Sermons & Stories

L’shana Tova!

We could use a good year! It’s been very challenging for far too many of us. Between COVID, the weather, physical and mental health issues, local, state, and national politics, tragedies overseas, and numerous other difficulties, it’s been really hard. And just when we think that things might get better, there seems to be another challenge, another turn for the worse.

That doesn’t mean that everyone is struggling. I’ve appreciated hearing from some in our community about how health and business and family are all positive. But then it’s not uncommon for them to share how they feel guilty that everything’s going great when they know it hasn’t been easy for so many others. Even when all is good it’s not easy to just be happy. There’s always a caveat. After the most joyous of celebrations someone will say something like, “Oh, that was amazing… for a COVID event.”

Whether things are going well or not, a complaint I’ve heard repeated throughout this time of turmoil is how common it is to lose track of the days. With resignation people share how one day can blur with the next and time slips away.

Some of us have looked for distractions – another show to watch, another book to read. We welcomed anything to pass the time. Some of us have just been distracted – it’s hard to focus. And some of us have had to deal with crises that directed our attention, whether we wanted to or not or whether we had the energy to deal with it or not.

I know that I have fallen into every category at one time or another over the past year. The general sense has been that life is just passing us by. I experienced that profoundly at our Religious School kickoff where it was surprising to see how much some of our young people had grown. In that moment I really felt the past eighteen months.

It’s a real challenge because losing track of days and time can feel like losing track of meaning and purpose and life. One way to reclaim our meaning and purpose during these uncertain times is to say, “hineini.” It literally means, “Here I am,” but the intention is more, “I am fully present.”

In Genesis 22, the traditional reading on the 2^nd day of Rosh Hashanah, God calls to Abraham and Abraham replies, “Hineini.” That’s when God instructs Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac. As Abraham and Isaac are walking together towards Mount Moriah, Isaac realizes that something is amiss. He calls to his father and Abraham answers, “Hineini, v’ni – hineini, my son.” And then when Abraham is about to offer up Isaac, an angel cries out, “Avraham, Avraham,” and he responds, “Hineini,” preventing the tragedy.

Three hineini moments within one small Torah narrative. The first marks a moment where everything changes. God is about to challenge everything in Abraham’s life. Abraham doesn’t know this, but he knows something big is going to happen. When he says, “Hineini,” he’s saying, “I’m here, I’m ready, I’m fully present.”  When the angel calls to Abraham with the knife in his hand, I’d like to think that when he says, “Hineini,” it’s with a little defiance. “I’m here and I am fully present and look what You are asking me to do!”

While there’s a lot more to unpack in both of those moments, it’s the hineini that Abraham says to Isaac that stands out right now. As strange as it sounds, this begins the only conversation between the two of them in the entire Torah. When he says, “hineini” to his son, I understand Abraham as saying, “You are important to me. I am fully present; you have my full attention.” We don’t know what words have been exchanged prior to this, we don’t have a good understanding of their relationship. We do know that for Abraham right then, the whole world consisted of only Isaac and God. While we would not want to emulate every part of Abraham and Isaac’s relationship, that hineini moment is worth exploring.

When we forget which day it is, when we think back and we can’t remember what happened yesterday or last week, we can feel adrift. To bring ourselves into the moment, to be present and focused can help us reclaim our sense of meaning and purpose.

Sometimes when we interact with family and friends, we just go through the motions. We communicate, but we don’t connect. We allow ourselves to be interrupted by phones or chores or life. This is normal – we can’t be one hundred percent present all the time. But at least once a day or as often as possible we should be able to say to the people who are most important to us, “I’m here for you; you mean the world to me; I care; I’m setting my phone aside; I’m fully present.” In other words, we too want to be able to say, “hineini.”

Saying, “hineini,” being fully present, is one way to tell someone that they have value. They are worth something as a human being. That is a gift to give to our loved ones and that is a gift we can give to anyone we meet. That doesn’t mean we have a deep moment of connection when we pick up our dry cleaning, but when so many people are getting treated so poorly for just doing their jobs, being present long enough to offer a moment of decency or appreciation matters sometimes more than we know.

In addition to being present with people, our tradition stresses that every mitzvah, every sacred deed, should be done with intention. When we give thanks for the food we eat, when we reach out to someone who is ill, when we light Shabbat candles, we do so with intention. Our rabbis teach over and over that every action can be a sacred action when it is filled with intention. Saying a blessing is like saying hineini. “I am here, I am present, this action brings meaning to my life.” Take a breath, push away the distractions, and bring your focus to the here and now.

It’s been hard and the uncertainty we have been living with doesn’t appear to be going away any time soon. In “A Man’s Search for Meaning,” Vicktor Frankl writes, “The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.” We can’t change all the problems of the world, but we can do something about how we approach it. Every day we are being called – by the people we love, the members of our community, perhaps even the Divine. As often as possible, respond with, “Hineini.”

May the times that we are fully present help us reclaim our sense of purpose and may this year be a good and sweet year for us all.

L’shana Tova Tikateivu!