Good afternoon. My name is Carol Chinn and I am honored to have been asked to speak today.
Michael’s brief was to ask the speakers to focus on CHANGE: reflecting on changes in their lives within the context of the High Holiday period. So this is what I will try to do.
It occurs to me that one can think of the High Holidays in particular, and life in general in triads. There are important ideas which we hear over and over in the liturgy which come in threes. First, there are three major days: two days of Rosh Hashanah and one day of Yom Kippur. There are three names for Rosh Hashanah:
1. Yom Ha-ZIKORON: the day of remembrance.
2. Yom Ha-TERUAH: the day of the sounding of the shofar.
3. Yom Ha-DIN: the day of Judgment.
So we have the past the present and the future. Rosh Hashanah is a day for remembering the past and reflecting on our past actions, It is the day on which, if we wake up and listen to the shofar, we can pull ourselves together and connect directly with our spiritual side without the mediation of the spoken word. It is also a prelude to the Day of Judgment.
I agree with Yitz Greenberg when he says that “The power of sin and of bad patterns is that it convinces people that change is impossible. People despair of their ability to change and give up the capacity to grow and renew.”
I have come to believe that CHANGE is part and parcel of being human. We change physically from the moment of birth to the moment of death. At each stage, youth, middle and old age, there are changes to be faced and embraced.
I remember waiting and waiting, looking for the signs and signals of womanhood to appear, which would indeed change my life, and grant me a passport into what became a central theme of my adult life - parenthood.
Despite the fact that I had tried to deny that there was huge pressure on me to marry and “settle down” I did exactly that, and set about learning a new role at an age when young people today are still deciding which courses to take in college. I became a hard working wife and mother, something for which my English private school education had hardly prepared me. Yet I remember thinking to myself that even though I was not out in the workforce I was doing a job and that I should do it with whatever talents I had.
The world in which I grew up was predictable; I was a member of an extremely homogenous middle class Jewish group which was becoming established in every field of endeavor, but quietly. The Nazis were only across the English Channel when my parents were in their 20s, and we were not encouraged to proclaim our Jewishness. However, we clung to our Jewish roots, mostly belonged to the majority denomination - generic orthodoxy, while trying at one and the same time to feel part of the wider community which surrounded us.
And then Geoffrey and I uprooted ourselves in our early 40s and came to live in New York, a city where we knew next to no one. When I set about thinking how I dealt with this enormous change several memories came back to me.
First, I decided not to try to straddle the two worlds. If you are going to undertake this adventure (a word I used a lot in the early days) you have to start afresh. So we sold our home , on which I had lavished such loving care; but I brought all the contents with us. In the strangeness I needed familiarity. So, as I thought of how this experience related to Rosh Hashanah I realized that every year we have the opportunity to start afresh, yet not discard the good things in the process; the good relationships, the happy memories, the works still in progress.
Second, I decided that I had to try to be open to any and all new experiences and learn to “wear a new skin”. I had grown up in a social group where women were not expected to work outside of the home, but here everyone of my generation had a profession, so I went to graduate school and became a professional. It was a career which did indeed provide me with the opportunity to feel I was helping others while being challenged and stimulated. I am about to retire, so I am looking to the future and trying right now to map out the third trimester of my life.
I think that the process of aging is the change in life which is in its way the most difficult to navigate. This third stage is kind of open ended. We do not know how long we have, another reminder which is reinforced at this time of year. I am not afraid of the possibility of death by stoning, but the specters of heart disease and cancer are surely present. We imagine that we will be able to continue in our sublime independence, but kind of know that we will one day be dependent on someone or something. Will those people come through for us? Is there any way that we can insure it. Is it too late for so many of the things we know we should have done? These are all real and scary questions which hover over us as we move into the third phase of life. Like the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur when we are instructed “to become conscious of one’s life, to overcome the routines that block the capacity to evaluate, correct and change,” So this stage of life, with the greater realization that time is short, and I quote Yitz Greenberg again “ too short to waste, too short to let pride and despair trap one in a life pattern with little in it to savor or respect. No aspect of life can be taken for granted: no feature of one’s personal way is either eternal or absolutely necessary, thus one can review, fine tune or alter with a new consciousness of alternatives”
We are told in the liturgy that three things “will avert the stern decree” they are Repentance, Prayer, and Charity, all things that we have it within our power to do. I think that repentance involves being honest with oneself about the things of which one is least proud and making a conscious effort either to redress the wrong or promise oneself that one will try not to repeat the offense. Although this is not specified in the liturgy, my personal view is that having recounted all the wrongdoings that one can bear to remember, one needs to forgive oneself, as well as others who have been hurtful. This is no easy task but one which I am going to try not to shirk.
It has occurred to me that the third stage of life is akin to the days between Rosh Ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur. Maimonides says that we should do even more good deeds at this time in order to tip the balance of our own scales toward salvation. For me the prelude to salvation would be peace of mind. A sense that I had not been, again in Maimonides words “one of those who forget the truth in their idle use of time and mistakenly use their years in empty and frivolous activity which does not help and will not save”. He says “You should look at your souls and improve your ways and your de-signs”. But just going through the motions will not hack it. There is a Hassidic story of a young man who hears the bugle blown to alert the town to the danger of a fire and who believes that it is the blowing of the bugle alone which puts out the fire. Some people think that hearing the shofar in synagogue will bring them a happy New Year, and that their inner “fires” will be extinguished. Waiting for others to take responsibility is not, to my way of thinking the Jewish way.
I think that “what can I do about this?” has been a mantra in my life and has helped me avoid the real danger of helplessness and despair that powerlessness provoke.
In conclusion I would like to say that I hope and pray that we are all here at this time next year to revisit the themes of the High Holydays. Even though we do not know “who will live and who will die” as the U’Netaneh Tokef prayer reminds us, we can make conscious efforts to make changes, for the better in our own lives and in the life of the world.
L’shana Tova
Copyright © 2006, The Society for the Advancement of Judaism