Statistics
Sermon, Shabbat Shuvah—Ha’Azinu 5785
Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha, Tucson, AZ
Shabbat Shalom, and L’shanah Tovah, and Gmar chatimah tovah. This is Shabbat Shuvah, the Sabbath of return, between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, which is never the best attended service of the year in any synagogue. I’m not saying that people can feel in this period of time that they have become “Too Jewish”, but returning to shul the day after Rosh HaShanah might be an acquired taste. And so, no surprise if our numbers are down tonight. The Sabbath of Return, Shabbat Shuvah, sometimes feels like the Sabbath of emptiness, instead…
Of course, there is a danger in simply counting heads as a measure of achievement, or accepting statistics as a means of spiritual success. Each of us matters, and how we live our lives, and how sincere our prayer is, is more important than the number of returnees seated in shul at any one moment. Still, statistics can tell us something…
Nobel Prize Winning poet Wislawa Szymborska, a favorite of mine, wrote a poem, 'A Contribution to Statistics'. I think it illuminates, in a simple and not entirely subtle way, some essential truths about humanity—that is, us:
Out of a hundred people
those who always know better
-fifty-two [percent]
doubting every step
-nearly all the rest,
Glad to lend a hand
if it doesn't take too long
-as high as forty-nine [percent],
always good
because they can't be otherwise
-four, well maybe five [percent],
able to admire without envy
-eighteen [percent],
suffering illusions
induced by fleeting youth
-sixty [percent], give or take a few,
not to be taken lightly
-forty and four [percent],
living in constant fear
of someone or something
-seventy-seven [percent],
capable of happiness
-twenty-something tops,
harmless singly, savage in crowds
-half at least,
cruel
when forced by circumstances
-better not to know
even ballpark figures,
wise after the fact
-just a couple more
than wise before it,
taking only things from life
-thirty [percent]
(I wish I were wrong),
hunched in pain,
no flashlight in the dark
-eighty-three [percent]
sooner or later,
righteous
-thirty-five [percent], which is a lot,
righteous
and understanding
-three [percent],
worthy of compassion
-ninety-nine [percent],
mortal
-a hundred out of a hundred.
thus far this figure still remains unchanged.
According to the poet Szymborska, we are all clearly fallible, self-interested, self-justifying, mostly decent when untested, not so strong when tried, once in a while inspirational, often confused—and all of us have a limited shelf-life.
It strikes me that the Torah portion for this Shabbat, HaAzinu, is just about perfect for people like that, for human beings trying to find a way to goodness and knowing, in a sort of dim way, our own limitations. For this week we have the final song of Moses, a poem of soaring imagery and fairly brutal self-justification, of love and frustration. It is, in its own way, a revealing masterpiece of a great orator, Moses, singing of the greatness of God, of the plain fact that his was a generation of Jews who were “crooked and perverse”, who were “foolish and unwise”—a nation “devoid of counsel” with no understanding. In other words, a fallible and self-interested group, not so much evil as ungrateful and not too bright. Just like the people Szymborska is talking about; just like, well, more or less, most of us.
There is hope here, too, however, albeit in small doses: Remember, Moses says, the days of old, “Zchor Y’mot Olam”, ask your father and your elders and they will tell you what you should know—that God is Eternal, and we are the ones who will pass. God will ultimately make expiation, atonement, for our people.
This passage is Moses’ valedictory speech, but it is also his own funeral oration—for Moses is singing of his own end here, and he knows that he, too, is mortal. God has done so much for this ragged group of slaves, and now that they are on the very brink of entering the Promised Land he, Moses, will only be permitted to gaze on it from afar—ki mineged tireh et ha’arets—but he will not be permitted to go in.
Moses, our greatest teacher, our leading rabbi, perhaps the greatest figure in all Jewish history, can only come to the border of the Promised Land. His lesson is one of both word and example: we, too, can come close but never quite enter the Promised Land. Perhaps only at this last moment does Moses come to realize that the journey to the Promised Land was really all about the journey, not the arrival. How he took the trip, how he passed along the way, was what mattered.
So if even Moses is not going to get to his Promised Land, and we are, at best, more than bit like Moses, we should already be fully conscious of the fact that we ain’t really gonna’ get in to our own Promised Land, whatever that might be. We just might get to the border—mineged ha’Arets—but we will never really make it. There is that statistical problem: we are, 100 percent of us, human and fallible.
So if we aren’t able to make it, why bother to try?
The lesson of Ha’Azinu comes in the fact that we are still reading the great story of Moses, and finding inspiration from it. Moses was a hot-head and, in his youth, a killer—and yet he brought not only himself but an argumentative people of great stubbornness— some things don’t change all that much!—to the very border of the Promised Land. He helped create Teshuvah for himself and for so many others. If Moses could do it, can we?
If we look at it properly—reasonably, I guess—the answer is yes. Our job is simply to make this journey our own, and undertake it with honesty and effort—to get to the border, if you will.
And the truth is that you, personally, are already on the right path. You are here tonight, on this Shabbat of T’shuvah. You are part of the good side of the statistics; you have defied the irony, on this night, and you bring some holiness with you by doing so.
May you come to appreciate, and treasure, the journey—and so, even inadvertently, find the borders of your own Promised Land.