Do you still love me?

Sadie and Abe had been married for many years. Over the decades, they had built a life together, achieving great material success, living far more luxuriously than they ever imagined from their humble beginnings. One day Abe came home from work, crushed, his face downcast and ashen. He turned to his Sadie, his life partner: “Sadie, today I lost everything. Our savings, our retirement, our yacht, our home in Italy, everything… Sadie, we don’t have a penny to our name. Sadie – will you still love me?” Without hesitation, Sadie turned to her Abe, saying: “Abe, I loved you from the moment we first met, I loved you when we had nothing, I have loved you every day we have been together, I love you now and I will always love you… I’ll miss you.”

Do you love me? Do you love me as much now as you did then? Do you love me rich or poor? In sickness and in health? Do you love me equally in my successes and my failures? If a single question could summarize the human condition, this would be it. Whether it is Sadie and Abe, or Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, or any of us, no matter who we are, all of us carry around this anxiety. It is the gnawing interrogative that makes us human: Do you love me? “It may not change a thing,” but as the song goes, it is sure “nice to know.” It is not just that we want to be loved, we want to be loved independent of station or standing, with a love that transcends time and place, context and circumstance.

It is this question, in its various formulations, that I have heard uttered again and again this year more than any other year I can remember. Our concern, our nagging fear is that our relationships are shot through with contingencies, and that once our station in life changes, so will the affections of others. Too often in the year gone by, we have asked this question and discovered to our dismay that our lives are filled with fair-weather friends. There are people who are with us when the going is good, at our sides in our victories, full of praise in our successes, and then, we discover that nobody knows us when we’re down and out.

In the past year, so many have faced this angst. While I am neither an economist nor an employment agency, in speaking to congregants, friends, and family across the country, I have learned that as disorienting as the loss of a job may be, as traumatic as the lack of financial stability is, equally injurious is the numbness one experiences on the day when the phone stops ringing. A social circle comes to a screeching halt, a sense of purpose is pulled out from under, we realize… that people love us, but maybe not for who we are, who we really are. It is a sting like no other to realize that your so-called “circle of friends” turns out not to be so present when the chips are down.

Here in this room, there are countless individuals suffering immeasurable psychological trauma from the effects of being overlooked or disregarded by those very individuals to whom they had previously been connected. Our sense of purpose, our sense of self is derailed by the effects of living in a disposable society. We live in a world where the human soul has been commoditized, each of us measured by an externally imposed sense of worth. It is not only those suffering from job loss who feel it. Our society does it to everyone. There are many alienated souls in our midst – the infirm, the handicapped, the homebound, the poor, all those who have been deemed a drain on the state, on the community, on others. The retiree, the divorcee, anyone who has found themselves estranged from their community of origin. Again and again the mahzor cries out – “al na tashliheni b’et ziknah, Do not cast me out in my old age!” Heschel explained that the what the elderly fear is not chiefly deteriorating health or human mortality, it is rejection by family and society, the fear that in frailty, we are no longer loved and needed. “Personal needs come and go,” Heschel wrote, “but one anxiety remains: Am I needed? There is no man who has not been moved by that anxiety.”
(Between God and Man, p. 132)

Time and time again, our society has proven to have no stamina, no “stick-to-itude” when it comes to the relationships that bind us together. As many of you may know, next month marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species, a book that explains why certain characteristics are more or less favorable towards adaptation and reproduction. A “who will live and who will die” minus the God part. In our free marketplace of social Darwinism, where affections are faddish and commitments ephemeral, our social fabric has taken a terrible toll. We have all served as enablers toward creating a world that lets our own sense of self and our perception of others to be derived from positions, titles, or status. Somewhere along the way, we have forgotten that the ultimate determinant to our happiness is not in a title or external trait, but here, within our core. As the great Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote, “The rank is but the guinea’s stamp; the man’s the gold for all that.”

I think a big part of the reason that I am so aware of the manner by which a sense of self is both freely given and quickly taken by our society is that the past year has been, for me personally, a fascinating exercise on this front. I have experienced many surreal moments when I have been made deeply aware of the opportunities extended to me as Rabbi of such a distinguished congregation. The change in stationery, as it were, has opened up whole new worlds in which my phone calls are returned, a Chancellor insists on being called by his first name, a teacher becomes a colleague, I share a quiet joke with an Archbishop and a handshake with Elie Wiesel. There is something about occupying the pulpit of Steinberg, Nadich, and Lincoln that confers rank upon a man. And yes, there are some days that I do pinch myself. But in all the excitement, not a single day goes by without my knowing that these very externalities are not and can never be the measure of my self-worth. I say this not merely owing to the importance of husbanding one’s vanity, not merely because my most treasured title is not “Rabbi,” but “husband” and “dad.” I say this because I know, as the High Holy Day prayer book teaches both you and me, Adam yesodo mei-afar v’sofo l’afar, man’s origin is dust and his end is dust. Whether this year has brought you high or low, all of us have a common origin and all of us have a common fate. Given this great equalizer, this paradox of being both the subject of Divine concern yet of profoundly humble origins and ends, I know that the trappings of our own lives, in their comings and their goings, must never be a distraction from our real sense of self.

It’s not that I don’t understand the need for standing and titles – I do. My brother-in-law served as the Acting Deputy Secretary of Energy. In order to become the Deputy Secretary (and not just “Acting”), he required Senate confirmation. During the process, one Senator asked him, “You are already Acting Deputy of Energy. You are doing the job, you have the office, you have the salary and you have all the responsibilities… Does it really matter to anyone whether or not you have the full title?” To which my brother-in-law replied, “Well, yes… to my mother.” For whatever reasons, admirable or otherwise, it is human nature and not necessarily wrong to seek status. But we should always remember that our lives are shaped by forces beyond our control, and we must resist hanging too much weight on that which will ultimately prove to be fleeting. None of us really know what the next stage will bring. Jerry Seinfeld once commented that there are four stages to the life of a comedian. The first stage is “Who is Jerry Seinfeld?” This is when you are starting out, when nobody knows you. The second stage is “Get me Jerry Seinfeld.” This is when you are up and coming and the buzz is growing. The third is “Get me someone like Jerry Seinfeld.” This is your prime. Everyone wants you, but can’t get you. The final stage, as you might guess, is “Who’s Jerry Seinfeld?”

Long before Seinfeld, our rabbis knew full well that we all come from the same point of origin, and that all of us will return to a common end. Perhaps each of us exists this year somewhere different on the “sine-cosine” of life, but we must not ever make the mistake of defining ourselves, or allowing ourselves to be defined, by our momentary station in life

On Rosh Hashanah I spoke of the great Israeli author Shai Agnon. There is a story told about Agnon when he learned that he had won the Nobel Prize for Literature. His friends rushed to his home to offer their congratulations. Reporters and photographers crowded into his living room to interview the writer and to take his picture. The Prime Minister and the President of the State of Israel called to wish Agnon mazal tov. Heads of state, artists, and writers from all over the world called or sent telegrams. At one point, a photographer asked if Agnon would sit at his desk and pretend to write something so that he could take a picture of the writer “in action.” The novelist complied and wrote down a few words. After the crowd left, someone looked at the piece of paper to see what he had written. Agnon had written the five Hebrew words that I just quoted from our mahzor: Adam yesodo mei-afar v’sofo l’afar, Man’s origin is dust and his end is dust. At the moment when he was surrounded by so much adulation, this was the simple truth that Shai Agnon felt he needed to keep in mind.

Yom Kippur is the day that we recalibrate our lens of perception, how we see each other and how we see ourselves. If we have been brought high in the past year, we look inward to make sure that we have not lost our bearings, our internal compass. If we have been brought low, then today we find ourselves affirmed knowing that in this community, here on this day, we all stand as equals before God – and equal in each other’s eyes. All of us, no matter what we have experienced in the year gone by, are meant to walk into this room today, as Abe came to Sadie, as if we no longer possess all the trappings, all the externalities, all the stuff that defines us to ourselves and others every other day of the year. This is why we fast, this is why we wear white, this is why we recite the viddui, the prayer of confession said otherwise only on our death bed. All of these gestures, prayers, and rituals are meant to remind us of the day of our death. We may be dressed in our holiday finest, but inside, we should all seek to access what exists at our core, unique and sacred. The Hasidic master Rabbi Pinchas said, “in everyone there is something precious that is in no other.” Today we imagine that we have only that with which we came into this world and that with which we will leave and we ask: “What is my essential core?” Once we have identified it, then we ask if we still love each other, if we love ourselves, and if we are worthy of God’s love.

Go ahead… ask yourself the following. Do people like you because of your status or influence or because of your sense of values and sensibilities? My favorite essayist, Montaigne, wrote:

If you are bargaining for a horse, you take off his trappings, you see him bare and uncovered… why in judging a man do you judge him all wrapped up in a package? He displays to us only parts that are not at all his own, and hides from us those by which alone one can truly judge of his value. It is the worth of the blade that you seek to know, not of the scabbard…You must judge him by himself not by his finery. (Montaigne, Essays, Frame 189-90)

How do you greet people when you see them? When was the last time you went to visit someone in the hospital? When was the last time you made a shiva call? I don’t begrudge anyone achievement and success. Ambition and accomplishment are values that should be preached and aspired toward. But if you have achieved success in your lifetime, I ask you to ask yourself toward what aim you are using that success. Today is Yom Kippur, you are standing alone before God, and you face your own mortality, what is it that you really
stand for?

On Yom Kippur, we demand of ourselves that we be judged and judge each other by standards of enduring, if not eternal, worth. Park Avenue Synagogue, our community, must be a place where everyone feels valued, where each of us knows that were it not for him or her, this community would not be the same. I want everyone in this building and everyone associated with this institution to feel that they are being judged for the things that really matter. Whether the year gone by has raised you up or brought you low, when you walk into this building, I want you to know that your worth is measured by that which has lasting value. What are those values? Kindness, compassion, love for the Jewish community and all of humanity. The ability to say that I have given of myself according to my ability toward sustaining Jewish life. The self-satisfaction that comes with arriving at the end of every single day knowing that this world is a better place for my having been in it. I want the social networks of this community to be built on these values that transcend the particulars of any one year. I want us to love each other for who we are, knowing that we are all created in God’s image and thus deserving of equal dignity. That is what I want our community to be, a place where you are recognized for what really matters, a place where you are loved for who you are inside, a place where everyone feels the joy and the responsibility that comes with the knowledge that were it not for you, we wouldn’t be what we are.

This past year, I have had occasion to be present with many families upon the death of a loved one. I look around this room with the bittersweet awareness that in such a short time, we have grown close, already having cried many tears together. I have been deeply honored to be let into your lives during such raw moments of loss.

Let me tell you something that some of you already know. No matter the circumstance of death, no matter who it is, rich or poor, old or young, when I meet with the family before a funeral, I conclude every conversation with the same question. We cover biography; we discuss a person’s triumphs and failures, family, profession, the relationships they held dear. We talk about just about anything a family wants to talk about. But I get the last question and it is identical for everyone: How would your loved one want to be remembered? After all the particulars, it is the answer to this question that I want articulated. Not for me – by then I have more than enough material to write a eulogy. I ask the question for the family. I want people to think hard about the legacy of their loved one. I want them to identify and express the values their loved one held dear, to utter them aloud, to say them around a table in each other’s presence, and to acknowledge their responsibility to remember those values and pass them down.

Today is Yom Kippur – so I give you a gift, I give you a burden, I give you a question. A question that will be asked about you after your death, a question that I ask of you today on this day that we are all reminded that “our origin is dust and our end is dust”: How do you want to be remembered?

Give it some thought, don’t rush. I can think of no better way for you to spend this day of reflection and introspection than constructing your own answer. Think about it. Over the course of the day, share your answer with your loved ones. Because whatever your answer is, that is who you seek to be, at your core, in your majesty and in your simple humanity.

I have one more request. I want you to live. Live for another 120 years, but live with your answer to that question inscribed on your heart and embedded in your deeds. Live according to that answer and you will never be brought so low that you cannot recover and you will never rise so high that you forget what really matters. Live with that answer and live by that answer and you will be loved. You will be loved by those around you, you will be loved by God, and you may just love the person you become.

How do we want to be remembered? It is a question that awaits us all, it is not in your power to have it otherwise. What is in your power, what is in all our power, is to know our answer and to commit our days towards realizing our highest ideals. In doing so, each one of us will, please God, live lives worth remembering.