The following sermon was given by Rabbi Ariana Katz at Hinenu on September 15, 2023 on erev Rosh HaShanah.
LOL y’all what if I started my sermon off like this:
Beloved community, God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.
I MEAN, COULD YOU IMAGINE??!
HOWEVER: If this has been meaningful for you in your own life, if this idea helps you shift the weight of the many burdens on your shoulders, gives you purpose, direction, balance under its yolk, I am so, so glad.
If this has been weaponized at you, like it has so many of us, to minimize our suffering, to point us toward meaning making when all we can do is double over in pain, *pfft sound effect.*
In 5782, 2 years ago, I spoke with you all about saying “it” like it is. We surveyed the scene around us, and gave one another permission to shout “its a DUMP.” In my imagination you shouted it at the top of your lungs at home while you Zoomed in, spooking your cat and upsetting your coffee cake (that’s how everyone Zoomed for Rosh Hashanah 5782, right? Zoomers at home now, you have your coffee cake?)
This year I want to offer you another piece of deep deep Torah from my mother Linda Rachel (shanah tovah Momma! Refuah shleimah!) It goes like this:
Why suffer.
Why suffer?
Why. Suffer. Try it–why suffer?!!
Dear one, if you have a headache, why have you not yet taken some Tylenol? Why suffer?
If that friendship is a weight around your ankles, why not release it? Let the bridges you burn light the way.
If you are struggling to do dishes, dear one, why not use paper plates for a week? Compostable, if you like!
If consuming media that pushes right up against the scariest images you replay in your mind, why not change the channel?
Beloved, if there is an easier pathway for you to take, thrive, be as well as you can be, why would you not?
Why suffer?
Suffering is a part of life. So much suffering in this world is out of our control. Sickness, loneliness, betrayal, breakups, incarceration, hunger, bad luck, bureaucracy that keeps us under resourced, capitalism that crushes our creative spirit and human connection. So when it is in the work of our hands to decrease our suffering, why would we resist?
My son’s birth story (ah, so you thought you’d get out of birth stories now that Meir is 16 months old! One more year!) My son’s birth story starts a week of hospitalization before I went into labor, and a pretty grueling initial 12 hours of unmedicated labor. I went into the birth process hoping to avoid an epidural, to see if I could do it, to “feel it all fully.” Despite our doula’s Kate’s best coaching, I had a vision of the idealized perfect birth, a labor that was connective, silly (Yakety Sax and Mambo No. 5 were high up on the playlist), transformative.
My body, Hashem, and my son had other plans. Around 6pm we decided I needed an epidural. After the miracle of modern medicine kicked in and I slept, I woke up to a different world. The room was dark and quiet, I watched with mild confusion and delight as my body had contractions on the monitor and did not feel more than a strange pressure, I visited with my family, snuck food with our doula, journaled, listened to songs my friends recorded for me, talked to Meir who was about to be born. When it came time for him to come into the world, he was born into a room of joy. Because I realized, “why suffer?” my son was born into a room where there was laughter, song invoking the angels, delight, instead of fear and desperation. Because I got out of my own way, released the lie that medicated labor is a failure, my son came into a world that was joyfully awaiting him.
What might be ready to be born, if we only let go of the idea we had to pay our dues, hurt, toil, in order to deserve it? What joy might come on the other side?
Now, some of this burden, that we must suffer to achieve joy or closeness with the Divine, we can blame on the prosperity gospel, which as you know, is my favorite pastime. The prosperity gospel is a creation of Evangelical Christianity, and it preaches “If you are good, you have good. If you are suffering, it is God’s will and your fault that you suffer. If you are God’s chosen, just look at your full to bursting bank account for proof.”
But of course, some of this is ours too–look no further than the Yom Kippur martyrology that uplifts those who died for the Divine name. Look no further than the copious explanations of why the Temple fell to see our ancestors blaming ourselves for it because of our own gossiping, not following mitzvot, not tipping our Levites enough as the reasons for diaspora and dissolution. Is our suffering our fault?
There is an amazing discussion in the Gemara, in the tractate Arakhin (1) that is mostly talking about vows, indefinite excommunication, and property as it related to offerings at the Temple. The Gemara asks, “what is the minimum of suffering someone can experience? IE, what is the least amount of pain that can count as suffering?
Rabbi Elazar suggests “if you have clothing made for you and it doesn’t fit you perfectly.”
Rava the Younger and Rabbi Shmuel bar Naḥmani say “no, even less inconvenience is still considered suffering! If you had someone dilute your wine with cold water instead of hot, that is suffering too. Or the opposite.”
Mar son of Ravina said “what about when you put your cloak on backwards and have to take it off to put it on again. That’s a kind of suffering!”
Rava or maybe Rav Ḥisda or maybe Rabbi Yitzḥak said “if you reach your hand into your pocket to get 3 coins bit only get 2, that is suffering.”
(The editor notes that it is not suffering if you take out 3 coins when you only needed 2, because dropping a coin into your pocket isn’t such a hardship.)
So nu, why do we care about the least amount of suffering? Beit Rabbi Yishmael explains that “anyone who passes forty days without suffering has received his reward, and he will have no further reward in the World-to-Come. And in Eretz Yisrael, they say: A calamity awaits he who has not experienced suffering in 40 days.”
Suffering is a part of life. But even this text is troubling (if also delightful): Why do we think that we must suffer in order to be worthy of love? Or of the world to come? Or of future reward? Why do we think that we must suffer in order to create good art? To deserve pleasure? To feel God’s closeness? For our bodies to have a pain-free day in the future? To be in relationships that hurt? Why do we think we must hear stories about ourselves that make us smaller–from other people, or those who claim to speak on behalf of God? Why, when there is already such great challenge and distance between us and the world to come, why would be hold on to relationships, behaviors, or rules for ourselves that make it that much father away?
Yes, as the Psalmist wrote, קָר֣וֹב יְ֭הֹוָה לְנִשְׁבְּרֵי־לֵ֑ב, God is close to the broken hearted (2), but God is also present at the birth of children, and under the wedding chuppah, and in the beit midrash, and when two people connect genuinely, and when Justice blossoms, and when fruit trees bear fruit, and when healing comes, and when learning is culminated, and when teshuvah is made. God is close to us when our hearts are breaking, and God is close to us when our hearts soar in joy. Let us not hold on to sorrow just so that we feel God’s closeness.
The Holy One does not need your suffering to be close–Just because God is close to the broken hearted (3) does not mean God wants you to hurt. Having to hurt in order to be awarded a blessing is no blessing at all.
In this new year, may we be granted the opportunity to reduce the suffering in this world–including our own. May it be a year of happiness, of better health, of sweet justice. May it be a year filled with ease, of delight, of inspiration. May the suffering you have had to withstand in the last year stop short at the threshold to 5784. May it be a year of good luck and great blessing. May it be shanah tovah, umetukah.
End notes:
1. Arakhin 16b
2. Psalm 34:19
3. OK this didn’t make it into the d’var but since you have the text ahead of time, there is this amazing text from Shulchan Arukh, Yoreh De'ah 335:3. Its giving instructions for how to make a bikur cholim, how to visit a sick person. The takeaway of it for me is that when visiting a sick person, it is understood that the Divine Presence is always there, so you have to be careful about how you sit so that you’re never, Gd forbid, sitting above where the Divine Presence is seated.
“One who visits the sick may neither sit upon a bed, nor upon a chair, nor upon a stool, but must [reverently] wrap himself and sit in front of him [the invalid], for the Divine Presence is above the top-side of his bed. Gloss: [This applies] only if the sick person lies on the ground so that he who sits [near him] will be on a higher level; but when he lies upon the bed, it is permissible [for the visitor] to sit on a chair or a stool. And thus is our accepted practice.”