The day that started as the sun set this evening is a very special day – Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement. We all know this, of course; that’s why we’re all here. The sages called it Yoma, which is Aramaic for ‘the day’ because ‘the day’ is unlike any other in the Jewish year. There are so many features that set ‘the day’ apart: First, this special evening service, known by the mediaeval text with which it opens, Kol Nidrey – ‘All Vows’; then, there is the wearing of the tallit, the prayer-shawl, in the evening, to mark the fact that although punctuated by separate services, ‘the day’ is essentially one long moment, indivisible; another feature: the way in which we inhabit the synagogue for the whole day, and pray our way through five services – including the memorial prayers of Yizkor, and concluding with the unique service of N’ilah; and, finally, the defining qualities of ‘the day’: the absence of food and any of the other signs or distractions of daily life; and the focus on confession and the pursuit of forgiveness and atonement. ‘The day’ is the spiritual equivalent of a strenuous physical workout that, pushing us to the limits of endurance, leaves us feeling, both, exhausted and replenished.

 

And so, ‘the day’ ends; it is just one day, after all. To all intents and purposes, it is a day in and of itself; and as soon as it is over, we return to our day-to-day lives, albeit renewed and ready to embark on the New Year. But is that all there is to it? Perhaps, the exceptional nature of Yom Kippur – with all its unique characteristics – actually masks a more fundamental purpose: to teach us to live today – in the present moment – not just for one day, but every day.

 

But what does it really mean – to live in the present moment? Has the Jewish people ever really lived in the present? Isn’t Jewish life all about remembering the past and journeying towards the future? Aren’t we forever trying to escape the present moment, especially during times of persecution. After all, most of our remembering is centred on recalling our ancestors’ great escape from slavery. And when we think of our forbears, going right back to the patriarchs and matriarchs, weren’t they always on the move?

 

Intriguingly, while the Torah relates the stories of our ancestors, and their endless journeys, the Hebrew text of the Torah, and, indeed, the rest of the Bible, continually subverts the meaning of past and future. It does this quite methodically, by using the Hebrew consonant, vav, which is usually translated as ‘and’ or ‘but’, to convert verbs expressed in the future tense into the past, and vice versa.

 

Let me give you the most common example:  Va-y’dabbeir Adonai el-Mosheh – ‘The Eternal One spoke to Moses’; how many thousands of times is that phrase repeated in the Torah? So often, that any regular attendee of Shabbat morning services probably knows the phrase – and the translation – off by heart. How disconcerting, then, to learn that without the ‘va-‘, y’dabbeir means ‘He shall speak’: Va-y’dabbeir Adonai – ‘The Eternal One spoke‘; y’dabbeir Adonai – ‘The Eternal One shall speak’. Even more bewildering, perhaps, is the way in which the meaning of a key phrase in the Sh’ma (Deuteronomy 6:4-9) hangs on how one stresses a particular word, which begins with a ‘converting’ vav: V’ahavta eit Adonai Elohecha means ‘You shall love the Eternal One your God’, but only if you stress the last syllable; V’ahavta – stressed in the middle – eit Adonai Elohecha, means ‘You have loved the Eternal your God’; indeed, without the converting vav, the ‘v’, ahavta, means simply, ‘you have loved’. So, what’s going on? Is this how the Torah teaches us to be sophisticated about the passage of time and acknowledge that the past was the future once, and that the future will become the past?

 

And what of the present?  There is no present tense in Hebrew; the present is either assumed in a particular context, or expressed by the use of a participle and a personal pronoun. And so, significantly, the famous text in the parashah, N’tzavim, in the Book of Deuteronomy (29:9-14), which we will be reading tomorrow morning, begins:

Atem nitzavim ha-yom, kul’chem, lifney Adonai Eloheichem.

You are standing today, all of you, before the Eternal your God

What a wonderful way of conveying the power of the moment! What could be more immediate than the image of a group of people standing in readiness ha-yom – ‘today’? And not any people, of course: the Jewish people; our people.  Is that what we are doing here today? And what about tomorrow: will tomorrow also be another today?

 

The Sh’ma suggests an answer.  We read (:6)

V’hayu ha-d’varim ha-eileh, asher Anochi m’tzav’cha ha-yom al-l’vavecha.

These words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart.

Is this verse, like the one in N’tzavim talking about a particular today – a day that is now in the past?  When we read these passages, are we engaging in the Jewish version of ‘Once upon a time…’: on a day long ago, the Eternal One addressed our ancestors? If we are, then we are missing something important because both texts were actually written in Judah, not in the wilderness, centuries after the ‘today’ moment they invoke – so, from a historical perspective ‘today’ was already ‘yesterday’. But it’s not just that both texts were composed so long after the ‘today’ they describe: if we treat them as located in a particular past, we are in danger of ignoring the purpose of both passages, which is, precisely, to make the past, present; present to the inhabitants of Judah in the 600s BCE when the Book of Deuteronomy was written, present to us here in 2010.  It is in this spirit, after all, that a text from Deuteronomy (chapter 6, verses 4-9) became the Sh’ma, a key part of our liturgy.  And it is in this spirit that the phrase, u’v’shochb’cha u’vkumecha – ‘when you lie down and when you rise up’ – was translated into daily liturgical practice.

 

V’hayu ha-d’varim ha-eileh, asher Anochi m’tzav’cha ha-yom al-l’vavecha

These words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart.

‘Today’ is today. But that is not all: the text of the Sh’ma and the prescribed twice-daily recitation conveys the message that something momentous is happening continually: the Eternal One is addressing us everyday. But what does it mean to say that the Eternal One is addressing us every day? And how do we know? Psalm 95 – one of the Psalms set aside for reading on Shabbat – includes this intriguing suggestion (:7):

Va’anachnu am marito, v’tzon yado; ha-yom, im- b’kolo tishma’u.

We are a people God tends and a flock of His hand; today, if we listen to His voice.

Today is not, after all, an end in itself; it is an opportunity to listen: Sh’ma Yisrael! – ‘Listen Israel! Im– b’kolo tishma’u – If we listen to the voice of the Eternal – Im – If…So, what would our lives be like if, rather than, forever looking backwards and forwards, we were to fully inhabit the present – and listen out for Eternity? Maybe that’s what all that switching of tenses – future to past; past to future – is all about: a device for transporting us to the eternal present.

 

But as soon as I say this, another question immediately asserts itself: why would we want to fully inhabit the present? The present moment can be, after all, in real life, terrible, painful – or, simply, dull and endless in its empty torment. If we can’t think of examples from our own experience, all we have to do is turn our minds to the suffering being endured right now by the people of northern Pakistan in the aftermath of the devastating floods, or think of individuals we know, who are gravely ill, or imagine what it’s like to be living alone and housebound due to chronic disability, or think of a child constantly victimised by abuse. There are so many circumstances when all we want is for the present to be over – even when it is something as trivial as a visit to the dentist. And anyway, isn’t there something rather problematically cliché about the preoccupation with living in the present?

 

The last thing I want to do is rehearse a cliché. My current thoughts about the importance of living today actually began in the presence of one of our members, who is terminally ill. Visit by visit, I witness her determination to live in the face of her impending death – and not just live; enjoy her life still each day: enjoy seeing the squirrels scurrying a cross the wall outside the window of her room; enjoy the care of the carers; enjoy the visits of family and friends; enjoy reading her daily newspaper – and experience all this daily enjoyment, amid the pain and discomfort of her condition, aware, each day, that her life is almost over – and could end any day. She is an exceptional person; a special individual, with a strong character. But it would be wrong to explain away her courage and wisdom as a function of her personal qualities. She is exceptionally admirable – but she has, also, simply learnt something from her experience of life, in the same way that we can all learn from the experience of our own lives: today will pass – and sometimes, even she, hopes a particular day will pass as quickly as possible – but today is also a singular moment calling us to live now; not yesterday; not tomorrow: now.

The poet, Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) wrote this reflection on ‘now’ in 1862 (The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson edited by Thomas H. Johnson):

Forever – is composed of Nows –
‘Tis not a different time –

Except for Infiniteness –

And Latitude of Home –

From this – experienced Here –

Remove the Dates – to These – Let Months dissolve in further Months –

And Years – exhale in Years –

 

Without Debate – or Pause –

Or Celebrated Days –

No different Our Years would be
From Anno Domini’s –

 

‘Forever – is composed of Nows’ – and now, if lived fully and deeply, is not simply a domain of time – the present moment squeezed between past and future – it is the abode of the Eternal. As soon as we let go of yesterday and stop worrying about tomorrow, now becomes a vast universe. But can we really do this, shaped and haunted as we are by the past, driven as we feel, relentlessly, towards the future? Perhaps living now is a luxury only to be enjoyed by those who know their end is near? Our questions, doubts and fears are real; Yom Kippur is an opportunity to explore them – and even, perhaps, to exhaust them… May this special ‘Sabbath of Sabbaths’ bring each one of us the nourishment and space that we need to reflect, and to inhabit this unique moment, so that when the sun sets once more, we feel ready to begin a new today. And let us say: Amen.

 

 

Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah

Brighton & Hove Progressive Synagogue – Adat Shalom Verei’ut

Erev Yom Kippur, 10^th Tishri 5770 – 17^th September 2010

 

 

 

I didn’t write this sermon – or the one I gave last night, or, the two I will deliver on Yom Kippur; I dictated them onto my computer screen using a programme called Dragon Naturally Speaking 10.0. Although speaking, as the saying goes, is ‘second nature to me’, dictating turns out to be anything but natural – especially when you’re using a clever IT gadget that having read all your documents thinks it knows what your going to say, and then gets it wrong… Suffice it to say, it’s an ‘interesting’ experience; quite unlike the reassuring picture on the packaging of a young woman sitting cross-legged on the couch, a laptop to her right, speaking into the microphone and smiling… maybe, she just doesn’t care that the words running across the screen next to her are gobbledygook… after all, she doesn’t look like she is trying to write a sermon!

 

Why have I been submitting myself to this strange kind of torture? Well, as some of you know, in the middle of April I developed a condition in my right forefinger and thumb, known as RSI – which means, ‘repetitive strain injury’. Unfortunately, tendons take a long time to heal, and I still cannot use my right hand properly.

 

So, why am I telling you all this? My experience of coping with RSI over the past few months, and learning to use voice recognition software, got me thinking – not just about the vagaries of having a minor health problem and turning to the NHS for treatment – but also about the increasing role of technology in daily life. There is no doubt that technology has revolutionised our lives – and not just during the past twenty years: Being at school every day, I didn’t get to see how my mother, a ‘housewife’, spent her time; so observing her daily routines during the holidays, when it was too wet to play outside, was a real revelation: I remember ‘wash-days’ – which, indeed, took the whole day; we did have a washing machine, but it was of the pre-automatic variety, so after washing each load, my mother had to put each individual item through a wringer that she operated by hand; the bathroom would be filled with steam as she laboured for what seemed like hours… I’m sure one or two people here remember it well …

 

For those who can afford it, technological developments, particularly in the domestic arena, have liberated millions of people from daily drudgery – many of them, housewives like my late mother. Technological advances have also transformed the workplace and the workforce beyond recognition. More recently, during the past couple of decades, technology has changed the way we spend our leisure time and how we relate with one another. A recent study by Ofcom, reported in The Times (‘Hooked on Gadgetry’ by Alexi  Mostrous,19.08.10), concluded that the average Briton spends seven hours five minutes each day on media or communications activities. Apparently, in 2009, 104 billion text messages were sent; in 2004, the total was 27 billion. As the author of The Times article put it, we have become ‘hooked on gadgetry’, and with technology being all about speed, it is mind-boggling to think what the text messaging figures will be for 2014 – unless, of course, by that time another communications gadget has taken off.

 

But at least, text messaging – and ‘tweeting’, and visiting ‘Facebook’, and e-mailing – are all about communicating; about people making contact with one another, albeit via technology. What about the time spent each day – especially by the young – sitting alone and entering into the strange worlds conjured up in the mushrooming thousands of computer games? Of course, for many young people, playing these games is just part of their leisure time, which also includes sports, music, seeing friends, even reading. But we just have to think about that singular Ofcom statistic again: the average Briton spends seven hours five minutes each day on media or communications activities…

 

A few months ago, in the early days of my RSI, while visiting my favourite bookshop, Much Ado About Books – a wonderful, quirky independent enterprise in Alfriston, my eye was taken by a hardback, entitled, You Are Not a Gadget – A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier (Allen Lane, 2010). Jaron Lanier is a musician, philosopher and computer scientist, connected, both, with the University of California at Berkeley, and with Microsoft, whose achievements include ‘coining the term Virtual Reality’, ‘creating the world’s first immersive avatars’ and ‘ developing cutting edge medical imaging and surgical techniques’ – I’m quoting from the dust jacket. I thought that the book would provide food for thought for the New Year, so I read it during August. It is quite hard to summarise – but, focusing on developments in the World Wide Web, Jaron Lanier’s basic thesis is that the Internet is dominated by what he calls ‘cybernetic totalism’ – which is his way of talking about the ‘absolutism’ and ‘singularity’ which characterise how information is presented and used in the universe of cyberspace, with very worrying consequences for creativity. Lanier writes (p.48)

If a church or government were doing these things, it would feel authoritarian, but when technologists are the culprits, we seem hip, fresh, and inventive. People accept ideas presented in technological form that would be abhorrent in any other form. It is utterly strange to hear many old friends in the world of digital culture claim to be the true sons of the Renaissance without realizing that using computers to reduce individual expression is a primitive, retrograde activity, no matter how sophisticated your tools are.

 

Lanier gives music as an example. Apparently, digital music has ‘flattened’ musical tone. But that’s not the only problem: so much of the music accessed on the Internet is presented in disconnected pieces, rather than as complete works. Looking more broadly, Lanier argues that ‘absolutism’ and ‘singularity’ have resulted in the loss of the individual voice and the dissemination of random pieces of information, demonstrated, for example, by the rise of Wikipedia, which has become the key resource for those researching topics on the Internet. Masking the individual voices that contribute to its bank of information, Wikipedia takes on the voice of singular authority. Why read the work of any individual thinker, past or present, if his or her ideas can be predigested for you?  But it’s worse than this: secondary sources have always summarised, explained and re-presented the ideas of individual thinkers; what Wikipedia and other information sites do is extract ideas from their original context, and break down creative wholes into disconnected bits of information.

 

But the issue is not just how knowledge and ideas are presented – it’s also why this is happening. As one of the key people involved in developing the web, Lanier is acutely aware of the idealism that fuels it – an idealism that seeks to serve ‘the hive mind’, the collective consciousness that the architects of cyber technology see emerging in cyberspace.  He writes (p.144):

Typical authors of Wikipedia … implicitly celebrate the ideal of intellectual mob rule. “Edit wars” on Wikipedia are called that for a reason. Whether they are cordial or not, Wikipedians always act out the idea that the collective is closer to the truth and the individual voice is dispensable.

By contrast, Lanier, who remains active in, committed to, and enthusiastic about cyber-technology, wants to see a return to humanism, creativity, and respect for the individual voice. In place of ‘cybernetic totalism’, he wants, as he puts it, to ‘foster an alternative mental environment where the exciting opportunity to start creating a new digital humanism can begin’ (p.23). As Lanier presents these two alternatives, his disdain for the current cyber-culture is palpable. He writes (p.44):

Maybe if people pretend they are not conscious or do not have free will – or that the cloud of online people is a person; if they pretend there is nothing special about the perspective of the individual – then perhaps we have the power to make it so. We might be able to collectively achieve anti-magic.

Humans are free. We can commit suicide for the benefit of a Singularity. We can engineer our genes to better support an imaginary hive mind. We can make culture and journalism into second-rate activities and spend centuries remixing the detritus of the 1960s and other eras from before individual creativity went out of fashion.

Or we can believe in ourselves. By chance, it might turn out we are real.

 

There is no going back to life before computers, but there are peoples around the world who live without them, and, more important, have no intention of entering the digital age. Can we learn anything from them? I asked myself this question as I watched the four-part series about the Amish on Channel 4 over the summer (Sunday evenings, July 25^th – August 15^th), entitled, Amish: The World’s Squarest Teenagers. The series charted the once-in-a-lifetime expedition into the world of ordinary teenagers in Britain, undertaken by five Amish, aged 17 to 19 – two young women and three young men. Apparently, all Amish teenagers have an opportunity to experience the freedoms of the wider world before being baptized, but this televised Amish Odyssey into teenage life in different parts of Britain was unique.

 

Even if you didn’t watch the series, you may know a little bit about the Amish, a Mennonite Christian sect of biblical fundamentalists, whose members originally migrated from Switzerland, France and Germany to America in the 18th century. Preserving the culture of their forebears, the Amish eschew all forms of modern technology, including electricity. They also live a completely gender-defined existence: the women look after the domestic sphere, including growing their own vegetables, and the men support their large families and cooperate together to build their own wooden houses. The Amish live in small, segregated communities, regulated by strict rules, in which wives submit to their husbands, and children learn to be obedient.

 

It’s all very narrow, and yet, despite a very limited education, in which academic learning is restricted to the basics, reading is largely confined to the Bible, and the emphasis is on developing practical skills, the five young Amish who came to Britain, were not just wholesome and innocent, they were also thoughtful, responsive and engaging. While bewildered, and sometimes dismayed, by the antics of young Brits, they were more perplexed than judgmental, and also ready and eager to explore and enjoy those new experiences, which were clearly and simply, fun – like swimming and surfing. All in all, they came across as likeable, warm human beings, who seemed, quite frankly, to be more mature than most of the young people they encountered in Britain.

 

Now, as we celebrate the arrival of the New Year, I’m not about to suggest that we abandon modern technology, take flight from all the freedoms we apparently enjoy, and start living the Amish way, but maybe the Amish have something to teach us about what my partner, Jess, calls ‘the art of living’. The art of living is about living fully and deeply and creatively; it’s about finding and being ourselves and engaging with the world around us, including nature, and relating to others as human beings, who are ‘as ourselves’ (Leviticus 18:18), while respecting each person’s uniqueness. Today, on a day that is, according to tradition, harat olam, ‘the birthday of the world’, the anniversary of creation, it is fitting that we reflect on what it means to be human and to be part of the natural world.

 

Of course, from the outset, from the moment we created fire, human beings have been technologists, manipulating our natural environment to serve our needs. And the making of fire, and all the related technical feats we have accomplished since the first homo sapiens walked the earth, have also, always been harnessed to both creative and destructive purposes: the first human beings fashioned tools and also weapons, and in each successive epoch, human beings have been making increasingly sophisticated tools and weapons ever since. But now we have reached a point in the evolving story of humanity when, whether it is tools or weapons, the products of our labour and our ingenuity, seem no longer to be in our hands and under our control; they have begun to rule our lives.

 

The most sobering issues to emerge from Lanier’s critique of cyber-technology don’t just revolve around the assault on individual creativity, but also include the way in which the creativity of so many brilliant people has been channeled into weaving the spectacular electronic web around our lives, and how the cyber revolution has been driven by the all consuming thirst for profit. Access to the goods of the Internet may be free on the whole, but just look at all the advertising and the way it insinuates itself onto every web page, and is so carefully crafted to every target audience. Cyber-technology is ‘big business’, and we are its eager consumers. Of course the internet has enhanced so many aspects of our lives – not least, giving us the opportunity to shop online – and is, indeed, a lifeline to those who are disabled and/or housebound, as well as being in the process of transforming the lives of those without access to education in the poorer parts of the world. But hasn’t the time come for us to remember that human beings first developed technology to serve our needs, not to dominate and diminish us – and, so, eclipse the art of living? As Jaron Lanier, puts it (p.154):

My first priority must be to avoid reducing people to mere devices. The best way to do that is to believe that the gadgets I can provide are inert tools and are only useful because people have the magical ability to communicate meaning through them.

 

Lanier is talking about putting gadgets in their proper place – at the service of human beings. Today is all about recalling our humanity – not simply by gathering together, not simply by sharing this sacred service and reading from our sacred texts, but also by listening to the voice of the shofar. What better antidote to our enslavement to technology than a simple ram’s horn? What can we do with it? We can polish it, so that it looks attractive. We can blow through it, and produce sound. We can even, although it isn’t a specially crafted musical instrument, devise, as we have done, different ways of blowing to produce different kinds of sound. But that’s all we can do. And then, all that is left for us to do, is to listen; to really listen, not just with our ears, but also with our innermost beings, allowing the blasts of the simple ram’s horn to stir us and move us, to disturb our composure and wake us up to ourselves and to our lives, to our relationships with others and to our connections with the earth. As we begin our journeys of reflection and renewal, and prepare for the year ahead, may the voices of the shofar remind us to find our own unique voices, and to listen out for the unique voices of other people, and of the natural world around us. And let us say: Amen.

 

Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah

Brighton & Hove Progressive Synagogue – Adat Shalom Verei’ut

Rosh Ha-Shanah Shacharit 5771 – 9^th September 2010