Kol Nidrei 5771: Letting Go
I never used to check luggage. However, now that my family size has doubled, checking luggage is no longer a question. Just last month, we were boarding a plane to visit family in Washington, D.C. and we checked our luggage curbside at the airport here. In front of me in line, a man ferociously berated the SkyCap, barking: “Will you hurry up already? I’m going to miss my plane. I paid good money for this ticket and this is the service I get?! I bet you didn’t even go to school for this did you?!” And the man went on and on and on. And yet the SkyCap presented nothing but a smile and “You’re right sir—Yes sir.” When it became my turn, I couldn’t help but engage the SkyCap—I said to him: “I don’t know how you do it. That man laid into you and yet you just took it. How do you do that? How did you remain so cool and collected?” The SkyCap replied to me with a smile: “You see, that hot-tempered man, he was going to Seattle.” “Okay.” “He was going to Seattle, but his bags…well, they’re off to Boston.”
Almost immediately, my remarks for Kol Nidre started to take shape.
You see, both the irate traveler and the SkyCap were wrong. Neither the traveling man, nor the SkyCap, were able to “let go.” And both are worse off for it.
We’re left with the question: how do we handle angst and disappointment? How do we handle frustration, and desperation and helplessness? How do we confront the feeling of loss of control? Our tradition – in fact, our Yom Kippur tradition – metaphorically speaks to these very queries.
In the Tabernacle in the desert, and later in the Ancient Temple, on this very day of Yom Kippur, the High Priest would stand before two goats. A sort of lottery took place; the proverbial straws were drawn. One goat would be ritually sacrificed, offered to God, and the other would be sent off into the wilderness, to be thrown from a cliff. The goat for God became a holy and pure offering, but with the other goat, the High Priest, the Kohen Gadol, recited meditations and transferred his personal transgressions, along with the sins of his family and all Jews onto it—the scapegoat. And with a balance of care and rage, the scapegoat was escorted to the highest of precipices in the wilderness. Bystanders offered the Kohen food, water and provisions along his harsh journey—but he refused.
When the Kohen came to the cliff edge he tied one end of a red thread to the rock and the other end to the goat’s horns, and then he pushed the goat over the edge. On the fall down to the valley below, the goat tumbled against the jagged sides of the cliff, shattering all its limbs.
Two offerings. One pure and holy, the other seemingly savage and profane. Two ways to get the job done. Two ways to respond to and dispense with sin. Of course, we no longer sacrifice goats today, but we can understand these types of sacrifice as a metaphor in modernity. With that which pains us, we have the chance to act peacefully and with sanctity, sanity and calm, or, we can harbor the pain, the desperation, the helplessness in a savage way. Those things that bring us pain, those events that leave us feeling hopeless, helpless and lost, those grudges we bear, the anger, frustration and desperation—they are all “derailers.” And often these derailers throw us over a cliff.
These derailers—they’re all part of the path of life. But the way we deal with them: that is something we can control. And the way we act is treacherous, for if done incorrectly, then that is a mortal sin.
What grievous transgression is committed? This sin that comes to mind this Yom Kippur evening is the sin of preventing life. We prevent life by falling victim to these derailers. We prevent life by holding grudges, by bearing the burden of pains we’ve caused others and they’ve caused us. We prevent others from living. We prevent ourselves from living, from truly tasting life. Our emotions and our stresses take such a toll on our body. And when we let loss of control and desperation get the better of us, everyone loses. When we “let go,” however, we are emotionally and spiritually lighter. When we let go of the derailers, everyone wins.
Two seemingly unrelated events rocked my world over the past year. A number of you are familiar with both stories, but the power of the lessons of both have challenged me over the past year to come to this “letting go” state of consciousness.
Sarah started contractions as early as 28 weeks and she laid on bedrest for nearly two months. The whole time I knew not what to do or what to expect. Would the babies be okay? Would Sarah be okay? Would we be okay? Though the community was incredibly helpful, fear gripped me as I stood on thisbima one year ago looking for a sign from our Facilities Director, Peggy Kerska, that my wife Sarah was going into labor. Lo and behold, we got through Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. However, Aliza was upside down and backwards and Akiva was sideways…staying calm did not seem like an option. With many thanks to God and our wonderful doctor, Sarah gave birth to our little ones moments before Shabbat and Sukkot began just a few days later.
That was October. Now fast-forward to July. Sarah and I were privileged to take a vacation this past summer to celebrate our five-year wedding anniversary. Having kept my laptop for the duration of the week in a secure-setting in our room, the last night I intended to download my emails to do work on the flight home. I asked the hotel manager if he would be so kind as to lock my computer in his office so that I might have uninterrupted internet for the download. He did me one better and locked it overnight in the hotel vault. The next morning, upon closing our account and checking out, I was floored to learn that five armed gunmen had robbed the hotel at 3am that morning, and accompanying the thousands of dollars with which they absconded, was my beloved laptop.
Some of you may be asking yourself, “How can these two events possibly be connected?” It is not because my computer was a baby to me. And it’s not because our children were the reason we wanted a vacation in the first place. It’s because as a result of the two in harmony, I learned that incredibly difficult lesson of “letting go.” I learned you don’t berate the messenger and you don’t misdirect baggage. I learned that the derailers prevent us from progress in life.
My twins were born on erev sukkot. One important symbol that was strong and ever-present in my childhood, and that eventually held steadfast and present in my adult life, was and is the sukkah. I have always been quite particular about eating and dwelling in the sukkah. That’s my mitzvah. Nights were always spent inside the sukkah; meals always outdoors. The sukkah for me was a bond for family and friendship and a vessel for the appreciation of the Divine—and, for that matter, the sukkah bears witness to the frailty in the world supported and sustained by the Divine.
Even though some dear friends came over to help us erect and decorate our sukkah while Sarah was on bedrest…just days before the holiday, this past year, my sukkah stood empty and uninhabited as Sarah and I spent the holiday with our family in the comfy temporary shelter of the maternity wing and special care nursery of Abbott Northwestern Hospital. Nurses and Doctors were our ushpizin, family members from afar were our protecting angels traveling on ananei kavod, clouds of glory. But daily, as grateful as I was for the new lives with which my own life was blessed, I still lamented because I slept in the hospital room and the family overnight room. I was not embraced by the smell of autumn and the warmth of a sleeping bag but by the draft of my scrubs and the pungent air of hand sanitizer. I was afraid of this new world. I was scared about being a father. I remember sitting and crying thinking about how am I going to care for these little, fragile ones. Petrified that the kids might be too small for the carseat; that they couldn’t go outside, it was too cold for 4 1b and 5 lb babies; scared that they would stop breathing in the middle of the night. I no longer had control of my world. I felt helpless and lost.
But there I was blindly and naively overlooking the simplest meaning of the Sukkah. Sukkot, too, is about letting go. It’s about leaving your comfort zone and embracing the unknown. It is about stepping out of your permanent shelter and navigating the temporary path. I only now can appreciate that, after all these years.
As I’m sure you can imagine, that week was the first of many occasions over the past year when things did not go according to plan or to schedule. Attending morning minyan, taking part in friends’ weddings, sleeping, eating—even davening at times. I learned quickly, harshly and carefully that I needed merely to “let go.” I needed to let the road navigate me instead of attempt to navigate the road.
When the hotel manager said those painful words to me, “Rabbi Olitzky, I’ve got some grave news,” I thought someone had died. Sure, it wasn’t cancer, it wasn’t a heart attack—it wasn’t any of those terrible medical revelations. But I wasn’t comforted or even relieved when he told me plainly: “I regret to inform you that your laptop was stolen from our hotel vault early this morning.” My first response was “Come on, right, you’re joking.” But then the reality set in—I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t stand. Social Security numbers, passport copies, our baby pictures, our wedding pictures, sermons, source material, any creative work I’ve ever produced over the past decade. I might as well have had an illness. I might as well have experienced a death. My whole body and mind shut down. I just sat there numb and my world began to close in.
My father tells me that his bubbe was a woman with very, very little means. An even she always used to say, “If it can be fixed with money, then it’s not important.” And you know what? She was right. As it turns out, I did in fact have everything except for my email successfully backed up. It may sound absurd, but I had 250,000 emails archived and filed away on my computer. I had emails going back to the late 1990s. I would often reflect on the emails sent moments after the planes struck the towers on September 11th. I would ponder the emails I received from friends after an illness, or from congregants after a funeral. From classmates after a party or from cousins after a simchah. For me, emails were pages of history, real and urgent, and they were ripped from me.
With those lost emails, the whole way I relate to the world has changed. And though this may sound extreme to some of you, and you may not be able to relate to the way I relate to my computer, imagine someone taking all of your high school yearbooks, or your journals or diaries, or your medical records, or passport, or perhaps love letters or poetry, and tossing it all into the fireplace.
I walked through security with an empty computer case. I flew the entire flight back, staring off into space, really believing as though that was it: I really thought my world was over. But then I got home and sat and held my babies—the blessed variables that changed my world in the first place. I was learning to live in the now.
There’s something greater in this world—and the only way we can arrive there is by letting go.
But letting go is not offering a goat on the altar nor casting it off a ledge. It’s something wholly more emotionally, mentally and spiritually involved.
Moments ago, we recited the Kol Nidre: the chief “letting go” prayer of Yom Kippur. But how many of us have ever truly contemplated the significance of the Kol Nidre? Essentially, we come together, standing as individuals, united before God, bearing our souls, and, in theory, we let go. We cry out to God in the familiar melody of our grandparents and great-grandparents. We wholeheartedly declare – better, we annul – any promise, any commitment, any vow, that we made over the past year. We declare them null and void. I suppose that nullifying promises is a bit easier then letting go of the derailers, but again, I ask, do we really let go of everything we need let go of this sacred evening?
For some of you the concept of letting go is a given. But I needed the balance of the blessing of the babies and the curse of a stolen laptop to help me to understand because I suppose I always thought, albeit erroneously, that with such a richly, preserved tradition, we’re against “letting go” in Judaism.
There is no doubt that we have a strong concept of “Zakhor” in Judaism. We are taught from a young age to remember and never to forget: the Holocaust, the Exodus from Egypt, Yizkor and Kaddish. And there is great merit in remembering.
We are a people of memory, but we believe deeply that we should learn from our memory, not become paralyzed by it. Not become paralyzed by the derailers.
And fighting that paralysis is “letting go.” For letting go is also our nature, it is our birthright. We’re created in the image of God, and even God recognized after the flood that the world, if it were to be populated with human beings, it would be an imperfect place, as much as God strove to make it perfect. So God let go and promised never again to wipe out the entire earth.
But we are not God and we are not all-powerful, omnipotent. God created this earth, the oceans and the mountains, the shores and the stones. And God could do away with them in a flash…perhaps we can too. How many muscles do you need to strain and how much energy do you need to expend to raise a boulder over your head and hold it for weeks and weeks and months and months and years and years? Now, how little do you have to do to let it go? Sure, you may be afraid of hurting yourself as you drop it, and perhaps putting it in its proper place—but it’s a given: when it’s out of our hands, we float up and we feel lighter. We feel ready to return to a life of happiness; we feel ready forthe return, for Teshuvah.
Maimonides teaches us that teshuvah does not truly exist unless it is partnered with Vidui, confession. That is to say, that one cannot sincerely be penitent and change their ways for the better unless they’ve confessed to themselves, to their peers and to God how they’ve erred.
More important than the apology that weaves its way through the vidui is the power of the act of the verbal confession itself. This is not only the rote ritual of beating our breasts—ashamnu, bagadnu, gazalnu… This is putting into words our suffering, our emotional torment. As the words of a confession take flight out of the shelter of our lips, they take with them the weight of pain and regret. This weight is replaced by the powerful combination of optimism and humility. And with those two in hand, then and only then can we begin to create a more perfect personal and communal world.
The first step to letting go is verbalizing what it is you need to let go. What is it you need to let go of this year? Take a moment and reflect on what is eating away at you—what is cutting into your ability to smile and your ability to love? What is preventing you from sharing laughter and simchas with your extended family? What is preventing you from doing well at work or at school? What is stopping you from being all that you can faithfully be? Take a minute and reflect on your derailers.
Now that you have in your mind images of what you need let go of this year, reduce each image down into a few words or a phrase or a short sentence. Now is the time for a vidui. We have to say it out loud. And we have to embrace it. In the world of the Twelve Steps, the first step is all about admitting when we are powerless. The weights we lug around for a lifetime sap our power. Now is the time to admit we are powerless. Now is the time to offer up our personal sacrificial goat. Now is the time to cast off our sins—just as we gathered together last week for Tashlikh. Let go, and Let God. This time, use your words and let your actions follow. Don’t settle for tossing bread as your sole act of “letting go” this year. If you feel comfortable, I encourage you to begin the process of letting go tonight, right now. Don’t be afraid—we are all brave enough: say aloud what it is you need to let go of this year…
[Personal Sharing]
…And now it’s out there. We cry over the next 25 hours Avinu Malkenu Zokhreynu Zikaron Tov L’fanekha—Our Father, Our King, remember us favorably. But that’s only a start. We cannot beseech God to remember us favorably if we cannot navigate the world favorably. Verbalizing our derailers is just the start to living in the now. What follows is patience, is tolerance, is compassion. What follows is trying as hard as we can not to sweat the small stuff, and perhaps even some of the big stuff too.
In brushing aside the grudges, the helplessness, the pain, the loss, the anger – in letting go – we seek the goal of something greater in this world. And that something greater is the primary goal in life: simply to be happy—but in achieving our own personal happiness, we must remember: we simply cannot allow ourselves to take happiness away from others.
Starting with letting go, each of us has a different path returning to happiness. For some of us, it may be the synagogue. For others, it may be exercise or free time. It may be family. It may be finally reading that book, or even publishing that book. It may be finding that long lost love. It may be an apology. It may be a trip—whatever it is: Letting go is step one. Happiness is step three. From this day forward, you are the only one who knows what is and is in control of step two.
If we move on after Yom Kippur, and we find ourselves not happy, we haven’t embraced the message of the Kol Nidre. We haven’t embraced the message of the Avinu Malkenu. We haven’t embraced the message of Tashlikh. We haven’t embraced our tradition. We simply have not let go. We’ve become the traveler and we’ve become the SkyCap. And Yom Kippur, this Day of Atonement, the day of wiping the slate clean is truly about finding inner peace and happiness, and finding out what’s inside each of our selves.
May each of our lives be lighter this year and the lights we shine shine brighter. May we find the courage to be the first to let go even when others have not. May we inspire happiness in others and become happy from others’ inspiration. And most important of all, may we find ourselves written and sealed in the Book of Life this year, and though the pen may be God’s, may the handwriting be our very own.
