Rabbi Ackerman's Blog
09/28/2009 - Yom Kippur Sermon 5770
Yom Kippur 5770-2009 – Rabbi David M Ackerman – Beth Am IsraelA free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.
But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.
The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
and he names the sky his own
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.
These words, of course, are Maya Angelou’s. For me, they serve as a deeply inspiring anthem for Yom Kippur. Grippingly, the poem contrasts “a free bird” who “dares to claim the sky” with “a bird that stalks down his narrow cage,” a creature of limited vision and range. Although the “caged bird stands on the grave of dreams” he still has longing in his heart.
Each of us, I think, is that caged bird, yearning to be free. Like the caged bird, we both fear and long for the unknown. Like the caged bird, we wish we possessed the courage and cool confidence of the free bird who “dips his wing in the orange sun rays,” who “leaps on the back of the wind,” and who “names the sky his own.” Like the caged bird, we open our throats to sing of freedom.
In our tradition, that “fearful trill” “heard on the distant hill” is kol shofar – the voice of the shofar. We cite it daily in the words of the Amidah – t’ka b’shofar gadol l’heiruteinu – beseeching God to “sound the great shofar of our freedom.” During the year God sounds that shofar. On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we’re meant to sing that song, to sound that shofar, for ourselves. The hope is that by the time Rosh Hashanah arrives, and certainly by the time Yom Kippur ends, we will be ready to ride the wind and claim the sky as our own. But it doesn’t happen automatically and it doesn’t unfold overnight. To the contrary, the Yamim Noraim mark the culmination of a long process of prying open the “bars of rage” (Angelou again) that confine our souls and our authentic selves.
Our calendar imposes a starting line for our inner annual journey to freedom at the emotional low point of the year, the Ninth of Av. On that day we chant from the Biblical book of Lamentations (Eicha in Hebrew), a series of mournful dirges written in response to the destruction of the First Temple two and a half millennia ago. This year a triad of verses found in Eicha’s third chapter caught my eye and ear:
“God has walled me in and I cannot break out; God has weighed me down with chains.
And when I cry and plead, God shuts out my prayer.
God has walled in my ways with hewn blocks, and has made my path a maze.” (Eicha 3:7-9)
Unique among Eicha’s poems, chapter 3 speaks in an individual voice, sharing the agony of one beaten down soul – walled in, chained, unable to pray, a caged bird. Listen to Eicha’s imprisoning metaphors – I’m walled in, weighed down, cut off from my ways, my path a maze. These words of lament speak in an intimate and personal way. I hear them personally. Perhaps you do as well. Maybe it’s middle age speaking, but I know what it’s like to feel stuck and overburdened, to lack an inner GPS directing me to a path out. Personally, I very much need the Yamim Noraim each year as a season devoted to grappling with the really serious life questions to which these ancient lines allude. Here too, I find profound comfort in the realization that I’m not the first person to feel this way, real healing in the recognition that human nature hasn’t changed all that much in 2500 years.
Commenting on the last verse, “God has walled in my ways with hewn blocks, and has made my path a maze,” the Talmud of the land of Israel (Maaser Sheni 5:2, 56a) adds a beautiful detail. Once upon a time, a network of caves connected Lod (on the plain near the Mediterranean) and Jerusalem [about 30 miles inland], enabling people to make the uphill journey quickly and with ease. After the Temple’s destruction the locations of those buried passageways were hidden making the path upward more conflicted and more difficult. The trail still exists; it’s just harder to find.
The Talmud’s detail lacks the intimate ache of Eicha’s lines but if heard in personal terms it adds a crucial layer. I may feel stuck, but the road home starts just beyond my front door as it always has; and while unstated by the rabbis the implication is that it remains worth my while to seek out my distinct way, my unique path.
Our souls’ path back to health, wholeness and freedom is complex and difficult. But it’s not impossible. In the weeks between Tisha B’Av and the Yamim Noraim we undertake that journey, despite the obstacles along the way, one labored step at a time. And hopefully by the close of Yom Kippur your soul and mine will have broken free of its cage and like the free bird of Maya Angelou’s poem can now soar across its own sky. Clearing the passageways, inner and outer, and taking to the skies is the essential work of the Days of Awe and the weeks prior.
Hear the words of Shlomo ibn Gabirol, an 11th century giant of the Golden Age of Spain, who poignantly expresses the same drama of our souls.
"Grevious are my wounds, fearful are my pains; my strength is gone, I am drained to the core.
There is no escape for my body or my soul, no haven for me, no relief for my plight."
With intensity and bitterness, ibn Gabirol expresses the trapped and stuck feeling that I’ve been trying to describe this morning. Now he goes a step further, naming the forces that hold him back:
"A triad of evils seeks my destruction, consuming my flesh, enslaving my spirit:
Great sinfulness, abiding pain, and loneliness – who can stand before these three?"
Ibn Gabirol’s oppressive triad is fearsome. It’s also familiar. My mistakes and misdeeds, my pain, and my loneliness also hold me back. It does sometimes feel overwhelming and unfair, a pair of sentiments to which the poet now turns:
"Am I an ocean, God, or a sea monster, am I constructed from iron or cast from bronze?
Troubles rest on me always, as if they were my heritage,
Demanding an account of my misdeeds alone, as if You have no claim against other people."
Suffering does feel singular I think; it breeds a sense of radical loneliness and a paralyzing powerlessness. It would take the ocean’s strength and breadth and width to overcome. And yet even this long suffering poet sees a way forward, and do take note of the metaphor he offers us in these last lines of his little poem:
"Consider my agony, the punishments I suffer, how my soul is imprisoned like a caged bird.
Accept me as Your constant servant, for to be Your servant is to be ever free."
Yom Kippur’s luminous spirit of release, an absolute counterpoint to Tisha B’Av’s dark mood of incarceration, emerges most notably and powerfully from the day’s haftarah, courtesy of the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah answers ibn Gabirol’s description of radical despair with an equally forceful statement of radical hope. As the haftarah begins, Isaiah quotes God: “Build up a highway! Clear a road! Remove all obstacles from the road of My people!” Remove all obstacles! Rashi sees those obstacles as boulders on the path, an image, he says, of the yetzer ha’ra that slows all of us down. Perhaps an actual road, Isaiah’s highway is the unique life path that we each travel.
The prophet proceeds to condemn those who fast as a matter of form but whose behavior and inner core remain unaffected and unchanged. “Because on your fast day you see to your business and oppress all your laborers! Because you fast in strife and contention and you strike with a wicked fist! Your fasting today is not such as to make your voice heard on high.” What then does God want from us?
Here’s Isaiah’s stunning answer: “No, this is the fast I desire: to unlock fetters of wickedness, and untie the cords of lawlessness, to let the oppressed go free; to break off every yoke.“
To the ears of a Hebrew speaker, the verbs, in rapid succession and in command form, tell Isaiah’s story. Pateach, hater, shalach – unlock, untie, set free – that’s the message of Yom Kippur. To be sure, Isaiah means for us to break the yokes that oppress others. As the ancient Aramaic translation, the Targum, has it, “cast away all perversions of justice.” But I think he also, maybe even primarily, means for us to set our own souls free, to complete the long climb from despair to wholeness. In Isaiah’s vision, the lush brightness of the journey’s culmination will overwhelm the arid darkness of its beginning. The prophet’s promise to us declares “you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring whose waters do not fail.” That’s Yom Kippur’s goal.
Isaiah makes it sound so easy and so elegant. Just break free; simple as that. It reminds me of a radio ad that filled the airwaves the first year Nomi and I lived in Chicago. An ad for a counseling and therapy group, the spot concluded with the organization’s phone number – 1800 CHANGE NOW. As if all you had to do was to make the call. Of course, the call was simply the first step. As so many of us know, lots of hard work comes next, and without a real commitment to seeing that hard work through, change remains elusive. Isaiah’s glittering vision is less a promise than a motivational device. Something beautiful awaits you at the end of this long journey. It is worth taking that first step and the many, many steps that follow. A small lithograph hangs over my desk, a fortieth birthday gift from Nomi. It depicts a man sailing a brightly colored small boat, and under the picture, in the artist’s handwriting is this inscription: “If you hold on to the handle, she said, it’s easier to maintain the illusion of control. But it’s more fun if you just let the wind carry you.” That’s what free birds understand. Let’s take to the skies this Yom Kippur.
Across the centuries, perhaps eternally, caged birds sing of freedom. Across the trail ways and flight paths of our lives, we long for wholeness and connection and authenticity. Across the anxiety of these weeks leading up to the Yamim Noraim, we yearn for the confidence and inner strength to claim the sky. This Yom Kippur may the concluding tekiah gedolah serve to herald the return of our souls to wholeness, to health, and to freedom. Until that moment, seven hours ahead of us, we all have cages of our own from which to break free!
G’mar hatimah tovah – May we each be inscribed and sealed for a good year.
Previous Posts
08/02/2010 - Palestine in 1912 (Most Recent)04/09/2010 ספירת העומר Omer Counting
03/27/2010 - Time Out From Pesah Cleaning Reading
01/23/2010 - Shavua Tov - A Prayer for Haiti
01/22/2010 - MLK Unity Service - Shabbat Bo
11/24/2009 - Parashat Vayetze & Thanksgiving
10/18/2009 - 30 Tishrei 5770 - Rosh Hodesh Heshvan
10/13/2009 - Rabbi Mordecai Waxman, a Tribute
09/28/2009 - Yom Kippur Sermon 5770 (Current display)
09/27/2009 - Kol Nidre Sermon 5770
09/21/2009 - Rosh Hashanah 2nd Day Sermon 5770
09/21/2009 - Rosh Hashanah First Day Sermon 5770
09/17/2009 - L`shana Tova Tikateivu v`Teihateimu
08/21/2009 - Rosh Hodesh Elul
08/18/2009 - The Torah of Trees
08/14/2009 - Parashat Re`eh
08/05/2009 - Tu B`Av [The 15th of Av]
07/24/2009 - Shabbat Devarim-Hazon
07/17/2009 - Parashat Matot-Masei
07/10/2009 - Parashat Pinchas