My Rosh Hashanah Sermon - would love to hear your thoughts!

In Marc Foster’s “Stranger than Fiction” Howard Crick’s life is turned upside down when he realizes he might be a character in novel. Immediately, Crick, played by Will Ferrel, seeks out a literature professor to find out what to do. His instructions are clear, figure out whether he is a character in comedy or a tragedy. As the narrative continues we find Crick carrying around a notebook. On one side, he has written the word, comedy. On the other side, he has written the word tragedy. As he lives his life, he begins tallying up moments of tragedy and comedy until he looks his love in the eyes and says, in perhaps the funniest moment of the movie, “I think I’m in a tragedy!”

Howard Crick is not the only person in history to divide stories into comedies and tragedies. Since Aristotle, literature has been placed into one of these two categories. Comedies begin in disarray but over the course of the narrative, they move toward unity until they finish with a final act of unity, usually a marriage. Think “Taming of the Shrew” or even “The Hangover.” Tragedy on the other hand, begins well but because of some fatal flaw everyone ends up dead on the floor. These range from “Hamlet” to Scorseese’s “The Departed.”

It seems today people are still using these classical definitions to debate the present state of the Jewish community. Open the newspaper and you’ll find many arguing that we are living in a tragedy. The Jewish population is shrinking, young Jews lack engagement with Israel, hostility toward religion is more accepted than it ever has been in America, the future of many of our greatest Jewish institutions is in question, including the future of the synagogue. Some view these as fatal flaws and fear that they spell the tragic death of the American Jewish community and perhaps the Jewish people.

Then of course, there are those who feel that we are living in a comedy. Look at the Jewish Meditation Center of Brooklyn and other similar organizations and you’ll see a renewed commitment to Jewish spiritual connection. Pray with Altshul or any other independent minyan and you’ll see an intense and powerful connection to Jewish prayer and community. Anti-Semitism is at an all time low, and in fact, we might actually be in a period of Philo-Semitism, a love of Jews. And of course, the current generation of Jews is the most secularly educated in history and this creates stronger leaders and brings to the table new ideas. Follow the comedy paradigm and the Jewish future has never been more sound than it is today.

In a way, the tragedy / comedy dichotomy is a false one. Jewish narratives do not function as one or the other. Like good postmodern movie, Jewish time combines moments of comedy and tragedy. Let me give you two examples:

Each week, the Jewish calendar relives the story of creation. Just as the world was created out of chaos and emptiness, tohu v’avohu so too does our week begin is disarray. However, our sages teach us that like any good comedy as our week progresses it moves toward wholeness. Monday is less broken than Sunday, Thursday less than Wednesday, until Shabbat arrives and our comedy ends like most, with a wedding as we welcome the Shabbas bride during the singing of L’cha Dodi. This wedding ushers in a 24 hour period where we gain an extra soul, taste the world to come, and experience wholeness unlike any other time during the week. It’s the ultimate happy ending.

However, our story doesn’t end there. Humanity has a fatal flaw. We haven’t brought about redemption. Our world, because of hunger, hate, injustice, and fear cannot sustain the unity of Shabbat. Saturday night arrives, Shabbat crumbles and we need the smells and sounds of the Havdallah services just to survive. Our comedy ends in tragedy. Our world is again in chaos and we must start our comedy narrative anew.

Like the Jewish week, the Jewish year bounces between comedy and tragedy. Each year, during the month of Elul we engage in a sacred drama with God. God, who according the Abraham Joshua Heschel is in search of humanity, goes looking for us. At some point right before Rosh Hashanah God finds us and in an act of love we unite with God. In fact, our tradition teaches us that at this time every year, humanity is so close to God, that God cannot tell the difference between humanity and the angels. For the rabbis who developed this doctrine, the month of Elul isn’t just a 30-day before the High Holy Days; it is an acronym for this process. Elul means ani l’dodi, v’dodi li, I am my beloved and my beloved is mine. God and humanity are intertwined and unified. The Holy Days are the last scene in the Jewish comedy, as God and the humanity are wed.

However, over the course of the year, we begin to fade. Humanity moves further and further from God. Again, humanity has let the flaws of hate, anger and materialism get in the way and we experience tragedy anew. Each summer as a reminder that our world is not whole, we arrive at the 9th day of the month of Av, Tisha B’av and are forced to relive the destruction of the Temple and God’s exile from our midst. But like our Jewish week, time moves in cycles. The month of Elul starts again and our tragedy turns to comedy anew.

Both the Jewish week and the Jewish year are microcosms of Jewish history. These narratives tell us many things about our relationship to God and to the Jewish story. However, most importantly, they tells us that Jewish time is neither tragedy nor comedy but the inextricable linking of the two.

Those who look at Jewish history can certainly make a reasonable argument that we live in a tragedy. I often look around at hostility toward Israel or see the shrinking demographic data and I feel the fear and regret I do when I say goodbye to Shabbat on Saturday night. However, I can also make a reasonable argument that we live in a comedy. I observe the energy in the Brooklyn Jews community, I hear a high-school student say that he’s never experienced anti-Semitism, I see how liberal Judaism has accepted fully the notion of gay marriage and I feel much like I do on Friday night when the Shabbas bride enters.

Throughout time, the Jewish world has contained pessimists and optimists. To steal a phrase from Simon Rawidowicz, Judaism is the “ever dying people.” Yet, we are also the ever-thriving people! Saul Bellow described Jewish literature (as a representation of Jewish life) as “a curious intermingling of laughter and trembling” because the tragedy narrative and the comedy narrative depend on one another. Just as Shabbat is so much sweeter because we experienced the chaos of the week, and Saturday night is so much harder because we’ve experienced the peace of Shabbat, our tragedy narratives make our comedy narratives stronger and visa versa.

A brit milah of a newborn baby has added meaning in light of the narrative of shrinking demographics. Anyone who joins Congregation Beth Elohim or goes to a Federation program proves wrong those who say that our age cohort does not care about Jewish institutions. And it works the opposite way. The narrative of non-affiliation forces congregations and organizations to avoid staleness and self-gratification. The narrative of lack of Israel engagement empowers us to create innovative programs and experiences like Birthright to educate our community about the richness of the state of Israel.

Tragedy and comedy narratives may seem mutually exclusive but they are not. A rich Jewish future is built on mutual interdependence of these stories. As Jews, we must laugh in the face of our greatest fears and view our greatest successes with a bit a fear. That’s the only way to avoid complacency.

However, Jewish time is not an endless cycle of bouncing between comedy and tragedy. Although the two are intertwined, the idea of redemption has always remained a foremost hope of the Jewish people. For some this is called the Messianic era. For others it is called peace, security, or stability. We may live today in both a comedy and a tragedy but it’s been the hope the Jewish people for millennia that we end up well. One day Shabbat will begin and it not end. Then life will be “yom shkulo Shabbat—the perfectly actualized Shabbat day. One day we unite with God at the High Holy Days and we don’t lose that connection. Maimonides’ famous statement, “ani mamamin, b’emunah sh’lemah,” I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the messianic age is statement of faith that we live in a comedy.

Time may vacillate between comedy and tragedy but it doesn’t function like a ferris wheel. We aren’t stuck in a perpetual and inescapable cycle of ups and downsbetween good and bad, joyshope and fears. Jewish time differs from those in say a Greek novel because history has a direction. Jewish time looks less like a hamster wheel and more like a…well a Shofar!

[hold out long, curved shofar]

The shape of the Shofar reminds us that we live in the interplay between the high’s and low’s but more importantly that one day the tragedy narrative will dissolve and we will end our story in a comedy. Yes, a shofar loops around, but it also ends up somewhere a little further ahead than where it began. One reason we blow the shofar is to remind us that there is a better place. We sound the horn to rouse us from our pessimism, to collect up our feelings of exile, pain, and fear and to acknowledge that the “ever dying people” will continue to thrive.

We live in a scary time. However, we also live in a hopeful time. Both narratives are important and both are crucial a whole Jewish story. Whether we see our current reality as a comedy or tragedy is really up the individual. There are enough elements of both to make a strong case for either. But Jewish history and faith teach us that no matter how many checks we put in the tragedy or comedy box we are a link in a history that is always moving toward betterment and self-actualization. There’s nothing more hopeful and entertaining than that!