Yom Kippur 5778: How We Speak, and How We Listen

At Mussaf on Yom Kippur, just before the cantor leads the powerful repetition of the standing Amidah prayer, she does something remarkable. She recites the Hineini prayer, saying these words:

“Here I am, impoverished of deeds, trembling and frightened from the dread of the One Who is enthroned upon the praises of Israel. I have come to stand and supplicate before You for Your people Israel, even though I am not worthy or qualified to do so.”

This is all a prayer before the prayer service actually begins. The cantor here is, in effect, saying a prayer about speaking before speaking the particular words she is about to speak.

Jewish prayer is all about words. Yom Kippur is, in a sense, all about words. But it’s not “all talk, no action.” The words on Yom Kippur are the action.

In our world of nonstop words, nonstop language, Yom Kippur reminds us that we must weigh our words. Even if we’re not someone on whose words might rest the fate of the world (and who might tweet those words at 6 am), the fate of our relationships, the fate of our reputations, even the fate of how we understand ourselves – all depend a great deal on how we speak and what we say – and what we don’t say. And, connected with all of this, how we listen.

As I say these things to you – even as I stand before you – I feel like I should be reciting that Hineini prayer. Not only because I feel unqualified to speak before the One Who is enthroned upon the praises of Israel.

I feel unworthy to speak in front of you.

I know. I’m “the man who seems to be in charge at Hillel”. I’m supposed to convey a message that is meaningful, and you’re supposed to listen. More and more, though, and especially in recent days, I catch myself as I speak, and even before I speak. What is important for me to say? And is it important even to say it?

I sense the power of speech, and I also recognize my own shortcomings related to speech. And all of this, for me at least, and at this moment at least, is wrapped up in how I deal with anger.

I’ll illustrate with a (very) recent story:  Last Thursday, I stood on the bridge by the Lakefill with many of you at our Tashlich service. It was beautiful – a warm afternoon, more than 50 people, even a shofar blowing. Rabbi Brandon spoke a few words of wisdom, and then I walked to the railing with a few clumps of bread, and with my little guys Jacob and Ethan in tow.

Ethan is 3, and he had a lot of fun just throwing the bread. His tashlich experience amounted to “More bread, Daddy. PLEASE! More bread!”

Jacob is in first grade. At Solomon Schechter Day School. So he gets it. Kinda. I asked him, “What are you going to try to do better in the coming year?” “Make better choices?” he said (or sort of asked). I led the witness: “You mean, like, doing better listening, and not arguing back at me when I tell you ‘no’.” “Yeah, Daddy.” I followed up: “Well, one of the things I’m going to work on is not getting so angry or frustrated with you when you don’t make a good choice.”

Then I threw my chunks of bread into the water. Some years, I’m throwing away a whole list of things, but last week, it kept coming back to one thing. Anger. Impatience? Anger. Frustration? Anger. Damaged relationships? Anger. Stress and a sense of impotence in the face of political issues that are tremendously upsetting. Yep, anger.

So I tossed my anger away, symbolically and metaphorically. Then I headed home with Jacob and Ethan, and we took the scenic route along the lake. It was a beautiful ending to this story.

But.

Of course there’s a but.

Not more than an hour later, Jacob was yelling at Ethan, Ethan was pulling away a toy, Jacob was half-crying/half-whining, and, yes, there was my anger again. And my voice was rising.

Here. We. Go. Again.

Why is anger so wired into us, so ever-present – yet so problematic? And what to do about it?

Maimoinides – the Rambam, the 12^th century Jewish philosopher and physician, famously echoed Aristotle’s belief that in life, and particularly in our emotional lives, we should strike a balance between too much and too little, find the golden mean. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks illustrates this idea, “Too much fear makes me a coward, too little makes me rash and foolhardy, taking unnecessary risks. The middle way is courage.

But anger is different. Even a little anger is not OK – there isn’t a middle way. Rambam explains, “Anger (is) an extremely evil tendency and it is proper for man to remove himself from it to the other extreme. One should teach himself not to get angry, even over a matter which befits anger.”

For Rabbi Sacks, “What is dangerous about anger is that it causes us to lose control….The result is that in a moment of irascibility we can do or say things we may regret for the rest of our lives.

Sacks suggests: The best way of defeating anger “is to pause, stop, reflect, refrain, count to ten, and breathe deeply. If necessary, leave the room, go for a walk, meditate, or vent your toxic feelings alone.”

Or we could try another approach, which I saw on this somewhat crudely illustrated flyer that same evening after Tashlich.

It was sent home from Schechter with five suggested steps managing your anger…if you’re about 6 years old:

(Hold it up and read from it)

What to do when you are angry:

Step #1: How do I feel?

Step #2: Take three deep breaths.

Step #3: Count slowly to five.

Step #4: Say “calm down” to yourself.

Step #5: Talk to a grownup about it.

Talk to a grownup about it.

And here we are…the grownups.

Words have the power to heal, to convey love, to build relationships. But also to destroy and tear apart. On this day, Yom Kippur, we repeat, over and over again, the “Al Cheit” prayer. Al cheit she-chatanu lefanecha. (Upon the transgressions that we have transgressed in front of You.) Over and over, throughout these 25 hours. So many words about our transgressions before God. And so many of those transgressions are about words. 11 of the 43 sins enumerated are sins committed through speech. Al cheit that we have sinned before you through gossip mongering, through oath taking, with the idle chatter of our lips, through foolish speech, through denial and false promises, through evil talk.

Why this repetition?

What are we being called to do, over and over again? Ultimately, I think, it comes down to two things:

(1) Speak more carefully.

And

(2) Listen.

In traditional Jewish practice, we say a blessing for just about everything important and quite a few things that might not seem so important. We say a blessing before we eat food because we are grateful for that food. We say morning prayers that show appreciation that we are here, alive another day, a recognition that we are living on borrowed time. We say a prayer before we head out on a journey, before we light candles to begin a holiday, and, as we saw earlier, before we pray to God.

What if we said a prayer before we spoke to another human being? What if we saw the very act of speaking as holy? If what you’re saying is holy, doesn’t that require a prayer?

I know, practically, this sounds tremendously difficult, especially in our nanosecond-response-time world of Snapchat, Facebook, and snappy one-liner responses, not to mention the 140 (or possibly 280)-character universe of Twitter. How could I possibly pause to pray each time I communicate?

But conceptually – before you go to speak with someone, before you respond to an email, send a text, or post….what if you said a prayer?

Maybe it would sound like this (with appreciation to Roy Lessin, a poet of Christian devotional prayers; I’ve adapted his language a bit):

Omnipresent One, guide my thoughts before they become my words. Place a guard over my mouth and a watchman over the door of my lips.

When I open my mouth, I ask You to fill it with right words, good words, true words, loving words.

Use my words this day to heal and not harm, to restore and not separate, to extend mercy and not judgment, to build up and not pull down, to comfort and not injure, to bring sunlight and not shadows, to encourage and not quench, to mend and not wound.

May my words herald good news, be seasoned with salt, and bring grace to the hearer.

If I am to speak correction, may it be with compassion; if I am to exhort, may it be with humility; If I am to instruct, may it be with brokenness; if I am to guide, may it be with wisdom; if I am to inform, may it be with clarity;

Guard my tongue from murmuring and my voice from complaint. In all things, may my mouth be filled with words of gratitude, expressions of praise, and proclamations of faithfulness.

Maybe that prayer would work for you. Maybe other words would work. Or maybe just taking a couple of seconds to pause.

Speaking is one part of the puzzle. But sometimes it’s better to Talk less, smile more.

Or to paraphrase that line from Hamilton:

Talk less. Listen more. And listen resiliently.

Judaism has a central guide to this kind of listening: Shema

Shema yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad.

Listen, Israel. Adonai is our God. God is One.

The program Encounter, which has enabled me and other North American Jewish leaders to visit the West Bank and East Jerusalem to meet and learn from and with Palestinians, operates under seven core values connected with Jewish tradition. (You should Google Encounter’s Core Values – it’s worth a look). But I want to mention just one:

Shema / Listening / שמע
Encounter cultivates resilient listening and curiosity, for Jews toward Palestinians as well as between Jews and other Jews with divergent worldviews.

Here at Northwestern, you may or may not engage with Palestinians and the issues connected with Israel and Palestine, so permit me to broaden this statement:

Let’s cultivate resilient listening and curiosity for Jews toward all non-Jews as well as between Jews and other Jews with divergent views.

Let’s broaden it further – let’s model resilient listening and curiosity for everyone. Let’s be willing to engage in the most challenging issues that we find politically unsettling, highly problematic – and let’s do so in a way that demonstrates respect. That demonstrates that we’re willing to listen resiliently – we do not have to give up that which we hold dear, our strongest values, but we’re open to the possibility that learning from another might actually enhance our self-understanding, might actually broaden our perspective – might actually impact our own values.

When I traveled on Encounter, it was about being willing to listen even when what I was hearing made me uncomfortable, frustrated, angry. Angry enough to feel I needed to take deep breaths, and maybe even talk to a grownup.

When Maimonides discusses anger he also points to this kind of listening:

“The conduct of the just,” Rambam writes, “is to take insults but not give insults, hear themselves flouted but make no reply, do their duty as a work of love, and bear affliction cheerfully.”

Resilient listening reminds you that it’s not about you. Or, at least, it’s not only about you.

As Brenda Ueland puts it in The Art of Listening

“When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand….Listening, not talking, is the gifted and great role….So try listening. Listen to your wife, your husband, your father, your mother, your children, your friends, to those who love you and those who don’t, to those who bore you, to your enemies. It will work a small miracle. And perhaps a great one.”

And miracles do not happen on their own.

Can we listen resiliently…

            To a parent

            To a colleague

            To a friend

            To a roommate

            To a partner

To a stranger

            To an Other?

At the end of Yom Kippur – we stop saying Al Cheit.

We stop saying nearly all words. We end with all of us, together, saying:

Shema yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad

Listen, Israel, Adonai is our God; God is One.

We end with this statement of unity – all transgressions wiped away, a clean slate, clear language, and one action step:

Shema.

Listen, resiliently.

And that’s exactly what we do at the very last moment of Yom Kippur – the shofar is sounded.

We stand in a place of no words, where we listen to whatever cosmic message comes through.

Throw away the anger. For real.

Say a prayer before you speak. Sometimes, really say a prayer.

And listen. Resiliently.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

On behalf of my wife Claire and our sons Jacob and Ethan, and on behalf of Northwestern Hillel, I wish each and every one of you a Shana Tova and g’mar chatima tova ~ may you be sealed for goodness in the Book of Life.