The Life We Have Chosen

Not too long ago, I found myself at the front of a funeral procession, sitting in the passenger seat at the side of the hearse driver, on my way to officiate graveside for a long-time congregant. Like a doctor on call, a rabbi can have the day turned upside down at any moment due to a pastoral emergency or in this case, a funeral. Appointments are cancelled, emails pour in without answer, and a host of commitments, personal and professional, must be rescheduled for a future date. Nine times out of ten, congregants and colleagues “get it,” tempers remain cool and everyone understands that my pastoral attention that day must be focused on one particular family. But every so often, as was the case that afternoon, the uglier side of humanity rears its head, and driving to cemetery I found myself on the receiving end of a series of calls, messages and emails individually and collectively suggesting or outright stating that I was unresponsive, indifferent to my colleagues’ schedules, and basically, anything but the attentive, kind and collegial person I strive to be. My fuse that day was shorter than usual, and in a moment of exasperation, I vented aloud, “This is not what I signed up for!” I despaired for my lot in life, my misbegotten professional path, how unfair and thankless people were, and the unreasonable demands of the world around me. At which point, the hearse driver, having listened to me throughout, turned to me and said, “Well, Rabbi, this is the life you have chosen.”

At the time, I was in no mood to process his response. In fact, I recall muttering something about how singularly unhelpful his comment was and how his choice of clientele was particularly well suited to his limited pastoral skills. However, and I have since told him as much, in retrospect I have thought long and hard about his tough love, the craggy wisdom of a man who has seen more than his fair share of rabbis and for that matter, all sorts of people come and go. Who better than a hearse driver to know the limitations of what it means to be mortal? “This is the life you have chosen.” For better or for worse, this sentence sums up the human condition. That uncomfortable awareness that despite being endowed with free will, despite our earnest belief that we get to choose the terms of our existence, inevitably and overwhelmingly, the vast majority of our circumstances are chosen for us. Are there things in this world that we wish to be otherwise? Of course there are – kvetch about it all you want – but that is what it means to be human. Move on! This is the life you have chosen, and for better or for worse, it has chosen you.

Our parashah already has a name, Sh’lah L’kha, but if it didn’t, I would call it “This is the life you have chosen.” Moses, Moshe Rabbeinu, has led the children of Israel out of bondage and through the sea. He stood at Mount Sinai, received the law from God, endured the sin of the Golden Calf, set up the desert Tabernacle and just last week pulled up stakes in order to complete the march towards the Promised Land. Now the spies are sent to scout out the land for forty days. As we know, ten return with a damaging public report, and the pluck and fortitude of the Israelites buckles and collapses. Enraged at their lack of faith, God resolves to put an end to them once and for all. At this point Moses, in what is perhaps his finest leadership moment, intercedes on Israel’s behalf. He assuages God’s wrath, and God agrees not to destroy them … sort of. For forty years, corresponding to the forty-day mission, Israel shall wander the desert. Their carcasses shall drop in the wilderness. This faithless generation must die out before any Israelite crosses the Jordan. The decree is meant as a compromise, but its effect on Israel is devastating.

In the center of it all, I believe, nobody is more demoralized than Moses himself. I have to imagine that at that moment in time, there was one and only one thought going through Moses’ mind: This in NOT what I signed up for! “Not at the burning bush, not in the back-and-forth with Pharaoh, not at the crossing of the sea, not at Mount Sinai – nowhere did anyone tell me anything about forty years. ‘Take them from bondage, lead them into the Promised Land,’ that is what I heard. The three-hour tour, not the forty-year one. And now, I am fated to spend the next forty years circling the runway, caught between a doomed and spineless generation and a wrathful God.” And just imagine how Moses will feel next week when he lashes out to strike the rock, only to discover than he too will not enter the Promised Land. God’s changing the rules mid-course results in Moses facing the crushing realization that all he was working towards would not be his to realize. “This is absolutely, positively, not what I signed up for.”

And I have to imagine, that in the depths of his despair, Moses heard that still small voice calling from within saying: “Moses, this is the life you have chosen.” You think you chose it, but really, it chose you. Moses came to learn what anyone in any position of leadership learns at some point, that try as we might to determine the priorities of our service, inevitably the agenda is set by forces beyond our choosing. All the more so in our own lives. Not Moses, not anyone, gets to choose the hand he or she is dealt. As Karl Marx wrote, “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past.” It is this pinch, between the mistaken belief that we are the masters of our destiny and the sobering realization that the terms of our existence are not of our own making, that makes all of us squirm. “Against your will you were created,” our sages teach, “and against your will you were born. Against your will you live and against your will you will die.” (Pirkei Avot 4:29) We think that we have the power to choose, but then we look at our lives – with natural disasters, illness, and in-laws – and we realize just how little we do actually choose. And in that dissonance the cracks of our humanity are revealed. As Hyman Roth relayed to Michael Corleone in Godfather II, as the hearse driver relayed to me, “This is the business we’ve chosen.” It is gritty, it is messy, it is unfair, it is not of our choosing, it is all too brief and none of us ever reach the Promised Land. Cry me a river if you want, but – as I overheard one of my children say the other day – build a bridge and get over it!

Moses never entered the Promised Land, King David never built the Temple, Milton Steinberg never finished his final book, Mozart died before completing his Requiem, and Herzl never saw the State of Israel come into being. If you know anything about any of these individuals, then you also know that their lives were anything but carefree. Yet we look back on them and so many others grateful for their enduring legacies. Like the Torah itself, all of our narratives conclude before reaching the Promised Land. But just because we realize that we are not the ones to bring the ball across the goal line, just because our hoped for agendas must defer to the exigencies of the hour, does not mean our lives lose value and worth. We can and must work towards living purposeful lives, even if, especially if, our aspirations will only be actualized long after we have exited the stage. As Rabbi Tarfon counseled, though we may not complete the task, we are, nevertheless, not free to desist from it.

To concede our own limitations, or those of the people around us, or of the world at large, does not mean that we live with any less urgency or for that matter, optimism. There is a lightening of the heart that comes with being liberated from the belief that everything in this world is in our control. Not because we are resigned to some grim determinism, but because we realize the measure of a life well lived is not found in a win-loss column or some sort of cosmic balance sheet. Rather the difference between success and failure is whether we did the best given the hand we were dealt. “This is not what I signed up for.” Of course it isn’t, but there is nothing terribly interesting or novel about that realization. What matters is whether you helped solve the problems of your day, whether you addressed the needs of the hour and whether you squeezed every moment for all its worth. As Teddy Roosevelt famously counseled:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again … if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. (Citizenship in a Republic)
 

Both Moses and Israel are denied entry into the Promised Land, but both he and they nonetheless proceed to move forward. Did they fail? Did they fall short? Everyone does. But they dared greatly, they left it all out on the field, giving their best efforts for a worthy cause that would give life to the generations to come.

Last week, I walked into the synagogue to find a grandmother of our community, widowed not too long ago, crying. She was standing in front of the rotating photographs in the lobby, including ones of her children and grandchildren, all upstanding and contributing members of the synagogue community. I stopped to greet her, asked her what was wrong, wondering if there was anything I could do to help. She turned to me, with tears in her eyes, and said “This is all him. He created all this.” At first, I was unsure of what she meant, but I saw that her countenance was a combination of sadness and gratitude, and I realized that she was referring to her late husband, taken too young, not having lived to see that his children would grow up to give so much of themselves to the Jewish community that meant so much to him. There she stood in her tears of joy and sadness, her children and grandchildren now producing the fruit planted long ago by her late husband. In that sacred, emotion-filled moment, I said the honest thing that came to mind, that though he may not have lived to see what she gets to see, knowing her children and grandchildren as I do, I know not a day that goes by that they are not well aware that everything they do is an expression and extension of their late father and grandfather’s life.

This is the life we have chosen. Never complete, far from perfect, and never long enough to enjoy all the fruits of our labors. The term is not ours to set and we certainly don’t control the outcomes. And yet we pick ourselves up, we stay committed to the work at hand, we aspire to live according to our highest ideals and we always act in the best interests of the causes that are most sacred to us. None of us will ever live to see the fullness of that for which we toil; by definition, it lies beyond the horizon of our mortality. But build we must, every generation on the foundation of the one prior, ever mindful, ever grateful for those without whom our journey would not be possible.