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| Shofar, So good! |
It has been quite an incredible High Holy Day season! I hope you have had a meaningful fast and a great start to the year 5773. In case you wanted to hear some more words of the season - here is my Yom Kippur sermon:
Mazal Tov!
Today is your lucky day! Yom
Kippur! In many ways, this day of Yom
Kippur is the day of luck. In Hebrew, one of the words for luck is mazal.
We use the expression Mazal
Tov, which literally means, “good luck” or “good fate.” And this is a part of what we are asking for
on this day – we want more Mazal Tov
in our lives, rather than Mazal Ra
(Bad luck).
As we reflect on our past actions and
how we can move beyond them, wholeheartedly into this New Year, I want to
invite you for a few moments to think about what it means to have Mazal tov, to reflect on the role of luck
and fate in our lives, and to explore how we can seek it out in this next year.
Our Hebrew expression for “good luck”
actually stems from the ancient arts of astrology, as mazal most literally means, “star or planet,”
In Judaism, we see many differing accounts as to whether or not to put our
trust in mazal. You may be surprised
to learn that many of our Jewish sages believed in the power of the stars to
influence individual lives. Yet, as Francine Klagsbrun points out, “they
managed to incorporate popular beliefs about astrology into an overall Jewish
view of the world, maintaining that the stars and constellations, like
everything else in the universe, are subject to the will of God.”
As such, we can play a role in shaping our fate, if we can find a way to
influence God.
In a Talmudic story, the famous Rabbi
Akiva, demonstrates his concern with the idea of mazal.
Astrologers told Rabbi Akiva that on
the day of his daughter’s marriage, as she entered the bridal chamber, a snake
would bite her and she would die. The
rabbi worried a great deal about this. But what was he going to do, not let his
daughter get married? Oy – a fate worse
than death (in those days)!
On her wedding day, as she entered
the bridal chamber, the girl removed the brooch she was wearing and pinned it
to the wall. Unknowingly when the pin of
the brooch went through the wall, it kept going, straight through the eye of a
poisonous snake hidden in the wall. Next
morning, as she removed the pin from the wall she found the snake, dead.
As she told her
father of this story, he thought she must have done something to change her
fate. He asked, “What good deed did you
do?”
She answered, “A poor man came to the
door on my wedding night. Everyone was
so busy at the wedding feast that no one paid attention to him. So I took my
portion and gave it to him.”
“You have done a very good deed,” said Rabbi Akiva.
From then on he taught that “righteousness delivers from
death.” (Proverbs 10:2)
The take away from this story seems
to mirror some of the ideas that we have been expressing today during our Yom
Kippur services. As we beat our chests,
asking forgiveness, seeking to do better for the next year, the imagery of
being inscribed in the book of life looms over us on this day.
In our U’netanetokef prayer, we
declare that it is on this day that much of our fate will be determined – who
will live and die, who will gain and who will lose, who will succeed and who will
resemble my Chicago Cubs. But we also
see that in the end, we can lessen the harshness of today’s decree through tefillah, teshuvah, and tzedakah. Through our prayers, our serious reflection,
our return to our true selves, and our commitment to helping others, we can
play a role in determining our own luck, as was the case with Rabbi Akiva’s
daughter.
<PAUSE>
There is a
Talmudic expression that broadens this perspective on our ability to change our
luck – m’shaneh makom, m’shaneh mazal.
If we change our place, we change our luck. We can take this maxim literally, if we want
– after all, changing one’s physical location will certainly bring about a
different fate. However, many rabbis
interpret this phrase metaphorically – we have to make our places, our
routines, our normal actions different if our luck is going to change.
The Baal Shem
Tov, a famous spiritual figure of the 18th century and subject of
many mystical stories, shows us how changing one’s place can really improve
one’s mazal.
One day, The Baal Shem Tov paid a
visit to a Jewish innkeeper who was struggling. The impoverished villager
welcomed his prestigious guest:
"I must have a donation of 18
rubles," the Baal Shem Tov requested. The poor man didn’t have this large
sum. But, since it was the Baal Shem Tov, literally the Master of the Good
Name, the innkeeper took some of his furniture and his donkey, sold them, and
gave the famous rabbi the money.
Several days later the innkeeper's
rent was due, and he could not pay, so he was evicted. The poor man moved
himself and through a friend, he found a tiny hut in a different village with a
new landlord. By selling off most of his furniture, the poor man managed to buy
a cow and eked out a living by selling her milk.
Wouldn’t you know it, the landlord's
cow became sick, and stopped producing milk.
One of the landlord's servants who knew of the new tenant went to the villager
and bought milk for the landlord. When the landlord was served the milk, he said,
"This milk is of a superior quality. Tell the owner that I will pay
handsomely for the privilege of being his only customer."
This incident turned the tide of
fortune for the villager. Each day he delivered milk to the landlord. The
landlord grew fond of the Jewish villager and began to consult with him about
his business, slowly turning over to him many responsibilities. The landlord's
bond with the villager became so deep that, being childless, he transferred
ownership of that village and the nearby city to the Jew.
A few months later, The Baal Shem Tov
came to the village, and our innkeeper friend came running to him, to explain
his good fortune. The Baal Shem Tov
replied, "Let me tell you why I asked for that large amount of money from
you, when your circumstances were so difficult.
A change of fortune was awaiting you in the future but not in that
place. It was necessary to bring you to the end of your rope so that you would
be forced to try something different, something new, to make a change. That is
exactly what happened."
What I found
most fascinating about this old Chasidic tale is that it mirrors some of the
findings of contemporary luck researchers.
Yes, there are a number of researchers who have spent time actually
analyzing people like Rabbi Akiva’s daughter and our villager friend, who
consider themselves lucky, trying to figure out what makes a person able to
change one’s mazal.
Richard
Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire, is one of these
luck-theorists. In his book, The Luck Factor, he formulates a few main
conclusions on what it takes to be lucky.
He says that lucky people tend to build a “network of luck.” By this, he
means that those who are best at creating mazal
tov tend to talk with a lot of people and hold extensive, diverse social
networks.
The people we
interact with do not only make us feel lucky because they love us – which is a
great benefit of making friends, don’t get me wrong, but they also bring us
opportunities. The more people we know,
and especially the more diverse our group of friends may be, the more
opportunities we find are brought our way.
For example, if you have 30 friends who all know one another, and you
are looking for a job, you’re going to hear about the same job from 30
different people. If instead, you have
20 good friends, but each one runs in very different crowds, you’re more likely
to hear of 20 different opportunities.
Another luck researcher, Max Gunther, points out that we don’t even need
to make friends to strengthen our network of luck – even just starting
conversations with people around us, at the check-out line, in the airport, at
the gym all create more exposure to opportunities.
Just look at
our villager friend and Rabbi Akiva’s daughter.
Each one started to change their makom
the place where they were – either mentally or physically – because they put
themselves in relationship and responded to the needs of another. Rabbi Adiva’s daughter answered the call of
the poor man. Perhaps it was the creak
of the door opening to help him that spooked the snake, causing it to hide in
the wall. For the villager, in his
despondence, it was through acquaintances that he found opportunity. Someone helped him to find his new
landlord. Another helped the landlord
discover that the Jewish villager, unlike Bart Simpson, had a cow.
The people in
our lives bring us opportunities to change our makom – probably more often than we notice. But noticing
and running with possibility is just
as critical as having a great opportunity brought to us in the first place. Professor Wiseman concluded that lucky people consistently encounter
opportunities, seemingly by chance, and see them as such, whereas
unlucky people do not. He conducted an experiment to test
out just how much of one’s luckiness has to do with personality. He “gave
people who describe themselves as lucky and those who describe themselves as
unlucky, a newspaper,” and asked them to count how many pictures were inside.
The results: On average, unlucky people took about two minutes to count the
photographs whereas the lucky people took just a few seconds.
Why? Because on the second page of
the newspaper was written in large print that took up half the page: “Stop
counting – There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.” Weisman’s data showed that
the unlucky people tended to miss this message while the lucky people tended to
spot it.
To change our luck for the better, we
have to be clear-headed enough to be on the lookout for opportunities. We cannot allow ourselves to get so caught up
in what we are doing that we block out lucky, fateful moments that are staring
us in the face. Yet another great reason
to follow Rabbi Dinner’s message of seeking Shabbat, seeking rest, so that we
can find that clear-headed space, that openness, we need in order to notice.
We have seen that lucky people tend
to work hard to build a network of luck based on diverse relationships and
attention to one’s surroundings. But
just as importantly, Professor Wiseman’s research has shown that lucky people
tend to be optimistic about their world – they are Monty Python fans, they
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. He asked a number of individuals, “Imagine
yourself at a bank when robbers come in, firing a shot, and it hits you in the
arm. Is this lucky or unlucky?” <Pause – let people think> Overwhelmingly,
what do you think happened? Lucky people said it was lucky – I could have been
killed, but the arm isn’t so bad. Wiseman to concluded that “Lucky people tend
to imagine spontaneously how
the bad luck they encounter could have been
worse and, in doing so, they feel much better about themselves and their lives. This, in turn, helps keep their expectations about the
future high, and,
increases the likelihood of them continuing to live a lucky life.” Rather than allow life to define a moment as
unlucky, perhaps what keeps lucky people lucky is their ability to re-define
what good luck really is!
Many of us do this
all the time – Have you ever played the “it could be worse” game? “Well, I broke my foot, but it could be worse
– I could have broken both feet!” Believe it or not, this is a central attribute
of Jewish thought. We
are the people who have for centuries striven to make blessings out of
curses. In fact, this morning, we
started our prayers with words that come from our Torah – words intended to be
a curse on the Israelites. A foreign
prophet, Balaam was sent to put a curse on the Israelites. When his words came out, however, they emerged
as the prayer we still say today – Mah
Tovu ohalecha ya’akov, mishkenotecha, Yisrael. How good are your tents, Jacob; your dwelling
places, O Israel? We could have thrown this beautiful prayer away because of
its source and original intent, but instead of choosing to respond to a curse
with destruction, we made it into a lucky moment – A moment where not only
weren’t we cursed, but we found a beautiful prayer and have created stirring
melodies to go with it. We are a people who search for opportunity and truth
wherever it is available, creating our own narrative of luck.
It begs the question of all of
Professor Wiseman’s research and findings.
He was studying people who considered themselves to be lucky – do his findings
actually lead to luckiness or do his tips lead people to feeling lucky? And more importantly, does it matter?
There is a Sephardic story of a mohel who just wasn’t cutting it in his
job. He had so few clients, he was
having trouble making ends meet. In a
stroke of apparent luck, this mohel
encountered Elijah the prophet who encouraged him to stay put, plucking three
hairs from his beard. Elijah said,
“Here, take them, burn a hair, and whatever you ask will be yours.”
The man took the hairs, went home and
told his wife. “What should we ask for?”
“Let’s ask that you should have a
good livelihood – that there should be many circumcisions.”
Well, no sooner had they burnt the
hair than their house was filled with parents and their screaming babies. They kept coming and coming, each one
demanding to go before all the others, each one getting pushier and pushier and
angrier and angrier.
The mohel’s wife said, “Quick, burn another hair to get them to go
away.” He did so and wished, “Away with
all the circumcisions.” Poof – all the
people were gone, but so was his own circumcision! An uncircumcised mohel – what could be worse
for business?! So, they used the third
beard hair to restore everything back to the way it was.
What should have been the luckiest break in the world – three
wishes for anything at all just brought them to a place where they could appreciate
just what they had, reinforcing the maxim from our Mishnah: Who is a rich
person? One who is happy with one’s lot.
On this day of Yom Kippur, we recognize
that there is only so much that we can do to influence luck. Remember what our rabbinic sages have taught,
mazal is subject to the will of God,
but the will of God is not the same as the will of humans. There are issues we cannot control, much
bigger than ourselves. Rabbi David Wolpe
of Temple Sinai in Los Angeles offers sage advice on perhaps the most effective
way to control our luck, our mazal.
“Most of the blessings that we
celebrate … are unearned blessings. I did nothing to deserve being born to
loving parents in the richest country in the world in the second half of the
twentieth century—I was lucky. So it is with most of what we have. If you work
hard, be grateful you were given a functioning brain and a society that rewards
such work. We all stand on the ground fashioned by God and tilled by those who
went before us.”
His message: we all have a ton of mazal that
is tov, if we allow ourselves to see
it, to appreciate it.
Right now, in our world, we know that
times are difficult – we know that our wallets are too empty, our bills are too
full, many of us have to work harder and longer. We see a Middle East that is continuing to
make existential threats to Israel, and we watch political gridlock that is
infuriating. Would that our luck can
change in any or all of these directions.
We can do our part by connecting with
people, remaining open to opportunities around us, and creating chances for
luckier days. We can take Shabbat into
our hearts, clearing our minds so we can notice our surroundings better. We can stand up for what we believe and work
to change our makomot – our homes,
our communities, our city, so that our luck can change. And while we may not be
able to influence all that fate throws our way this year, we can control how we
respond and how we interpret. The mazal happens . . . We add
the tov.
Will this sermon help you to win the
lottery? Hopefully – and if it does,
please remember to support TBO, the place where your luck turned around! But if you don’t, may you do the hard work
that helps you to find Mazal Tov
in all aspects of your life, so that you feel as though you’ve won the lottery
every day.
Yom Kippur Sermon 5773 by Rabbi Ari Margolis, delivered at Temple Beth Or - please email rabbimargolis@gmail.com if you wish to cite material
