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SERMON BY RABBI GLENN ETTMAN
delivered on YOM kippur morning 5768
september 22, 2007
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Photo by
Chris Gaines |
Listen UP
Elevating our Power to Listen and to Hear
Listen to this.
A man goes out and brags about his brand new hearing aid that he just bought. He proudly proclaims: "It is the most expensive one I have ever had!" His friend says to him: "That is great. What KIND is it?" The man replies: "it's half past four…"
Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever only heard half of a question even though you were convinced you were listening? Or for whatever reason you misheard what someone actually was saying? Or do you have, what we affectionately can refer to as "selective" hearing – where we select what it is we want to hear and to listen to. Sometimes we even joke about how we half listen to our chatty younger children, or our spouses who we perceive as nagging but may not actually be. Many people choose not to listen when they are driving because they know the way. Slow down; turn here; are we there yet; these are all phrases that we may not actually listen to.
But what about those times when we have half tuned out someone who is chattering, and ended up missing some important information. Or, you are sitting in a meeting and only hearing what you want to hear, ignoring the accolades or crisis that you may be privy to.
On Yom Kippur we are forced to listen to ourselves in a contemplative prayerful way. But we need to take this message beyond our prayerful moments and into our lives. Today is our reminder to listen. To listen up. To listen to this. As if to say, this stuff, the stuff you are about to hear…yeah, this is the important stuff.
This is the message for us today and it comes to us at the most important time of our year when we are challenged to hear. But why do we have to be reminded to Listen UP? Shouldn't we hear the world that is around us? Shouldn't we be in tuned with the sounds that pierce the air we breathe? Shouldn't we care about the voices who are communicating with us?
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Sadly, we use this device way too often; I am even a culprit of it myself. Think of how many times you have had to preface a conversation by saying "Listen up, this is what you have to do today". Or your boss reminds you to listen closely. Or even we say to a spouse or a family member, listen to this, I have a great story to tell you.
Sure these words get our attention and focus our senses to what it is we are about to hear, but what happened to good old fashioned listening when we did not have to be reminded to do it? If we have to so frequently be reminded to "listen up", does this then mean that maybe we have been listening "down"?
Yom Kippur is our time to be at one, atoning for our wrongdoings and shortcomings where we are listening to our gut as we confront ourselves. But we must also today call to ourselves to "listen up".
In order to do this, let us first understand what it is entailed in listening in its elemental form. From the cultural anthropological sense, when we listen we are engaging in an interaction - a shared moment. Listening is therefore not a solitary event because we have to listen TO something or someone. To listen we must be in partnership and connection. There is always a giver, the one who is speaking, and there is always a receiver, the one who is listening. The interaction then becomes the relationship. But when we are not fully listening, our relationships are challenged because one person is not really "there".
We can really see this beautiful moment of cultural studies when we think about those around us who are hearing impaired in anyway. For communication, it is important to engage someone, to look at them, and, unencumbered, speak so that they can "listen" to what we have to say. Doing this clearly, with proper enunciation, not while doing something else. Not with our hands over our mouths. Not reading the paper or watching TV, but present and in connection. While the actual audibility itself may live on different gradations, the essence and the overarching structure of what it means to listen puts us in direct connection with others.
To listen is to connect, to be "heard," and ultimately, to communicate. It allows for us to communicate ideas and words, thoughts and actions, hopes and dreams, even fears and anxiety.
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We are reminded of the importance of listening with one of the most important symbols of these Holy Days. The Shofar is our reminder to listen, the old fashioned way. But it is not just today that we are reminded of it. Our tradition explains that we are supposed to blow the Shofar everyday for the entire month preceding Rosh Hashanah as our spiritual preparation and anticipation of the great beginning of the New Year. We then conclude Yom Kippur with a long shofar blast. The deeper meaning of the reason we use this symbol so much during this time of year is exactly this. When we hear the shofar, we are compelled to be awake spiritually, but also we are reminded to listen.
Historically the shofar was used as a call of announcement indicating something important was to be presented. The shofar was also used to call a community to battle. Or to proclaim freedom as we say in the weekday Amidah when we proclaim "Teku b'shofar…"sound the shofar and proclaim our freedom…"
But it is not just the shofar itself that is important for us, rather it is what the shofar reminds us to do that is. It is not about blowing the shofar, rather it is about hearing it. In fact, we are not commanded to blow the shofar, though the one who does is an honorable task, but the message is to hear the sound. To listen. As if the blast of the shofar is saying: "Listen Up" becoming a reminder for US to do just that, to listen.
Now, I bet if we were to conduct an informal survey about our relationships, I would venture to guess that the majority of you would say that "you are good listeners" or "you wished your partner would be a better listener". Or even some who would say "I have trouble listening, I would rather read something". In our relationships, we all hope and pray that we can bring this quality to our lives, but that is not always the easiest thing to do.
The world we live in is overwrought with sounds of distraction. We need to find our sounds of silence, as the famous Jewish prophetic songwriters, Simon and Garfunkel, sing about. These sounds of silence are so that we ourselves can listen because it matters, not just for ourselves, but for those with whom we are in contact.
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Listen to this story about Viktor Frankl, the founder of a new school of psychotherapy and a survivor of the Holocaust and how important listening can really be.
A woman phoned him up in the middle of the night and calmly told him that she was about to commit suicide. Frankl, realizing her need, kept her on the phone and talked her through her depression, giving her reason after reason to carry on living and listening to her cries for help. Eventually she promised him she would not take her life, and she kept her word.
When they met a few years later, Frankl asked her which of his reasons she had found convincing. "None", she replied. "What then persuaded her to go on living?" asked Frankl curiously. Her answer was simple. Frankl had been willing to listen to her in the middle of the night. She felt that a world in which someone was prepared to listen to another's distress seemed to her one in which it was worthwhile to live.
For us this is true as well. What an underrated art listening is. Sometimes it is the greatest gift we can give to a troubled soul. It is an act of focused attention. It means being genuinely open to another person, prepared to enter their world, their perspective, their pain. It does not mean that we have a solution to their problem because there are some problems that cannot be solved. But we can listen! And when we do, we share in life.
Think of that familiar voice on the other end of the phone. Or the cry of a newborn. Or the sound of the laughter of a child. Or a call from your Mother just, as mine says, "because I wanted to hear your cheery voice". When we listen to one another we are able to hear the sweet music in an otherwise cacophonous world. And find our own sounds of silence in order to hear. Elevating our minds and our ears so that we can truly, listen up. That is our task that we must embrace as we begin our New Year.
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We all have our own perspectives and feelings, but listening forces us to be selfless and to quiet our overt needs and let others in. We can see an example of this in the book of Genesis where God reminds us of exactly this point. Listen to what God says to Sarah when she is kvetching about how hard it is to live with her husband Abraham and their "maidservant" Hagar. God says to Sarah about Hagar:
Shema B'Kolah – Listen to her. Listen to the cries of her rather than only hear the frustrations of yourself. God reminds Sarah that all of us will be heard by the Divine, but the most elemental concepts of a relationship is to listen to HER, to listen to HIM, to listen to THEM. To silence ourselves and to listen UP.
God listens to those who otherwise go unheard. To Ishmael, driven from home; to Leah, unloved; to Rachel and Hannah, longing for a child devoted in prayer; to the Israelites as they groan under the burden of slavery and wandering; to us as we carry on the chain of tradition. God listens, and in listening gives us a model and the strength to live.
Not accidentally are the most foundational words of Jewish prayer the Shema which is usually translated as, "Hear, O Israel" as we see in our prayer books before us. But it would be better to translate it as, "Listen, O Israel." Listening is where pain is healed by being shared. Listening is where community is created. Listening is where trust is born.
But silencing ourselves also forces us to listen to ourselves, which is sometimes not such an easy task. It seems so much easier to listen to others because then we do not have to deal with our own issues. But that is not the only point.
How many of you sitting here have ever thought "if only I could listen to my own advice?" Or "I am great helping others but why can't I listen to myself?" Or just thought it would be easier to listen to someone else's issues as an unconscious way of masking the challenges that we may not want to hear?
Perhaps the challenge to all of this is that sometimes the words that we hear from within are not so pleasant. They are filled with dissonance and hurt, heart ache and confusion. We may hear things that we do not want to hear. Either voices that we cannot control, or words that we do not want to admit are true.
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Perhaps the knowledge that we just are not that happy in what we are doing and where our life is going at the moment. Or the voice that says "maybe this relationship isn't working after all." Or "that I am growing up and I having a hard time relating to my parents." Or that voice that says "my children are growing up, and I have to begin to listen to them not hear what I want to hear." Our challenge is to listen up to ourselves. And, as hard as that may be, two scenes from our Torah can help shed light onto this important task.
The first scene takes place at Mount Sinai where the Israelites are gathered at the foot of the mountain. God speaks and there follows the unique moment. It is the only time when we learn that God is speaking to an entire nation. There is thunder. There is lightning. And a blast of the shofar. The entirety of the people stands there listening. And then, vayar ha'am – they say " the people were afraid." Vehynu - "and they trembled." Sometimes listening can be scary. But remember what they ultimately were hearing - the great moment of God's revelation of Torah. On the surface a scary moment, but at its core a glorious reality. Sometimes what seems scary is really a true revelation.
Then there is another scene which takes place about 500 years later which speaks to our challenge of listening to ourselves. This scene takes place at the same Mountain. This story is now with Elijah. He sees in front of him a whirlwind shattering rocks and crushing mountains, and God is not in the whirlwind. And then there is a violent earthquake, but God is not in the earthquake. Then there is a fire, but God is not in the fire. Finally, Elijah listens to a kol demama daka – a still small voice, and that is where God is. Even in the scary moments of nature that we cannot control, God's voice is there to be listened to. We have to stand and be present and listen. When we listen, we can hear the moments of revelation that surround us, as well as the sounds that live with in our own Kol Demama Daka, that still small voice.
Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, the chief Rabbi of England, can help us to understand this even more by explaining that the Kol Demama Daka is not just a "still small voice," rather it is a voice that you can hear only if you are listening. This is the voice of being present and aware. Of being ready to receive the words which are being spoken, and not to be distracted by the images around us - finding our sounds of silence.
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All of us sitting here today, must elevate our ears to listening. The final act in our Teshuvah drama is to make a change and to listening to the voices that are around us, the ones that are with us, but also, as hard as it may be, the ones that are inside of us.
The mystics explain that in every conversation, there are at least three "people" present, there is the speaker, the listener, and then there is God. When we find that "voice that we hear only when we are listening" we are connecting in some level with the Divine world and realizing the holiness that is around just because we are all God's creations. Reminding us how important, then it is to Listen UP.
Peace Camp Canada, a cutting edge summer program bridging Israeli and Palestinian teenagers in partnership and conversation teaches that listening is a path towards peace and action. They are attempting to Listen Up towards meeting our hate in the world. Three times a day we are reminded of the importance of listening when we say the Shema reminding us to Listen UP to our community. Even the last parasha in the Torah cycle, which we read just last week, calls for us to Haazinu - give ear and Sh'imu – to listen up because you are about to enter into the Promised Land.
And so friends are we entering our Promised Land of this Year, 5768. It is our task to elevate ourselves so that we can listen up and listen to the divine within us. Hilkot Shofar, the laws concerning the Shofar explain exactly this, saying: "The only bar against living a Jewish life is our purposeful intention NOT to live it. Anyone who wishes to change his or her life…can do so. All it takes is the willingness to listen. First, to the strident call of the shofar and then to the silent call of the still small voice within us." Listen up to the sounds of potential. Listen up to the sounds of possibility. Listen up to the sounds of our encroaching reality of newness, of holiness and of connectedness. All reminding us, quite simply, to Shema Yisrael - Listen UP Israel, there is beautiful music in the world to be heard, may it be our job to listen.
Cain Yehi Ratzon – May this be God's will.
Rabbi Glenn Ettman
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