Thinking About the High Holy Days

Back in 1984 in the small community of Eastvale Texas, things went awry.  Big time.  Potholes were so numerous that the police stopped giving tickets for drunken driving (everybody swerved).  Water was in extremely short supply to the extent that the fire department had to “borrow” water.  Even automobiles threw fenders, mufflers and tires randomly, indiscriminately. Car parts littered the streets.  They just fell apart all over the place.  To use biblical terminology, ‘the septic tanks runneth over.’

Leaders from the community got together and decided the best way to get some coveted financial relief from the government was to call themselves ‘blighted’.  Said then Mayor Bert Eubank, “All I need is just a couple of million.”

These modern-day Jobs figured they could attract a lot of attention by drawing the national media to view their open wounds (anticipating sympathy in the form of dollars).

The story reminds me of the beggar in Fiddler on the Roof.  With his hand extended, he begs for money from the usual characters.  Offered one kopec, the beggar complains, “Because you had a bad week I should suffer?”

As life progresses, good and bad come unexpectedly.  How we react to these occurrences defines us.  A large segment of the deepest meaning of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is coming to terms with how we have responded to the ordinary events of life, the day to day stuff.

A prayer we recite on these Holy Days reads that we should be blessed by never having to be dependent upon the charity of others.  At the same time, we pray that God should be charitable to us in judging our lives. In other words, we ought to feel dependent upon God, not upon humanity. 

Who would disagree?  Of course we ought to be independent of people!  Closer to the truth is that we invert the Judaic notion: we form intricate webs of dependency and inter-dependency with people while distancing ourselves from God. 

One of the realizations of the Y2K phenomenon was that we swiftly understood how much we are need of one another for survival.  In the worst case scenario, they told us back in 1998, Y2K would mean that computer lines will not function, the electrical grid of the world will not work; there will be food stoppages too as transportation suffers. 

The runup to Y2K proved to us that we are dependent on people.   They are our employers; we wait for words of encouragement, paychecks and raises.  They are our customers; without them we are out of business.  We are connected to humanity at all levels.  Our lives are spent depending on people.

And yet.  It is not supposed to be this way.

At times of searing personal pain, our attention goes elsewhere.  Wisdom from the battlefield: ‘there are no atheists in a foxhole.’  Our tradition says the same thing using the metaphor of life.  Long ago, Eliezer ben Durdaya was a man who reached the height of personal achievement.  He was rich, successful… and hungry.  Eliezer had an insatiable desire for more and more.  His life slowly became twisted and his contorted by his want and the intolerable emptiness inside.

Nearing the end of his days Eliezer ben Durdaya screamed to the mountains, ”You are great  --Plead for me!” They remained silent.  Eliezer then turned to the sun and moon asking their help and intervention.  They too, remained unmoved.  Finally, Eliezer understood the blanket truth: he had to do the final reckoning.  No one, no thing would come to his defense.

Judaism does not believe in finger-pointing, unless the finger is directed at the self.  Even if events or people have contributed to our present condition only we can make the ultimate difference; change.  The Talmud sums it up this way: When a person dies, nothing accompanies him before the Almighty, except his deeds.