Yom Kippur, 5769/2008 - What is Our Legacy?
Yom Kippur, 5769/2008 Rabbi Julie Hilton Danan
What is Our Legacy?
There once was a rich man who was near death. He was very grieved because he had worked so hard for his money and he wanted to be able to take it with him to heaven. So he began to pray that he might be able to take some of his wealth with him. An angel heard his plea and appeared to him, saying, “Sorry, but you can’t take your wealth with you.” The man implored the angel to speak to God to see if God might bend the rules.
Later, the angel reappeared and informed the man that God had decided to allow him to take one suitcase with him. Overjoyed, the man gathered his largest suitcase, filled it with pure gold bars and placed it beside his bed.
Soon afterward, the man died and showed up at the Gates of Heaven. The arc- angel Gabriel was standing there. Seeing the suitcase, he said, “Hold on, you can’t bring that in here!”
But, the man explained, he had gotten divine permission and asked the angel to verify his story. Sure enough, the angel checked and came back saying, “OK, You’re right. You are allowed one carry-on bag, but I’m supposed to check its contents before letting it through.”
The angel opened the suitcase to inspect the worldly items that the man found too precious to leave behind. He found the suitcase filled with shiny, gleaming gold bars, gasped, and asked incredulously, “You brought…pavement?!!”
A heaven of streets paved with gold, angels strumming harps, and pearly gates, doesn’t sound like a very Jewish picture. Judaism is known as a this-wordly religion. As Jews, we always say, “Le’chayim,” to life! We tend to focus on this life, to uphold life as the highest value, and to avoid talking much about the afterlife. Many modern, liberal Jews today do not believe in a survival of the soul after death.
But in fact, traditional Judaism has embraced many views of the afterlife. If you believe in the survival of your soul in heaven (which Jews call Gan Eden) resurrection of the dead in some physical form at the end of days, or even reincarnation (like the Kabbalists), you are well within the bounds of Jewish tradition. Our tradition tells us that the way to prepare in this life for the world to come is to do good deeds, learn Torah, and develop our inner spiritual life so that when we leave the material world behind someday we will have already forged a connection to the God within our own souls. But whether we are mystics or rationalists, whether or not we believe in the soul’s survival, we can all agree that we also live on in our work, in our deeds, and in the hearts of our loved ones.
Yom Kippur is a time that we think about the big questions in life, which include our own mortality. As Woody Allen said, “I’m not afraid of my own death. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” But at some point, each of us is shaken from our denial. The illness or death of a loved one, tragic events like 9-11, or natural disasters make us face the fact that none of us will live forever. In case we want to avoid that realization, the High Holy Day liturgy reminds us: “All of humanity is founded on dust—like vessels of clay that break, like grass that withers, like flowers that fade, like shadows that pass, like clouds that are emptied… like a dream that vanishes.”
Rosh Hashanah is the “birthday of the world,” but Yom Kippur recalls our mortality. Traditionally in Ashkenazic communities, men wore the kittel, the same garment they would someday wear as a shroud (of course, they also wore it at their own wedding, so go figure). By fasting, we withdraw from the physical world. At the end of the day, we call out the Shema, as we are supposed to when we breathe our last. But as Reb Zalman explains, Yom Kippur is a “non-fatal death.” It allows us to feel cleansed of the mistakes of the year, symbolically reborn, and ready to begin a “new incarnation” in this very lifetime. So Yom Kippur is a fitting time to think about the legacy we will one day leave behind.
As we consider our legacy, we can look at five major areas that we can count on one hand: our wealth, our work, our world, our families, and our Jewish community. Wealth may be the simplest one to consider. Even if we don’t believe that heaven’s streets are paved in gold, we know deep down that we can’t take our money with us. As we learned in our estate planning seminar with Steve Margolin, there is so much good, so many mitzvoth, that we can do with our money, if we will just face our mortality and plan ahead to leave something great for others. We can create a legacy that lives on in our community for future generations. And let us remember also, that when we inherit money from loved ones, we have been given a sacred opportunity to immortalize their name, values, and legacy through our acts of tzedakah. It is a Jewish tradition to give tzedakah and do mitzoth in the name of departed loved ones. This is said to elevate their souls and to make their values live on in our deeds.
Second, we hope that our life’s work will leave an impact on those we leave behind. People differ in their drive to leave this type of legacy, whether of leadership, invention, creativity,or scholarship. But even the humblest person affects those who come after. As Albert Einstein said, “many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of others, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have receive and am still receiving.”
Third: No matter if we are famous or obscure, all of us together are shaping the legacy of the world we live in. The Days of Awe are called Judgment Day or Yom Ha-din. In a few weeks, we will have another judgment day, election day. We are making decisions that will affect generations to come. Our votes and our social action all come together to create the nation and society in which future generations will live. But our legacy extends well beyond the human world. Every action we take today, from our choice of food to our method of transportation, to the leaders we elect and their environmental policies, will create a legacy of harmony or devastation for future generations on earth. From rainforests to ice-caps, oceans to honey bees, the planet is ours to nurture or destroy. It is our urgent task to create the legacy of a healthy, sustainable planet for generations to come.
Of course, the deepest and most personal way that most of us leave a legacy is through our children and grandchildren, if we are blessed to have them, and our talmidim, our students, people of a younger generation that we mentor and nurture. There is an ancient Jewish tradition, that besides writing a will to distribute property, we also write an “ethical will” to tell our survivors our highest values. One does not have to wait for death to distribute this will, but it can be written as a letter in the present, in which case it is called an iggeret. I think that this living letter is even better, because it creates a framework to discuss your values with your family while you are all together. Of course, we should be transmitting our values with our children and loved ones all along, but this action clarifies and preserves them. We can also share memories, favorite teachings, stories, and personal instructions with our families. Steve Margolin has purchased a book for our congregation, So that Your Values Live On—Ethical Wills and How to Prepare Them, which we will put in our library. We have provided some handouts in the lobby for those who wish to start writing an ethical will or iggeret to their families.
Finally, let us consider the legacy that we are creating here at Congregation Beth Israel. Our synagogue has waxed and waned, but it is a century old by most counts. And yet we still live from year to year, planning and fundraising on an annual basis. It is time to look beyond the annual budget and build endowments for the future. Some join our community for a lifetime, but many join for a few years when they want to have their child to go to religious school or become Bar or Bat Mitzvah. To create a legacy we must think not only of our family’s immediate needs, but of families who will come after us. Rabbi Sam Stahl from my hometown in Texas used to say, “God promised us that there would always be Jews. He didn’t promise that there would be Jews in San Antonio.” It is up to us to decide if we want to work toward having Jews in Chico for generations to come.
Every day I read in the paper about all kinds of planning projects going on for the city of Chico. Even my own Avenues neighborhood has developed a huge planning process. Now we need to plan for the future of our Jewish community. The time has come for us to begin a visioning process for our entire congregation. All the great Jewish communities in history were shaped by someone’s faith in the future. The vision of those who established this congregation, whose names are on our wall here, the vision of those who had the foresight to purchase and later expand this building, went beyond their immediate needs and stretched into the future. It was a leap of faith, grasping hands with unseen lives to come. We are the community they dreamed of having, and it is time for us to dream about the future community we want to create.
Our community has elderly Jews with growing needs, and we ourselves are all getting older. But we have almost no planning for the Jewish elderly. We need to think of the needs of our youngest members and how we can enhance Jewish education for the whole family. We have often talked about a new building, but I think it will remain a distant dream unless we sit down together to envision the kind of Jewish community that facility will attract and foster in years to come. Then we have to decide if we are each willing to pay the price for that dream. The story is told of a rabbi who comes before the congregation and says, “I have some good news and some bad news. We need a new roof for the synagogue. The good news is that we have the money. The bad news is that the money is in your pockets.”
Let us begin the process now to envision the future legacy that we want to create. It’s true that times are tough, and we may not be able to fulfill our vision now, but the lesson of Jewish history is that if we dream now, we can find a way to fulfill our dream in the future. We can look into our hearts, minds, and pockets to create a legacy that stretches beyond our child’s Bar Mitzvah and even beyond our lifetimes, to secure the foundations of Jewish community here in the North state for generations to come. It is time to envision and create our community legacy.
Rabbi Jack Reimer shares a story about the legendary tzadik, righteous person, the Chafetz Chaim,” A tourist came to visit the great sage and was shocked by his meager possessions. The visitor blurted out, “where are your possessions?” The Rabbi replied, “And where are your possessions.?” The tourist said, “What kind of question is that? I am only a visitor here.” The sage replied, “And so am I.” We are here but for a time. Let us treasure each moment and day that we have during the sojourn of our lives. And let us leave a precious legacy of life and faith for those who come after us. Amen.
