Yizkor Sermon 2011

YIZKOR 5772 (Thanks to Susan Grossman)

This is my 16th YK Yizkor Sermon at KS, my 31st as the rabbi of a congregation and including my student pulpits my 34th preaching at services on the High Holidays. I don’t remember my sermons from 25/30 years ago, but I think I’ve always tried to do a sermon to prepare myself and my community for Yizkor tears. While all these sermons were ultimately about life, this year I offer something without the tears of memory.

Rabbi Naomi Levy is one of my truly gifted colleagues. Upon ordination, she became a successful congregational rabbi in California. She married a wonderful guy. They had two beautiful children. She published. Then she received the call from the pediatric specialist. / No one wants to get a call like this. That story is in her third book, Hope Will Call.

The results were in. Her daughter, Noa, had a terminal degenerative disease called, ironically, A-T, which stands for Ataxia-telangiectasia, (the-lan-jick-tay-sha). Most of its victims are wheelchair bound by the age of ten and die before they turn twenty.
Second opinions were ambiguous. At best though, they wouldn’t know if Noa had A-T until she was older.

Rabbi Levy’s whole world narrowed to trying to “fix” her daughter. There were medical and therapy appointments and fighting the insurance company for coverage.

She spent every waking moment focused on her child. She stopped working. She stopped writing. / Can we blame her? Yet she blamed herself. She felt lost. / She stopped praying. Where was God anyway? / The fear, pain and anger bubbled up inside her.

How did she find her way back? / To herself? To God?

It was a long journey that begins with a story: A story about a homeless man named Bo who wanted to study Bible with Rabbi Levy: “One day in late October as I was [waiting for Noa,] sitting in a waiting room, watching my life slip away from me, I flashed a memory of Bo…”
“Bo was a person who told his story: ‘I could have had it all: a home, a wife, kids. I could have been a teacher. But I was running away and chasing after other gods. / I traded it all in for the drink and the needle.’
In a conversation Noami said to Bo, ‘Do you know where Jonah finally found God? Right in the belly of that whale. It’s time for you to find God, Bo.’ Bo got very excited. He said, ‘God’s with me in the belly of the whale.’
“Watching Bo, I so wanted to believe he could turn his life around. I wanted to believe that it’s never too late to change. I thought about the ways we all run from the call of God or the call of our souls. But Bo’s life had spun out too long and too far. Bo began the process of changing his life, but he could never get out of the belly of the whale. He died of AIDS.

“Sitting in that waiting room, I saw myself inside Bo’s whale. I couldn’t figure out how to keep things in perspective. I couldn’t figure out how to get my life back on track again. Fighting for Noa’s health had become my obsession.... Thinking of Bo I whispered to myself, ‘It’s never too late’ is a lie. / Suddenly I saw the danger of putting things off, of dropping out of life the way I had. I understood that if you wait for the right moment to appear, it might never come. I told myself: You’re waiting to be saved from above, but transformation requires effort from below. You keep telling yourself you’ve got plenty of time to get back on track, but time has better things to do than to stick around waiting for you…”

In her story Rabbi Levy’s miracle was also subtle. Her angel? / A bald man, another waiting room parent. One day, he commented to Rabbi Levy that her daughter Noa was something special. These words began to open Rabbi Levy’s eyes to the good before her, in her own daughter. Despite all her pain and weakness, all of her learning challenges, Noa bubbled with enthusiasm, optimism and ideas about how to live her life the maximum within her challenges. She exudes a joi de vivre – a joy in living every moment which is tangible.

One day, as she was cleaning out Noa’s backpack, Rabbi Levy found a spiral notebook filled with entries Noa had written. She couldn’t help but read them.

Rabbi Levy writes: “Where did this come from? That voice…that depth. I slid to the floor of her bedroom and read on. My tears were dripping on her words…barely legible…words full of wisdom and encouragement…Did she know she was talking to me?...”

“I asked Noa for her permission to share them with others…I call them ‘Noa’s Twelve Rules for Living a Rich Life…’

“1. Be Adventurous: You can sit at home and be grumpy and life will mean nothing to you. Or you can go on an adventure through life and try stuff you never thought you would do and life will be exciting for you. You shouldn’t just sit around and do nothing because there should be some pretty cool adventures in life.

“2. Be Kind to Yourself: If you’re mean to yourself, others will be mean to you. So respect yourself. It’s a good thing. People will see your positive outlook and add to your happiness.

“3. Make Mistakes: If you don’t do anything you will never make a mistake. If you don’t make a mistake you will never try anything. So make mistakes; it will be good in the end.

“4. Laugh: When you are in a bad mood and someone makes you laugh, it gives you a jump start on your day. My friend once hurt her head and I said something funny that made her laugh and then that really cheered her up.

“5. Lift Your Own Spirits: If you are sad or down you have to will yourself not to be down anymore. One morning, I was driving in the car to school and I said to myself, ‘I don’t have any talent,’ and I really got sad. Then I thought, ‘I can blow Shofar,’…(and) my sadness went away. So remember you can wish yourself up.

“6. Play to Your Strengths: If you can do something, don’t let it get involved with what you can’t do. I can’t do math so well but I can do reading really well if I try. So I don’t get my good reading mixed up with my bad math. So don’t let your good get mixed up with your bad.

“7. Ask Yourself for Help: If you are having trouble with something, think first before you ask someone for help… Once my mom was having trouble writing a sermon. Before asking anybody for help she thought about it some more and wrote a great sermon. So think before you ask for help. It will be better.

“8. Live Up to Your Dreams: If you have dreams they’re probably not going to happen if you don’t live up to them. None of my dreams are going to happen if I don’t stick with them and believe they’re going to happen. So follow your dreams. What can go wrong? Most everything will come true.

“9. Be a Friend: Nobody is ever perfect, so your friends have to learn to look past your faults…Someone isn’t going to like you because you know everything. They’re going to like you because you truly care…True friends are the people who really care for you when you need them.

“10. Don’t Let Mean People Shake You: If someone is being mean to you, it’s probably because they have there own problems…At my old school there was this girl and she was always mean to me and talked about me behind my back. That mean girl said I was so weak. She said I couldn’t do anything. Now, I wasn’t going to sit there and take her rudeness. I went out there and proved I could do it. You can do anything you want to do. Don’t let some negativity hold you back.

“11. Forgive: If someone hurts your feelings, you will be offended, but it can be fixed…I once had a big fight with my friend at school…We finally made up and became good friends again. You know you can’t change the past, but you can change the future.

“12. Stand Up to Peer Pressure: You know who you are. You don’t need anyone to tell you who you are…[you] don’t have to do what other people tell [you you] should do. Be strong! Be smart! Make good decisions!”

Did Noa know she was also talking to each of us? These 12 rules encapsulate how to make the most of our journey through life. Be Adventurous. Be Kind to Yourself. Make Mistakes. Laugh. Lift Your Own Spirits. Play to Your Strengths. Ask Yourself for Help. Live Up to Your Dreams. Be a Friend. Don’t Let Mean People Shake You. Forgive. Stand Up to Peer Pressure.

Some miracles are so subtle they begin with barely legible words scrawled in a young girl’s spiral notebook.

Noa’s 12 Rules for Living a Rich Life speak to how we can hold onto hope. How we can see the good before us. How we can reach out a hand to another and be strengthened ourselves thereby. How the power of transformation comes from within us and we should not wait too long to begin.

But Noa certainly is wise enough to play to her strengths and make the most of her journey through life. It is the journey that matters most.

How do we make the most of our journey? / How do we hold onto hope in the dark belly of the whale? / How do we see the good before us? / How do we reach out our hands to others and strengthen ourselves thereby? / How do we embrace the wisdom that the power of transformation comes from within us and we should not wait too long to begin?

We are all hikers on the trail called life. We, too, can find ourselves alone in the dark, beset by storms, facing exhaustion, and despairing of hanging in there until the sun again shines.

How we weather those storms depends on our attitude. How we hang onto hope, even in the dark, depends on our ability to see the good despite the bad. How we rise above our exhaustion depends upon our ability to reach out to others and be strengthened thereby.
It is not where we start from, nor where we end up, that is most important. It is not what we are going through, nor how long we have, that is most important. It is the journey itself that matters most.

The quality of that journey, where we find joy and where we derive strength, is up to us. Our lives can be filled with pretty cool adventures. God’s subtle miracles are all around us, if we open our eyes to see them. The ability to transform ourselves, even in the belly of the whale, is within us whenever we choose to start. Let us not wait too long to begin.

It’s the journey to life and of life that matters most.