High Holy Days Sermons 5783

CREATING FROM JOY

By Rabbi Ari Margolis

Sunday, September 25, 2022

A few months ago, I made a big change in my life … I bought my very first iPhone. Up until now, I’ve been an Android person.

No one pressured me to make this change - I came about it of my own volition. It was logical - my wife and now my daughter have iPhones. My siblings and most of our parental figures have iPhones, and have for years found ways to bear with me as they could not video conference or share photos as easily. Despite how much it made sense to make this shift, I still made this change reluctantly - I wasn’t necessarily excited or even happy to go through with it. 

And I gotta say, I didn’t expect to struggle as much as I did - there are things that my old phone could do that I cannot do on my new phone. Buttons aren’t in the same places, gestures are different, and I had to wait for my phone to learn my unique way of typing. 

So, I not-so-silently suffered, as any of my family members or co-workers can attest to - any time I encountered a problem with the phone, I quickly turned to the refrain, “Well, this wouldn’t happen with my Android phone. . .” 

I know some of you out there really get me right now … and more importantly, I share my tongue-in-cheek frustrations with you because I’m not the only person who has gotten trapped in the mindset that fights the changes we create. And I know such a mentality is not unique to our phones. I know there are WAY more serious problems in the world to contend with and much bigger changes that we struggle with in our lives. Change is always hard, no matter how much we know it is needed, no matter how much it makes sense. To change requires us to let go of something that was, setting us on a process of grief and mourning.  

I might still be stuck in that process when it comes to my phone if it wasn’t for a study session with one of our Bar Mitzvah students here at Or Shalom. I had a meeting with one of our youth who has a wonderfully big heart. His Torah portion will be the very first one in the Torah - Bereshit - and he chose to read from the very beginning, the story of creation. When I asked him, “Can you remember what was the first thing God created?” He responded, “Yes … Light.” And then, I asked him, “Why do you think God started creation with light?” He paused for a moment, and with conviction in his voice, as if the answer was obvious, he looked up and remarked, “Because light is a symbol of joy.” 

Wow . . . this simple and beautiful interpretation . . . . Joy. God’s creation began from a place of joy - our creation, the world we live in, this universe began with joy - He was so right. The evidence for this is strewn throughout the early verses of our text. At the end of the first day, God looks at what was created and cannot help but declare it to be good. And with each day of creation, God pauses to look back and realize the good that was put into the universe through God’s attempt to make something new. Finally, on the seventh day of creation, when God takes a rest from creation, we become witness to God taking in the joy that God had put into this project of creating the universe. Our origin story chronicles the hard work that was infused with a spark of creativity. And we see that what God put into the endeavor, God got out of it… the joy and pride that came back to God, in that time of Shabbat, reflecting on creation.

As I left the meeting with our young sage, I took this insight to heart, his insight made me think about the creation that so many of us have experienced over the past couple of years, as we have struggled with the disruptions and changes caused by the impact of COVID-19. When the pandemic struck, we had to make shifts, suddenly and rapidly. Many of us made these changes in our lives willingly - they made sense, they were sacrifices we made to save lives, it’s what we had to do. But as it drew on, we continued using our creative energy to make changes out of necessity, out of fear, out of caution. We chose based on what we were lacking or what we didn’t have access to. We learned how to use zoom, and how to attend and how to lead gatherings virtually. We helped our children attend school from their bedrooms, we chose to forgo vacations and travel, held back from seeing family members, delayed celebrations. . . All the while, we have had to re-think almost every detail of our routines. Then, we had to re-build the structures of our lives, searching for what could once again feel normal. No wonder so many of us are just exhausted from these past couple of years. Much has been written about the decision-fatigue that has accompanied many of our experiences of the pandemic due to this constant shifting and responding to the new guidance that have shifted along with each new strain of the virus. Where has there been room for joy in our creativity? That is what many of us have been missing, and it’s what we need to bring back into our lives.

It’s with this spirit that I left my conversation with our soon-to-be teenager, picked up my new phone, and started a new relationship with it. I started to look for what it could do, and not just what it couldn’t. I had some of our teens show me tips on how to airdrop files to others and how to get the most out of it. I allowed them to share their iPhone joys with me, it became a tool of connection once again. This shift in attitude has pulled me out of my funk and helped me to see my phone as a partner that helps me to bring and create goodness in our world.  

While our world continues to change rapidly, forcing us to shift, as well, I want to invite us to take this wisdom of our Torah to heart - that we follow God’s example and find the joy in what we are creating - to connect with a bit of the fire that lit up the stars and brought life into the mud - that we take a moment, even in the midst of our busy lives to identify the goodness in what we are bringing to the world with each decision we make. 

As we start our New Year together, this is our tradition’s invitation to find inspiration and joy as we start out our change process anew. Let us approach these next 10 days from a place of inspiration. May we infuse our reflection and repentance with hope and embrace the changes we know we need to make, seeing the goodness they can bring. There’s a reason that we begin our New Year with a celebration and happy gathering before moving into Yom Kippur instead of the other way around. Let us find the silver linings, even in our flaws, that can lead us to creating something wonderful that we can be proud of in the new year. Let our inspiration carry us through the bumpy roads of change, and let us create connections as we share our change with others, both to receive the support and help we might need, and to inspire others to do the same. Today is not intended to be a time to beat ourselves up or focus on how hard our journey ahead might be; to notice only what we don’t have or what we are losing, rather this season offers us the chance to arouse our hearts to the goodness we can bring by creating something new, something better, something hopeful. Let’s break the pattern of the past few years, and seek out the goodness that we can create in 5783 with all of our decisions, connecting with the divine spark of creativity and joy that has been implanted in each of us.