Choose Life So That You May Live
Erev Rosh Hashanah, 5776
Temple Beth Israel, Fresno CA
Rabbi Rick Winer
וּבָֽחַרְתָּ֙ בַּֽחַיִּ֔ים לְמַ֥עַן תִּֽחְיֶ֖ה אַתָּ֥ה וְזַרְעֶֽךָ:
…Choose life so that you will live, you and your children.
Once in a while, I get biblical passages popping up in my consciousness. I suppose that’s a liability of being a rabbi. I also get seemingly random song lyrics. I know many of us do that.
This year, leading into High Holy Days, this passage from Deuteronomy, coming from our Yom Kippur Torah reading, kept entering my mind and I figured I ought to listen.
וּבָֽחַרְתָּ֙ בַּֽחַיִּ֔ים
Choose life.
For S’lichot this year, I decided to follow the model of many of my colleagues and screen a film with relevance to the preparation for the High Holy Day period. Congregations have been doing this for years and the one film I see on everyone’s list is Crimes and Misdemeanors by Woody Allen.
It’s described as an existential drama… The lead character appears to be a pillar of the community as the film opens with him accepting an award of gratitude but the scene quickly cuts to him reading the letter he intercepts from his mistress to his wife. He ultimately chooses to deal with his problems in a rather rash way.
In the film we are told, “We define ourselves by the choices we have made.”
More than three thousand years before this Jewish filmmaker wrote that line, Deuteronomy told us:
Deut. 30: 15-16
See, I have set before you this day life and good, or death and evil.
For I command you this day to love the Eternal, to walk in the ways and to keep the commandments, laws, and teachings of your God, that you may live and increase, and that the Eternal your God may bless you in the land that you are about to occupy.
19I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day:I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life—if you and your offspring would live—20by loving the Lord your God, heeding God’s commands, and holding fast to God. For thereby you shall have life and shall long endure upon the soil that the Lord swore to your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give to them.
…Throughout the High Holy Days, I will focus my messages on the theme of ‘Choice.’ It will unfold in each of the talks I deliver so you’ll miss out if you aren’t able to hear the complete cycle. I will be exploring, how our choices define us and our community and how Judaism may guide us with our choices.
I will never forget how clearly my rabbi, Shelley Waldenberg, pushed our Confirmation Class to understand how much control we have in our choices and how we could use them to do the right thing. Ever since, and that was quite a few years ago, I’ve taken to heart the seriousness with which I approach choices…
Those of us who gathered to watch Woody Allen’s film saw a community making choices that were not all good choices. In fact, most of them were bad choices. Much of the film explored whether or not one could get away with these bad choices and even profit from them. Even when it appears that we get away with some horrible choices, will God punish us? The characters wrestled with their own choices and we are left with that underlying question. Is there divine justice? How will the choices we make throughout life affect us and the people around us in the long run?
A little recap for those who weren’t with us on S’lichot…
Martin Landau plays Judah Rosenthal, a successful ophthalmologist who is embroiled in this extra-marital affair. Anjelica Huston plays Dolores, the mistress who threatens to not only expose the affair but also the doctor’s creative bookkeeping which seems to tip him over the edge even more than the issue of infidelity. Dr. Rosenthal enlists his brother Jack, played by Jerry Orbach, who has friends who can take care of things, things like a mistress who talks too much.
Meanwhile, Woody Allen plays a not-so-successful documentary filmmaker who takes a job directing a movie about his brother-in-law the very successful TV producer, Lester, played by Alan Alda. Allen’s character, Cliff falls in love with his brother-in-law’s associate producer played by Mia Farrow, however, Cliff and his wife, that was Lester’s sister and Cliff haven’t been intimate in a year. There is one more brother-in-law Ben, played by Sam Waterston, who is a kind-hearted rabbi who is going blind and being treated by, of course, ophthalmologist Judah Rosenthal. Do you need a scorecard?
While this film script certainly has become part of regular S’lichot observance across the country, another text tied to this season goes back a bit further in our tradition.
The Book of Ecclesiastes is one of the five scrolls in our biblical canon, each read on a different festival throughout the year. We read the Book of Esther on Purim, Song of Songs for Passover, Ruth on Shavuot, Lamentations on Tisha B’av and Ecclesiastes for Sukkot.
Ecclesiastes, traditionally attributed to King Solomon, takes popular wisdom of the time and challenges it. One of the themes running throughout the book is the question of whether or not the good are rewarded and the evil punished.
In pondering the question of divine justice, Ecclesiastes observes how fragile life is. This focus on the fragility of life is why we read the scroll on Sukkot. We spend the week dwelling in our temporary shelters raising our sensitivity to our dependence on the natural world. The sukkah must allow drops of rain through, God willing, and cannot be so solid as to be deemed a permanent structure. We must feel the elements. We must feel our place in the world.
Long before Woody Allen, Ecclesiastes contemplated life, how fleeting it is, whether it is affected by divine justice and the meaning behind it.
Ecclesiastes is credited with several timeless statements including one that, I believe, is inaccurately understood in English.
If we take out our trusty King James bibles, we find Ecclesiastes’ opening statement in the second verse of the scroll, “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” I’m an optimist and there just doesn’t seem to be any way to save that passage but maybe one of the standard Jewish translations will help. The Jewish Publication Society in their latest translation from 1985, known as New JPS renders this verse, “Utter futility!—said Koheleth (that’s the Hebrew name of Ecclesiastes) Utter futility! All is futile!
That didn’t help.
Here’s the Hebrew…
ב הֲבֵ֤ל הֲבָלִים֙ אָמַ֣ר קֹהֶ֔לֶת הֲבֵ֥ל הֲבָלִ֖ים הַכֹּ֥ל הָֽבֶל:
Doesn’t that sound much better?
The word giving us problems is:
הָֽבֶל
I tried my handy Hebrew translating app… it also said ‘futility,’ which is a great example of an issue my teachers pointed out to me which is that our modern translations are often heavily influenced by years of cultural understanding. However, I remember professors who were expert in ancient Semitic languages pointing out a better understanding of this particular term. So, I dusted off my four volume Hebrew dictionary and with a magnifying glass found the term with a longer list of definitions…
It begins in agreement with King James, giving us ‘vanity,’ but it goes on… ‘emptiness, steam, vapor and breath,’ definitions which have a solid foundation, as it were, in their ancient semitic context.
Let me try it with the word ‘mist’ in for הָֽבֶל as I learned from my teachers…
“Pure mist, says Ecclesiastes, pure mist, everything is mist.”
It may not be a whole lot more comforting but it’s a very different concept, one that reminds us that life is fleeting and might, therefore, lead us to value each day.
We read a little further on in Ecclesiastes…
Ecclesiastes 1:13-14
13I set my mind to study and to probe with wisdom all that happens under the sun.—An unhappy business, that, which God gave men to be concerned with! 14I observed all the happenings beneath the sun, and I found that all is mist and pursuit of wind…
Ecclesiastes is describing life ‘under the sun’ and gives us the image of ‘mist’ and ‘wind.’ How quickly is a mist evaporated under the sun or dispersed by the wind. Like mist, life is fleeting. A much more powerful illustration when we use ‘mist’ instead of ‘vanity.’
Ecclesiastes sees how ephemeral life can be, here today, gone the next but he cannot find a connection between longevity and virtue. He’s having trouble seeing evidence of divine justice.
The character of Judah in Crimes and Misdemeanors acquired wealth which did not calm his troubled spirit and, ultimately, he appeared to get away with murder.
Ecclesiastes ponders the question of this classic human pursuit of wealth…
Ecclesiastes 2:3-11
3I ventured to tempt my flesh with wine, and to grasp folly, while letting my mind direct with wisdom, to the end that I might learn which of the two was better for men to practice in their few days of life under heaven. 4I multiplied my possessions. I built myself houses and I planted vineyards. 5I laid out gardens and groves, in which I planted every kind of fruit tree. 6I constructed pools of water, enough to irrigate a forest shooting up with trees. 7I bought male and female slaves, and I acquired stewards. I acquired more cattle, both herds and flocks, than all who were before me in Jerusalem. 8I amassed silver and gold and treasures of kings and provinces… 9Thus, I gained more wealth than anyone before me in Jerusalem… 10I withheld from my eyes nothing they asked for, and denied myself no enjoyment; rather I got enjoyment out of all my wealth. And that was all I got out of my wealth.
11Then my thoughts turned to all the fortune my hands had built up, to the wealth I had acquired and won—and oh, it was all mist and pursuit of the wind; there was no real value under the sun!
I remember the bumper stickers that that said, “He who dies with the most toys wins.” I hope they were meant tongue in cheek.
And while there is no question that some of the world’s great wisdom today is found on bumper stickers, perhaps there’s no better source than country music.
Here’s a verse from a recent song by Kristian Bush called Trailer Hitch.
I don’t know why
Everybody wanna die rich
Diamonds, champagne,
Work your way down that list.
We try, everybody tries
…to fit into that ditch
You can’t take it with you when you go
Never seen a hearse with a trailer hitch
Album: Southern Gravity, Song: Trailer Hitch, Artist: Kristian Bush, Songwriters: Brandon Bush, Kristian Bush and Tim Owens. 2015
I find it amazing and fascinating that the same questions, the same spiritual wrestling goes on today that Ecclesiastes grappled with thousands of years ago. Woody Allen explored it in Crimes and Misdemeanors, it’s on country music radio and we face it every day. I am quite sure that the vast majority of us are not dealing with the extremes we saw in the film. I certainly hope we’re not hiding embezzlement and eliminating mistresses, but Ecclesiastes’ contemplations are absolutely applicable to us.
What are our goals?
Ecclesiastes spent considerable time amassing wealth and, ultimately, he deemed it an ephemeral pursuit.
What are the measures of our success?
Many of us are striving to create quality families. I know it’s not for everyone but we all create a legacy whether through direct progeny or the community around us.
Whether we are instilling positive values in our children or modeling them for the following generations, we have the opportunity to engage in Tikkun Olam, the repair of our world.
Typically, my goal for these thoughts on Erev Rosh Hashanah is to set the stage, to give us the general subject I’ll be exploring throughout the rest of our services and I’ll commonly leave us with more questions and subjects to ponder throughout the High Holy Day season.
The subject…
“We define ourselves by the choices we have made.”
וּבָֽחַרְתָּ֙ בַּֽחַיִּ֔ים לְמַ֥עַן תִּֽחְיֶ֖ה אַתָּ֥ה וְזַרְעֶֽךָ:
…Choose life so that you will live, you and your children.
How does each choice we make serve the goals and reflect the values at the foundation of our lives?
How does each choice serve this world of Creation of which we are a part?
How does each choice fortify the legacy we are building?
There was a character of a philosopher in Allen’s film whose interviews for a documentary appeared occasionally and mused in a fashion quite reminiscent of Ecclesiastes. It was his words that closed the film…
We’re all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions
Moral choices
Some are on a grand scale, most of these choices are on lesser points
But... we define ourselves by the choices we have made
We are in fact the sum total of our choices
Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly
Human happiness does not seem to have been included in the design of Creation
It is only we, with our capacity to love, that give meaning to the indifferent universe.
And Ecclesiastes wrote:
Ecclesiastes 3:11-13
3:11God made everything beautiful in its time; God has also put an enigma into our minds so that we cannot comprehend what God has done from beginning to end. 12Thus, I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and do good in our lives. 13Indeed everyone who eats and drinks and finds satisfaction in our labor — this is a gift of God.
“We define ourselves by the choices we have made.”
וּבָֽחַרְתָּ֙ בַּֽחַיִּ֔ים לְמַ֥עַן תִּֽחְיֶ֖ה אַתָּ֥ה וְזַרְעֶֽךָ:
…Choose life so that you will live, you and your children.
May our choices bring us blessings…
May our choices build foundations for us and the generations to follow.
May our choices bring us from blessing to blessing and strength to strength.