Rabbi Rosenblatt delivered the following sermon during Rosh Hashana 5787.
As many of you may know, my great-grandfather was a very famous cantor. He portrayed himself in “the very first movie in sound,” The Jazz Singer. He was one of the first recording stars who signed with RCA Victor, and he sold out Madison Square Garden for his concerts.
My grandfather, while not a famous cantor, was also a remarkable person who made his own remarkable impacts. He knew 20 languages, yes, 20: English, Yiddish, Hebrew, Aramaic, German, Spanish, French, Arabic, Judeo Arabic, Ugaritic, Akkadian, Ethiopic, Syriac, Ladino, Latin and Greek. Yes, I am sort of showing off, but I need you to get the picture… He translated some of the first works of Jewish philosophy, such as the works of Saadia Gaon & Avrohom Ben HaRambam, from Judeo-Arabic to English. He founded a synagogue that was the center of Jewish life in Baltimore in the middle of the 20th Century and still has 1,300 member families and a school that is now K-12.
My entire life I have met people from around the world who ask if my ancestors are in fact these rabbinic and cantorial celebrities. Think “Swifities,” but in chazanut, not pop music. My father, Alav HaShalom, lived in the shadow cast by his father and grandfather and wrestled with that legacy. He used humor to cope with the weight of it. There were many such jokes and stories; the one that sticks with me is, “yichos (pedigree) is like a potato. The best part is underground.”
I remember when the weight of that lineage hit me like a ton of bricks. It happened well before I chose to study to become a rabbi. It was one of those moments, when you remember exactly where you were; for me it was sitting at my aunt’s kitchen table. My cousin, a role model for me, who was himself a prominent NY rabbi, made a comment wondering if he would also get an entry in the Encyclopedia Judaica. Suddenly, it landed with an aching feeling that gnawed at my brain. I thought, “how am I going to matter that much? Am I going to be someone who will matter at all? “
I came to discover that the hunger to matter burns in almost everyone. It is a question so many of us ask: “will I matter? Will I be remembered? How do I matter?” As a society we are so hungry to matter that there are thousands of people posting mundane aspects of their days as if in a reality show featuring themselves as some kind of celebrity.
Even more surprising is that people who objectively seem to matter even have trouble appreciating how they matter. A prime example is Anthony Fauci who was the Director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the center of the Covid 19 pandemic. In North America, Fauci was the most recognizable face of COVID19 intervention. Prior to covid, Dr. Fauci was one of the people most responsible for changing AIDS from certain death to a manageable disease. From his diaries we have a glimpse into the mind of a physician who was leading the charge of modern medicine against the most threatening virus in a century. If anyone on the planet in 2020 mattered at all, it had to have been Fauci.
One might imagine this man who, at least by popular reckoning, had saved millions of lives from two devastating diseases could have a certain emotional security that he made a positive impact on this world. I would assume that in such a situation he could live insulated from that nagging feeling that one doesn’t matter. Yet, his diaries reveal that he was fascinated, even obsessed by celebrity, by the attention, and with the comments about him made by Julia Roberts and George Clooney. He mattered so much to so many, yet he seemed to crave reassurance from a small handful of people whose mattering was limited to mere entertainment.
We Jews come by the mattering instinct honestly, regardless of how famous our grandparents might have been. We literally invite judgment:
היום הרת עולם היום יעמיד במשפט
Today the world was created, today we place ourselves up to be judged.
Yes today, we are judged by Gd, judged to see if we matter enough to be granted another year, or another success.
There is a prayer, perhaps the most famous of Rosh Hashana, the Unetana Tokef. It is often quoted for its ominous lines:
Who will live and who will die?
Who by fire and who by sword?
There has always been a part of me who felt like those who died by fire and by sword left a story worth telling, a story that mattered. At least they mattered.
How did all the rabbis miss the terrifying words of the prayer in the last paragraph? “Man’s origin is in dust & his end is back to dust…. he is like a passing shade and a vanishing cloud, a passing breeze, like dust that scatters, like a fleeting dream.” Those words are my deepest fear expressed. They sum up the trepidation that hit me after that conversation about the Encyclopedia Judaica, after I had that moment when that brain worm of mattering first started to bore at my soul.
There was a book published this last January, The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us & Divides Us, by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. I was intrigued, because the title seemed to speak to this deepest of concerns. Somehow, I thought, this book would answer the most vexing questions of what makes us matter with any degree of certainty or finality. Maybe I was hoping to find an exemption, a remedy to the burden I had been feeling for so long. Maybe Goldstein would solve my mattering problem. However, the book is more of an exploration of the longing to matter itself, the need to matter, the origin, evolutionary advantage, and the etiology of this emotional chasm. She answers why the need to matter is so important.
One of her most compelling arguments starts surprisingly with the timing of human birth. Almost all animals can walk within hours of birth. Humans take a year. Why? It turns out we need to be born early because after nine months the metabolic needs, the pure energy demand of the growth requirements of the fetal brain is so great it would overload and kill the mother. As a result, we are all born helpless so that we can grow a brain on our own. We are physically helpless. We need to be taken care of, fed cleaned, etc. To satisfy those needs we need to demand attention. Human infants are neurologically dependent on attention; they need to matter to someone, to be taken care of. And thus, deep in our programming is the need to matter. It is part of our survival instinct.
Mattering to someone else may be most pronounced in infancy, but it never goes away. None of us built our own houses; we hired framers, plumbers, roofers, electricians, and of course, a contractor. We probably borrowed money. So, we needed others, with different skills and resources. None of us grows all our own food; we rely on others – farmers, drivers, etc. None of us built our own computer or installed our own WiFi; we relied on technicians, programmers, and entrepreneurs.
In short, we thrive together; we need others, they need us, and we need to matter enough to deserve their help. Humans have dominated because we have figured out a way to depend on each other, to need other people’s help. We need to matter to one another.
The Torah tradition has an emphatic response to the question of mattering. The Mishna, the foundational text of Jewish law, in a rare philosophical statement says we must all declare the following: בשבלי נברא העולם – the entire world was created for me. Not only the physical part of the world was created for you, not just the beautiful skyline, the sunset, and the taste of soft butter on fresh bread. The very roots of existence itself were created for you. The First Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi in his famous work the Tanyah explains as follows.
God fills all worlds and encompasses all worlds,” as is written, “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” Yet He leaves both the higher and lower [worlds] and uniquely bestows His Kingdom upon you such that a man is obliged to say, “For my sake was the world created.“
Before the Tanyah one thought that the eagle and the elephant, the wheat and wine, were all created for me, so I must use them well. The Ba’al HaTanyah supercharged this idea. [Meaning] even the spiritual dimensions of creation, Gd in his infinite and inscrutable being, his unlimited power and spiritual force, devolved from the lofty levels of separate and abstract holiness to embody a physical and limited form, for you, Sarah Goldberg in seat 223a. Yes, stop looking around, you and the person next to you and so on.
To this idea Tzadok Hakohen of Lublin, another of the great Chassidic master adds a certain kind of heresy. Rabbi Shneuer Zalman expanded and enlarged the idea that the world was created for you, but Rav Tzaddok said it is heresy not to believe in yourself, not to believe that Gd created the world for you, personally.
צדקת הצדיק/קנד
כְּשֵׁם שֶׁצָּרִיךְ אָדָם לְהַאֲמִין בְּהַשֵׁם יִתְבָּרַךְ – כָּךְ צָרִיךְ אַחַר כָּךְ לְהַאֲמִין בְּעַצְמוֹ. רוֹצֶה לוֹמַר שֶׁיֵּשׁ לְהַשֵׁם יִתְבָּרֵךְ עֵסֶק עִמּוֹ, וְשֶׁאֵינֶנּוּ פּוֹעֵל בָּטֵל שֶׁבִּן לַיְלָה הָיָה וּבִן לַיְלָה אָבָד (יונה ד, י). וּכְחַיְתוֹ שָׂדֶה שֶׁלְּאַחַר מִיתָתָם נֶאֶבְדוּ וְאֵינָם. רַק צָרִיךְ לְהַאֲמִין כִּי נַפְשׁוֹ מִמָּקוֹר הַחַיִּים יִתְבָּרַךְ שְׁמוֹ, וְהַשֵּׁם יִתְבָּרַךְ מִתְעַנֵּג וּמִשְׁתַּעֲשֵׁעַ בָּהּ כְּשֶׁעוֹשֶׂה רְצוֹנוֹ.
Just as a person has to believe in Gd, he also has to believe in himself (herself) and that Gd has business with you. That you were not given life (here I borrow a term from prince Harry) as a spare. That is here today and gone tomorrow. You must believe that your soul is from the Source of All Life, may He Be Blessed. And Gd, may his name be blessed, takes delight and pleasure from you when you do Hashem’s will.
How does Rav Tzaddok know that it is heresy to deny that Gd gave you, individually, a purpose. His source is as ubiquitous in Judaism as it is spiritually radical.In Rav Tzaddok’s words it is that your soul comes from the source of all life; it is a little slice of Hashem put into you individually. This is of course radical because we believe in Hashem Echad, the unity of the Divine. However, this idea is so universal that we say it every time we read or study Torah, חיי עולם נטע בתוכינו – everlasting life, you placed within us.
This concept provides a road map to mattering and to faith at the same time. Many of the Chassidic masters return to this theme over and over again. For example, the Gerrer Rebbe, the Sefat Emet teaches that there is a point of light within all of us, which is his metaphor for the soul. This point of light is perceptible. We feel it. We can nurture it and starve it. When we invest spiritually it grows and shines. When we ignore our purpose, it dims and creates a vacuum.
I don’t want to cast aspersions in this room, certainly not on Rosh Hashanah. My experience here for nearly 25 years is that one of the struggles in our generation is belief in and connection to Hashem, to Gd. We struggle wondering if he is listening to our prayers and how to connect with the Divine. I find people connect most readily to questions of the soul. One of the most common questions I get asked after the death of a loved one is, “what happens to my mother’s soul?” or “where is my father’s soul right now?” We have an easier time accepting loss by connecting to a soul; we are ready to believe it is there. Rav Tzaddok and the Sefas Emet based on centuries of tradition would tell you that it is easier to believe in a soul because you actually feel its existence. It shines, it aches, it warms you and it drives your quest to matter.
That aching to matter: that is the soul screaming at you from inside, demanding your investment in the work of the soul. There are moments when resolving that need to matter and when the aching of our soul becomes the most sublime of feelings. For artists and academics and rabbis it is the moment when someone understands your work and your message. For healthcare workers it can be that moment that you reverse disease, or resolve pain. It can be a moment when the family gathers for dinner and it can be one of those moments of true friendship. It can also be one of those moments, like the first memorial for the fallen of October 7th with 1200 candles lit in this room and the spontaneous singing of Hatikvah. It can be a Kabbalat Shabbat, or a succah raising or a myriad of acts of Tzedakah and Chesed, charity and kindness.
Sometimes that aching in the soul is misunderstood and we seek alternative remedies to anesthetize the feelings of inadequacy: some binge Netflix, some binge Häagen-Dazs, others doom scroll. In more extreme cases there are other diversions and numbing agents of a chemical variety. Occasionally we try to satisfy the needs of the soul with the wrong kind of mattering: financial success, professional success, or even the number of followers we have on social media.
If there is one lesson I want to drive home, it is that the ache – the need to matter – is not in and of itself a bad thing. We should lean into it. We should know that the mattering instinct drives us to be our best selves. It is what drives us to do good for others. It is what drives us to connection. It is also what drives us to Gd. The aching to matter is also important because it prevents us from retreating into an emotional cocoon of solitude.
If Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is correct, then the need to matter is the psychological underpinning of companionship and community. Jewish tradition is more ambitious; it is not an evolutionary quirk; it is the very reason you are here. It is your soul itself.
It is at this point in the sermon that the rabbi usually tells you what is called the application. It is what you need to do. Some of the primary examples are: study more Torah, give more charity, forgive your neighbors, love Israel stronger. For the first time in 23 years, I am devoting the application to the realm of feeling. I want you to feel that you matter. I want you to also feel the chasm between the feeling that you should matter and that you do matter. It is in that uncomfortable space that teshuva – repentance -happens.
On Yom Kippur I will propose some practical ways to deal with the gap between your potential to matter and feeling like you do matter. For now, I leave you with just the need to appreciate the feeling. It’s a little like the fact that we have no shofar today because it is Shabbat; we have removed the action, we are left with only the feeling.
I went back and reread the famous Unetana Tokef prayer of Rabbi Amon, the one that starts on Rosh Hashanah when we are judged: who will live and who will die? Its climax is “repentance, prayer, and charity avert the evil decrees.” Its conclusion is
“we come from dust and return to dust. We labour by our lives for bread, we are like broken shards, like dry grass, and like a withered flower; like a passing shadow and a vanishing cloud, like a breeze that passes, like dust that scatters, like a fleeting dream. But You are the king who lives eternal.”
The final thought that he leaves us with is the aching to matter. So, I am leaving you with it, not because I can’t propose remedies, but because the feeling itself, the hunger for it , and the ability to understand the thirst itself is so important that the machzor’s most famous prayer also ends with it.
