What does a rabbi do after the final shofar blast of Yom Kippur?
To the degree that the Jewish people have a World Series, the High Holidays are it – our fall classic. Not just Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur themselves, but the grueling weeks and months of preparation leading up to them. For the synagogue staff: tickets, membership, seating, emails, service times, security, A/V, maintenance – far more than you or I will ever fully know – and for which we are all deeply grateful. For the cantors: rotations, rehearsals, music, collaborations within the synagogue and beyond – efforts which ultimately uplift us all. For the rabbis: writing, messaging, arranging for speakers, orchestrating ritual life – all of it invisible but essential. It’s like a 162-game baseball season that culminates in pennant races and playoffs, and for clergy it all happens – and I believe this to be proof of God’s dark sense humor – against the backdrop of everything else that begins in the fall: Hebrew School, board meetings, bnei mitzvah, and more. Affirming and thrilling as it is, it is also physically and emotionally exhausting.
So, what does a rabbi do after the final shofar blast of Yom Kippur?
Well, I can’t speak for every rabbi. But this rabbi – after the evening service (to which I’ll return), after the obligatory bagel and lox, after walking the dog (to which I’ll also return) – this rabbi poured himself a single malt and sat on the couch to watch the final innings of the deciding game three between the Yankees and the Red Sox.
If you saw the game, you know it was no ordinary game. Yankees pitcher Cam Schlitter provided us with one of the greatest pitching performances in postseason history, shutting down the Red Sox in a 4–0 win. On only his eighty-fifth day in the majors, he became the first pitcher ever to throw eight scoreless innings with at least twelve strikeouts and zero walks in a postseason game. The most strikeouts in a winner-take-all game in history. The most in a playoff debut in Yankees history. The most he himself had ever thrown. Even more astonishing, he seemed to grow stronger as the night went on – his hundredth pitch a ninety-nine-mile-an-hour fastball. A pitching performance for the ages.
Spectacular as the game was, it was what Schlitter said in the postgame interview that has stayed with me since. Having pitched the game of his life and won the series, he was asked how he felt, how he would celebrate, and what it meant to make history. He replied, in essence, “Well, tonight I’m going to enjoy this moment. But I need to knuckle down and prepare. We start a new series on Saturday, and I’ve got to go to work.”
We start a new series on Saturday, and I’ve got to go to work.
That sentence, spoken by Schlitter, could just as easily be spoken by this rabbi, or any rabbi. On one level, a reminder that whatever highs (and lows, for that matter) we experience in life – in our professions, our families, our personal lives – the next day we return to the grind. As the Scots say: “Back tae auld claes and cauld porritch,” meaning “back to old clothes and cold porridge.” Nobody stands under the huppah forever. At some point, someone has to take out the trash, wash the dishes, or – as seems to be my fate – walk the dog. It is our humble routines and realities, not the fleeting excitements, that constitute our lives.
And on a deeper, and not unrelated, level, Schlitter’s response signals not merely how life happens but how holy living happens. The temptation is understandable, all the more so after Yom Kippur, to measure ourselves by the mountaintop moments. We were in synagogue, we said all the prayers, we beat our chests, confessed our sins; we all got very reflective and introspective; some of us even had those hard conversations with our family and friends to fix that which was broken. We all feel pretty good about ourselves. Like with a flu shot, we are good until next year.
But that is not really how spiritual living – or living itself – actually transpires. I mentioned the evening service following the shofar blast. It is short and sweet so everyone can get home quickly to break their fast. What is striking about that brief prayer service is that at two points in that service we again ask God for forgiveness. It makes no sense. Everyone in the room has just spent the previous twenty-five hours pleading for forgiveness. Even if I had wanted to sin, when would I have found the time to do so in the three minutes between the sound of the shofar and the beginning of the ma’ariv service? Aside from the fact that people are pouring scotch as they pray, why are we beating our chests and asking for forgiveness again?
The answer, I propose, is that even at the very moment when we think, or maybe even believe, that we have achieved our spiritual peak, we declare ourselves committed to the climb. Like a runner who goes for a jog the day after a marathon, like a ballplayer who, having pitched the game of his life, is already thinking about the next game, like a rabbi who writes a sermon the day after Yom Kippur, and like a congregant who listens to another sermon two days after Yom Kippur, praying and asking anew for forgiveness immediately after Yom Kippur signals that our commitment to holy living isn’t “one and done.” It is a Jewish – and slightly more inspiring – version, if you will, of the myth of Sisyphus. Not that we are condemned to keep pushing the boulder up the mountain, but rather that we see our lives as a sustained climb toward arriving at our aspirational selves.
It is, the rabbis note, why today’s Torah reading begins as it does. Moses frames his final song, his last words of blessing to Israel, with a metaphor drawn from nature. But not with thunder and lightning, the blaze of the sun, or the gust of the wind. Rather, “Let my teaching fall like dew, my words descend like gentle rain” (Deuteronomy 32:2) – steady, temperate, and nourishing. The forgiveness we ask for, the forgiveness we grant, the habits we form – these things gain power through constancy and repetition over time.
Debbie and I visited a winery this summer, and our guide explained that when wine is made, the grapes should not be pressed too quickly. Good things happen, transformations occur, and behaviors stick by means of patience, regularity, and care. That is how love works, as the poet Browning wrote, “according to the level of each day’s most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.” That is how life itself works. We are our best tells: the calls we make, the habits we keep, the kindnesses we extend. Do we think about the values of our loved ones only at Yizkor and on yahrzeits, or do we champion their ideals as part of our daily routine? These things, all things, are not measured on holidays, birthdays, or anniversaries. They are measured best on the quiet days when nobody is looking.
And it is also how Jewish life works. The rhythms of the Jewish calendar and the milestones of the Jewish life cycle give us those mountaintop moments where we can touch eternity and reach for our higher selves. The holidays observed, bnei mitzvah celebrated; weddings sanctified, funerals attended. But as precious as they are, these moments have meaning only when anchored in the steady, faithful, day-in and day-out work of Jewish living. Judaism is no different than any discipline. Anything I practice in my life that I am good at, any relationship in my life that is sacred, any value I hold dear – are so not because of rare flashes of brilliance, but because of daily devotion. If Jewish practice, Jewish community, and Jewish Peoplehood are things we value, then they are not things we can tap in and tap out of according to whims of convenience, convention, and calendar. There is no fairy dust in this world. You get what you give, in Jewish life no different than in the rest of life.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel told a story about a town where one day all the clocks stopped working. Despite the people’s best efforts, they could not get the clocks to start again. Though many in the village were handy, there wasn’t anyone who understood the inner workings of the clocks, the springs and dials and pendulum. Because the town was secluded, years passed until a stranger wandered into the village who was discovered to be a watchmaker. Quickly the town came abuzz, each villager bringing their clocks in hope that this wanderer could fix them. One after another lined up, hoping that their family heirlooms could be returned to working order.
But each of the villagers met disappointment. After many long winters and weary summers, their clocks were too rusted to salvage. Among all the heartache and sadness, there was one person who did get good news: the watchmaker could fix her clock. Soon everyone gathered around this lucky time-teller asking her secret. Why could the watchmaker salvage her clock and no other? “When our clocks stopped, I didn’t know what else to do,” the woman said, “so I kept winding my clock every morning as if it worked.” That simple act of faith kept the clock from rusting over.
The story is, I believe, a story about hope and a compelling closing argument for ongoing, as opposed to intermittent, observance of Jewish ritual. This past summer, I met with a congregant who had suffered a terrible loss. She was asking all the questions one would and should ask of God in such a dark moment. She called me last week just before Yom Kippur. Despite her doubts, she had decided not to walk away. She stayed committed to ritual – even when God’s presence felt most distant and perhaps least deserving. She shared with me how, most unexpectedly, most dramatically, and most wonderfully, she felt her faith return. In her observance, she felt the presence of God on her shoulders – a return she shared would not have happened had she not kept at it, had she not kept winding the clock.
We demonstrate what matters most to us not annually but daily. We show we take it seriously by taking it seriously. If we want Judaism and faith to be there for us in the tough times, we need to practice it in the good times. If we want it to be passed down from generation to generation, the power to make that happen is in nobody’s hands but our own. The season of faith is a long one. World Series are thrilling, but it is in the at bats and innings of everyday life that the game is won.
It is the Saturday after Yom Kippur. It’s time to go to work.