Atoning Every Day

We end the Aleinu prayer by saying the words, v'ne-emar v'hayah Adonai echad u'shmo Echad, "on that day Adonai will be One and God's name shall be One." Throughout the generations, tradition has held that this declaration from the prophet Zechariah (14:9) means that God will be worshipped by all the peoples of the world and all will know God by the name given to God's chosen people, the name will be One. We can also say that "On that day, the unity of God will be established and the confusion caused by the worship of God under many names will be resolved: Allah and Christ and Buddha and all other names will at last be revealed as included in the One name of God." The emphasis of the prophecy is not on God. God is already Singular and God's name (meaning God's reputation) is already Singular -- Singular, Superlative, Quintessential, Exceptional, Matchless, Incomparable, Unequalled, Supreme, and Beyond Compare. But the meaning of the prophecy is that "On that day" we on earth will be unified by our sudden understanding of God's unity and our sudden realization that all names for God are really One and the same. "On that day" it is our world that will suddenly be "at One" with God. It is in this regard that I like to tell the story of one Hasidic rebbe who was so nearsighted that whenever he removed his eyeglasses he could clearly see God's unity.

Every High Holy Day Season we are confronted with the possibility to atone, to put a hyphen in that word, creating the two words "at and one" and meaning that atonement can bring us back to a condition in which we are "at-one" with God.

Even a moment of thought, though, will bring you to a startling conclusion. There is really no way that you can ever be separated from God. In reality, in truth, you and I are always and eternally at-one with God. The entire universe is always and eternally at-one with God. God encompasses all creation and hence there is no way in which we could ever be alone or separate from God.

Go out and sit on your lawn and you will soon learn that lesson. You think of it as grass, which means that it is a carpet of green, and that is how you usually see it, provided you have been watering and tending it. But if you get down on the lawn and look more closely, you see that it is not a mass of green, but a large group of individual blades of grass which only seem like a carpet when you glance at them in a casual way or when you study them from above. Even closer, you will notice that no two blades of grass are shaped entirely the same way. No two blades of grass grow at the same precise rate. No two blades of grass are precisely the same color of green. Like human beings, every blade of grass is a distinctive individual. All of them are one and each of them is one.

So, too, with human beings. Seen from above, we are a herd that is in need of shepherding. God must see to watering and feeding us, even as God provided food and water for the Israelites in the forty years of their wandering in the wilderness. Nevertheless, when you approach closer, you realize that each of us is singular and unique. We each require different amounts of food and water, different regimens of exercise, different kinds of nourishment for our bodies and for our spirits. All of us are one and each of us is one.

Just as each blade of grass must sense that its needs are unique so that it may thrive, each of you must sense that your needs are unique in order for you to thrive. Indeed, modern human beings tend to stress this uniqueness above all else. But we cannot escape being human, being a part of the world, being influenced by wind and flood, being forced to remove our shoes in an airport, being forced to carry a passport to travel abroad, being forced to obey the laws of gravity and motion, being torn asunder by the pain of others and the pain we experience ourselves and, just so, we cannot escape the inevitable feeling that we are alone even in the midst of all this unity.

A man once posed this very question to Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, "If God is always with us everywhere, why is it that we often feel separated from God?" The Baal Shem Tov replied that God is like a parent trying to teach a child to walk. The parent supports the child at first as the child learns to take one or two steps. But, in the end, if the child is ever going to walk on his or her own, the parent must remove that support. So God moves back a way and entreats the child to come close. The child totters and falls at first, then the child gets up and walks. When the child comes very close, God moves back a little farther. The farther back God is as the child continues to struggle to reach God, the stronger the child becomes in the skill of walking. God is always with us, but God wants us to walk on our own.

And, ask yourself, what good would that grass be to you if you had to support every blade in order for it to grow? What good would the blades of grass be to themselves if they could not grow freely? Think of them as stalks of wheat or corn, as your dog or your cat, as sheep or as cows. Think of them as birds or alligators, tigers or elephants, lions or zebras. Think of them as paintings or operas, as symphonies or statues. What good would anything in the world be if it had to be supported individually at all times, if it had no self-reliance and had to be guided at every moment?

And, yet, that is precisely what the world is like because it is God's world. God is constantly teaching everything in the universe what it needs to learn in order to operate on its own. From stars that begin as supernovas and shine brilliantly for millions of years and turn in on themselves to become dark holes that swallow the very light they once emitted to human beings who begin as infants needing constant care to become teenagers who sweep out in every direction to find meaning to adults who keep trying to stabilize themselves and to steady their own existence in order to comprehend their world to seniors who are filled with wisdom but eventually need the kind of constant care they required as infants. Like stars, like beasts, like trees, like grass, we human beings are caught in a constant cycle in which each moment is spent trying to learn how to walk in a slightly different way.

For many of us it is only toward the end of our lives that we realize that this learning process is life's real meaning. God is teaching us. Our need to be at-one with God is driving us forward when we make progress. When we falter and fall down, this too is part of the process. Rising up and trying again is not only the way to overcome failure, it is the way to keep learning as we walk toward God.

Some people take the whole walk, learn all the things they need each moment of their lives, and never realize that they are serving God's purpose. They never pause to look down from above and see that they are at-one with all things bright and beautiful. Some people discover this truth and give it a name which is not God. For William Wordsworth, God was wholly identified with nature. Yet it takes us no great insight to hear the God we know in Wordsworth's words:

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
     The Child is father of the Man;
     I could wish my days to be
     Bound each to each by natural piety. (1802)

We do not picture our One God as a human being, yet there is no great difficulty in translating the vision of Michelangelo painted on the ceiling of the Cistine Chapel, in which Adam looks up and languidly raises a hand propped on his knee and God with more effort and intent, looking a bit like an anachronistic Charlton Heston draped in beard and robe, looks down intently on His creation and stretches forth a hand with His index finger almost but not quite touching the hand of Adam. All of us are conscious of this image, but most of us are less conscious of the draperies and cherubs that surround the image of God. Next time you look at this image, look closely at the shape in which God is contained and you may realize for the first time that Michelangelo had encased God in the image of a human brain! For Wordsworth the path of at-one-ment was through nature and for Michelangelo the path of at-one-ment was through intellect.

There is no difference when Willy Mays makes that impossible catch, no matter how times you see the film clip in which he makes it or when Tiger Woods makes that impossible long put and you hold your breath as the golf ball teeters on the edge of the cup, or when Jesse Owens breaks the string at the end of the 100 meter dash at the 1936 Olympics. The artist and the poet and the athlete have this in common: they speak not only for themselves to tell us what they have learned or what they are learning, but for all of us to give us messages that are larger than their lives.

God is teaching us every moment, helping us learn to walk through this moment and on to the next. And every blade of grass is important if there is going to be a lawn. And every learning is essential to every life. When you tell a story about your childhood to a child, you are sharing what you know, but you are also adding knowledge to the consciousness of that child. When we repeat the words of the prophets and the words of the sages, we are selecting from all that is out there those words and sayings that help us now, that have meaning for the path we are walking now. We must be selective because we cannot ever be inclusive. But in our selection there is purpose. In every story we share with one another, whether about ourselves or about others; in every song we sing together; in every voice we raise in a cause worth pursuing, in every act of tzedakah we undertake because it must needs be done, in every mitzvah we do, in every ritual we share, in every prayer we repeat to one another and to ourselves, we are learning something for ourselves and sharing something that will add meaning to the life of others.

And what does it all add up to? What meaning can you draw from all this poetry and art and sports and cooking and accounting and lawyering and doctoring and teaching and repairing? It is what the prophet said, "On that day," meaning every day -- this day and every other day -- we not only advance ourselves as we try to reach God along the path of our lives, but we become more like God by enabling others to walk a little better in the path toward atonement, toward being at-one, toward being not a single blade of grass but a lawn that pleases and brings beauty, that gives us pleasure and cools our feet on days of intense heat, and holds the earth in place so that rain and wind will not destroy it, nor will it ever perish even though every blade of grass has its appointed time to perish.

How you choose to do your atonement is up to you. You may become closer to God through listening to a song by Amy Winehouse or one by Willy Nelson or one by Ludwig von Beethoven or to one you yourself have written. You may become closer to God by supporting CJCN or the Humane Society or the Jewish Federation or some person or thing that only you realize is in need. You may become closer to God through prayer or through drama or through watching television or through attending the movie theater or through writing your own stories. You may become closer to God through reading or painting or stitching or scrapbooking or embroidery or cooking or dancing or playing a musical instrument. You may become closer to God by seeing the stars at night or the rainbow in the daylight or by standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon or by witnessing Niagara Falls.

Whatever path you choose, it is the walking of it that brings you wisdom and the wisdom of sharing it that makes you more than yourself. And whatever path you choose, you can be certain that just in front of you, teaching you and guiding you, God is there waiting for you to reach your goal and God's goal, to become the best you that you can be, for your sake, and for the sake of every other person in the world and for the sake of the universe that God created for your sake. You will remove the spiritual glasses from your eyes and realize that all this is one and the same, all magical, and all mystical. V'ne-emar v'hayah Adonai echad u'shmo Echad, on that everyday of your atonement, God will be One and God's Name will be One. And let us say: Amen.