Before Shabbat

I spent a few fabulous summers on staff at Camp Young Judaea in Wimberley, Texas. In those days – the ’70s – it was a very rustic place. Basic cabins with basic indoor bathrooms and showers. Bunk beds and plywood cubbies. No air conditioning. In Texas. Just jumbo fans that revved up like turboprop engines. (CYJ is now a true campus: everything air-conditioned, a huge pool with waterslides, a ropes course that looks as if it were built for SEAL Team Six.)

The staff was very young. There were a few years when the oldest person at camp was the Israeli shaliach, a guy in his 30s who helped run programs about Israel. That’s it. The director was in his 20s. Everyone else was a college grad, a college student, or a high school student. You might think this would lead to a Lord of the Flies situation. In fact, we were very chill. The only thing we took seriously was camper health. Otherwise, it was about maximal fun. We enjoyed each other every day.

One highlight of camp life was the campout under the stars. We’d drive a cabin or two of kids and counselors to Pedernales Falls State Park, a huge expanse of forest, waterfront, and trails, set up our campsite, and have the best time. As night fell, though, I remember getting a little nervous. Pedernales had only just opened to the public. The trails weren’t worn in; a lot of the underbrush hadn’t been cleared. And it was dark. So dark.

On the one hand, the expanse of stars was breathtaking. I’ve never been anywhere since that was quite as dark as that night. The only light for miles was our campfire. I wish I’d known something about the stars then. I wonder if I could have seen the Milky Way. Every constellation in the Northern Hemisphere paraded over us in the course of the evening. It was one of those rare times when the word “breathtaking” actually applied.

On the other hand, sitting in the dark in the middle of a giant state park was not entirely pleasant. Around 10 p.m., once the kids had passed out, the crackle of the campfire was joined by the sound of… I didn’t know what. Animals of some sort. But which animals? Cougars? Bobcats? Coyotes? Raccoons? They made strange noises I could not identify. When I shone my flashlight toward the alien sounds, all I could see were eyes, glowing in the underbrush. It may not surprise you that I am not a naturalist. It will not surprise you that I was frightened.

We were so vulnerable out there, in what felt like the middle of nowhere. That sense of being at the mercy of the universe, that fight-or-flight response, is buried deep in the amygdala. Years later, I think about the times I’ve felt that same existential dread with no wild beasts anywhere near: times I’ve felt alone and unable to tell what was going to happen next. Some were collective moments of fear: 11/22/63, 9/11, October 7th. Some were personal: getting up for the first time after open-heart surgery, going back for more surgery last year, and worrying about so many people and their medical and personal crises. (As I write this, I’m making myself anxious.)

My point is not to make you anxious. It’s to name the elephant – or the coyote – in the room: we are so vulnerable. I look at my infant grandchildren learning to hold up their heads on those very elastic necks, and they are utterly helpless. And even after they grow strong and tall, I will worry about them, on their own, in a crazy world. I worry about my adult children, in their 30s and 40s. Because we are not mighty fortresses. We are not impregnable X-Men. We are just humans.

Sukkot pulls us outside into a flimsy shelter with no real roof and no permanent walls. I’ve stood inside a sukkah as it rained and as it snowed. I’ve watched the s’chach – the cornstalks or branches laid across the top – blow away. There is no promise of shelter from the storm in a sukkah. If anything, the sukkah promises disorder and vulnerability. In fact, it celebrates them. For a week, we are commanded to sit out in the dark under the stars and listen to the noises in the underbrush.

Back at CYJ, the caretaker, Mr. Lester Hill – toothpick in his mouth, cowboy hat on his head – taught me two lessons about being vulnerable. First: “Red and yeller kill a feller.” Which is to say, if you see a coral snake (and I did), go the other direction, because it’s very poisonous. Second: “Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you.” Which, I think, bears no explanation.

Be careful – and be bold. There’s no hiding, no safe spot. It’s all out there, the blessing and the curse. Embrace the unknown, the way Sukkot asks us to. It’s all we’ve got.

This is the official kickoff of this year’s Before Shabbat essays. I usually begin on the Shabbat between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, a weekend with its own name on the Jewish calendar: Shabbat Shuvah. You might think the word shuvah sounds a lot like teshuvah, which means return, or repentance. And you would be correct. They share the same root.

Shabbat Shuvah, the Sabbath of Return, gets its name from the haftarah we read this week, where the prophet Hosea pleads, “Return, O Israel, to Adonai your God.”

Pairing Shabbat with repentance is a curious move. Shabbat celebrates the creation of the universe. On Shabbat we are asked to see the world as whole, even if only for twenty-four hours. We don’t work, and we cease from any activity that might suggest the world is incomplete. We are commanded to stop striving. Or, to twist the aphorism: Don’t just do something; stand there.

Teshuvah says the opposite. It insists that we are unfinished, that there’s a lot of work to do – stat! And not just on ourselves. We need the world and all its bounty, and the world needs us, as stewards and protectors of this fragile place where we live.

Shabbat Shuvah asks us to hold both: to do the inner work of return from a place of rest rather than anxiety. It is the clearing in the deep woods where we can pause and breathe. We know where we are: in the loving embrace of Shabbat. We are not lost. There’s something so wise in that, something so Jewish. Because when we feel safe and secure, we can be more honest with ourselves, and with the people to whom we owe apologies.

I hope this doesn’t qualify as TMI, but my wife and I occasionally have a difference of opinion – a rare, but not unheard-of, occurrence. In those moments it is so much easier to engage when we both understand that we’re on the same side, that we are safe with each other.

Genuinely asking forgiveness must come from the adult side of our brains, the side that eschews excuses and demands honesty. I remember being ordered to apologize as a kid, and later, as a father, doing the ordering. The results were the same either way. “Tell your sister you’re sorry.” “I’m SORRY!” – followed by a snort or a derisive sneer. That doesn’t count. The words don’t count if the heart is absent.

Shabbat Shuvah eases us toward Yom Kippur. The deep woods of that day are less familiar territory, filled with the questions we have to ask ourselves all through the service. How have I lived my life this year? When have I been kind and selfless? When have I been selfish? When have I been judgmental and mean? When have I tried to be a mensch – a person who does the right thing – and when did I take a pass because it was inconvenient? So many questions, all meant to help us recalibrate how we behave in the world, from the macro level of giving tzedakah to the most intimate settings with family and dear friends. Yom Kippur isn’t easy. It’s not supposed to be.

But before we get there – soon! – we give thanks for this Shabbat, a soft, gentle respite in which to pull ourselves together for what’s ahead.

Tonight we enter a unique rarefied space called the Days of Awe. For ten days, our tradition says, we are suspended between life and death as God examines our deeds. Do our good deeds outnumber our sins? Have we lived a particularly grim, sinful life these past 12 months? The answer, so the teaching goes, determines where we’re going to end up over this new year. Will we live a blessed life, a reward for good and right behavior? Or will we perish – by fire or water, hunger or thirst, or any other ignoble way to go?

It’s fair to say that for most 21st-century Jews, this formulation of our fate as humans has faded away as something we actually believe in. There are just too many doubts, too many experiences we’ve had in life that make this “God’s judgment” motif quaint. We just don’t buy it. Our fate is not in God’s hands. Even scarier, our fate is in our own.

And yet, all this week, the leitmotif of my days and nights, too, is:  the new year is coming. I feel it in my soul—an excitement combined with some awe and trepidation, too. I am carrying all sorts of complex truths about the planet we live on right now. My suitcase is heavy, laden with the weight of climate change, political upheaval, and the persistent ache of injustice. The terrain upon which we tread is rough and steep. It’s not easy living in this world.

Our ancestors went through periods when they imagined that life would settle into a knowable, easy rhythm. There would be no significant horror or damage or catastrophe, just a steady state of relative calm. Everything, they thought, would be restored to how God meant it to be.

But more frequently, our rabbis feared for the future. They saw us as an unempowered minority in a hostile world saw no way out. We couldn’t fix this awful mess of a world from beneath the pile of troubles. They developed a dream. God would reach in and transform everything in an instant with a Messiah, and then history would end, and we would live for eternity, studying by God’s throne.

I am not a prophet or the son of a prophet, but I stand before you tonight with a different kind of promise. The load we carry will not lighten. The road we walk will not be smooth. The path ahead remains steep and uncertain.

But I can guarantee that we will welcome in this new year with joy and exhilaration. Rabbi Larry Kushner called Rosh Hashanah the annual meeting of the Jewish people. And we have a seat for you!  We will sing and pray together. We will hear new melodies and familiar ones, too. We’ll hear ideas and poetry. It will feel good to be together, seeing old friends and new ones. It will be wonderful to experience how we continue to grow and change.

The world breaks our hearts every day. It disappoints and scares us. It makes us feel as if a giant asteroid is heading right for our heads. But here we are—we Jews persist. We’ve got something that’s worth hearing and remembering.

On this new year, even if just for the length of a High Holy Day service, come lay your burden down. Come sing, and pray, and bless, and just sit with your people in the sanctuary. Feel the warmth and the love. This is what Temple Beth Avodah is all about.  This is how we endure—not by escaping the world’s weight, but by sharing it – together.