by Rabbi Peter S. Knobel
Rosh Hashana Night 5760

If at first you do not succeed try, try again. That is something my mother taught me a long time ago. I would like to try something that did not work very well on Rosh Hashanah. There is a tradition in Judaism that when one has survived a major illness or operation or an accident, one recites a prayer of thanksgiving called Birkat hagomel. There is a blessing followed by a congregational response. The text of the blessing is:

Praised are you Eternal our God Ruler of the Universe who has sustained me in your goodness.

The congregational response is:

May the one who has been gracious to you continue to favor you with everything that is good.

I would now like to invite any one who during the past year survived a significant danger, and join me in the prayer. Please repeat after me:

Praised are you Eternal our God Ruler of the Universe who has sustained me in your goodness.

Now I invite the congregation to say:

May the one who has been gracious to you continue to favor you with everything that is good. .

Man tract und Gott lacht. Humans plan and God laughs. So goes the old Yiddish proverb. The Yamim Noraim are a season for reflection. Tonight I want to include you in my ruminations about the meaning of having undergone major surgery. The verse from the Torah

I 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,

has been a frequent inspiration for my High Holiday Devar Torah. This year it takes on special significance because the embracing of life is more than an affirmation of continued existence or mere concerns about health as important as they are. It is a conscious examination of what constitutes a meaningful life.

This Devar Torah is a work in progress because my reflections on the meaning of my bypass surgery are a work in progress. Erev Pesach instead of attending Seder I had coronary bypass surgery. From the moment I awoke I have been monitoring my reaction to the event. I entered the surgery with a great deal of casualness and confidence. I trusted my cardiologist Dr Ira Bernstein, the invasive cardiologist Dr Michael Sallinger who did the angiogram, the surgeon Dr. Timothy Votopka and the especially the anesthesiologist, Dr. Hugh Gilbert, a friend and a member of our congregation who put me to sleep and more importantly woke me up. Some have suggested that my lack of fear was simply a case of denial. On the other hand, I know of so many successful outcomes with people who did not enter the surgery as healthy as I did that my anxiety level was very low. It is true that both my father in law and an uncle died having the surgery but that was long ago and they were older and ill.

Our reactions to illness or infirmity and to its treatment are often influenced greatly by the approach of the medical personnel. If we lose our dignity our sense of ourselves as incarnations of the divine image, illness is often more frightening and our treatment more complex. I am indeed fortunate because my problem was straightforward and medical response equally straightforward. Yet what makes the experience extraordinary for me was the care of all my physicians. I was not a case; I was "Peter" to those with whom I had a long ongoing relationship, and "Rabbi" to my surgeon who I just met. I felt confident that those who treated me, cared for me, and {let me repeat} that I was not a case, a statistic, even a mere patient. My sense of personhood remained in tact. My four children, Seth and Amy Jeremy and Alyssa and my granddaughter Leah were truly amazing. I felt loved and supported. They assured me that life was ahead of me. Their warm and loving response made me focus on the future and not the past. And a little more than a month after surgery Alana, my new granddaughter’ was born on my mother’s birthday—was it a sign from Heaven or just my mother watching over me?

The support of my colleagues, the leadership of the congregation and so many individual congregants increased my desire to recover and recover quickly so that I could enter the community again. The prayers and visits of my colleagues and friends Rabbi Smith and Cantor Klepper were sustaining. The acts of kindness of Jill Randell, Hyma Levin and Rhonda Mlodinoff eased my recovery. The outpouring of concern from so many of you was moving and healing. The greatest debt I owe to Elaine, whose love heals and whose chicken soup is incomparable. Her matzah balls, whether the light airy ones that she prefers or the lead sinkers that I prefer are more effective than any analgesic. As always she is my mainstay in difficult times and the angel that I call her. She worried and fussed but insisted that I get back to my old self and if this were not possible to be a better new self. In some way this Passover was from a journey not unlike those of our ancestors. It has a haggadah that I am only beginning to write. Its texts are not fully understood. It is a journey whose final destination remains unclear but its hope is expressed in the phrase that completes the seder, leshanah haba birushalayim, next year in Jerusalem.

When one is ill, one discovers the wisdom and beauty of the mitzvah of bikkur cholim, visiting the sick. The Talmud identifies it as one of the mitzvot, which are rewarding in and off themselves but of such importance that they provide reward in the world to come. There is no question in my mind that the prayers, visits, cards, phone calls aid in the healing process. As a patient I was gratified by the attention. As one who has visited many over the years my understanding of the mitzvah has been deepened. I am reminded of the Talmudic story about the power of the healing presence of another person. The touch of another person can help to remove the pain and restore the other. Rabbi Johanan was a great healer. Other rabbis called upon him. It is told that:

R. Hiyya b. Abba fell ill and R. Johanan went in to visit him. He said to him: Are your sufferings welcome to you? He replied: Neither they nor their reward. He said to him: Give me your hand. He gave him his hand and he raised him.

But the story does not end there. The Talmud teaches that when healers become ill they cannot heal themselves. The concept of the wounded healer is important for when healers can acknowledge their own brokenness they become more effective healers.

Now R. Johanan the great healer of the previous part of the story is ill and R. Hanina went in to visit him. He said to him: Are your sufferings welcome to you? He replied: Neither they nor their reward. He said to him: Give me your hand. He gave him his hand and he raised him. Now the Talmud asks, Why could not R. Johanan raise himself? — They replied: The prisoner cannot free himself from jail. (Berachot 5b)

Recognizing our own vulnerability and weakness is very important. The willingness to seek help requires courage and wisdom. It is a strength and not a weakness to understand our own limitations.

One of my favor Chasidic stories centers around concept of love and friendship. Too often we use the word friend when we really mean acquaintance. What is the test and measure of love? It is not a simple question and no one response will suffice but this is a story that sets a very high standard. It is a goal worthy of achieving.

Rabbi Simcha Bunam once said, " I have learned the meaning of love by overhearing a conversation between two Polish peasants in a tavern. They were somewhat inebriated and one said to the other "Do you love me? And the other answered ‘of course I do’ and he continued ‘Then tell me where I hurt. And the other said ‘I do not know.’ Then the first man responded ‘Then how can you say you really love me.’ Rabbi Bunam continued, "to be a friend is to know where the other hurts."

Ideally all healers, physicians, nurses, therapist, clergy, friends and family would know us well enough to know where we hurt.

Judaism teaches, we are each God’s partners in the ongoing creation and the perfection of the world. For me this is most true of the physician. A beautiful midrash about the creation of humankind describes God as acting like a sculpture gathering clay from the four corners of the earth and carefully and gently molding it into the first human being and then animating the clay with the divine breath. This midrash helps me to think about my surgical scars. When I observe them scars I do not see them as grotesque or Frankensteinian, which is the way Joseph Epstein, a fellow Evanstonian, described his own bypass surgery in his article in the New Yorker. I view my scars as enhancements. The surgeon is an artist who takes the material he has, makes it different and enhances it.

It reminds me of a story of a very famous diamond that was damaged. It had a large scratch, which marred the once perfect stone. The king who owned the diamond was devastated and he offered a reward to any one who could repair it. The finest diamond cutters looked at it, but simply shook their heads. Then one old Jew said to the king, let me try. The king warned him that if he ruined the stone it would be his own ruin. About a month later the old Jew returned with the stone. The king looked at the stone and slowly his frown turned into a smile. The old Jew had not removed the scratch but had transformed it is the stem of a rose which he had carved into the diamond. The skilled hand of at artist transformed the beauty of flawed perfection.

The anesthesiologist as behaves in God-like manner. For he/she re-animates the clay by restoring the soul that temporarily lives outside the body while the individual is on the heart lung machine. In seeing physicians as instruments of the divine we do not make of them God, but we are reminded that their vocation is a sacred one. They care for body and soul. The mere mechanical model of the human being and the mechanistic model of healing often miss the point. Daily we recite in the siddur;

Praised are You, Eternal our God, Ruler of the universe, who has fashioned the human body with sublime wisdom creating an intricate network of' veins, arteries, structures and organs which must function properly. If one of them malfunctions, it would be impossible to rise and stand before You in praise and thanksgiving. Praised are You, O Eternal One, who heals all creatures and performs wonders.

There is nothing like illness to remind us of the blessing of health. But the prayer for the body is followed by a prayer for the soul.

My God, the soul with which You endowed me is pure. You created it. You formed it, you breathed it into me, and you preserve it within me. A time will come when You will reclaim it from me but you will return it to me in the life to come. So long as the soul is within me, I thank You Eternal God and God of my ancestors, Author of all works, Protector of all souls. Praised are You Eternal who has restored me to a new day of life. [My God, and God of those who lived before me, You who restore the soul to the body of us all, You are praised.]"

Each morning my soul animates my body and I am ready for a new day. The language of medicine and the language of religion belong together. Diseases and the ravages of the aging process are part of the imperfect structure of creation. Judaism also teaches that the world is created the way it is and it operates according to natural law. The technical scientific terms are required to provide the most competent treatment. The language of religion provides the meaning and the understanding. The combined language roots the helper and the helped in the same soil. To be a healer is a sacred vocation. The patient is a sacred vessel that is in need of restoration. The examining room, the operating room, the patient’s room are holy places. Business is not incompatible with holiness.

As I contemplate the meaning of my surgery I ask myself, Is there a new me or is it just the old me recycled?

The prayer Unetanek Tokef takes on increasing significance each year.

How many shall pass away and how many shall be born? Who shall live and who shall die? Who shall see ripe age and who not? But repentance, prayer and tzedakakh avert the severe decree.

This is a very difficult prayer. Its theology if understood literally is painful. The longer I live the more aware I am of the immense blessings and the horrendous agonies of living. I watch as dreams become nightmares and night terrors are transformed by the light of day into moments of exultation. The strange exigencies of life become more acute. We are challenged to see patterns of meaning in the good as well as the bad. It easy to believe when one feels blessed. God as warm and fuzzy,-a baby blanket that provides a sense of security is attractive. But when we are struck down sometimes our faith falters and sometimes it grows stronger. At times our fervent prayers seem to be answered as our lives fill with blessing--as tragedy is averted. At other times our prayers seem to be ignored, rejected or worse fallen upon infinite emptiness. I am painfully aware that this service which brings so much comfort and a sense of renewal to so many is also a source of anger, frustration and alienation to so many others. The words we say seem to promise more than many of us experience.

My own relationship with God is tried on a daily basis. I see so much beauty and wonder in the world. It testifies powerfully to goodness and concern at the heart of the universe. Yet the cries of suffering and images of brokenness obscure the beautiful music and darken the exquisite landscape. I am reminded, of the story from the Talmud, of the voice of the renegade sage Elisha ben Abuyah. When he saw a young boy climb a tree to chase away the mother bird before taking her eggs in fulfillment of the Biblical commandment, and the boy broke his neck and died, he declared: "There is no justice and there is no Judge."

The Holocaust, the death of the innocent and the suffering of the righteous, tear at the fabric of my faith and make my soul restless. A hurricane of divine fury, a raging uncontrolled irrationality, seems to issue forth from my soul and from the divine core of the universe, leaving the world and me like the devastated landscape at Mt. St. Helen after her cataclysmic eruption.

My three-year-old granddaughter Leah taught me how to think about these moments. She has a boyfriend whom she tells Elaine and me she intends to marry. We asked Leah the boyfriend’s name, and she said his name is God. I must say we were a little taken aback.

One day when we were baby sitting for her, we watched her walk from our living room to the corner of entrance hall in our house with what appeared to be someone in tow. As she walked she waved a scolding finger in the air as if admonishing the unseen second figure. When we inquired what she was doing, she said, "Grandma Goodie, didn’t you see that God was touching all your beautiful things in the living the living room?" God needed a time out. After a little while she went back to the corner and brought God back into the living room. The time out was over. There are times when I desperately want to give God a time out. I want to say to God, Rav lecha. Enough. But then I like Leah need God back in my life.

My faith lives with the contradictions. It enables me to pray for the miraculous and not be surprised when it does not occur. It allows me exult in the sudden unexpected blessing when it extinguishes the darkness. Tonight we call upon God to descend from the throne of Judgement and move to the throne of Compassion. I believe with all my heart and soul what my father believed; that we live in a moral universe. His was a cool and non-theistic faith that right would ultimately triumph, and every day he tried to live up to the ideal. His goodness was an inspiration and I think of him daily and constantly asking when difficulties arise what he would have done. My own formulation, however, is different than his. God wants the world to be the dwelling place of shalom -- a perfect peaceful harmonious existence -- the lamb and lion unmolested by the other. When we work in concert with God we are shitufei adonai: God’s partners. We can move the world in the direction of Shalom. Sometimes our actions support God’s purposes and the result is a better world then God and we rejoice together. Sometimes our interventions, and even God’s, are insufficient our wrong headed and the outcome is disastrous then God and we weep together. Our linguistic pronouncements in the worship service are the way God and we wish the world to be. I have much empathy for God and for us because the best-laid plans often go awry.

Each year that we live we cheat the angel of death. Does illness or untimely death have moral meaning? There are certainly passages in the Tanach and the Talmud, which assert that it does. But experience tells us that there is nothing automatic about the relationship between health and ethical behavior or for that matter ritual behavior. I wish to return to the Unetane tokef.

On Rosh Hashanah it is written; on Yom Kippur it is sealed. How many shall pass on; how many shall come to be? Who shall live and who shall die? Who shall see ripe age and who shall not? Who shall perish by fire and who by water? Who by sword and who by beast? Who by hunger and who by thirst? Who by earthquake and who by fire? Who by strangling and who by stoning? Who shall be secure and who shall be driven? Who shall be tranquil and who shall be troubled? Who shall be poor and who shall be rich? Who shall be humbled and who shall be exalted?

But Repentance Prayer Tzedakah temper judgment's severe degree.

I have come to understand this prayer as a powerfully disturbing yet realistic description of the fact that we do not know what will happen during the next year. Life is uncertain and unpredictable. Most of you know this far better than I. However, if you had told me that last Pesach I would be receiving my chicken soup intravenously rather than chomping on matzah balls, or feeling surgical pain rather than crying the exquisite tears brought on by too much fresh horseradish, I would have thought you crazy. There is much over which we have no control over. This may be a terrific year or it may be a terrible year. The conclusion of the prayer which seems to promise that everything will be ok if we repent, pray, and give tzedakah. In my view it really states that while there are many things in life which are beyond our control, we can control how we behave. Teshuvah (repentance) is about our repairing, restoring, renewing our relationships with other people. Life is with people and others give meaning to our lives. Prayer (tefillah) is about recognizing a deeper transcendent dimension to life. Life has its ups and its downs, its victories and its defeats, but we can tap into meaning in spite of it all. Tzedakah is about changing the world and making it better; creating a just world where people can live out their human potential. The prayer calls upon us to accept what is beyond our control and change what is in our power to change.

Under the category of children say the darnedest things, one of our nursery school teachers reports the following from one of her students. When I returned to Beth Emet after my surgery, one the children told the teacher. "God is back." It struck me that without realizing it the child was repeating something I have tried to teach myself. Every human is like God. We are wondrous and mysterious and precious beyond calculation. It is a reminder that in truth each of us is created in the image of God, and we are God’s most visible manifestation on the earth. How we live our lives and how we treat others either desecrates or sanctifies the image of God.

As we approach questions of illness and health, we have become used to medical miracles. Biomedicine now keeps many of us alive and healthy longer. But age, accident and illness will take their toll on all of us. In many cases a cure is not possible. Even amelioration of the pain, suffering, and disability is minimal. We will not be restored to our former state of physical health, but it does not mean that we cannot be healed. Healing is a learning to respond positively to life when life is not perfect. Refuah, healing in its most complete, in obvious sense means a cure, but in the deepest sense whether or not there is cure it can be renewal and an outlook on life that allows for meaning and significance. Pain and suffering can be great teachers--often awful and awesome instructors. They teach us about loneliness, loss, but they can teach us about love and caring. Weakness can give way to courage and self-absorption to empathy. To achieve this kind of healing is neither trivial nor simple.

My surgery has caused me to ask increasing questions about the meaning of getting older and the process of aging. It is true that I want to eventually become one of the well elderly. I take care of my body. I diet and exercise, but I have done that for years. I am more concerned about my spirit. I still have the same drive for success that I had from the very beginning. I am always planning. How can I transform this community? What new programs, what new skills what new staff do we need? How can I share my knowledge and experience here with a wider audience? Most requests for my time and presence are answered with a "yes". My wife and my family, I am afraid, do not get more of my time and attention now than they did before my surgery. They are used to it but it is neither fair nor wise. The spirit is nurtured by intimate relationships, periods of solitude and silence, concentrated study and unencumbered leisure.

In a strange way I have come to realize that I am concerned about my immortality. I have always said that I would be content if my epitaph were the world is a little better because he lived. I consider it high and important praise and legacy worthy to pass on to my children and grandchildren. Yet I have begun to suspect that I really want more. I want when the history of Judaism is written that I will be more than a footnote. Better still, when the history of the world is written a thousand years hence, my name will at least appear. Better still some thing I have written or said will have a continued place on the human curriculum. I wonder if I am so different from all of you. Does my striving for immortality deprives me from living more fully? Will I cheat the angel of death because I am so busy and he can’t find me or I am doing something so necessary God will not let it happen? Like Moses, I hope to continue striving until the last moment and only God’s gentle kiss will take my soul. Life after death remains an intriguing subject of contemplation. I am not sure of its reality but I do not despair of the possibility. The idea that my parents are united in death and that they frequently share a Viennese waltz is a comforting thought.

Recently I have become aware of something that I always say with pride but how foolish it sounds now when I repeat. I say, "It has been many years since I read a book for pleasure. I have so much reading to do just to keep up," and then I add "but I enjoy what I read." It similar to what some people say about work on Shabbat. Saturday is quiet and I can get a lot done with out interruption and besides Rabbi-work gives me pleasure. One of Judaism’s greatest gifts to humankind is Shabbat -- a time to pause and a surcease from the frantic pace of life. How many books on stress management tell us to pause and smell the flowers and taste our food and listen to music and spend time with the people we love. I, like most of you, have little or no Shabbat. Yes I am at services and we light candles and make Shabbat at home. I do refrain from certain activities on Shabbat, but I never really get into a Shabbasdick mode. The observance of Shabbat is a mitzvah; an obligation--one we owe God and ourselves. It has a structure, a beginning and an end that are marked by rituals. It is a mixture of family, personal and communal time. It has an attitude: one of gratitude and appreciation. It has a focus on holiness: genuine separation from the routine of the week and a concentration on our unique role in the universe. According to the Bible the Jew imitates God on Shabbat by blessing, resting, and sanctifying. To observe Shabbat is to don a special soul and to allow our soul to resonate to the soul of the universe God. The details of Shabbat observance have standard practices and customized features. I have no illusions that you or I, because of a single sermon, will suddenly change our practice. The Shabbat is about personal and communal well-being. It is about personal and communal survival. It is about changing us and changing the world. Making Shabbat alone or changing our personal practice alone is very difficult. I have no illusions because I have made abundant unsuccessful attempts. Even the simplest life style changes require effort. Most of us do not hear the commanding voice of God thundering from Sinai "Zachor et yom hashabbat vekadesheihu." Remember the Sabbath day and sanctify it." Yet I suspect we hear other voices; some internal which cry out for change, and some external; our family, our friends, our physicians. God’s voice, we are told, comes in the guise of familiar voices to which we are likely to hearken. The Torah reminds us. "Six days shall you labor and do all your work but the seventh day is a day of rest for the Eternal." A recent medical study points out the people who attend worship regularly live longer and better lives. While considerably more study is required to understand the relationship between in longevity and worship attendance, it is a reminder that tradition is often wiser than we are. I wonder, How might Shabbat observance affect longevity? How might Shabbat observance affect personal well-being?

As you have probably concluded, I do not yet know what to make of my surgery. There was not an obvious revelation--no epiphany that instantaneously changed me. A balloon which Elaine’s uncle and family sent me in the hospital and which has stood tall in Elaine’s study since the day I came home from the hospital is finally, as I write this Devar Torah, sinking to the floor. Does its movement have a message for me? I believe it means that the time has past for me to expect to be thunderstruck. Meaning will evolve as I go on living. The scar on my chest, which others recognize as making me a member of the zipper club, will be a permanent marker. I hope it will be a sign of renewal, not merely of doing the same thing over and over. I hope it will become a reminder of mortality that will teach me to number my days and to become wise. But I am not sure it will. It may have no more impact than the tonsillectomy that I had as teenager. Although I must say that I rarely have had a sore throat since. So when people ask me, "Are you I fully recovered? Are you back to yourself?", my quick unthinking response is, "I feel wonderful. I am completely recovered. I am still me." Yet I wonder can I really ever be the same after others have literally held my heart in their hands. When and I understand it more, I will share it with you.

Choose life. I thank God and so many others that my life continues. I pray that in the years ahead I will use my time wisely in the service of God, of the Jewish people and humankind. May each day be an opportunity for each of us to sanctify the ordinary and to sustain each other in love.

Amen.