With God’s Love We Forgive

Once upon a time, in a small shtetl in the Pale of Settlement, there lived two young women of marrying age. Two promising men from a neighboring village were identified, arrangements were made, and the town began to prepare for the upcoming double simcha. Disaster struck when a band of marauders attacked the would-be grooms on the way to the shtetl, and one of them, tragically, was killed. The remaining groom arrived the next day and was met by the two eagerly awaiting families. The groom had no idea to which bride he was betrothed, and a fight broke out between the prospective mothers-in-law, each one pulling an arm and insisting that the young man was her daughter’s intended.

The rabbi was summoned, assessed the situation, and turned to his books for wisdom. He explained that as nobody actually knew with certainty to whom the surviving suitor was betrothed, there stood no other option other than the precedent set by King Solomon: The young man must be cut in half – each bride to receive an equal share.

Upon hearing the verdict, the first mother cries out: “Rabbi, haven’t we known enough suffering? God forbid any harm should befall this young man!”

To which the second mother replies: “Nu – so cut him in half – it is the only fair way to do it.”

At which point the rabbi looks up at her and says, “Aha, you must be the true mother-in-law!”

Shanah tovah! To each and everyone one of you – a year of health, joy, and laughter. To the members of the Park Avenue Synagogue family, to my clergy and professional colleagues, to the lay leadership, to my mother-in-law – may this year be filled with only the very best for you, the Jewish people and all of humanity.

Not everyone is a parent, and not everyone is blessed to have the mother and mother-in-law that I have, but there is something about the jokes Jews share about parents and their children that we all understand cuts to the core of who we are as a people – our hopes, our joys, our anxieties, and beyond. “How many Jewish mothers does it take to change a light bulb? … Forget it, I am fine sitting in the dark.” A distinctive extract drawn from the Jewish soul: neurotic pride in our offspring distilled through a willingness to suffer the sins of the children whom we adore. Like Eskimos and snow, Jews have more words and more jokes to contend with the charged condition of parent-child relationships than we can count. To kvell or not to kvell – that is the Jewish question. It is the presence or absence of our people’s most valued resource, naches – that is the truest window to the condition of our lives.

This evening, as we celebrate Rosh Hashanah and usher in a new year, it is this extract, whose origins date back to creation itself, that we will drink. You see, Sholom Aleichem was not entirely correct when he wrote: “Adam was the luckiest man to ever live, because he had no mother-in-law.” Neither Adam nor Eve may have had a mother-in-law or a mother or father to contend with, but they most certainly lived in the shadow of a rather daunting parental figure: God. Contrary to what we will recite tomorrow – hayom harat olam, “today the world was created,” – according to the Midrash, today, Rosh Hashanah, is not actually the first day of creation. Rather, in the words of Rabbi Eliezer, creation began some six days ago – on the twenty-fifth of the Hebrew month of Elul. Each day creation proceeded, culminating in the first day of Tishrei, the day Adam and Eve were created, the day Adam and Eve sinned, and significantly, the day their sin was forgiven or at least mitigated by God. Today is known as Yom ha-Din, the Day of Judgment, because it was on this very day, the first day of the seventh month, that Adam and Eve stood in judgment in the presence of the divine, were found guilty, and were pardoned.

All biblically based religions draw on the story of Eden, but for Jews our focus is not on the original sin, but on the original pardon – on God’s ability, from the very beginning, to judge humanity with compassion, to see past our failings and forgive us as a parent would a child. Like Adam and Eve, we know that in the past year. we have fallen short of our God-given potential We know that we have stumbled, and so we call on God to be merciful unto us, k’rahem av al banim – as a father shows mercy to his children. Were it to be the case that God judged humanity according to a strict application of justice, we know we would not pass the test; we would not be written into the Book of Life. And so we cry out to God as a child to a parent – Avinu Malkeinu, “Our Father, our King.” Even when – especially when – we stand exposed in our foibles, when we know we are deserving of rebuke, we beg God to remember that in God’s eyes we are ha-ben yakir li, God’s beloved child. We want God’s judgment to be clouded with naches, we count on the kvelling to trump the penalty we deserve, we want God’s rachmonus to overwhelm God’s wrath.

In the days ahead we will return again and again to the shaping power of the parent-child relationship. First, tomorrow morning, God will remember Sarah with the birth of Isaac. We will read of the lengths to which Sarah goes to protect him. We will read of Hagar’s love for her son Ishmael. Tomorrow’s Haftarah recounts Hannah’s desperate plea for a child, and on the second day of Rosh Hashanah we will encounter Rachel’s sorrow-filled tears on behalf of her children. The stories are linked together by a parent’s love for their child. As for the tale of the binding of Isaac, it is the exception that proves the rule. The take-home message of Isaac’s near-death experience is the uncomfortable realization that Abraham’s love for God surpassed his love for his son. Disturbing as the story is (and it is), in the rabbinic mind, not only is there a reason for it but we leverage it to our benefit. Tomorrow morning (in the zikhronot section of the musaf service), we will ask of God to “Remember how [Abraham] bound his son Isaac on the altar, subduing his fatherly compassion so that he might do Your will with a perfect heart. So may Your compassion [God] overcome Your anger against us…” It is almost as if – it is exactly as if – we are asking God to reciprocate the extraordinary deed that Abraham performed so long ago. If Abraham, a man of flesh and blood, was able to suppress his paternal love in favor of you, God, can you not, as you once did for Adam and Eve in the Garden, suppress your anger, see past our faults, act like a parent, and forgive us into the year ahead.

Because whether it is God’s mercy towards humanity, that of our parents towards each of us, or each of us towards our own children, there is nothing more potent in this world than a parent’s love for his or her child. It is not just that we would do anything for our children. The power of a parent-child relationship is that it is a relationship that you never give up on. Siblings will take their own paths in life, spouses sadly may go their separate ways, friends come and go. But a parent: A parent never gives up on a child. When that child does fail or sin or fall short, a parent never writes off a child’s potential; in a parent’s eyes, it is always the sin that is judged, never the sinner. The theology goes much deeper than “once a parent, always a parent.” A parent always believes that their child’s story is still yet to be written, a parent never loses faith in a child’s capacity to turn things around. There is always, always, in a parent’s eyes the promise of return.

Friends, our task over the next ten days is to grant to others what we ask from God. These Days of Awe are not just about relationships between parents and children – but about the myriad of relationships in our lives that are in desperate need of repair. Brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, friends and family – the real challenge of this season is not asking forgiveness, but granting it, propelled by the faith that others are capable of personal transformation. In identifying God’s willingness to be compassionate, in identifying with our predecessors’ ability to do so, we recognize that each one of us is capable of doing so, and not just towards our children, but towards all those seeking to return. Too many times in the past year, to too many people, we have closed ourselves off to the possibility that a person is capable of change. Not today, not in these days to come. In the words of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachia, now is the time to judge every person favorably. We must allow for the possibility of a person’s inherent goodness, that his or her story has yet to be written, and whatever that person’s failing may have been, now is not the time to give up on them. They may or may not prove worthy; that ultimately is not in our power to control. But today we commit that it will not be for lack of effort on our part that our most precious relationships stand in disrepair.

“Open for me,” says God, “a gateway of repentance as big as the eye of a needle, and I will open for you gateways wide enough for horses and chariots to pass through.” Like parent to child, time and again, God has proven willing to take us back. No matter our failings, we are still creatures worthy of God’s love. This holiday we pray that our loved ones will take us back – that in all our shortcomings, we are worthy of being given another chance. So too this holiday season, may each one of us aspire to be godlike in our behavior, replacing our hearts of stone with tender hearts: hearts supple and resilient enough to forgive those who are seeking forgiveness, hearts capacious enough to make room for the imperfections built into our humanity from the very start.