Rabbi's Greeting
Rabbi Elizabeth Bolton
Erev Yom Kippur 5766
October 12, 2005

There once was a man, who in preparation for an important business trip ordered a suit from a particular tailor with an excellent reputation. The day before he was to depart on his trip, the businessman stopped into pick up his suit, but it was not ready. Unable to postpone his journey, he left without it. His trip took many months. When he finally returned home he stopped by the tailor's in hopes of finally getting his new suit. But the tailor said, "Sorry, I need a few more days."
In four days time the businessman returned to the tailor and lo and behold this time his new suit was ready. He tried it on. It fit beautifully and looked wonderful. As pleased as he was with the finished product he could not resist asking the tailor why it took him so long to make one suit. "After all", he added, "even God only took six days to create the world." Nonplussed, the tailor responded, "Yes that it is true; but look at God's world and look at my suit."

"[T] he primary image of creation is God emanating light into vessels. For whatever reason, these vessels are flawed....They shatter. Shards of vessels fall and disperse through reality. Many of the shards retain sparks of light. The purpose of existence is to gather the sparks of light....What is essential in this image is the centrality of failure. God tries to create the world. It doesn't work because the vessels shatter...Failure is part of the hardwiring of the system."
[Marc Gafni, The Mystery of Love]

We began this evening by bringing in, and acknowledging, light in our midst. The next words introduced our solemn annual ritual of renouncing our vows by declaring that the most imperfect among us may pray in our midst. Light is sown for the righteous, we sang in solemn echo, and it repeated again in the formulaic introduction to our legal declaration.

Later, we heard words from the wise woman, Barbara Kingsolver:
"I remember my Japanese friend's insistence of forgiveness as the highest satisfaction, and I understand it really for the first time: What a rich wisdom it would be, and how much more bountiful a harvest, to gain pleasure not from achieving person perfection but from understanding the inevitability of imperfection and pardoning those who also fall short of it."

[Barbara Kingsolver, Small Wonder, "Going to Japan."]

We enter this strange and hallowed realm of forgiveness, seeking it and offering it, perhaps feeling stalled before its magnitude, or awed by its power. Tonight I invite you to at least make your acquaintance with its inevitability, with the inevitability of your own human imperfection, and thus the world's.

The world's imperfections, and our own, are inexorably linked. In this way, all questions of design and designer, evolution and creation, are easily subsumed into any one moment of awe at the mystery in each choice, each chance, each breath-taking moment of life.

The gift of Yom Kippur is the opportunity to release anger and restore hope. Without it, the untold pain of those suffering from the mysteries of wayward cells, shifting tectonic plates, shards of shrapnel, or intimate loss will remain unfocused, out of our range of compassion or action.

One more story.
"Every bone in her face was shattered last November when Victoria Ruvolo was struck by a 20-pound frozen turkey hurled through her windshield by a Long Island teenager. But when she came to court on Monday to hear the teenager accept responsibility for nearly killing her, she was there not for retribution but for his redemption."

The article went on to describe the incident, Ms. Ruvolo's surgeries, and what happened when 19-year old Ryan Cushing met outside the courtroom.

"Stopping to speak to her on his way out of the courtroom, Mr. Cushing choked on an apology and began to cry. For an intensely emotional few minutes, Ms. Ruvolo alternately embraced him tightly, stroked his face and patted his back as he sobbed uncontrollably.
Many of the two dozen people in the court - prosecutors, court officers and reporters - choked back tears.
"I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry," Mr. Cushing said over and over again. "I didn't mean it." Most of their exchange was whispered, but at one point Ms. Ruvolo's advice to him was just barely audible.
"It's O.K., it's O.K," she said. "I just want you to make you life the best it can be.""
[New York Times, "Plea Bargain Is Accepted in Turkey-Throwing Case," by Julia C. Mead, Tuesday August 16, 2005]

I find, in these words in response to this story, an extraordinary employment of sacred terminology on that most secular of realms, the editorial page:
"Given the opportunity for retribution, Ms. Ruvolo gave and got something better: the dissipation of anger and the restoration of hope, in a gesture as cleansing as the tears washing down her damaged face, and the face of the foolish- miserable boy whose life she had singlehandedly restored."
[New York Times, Editorial, "A Moment of Grace," Wednesday August 17, 2005]

Failure and light. These are the poles between which we might see ourselves situated tonight. That we arc between these two is inevitable. As we enter into our shared time of supplication for and offering of forgiveness, I pray that we find within ourselves the capacity to reach with all our physical and moral fibers toward the light.