Friday, September 18, 2009

Rosh Hashana 5770: The Grasshopper and the Ant

Once again it is Rosh Hashana and I am once again conflicted by a the Netana Tokef prayer.
On Rosh Hashanah it is written, on Yom Kippur it is sealed
How many pass on, How many shall come to be
Who will live and who will die
Who shall see ripe age and who shall not
Who by fire and who by water
Who by sword and who by beast…
…But repentance prayer and charity temper the stern decree. [Gates of repentance 313]

Netana Tokef itself is based on a earlier Talmudic work, which sets the theme for the entire holiday cycle:
R. Kruspedai said in the name of R. Johanan: Three books are opened [in heaven] on New Year, one for the thoroughly wicked, one for the thoroughly righteous, and one for the intermediate. The thoroughly righteous are forthwith inscribed definitively in the book of life. The thoroughly wicked are forthwith inscribed definitively in the book of death. The doom of the intermediate is suspended from New Year till the Day of Atonement; if they deserve well, they are inscribed in the book of life; if they do not deserve well, they are inscribed in the book of death.[Rosh Hashanah 16b:]
We are all, of course of the intermediate category. So every year, even Jews who are not religious fill synagogues which remain rather empty the rest of the year to observeRosh Hashnah and Yom Kippur. For many, it is more about some form of family obligation than actual observance. For some it is all a build up to the Yiskor , the memorial service to remember those close to us who have died. Yet for whatever reason they all come. Every year we go thorough a liturgy different than the rest of the year. Every year, we sing songs in high dramatic tones different than a usual Shabbat service. In almost every congregation, no matter how informal the rest of the year, everyone dresses formally for this time of year.

This all has bothered me for a very long time. I'm not sure which event would be considered the most significant. Was it the Yiskor service turned JUF fundraiser in 1972? Was it every donation envelope passed out during the congregation president's speech? Was it is the 1979 service when I was twelve years old, and the president of the congregation tried to personally kick me out ofKol Nidre services so they had chairs for paying adults? Was is the clothes competitions of who looks best in their fine wear and is therefore the holiest? Maybe it was seeing my teachers who kept telling me in Hebrew school to show up to Shabbat services only there on the high holidays. It was all the hypocrisy that irritated me from a very young age, much of it directed, rightly or wrongly at the high holidays and the high holiday congregation.

Oddly enough, my response was more radical than those I was criticizing. A quarter century ago, I decided to leave Judaism for eastern mysticism. My freshman year of college was the first of many years I did not go the High Holiday services, and was glad to miss all the hypocrisy. Yet I somehow started to come back. Many of my illusions of high holiday services were shown false in the services my parents eventually ended up at, Northwestern University Hillel. I made it a tradition then to read from Martin Buber's Tales of the Hasidim over the high holidays. Slowly, until the time of my Dream of the Shema in 1995, I was getting ready to return, and not even realizing it.Rosh Hashana did start the process of my own T'shuva.

Yet it has left problems I still cannot resolve.The Natana Tokef's Who shall live and Who shall die is still too harsh for me, and I've tried to find more sensible metaphors. What I came up with is a different view: It is not our bodies we are talking about, but our souls. One can have a perfectly healthy body and be dead inside or one can have a physically damaged body and still have a full life. While physical heath is important to facilitate full living, it is not required. What is required is a good attitude and perspective to live a full life. So I don't believe in a Book of Life as much as a Book of Fully Living. It is not making a seal on our fate in a book, but unsealing and turning to a new set of blank pages to write our next chapter, one that will, God willing, make a great read.

What is fully living? the difference between those who show up for service once a year and every Shabbat gave me hints about it. One hint come from the book of Proverbs, one of the earliest places the ant provides us with a parable of how we are to live our lives.

4. Give no sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids. 5. Save yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, and like a bird from the hand of thefowler . 6. Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise; 7. Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, 8. Provides her bread in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest. 9. How long will you sleep, O sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep? 10. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep, 11. So shall poverty come upon you like a vagabond, and want like an armed man.[Proverbs 6]
Proverbs talks of one who sleeps instead of working hard to gather and store. Aesop took the story further with the ant and the grasshopper fable. The grasshopper plays all summer never doing any work. The ant on the other hand does the exact opposite, spending the whole summer gathering and storing for the winter to come. When winter comes, the Ant is ready and survives, the grasshopper freezes to death, though, in some later versions without a rebuke first. This imagery does work in many aspects. The grasshopper is living for the moment joyously, yet often fails when adversity come along, In some versions of the ant and the grasshopper, the ant believes intzedakah , and gives to the grasshopper what is necessary. Yet there is a false premise in Proverbs 6:7. The ant is not free, but a mindless drone of a queen. The ant can not appreciate the song of the cricket, he only know to search and gather food. Sadly the ant does not even know this so programmed to this task. To be stepped on is nothing, for the ant is nothing. Unlike trying to catch a gazelle bird or grasshopper, the ant is easy prey. The ant does not even recognize he is in danger while ironically preparing for danger. .

Over the summer, when both insects are prevalent, I've thought a lot about grasshoppers and ants. There are in the world those that work, plan and prepare for the future. There are also those that spontaneously enjoy the word with out a worry. In our prayer lives the grasshopper and the ant are very much the congregants who pray once a year and those who pray every day or every Shabbat . The high Holidays are like the approaching winter, and the Grasshopper gets desperate for a new lease on life. The ant is prepared, the grasshopper not.Yet, it seems both survive. Thinking in polarities about grasshoppers and ants leaves us with a different view than mere opposites. It it a balance of both views which is important. To pray and read Torah all the time is not sufficient. Neither is joyously playing and enjoying the word around us. To live fully live we must enjoy creation in order to witness it and be part of it. At the same time we need to prepare and build for the future, through study, contemplation and prayer. If we do one, but not the other, our book of fully living will not be full of life, but as dull as death.

It is with a balance between two extremes we find fully living. One cannot exist without the other. It is like the student and the fiddler. AS much as the Student of Torah studies all day or a shopkeeper works all day and finds the fiddler lacking for playing his fiddle all day, a wedding is not complete nor joyous without the fiddler bringing joy to the wedding couple. The fiddlers income is from those who spend their days working and studying.

As we all begin 5770, May you be both the grasshopper and enjoy the beauty of Life, and the Ant and be prepared for adversity. In doing so may you have a full chapter in the Book of Fully Living.

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