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KOL NIDRE 5783
Hurricane Ian was still raging with devastation when politicians began blaming each other for allowing it to happen. Hurricanes happen as they have for all time. Blaming others is not a modern phenomenon. The Torah is filled with finger-pointers. Eve ate the forbidden fruit, and when Gd confronted her, she told Gd that it was the snake’s fault; he deceived her. Adam blamed not only Eve, but had the chutzpa to blame Gd: “The woman that You gave to be with me—she gave me of the tree and I ate.”
Finding fault is an American preoccupation. Let me read you a few examples:
· A California woman was driving a Porsche after having had several drinks. While driving 60 in a 25-mph zone, she had an accident in which her passenger was killed. Porsche was ordered to pay $2.5 million for having designed a car that was too high-performance for the average driver.
· An overweight man with a heart condition bought a lawnmower from Sears. Later he had a heart attack while starting the mower. He was awarded $1.8 million.
· While in the process of attempting to burglarize a school, a man fell through a skylight. The company that insured the school was ordered to pay $260,000 in damages and to give the would-be burglar $1,500 a month for life.
· In Maryland, 2 men tried to dry their hot-air balloon in a commercial laundry dryer. The dryer exploded, injuring them slightly, and they ended up winning almost $900,000 in damages.
Now these are just a few examples of a very large problem. I’m probably dating myself, but remember when we used to sing, “Blame It on the Bossa Nova?” Now we turn to a social media that revels in shame/blame games and accusations. It’s a psychological game we play to make sure that we don’t ever have to feel worthless. If you are to blame or if I can shame you, then YOU can’t blame me, and I won’t have to feel shame.
It’s not just social media. We tend to be pathological complainers. In Yiddish we say, Er burchet, “he grumbles, he complains.” Many of us are constantly grumbling! We grumble because of our employers or employees, our synagogues, our doctors—even our rabbis. Our spouse is blamed if we’re unhappy. Our kids are blamed for not being as good as we were and, of course, our parents are blamed for everything!
A marriage counselor once asked a husband, “Can you really blame all of the problems in your marriage on your wife?”
“Not really,” he said. “Only half of the problems are the fault of my wife. The other half is the fault of her mother!”
Here’s another very graphic Yiddish expression: a ferkrimte ponim, “a sour puss.” Surely, you know people like this. They may be sitting next to you now. Nothing is ever good. Their homes are not large enough; their vacations not long enough; their neighbors not friendly enough; their family not considerate enough.
The other side of the coin, of course, are those who blame themselves when things go wrong and can’t move on. Rabbi Harold Kushner, writes about the baseball (1986) season when the Boston Red Sox were making a run for the World Series:
The Red Sox were in a playoff game in California. If they lost, their season would be over…With 2 out in the 9th inning, California pitcher Donnie Moore gave up a home run to Dave Henderson that cost California the ball game. Donnie Moore never got over that one mistake. He dropped…out of baseball…and took his own life. He could never forgive himself for doing that one thing wrong.
Now contrast that with something that once happened [in 1983] at a college basketball game. A 19-year-old sophomore from Michigan, Chris Webber, made a mental mistake that cost his team the national championship. But unlike Donnie Moore, he didn’t lose faith in himself…A year later, Chris Webber was the NBA’s Rookie of the Year!
My friends, on Kl Nidre night we come before Gd asking forgiveness—pledging to do better. But we can’t begin the process of forgiveness unless and until we break loose from this blame-game mentality. So, stop playing the victim! Take the challenges that life throws at you and use them as vehicles for growth. Easy for me to say? OK, but let me illustrate what I mean with an amazing story I found in a Delta Sky Magazine called, “Alexandra the Great”:
Alexandra Scott, a vivacious, intelligent child was diagnosed was Neuroblastoma—a deadly childhood cancer of the brain for which there is no cure. But this never stopped her from smiling and always wanting to help others. When she was 7, she had a stem cell transplant to give her more time. The treatment left her mouth so ravaged with sores that it wasn’t until she could talk again that she announced to her parents that she wanted to have a lemonade stand to raise money for the hospital where she was treated: “I want to give to my hospital. Because all kids want their tumors to go away.”
She pestered her parents until they agreed. She even offered some of her own toys for sale along with the lemonade. Her parents had no idea just how brilliant their little girl’s idea would prove to be.
Alex opened for business on a warm October afternoon, after her sister Liz tipped off the local newspaper which ran a feature story on Alex—and then the magic unfurled. People lined the streets in their cars even bringing more toys for Alex to sell. And although hand-lettered signs read “50 cents a glass,” her money jar soon filled with $5, $10’s and $20’s. Before the exhausted Alex called it a night, she had collected $2,000.
But that was just the beginning. As Alex got weaker, she caught national attention. Oprah Winfrey had her on her show and magazines featured her and her mission. Alex stunned everyone as she explained to an interviewer from Family Circle Magazine; “My goal last year was $100,000 and I made that. Now I want to raise $1,000,000. Soon every state had an Alexandra Scott lemonade stand, and with corporate sponsors she did it!
Now that you’ve head Alex’s amazing story, here’s the rest of the story:
Before Alex passed away, a horse breeder, John Silverstrand, was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer and given months to live. He’d heard about Alex and her lemonade stands just as he began raising a horse, he named Afleet Alex, who almost died at birth but was bottle-fed back to life. He pledged to give a portion of all the horse’s winnings to help fight pediatric cancer.
The horse placed 3rd in the Kentucky Derby. In the final seconds of the Preakness, the horse in front of Afleet Alex clipped him in the knee with his back hoof. Alex buckled and lost balance. It was a miracle…to the amazement of the crowd, Alex’s spindly leg recovered and pushed past the other horse to win the Preakness by 3 lengths going away. The jockey, Jeremy Rose later said, “As Alex and I were going down, I felt a spirit of some kind, like it was little Alex lifting us up.”
In the end Alex raised $5 million—all of this from a sick little girl who never complained about her own illness or impending death…and whose only wish was to make a difference in the world before she died.
Wow! Alexandra Scott certainly had what to complain about. Her whole life was filled with doctors and surgeries and chemo—NOT the life of a typical child. Did she throw a tantrum and blame the surgeons, her parents or Gd? Not Alex! She literally took her lemons and made lemonade. She took the unimaginable challenge that life threw at her and used it as a vehicle for growth—not only for herself, but she lifted up everyone around her. She brought more light and love into this world than most people could in several lifetimes.
After hearing her story, how can we complain about our lives? How can we blame our problems on everyone else? Remember, we can’t begin the process of forgiveness on Yom Kippur unless and until we break loose from this blame-game mentality. So, stop playing the victim! Instead, be like Alex. Be the one who brings light into the world by giving of yourself despite the curveballs life has thrown you.
You don’t have to create a franchise of lemonade stands. But you can give of yourself to your shul, to the victims of hurricane Ian, to Israel, to your neighbor who’s not well. There’s no shortage of places that need your light. By bringing light to the darkness, you encourage others to do the same…and then you move from being a victim to being a lamplighter. This—more than anything—gives Gd a good reason to keep you around another year spreading your light.
The Chassidic master Reb Elimelech of Lizensk writes that before his wife would light the Shabbos candles he would say to her so softly and gently, “My dearest, holiest wife, you know our rabbis teach us that on erev Shabbos every husband and wife have a chance to fix the mistake that Adam and Eve made on the 1st Friday afternoon of creation. Do you know what was their biggest problem? Not that they ate from the Tree of Knowledge. It was that they blamed each other afterwards. So, my sweetest wife, I’m mamash begging you…we shouldn’t blame each other. I’m so sorry if I hurt your feelings, if I wasn’t good enough to you this week. Please forgive me if I didn’t treat you the way you deserve to be treated—like a princess, like a queen…” (Lamed Vav, Tzlotana Midlo, p.211)
My friends, let’s stop blaming each other. Instead, let’s ask each other for forgiveness saying, “I’m so sorry if I hurt your feelings, if I wasn’t good enough to you this past year. Please forgive me if I didn’t treat you the way you deserve to be treated.” If we do this, Gd can begin to forgive us and, perhaps with this, we can even repair the world. Amen!
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