All Is Not Lost: We Return to the Stone | Rabbi Angela Buchdahl | Rosh HaShanah 5782

my friend stacy once shared a bit of wisdom on how to sustain a long relationship whenever your spouse or partner does something that really drives you nuts instead of getting upset just say to yourself isn't that adorable it's surprisingly effective like when my husband jacob is so engrossed in doing his new york times crossword puzzle that he is unable to hear my voice jacob hey jacob isn't that adorable jacob will tell you that one of the things he finds most adorable about me is my propensity to misplace things you see my mind is caught up in so many holy thoughts i can't be possibly bothered by all the little details like where i left my keys or my phone or my wallet i can't count the number of times i've walked out of a restaurant without my purse and one time i left my bag on a bench in central park and by the time i returned it was gone now good samaritan returned it to my apartment two days later with everything intact you gotta love new yorkers but not before jacob who does all of our billing had had to cancel every one of our credit cards and change the auto pay settings on every one of our online accounts at that point i stopped taking a purse with me and just started carrying one credit card in a pocket when i go out one day jacob asked i notice you haven't used your visa card in three months did you lose it no it's definitely not lost i said honestly i just don't remember the safe place that i left it you mean you lost it it's temporarily missing but it's not lost until i decide that i can't find it well jacob found that response even more adorable than usual but it turns out it's a very jewish response and when i studied the copious laws around lost objects with my brilliant talmud hebrewta rabbi isar katz i felt like the ancient rabbis were reading my mind to set the context you have to understand that our tradition sets a very high standard for returning what is lost where the onus is on the finder to return the lost objects to the owner back in ancient israelite times a lot of people's most valuable property could literally walk away from them the torah is clear when you see your neighbor's ox do not see it as lost that's a proactive mandate you must see that what is missing does not become lost for most of us we think returning lost property is a good deed but in jewish law returning a lost object was an obligation to be initiated by the finder and not returning a lost object was considered theft now i'm guessing it wasn't that difficult to recognize your neighbor's wayward ox it would have some identifying markers maybe an iron brand or a name caller what the tom would called simon that would make it easier to recognize the owner and easier for a finder to return but what about all those items in our lives that have no see my name no identifying marks like that twenty dollar bill that falls out of your pocket or the sunglasses you drop on the subway surely a finder is not responsible for returning those here the talmud creates a status of hefcare for those generic lost objects that they deem ownerless that no one is responsible for returning if you find it you keep it you know like when you leave behind your umbrella you know it's really gone but here is the really interesting part a window into the talmudic mindset when exactly does an object change status from belonging to you to becoming ownerless it's not the moment that the object goes missing it's the moment that you the owner give up on ever finding it the talmud calls it the moment of despair it's only when you feel yauch or despair that the thing that you were missing becomes truly lost so you see i really was in a talmudic mindset when i told jacob that my credit card was not lost because i always had faith that i was gonna find it which i did a month later when i finally reached into the right jacket pocket but think for a moment about the profound lesson that our tradition is teaching us as long as you hold on to hope nothing is truly lost until that moment you despair that object does not become ownerless it still belongs to you and it could be returned but we can't restore it by ourselves and we can't find it by staying in place so where do we go to search well legend has it that during temple times in the center of jerusalem there stood an evan hatoen a stone of lost objects archaeologists imagined it to look like a large pyramid with wide platform steps on all the festivals like rosh hashanah when the entire community would make pilgrimage to the holy city they would come gather at the center and anyone who had found an object would bring it with them to the stone and anyone who was missing something would go there looking for it it was a giant communal lost and found but the evan atoen signified something even greater the stone of lost objects was an assertion of our mutual bond i will help you find what you're missing and you will help me restore what i've lost the stone was our antidote to despair now if you knew that on our holy days you and the entire community would return well then you know that all is not lost isn't it fitting that the theme for all of these high holy day services is teshuva returning you have all returned whether you are sitting here in this sanctuary or radio city music hall or joining us from your homes wherever you are today as an ancient days i want you to imagine that we are all gathered with each other around that evan hatoen where we can ask each other what have you lost since we last gathered a year ago and what are you seeking to find how can we help each other stave off despair since this coveted pandemic hit our shores 18 months ago 600 000 small businesses have closed not available worldwide and there will be many more these numbers are staggering and then there are all there are the losses which are much harder to quantify which you've told me about personally you said i lost my connections with my neighbors my deli guy my soul cycle friends the people in the pews whom i love but have just not seen i walked past my favorite italian restaurant the one i went to with my wife and now it's gone i lost my passion for my job working around the clock from home with my children running underfoot i missed my last baseball season of high school i lost a critical year of dating said a 26 year old i lost a critical year of dating said a 62 year old each of us carries personal losses from this past year and almost everything feels so much harder because we are still limited in the way that we can gather together just six weeks ago i thought things were going to look very different in here in anticipation of full capacity we rented out radio city music hall i cannot tell you how much i'd been looking forward to bringing in this new year with the full sanctuary and seeing all of your unmasked smiles and hearing your unfiltered voices singing but we're not there yet but if there is one thing we have learned in the last 18 months it's that we can still show up you are here and you out there you too are very much also here and we have found that we can gather and connect and comfort we can learn exercise even date in ways that we would have dismissed before and we must keep doing it because this showing up is more important than ever and while the evan hatoen no longer stands in jerusalem this bhima like countless other bemas around the world can still function as our stone of lost objects but its power can only be made real by you the stone only works when we are brave enough to come before each other and say what we have lost when we commit to each other to helping each other find you know what that's like when we come together here and sing our misha barach prayer for healing we announce the names of those who have lost their health their mobility their hope and we pray with them for it to be restored when we say kaddish those people who are recent mourners or observing a yard site they stand first and they silently announced to this congregation i have lost my spouse my sister my friend what do we do when we stand at the stone with someone who's lost something that cannot be returned death is so severe in its finality our obligation then becomes to help the mourner from feeling from sinking wholly into despair we cannot restore for them a life but we can sit with them we can weep with them we can tell stories and help them see the glimmer of an easier day that all is not totally lost and remember the talmud teaches that when we lose an item that has sima neem those unique identifying markers we hold out hope that that object might still be returned we stave off despair and that thing it does not become ownerless it actually still belongs to us and it could still be returned and so it is with people we loved think of their countless which returned to us in unexpected ways and assure us that they still belong to us like when you catch yourself in the mirror and you see your mom's eyes staring back at you or when you realize you've started telling his dad jokes when that song that you both danced to at your wedding comes on when you hear your child ward off the evil eye like her boobie did tutu kinnahara when our community gathers with each other at a funeral or at a shiva we can learn new details about a loved one we didn't know we can actually find things to laugh about we are reminded that we do not have to carry all those sima nim by ourselves so does your husband's college classmate who knew him since he was 18. so does your grandfather's friend who set him up on his first blind date so does your colleague who still makes your grandmother's coogle recipe your community holds these memories with you sometimes the sema name that we remember most about our loved ones are those things that made us the most crazy when they were alive they're quirks and idiosyncrasies now in hindsight we think you know they really were adorable each one a treasured simone a sign of the person we loved they reassure us that even though our loved ones are no longer walking the earth they are not gone from our hearts or our minds jewish law has a lot to say about lost objects but its core it is all about our communal responsibility to each other so for a moment i want you to look around this room this is your congregation you're a beautiful bunch and if you are not in the sanctuary right now i want you to picture the people who make up your community let's remind each other what the evan hatoen symbolizes i am obligated to you to return what i have found i have to seek you out so tell us what have you been missing in the last year and we will help you find a job find a doctor find a bashert find a new apartment find a caregiver find someone to talk to and you who have lost so much and i'm not minimizing loss for a moment our tradition would ask you to resist despair don't give up on finding those things that are most beloved to you fight for them and they will return in unexpected and meaningful ways gather with me around the stone after these isolating days of this relentless pandemic we've returned to this place and we say to each other i've lost something precious will you help me find it [Music] i have found something wonderful tell me if you need it you are not alone in your searching we are with you we return and return again to each other [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] um [Music] you

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Length: 21min 3sec (1263 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 07 2021