Who is Wise? | Kol Nidrei Sermon 5787
Kol Nidrei Sermon 5787
A few weeks ago, I hopped on my bike and went for a ride all the way up to the eastern Tennessee Mountains. It was fantastic. Huge, rolling mountains and valleys that stretched for miles, rushing streams and lakes and blue skies with just enough clouds that it would have made a perfect muse for an artist. Riding around the twisting roads of the mountains, each new turn could unfold into a view that seemed to go on forever. I thought of Psalm 121, “Esa einai el he-harim, I lift up my eyes to the mountains.” To say I was enjoying myself was an understatement. It was beautiful and thrilling. And even better, there was no cell service. Not for huge stretches anyways. I finally stopped for a late lunch at a restaurant, which also was in the middle of nowhere - so no cell service, but it had wifi. I figured I’d connect and check in with the world I left behind for a few hours. Big mistake. Between e-mail, texts, and voicemails, I had at least a couple of dozen messages all along the same lines. People received a suspicious e-mail, seemingly from me, asking for gift cards, or money, or something along those lines. They wanted to check and see if it was really from me. It wasn’t. We sent out an email later that day letting people know it was a scam. By the way, I’ll never ask you for gift cards, or send you wiring instructions or anything like that by e-mail. But really, what a return from the holy to the mundane. And to be honest, I was a bit annoyed too. Definitely not with anyone who reached out to verify, but with those who impersonate, those who scam, those who try and prey on people who are trusting. I worried too that someone may fall for it. To my knowledge, no one did. But this actually happens around a couple of times a year. And it’s incredibly common for scammers to impersonate clergy of all faiths and reach out to their congregants. I did a quick search online and found various and diverse religious groups had made warnings about it. I suppose enough people fall for it that it’s happening so much. That, of course, is just one of many scams. It seems like there’s always an e-mail or a phone that seems plausible enough, but is really just a trick.
I’m sharing that story though, because the reaction of so many of you was actually perfect - you reached out to verify. It’s sad, but we live in a world that sees no shortage of scams and impersonators, half-truths and misinformation dressed up as advocacy, and conspiracy theorists out to make a buck, or at best just don’t realize their own limited logic. We all know that’s an issue, though. We also live in a world where well-meaning people believe they have the whole, unbiased view of something, and they - we? - don’t. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is often so hard to come by.
Our faith - like a lot of faiths I suppose - puts great value on truth. Most famously, one of the Ten Commandments is to not bear false witness. But more than that, the blessing after the Torah reading includes the words “asher natan lanu Torat emet…[Blessed are you God] who has given us a Torah of truth.” Seven hundred years ago, Rabbi Yaakov ben Asher, the Baal HaTurim, made a fairly brilliant observation. He noticed that the last letters of the first three words of the Torah spell Emet - Truth. And not only the last letters from the first three words, but the last letters of the last three words of the story of Creation also spell truth, Emet. God’s Creation begins and ends with truth.
But pursuing truth isn’t exactly an easy thing, though some people seem to have an answer to everything. The greatest Biblical scholar in Jewish tradition is Rashi, Rabbi Solomon son of Isaac, who lived in France 1,000 years ago. My favorite teaching of his is his comment on Ezekiel 46:4, which has to do with the number of lambs grilled for dinner…err I mean being prescribed for a sacrifice. I know, odd verse to be the source of a beloved comment. But I do love a good BBQ and perusing the menu is part of the fun. Anyways, the problem is that the number of lambs in Ezekiel, which is six, doesn’t match what the Torah says it should be in Numbers 28:9, which is two. So rather than feign knowledge where there isn’t any, Rashi simply writes, “lo yadati lama - I don’t know why.” I love that the first person Jews turn to to explain the Torah is the person who is able to admit that there’s a verse he can’t explain according to tradition. That doesn’t stop him from positing a possible solution, but he warns the reader ahead of time that it’s his best theory, not an answer he received from a reliable source. Rashi teaches that true knowledge can only be built on a foundation of humility. It’s not surprising that one of the most learned rabbis and gifted teachers in our tradition doesn’t know something, because the only way to become that learned is to be willing to admit that there are gaps in your knowledge. Rashi teaches that no matter how much we might want a definitive answer or explanation, sometimes the best we can do is an educated guess. It may not feel satisfactory, but at least it’s honest.
And I'll tell you another reason I like Rashi so much. It's not just his erudition, or how he can succinctly convey what was at his time already 1,000 year old rabbinic tradition. Rashi rarely invents a reading of his own — more often, he'll simply lay out two or three interpretations that already existed in the tradition, side by side, without insisting you pick the one he likes best. It's that he's able to convey all that erudition while acknowledging there are multiple ways of looking at something.
You all know, I’m a Ted Lasso fan. I’m still an episode behind though on the latest season - busy time for me - so don’t spoil anything. But, if you’ve never seen it - spoiler alert - I’m going to share something from the first season, which was six years ago.
If you’ve not seen it before, Ted Lasso is an American coach of an English Premier League football - that is soccer - team. He’s never coached soccer before, which is part of the reason he ended up in that position. The team he coaches, the fictional Richmond, was owned by Rupert and Rebecca. Rupert loves, loves, loves football and owning the team was his life. And then Rupert and Rebecca get divorced, largely because of Rupert’s failings. And Rebecca gets the team in the divorce. Since she is very upset at Rupert, she is determined to purposefully sink the team and does so by hiring Ted to be the head coach. Turns out Ted is actually a fantastic coach, realizing that while knowledge of the sport is important, a great coach’s first job is to bring out the best in the players and to transform them from individual athletes to a team. And he knows what he doesn’t know and commits to learning. Anyways, there’s a great episode in the first season where Rupert, formerly owner of Richmond, encounters Ted in a local British pub. Ted’s almost always good natured, but Rupert is obviously still pretty upset about losing the team and having someone like Ted coaching it. They decide to settle their dispute by playing darts. If Rupert wins, he gets to set the lineup for the last two matches of the season. If Ted wins, Rupert is banned from the owner's box. Rupert thinks he has this one easily, and rather than using the house darts, he opens up a fairly posh looking box of his own personal custom darts. And then they play. And Ted demolishes him at darts. And as he’s doing so, gives this speech,
“Guys have underestimated me my entire life and for years I never understood why – it used to really bother me. But then one day I was driving my little boy to school and I saw a quote by Walt Whitman, it was painted on the wall and it said, ‘Be curious, not judgmental.’ I like that. (Throws triple 20). So I get back in my car and I’m driving to work and all of the sudden it hits me – all them fellas that used to belittle me, not a single one of them was curious. You know, they thought they had everything figured out so they judged everything and they judged everyone. And I realized that their underestimating me – who I was had nothing to do with it. Because if they were curious they would have asked questions. Questions like, ‘Have you played a lot of darts, Ted?’ (Throws triple 20). To which I would have answered, “Yes sir. Every Sunday afternoon at a sports bar with my father from aged 10 until I was 16 when he passed away. Barbecue sauce.” (Throws triple bullseye to win).
I love that speech. Rupert is so confident in so many things. He’s confident that he’d do a better job managing his old soccer team, he’s confident that he’ll beat Ted at darts. And Ted calls him out, saying if you knew anything about me, you’d know I play darts - really, really well. But he wasn’t curious. And while Ted starts off knowing very little about soccer, he knows a lot about people and is willing to learn and take advice. Something Rupert never was. There’s a lot of great sermons you can get from watching Ted Lasso, but that’s a great one. Ted and Rupert both have convictions, but Ted’s convictions are paired with his curiosity. Conviction without curiosity leads to all sorts of blindness. And versions of that lesson can be found all over Jewish tradition.
Ben Zoma taught two thousand years ago, “Who is wise? The one who learns from everyone.” Rupert should learn from Ted, just as Ted is open to learning from everyone.
The Talmud is dozens of volumes of transcripts of conversations between rabbis over hundreds of years that discuss almost everything and anything. In the pages of the Talmud, we frequently come across two different schools of thought, the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai. In one instance, they argued for three years over matters of law, until a voice from heaven declared, "Eilu v'eilu divrei Elohim chayim," these and these are the words of the living God. Both were right. And yet the law followed Hillel, not because he was more right, not because his version was closer to the “truth” but because his students were kind and humble, and taught their opponents' opinions before their own. In other words, when there’s uncertainty, or at least when there’s disagreement, it’s ok to have conviction, but it has to be matched with humility, acknowledging that there’s another way of looking at things, and that the other side has a point worth considering. I'm as guilty as anyone at feeling a bit flustered sometimes when someone disagrees with me over something I consider important. But it's almost never the disagreement that gets me. It's the disagreement paired with the unwillingness to even understand where someone else might be coming from. And here’s another reason that I think Hillel wins out. He wins the balancing act. It’s not that he’s so open minded he’ll believe anything or stand for nothing. Hillel has convictions. At the same time, Hillel has humility and a willingness to listen and to learn from others. All conviction and no capacity for humility leads to cruelty. All humility and no capacity to act turns into paralysis and perhaps even cowardice.
Pirkei Avot, an ancient rabbinic text, compares the disagreements between Hillel and Shammai to Korach's rebellion against Moses. Hillel and Shammai's argument had lasting value because it was l'shem shamayim, for the sake of heaven — both sides were genuinely trying to find the truth. It’s never been about unquestioning faith, but rather that when there are disagreements, they’re in good faith. Korach's argument didn't endure, because it was never about truth. It was about power. Korach didn’t argue because he thought he was right, or because he was trying to get closer to the truth. Korach’s arguments were purely campaign rhetoric, used in the service of gaining power and nothing more. Since Korach wasn’t legitimately trying to engage in honest debate, his arguments had no lasting value. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who led the United Kingdom’s Modern Orthodox movement, the United Synagogue, spent much of his last years - he died in 2020 - warning that a great deal of what now passes for public argument looks a lot more like Korach than like Hillel and Shammai — people who've stopped trying to be right and started trying to win.
It's not a coincidence, I don't think, that we do this work tonight. Kol Nidrei is, at its heart, an act of humility about our own words. We stand and admit that the vows we made last year — the promises, the certainties, the things we were so sure about — didn't all hold up. We don't do that to excuse ourselves from ever vowing again. We do it so this year's words, even when spoken with conviction, can be made a little more honestly, with a little more awareness of our own limits. That with our convictions, we bring humility and curiosity.
So that's my hope for us this year — for me as much as anyone. That we hold our convictions the way Hillel did: firmly enough to act on, humbly enough to keep listening, curious enough to ask one more question before we decide we're right. G'mar chatimah tovah.
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