ROSH HASHANAH 2 5785

Add Value to Your Life

Another name for Rosh Hashanah is Yom Hadin (Day of Judgment). Since yesterday I spoke about Israel and enlisting in Gd’s army to do your part to support Israel, today I will speak about the Day of Judgment and what that means for us. I begin with the story of Judge Mindy Glazer.

My dear friend, Rabbi Jory Lang from Miami, knows judge Glazer and shared with me her story. In her courtroom in Miami-Dade, Arthur Booth, a 49-year-old man appeared for a bond hearing. Arthur had been arrested the previous day for breaking into a home, stealing a car and then leading the police on a miles-long street chase. He caused 2 accidents before he was finally caught and arrested. What happened in that courtroom was almost too fantastic to be real. It was all recorded on the courtroom video.

Judge Glazer shuffled through papers on her desk and suddenly looked up, stared at Mr. Booth and asked, “Did you go to Nautilus Middle School?”

         Booth broke down in tears and cried out, “Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.” Both were once promising students.

         “I’m so so sorry to see you here. I always wondered what happened to you, sir,” Glazer said. She turned to the court and said, “This was the nicest kid in middle school. We used to play together and now sadly look what happened.”

At this point Booth was crying uncontrollably, repeating over and over again, “Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.” Judge Glazer set the bond at $43,000 and closed the hearing by saying, “Mr. Booth, I hope you’re able to change your ways to come out of this okay and live a lawful life. Good luck to you sir.” The video has been seen millions of times.

After the hearing, Booth’s cousin was interviewed and asked why she thought he was so deeply distraught? She said, “He was probably thinking, I had those same opportunities that Judge Mindy Glazer had. That could have been me up there. I could have been a judge too, just like my friend Mindy.” He was so overwhelmed with emotion because he was so filled with remorse and with thoughts of what might have been.

This was an incredible encounter by itself, but let me tell you the epilogue to the story. 10 months later, Arthur Booth was given an early release from prison for good behavior. Standing there to greet him at the Correctional Facility upon his release were members of his family—and Judge Glazer! This too was captured on video. After hugging his family, Booth fell into his former classmate’s arms. Looking him in the eye Judge Glazer said, “You’ve got to take care of your family. Try and get a job and stay clean. Don’t let us down.

         “I won’t,” he promised. “I won’t.”

As they bid farewell, they resolved that the next time they meet would be not in a courtroom, but at a class reunion.

There’s something so powerful about that moment of recognition between Judge Glazer and Arthur Booth in this courtroom scene. I think of this story and think about Gd looking at each and every one of us, looking up from his papers and saying, “Is that you? Is that you I knew since childhood? I knew your potential. I knew what you were capable of.” The truth is we know it too!

Remember, a few years ago, the people of Hawaii woke up to an emergency alert on their phones that said: “Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill.” With the situation between the United States and North Korea being very tense then, Hawaiians understandably panicked, believing they were the target of a nuclear attack.

         Some ran into basements. Others hid under tables. Some even climbed down manholes in the street. It took a full 38 minutes until the state finally issued a correction explaining that the warning was a false alarm. It seemed an employee simply pressed the wrong button. Oops! But for 38 minutes 1½ million people scrambled to try to find a safe place.

But they also did something else. Thinking that a catastrophic attack, possibly a nuclear holocaust was imminent—Gd forbid—they were forced to consider how to spend their last moments on earth. Thank Gd the warning was a false alarm, and the extent of the damage was just a lot of anxiety.

But nevertheless, I think there’s a lesson for all of us in Hawaii’s unfortunate experience. If you had 38 minutes to live, how would you spend them? What would you reach for? Who would you call? Would you open a prayer book? Would you say the Shema? Would you reach for a phone to tell someone you love them? Would you contact someone you wanted to reconcile with in your last 38 minutes? What would you do if you thought you had a very limited amount of time left?

This leads to the obvious follow-up question: Why aren’t you doing that now? As Tim McGraw sings: “Someday I hope you get the chance to live like you were dyin’.” In those 38 minutes, the people of Hawaii had that chance. But why wait for an emergency alert to get us to think of it?

This reminds me of something my mentor, Rabbi Benjamin Blech, shared with me a few years ago. Rabbi Blech—from my perspective—is the most brilliant teacher of Torah today. He is the author of 26 books. Some of you might remember when I brought him to Atlanta a few times as our scholar-in-residence. Rabbi Blech writes of a similar lesson inspired from the New York subway system: The Metropolitan Transit Authority issues cards that you slide through the turnstile to get through to a train station. There are automated kiosks near the turnstiles where you can add credit to your card. You can either buy a certain number of rides and put that value on the card. [So let’s say you put $30 on your card which grants you 10 rides and they throw in some type of discount the more you purchase] or there’s another option. The other option is a flat fee for a certain amount of time. If you buy 7 days, for 7 days you could ride as often as you want…

         He continues: Just before Rosh Hashanah, as I was about to re-up my card, I came to the kiosk which offered me this choice: “Do you want more time or do you want value?”

         “Hmm,” I thought, “which do I want?”

Rabbi Blech is a very deep and thoughtful person. So before Rosh Hashanah it suddenly became an existential question for him: “Binyamin, do you want more time on this earth, or do you want more value while on it?” He continues: In a couple of days from now I’m going to be pleading with the almighty to give me another year on Rosh Hashanah. Is that what I want—more time to occupy space? Do I want more value to bring new meaning and purpose to my life throughout the next year of my life. The initial answer, of course, is I want both. But what if like the MetroCard kiosk I was only able to be offered one or the other. Which one would I choose?

         He answers: I thought about some of the greatest people of the past—some of them live long lives, others not so long. But what we remember most about them, is not how long they lived, but how they lived. At that point while standing in a New York subway station taking up space in front of the kiosk, angry New Yorkers were saying, “Hey, are you buying something here or not?” as I’m having this philosophical discussion with myself.

         The truth is, more time is not really up to me—it’s in Gd’s hands. But the value that I invest in my life—that’s completely up to me. That’s my choice to make, and hopefully, if I choose more value, Gd will be kind enough to grant me more time. Because far more important than counting our days, is making our days count! To which the angry New Yorker behind me said, “Get out of the way already.”

Now that you know the story, as Paul Harvey used to say, here’s the rest of the story. After undergoing an annual physical, Rabbi Blech was told by his doctor that he needed to call his wife Elaine so that they would both be in the room when he shared what he needed to share. You know that’s never good.

         He and Elaine told Cheryl and I at dinner when we were in NY, that he was diagnosed with a fatal disease for which there was no cure. After his diagnosis, the doctor said he had about 6 months to live. That was in 2011. 7 years later he was having this discussion with a kiosk in New York City and still today at 91, he continues to teach and to lecture and to write. Gd has indeed blessed him with both—hopefully to 120. Baruch Hashem!

Let me ask you: What does it mean to opt for more value? 1^st and foremost it means realizing that life is NOT something that’s going to happen to us. It’s something that is happening to us right now! An elderly woman put it this way: First I was dying to finish high school and start college. Then I was dying to finish college and start working. Then I was dying for my children to go to grow old enough for school so I could return to work. Then I was dying to retire. And now I am really dying, I suddenly realize I forgot to live!

So, today on Rosh Hashanah, let’s not forget to live—to really live! So add value to your life.

Sometimes we look for value, however, in all the wrong places. Take sports, for example. I think it’s amazing that with all its injuries, the Braves were still able to make the post-season this year. For some, however, sports become their lives. Fistfights can break out in a stadium if someone’s wearing a Jersey that’s not of the home team. Sports are a wonderful divergence. When our team wins, we can forget about our troubles for a little while and be part of something bigger. It can bring a whole city together. I totally get it. But then it ends, and the reality of our lives is still there waiting for us. And so it is with drugs, the TV—and all of our screens. They can take us away from the rat race. In that sense they are valuable—but they don’t add much value to our lives.

Gd says to us in the Torah (Lev. 19:2): K’doshim t’hiyu ki kadosh ani Hashem Elokeychem (You [the Children of Israel] shall be holy, because I Hashem your Gd am holy). That’s not just a command, it’s of the essence of a Jew. “You shall be holy;” you are a holy soul; you have no choice in the matter. There’s no getting away from it. This is why we Jews are the 1^st ones to chase every cult, every meshugas out there in quest of something more. It’s because our souls are telling us we’re lacking something we need. We look everywhere but in our own backyard.

I end with the story of an elderly Jewish woman who sets out from her home in Brooklyn to go to India to see the holy guru Maharishi Baba Ganoush. She flies to Mumbai, takes a small jet to a remote location, and a taxi to a bridge at the edge of a mountain. Then she’s told she will need to travel miles by foot crossing a valley to arrive at a small rural village.

         She finds the ashram and asks to see the great spiritual leader Maharishi Baba Ganoush. “That’s impossible,” the assistant said. “No one is allowed to see him for 6 months.”

         “6 months? I came all this way. I can’t wait.”

         “I’m sorry, no exceptions. He’s meditating for 6 months.”

         “No, I must see him.” She sits herself down by the entrance to the ashram and declares she’s not leaving. After 3 days, the assistant realizes he must make an exception.

         He tells her, “I’ll let you see him, but you can only say 5 words.”

         She makes her way through several hallways, and at an archway beyond a tunnel is this young man—the holy Maharishi Baba Ganoush sitting on a bamboo mat in a yoga position chanting. The woman steps in front of him. Looks him straight in the eye and says her 5 words: “Sheldon, my son, come home!”

It’s always the Jews going to the ends of the earth to search for a life of value and meaning when in fact it’s right in front of us, right here at home—a Jewish life filled with connection to Gd, filled with kindness and compassion, filed with light illuminating the darkness of this world. Our souls are starving. On this Yom Hadin (Day of Judgment) add value to your life as you come home and stay home. Amen!