going to be a rabbi, I wouldn’t have even known how to process that information. Since I was about twelve, I always thought that I was going to be a lawyer. By the end of college, I had taken the LSATs and applied to law school. And then I did something that was much smarter than I actually was when I was twenty-one. I shadowed a friend of mine, my former guitar teacher, who had become a lawyer and was doing the kind of law I thought I wanted to do. He worked for the Environmental Protection Agency and while the work was important and he was enthusiastic, it was nothing like I had imagined. Environmental law was about regulations and measurements and-- while I want whoever is sitting here planning to be an environmental lawyer to go out and save our world from pollution and global warming--the work was not for me. So I did what many thoughtful college seniors do when you see your life plans evaporate before your eyes: I slipped into mild depression and I kept asking, “What do I want to be?” I kept getting nowhere. Did I want to be a doctor? A musician? (well, I am a musician but I also wanted a job with healthcare…) Did I want to be an insurance salesman, like my Dad? A teacher like my Mom? I was not making any progress and then one day, it occurred to me that maybe I was asking the wrong question. The question was not what did I want to be but what did I love to do. And that was easier to answer: I loved teaching, I loved doing community work and organizing. I was really into to Jewish music. I was drawn to counseling and actually had thought about becoming a psychologist. So I had this whole list and then one day I was at an anti-war rally and some rabbi got up and started to talk about social justice and Jewish values and I’m sitting there thinking, “I could do that…” and that would enable me to do all the parts of what I loved. And then it all fell into place. I was always deeply committed and active Jewishly, it just never occurred to me that might be my job. And, it’s worked out pretty well. But the key that got me there was reframing the question in a way that made me think about core issues in my life, what was important to me, the directions I could move towards that would bring satisfaction and happiness?

As we sit here in services over the holidays, how can prayer help us re-frame important questions in our lives? Many Jews have trouble with the language of traditional prayer. They think that “being a good Jew” means saying each prayer with full conviction and full belief. I really don’t think the tradition is so rigid. One technique I often use when praying is to take a prayer and reframe it as a question, rather than a statement. Avenu Malkenu, hatanu lefanecha. Don’t say it as a statement, “God, we’re terrible people and we’ve sinned before you.” But reframe it this way: Avenu malkenu, we’ve sinned before you? Have I sinned in my life over the past year? What do I even think of as a sin?” Or another example from the V’ahavta, the prayer after the Shema: Don’t just rattle off from rote memory “You will love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might. These words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart.” Instead you might try praying, “You will love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might? What does that mean? Is loving God the same thing as loving human beings? Do I do anything in my life with all my heart, with all my soul and with all my might?” The goal is to reframe the prayer so that it’s a springboard to send you up, not an anchor to weigh you down. And I don’t think this is sacrilegious at all. If the rabbis thought asking questions was sacrilegious, the Talmud, which is basically volume after volume of the rabbis’ arguments, questions and discussions, would never have become such a central book in our tradition. The point is to use the service, the prayers, the support of community, the knowledge that Jews all over the world are gathered tonight, as an opportunity for redirection, for asking questions that will move us towards growth and change.

What are the questions that you need to ask yourself on this Rosh Hashanah? I’ve been thinking about this for the past month and I want to share some of my questions, hoping they might be helpful as you frame your own:

WHAT WAS YOUR GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT LAST YEAR?

WHAT WAS YOUR GREATEST DISAPPOINTMENT?

WHAT, IN THIS PAST YEAR, BROUGHT YOU THE MOST JOY? HAVE YOU FIGURED OUT WAYS TO STRUCTURE YOUR LIFE SO THAT HAPPENS MORE OFTEN?

WHAT DID YOU DO THAT BROUGHT YOU THE MOST REGRET? HAVE YOU FIGURED OUT HOW TO STRUCTURE YOUR LIFE SO THAT WILL HAPPEN MUCH LESS THIS YEAR?

WHO DO YOU ADMIRE MOST AND WHY?

WHO ARE THE PEOPLE WHO ARE MOST IMPORTANT TO YOU? DO YOU MAKE TIME TO BE WITH THEM IN A WAY THAT IS SATISFYING AND MEANINGFUL?

WHO DID YOU FIGHT WITH LAST YEAR? WHO DO YOU WISH YOU COULD RECONCILE WITH IN THIS YEAR TO COME?

WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE FIVE YEARS FROM NOW? WHAT ARE YOU DOING ON A REGULAR BASIS TO HELP YOU REALIZE YOUR HOPES AND PLANS?

AM I ENGAGED WITH MY JUDAISM – AND WITH THE JEWISH COMMUNITY - IN WAYS THAT ARE MEANINGFUL AND REAL?

WHAT DO YOU WANT THIS COMMUNITY, THIS COUNTRY, THE WORLD TO LOOK LIKE A YEAR FROM NOW? HAVE YOU FIGURED OUT SOME SMALL WAY THAT YOU CAN CONTRIBUTE TO THAT VISION?

I want to close with a poem that I love by the poet Mary Howe where she looks at the issue of questions and how we decide to answer them. Sometimes it’s so difficult to answer certain questions but when we reframe them though the eyes of others, of people we know and care about, people who care about us, the answers are clearer and sometimes come more easily. Mary Howe calls this poem “My Dead Friends.”

I have begun, when I'm weary and can't decide an answer to a bewildering question to ask my dead friends for their opinion and the answer is often immediate and clear.

Should I take the job? Move to the city? Should I try to conceive a child in my middle age?

They stand in unison shaking their heads and smiling--whatever leads to joy, they always answer, to more life and less worry.

I look into the vase where Billy's ashes were-- it's green in there, a green vase,

and I ask Billy if I should return the difficult phone call, and he says, yes.

Billy's already gone through the frightening door, whatever he says I'll do.

In the Jewish tradition, the process of shaping and then answering, important questions in our lives is called teshuvah. But teshuvah is about more than asking the right questions. Once we begin to answer them, we need to move towards action, redirecting how we act in our studies, in our friendships, in our families, in our communities, in our Judaism. I hope we’ll be able to frame the questions that will help move us forward in our lives and during the next ten days, we can begin to act in a way that’s in tune with the answers we know are true for us in this new year.