How to Evolve

(singing fades out)

Rabbi Sacks:

Dayan Gelley, Rabbi Harris, President of the United Synagogue, President of the Board of Deputies, beloved friends. Wow, c’est magnifique. When you see this shul so beautifully restored, you have to admit you miss the dark green paint and the damp, but. Can I say to you how moving it is, how inspiring, to see this beautiful synagogue, one of the oldest in London, one of the most beautiful in the whole of British Jewry, so beautifully transformed. A living example of chadesh yameinu kekedem, of renewing its days as of old. And I thank and congratulate everyone who had a share in it.

This is a wonderful community, deeply loyal to our traditions, blessed by an outstanding Rabbi, Rabbi Michael Harris. And as I said to you on Wednesday, Michael, when you spoke so eloquently to our Rabbi’s conference, your late and much missed father, Chief Rabbi Cyril Harris of blessed memory would be so proud of what you and this community you have achieved. May you and the community continue to go l’eylah ul’eylah and ever more successfully in the coming year and coming years, amen.

Congregation:
Amen.

Rabbi Sacks:
Let me also thank in advance on your behalf Rabbi Lionel Rosenfeld, Reverend Jonny Turgel, our young soloist, Eli Baigel, Conductor Stephen Levey and the Shabbaton Choir for what we know will be one of the great spiritual and emotional experiences of these holy days. It was Rabbi Rosenfeld and the Shabbaton Choir that brought back the tradition of choral selichot after it had almost disappeared in Anglo Jewry. And your music has inspired me as it has inspired so many, especially the victims of terror and others in Israel for whom you sing every year on your chorale mission, where Elaine and I have had the privilege of seeing just how music can be rofeh lishevurei lev, can heal broken hearts and help make them whole again.

It was on one of our missions that we decided to take one piece of music composed by Stephen Levey, sung by the choir and put it on YouTube. It’s been watched in the last 15 months by 725,000 people, not that I’m counting. But that must make it the most listen to recording of Jewish music ever made. So I thank you, all of you of the Shabbaton Choir, and may you continue to make our soul sing for years to come, amen.

Congregation:

Amen.

Rabbi Sacks:

Finally, may I wish all of you et asher yeshno po imanu omed hayom, (Devarim 29:14) those who are with us today and Jews everywhere, in Israel and throughout the world, a year of health, a year of blessing, and above all, a year of peace, amen.

Congregation:

Amen.

Rabbi Sacks:

Friends, Rabbi Yisroel Salanter once said, “When I was young, I wanted to change the world, and I tried, but the world didn’t change. So I decided first I will change my town, but my town didn’t change. So I said, then I will change my family. I tried, but my family didn’t change. And then I realised, first I have to change myself.” There are two paths, shnei shvilim, in life. One leads on to happiness, the other to misery, disappointment, loneliness, anger, resentment, and profound unhappiness. And that is the choice between us on these holy days. Which path will we take? The second path says if there is something wrong with my life, it’s someone else’s fault. I’m innocent, I’m the victim, someone else is to blame.

We are all, without exception, sometimes tempted to take that path. It’s comfortable to be a victim. People have rachmanus for you, they feel for you, they sympathise with you. Best of all, you don’t have to change. Why should I change? It was somebody else’s fault, they have to change, not me. There’s only one thing wrong with thinking of life that way, one thing wrong with seeing yourself as a victim of circumstance. It condemns you to impotence, it robs you of the one thing in life that might make a difference to your life, namely, the ability to change. And the result is that if we see ourselves as victims, we will rage against the world. We’ll feel angry, we’ll feel hard done by. We’ll feel a lingering sense of injustice. And it will eat us up, robbing us of the capacity for happiness and joy.

And you know, there are too many people in this world who are angry, who are sad, who are depressed. There are too many people who feel life is slipping by without meaning, without happiness without hope. Why? Because too many people see themselves as victims. There is another way, a way that leads to freedom and fulfilment, a sense of space and light, a way that leads to happiness. It says that if I want to change the world, first, I must change myself.

That is the meaning of teshuvah, of repentance. That is the Jewish way, the only way if we want to experience life as a blessing. We misunderstand teshuvah if we think of it as just a way of saying, oy, ashamnu, bagadnu, gazalnu, we tick all the boxes, we confess with every letter of the alef-beis. You name it, I did it, all the way from A to Z, avarice to zealotry, I plead guilty Ribbono shel olam to all charges, please find against me. And now Ribbono Shel Olam, in return for all that honesty, could I please have that Bentley you know I’ve wanted for so long? Or at the very least, could you make my share prices go up?

Friends, I hope I don’t disillusion you, but that is not what teshuvah is. Teshuvah means being honest with yourself, it means seeing the flaws in our own character. It means getting hold of ourselves and saying, “I don’t have to be like that. I can be different if I try.” And believe me, God helps us if we try. How? By what we’re going to do right now, by prayer. Despite what many people think, prayer is not a matter of asking God to change the world. Prayer is asking for God’s help to let me have the strength to change myself. Teshuvah asks the hardest of all questions. Let me tell you, what is the hardest of all questions? I’ll tell you by way, if I may, of a story.

One night in New Jersey at three o’clock in the morning, Hetty wakes up and she sees her husband Moishe in a state of anguish, walking up and down the bedroom, up and down, his head in his hands. She says, “Moishe, it’s three o’clock in the morning. What are you doing walking up and down?” Moishe says, “Hetty, you know that hundred thousand dollars I borrowed from Yankel next door? I can’t repay it.” Hetty says, “Wait two minutes.” She opens the window. She yells out to the house next door, “Yankel, Yankel.” Sleepily, Yankel eventually opens the window and says, “Hetty, what’s the matter?” She says, “Yankel, you know that hundred thousand dollars Moishe borrowed from you?” “Yes,” he says. “Well,” she says, “he can’t repay it,” and she slams the window shut. And then she turns to Moishe and says, “Now let him walk up and down and then you get to bed.”

Friends, the biggest question in life is whose problem is it? And very often it’s someone else’s problem, but sometimes it’s mine. What if my colleagues don’t like me? What if my marriage is not as strong as it once was? What if I feel I can’t communicate with my children? Sometimes life can be full of problems, but what if we are the problem? What if we didn’t give them enough time or attention or respect? What if I was so preoccupied with my feelings I didn’t even recognise theirs? What if I loved myself too much, and then not enough? Chevra, there is only one thing we can change in the world, and that is ourselves. And if we spend our lives waiting for other people to change for our benefit, we will waste our energies, we will waste our emotions, we will waste our lives.

Let me give you one example, albeit an extreme example, but a very moving one. This year, rachmana litzlan, one of our friends died. She was a remarkable woman and she died all too young, a victim of a terrible cancer. And shortly before she died, in the midst of the most terrible pain, she wrote a letter, ostensibly to her family, actually to God. And she asked for it to be read out at her funeral, and it was. It was one of the most moving documents I have ever read. What do you think she wrote in the last days of her life, in the midst of pain? She wrote a shir shel todah, a song of thanksgiving, thanking God for her life, for the love she had found in her marriage, for the gift God had given her in her children, for the opportunities she had in her life to do what she felt she should do.

Anyone would have been justified in her circumstances at feeling anger or sadness at her fate, or be paralysed by fear of death itself. I can hardly begin to imagine the physical and the metaphysical pain she must have suffered, knowing that she was to be taken from this world in the midst of her years. And yet she didn’t ask God to change the world, she changed herself, and instead of cursing fate, gave thanks for the years and the happiness she had had. That is spiritual greatness, and I don’t think anyone who was there listening to the words she had written will ever forget that memory for the rest of their lives.

That is an extreme example, but how much more so in the lesser challenges life constantly throws us. We can’t control what happens to us. That is in the hands of the Almighty in whom we trust, but whom we will never fully understand. But there is one thing we can control, whatever happens to us. Namely, how shall we respond? Will we respond with courage or with fear, with acceptance or with anger, with hope or with despair? Will we use our pain to curse our fate or will we use our pain to sensitise us to the pain of others? When night falls, will we curse the darkness or will we light a candle? Friends, in the coming days, please think about the problems in your life, and ask, how could I change to make them better? If I want others to smile, first I must smile. If I want others to respect me, first I must show respect to them. If I want other people to honour me, let me honour them. If I want others to love me, first I must love them selflessly and unconditionally,

It’s easy to blame others, hard to change ourselves, but that is what God wants, that is what teshuvah is, that is the challenge that begins tonight. Friends, in the coming year, may we be among those who light a candle and not among those who curse the darkness. Because the only way to change the world is to know that first we must change ourselves. May God give us that wisdom, that courage, and that strength, and may he write us all in the book of health, the book of peace, the book of life. Amen.

Congregation:

Amen.