Rabbi Gleason Divrei Torah

Despite loving this holiday, and remembering that every year it never fails in its power to transform, I still feel a twinge of dread in the hours leading up to Yom Kippur. Because it is often difficult. It often involves discomfort. A lot of words and a lot of time with our own minds and hearts without comforting distraction.

And what is all this meant to prepare us for? What is it meant to transform us toward?

To get at this question, I want to share an arrestingly beautiful and mysterious story from the Talmud.

The Gemara relates that Rabbi Elazar fell ill. His teacher, Rabbi Yoḥanan entered his house to visit him, and saw that he was lying in a dark room. Rabbi Yoḥanan, the teacher, exposed his arm, and light radiated from his flesh, filling the house. He saw that Rabbi Elazar was crying, and said to him: Why are you crying? 

Thinking that his crying was over the suffering that he endured throughout his life, Rabbi Yoḥanan attempted to comfort him: If you are weeping because you did not study as much Torah as you would have liked, remember that we learned: One who brings a large offering and one who brings a meager offering have equal merit, as long as they direct their hearts toward God. 

There’s no response from Rabbi Elazar. So Rabbi Yochanan did what many of us do in our misguided but well-intentioned way of trying to comfort someone - and continued to search for a thought, some reframe, some idea that would make him feel better. 

If you are weeping because you lack sustenance and are unable to earn a livelihood, Rabbi Yochanan said, as Rabbi Elazar was, indeed, quite poor, well, he said, not every person merits to eat off of two tables, and you do eat from the table of Torah, so you need not bemoan the fact that you are not wealthy. 

No response. Rabbi Elazar continues crying and Rabbi Yochanan goes on in his attempts to comfort him.

If you are crying over children who have died, this is the bone of my tenth son, who also died, and suffering of that kind afflicts great people, and they are afflictions of love.

Finally, Rabbi Elazar said to his teacher: 

לְהַאי שׁוּפְרָא דְּבָלֵי בְּעַפְרָא קָא בָּכֵינָא.

Rabbi Elazar said to Rabbi Yoḥanan: I am not crying over my misfortune, but rather, over all the beauty that will decompose in the earth.

 אֲמַר לֵיהּ: עַל דָּא וַדַּאי קָא בָּכֵית, וּבְכוֹ תַּרְוַיְיהוּ.

Rabbi Yoḥanan said to him: Over this, it is certainly appropriate to weep. And the wept together.

Finally, Rabbi Yochanan, gives up in his attempts to make things better, and he simply cries. And they are able to simply weep together over their mortality, over all the beauty that will one day die. 

But these are not tears of only sadness, they are also tears of a particular kind of joy. 

So I want to look at what we learn from this story, that is wisdom for us, on this holiest day of the year, on which we set our intentions for the year to come.

Last week, I read an op-ed by David Desteno titled Rosh HaShana can change your life (even if you’re not Jewish). It could more accurately be called the High Holy Days can change your life, because the themes are present in the full trajectory of the holidays. What the article pointed out was that, perhaps counterintuitively, around the world research has shown that people’s happiness tends to follow a U-shaped pattern through life: Happiness starts decreasing in one’s 20s, as people are prioritizing their careers, and then hits a low point around age 50, and then slowly rises through one’s 60s, 70s and 80s.

Desteno argues that there is a turnaround at 50 because this is around the age when people typically start to feel their mortality. As their body aches more, as they see the end of their life God-willing far off - but there on the horizon.

This reckoning with mortality, though, does not depress people, but it actually increases happiness as people begin to value the things that actually bring us happiness and fulfillment in this world - our friends, our family, our community, and serving others.

And this is why I think this story from the Talmud is not a sad story, just like Yom Kippur is not a sad holiday. Rather, it’s a day that jolts us into awareness of our temporariness. We don’t have to wait until we’re 50 - for those us who are under 50 - to rearrange our priorities. This day that we have right now in front of us - is our tradition’s way of helping us do that every year. Yom Kippur meant to reorient us, to turn us inward, and to turn us, once again, toward each other. 

There is someone who I know who does not go to synagogue on Yom Kippur, and she doesn’t have a traditional practice. But she does have a ritual that she does every Yom Kippur. She goes to her late husband’s grave, and she lays down next to it, in the plot that will hers one day, God willing in a very long time, and she cries there and lays there, and spends time. And this practice, though it may seem from the outside to be heartbreakingly sad, does not leave her feeling distraught. It leaves her full of joy, and energy for the life that she still has. It leaves her, as Yom Kippur should leave us, with an awareness of the thinness of the veil that lies between this world and the next. Of the thinness of the veil that separates her from her late husband, the thinness of the veil that separates us from the earth, from the grass, from the wind and all living things around us in a web of life. 

In this world that we live in, if we see that someone is crying, it’s not difficult to imagine why they might be crying. For all the reasons that Rabbi Yochanan listed. That we might be feeling bad about ourselves, or we might be lacking sustenance, beaten down by life’s circumstances, or we may be grieving a loss. There are many reasons. But it might be for all these things multiplied by the power of the beauty of life, and there is no simple rationalization that will provide comfort. 

The best thing - we learn from this story-  that will provide comfort, perhaps, is for another human being to come down and cry with you. And if we don’t come out of Yom Kippur more prepared to do that, then all of the thousands of words we will pray throughout this day will have been worth little. If we don’t come out of the Day of Atonement more prepared to comfort another person in their suffering, with the comfort not of rationalization, but of our simple presence, then part of the purpose of this day will have utterly failed. If we don’t come out of Yom Kippur with a softening of our hearts, that allows us finally, to cry - then part of the purpose of this day will have failed. 

Let us go back for a moment, though, to the mysterious description of what happens when Rabbi Yochanan first walks into the room. It says he pulls back his sleeve to expose his arm, and his flesh itself is glowing light. So what can we learn from this magical glow in the dark rabbi?

It’s an everyday magic. That if we read carefully we see that Rabbi Elazar does not actually start crying until after that moment, when the light from Rabbi Yochanan’s arm fills the room. 

The beauty that he is crying over, is the beauty of his friend, his teacher. His teacher tries to comfort him with thoughts and ideas, but what has shocked Rabbi Elazar into aliveness is the beauty of another person’s glow. 

We, right now, are training ourselves, to be able to bask in the light of another person, and also to be able to metaphorically pull back our sleeve, to reveal to each other that we, too, are human. We are flesh and blood. And that is where the glow comes from. And what Rabbi Yochanan needed to recognize all along was that his presence was a light filling the room. And this is what his friend needed - not ideas. 

What we are plagued by in this moment, in this country - among many other things but perhaps this at the core - is loneliness. We have forgotten in the midst of our increasingly stressful lives, how to simply be present with another person’s pain, without explaining, without asking anything - and showing each other our humanness. Pulling back our sleeve and saying - I, too, am made of flesh and blood. We get to practice this on Yom Kippur when we were simple clothes, simple shoes - no adornments or makeup. Our raw humanity as we are, as our bodies as they simply are in this very moment, is enough. There’s no longer any need to pretend otherwise. And from that confession light pours out. 

As we commit to stand here together throughout this holiday, let us give up on pretending, let us give up our toughness, and instead, show each other our humanness. Let our awareness of our temporary lives, bring us not anxiety, but joy, and guide us to shift our priorities to align with our highest values. Let us celebrate today the fact that we are breathing here together. And let our commitment to being present with one another, with our own families, and friends, and even strangers - extend beyond these 25 hours and into the rest of our year. May we never cry alone again. May have the courage to share our pain. May our pain over the tragedies of this world propel us to act together with hope and connection rather than only fear and outrage. When we want to appear tough, when we are too proud to apologize, when we are too angry to accept an apology - may we simply pull back our sleeve to reveal the most beautiful thing about us, our pure and vulnerable humanity - and may light come pouring forth. 

Gmar chatima tova, may we all be sealed for a good year.