The Search for Meaning

Kol Nidre, 5758

Rabbi Melanie Aron

I was asked recently, in an interfaith context, to deliver a speech about the significance of the upcoming millennium to the Jewish religion. I almost accepted. It would be an easy talk to prepare - nice and short.

The millennium, in and of itself, has no significance to Jews. Our year is 5758, and though 5760 has certain round number qualities, it's really not too exciting. Even the letter equivalences which will be used, tav shin samech, don't spell out anything as exciting as say 5755, tav, shim,nun, hey, a.k.a. 1994-95, which spelled out "a year of changes" : which it was in many ways. And yet one can't escape the hype, the desire to give meaning to a coincidence of numbers on the secular calendar. That desire to give meaning seems sometimes to be as strong an instinct as that which prompts us to seek community, or shelter, or even food.

One of my colleagues, gives one sermon each year on the important people who have died between this year's High Holidays and last's. When I spoke with him, just before Rosh Hashanah, he was trying to find something Jewish to say about Princess Diana and Mother Theresa. As I was speaking with him, it occurred to me that one of the more Jewish significant people who died this year was Victor Frankel, author of Man's Search for Meaning, a classic of humanistic psychology.

Frankel was a psychoanalyst, trained in Vienna, who was interned in Aushwitz from 1942 until the end of the war. As a prisoner in a concentration camp he tried to apply his psychological training to dealing with his day to day existence. Writing after the war, he noted that "once the prisoners were entrenched in camp routine, they would descend from a denial of their situation into a state of apathy". He recognized this apathy, which led prisoners to fail to get up, wash, or leave the barracks, even under threat of blows or death, as deep depression. He noted that those who were able to hold onto meaning, whether the hope of reuniting with a child who had been put into hiding, or the expectation of finishing a work that had been started before the war, were able to fight off despair.

From this experience, and on the basis of work he had done before the Holocaust, Frankel created a counseling approach, he called "logotherapy" which was concerned with helping the patient find meaning, even in the most troubled life. Unlike Bruno Bettelheim, whose work has recently been discounted and even criticized as fraudulent, Frankel's work continues to draw praise and to motivate many therapists, and ordinary people who find great meaning in his writings. Many of you have probably read Frankel's book, possibly years ago.

I wondered in rereading Frankel again recently, to what extent Frankel's ideas could be applied to each of us as individuals, and to our congregation as we approach a twentieth birthday.

Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato, a teacher in the Musar Movement taught that "it is the basic obligation of every Jew to clarify and decide what is his purpose in the world." Many of us would recognize that to answer this question is harder than we might initially think. Some of us may even have had the experience of finding that questions like: "What is the purpose of our lives?" which intrigued us as college students, and then were dormant during the years we were involved in the day to day tasks of establishing our careers and raising our children, have reemerged as topics of interest. We wonder: Is it sufficient merely to exist and to enjoy the pleasures of this world? Do we have an obligation to contribute in some way to the world? Do we have the ability to contribute in some way, to something more lasting than ourselves?

One of the most common questions I am asked after a death- is not why did this happen, but what is the purpose of my life, now? I have noticed that those who do not find an answer to that question, whether through their religious values, family responsibilities, or community involvement often fail to thrive. Having a why to live for, seems at some level more significant than a how.

This is supported by one of the stories told in the Talmud about a very old man who came to Rabbi Yossi ben Halafta wondering why he of all his generation had remained alive. The Rabbi asked him, what mitzvah do you keep? He responded that he went to the synagogue every morning to be the tenth man for the minyan. The rabbi said: "It is the performance of this mitvah that keeps you alive." I do not believe that Rabbi Halafta believed that long life was the reward of the mitzvah so much as its consequence. So long as he was the tenth for the minyan, the old man had something to live for and someone who was depending on him. The daily minyan broke the self- absorption that sometimes accompanies the physical decline of old age, it connected the old man with other people and with a story that transcended his own existence. If that human contact and overarching meaning disappeared, he would not able to go on. And indeed the story in the Talmud continues by telling us that when the old man was prevented from attending the minyan for three days, he died.

This need for meaning is corroborated less anecdotally by studies done of thousands of people. "Finding a purpose and meaning of my life" is a very important as a goal for the vast majority of people.

Concerning contemporary society, Frankel worried that all of our stress on having a happy life rather than a meaningful one, was actually leading to unnecessary unhappiness, as people became unhappy about being unhappy. Being content is not necessarily the goal one should pursue. The striving and struggling for a worthwhile ideal, a freely chosen task, is worth the unhappiness and suffering that might come along the way. One cure, in fact, for dealing with unhappiness is the self-transcendence which comes from seeing one's suffering and trials, as part of life in the context of some greater picture. Having a personal "master story" provides the coherence we seek and connecting our story with some greater struggle, assures us that what we do today, will indeed matter, one year, one decade, perhaps even one century from now.

 

As a congregation we are also at a stage of figuring out what is the meaning of our existence. For a long time, there remained a question as to whether Shir Hadash would continue from year to year, from location to location. And even after our congregation had displayed some staying power, maintaining our viability was a major focus of our activity. But now, we have a building that speaks of our permanence and a membership which makes us a force in our local community. Now that our energies are not totally focused on survival, we need to think about why we exist and what we are striving for.

I think part of that answer comes from the unique role that we as Shir Hadash have defined for ourselves. We have chosen to reside on the outer reaches, not only physically, but also very much demographically, of the traditional Jewish world. It is much more than being about 15 miles south of the catchment area of the San Francisco Federation. All of the trends that national leaders of the Jewish community see on the horizon, all of the changes that are causing a great geshrei, a cry of despair on the east coast- are here already, and have been with us for some time. We are a congregation that is in many ways an experiment in outreach and in the ability of a community to be welcoming to those on the periphery of Jewish life while maintaining a continuity of Jewish values and teaching.

Rabbi Janet Marder- regional director of Southern California Region of the Reform movement, spoke recently about the contribution that we liberal congregations on the West coast are making:

"We are writing the history of American Judaism right here, right now. The future of American Jewry is not some abstraction out there in statistics land. Our congregations are the arena in which the fight for Jewish survival will be fought. Your home, your families are the testing grounds. You are writing the Jewish book of life or death."

We are the ones who will answer the question of whether Judaism can survive in an atmosphere of openness, with a large measure of assimilation and integration into our surrounding communities. If Judaism cannot find a way of thriving in our community, then in a sense we are saying that we cannot meet the challenge of American freedom and must return to the ghetto if we are to remain Jews.

I believe that this search for a more mature mission for our congregation, will also take us beyond the boundaries of the Jewish community. How much naval watching can we be content to do, when there is so much need around us. As comfortably situated Americans we are a minority of a minority of the human race.

In preparing for Confirmation this fall, I came across an interesting little lesson which brought it home to me. If we imagined the entire world population as 100 people- then 80 of the 100 would live in substandard housing, 50 of the 100 would suffer from malnutrition, 6 of the 100 (Americans) would consume one half of the world's wealth, and only 1 out of the 100 would have a college education. Let me give you a further sense of how far our everyday lives are from the reality for most of the inhabitants of our planet. In this boiled down picture of humanity, in this world of one hundred people, no one would own a computer.

Part of our mission in the years to come will be to consider the other 99% of the inhabitants of the earth, both those physically close and those further away from us.

Finally, the search for meaning is the challenge before the entire Jewish community, not just our congregation. Though our commitment to Israel and to World Jewry remains strong, we no longer exist as Jews for the purpose of supporting Israel and protecting Jewish communities overseas. Israel's peace dividend may have been cashed in prematurely, but the fact remains that Israel is an established independent nation, which needs our support, but is not dependent on us for its very existence. We no longer hold paramount in our hearts, what Professor Jacob Neusner calls, the Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption. That public Judaism which stressed financially and morally supporting Israel, rescuing beleaguered Jews, and promoting sound Jewish public relations, is no longer enough to answer for most of us, the question, Why Be Jewish.

Neither are we any longer Ethnic Jews, like our parents or grandparents, who grew up in Los Angeles, or New York or a number of other Jewish enclaves scattered around the country. Sitting with their Jewish friends, eating Jewish foods, discussing Jewish issues, they were not bothered by the question, Why be Jewish. Had we asked them then, they might have answered: Why be Jewish? and what else should we be.

Professor Neusner offers this image of the new Judaism of the next millennia: "It will be a Judaism not just of building our Jewish community, but also of fortifying our Jewish life. It will be a Judaism that will not only strengthen our Jewish bodies but also nurture our Jewish souls. It will be a Judaism, not for shreing gevalt, and running from our enemies, but for counting our blessings about the splendor of our tradition."

In the course of Jewish history, many millennia have come and gone, and this one too will arrive at its appointed hour, either Jan 1 2000 of Jan 1 2001. It will be significant only if we make it so, through our efforts to meet the challenges before us and through the meaning that we give to our experience.