Rosh Hashanah Sermon - Second Day

Rosh Hashanah 2nd Day 5722 (Thanks to Rabbi Jack Reimer)

One of the things I always do as the High Holy Days draws near to look back over the main events of the year and see if I can find any lessons in them that will help us live in the new year.

This morning, I want to remind you of one event that occurred this past year, last October, that you may not have seen and if you did have probably forgotten. When it occurred, it made every newspaper in the country, but then, after a few days it faded from our memories. In a month, the story was almost forgotten. But, the story has stayed in my mind, and so, I want to study it with you today.

It is the story of two prominent, highly educated and very successful women, and the mistake that they both made. The first is Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. And the second is Anita Hill, who is a member of the faculty at Brandeis University.

Twenty years ago, the whole world knew their names. Anita Hill was the woman who testified against Clarence Thomas when he was being considered by the Senate for the position on the Supreme Court. She made terrible accusations against him, which he denied. And the story of those accusations that she made were in every newspaper in the world.

Finally, Clarence Thomas was approved. And that was the last we heard about this matter until this year. And then, this year, Mrs. Clarence Thomas did a very strange thing. For some reason, I don’t know why, Mrs. Thomas called Anita Hill this year. She called her at 7:00 in the morning on a Saturday. And she called her, not at her home, but at her office. Surely she knew that the odds were very slight that she would be in her office at such an hour, but that is what she did.

And when no one answered, she left this message on the machine. “Good morning, Ms. Hill. This is Virginia Thomas calling. I just wanted to reach across the years and ask you to consider making an apology for what you did to my husband. So give it some thought, would you, please? Ok. Have a nice day.”

My guess and it is only a guess, I don’t claim to know, is that the reason Mrs. Thomas chose to call Anita Hill at her office on seven o’clock in the morning on a Saturday was because she did not want to speak to her directly. She probably felt it would be easier to leave a message on her machine than it would have been to speak to her in person. I can understand that. You and I have probably done the same thing on occasion, haven’t we? Sometimes, it is easier to write a letter or to send an e-mail or to leave a message that it is to confront someone directly. Isn’t that so? But for whatever reason, that is what she did.

My question to you today is: Did she do the right thing in reaching out to the woman who had made an awful accusation against her husband more than twenty years ago or not? Before you answer that question, let me tell you what happened next.

Ms. Hill came into her office on Monday morning, and heard the message. And do you know what she did? She reacted by contacting the campus police department, which in turn notified the FBI, and from there, the story of what happened went to the newspapers.

I ask you: If the caller had threatened her life, then I think she would have been justified in calling the police. But in this case, there was no threat; there was no danger, just a message from a woman who lived in Washington, many miles away from Boston. And in the call she made no threats, and she made no warnings. All she did was ask for an apology.

By going to the police, what did Anita Hill accomplish?? She only made the event into a news story, a story that was in every newspaper in the world for a day or two, before it faded away.

Who are these two women? Virginia Thomas is a wealthy and a successful woman. She is active in many political causes. To the best of my knowledge, she has a good marriage. And Anita Hall is also a very successful woman. She is a tenured professor at a major university. She has written some very substantive articles in her field of expertise.

And yet, I must tell you that I feel sorry for them both. I feel sorry for both of them because, even though more than twenty years have gone by, the two of them are evidently still obsessed by what happened. Even though the world has almost forgotten what happened back then, Virginia Thomas and Anita Hill are evidently still preoccupied with the scandal that they were involved in so many years ago. What happened more than twenty years ago is evidently still a festering sore that continues to pain them. And so, one made the mistake of bringing the matter up again, in a way that did no good. And the other made the mistake of publicizing what she did, in a way that did no good.

And what did they accomplish by doing that? They only succeeded in reminding us of an embarrassing incident that is better forgotten, for all our sakes.

Why do I talk about this matter today? After all, neither Virginia Thomas nor Anita Hill is here today to hear what I have to say?

I do so, because you and I are here, and I think that most of us have made the same mistake on occasion that these two people made this year. Who among us does not carry inside us the memory of some incident in which someone hurt us, for no good reason? And who among us has had the wisdom to put that incident behind us, and to let the past be past?

How do we make it better and find a way to move on? Part of the answer is that we do need time to grieve. I do. Many of us have invested hours and hours and our souls toward the right direction for our community and some of us have not seen those dreams bear fruit. We need to move forward together but some of us are just going to need some more time. I would ask everyone to consider: if your vote had been cast with the minority, how would you feel and how much time would you need to work again for the future?

Before we’re ready to put the past behind us we should always first seek forgiveness and that’s what I want to do now in two steps. First, it has been a difficult year for me professionally and more so personally. That does not excuse any act or word that I may have expressed that was hurtful to anyone. As a symbolical step I’d like to apologize to anyone I have caused pain or embarrassment. That is not a true apology, though. I have spoken to a few people who I may have injured with words this year. If you are someone that I have hurt with anger, or hearsay or flip uncaring remark, please give me a call or email in the next few days. I’d like to make a direct confession of regret and hope to not repeat the inappropriate behavior before Yom Kippur so that I can cleanse myself as much as humanly possible before the Day of Atonement.

I also know that some people will be afraid to contact me. So I return to the earlier them about our quest during these Holy Days for healing. There is a key section of the Mussaf that is called Zichronot. And in that section, there is a passage that says: Ata zocher kol hanishkachot. You remember all that we forget. I always thought that means that the things we do wrong that we forget about, God remembers. God writes them in a book and God confronts us with them on Rosh Hashanah.

But perhaps Ata zocher kol hanishkachot has another meaning. Perhaps it means that God remembers all the times when we were insulted or when we were criticized, or when we were treated badly and we forgot about it. That … God remembers, to our credit. The fact that we don’t spend our lives brooding over the things that were done to us, but that, instead, we get over them, and go on with our lives, THAT is what God remembers on our behalf on the Day of Judgment.

Let me tell you of an experience from some years ago. When I was in an former congregation, I got a call that one of our members was in the hospital, and that he was going to have surgery. So I went to see him as soon as he could. I walked into this patient’s room, and, much to my surprise, the man began to cry. I asked him why he was crying, and this is what he said, “That you would come to see me after what I did to you? I can’t believe it.”

I asked him what he meant, and he said, “Don’t you remember. You came to the board once with a proposal. And I was one of those who spoke against it. I ridiculed your idea, and said that it would never work. And thanks to me, your proposal was turned down by the board. And now, you come to see me? After what I did to you?” And he cried.

I must tell you that I am not a great saint, but even then my memory is not what it used to be. And I honestly did not remember the incident. If I had, who knows? Perhaps I might have been a little late going to see him, or I might have been a little bit less effective in praying for him, but I really didn’t remember. And that made it easier for me to live with and to work with this man all the years that we were in the same synagogue together. Whereas he had to live all those years with the feeling that perhaps he had hurt me or insulted me, or that I was mad at him. There are times when it is good to have a bad memory, and this was surely such a time.

And so, this is my wish for you as the new year begins: May you have, not only a good memory for all the blessings that you receive in your life, but may you also have a good forgettery for all the painful things that you receive in your life. May you have a good memory for all the joyous moments that you experience in your life, and may you have a good forgettery for all the slights and hurts and insults that you experience in your life.

And may this year be a year of happiness, healing and peace for us all.