Sometimes I remember that my days are numbered.
My days for working are numbered.
My days for seeing a cloudless sky are numbered.
My days are numbered for sitting beneath tall trees.
And my days are numbered for learning.
My days for holding the ones I love are numbered, As are my days of kisses.
My days of anguish, fear, and longing – they too are numbered.
And my days of walking the crests of high hills.
My days of deep conversation with friends and colleagues are numbered.
And the days on which I can make a dent on the world.
My days for inventing, creating, demolishing, undoing, subverting, contributing.
My days for mending and tearing apart. My days of confusion. My days of spreadsheets, keyboards, pens, paperclips.
My days for travelling by train, bus, boat, plane.
My days for reading, music, turning my face towards the stars, and washing the dishes.
My days of getting to know myself. My days for understanding what life is. My days for loving. My days for knowing.
All of these, too. I don’t think I can remember this all the time. I am too forgetful for that. Too easily absorbed in the work of the day.
But when I do remember, life shines with new depth and wonder.
And I find it much more straightforward To do what I am here to do.
These beautiful words were written by Justin Wise. He is currently Chair of Alyth Synagogue, and of course a deep thinking Reform Jew. They will appear in our new Machzor which will replace the one in your hands next year or the year after depending on how far the Committee I chair that is producing it manage to get in the next few months.
Finishing the Reform Machzor for the twenty first century is what my Sabbatical from January will be dedicated to. Justin’s poem will be opposite U’Taneh Tokef in the Rosh Hashanh Musaf service – the medieval poem that states an inevitable truism – that in the coming year some will end their time on earth – in the words of that rather less comforting poem ‘ Who by fire, who by water, who by poverty and who by riches.’
In our community of 3500 people it is not possible to avoid the inevitable vulnerability of life. But it is possible to live it together with the support of each other.
When people ask me what I enjoy about being a Rabbi it’s very easy to answer – and I can do so with the motto of our Synagogue – L’dor va’Dor, from generation to generation. I love that on a Friday morning I can join my colleagues Sarah Koster and Marian Cohen at Shabbat Stay and Play – I can meet the new-borns of our community and their anxious parents finding support at their Synagogue. I can see the enthusiasm of our toddlers as they join in with the Shabbat songs and actions, which I lead with my guitar.
I love that at our Shabbat Club every month children come up to our Bimah for their birthday blessing with the little ones with fewer inhibitions shouting Rabbi Mark or Rabbi Debbie as they spot the Rabbi they know. I love that I can join our children at our youth clubs and help them enjoy being part of community.
I love that our Bar and Bat Mitzvah children share their nerves and their achievement with us as Rabbis as we teach them every Friday and help them to prepare their Divrei Torah.
I love the delight of new couples joining our Mazeltov Marriage classes, exploring what life together forever may mean with their Rabbis, especially when they start swapping phone numbers and knowing each other as friends.
I love helping parents to help their children to find their place in Judaism, often uncertainly, often not knowing what will work best for their schooling, Jewish education and Jewish participation.
I love accompanying our members in life – through tough times when they need our pastoral support, through good times when they are ready to volunteer to make their EHRS community work. I love those times when someone asks to meet up – just to talk through a challenge in life because they know that their Rabbis are there for them, they care and what you say to them stays with them.
I love joining those who now have more time in life as they dedicate this time to Jewish study, to a game of bridge at the Shul or dancing at our Shul’s Zumba Gold. I love witnessing friendships being built in their later years at lunch clubs, JACS, Coffee and Chat and more and I love knowing the people who are coping with life in their 80’s 90’s or even century.
And this part may surprise you. I love accompanying our members on their final journey – the mitzvah of Levi’at ha Metim, comforting their bereaved family, helping to make the funeral, however and wherever it is conducted, more bearable, more able to reflect the good in the life of a Jew who has finished their time on earth.
All the way through these experiences I know that the life journeys of our members will be uncertain. They will be vulnerable – it is essential to the human condition. But by being part of this or any Synagogue, by playing their part, by making their contribution to a Synagogue community as they can during their lives they will be supporting others and themselves in their vulnerability generation to generation. Our Synagogue is not a shop, where you assess its value for money by the goods you receive, it is a community where giving is just as valuable and meaningful as receiving.
There is no stopping the rolling on of our generations. We cannot escape losing a hundred or more of our members every year to this essential vulnerability. And we must never stop doing all we can to bring a hundred or more to join our community every year so that we are always there to support each other.
I grew up using the Liberal Machzor Gates Of Repentance for my High Holidays and within it was a passage during the Yizkor service which always made a great impression on me, and I know on others. It was written by a Jewish politician – Viscount Herbert Samuel, he was leader of the Liberal party in the early 1930’s and High Commissioner for Palestine in the early 1920’s – but he also wrote this about life – with an extraordinary sensitivity:
If there is to be birth, there must be death. Unless there were departures, a time would quickly come when there could be no arrivals, since the area of the finite earth would be filled.
We can imagine a world in which there was neither birth nor death; but not a world in which there was one without the other.
If some Messenger were to come to mankind with the offer that death should be overthrown, but with the one inseparable condition that birth should also cease; if the existing generation were given the chance to live for ever, but on the clear understanding that never again would there be a child, or a youth or a girl, or adolescent love, never again new persons with new hopes, new ideas, new achievements; ourselves for always and never any others – and if the answer to that Messenger were to be given by the light of dispassionate reason, could there be a doubt what it would be ?
As we come to this deep point of the Yom Kippur Day, when our services will turn towards the joy of having spiritually cleansed ourselves ready for the New Year. May we all recognise that we are all together in making life good for each other, supporting all our generations, ensuring that those without family have support from their community. We know that all of us are vulnerable and we know what is inevitable and we know that we share the beautiful task of making being a vulnerable human a joy.
