There were frogs on his bed,
Frogs on his head,
Frogs on his nose,
Frogs on his toes…

…according to a children's song we teach in nursery school. In addition, all the water in Egypt had turned to blood, there were lice and locusts, flies and boils, yet Pharaoh still didn't heed the call to let the Israelites go. Why not? Because, since there was as yet no indoor plumbing, each morning Pharaoh had to go out to the river to bathe and answer nature's call. He didn't listen to the message of the plagues because… (Are you ready?) he was in De Nile!

Bad pun or not, most of us are right there in the river with him. We too, spend a lot of our time in denial. What do we deny? The terrible things in the world that can cause us to suffer, that can destroy us and those we love. Mostly we deny our mortality, until something like a biopsy makes it impossible to hide from it any longer.

To hold the horrors at bay we try and make bargains with God, vows, promises. I remember one day when I was out running. As I passed Jawonio, the wonderful facility for children with physical and mental disabilities, I thought of my own young children, able to run and jump, see and hear, read and write. I had a terrifying thought: What if one of my kids got MS, or Cerebral Palsy, or some other horrible disease? What if they were hit by a car and maimed or killed? I shuddered with fear, and I prayed: "God, if anything is going to happen to my children, let it happen to me instead. Let me be the one to suffer. Spare them, God, please spare them. I'll do anything you ask if only you'll leave them alone." The bargains I tried to make with God when I found out I had cancer I don't even want to begin to tell you.

I'm certainly not alone. Most of us have done this. But these vows of ours, these promises, are in vain. We mean them in all sincerity, yet what happens in the future to us or our loved ones is beyond our control. Even if we fulfill everything we've promised, we still know for certain that each of us will ultimately die.

These vows and promises of ours help to keep us in denial. By taking them away - in advance, in the version of Kol Nidre we now use - we are being told to face reality directly, not to hide, not to flinch, not to lose ourselves in fantasies.

Vain promises though they may be, why has a prayer for neutralizing them, Kol Nidre, become the theme of the most sacred night of the Jewish year? Listen to what the prayer actually says:

Let all our vows and oaths, all the promises we make and the obligations we incur to You, O God, between this Yom Kippur and the next, be null and void should we, after honest effort, find ourselves unable to fulfill them. Then may we be absolved of them.

Is this really so crucial an issue? It hardly seems important compared with being a good person, making our world a better place, taking care of our families, helping others in need, being a good Jew. In my opinion, though, Kol Nidre does point to, if not the most important issue for all human beings, at least one of the most important: our need for courage. We need courage to get out of denial, courage to smash the idols that enslave us, courage to face death, and courage to face the unknown.

Do you know what our Torah calls hiding behind half-truths, sitting complacently behind a veil of fantasy? Idolatry! It is idolatry to settle for partial truths that are easier for us to bear. As you well know, throughout our history we have been unalterably opposed to idol worship.

Judaism began as an iconoclastic religion, in the original meaning of the word iconoclast: one who smashes idols. It isn't easy to get people to give up their idols. There's a woman who no longer belongs to our Congregation for this very reason. At an adult study session I explained that the Hanukah story about the little bottle of oil that burned for eight days was just that: only a story, and one that can't even be found in any Jewish sources for nearly six hundred years after the Maccabees. You'd have thought I'd advocated murder, she was so upset. How dare I puncture one of her most cherished fantasy balloons! How dare I do a Jewish version of "there is no Santa Claus." I became, for her, the Grinch who stole Hanukah. Rather than smash even this little idol, she left the Temple.

People have to be willing to hear the truth, and she wasn't. No one can be browbeaten into giving up their idols, as we have known for generations. The Talmud…

…recounts an occasion when the imperial Romans are upset with the local Rabbi because he has been giving sermons inciting the people against the government. The Romans handle this with the "diplomatic" tools available to powerful governments in every age: they send out a troop of soldiers against the Rabbi. The townspeople hear that the soldiers are advancing to arrest their Rabbi, so they surround his home (with the Rabbi still inside). When the soldiers arrive, the townspeople say to the soldiers: "Leave him alone. He harasses us too, and we ignore him - you do the same" [Brad Artson, The American Rabbi, Winter 1999, p.109.]

Obviously, I hope that's not the case here, but in all fairness, I know how hard it can be to smash even the little idols. Most of us squirm when our cherished preconceptions are challenged. For some unknown reason, when I was growing up the word "entrée" was used in my house to refer to the first part of a meal, the appetizers. It made perfect sense to me, because the rest of the meal was certainly "entered" through this course. I was pretty uncomfortable for a while when I got older and had to learn to use the word entree for the main course, not the first one.

If it's uncomfortable to have our little idols smashed, can you imagine what it's like when the really big ones are shattered? In the ancient world, one of the biggest was the goddess Moloch to whom human children were sacrificed. As terrible as parents must have felt giving up their babies, that was simply the way things were done.

Then came Abraham. He too, felt called to sacrifice his son Isaac. Who called him? One of my colleagues says it wasn't God. Who then? The gods and goddesses of the idol-worshippers. Why does he say this? Because the word for God in the singular is El, as in El Elyon, God Almighty or Ain Keloheynu, who is like our God. But that's not what the Abraham story says. It reads "Elohim nissa et Avraham, the gods [plural] tested Abraham" with the instructions to sacrifice his son. Abraham lived among the idol-worshippers who believed not in one God but in many. The beliefs of his neighbors still exerted a powerful pull on him.

Iconoclasts. Idol-smashers. Fantasy-puncturers. Veil-piercers. Reality-facers. That is what we Jews think is our task and the path we suggest for all people. We believe any idol, whether in the form of a statue, an idea like the earth is flat, or an attempted bargain with God that allows us to remain in denial is a stopping point. It freezes reality. It stops progress. We Jews are the ones who gave the idea of progress to the world, liberating it from an incessant cycle of depressing sameness. Guarding it and restoring it when it is lost is one of our most deeply held religious values.

When ideas or events begin to hint that there is something else, something beyond what we see or think or believe at the moment, we need courage to look and see what it might be. There are many kinds of courage. Some involve great prowess, mental or physical:

A rich woman from New York was touring the West and finally arrived in Santa Fe. She noticed an old Indian with a necklace made from curious-looking teeth.

"What are those?" she asked.

"Those are grizzly bear teeth, madam," replied the Indian.

"Ah, yes," she nodded. "And I suppose they have the same value for you red men that pearls have for us."

"Not exactly, madam," replied the noble savage. "Anybody can open an oyster." [King Duncan, Lively Illustrations for Effective Preaching, Seven Worlds Pub.(Knoxville, Tenn., 1987),"Courage".]

There is also small, quiet courage:

During the Nazi occupation of Paris, a husky storm trooper stepped onto a subway car and tripped headlong over the umbrella of a little old lady sitting next to the door. After picking himself up, the bruised Nazi launched into a tirade of abuse, then bolted from the car at the next station. When he was gone, the passengers burst into spontaneous applause for the little old woman. "I know it isn't much," she said, graciously accepting the compliments, "but he's the sixth one I've brought down today." [King Duncan, King's Computer Treasury of Dynamic Humor, Seven Worlds Pub. Knoxville, Tenn., 1990).]

Fearing pain, fearing death, is what robs our lives of meaning. Yom Kippur is designed to help us find the courage to face these fears. White robes are worn, robes the color of the shrouds we wear in our coffins. We do not eat, so that we feel how incredibly frail are our physical bodies. The mood is solemn and somber, as at a funeral. We speak of eternity. We seek the courage to face death in order to more fully cherish life.

While we are still here, there is something many fear far more than death.

… a spy [was] captured and sentenced to death by a general in the Persian army. This general had the strange custom of giving condemned criminals a choice between the firing squad and "the big, black door."

The moment for execution drew near, and guards brought the spy to the Persian general. "What will it be," asked the general, "the firing squad or 'the big, black door?'"

The spy hesitated for a long time. Finally he chose the firing squad.

A few minutes later, hearing the shots ring out confirming the spy's execution, the general turned to his aide and said, "They always prefer the known to the unknown. People fear what they don't know. Yet, we gave him a choice."

"What lies beyond the big door?" asked the aide.

"Freedom," replied the general. "I've known only a few brave enough to take that door." [King Duncan, Dynamic Illustrations, Seven Worlds Corp. (Knoxville, Tenn., April/ May/ June 1994),"Fear".]

The unknowns of freedom frighten many of us more than the knowledge that someday our life will be over. Yet if we shrink back in fear, holding tightly to our idols, muttering vain oaths and promises, cowering in denial, we might as well be dead. If we face our fears, face our freedom, face the unknown, blessing may yet come:

A Talmudic legend says a traveler came at twilight to a camp site. Looking off into the distance he saw a strange object which seemed to be shaped like a monster… Gathering all the resolve he could muster, he drew nearer and discovered that it was a man, which caused a great deal of his fear to vanish. Venturing still closer he found it was not only a human like himself, but it was his own brother! [King Duncan, Lively Illustrations for Effective Preaching, Seven Worlds Pub.(Knoxville, Tenn., 1987),"Human Relations".]

When we find the courage to face our fears we find our brothers, our sisters, and ourselves.

Living in denial is a kind of idolatry, self-destroying, progress-ending. We seek courage to smash the idols and peer behind the curtain to see that the great and terrible wizard is only an absent-minded professor, at least as terrified as we are. We seek courage to face the reality that really is, rather than what our fears make it: As one poet put it:

To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes, to let it go, to let it go. (Mary Oliver, "In Blackwater Woods," American Primitive) [Bruce Bode, The American Rabbi, Fall, 1999, pg. 60.]

Lastly, we seek courage to find the faith that is the root of all courage, the faith that allows us to go on despite our vows, despite our denial, despite our fears. In the words of Victor Hugo:

Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake. -- Victor Hugo [Dynamic Illustrations, April/May/June 1997.]

When we have done our tasks, may we sleep this night and all other nights, secure in the faith that though we slumber, God is awake. God is awake. For as many tomorrows as we are granted, may we awake each morning to face reality without denial. May we then go about our business of finding the courage to help mend this broken world.