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CHOOSE LIFE: Yom Kippur 5763, September 2002

by Student Rabbi Sari Laufer

The great Shofar is sounded.

There are moments in Israel when everything comes to a complete stop, preceeded by a sound. There is a horn - strikingly similar in tone to the Shofar of the Yamim Noraim - that sounds throughout the country on the Holocaust memorial day and on the Israeli day of remembrance for veterans.

And then there are the terrifying sounds - the booms and the roar of the plane engine. Upon hearing it, there is no way to know if it is a regular surveillance helicopter making its rounds, or an Israeli fighter jet on its way to the territories. No way to know if it was merely a car backfiring, or yet another suicide attack - perhaps this time on a place you love.

A still small voice is heard.

After these moments, there is always silence. When the horn sounds throughout the country, shopkeepers stop their business, pedestrians stop in their tracks, and cars come to a standstill on roads and at intersections.

After a boom, everything seems to come to standstill. It is almost a collective catching of breath, an awful sense of waiting. Waiting for the "voice," that will bear witness to whatever has happened.

And then there are the sirens. As a child of New York City, I used to be lulled to sleep by the sound of sirens. After nine months in Israel, it is the opposite. The sound of a siren jolts me awake, and my ears prick to ascertain the situation. If I hear one siren, I can go back to what I am doing. If there are two, I wait at attention for a few minutes longer. And if there are more than that, if there are many... well, that can't be a good thing. These thoughts stay with me even in Los Angeles.

And just over a year ago, suddenly, unexpectedly, it was Americans who heard the horrible sound of the booms, collectively waited, and heard the sound of the sirens.

On Rosh HaShanah it is written, on Yom Kippur it is sealed: How many shall pass on, how many shall come to be: who shall live and who shall die...

This year, the words of the Unetaneh Tokef, which I have heard and recited year after year, ring painfully in my ears.

I hear "who shall perish by fire," and my mind cannot help but flash to the burned out remains of the bar beneath my apartment in Jerusalem, viciously attacked on a crowded Saturday night.

I hear "who by beast," and I think of the countless children abducted from their homes, whose stories seem to have flooded the news this summer.

I hear "who by earthquake," and I cannot help but imagine how the earth near Ground Zero must have shaken as those towers came down.

"Who shall be humbled," and the scandals of corporate America flash before my eyes.

According to the Unetaneh Tokef, these events had somehow been decided; the fate of those involved had been sealed on the previous Yom Kippur. These acts, these horrible events, were not some sort of punishment, according to the prayer, and, of course, we learn that Teshuvah - returning to paths of goodness, returning to God, Tefilah - prayer, and Tzedakah - acts of righteousness - will temper the decree.

Does this satisfy all of you? Can you live your daily lives with the sense that it has all been decided for you? To be totally honest, it doesn't satisfy me. Raised on the concept of free choice and human will, I cannot fully ascribe to this sense of predetermination. And saying this prayer last year, having witnessed multiple attacks in Israel, and September 11, I found it all the more painful to think of those events having been predetermined. Faced daily in my year in Israel with the prospect of a deadly attack, my classmates and I had to find a sense of hope, a reason for living our lives as normally as possible each and every day.

On August 9, 2001, I had my first experience of the bells of the radio and the wails of the sirens. On a class trip to celebrate the end of our summer session, we turned on the radio to hear the horrific news of a bomb in the center of Jerusalem - at a Sbarro's pizzeria on a busy intersection. There was the overwhelming sense, for the first of many times, that any one of us could have been there.

That night was also the date of the huge birthday party a few of my classmates threw for me. People came reluctantly, as if they were afraid to celebrate on this day of sudden, deep mourning. But as the night went on, the party picked up.

The next day, my birthday, was a Friday. And as I prepared for Shabbat, I sat down and wrote an email to my friends and family. I wrote:

"So, I was trying to rationalize the fact that my friends threw me a huge birthday party last night. And I did feel twinges of guilt, but I realized that in our own, possibly warped, way, we followed the prescriptions of Jewish tradition. Instead of solely focusing on the death, we chose to celebrate lifeŠ

I know that there is rage, terror, grief, disillusionment, helplessness. What there does not seem to be is hope. I suppose that is really the mission, then - to find SOME hope, somewhere - that things will get better."

This sense, this searching, has been a fact of Israeli life for years. Some would argue it has been that way since 1948, but certainly since the start of this current Intifada, Israelis have had to look for a real reason to get out of bed every morning - look for inspiration to board a bus, weigh the various aspects of going market shopping, think more than twice about grabbing a drink with friends on a Saturday night.

These are tensions, that having lived under them for the better part of a year, I would not wish on anyone, much less my home country and especially the city of my birth. Yet after one terrible day, some of these tensions came to America. Not to the same extent, and these thoughts and questions did not enter the American consciousness as they have the Israeli, but nonetheless, American carefreeness changed forever that day. Americans, like Israelis, needed a way, a thought, to get through each day with a sense of normalcy.

Our Torah reading tomorrow morning, the one that Reform congregations choose to read on Yom Kippur, provides an interesting, and I think beautiful, alternative to the determinations of the Unetaneh Tokef. We are taught:

I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day that I have set before you life or death, blessing or curse: choose life, therefore, that you and your descendants may live. This phrase is oft quoted and oft studied. God tells us that when given the choice, we should choose life. What does this mean? If, as the Unetaneh Tokef suggests, our fate is already sealed, how can we choose life? The Torah gives us suggestions. We can choose life: by loving your God, listening to God's voice, and holding fast to the One who is your life and the length of your days. I would argue that it can be less regimented than that. You can make daily choices of life, to give your life, your daily life, added significance. Choose to make every moment count. Fill your days with as much joy and meaning as possible.

It is that overriding concept, I believe, that makes Israelis get up every morning and get on the bus, that makes them flood Moment Cafe when it reopened just months after its brutal destruction, that makes them laugh and sing and dance despite it all.

There are hundreds of ways to choose life, each and every day. Part of the morning Shacharit service in our prayerbook is the Nisim B'chol Yom - the miracles of every day, in which we thank God for such events as waking up and opening our eyes every morning, for making firm our steps, for getting dressed. I now carry in my wallet a card with Brachot L¹chol Yom - Blessings for every day. They include such things as blessings upon "seeing the large-scale wonders of nature, such as mountains, hills, deserts, seasŠ.", blessings upon seeing a rainbow, upon seeing flowers and herbs, blessings for food, and so on and so forth. I try to remember every morning to say:

Modah ani l'fanecha, melech chai v'kayam, she-hechezarta bi nishmati, b'hemla raba emunotecha. I give thanks before you, living and everlasting ruler, who has returned my soul to me in abundant kindnessŠ

And as I read the magazines and watched the specials dedicated to the year anniversary of September 11, I noticed perhaps that same spirit in Americans. They did not necessarily add prayer, or acts of justice, or constant repentance to their daily lives, but they all did SOMETHING to differentiate their post 9/11 lives from what they had lived before.

My favorite of all of these is the story of a woman in the South. Living in Atlanta, she had no direct connection to the Twin Towers or to the Pentagon. Yet, she recounted to People Magazine, she now takes the stairs to and from work every day in lieu of the elevator. She does it, she says, "as a small way of remembering everyone who hurried down all those flights of stairs at the World Trade Center," and in recognition of her health and her life. Others tell of the appreciations they have now for the small things - spending extra time at home, calling a good friend just to say hello, stopping, metaphorically and literally, to smell the roses. And not just the roses, but perhaps the small wildflowers blooming along the road.

I do not have an answer for you about the Unetaneh Tokef. I cannot tell you whether your fate is going to be sealed at sundown tomorrow, whether there is or isn't something you can do to change it. Yet I firmly believe that whether or not our fate is ultimately and permanently sealed, the lesson to choose life is an important one. Make each moment count. Choose life.