Kol Nidre Vows 5781 ~ Sept. 27, 2020

Have you ever been on a flight when the captain announces on the loudspeaker that everyone needs to return to their seats, put on their seatbelt and prepare for severe turbulence? On a flight from New York to LA, a young man was seated in the middle, next to an Orthodox Jew, who turned out to be Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, a world-renowned rabbi who has made Efrat, Israel his home for many years.  As the pilot completed the announcement, Rabbi Riskin took out a card from his wallet and began to recite tefilat haderekh, the prayer for the traveler on route. The young man turned to Rabbi Riskin, apologized, and said that he was Jewish, albeit not religious, and was curious about the prayer he was reciting. Rabbi Riskin introduced himself and explained it to him. The young man asked: “would you teach it to me?  I promise that if we make it through this rough trip, I will be a better Jew. I will give tzedakah, I will celebrate Shabbat, keep kosher, and attend synagogue more often.” The Rabbi responded: “let’s make this easy, simply repeat the words after me.” Needless to say, the plane landed safely. The young man thanked the rabbi for teaching him the prayer. And said, “you know rabbi, in the heat of the moment, I made a vow…you know that it was in the heat of the moment…I hope you understand.” We might have expected Rabbi Riskin to hold him to that vow; as Robert Munsch, once titled one of my middle son’s childhood favorite books: A Promise is A Promise. Instead, Rabbi Riskin, shook the young man’s hand and said: I am hoping that it was your prayer that guided the plane to safety. And for that I am grateful.”

Have you ever made such a vow in the heat of the moment?  If our lives were a part of a Hollywood screen play it might seem that at times we find ourselves partnering with the Ribono Shel Olam, Master of the Universe, and at times with the devil himself.  At times, we make requests and vows, that if we somehow make it through a particular moment in life, then we will partner with one or the other. We can all think of moments when we made such requests, hopefully, with G-d.  The “if” promise or vow.” And then as the turbulence comes to an end and our lives have returned to safe and even-ruddered skies we miss the opportunity to recognize that G-d did play a role in our getting there.  We somehow negate that we made such a vow. And I am not certain that only happens with G-d.

On Yom Kippur we not only make vows to influence G-d, but to try to convince ourselves that we can control elements within our lives and in doing so, we can influence the outcome.  Rabbi Harold Kushner, someone who I learned a great deal from, suggests that “the  illusion that we can control events if we do everything right, that we can make people love us if we do things right, and that we can guarantee happy endings by deserving them, is an illusion, and a very destructive one….” And yet we make all kinds of vows in our lifetimes. Some are important institutional, traditional vows, such as ones of marriage; we pray that they provide commitment: others are attempts at controlling ourselves or life’s situations to improve our lot.

A study in the NY Times reported that the vows we make in January, at the beginning of the secular calendar year, are usually the most difficult to keep. Strange as it may seem, it is more of the September vows that are kept…it is September that is considered to be the true “new year” for vows…because after the lazy days of summer, we get back to set routines.  Perhaps the author of the Torah and the creator of Jewish festivals understood that truth, with the timing of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, that the intensity of scrutiny upon ourselves and commitments we make are ones that are honest, truthful and have the best intentions and motivations to be fulfilled.

Let me share with you what motivated me to think out loud about vows with you tonight. A few weeks ago, a man asked me whether he could attend his brother’ funeral.  And you probably are asking why did he ask? Several years ago, he and his brother had a terrible fallout, all because of a business deal gone bad. He made a vow, not just any vow, but one that had torn his family asunder.  He vowed never to see his brother again. And he kept that vow until the day that his brother died. But now he had a different obligation that he was challenged by the halachic commitment to bury the dead, and to sit shiva. I will never forget seeing the tears on his face as he said to me: Rabbi I made this vow…what do I do know? Thankfully, I had studied just a while back, a halachic ruling by Rav Soloveitchik, one of the great Orthodox rabbis of the 21^st century, who had a similar question posed to him. Any idea what that response was?  You vowed that you would not see your brother, but that was in life…not in death. He has passed away. Unfortunately, you never made amends, and the type of vow you took would require a major court of rabbis to annul, and you chose not to. But that was in life…not in death. You are permitted and actually obligated to attend the funeral…to ask forgiveness, to bury your brother and sit shiva.  While the direct question was about his personal vow, clearly the question of what is it that motivates us to make a vow, and how obligated are we to maintain that vow, at times requires a great deal of psychological stamina, to decide to what extent a vow is not simply words; but motivates us either in a positive or negative direction by its nature.

I wonder not only about the next generation, but ourselves, as we witness that our society no longer has that age-old commitment to one another and loyalty that used to be at the heart of the American dream: marriage, employment, friendships, study, and volunteerism. It is what we were taught about commitments to maintain a synagogue, for the betterment of those who do attend, even if we choose not to attend ourselves.

All too often it’s what you did for me tomorrow, as I continually see in today’s life commitments; but shouldn’t it also be about the yesterdays that brought us to today! It’s helping the other when the one stumbles. It challenges today’s view that everything and every commitment is disposable, recyclable and returnable…rather than repairable and “works in transition.”  Good relationships are maintained not only because of the vows made, the commitments signed on a ketubah, a letter of intent, a contract or a handshake…it’s because people value commitments, and work on them, not only in good times, but in less than perfect moments as well. It was the commitment of so many of you to this shul, that brought my wife Lisa and myself to Congregation Beth El.

Each and every Thursday morning as my students at the Solomon Schechter Academy begin their day, I am impressed by their singing of Hatikvah as they face the Israeli flag. Let’s use this example to help us with our own personal vows. The flag of the State of Israel is made up of a Magen David, a star of David, with two blues stripes. Those two blue stripes represent our vow at Mt. Sinai to uphold the values that are the cornerstone of Jewish ethics and life, within the State of Israel. It is the stripe of the tallit. It is the guiding principle of the State as a Jewish Commonwealth and the moral standards that guide the Israeli military, as its teens and adults protect it from aggression and terrorism. For those of us who hold Eretz Yisrael dear to our hearts here in the diaspora, and I hope that is all of us, it is a commitment to the land, and the state as a haven and a homeland.  “Rabbi Joseph Soleveitchik was asked whether there was any halachic significance to the Israeli flag.  He responded that on the one hand, Jewish law did not consider flags and ceremonies sacred.  But then he went on to say that the Israeli flag is soaked in the blood of thousands of young Jews who fell in defense of the land….  It has a spark of holiness which stems from dedication and self-sacrifice and therefore we are all obligated to honor the flag of Israel and to show respect for it.”

The Israeli flag and our honoring it, is a statement of our commitment to the vows we make to the ideals of the State of Israel. As the Psalmist declares: Im eshkachech Yerushalayim, tishkach yemini, if I forget Jerusalem, may my right hand lose its sense of feeling. 

Just a few weeks ago, I was reminded of one of the many moments in my youth that instilled within me that vow.  (pause) I can still picture the moment in the summer of 1972 when Jim McKay of ABC Sports reported that the helicopter carrying the Israeli hostages blew up in the air by Palestinian terrorists, right in front of his eyes and ours too. His choked-up tears; his inability to continue to report; his humanity; the tragedy as it unfolded. This past summer, on the 48^th anniversary, two planes took off in Germany, ceremonially flew over Dachau and then made a flyby over the site of the attack. One of the pilots was from Germany; the second from Israel. Both pilots were the commanders of Israeli and German Air Forces purposefully holding joint military training exercises.  That flyover and military training exercises allow us to see how Israel has built up a seed of cooperation. That is the vow within the words of Hatikvah.

It is the vow I asked my son to remember. As we moved here to New London, I passed down my oversized gas lawn mower to him. I took pride in that lawn mower.  And now it is his. As I gave it to him, I asked him to do what I used to do every week, as I started up that lawn mower. Look down at the drip plastic cup that is a part of the engine. Take pride as you read its bold black letters “made in Israel.” 

It’s the pride in reading in the Times of Israel this morning that “a new made-in-Israel gargle test for coronavirus is being deployed in European airports, after a leading aviation security company threw its weight behind the tech. A freshly inked agreement will lead to the tests being piloted in two European airports within days or weeks and comes as pilot programs for the tests are already underway in 12 hospitals internationally. The SpectraLIT test, which eliminates the need for swabbing and lab processing, works on a self-service basis, with passengers simply asked to gargle with 10 milliliters of a special mouthwash, and then spit into a tube.” The head of the development team said: “It will prove no more inconvenient than fingerprint checks.”

I wonder if those who support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement will choose to go for the more painful swab, simply because the test was made in Israel.  I wonder how many in the BDS movement know that many of the technological advances that they use, were created in Israel in the medical, agricultural and technological spheres, such as Waze, the navigation app on our smartphones that is so superior to the others, that Google purchased it and is used throughout the globe; text messaging, created by two Israeli teenagers who skipped high school classes to invent it; the USB drive; drip irrigation that targets which plants need to be watered and which don’t, and which Israel shared with all of the world in an attempt to eradicate famine, even to those third world countries who vote “no” against Israel at the UN.  (Pause) While we pray for everyone in this world on this day, a special prayer to those in Eretz Yisrael, who once again are in a full country lockdown on Yom Kippur. We pray that the experts are wrong and that the chances of a third and fourth lockdown in Israel will not be reality.

As we sing in the Hatikva: “Od lo-avda tikvatenu,” our hope, our tikvah, remains resilient in and for the future. And I hope that we get it, meaning we understand it that we sometimes need to find commitments from our past, to our present and future vows.  As we petition G-d this Yom Kippur let us be mindful and realistic of our nedarim, that it is not just about landing safely…it’s about the journeys, that sometimes may be turbulent, and the values we associate with them. Hashem, katevnu b’sefer Hachaim, please write our world into the Book of Chayim, in a most positive of ways.