No one wants to make mistakes, but we make them anyway. Some of them have the annoying habit of embarrassing us in public, like these beauties from various Temple and Church bulletins:

Jews: For those of you who have children and don’t know it, we have a nursery downstairs.

 

This week, the flowers on the bimah are in honor of the birth of David Alan Beltzer, the grand sin of Rabbi and Mrs. Philip Beltzer.

 

Baptists: A bean supper will be held on Tuesday evening in the church hall. Music will follow.

 

Methodists: The ladies of the church have cast off clothing of every kind, and they may be seen in the church basement every Friday.

 

Next Sunday we will serve a pot luck supper. Prayer and medication to follow.

 

My favorite (Jews): Thursday at five there will be a meeting of the Little Mothers’ Club. All wishing to become Little Mothers, please see Rabbi Shapiro in his study. [The American Rabbi, Spring, 1997, pp. 22-23.]

 

This is the time of year we Jews examine our mistakes, private and public.. We try and make amends. In the secular world we may atone for our transgressions by replacing the lampshade we ruined while wearing it on our head all evening at the New Year’s Eve party. We to make resolutions, such as never drinking that much again. The tradition of New Year’s resolutions to reform, to change, has a long and venerable history in the Western world. So does the tradition of breaking them almost as soon as they’re uttered!

We Jews also make promises to ourselves at this season of Rosh Hashanah, our New Year. But they are not resolutions. What we do is called Teshuvah, Repentance. Teshuvah involves returning to the right path, the path we were on before we messed up, lost our way, or perhaps even purposely took a wrong turn.

Very often we look for teshuvah, repentance, on far too grand a scale.

In the comic strip For Better or for Worse the husband has sprained his back and is laid up in bed. “I’ve been lying here for two whole days, El. Strange how you become deeply philosophical when you’re incapacitated.”

“I’ve been thinking,” he continues. “What is life? What’s it like to die? What’s our role in this infinite cosmos? What’s for lunch?”

Ellie stops and looks at him and says, “Lunch?”

“Well,” he admits, “I like some of my questions to have answers.” [The American Rabbi, Spring, 1998, pg. 8.] 

 

It is in the small and everyday moments of life that we can change the world in some small way. We are not murderers, rapists. The worst sin that most of us have to repent for is wasting opportunities for doing good, opportunities when we might have made a little piece of our world a little better. So I’ll leave you with a true story by a man named Elliott Pearlson, who writes that twenty years ago he used to drive a cab to make a living:

When I arrived at 2:30 a.m., the building was dark except for a single light in a ground floor window. I had seen too many impoverished people who depended on taxis as their only means of transportation, so unless a situation smelled of danger, I always went to the door. This passenger might be someone who needs my assistance, I reasoned to myself.

So I walked to the door and knocked. “Just a minute”, answered a frail, elderly voice.

I could hear something being dragged across the floor.

After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 80’s stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940s movie. By her side was a small nylon suitcase.

The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets. There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.

“Would you carry my bag out to the car?” she said. I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman.

She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb. She kept thanking me for my kindness.

“It’s nothing”, I told her. “I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my own mother treated”.

She gave me an address, then asked, “Could you drive through downtown?”

“It’s not the shortest way,” I answered quickly.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” she said. “I’m in no hurry. I’m on my way to a hospice”.

I looked in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were glistening.

“I don’t have any family left,” she continued. “The doctor says I don’t have very long.” I quietly reached over and shut off the meter. “What route would you like me to take?” I asked.

For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator. We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds. She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl. Sometimes she’d ask me to slow down in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.

Suddenly said, “I’m tired. Let’s go now.”

We drove in silence to the address she had given me. Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They must have been expecting her. I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door.

The woman was already seated in a wheelchair. “How much do I owe you?” she asked, reaching into her purse.

“Nothing,” I said.

“You have to make a living,” she answered.

“There are other passengers,” I responded.

Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly. “You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,” she said. “Thank you.”

I squeezed her hand, then walked into the dim morning light.

Behind me, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life.

 

Sometimes the door shuts in the fullness of years. Other times, tragically, the door shuts on someone we love long before their time. We can curse the world and all its pain, or, even in our pain, we can do teshuvah, turn towards doing what good we can.

These new memorial walls that will enable many, many people to memorialize their loved ones in our sanctuary, are an act of goodness in the face of tragedy. We gratefully dedicate and consecrate this gift, given to our Congregation by Peggy Green in loving memory of Jason Green, Peter Green, Edna Green and Harry Myers. May this visible memorial inspire us all to acts of goodness and righteousness, and help us rededicate our lives to all that is noble and beautiful. 

Baruch Eloheynu asher natan lanu maychochmato v’hispiya alenu laazor livnai adam b’orech chayainu.

Praised be our God who imparts wisdom to us and influences us to help others by our way of living.

The astonishing thing about the human being is not so much our intellect and bodily structure, profoundly mysterious as they are. The astonishing and least comprehensible thing about us is our range of vision; our gaze into the infinite distance; our lonely passion for ideas and ideals... for which... we will stand till we die, the profound conviction we entertain that if nothing is worth dying for nothing is worth living for. [Gates of Prayer, pg. 668] 

 

Our loved ones lived their with passion and idealism. Some of this we saw. Some we did not, for it remained hidden in the warm recesses of their hearts. All of this -- their ideals, their convictions, their passion, their ideas, are part of who we are and who we are becoming.

In loving memory we consecrate memorial plaques that have been presented during the past year in memory of…………………..

Tzruram b’tzror ha’chayim et nishmatam.

May their souls be bound up in the bond of eternal life.

Please rise and face the memorial walls.

El Maleh