Rosh HaShanah evening 5784 / 2023 -- “A Shabbat Fish Story for your Soul”

 Rosh HaShanah evening 5784 / 2023 --

“A Shabbat Fish Story for your Soul”  

<SING>  מַאן דְּיָזֵיף שַׁבְּתָא — פַּרְעֵיהּ שַׁבְּתָא  Man de-yazif shabta, par’eih shabta.

Believe it or not, we’ve just been singing words that are on that stained glass window over there. 

Earlier this summer we had a brief ceremony here with Susie Klein, our extraordinary stained glass artist, and Norman and Myrna Kasser, who donated this window.  Sadly Myrna passed away in August.  She had spent numerous years in remarkably devoted service to our community over the course of decades.   It’s really impossible to imagine our community without her. And it seems appropriate even before I share any comments over the course of these High Holy Days, to pause to remember this most remarkable, wise, sometimes provocative and always loving and devoted, leader and friend.  We join her beloved husband Norman, in sadness following the loss of his life partner of nearly 60 years and we pray that he, and all her loved ones, may find comfort.     Yehi zikhrah barukh -- may the memory of Myrna Kasser, מאירה בת לאה ונח, be for a blessing always. 

But back to this window.  At our gathering over the summer I shared some reflections on that new window,  The theme of this window is the 5th day of creation - according to the Torah that’s when birds and fish were created - so this window has images and texts related to birds and fish throughout the rest of the bible and rabbinic literature, including that on our new stained glass window is a fish that swallowed a jewel. 

Let me tell you the story -- it comes from the Talmud -- from the tractate called Masekhet Shabbat -- the part of the Talmud that discusses Shabbat.  The story is about a man named Joseph, whose nickname was ‘Joseph who honors shabbat’ - Yosef mokir shabbei.  The story goes that Yosef would live very frugally throughout the week in order to save money, so that he and his family and guests would be able to have the most extraordinary meal for shabbat.  This means that all the fish vendors in his town knew him, and one day when a particularly large fish came in to the market on a Friday morning, the vendors said: “You  know who would love this fish? Joseph who honors shabbat!”  so they find him and bring him to the market and they show him the fish, and of course he buys it. He prepares it and then he and his family are sitting down for their shabbat dinner, and they start to serve the fish, and inside they find a precious jewel, that apparently the fish had swallowed.  (The Talmud also tells the back story of how this jewel came to be swallowed by the fish, but I am less interested in that part of the story.) 

The concluding line of the story is the words we were just singing:  there’s a Saba - an elderly man - who hears about this and responds to this story:  man de-yazif shabta, par’eh shabta. One who is dedicated to Shabbat, one who invests in Shabbat - that person will be rewarded by Shabbat.

So when Susie Klein asked me for stories about fish in Jewish tradition, for a window about birds and fish in Jewish tradition, I thought of this story, and Susie made it happen - in her inimitable way, because of course she did it with a real gemstone there in the window, and you have to come up to look at it after the service. 

There’s no question that the early generations who told this story got a particular message from the story: that God provides miraculous rewards those who make sacrifices to observe shabbat.  Yosef’s righteous behavior got him noticed by God, who took  note of him and decided he deserved a reward, and orchestrated this situation by which he received the reward.  Over the course of Jewish history there have been many who have taken that kind of attitude about Jewish ritual and observance.  That observing shabbat, or keeping kosher, or praying, or fasting on Yom Kippur, serves as a kind of insurance policy to make sure you’ll be blessed and rewarded. And sometimes people for whom this miraculous ‘insurance policy’ idea doesn’t resonate at all-- might conclude that a story like this has no value in the modern era.

But there’s another way to understand this story -- and frankly this is how I understand it and why I love it, and why I suggested to Susie that we put it in the window. I think this is absolutely a true story about what happens when people make Shabbat a part of their lives. Because what was Yosef doing? -- It was a value for him to make a nice meal for his family every week.  To give his family an opportunity to come together and prioritize each other, free of distractions; to savor good food, probably to say words of appreciation to each other that maybe they didn’t have time to say over the course of the week.  And then, after weeks and months and years of having lived like this,  after weeks and months and years of making Shabbat a priority, suddenly he notices:  Because of the choices I have made and the way I have lived my life, I have this jewel on my table.  He realizes that over the years he has nurtured something so special and precious (though my sense is that he probably didn’t find it all at once, but that it gradually grew over the course of the years). I think that’s really what the elderly man’s words mean at the end of the story -  man de-yazif shabta, pra’eh shabta.’  one who invests in Shabbat will be rewarded by Shabbat.  

I chose to tell this story tonight in part because, whereas this is the first night of the new year, it is also a Friday night like any other. And how can a rabbi resist the opportunity to share some thoughts about Shabbat, which remains one of Judaism’s very greatest ideas and more relevant now than ever.  

Earlier this evening we sang one of the classic passages about Shabbat from the Torah -- “Ve-shamru.....”  The Shabbat is an eternal covenant between God  and the People of Israel, that God made the heavens and the earth in six  days, [which is according to tradition what we are commemorating on Rosh HaShanah], וביום השביעי שבת וינפש And on the seventh day, God rested.

Now in the Hebrew, this passage includes two words for "rested"-- uvayom hashvi'i - shavat vayinafash. Both those words mean “rested,” but with somewhat different connotations. First is the word “Shavat” - it means "rested" in the sense of "ceased from work.   But next we have a different word - the word "vayinafash.”  The word Vayinafash is often also translated just as "rested," but it has a deeper meaning than that - this word contains the word "nefesh," the Hebrew word for "soul." So another way one could understand this word is that on the 7th day God ceased from work and, in addition to ceasing from work, God did something else: even though this is a very provocative idea:  that God "activated God’s soul," or God "permitted the soul to be fully alive."  And in imitation of God, it’s traditional for us too, to rest on Shabbat in both senses of the word:  to cease from work, and to activate our souls. 

There’s an implication here that when it’s not Shabbat, our soul is not fully activated - vayinafash is apparently not our state of being at all times. A mystical teaching in the Talmud tells us that we each get a Neshamah Yeterah, an extra, additional soul, on Shabbat -- or at least that’s how it feels,  Because you can only hear the sweet song of your soul When you quiet all the background noise that fills up our lives. 

But I think this story has truths that go even beyond Shabbat.  The concluding line of the story reminds us -- that by and large, what we choose to invest in will reward us. What we choose to nurture will grow, for better and for worse. And that which we refrain from nurturing will not grow, again, for better, and for worse. Nurture shabbat, invest in Shabbat, and we benefit from Shabbat, just like almost everything else in our lives. Don’t nurture it, and it doesn’t yield its benefit. 

Recently I heard an interview with the physician and author Dr Lucy Kalanithi,  who said that one of the bits of wisdom she learned recently was actually from her physical therapist, whom she was seeing for back pain.  And the therapist was reminding her of the importance of doing the prescribed exercises on her own in between the sessions with the therapist.  

The therapist says to Dr Kalanithi: “You WILL do the exercises, will you?”

Dr Kalanithi says “Yeah, I’ll do them.”

The therapist says:  “No, really - I’m asking you to commit.  Because you really have to do the exercises.  If you kind-of do them, it kind-of works.  But if you REALLY do them, it REALLY works.”  

For Dr Kalanithi, this became a metaphor for so many things in our lives which we know they really help, we know we probably ought to do them, but we don’t necessarily feel fully committed to them -- so we ‘kind-of’ do them.  And you know what?  -- that ‘kind-of’ level of commitment really does ‘kind-of’ work.   To take some Jewish examples, someone who has a lukewarm commitment to Shabbat, or Jewish prayer, or Jewish learning,  really will get a kind of a lukewarm benefit from these.  But that’s an entirely different thing from REALLY doing it - and it shouldn’t be surprising if you invest ‘kind-of’ effort, that you might get a ‘kind-of’ effect rather than a ‘real’ effect.’ Like almost everything in our lives, we get out of it what we put in. Or as that elderly man in the Talmud used to say, man de-yazif shabbat, par’eih shabbat.’ One who invests in Shabbat will be rewarded by Shabbat.

So tonight on the cusp of this new year:  What will you nurture?  What will you invest in? What relationships will you prioritize? What traits in yourself will you work on to improve? What aspects of your soul will you tend to, and grow and water? 

It’s a good idea to decide carefully, because we probably can’t do everything, and it’s likely that our decisions about what to invest in and nurture will truly influence what will grow in our lives during the coming year and what will not. And remember that one of the themes of these high holidays, to put it bluntly, is that sitting here on the cusp of a new year, and making decisions about the coming year, is a most remarkable privilege. It’s something we only get to do a finite number of times; none of us get unlimited trips around the sun.

Before we resume tonight’s service, though:  you probably know that there’s a competition each year for who will be the person who’s not Jewish who gets quoted in the largest number of high holy day sermons each year. Last year I think it was Queen Elizabeth.I am thinking that in the running this year is going to be Greta Gerwig - co-creator of the Barbie movie that has been such a sensation this summer. Rabbis all over the United States preparing for the High Holy Days took notice in July when a profile of her appeared in the New York Times Magazine, and she talked about the back story of this movie, how it is that she wanted to make a movie that people would experience as warm and affirming, evoking the freedom of childhood in the best possible sense of the word, recognizing each person as an individual and encouraging them to build a better world.  (In addition to selling some merchandise.) And when she reached back into her memories, guess what she talked about:  

"[Greta Gerwig] told me that when she was growing up, her Christian family’s closest friends were observant Jews; they vacationed together and constantly tore around each other’s homes. She would also eat with them on Friday nights for Shabbat dinner, where blessings were sung in Hebrew, including over the children at the table. May God bless you and protect you. May God show you favor and be gracious to you. May God show you kindness and grant you peace. Every Friday the family’s father would rest his hand on Gerwig’s head, just as he did on his own children’s, and bless her too. “I remember feeling the sense of, ‘Whatever your wins and losses were for the week, whatever you did or you didn’t do, when you come to this table, your value has nothing to do with that,’” Gerwig told me. “ ‘You are a child of God. I put my hand over you, and I bless you as a child of God at this table. And that’s your value.’ I remember feeling so safe in that and feeling so, like, enough.” “I want people to feel like I did at Shabbat dinner,” she said. “I want them to get blessed.”  

So now you know something incredible - which is that the Barbie movie at its essence was an effort to bring the joy and satisfaction of a Shabbat dinner to the rest of America and the world.

Joking aside, my sense is that for most human beings, that’s one of our deepest desires and yearnings: to be blessed and validated, not for what we make and produce, not for the role that we play and what we achieve, but simply for who we are. To feel like we are activating our actual nefesh, our soul, and it’s being recognized and validated by someone else.  To be recognized as “enough,” and worthy of blessing just by virtue of being a human being. Because only when we feel like we are “enough” are we able to take the steps to grow and change and nurture and build.

I wonder if that’s what these words shavat va-yinafash שבת וינפש mean. Only when I stop producing and making and achieving can I listen to my own soul, get to know my own soul so that I can fully activate it. 

And that’s my prayer for all of us for for this new year 5784:  May we know the feeling of vayinafash וינפש - may we know what it feels like when our soul truly comes alive.  And may we use that feeling to make wise decisions about what we’re going to nurture during the coming year.  Because that which we nurture is likely to grow - and that which we invest in is likely to reward us.