This is the night when we are privileged to hear that haunting melody which Tolstoy once labeled-

the Kol Nidre. It's text alone is said to be 1500 years old.

Yes, we are here tonight to measure ourselves against a daunting standard- one which has endured vicissitudes of time and chance, the peril of persecution, the despair of exile, the horrors of the Holocaust, and the challenge of far-reaching change. Yet still this faith of Abraham and Sarah proves to be one of the most creative and enduring responses to the riddle of human existence.

"WE'RE TALKING TORAH," that's our theme for these High Holy Days, and book by book, we shall search for a central message from Genesis through Deuteronomy to take to our hearts in the new year we have entered.

You know, we didn't take out those Torah scrolls from the ark earlier, just because they look pretty!

And the Talmud urges:

Turn it again and again, for everything is in it; contemplate it, grow gray and old over it, and swerve not from it for there is no greater good.

But the scholars also insist: "The Torah was not given to the angels." And perhaps that's its secret! Judaism has stood the test of time because Torah is true to the facts of our human nature. No sugar coating, but with astounding perception and incisive clarity, this Torah penetrates to our every conceit and delusion, understanding all too well, that, as John Ruskin observes:

We've already spoken of Genesis and Exodus, and the Torah's very next book, Va-yikra, Leviticus, is perfectly suited to our concerns on this Kol Nidre Eve.

Leviticus was our ancestors' most earnest response to what one must do when we fall short, when we become unclean, and the process by which to become headed, reconciled, purified and restored.

Judaism endures today because of its realism; it's hard-nosed insistence that evil does not come from forces outside us, but from within us! The fact is that human beings are born morally neutral, with strong tendencies toward evil. And having fallen short and given in to our less than best, remember that we are able to choose the good and to better our record.

"WHO'S SORRY NOW?" We all are! We, each one of us, make our confessions to God in private, but notice that we do so together, shoulder to shoulder, as a congregation and as a People.

Did you see that article in the paper a while back? A Wisconsin psychiatrist managed to convince a patient that she had 120 separate personalities, among them a duck and the Devil- and then charged the woman for group therapy! Well, maybe Yom Kippur is an ancient form of Jewish group therapy as we once again raise to our consciousness this undeniable reality. Life is not an issue of comfort or convenience or even achievement. It's about trying to be faithful to ideas that move us and to ideals that transform us, about acting toward others with empathy and giving ourselves over to love with abandon. It's about trying and failing, and then being forgiven, and then trying again.

Now few people would claim Leviticus as their favorite book of the Bible except "Dr. Laura" (with whose take on certain Levitical passages I am in entire disagreement). Through the years, I've seen the horrified looks on the faces of too many Bar and Bat Mitzvah students, not to mention their parents, incredulous that on "their big day" they will be reading from the Torah about diagnoses of leprosy, the sprinkling of animal blood, rules of menstrual purity and dietary laws. Yes, some of Leviticus is, to use a scholarly term: "Yuckky!"

But look closer, because Leviticus also happens to include some of the most eloquent, high-minded verses of all Scripture. Here one finds the golden Rule- "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Here we find the Holiness Code which we shall read tomorrow afternoon. And there is, in all the world's sacred literature, no finer articulation of true religion than those words of Leviticus, Chapter 19.

But even more, this book provides us, on this sacred evening, with a useful paradigm, a model by which to atone and set ourselves right both with our Creator and with our fellow men and women.

The setting of Leviticus is the desert of wandering after the Exodus. The locus of faith is all that transpires in the Ohel Moed, the portable tabernacle. Central within Leviticus we read how on Yom Kippur, and on that day alone, Aaron would carefully prepare and purify himself in order to enter the Tabernacle with the purpose of securing forgiveness for himself, his family and the entirety of his people.

Naturally, later generations of our people, in the absence of this portable sanctuary, and following the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem, substituted words and prayers of atonement in place of priests and animal sacrifices.

Still, I believe, the Biblical Aaron has set a fine example for us as to how we too should approach this Yom Kippur: Atoning first, from the self and then outward, to others. Beginning then with ourselves, of what ought we be mindful?
 
 

First, there is such a thing as "the fine art of failure." Students and young people - I want you to wake up a minute because this one's for you! The knowledge that we fall short of expectations, of our desired level of quality and standards of achievement, mustn't ever be allowed to cripple our spirits! Don't be afraid to fail. Sometimes it's an indispensable chapter in our growth.

If you know me at all, you are aware that you have only to name any sport known to humankind, and I will know absolutely nothing about it! But I do read, and I know a point for a sermon when I see it, even when it comes from the world of sports.

Michael Jordan, arguably, I understand, the most talented athlete ever to grace the basketball court, offers this reflection:

I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On twenty-six occasions I have been entrusted with the ball to take the final, game-winning shot- and missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

Kol Nidre, this night is Judaism's "Beginning All Over Again Night"! Remember that! God knows how difficult T'shuvah-repentance is. Trying with all our might to return to God, God will come the rest of the way to embrace us as would a loving parent.
 
 

Number two, and this continues to center on the self, but it will lead us outward to an understanding of the other person. Within us there is a powerful desire to forgive, even as we long so to be forgiven.

Herb Gardner wrote a play titled, "A Thousand Clowns." It's about a man named Murray, who was a jobless rebel against a square society. Now Murray's gone out to find a job in order to please his girlfriend, Sandra.

He returns home to Sandra and recounts this day's amazing discovery. Murray had somehow "forgotten" to search for a job, but he had learned something central to our consideration on this Atonement evening.

"Picture me," Murray breathlessly tells Sandra: I'm waiting on East Fifty-first street an hour ago and I decided to construct and develop a really decorative, general, all-purpose apology. Not complicated, just the words, 'I'm sorry,' said with a little style.

Sandra asks-"Sorry for what?"

For being late, early, stupid, asleep, silly, alive. Well, you know, when you're walking down the street talking to yourself how sometimes you suddenly say a couple of words out loud? So I said, 'I'm sorry,' and this fella, complete stranger, he looks up a second and says, 'That's all right, Mack,' and goes right on.

He automatically forgave me. I communicated. Five o'clock rush hour in midtown you could say, 'Sir, I believe your hair is on fire,' and they wouldn't hear you. So I decided to test the whole thing out scientifically.

I stayed right there at the corner of Fifty-first and Lex for a while, just saying, 'I'm sorry,' to everybody that went by. 'Oh, I'm sorry sir' . . . 'Say there, miss, I'm sorry.'

Of course some people just gave me a funny look, but, Sandy, I swear, seventy-five percent of them forgave me. 'Forget it, buddy' . . . 'That's O.K., really.'

Two ladies forgave me in unison, one fella forgave me from a passing car, and one guy forgave me for his dog- 'Poofer forgives the nice man, don't you Poofer?'

Oh, Sandy it was fabulous. I had tapped some vast reservoir. Something had happened to all of them for which they felt somebody should apologize.

There is within us a powerful desire to forgive.

And, this leads us to a third observation. If Murray's assumption is true, and I believe it is, then there should be more than a few of us here tonight who, having been wronged, and often bitterly so, are in need of finding the pathway to forgiving. We do not have to forget- did you hear that? We do not have to forget, but it is a terrible error when we refuse to forgive.

Theologian Lewis Smedes offers us these reasons for forgiveness. He writes:

When you make a hard decision against forgiving, you lock yourself in a straight jacket of your own resentment .... unrelieved resentment is like a videotape inside your soul, playing its tormenting reruns of the rotten things someone did to you ... wrenching your soul tighter every time it plays.

In a recent article in "The Detroit Free Press," columnist Mitch Albom had this to say:

In writing the book, "Tuesdays With Morrie," I watched my old college professor, Morrie Schwartz, who was dying of ALS, break into tears when he told me of an old friend with whom he had lost touch. Once they had been so close. But a silly little argument had split them apart.

"I found out last year," Morrie said, "that this friend died of cancer."

He began to weep openly.

"I never had the chance to make it up to him. I never had the chance to say I'm sorry. Why did I let that stupid little argument separate us all these years?"

I watched Morrie cry. He could no longer move his arms or legs, he was weeks away from death, but he wept not for his weakened health, but for missed opportunity. He wept for the days, weeks and years that he could have spent in loving companionship with a friend, but instead lost to stubbornness.

"If there's anyone you care about that you're fighting with now," Morrie told me, "let it go. Say you were wrong - even if you think you're right. Because I promise you, when you get to this point in your life . . ."

He nodded to his dying body.

"You won't care who was right or wrong. You'll only want to savor every minute you had with them."

This holy night, when, once again, we hear the Kol Nidre, poses many important questions before us. Bottom line, let me ask you this one: are you a moth or are you an eagle?

What does the moth do? Irresistibly, the moth flies straight toward oblivion; heads for a hot light bulb to meet its self-destruction. The moth never learns. And some of us don't either. We are consumed by the very things we intend to solve or master.

Or are you an eagle? A naturalist, walking in the country, passed a farm in whose chicken-yard he spotted a half-grown eagle pecking at the feed with the chickens. And he asked the owner:

Why is there an eagle living with the chickens?

The farmer answered, "When the eagle was very young, he fell in with the chickens and now he's got chicken ways." The naturalist asked if he could try to bring the eagle to his true self. "Give it a try," the farmer agreed.

The naturalist picked up the eagle and holding him as high as he could, cried out:

You're an eagle. You are king of the birds. You deserve to fly free. Fly!

And the eagle looked about and jumped down to rejoin the chickens.

The next day, the naturalist took the young eagle to the roof of the farmhouse. He whispered in his ear:

You are an eagle. You are king of the birds. You are intended to fly free. Fly!

And the eagle looked around a bit. Saw some open sky, but returned to the chicken-yard.

The third day, the naturalist took the eagle to a mountain top, and with strength and conviction held the bird high telling him:

You are an eagle. And God created you to cover the skies.

And the eagle looked up and saw the limitless sky all around. Then he woke up to who he really was. He claimed himself and flew away- free!

The eve of Kol Nidre, and the message of Leviticus with all of the details and accounts of Aaron the high priest, all serve to present us with a choice: As a moth, fly into the fire, or as an eagle, take to the open sky? Remain an eagle in a chicken-yard or learn to fly free and claim your destiny as a child of God? This night, we are called to choose.