Statistics & Repentance
Shabbat Shuva/Ha’azinu 5784
Shabbat Shalom, and L’Shanah Tovah. This evening we are entered into the Shabbat of Return, of Repentance, between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. I love the ironies of this particular Sabbath. For one thing, it is called the Sabbath of Return—yet falling as it does immediately after Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur on Sunday and Monday, fewer people, inevitably, will be here over this Shabbat. We might better call it the Sabbath of flight, or the Shabbat B’richah instead of Shabbat Shuvah—the Sabbath of Absence sometimes seems more appropriate than the Sabbath of Return. It’s as though attendance at Temple is limited by some sort of natural measure, and T’shuvah, return, is suspended this weekend especially.
Of course, there is a danger in simply counting heads as a measure of achievement or accepting statistics as a means of spiritual success. Repentance is measured one person at a time, and in the degree of return, rather than the number of returnees seated in the pews at any one moment. Still, statistics can tell us something… And what they tend to tell us, is that, for all the fervor and beauty of the Rosh HaShanah liturgy, for all the power of the music and the prayer, most of us have a pretty hard time making changes of great substance in our personal conduct.
Nobel Prize Winning poet Wislawa Szymborska, a favorite of mine, had 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.
You see, 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 but vivid 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, 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.
Often, this portion is not actually paired with Shabbat Shuvah, by the way—the lunar calendar is a regular but rather fickle mistress in the near term, and the Torah portions are sometimes matched with Haftarot other then the ones that our rabbis chose so carefully for them 1500 years ago. So it is a special opportunity to have HaAzinu as our Shabbat Shuvah reading, matched with the beautiful passages from Hosea, Micah, and Joel that make up our selection tomorrow. Shuvah Yisrael the prophets begin—return, Israel, to the Lord your God. You have stumbled in your error and transgression. Come back…
Return, we are told. Overcome the odds. Repent your mistakes and sins, and make your teshuvah. Return to Me, God says, and I will bring you back to Me in love. Do not fear. Return.
Shabbat Shuvah is an invitation, but it is also a challenge. For when we try to return we are often a little stymied by the potential—indeed the likelihood—of failure. Sure, we can come back, but we know in some part of our hearts that we are unlikely to fully succeed. Repentance means changing habits we shouldn’t have, making up with people we don’t like, remaking our character in ways that are painful and serious, even modifying some of the desires of our hearts—and that’s very hard to do, and we are, essentially, predestined to some degree of failure. If teshuvah is the Promised Land of this part of the Jewish year, we are more than bit like Moses, already fully conscious of the fact that we ain’t really gonna’ get in. 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 HaAzinu 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 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’t we?
If we look at it properly—reasonably, I guess—the answer is yes. For at this time of Teshuvah, our task is to return to the best that is within us, to come back part of the way to God and goodness--not all the way. Full Teshuvah would be entering the Promised Land. 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 Shuvah. You have begun to return. 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. You are why we have Shabbat Shuvah.
May your return over these Aseret Yemei Teshuvah be blessed with a measure of success at return and repentance. And may you come to appreciate, and treasure, the journey—and so, even inadvertently, find the borders of the Promised Land. Ken Yehi Ratson.