High Holiday Guest Drashes — Aidan Gilbert and Stephanie Goldfarb

Thank you to community members Stephanie Goldfarb, Aidan Gilbert, and the many volunteers who made Mishkan's High Holiday services a success.

Aidan's d'var begins at [00:24]
Stephanie's reflections begin at [17:01]

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Produced by Mishkan Chicago. Music composed, produced, and performed by Kalman Strauss.

Transcript

Transcript

Aidan Gilbert:
Shabbat shalom and Good Yontif.  

On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed:
How many shall pass away and how many shall be born;
who shall live and who shall die;
who shall live out their allotted time and who shall depart before their time;
who by water and who by fire;
who by thirst and who by earthquake; 

These are words that come from the prayer Unetane Tokef, which we’ll daven during musaf in a few hours. I needed to speak earlier in the service because I tend to tire easily, but these themes appear throughout the Yom Kippur liturgy, and I have always found the them unsettling.  It is beautiful prose, to be sure, but it also has a razor-sharp edge. And I also have to admit that how I approach these words today, as someone living with a chronic, life-limiting illness, has changed in tandem with my health. “Who shall live and who shall die?”  Those words now cut me -—figuratively, if not literally.

It seems, however, that the poet who wrote the Unetaneh Tokef left a few things out. The Talmud tells us that on Rosh Hashanah the Holy One opens THREE books – The Book of Life, The Book of Death, and – since very few of us are wholly good or wholly bad, a middle way. The Rabbis teach that, during the Days of Awe, those in the third book – which doesn’t get a name – have the ability to move their names to the Book of Life through tefilah, tzedakah, and gemilut chassadim, that is, prayer, charity, and acts of loving kindness. The rabbis instruct we should perform as much of these three things during those ten days as we possibly can. Atonement is not a spectator sport. You gotta werk!

This all seems rather transactional to me.  And, as someone set squarely in the third book — which, for shorthand, I have come to call the Book of Meh — I can’t help but wonder if G-d is looking for quantity or quality.  There is no evaluation matrix provided.  How am I supposed to know how I’m being graded? Should I fail to accumulate enough good deeds — which I’m certain I have failed to do —  do I end up automatically in the Book of Death?  

It bothers me that Death is put out there like punishment for the wicked.  Every one of us—- saint and sinner — will someday die. People have been doing it since the dawn of time, and for just as long we have been struggling to find the meaning of life and its mysteries.  But that isn’t as easy as “Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull life’s meaning out my hat!” 

Kafka wrote that the meaning of life is that it stops.  The comedian Ricky Gervais, paraphrasing Kafka, said that it is exactly the inevitability of death that makes living so urgent.  Scarcity  directly correlates with value. The important lesson there is to keep living, to keep looking for beauty in the time we have.

Death, for me, is not an abstract possibility, but something to be faced head on, even while I attempt to put off the inevitable as long as I can. People get super uncomfortable when you raise the topic of death. I understand. But we don’t have the luxury of denial. 

Studies have been clear: Discussing death makes it less frightening, which can only help to make the physical act of dying more peaceful. The Dalai Lama teaches, “If you are mindful of death, it will not come as a surprise- you will not be anxious. You will feel that death is merely like changing clothes.” Or, as J.K. Rowling wrote, “To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure. 

I am, in many ways, the luckiest person in this room. I know with some certainty how, if not when, I will die. One day in the not so distant future, my immune system will attack my heart and it will stop.  How is that lucky? Well, I’ve been through this a few times already.  I know how it feels, and that is — at least for me — immensely comforting. Once it occurred to me that nothing will happen to me that I haven’t experienced before, well, that knowledge instantly chased away any fear. Whatever energy I would otherwise waste on worry and fear of the unknowable can be used to love my family and friends more fiercely, to show my gratitude to all those people who have been so good to me; to see every warm, sunny day as a treat to be devoured and savored. To see time spent curled up with my dogs as a gift from G-d.  

It appears I have been given my own, rather extended, Days of Awe during which I plan to write my OWN Book of Life wherein I can focus on treating people lovingly, without judgment. I will not be around to enjoy my dotage, so I have resolved to live in the immediacy, the urgency of life, rather than wallowing in a cesspool of  self-pity. I think that’s what Ricky Gervais would want. I am going to make my Days of Awe count. I will appreciate what I have rather than bleating about what I don’t have or regretting what I never got to do. I will make a conscious decision to look for the blessings and beauty of everyday life and to express my gratitude to the Holy One and my loved ones for the joys and sorrows that are part of the immediacy of living.

I don’t know if that counts for atonement or teshuvah, but I do know that it is what I can do. Illness has stripped away most of the things that, five years ago, I would have said were fundamental to who I was as a person. I am no longer able to work. I can no longer sing. I can no longer dance. I find most of my art now beyond my physical strength. I can no longer cook or bake like I used to — although I feel charmed that my challah still turns out okay — and I can no longer consume enough calories on my own to sustain my body. I live with constant pain. But, as is often the case, losses also come with opportunities for Grace. As Jelly Roll sang: It’s not okay, but we’re all gonna be alright.  I may not be solo material any more, but I find myself at services, eyes closed, listening with my whole body, allowing the music to envelop me, and I sing as much as I can.  When I don’t have the breath or strength to sing, I pray with my ears. I feel the music palpably, and it feels so much like joy.   

Where the kitchen used to be my domain, I now tamp down my arrogance and ego and I let my wife have the chance to show her love and care for me. I have had to set aside independence and modesty without embarrassment and allow caregivers to wash and dress me, which, for someone like me who has been plagued with body issues for most of my life, that feels like an act of contrition in and of itself. I have been freed from the shackles of others’ expectations and have learned to embrace a life of authenticity, even if authenticity isn’t always pretty or comfortable. That is one reason I’ve so appreciated Mishkan and the people who are building it — whether it’s knowing the Progressive Hevra Kaddish exists to embrace all people at the end of their lives, or the support groups for grief, sobriety, or chronic illness at Maggie’s Place. I know that Mishkan is a community in which we practice love and radical acceptance in all of our messy authenticity. 

On Rosh Hashanah I stood on this bimah for an aliyah and to bench Gomel.  Simply standing was proving to be more taxing than I had thought, and the emotional cost of benching gomel was breaking me.  Then a woman standing to my right — also traversing the painful landscapes that had brought us all up to the bimah — rested her hand on my shoulder and kept it there – grounding me in a community of love, pulling me a fraction closer, just so I knew I wasn’t alone

We weren’t introduced, but if you are here with us today, thank you so much.

At some point I realized the act of living in the present moment requires an act of faith. If I want something more from life than loneliness and illness, I have to make friends with the unknown and have faith that there are good days ahead.  I had to sit with that for a while, because — at least for me — Faith is sometimes a limited resource. I called out from my narrow place, and I found comfort and inspiration in the words of  poet Minnie Louise Haskins, who wrote:

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown”. And he replied:“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way”.  

Hearing those words the first time changed me. They have become a psalm to me. What does all this mean for you?  

I hope you take this as a challenge. Stop worrying about things you can’t change and try to embrace the fleeting nature of now. Mindfulness isn’t listening to an app.  It’s about being fully, authentically, and lovingly present in the moment. Even the flawed ones. Be generous with help and affection. Forgive quickly. And never miss an opportunity to pet a dog. When I am on my deathbed, I promise you, I shall not despair for the hours I spent petting my dogs, Sadie and Louie.  

Life is too short to throw it away on worry and fear. Look for the joy around you and revel in it. Look for someone lonely — or feeling unloved or unloveable — and prove them wrong. On Erev Rosh Hashanah, Jenna Cohen, and our amazing Davening Team helped close out the service with these inspiring words: “Drench yourself with words unspoken, live your life with arms wide open. Today is where your book begins. The rest is still unwritten.”  

When the doors close on the Ark in the waning moments of daylight this afternoon, G-d gives us a potent symbol of the Divine closing the Book of Life.  But for G-d’s sake, don’t put down your pen.  Keep writing your own Book of Life. Make it a thriller. Make it a love story. Make it a musical! Just keep putting words on the metaphorical paper.

Ending on an even more personal note, I am tucking in here a personal request. Please, cherish Mishkan, like a fragile treasure, because that is exactly what it is. It is fragile, flawed, and precious because every one of us is fragile, flawed and precious.

I know this dvar has been all over the place — so far it has referenced — subtly or not so — the Sages, Kafka, Rashi, Ricky Gervais, Bullwinkle Moose, an obscure British poet, Albus Dumbledore, RuPaul, Jelly Roll and the Dalai Lama. (As an aside, how many Yom Kippur drashes around the world today do you think quoted Jelly Roll? Or Ricky Gervais, for that matter!). Thank you all for this opportunity to speak today. This has been the single greatest honor I have known.

G’mar chatimah tovah — may you be sealed for good in the Book of Life.

Stephanie Goldfarb
At this time last year, and for the last four years, I sat in high holiday services trying my very best to feel gratitude for the blessings in my life as I performed my annual spiritual soul accounting. And then inevitably, we’d come to the Torah service and I’d watch people flood the bimah to celebrate the birth of their children, and I’d shrink back into my seat, my heart broken at other people’s happiness, and broken at my own pain for not being able to tolerate other people’s joy. 

The High Holiday season can push us to feel subject to the whims of the world. Who shall live, and who shall die, we ask? Are we clay in a potter’s hand, ready to be shaped according to Divine will? What fate will be written and sealed for us? Over the last four years, I lost pretty much all of my perspective and believed there must be something fundamentally unworthy about me to deserve a child. Thanks to Rabbi Lizzi, Leah Whiteman, and the unending support of the Mishkan community, I retained enough of a tether to continue engaging with Judaism and with our community through my personal path to parenthood. After four years of IVF and IUIs, multiple miscarriages, a relentless amount of injections and surgical procedures, and seemingly unending cycles of pain, loss, and grief, my partner Hunter and I welcomed our beautiful son, Reuben Lev into the world this summer. And several weeks ago, I was honored to be asked to stand here, representing my beloved Mishkan community who, like me, celebrated important milestones this year. 

Everything about this moment feels like a literal miracle to me, except for the fact that I am positive that some of us remain sitting in our seats, praying deeply for the blessing of children, and feeling painful feelings at witnessing the joy of someone else crossing over to the other side of this horrific struggle that ultimately guarantees nothing, no matter how much teshuvah or tzedakah or tfilah we do. I accepted Rabbi Steven’s invitation to have this aliyah on the condition that I could tell my story, and that I could name and acknowledge the folks in this holy space today who are aching for children and aching at my joy. I see you, and what you are enduring isn’t fair. 

In honor of this aliyah, Hunter and I would like to extend an invitation to anyone in our community going through the IVF process, queer folks, those in a challenging journey to parenthood, or who have children in the NICU to reach out to us for support. We’ve been through it all. Amy Nadal and Rachel Mylan can connect us. We know what it means to beg god for the blessing of a child and to spend years feeling unanswered. We know what it means to witness people in our community celebrate their blessings year after year, and to feel horrified by our own jealousy. We know what it means to be told to “count our blessings” in years characterized by despair. We have been through so much, and we are here to listen and hold you in empathy if it feels right. As I stand here in this moment, holding a miracle in one hand, please know that I’m holding you in the other, and I’m praying for you to make it to the other side of this journey to parenthood with gentleness and self love. You aren’t alone.

Shana tovah.