Yom Kippur 5784 Congregation Beth Am, Buffalo Grove, IL
There’s an old joke about a Jewish telegram, it read “Start Worrying. Letter to follow.”[1]
Then there’s the joke about four people who get lost while hiking in the desert together. It’s hot, they are tired and thirsty.
“I’m so thirsty,” says the Englishman. “I must have tea.”
“I’m so thirsty,” says the Frenchman. “I must have wine.”
“I’m so thirsty,” says the German. “I must have beer.”
“I’m so thirsty,” says the Jew. “I must have diabetes.”[2]
We Jews are known to worry. We laugh and make jokes about how much we worry, and these jokes are relatable because there is an element of truth into them.
We worry because life is filled with uncertainty, and we are reminded of this time and again. We are reminded about life’s uncertainty
- When we hear about another heat wave reaching life-threatening temperatures,
- When we are reminded about life’s uncertainties when we hear about wildfires and floods killing not thousands, but tens of thousands,
- Or when we learn of another mass-shooting, in the malls, at schools, and religious institutions.
- We are reminded of life’s uncertainties, when we hear and experience the national, uptick in antisemitic acts, and with the ever-increasing concern about our own security and safety.
In our own lives, we might worry about our children, and loved ones, and also about our own healthy and wellbeing, we want everyone to be safe, healthy, and happy, and God forbid, when there is a sign that we or they are not, the worry of the unknown can overtake us.
So yes, Jewish worrying jokes work because embedded in the punchline lies the truth that we live with a profound amount of uncertainty, and this is never easy and always uncomfortable.
Living with great uncertainty, along with a degree of fretting has been the story of our people, throughout our entire history. Rabbi Toba Spitzer writes:
“We can’t change our fate; the truth is, we can’t even anticipate our fate. We have no idea what’s going to happen in this coming year. So what can we do?” She asks.
I think that we might find ways to help us navigate the times when suffer from an acute awareness of life’s uncertainty, by bolstering our faith, developing a sense of ongoing hope, and being in a caring community. Faith, Hope and Community might lead us towards suffering less and living with more ease.
Jews know what means to live with the unknown, it is in our DNA. When God calls to Abraham- Lech Lecha—go to a land that God would show him, just pick up and leave, with out knowing the details, Abraham and Sarah go, they leave and we do not hear of them complaining about it, they are not arguing about directions, or wondering how long it will take. Abraham and Sarah, the very first Jews, go. They venture forth into uncertainty. And as the therapist Estelle Frankel writes, “Abraham and Sarah become “ivrim, Hebrews, or ‘boundary crossers’ – those who leave the known for the unknown.”[3]
Despite living in uncertain times, our ancestors were not known to be mostly worriers. And they didn’t just have “blind Faith.” They didn’t just automatically have faith or trust that all will be well. After all—when the angels, disguised as the travelers told Sarah that she would finally have a beloved child at the age 90, her first reaction was not one of faith—that God provides, it was to laugh in their faces, at such ridiculous news.
When Abraham answered God’s calls to sacrifice his son, for sure, some people think that that was Abraham passing the ultimate test of faith, but in this story, its Isaac who taught us about faith. He questioned his father, he knew something was up—but he did not despair, and he, was the one who saw the ram, sacrificed instead, and in this way, Isaac taught us about faith.
“Faith”, Author and Activist Sharon Salzberg, writes is “not a commodity that you either have or don’t have enough of, or the right kind of. It’s an ongoing process. The opposite of faith is despair.”
To have faith is to not give up. No matter if we believe in God or we believe in the power of the goodness of humanity, or in science or in a universal spiritual energy, to live a fully imperfect life that acknowledges the uncertainty in the world and that we have very little control over, is to not give in to despair.
To be of faith is to rise in the face of our own suffering, and the suffering of the world, with humility and respond, here I am. To be
of faith is to rise in honor of our own humanity and to show up—being present to what is, even when we wish it were otherwise.
There is no one here today who has not waited for test results to come in, who has not experienced the pain of loss. Many of us are worried about our own mental health, or that of loved ones, many of us have experienced financial insecurity and uncertainty as to how we will pay our bills. Living in the face of uncertainty, not giving into despair, is a heroic act of faith, handed down to us, by our ancestors through the generations.
Living with uncertainty and worry is made easier by having hope. We rise with hope knowing that while we don’t have control over much, we do have some control—mostly over our actions and our outlook on life.
I remember, years ago first hearing about Wangari Maathai–
She was the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. She was responsible for the planting of 30 million trees in Kenya. In Kenya, women had been complaining of deteriorating environmental conditions in their rural regions. With streams drying up, and poor harvests, women had to walk further and further afield in search of firewood. Wangari mobilized thousands of women and men to plant tens of millions of trees throughout their land.[4] Until one tree at a time, relief in the area was finally had. Our sages teach, is not our job to complete the task, but neither are we free to not do anything.[5]
To have hope is to realize that each of has power. Power to choose how we think, how we orient ourselves.
In 1944, a 13-year-old boy name Hugo and his family were deported to Auschwitz. From Auschwitz to a work camp, then on to death marches and only a few days after liberation Hugo’s father died from typhoid and starvation in his son’s arms. Hugo Gryn became a leading Reform Rabbi in England.
He tells this story– The Jewish prisoners in our barracks—Block 4—decided that we would celebrate Chanukah by lighting a menorah every night. Bits of wood and metal were collected and shaped into light-holders and everyone agreed to save the week’s meager ration of margarine that would be used for fuel. It was my job to take apart an abandoned prison cap and fashion wicks from its threads.
On the first night of Chanukah…most of Block 4 gathered around the menorah—including some Roman Catholic Poles, several Protestant Norwegians and… a German count who was implicated in the attempt on Hitler’s life. Two portions of margarine were placed down—my wicks in place.
We chanted the blessing, praising God who “performed miracles for our ancestors in those days and at this time,” and as…I tried to light the wick, there was only a bit of spluttering and no flame…. What the “scientists” in our midst failed to point out was that margarine does not burn!
As we dispersed and made our way to the bunk beds I turned not so much to my father, but on him, upset at the fiasco and bemoaning this waste of precious calories. Patiently, he taught me one of the most lasting lessons of my life and I believe that he made my survival possible.
“Don’t be so angry,” he said to me. “You know that this festival celebrates the victory of the spirit over tyranny and might. You and I have had to go once for over a week without proper food and another time almost three days without water, but you cannot live for three minutes without hope!”
Hope might not change an outcome, but it can bring us to meaning. It can allow us to rise in the face of uncertainty. The late Czech President and author, Vaclav Havel, wrote, “Hope is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart….[It] is not the same as joy that things are going well…but rather an ability to work for something because it is good not just because it stands a chance to succeed. Hope, he continues, is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.[6]
We rise in the face of uncertainty with faith, in that we do not despair, we rise in the face of uncertainty with hope in that we value what is good and true and work to make that goodness seen in the world and we rise in the face of uncertainty because we are in community with one another.
Our Beth Am family knows the value of community and friendship when facing uncertainty and worry. We are, after all, celebrating our 10th anniversary at Abbot court. Ten years since we moved from 225 N. Mchenry Road. This very space. At the time, people told us we would shut our doors, that we’d not survive the move, and there were well meaning synagogues that told us they would
take our membership when we closed. We survived Beth Am’s greatest period of uncertainty because we had faith, we had hope and we had each other. We know in the life of the synagogue, and in our own lives, it is so much easier to face uncertainty, when we are with others who understand. To know that even in the worst of times, there are people in this world who can help us, and also, that there are people who need us, can help us to live a life of more ease and less worry, less fear.
We rise in community because our ancestors knew that without community we could not, we would not, survive.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks teaches, “For us, faith is the redemption of solitude. It is about relationships – between us and God, us and our family, us and our neighbors, us and our people, us and humankind. Judaism is not about the lonely soul. It is about the bonds that bind us to one another and to the Author of all. It is, in the highest sense, about friendship.”[7]
Friends, in the coming year 5784, may our worries dimmish as we rise in Faith, Hope, Community and friendship. May we be blessed.
Ken Yihe Ratzon May this be true.
[1] https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/classic-jewish-telegram-joke-start-worrying-details-to-follow/
[2] Heard from Rabbi Elaine Glicksman, Rosh Hashanah 2023
[3] Estelle Frankel, The Wisdom of Not Knowing (Shambala, 2017), p. 16
[4] https://wangarimaathai.org/wangaris-story/
[5] Pirke Avot 2:16
[6] Václav Havel in Disturbing the Peace: A conversation with Karel Hvížďala, (Knopf, 1990), p. 181. Originally published 1986. Translated from the Czech by Paul Wilson. Also available in The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A citizen’s guide to hope in a time of fear by Paul Rogat Loeb, (Basic Books, 2004), p. 82.
[7] https://www.rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/behaalotecha/faith-and-friendship/
Ayin Tova: To See The Good 
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