Yom Kippur 5786

Living Well, Dying Well

Shanah tovah, g’mar tov, and tzom kal! I hope everyone is feeling well and strong. Most people have no problem fasting for twenty-four hours, but other people are not able to do so. Whether you take medication, or are ill, or just aren’t up to it this year, there is no shame in taking a sip of water or eating something.

Why do we fast on Yom Kippur? The Torah tells us that on this day we must afflict our bodies. Why not lash ourselves with those little whips that some Christian subgroups are said to use, and be done with it? Why not stub our toe, or trip and fall, like we do other days? Why not afflict ourselves by eating very unhealthy food, as we also do most days?

Today we afflict our bodies, but we also turn our attention away from our bodies. Today we focus on the spirit. We traditionally dress in the white of the shroud, and we neither eat, nor bathe for pleasure, nor engage in marital relations, because we are, as it were, role playing people who are ready for death.

As Unetanetokef says, today Gd decides who will live and who will die, who will live to a ripe old age, and who will not. We have examined our deeds, and we are afraid they are wanting. We are afraid that we have not done enough. That we have not tried hard enough. That we have not given enough of our money, of our time, of our attention. We have been selfish. We have valued objects over friends, position over relationships, wealth over goodness. We have turned to false gods that neither profit nor save, and ignored the One Who brought us out of Egypt, through the sea, to the mountain to take us to be His people.

We absolutely believe in science, and evolution, and the Big Bang. We may not have been grateful enough to the One Who, in a very different sense, created the heavens and the earth. On Yom Kippur, we dress in white, we abstain from live-giving activities, because we realize that, if the world truly operated on a system of merit as in Unetanetokef, we might not deserve to live.

Have we really appreciated all we have been given this past year? Have we paid attention to our friends and our family? Have we enjoyed nature, have we given ourselves the chance to see and hear and taste beautiful things? We are like kings and queens, given more than the mightiest rulers of ancient times, but we act like drudges. We are able to study as our ancestors, who worked fourteen hour days, were not, but instead we scroll through our phones. Do we deserve all we have been given?

Our most powerful statement on Yom Kippur is not made with words. By our actions, we admit to Gd that we teeter on the edge of deserving another year. Maybe we do, and maybe we don’t. So we rehearse our deaths, by turning away from those things that keep us alive. And we put it in Gd’s hands. If, through Your mercy, we get another chance to live, we promise to truly live. And if You decide that we have had our chance, and we have blown it, then we will accept your judgement. Then we are ready to go. We are ready for death.

When we say that, we are not merely humbling ourselves before Gd. We are declaring what is important and what is not important. We are deciding what kind of world we want to live in.

A few months ago, I was reading an article on some of these guys who are involved in ‘bio-hacking.’ Guys, mostly guys, who take tons of supplements, who work out for hours each day, who do intermittent fasting, or eat only protein, or no protein, or whatever their particular group does. They all have their own plan, which they say will remake your body into the way it was when you were twenty five. You will be able to run for miles, your metabolism will be quick, your hair, your skin, everything, like it was when you were a kid.

It costs a lot of money. These guys go to conventions and are exhorted by lean, wiry leaders. They go to clinics and get their blood checked, some weekly. Some of them get blood infusions, or vitamin infusions, or whatever special treatment the leader of this group promises will make them young again.

The high-tech version of this may be new, but the idea behind it is not new. From Gilgamesh to Ponce de Leon, from the Taoists of China to the Alchemists of Europe, people have been searching for the secret of a long and youthful life. These days, we dismiss the magic of the past as silly. People still pay thousands and thousands of dollars to belong to these bio-hack groups.

In one of the articles that I read, a person who worked behind the scenes of one of these groups said something very revealing. He said, ‘All of these people are deathly afraid of dying.’

That struck me as the truth. All of these people are deathly afraid of dying.

It is not just the bio-hackers. Why do people make millions or billions of dollars and still want more? Who needs more than one yacht? There is an old Yiddish saying, with one tuchus you can’t sit in two chairs, and I am sure the same is true of a yacht. Why do people have plastic surgery? Why do people want millions of followers online? They are afraid of dying.

They are afraid of being forgotten. They are afraid that their life will end and it will all have been meaningless. They are afraid of nothingness. They are afraid that it will all come to an end.

Being a billionaire is not the answer. Bio-hacking your cells in an attempt to live to 150 is not the answer. Being famous is not the answer. But there is an answer.

Judaism is a religion, so of course we have an answer to what makes your life meaningful. Unlike some religions, we don’t say that meaning comes from getting into heaven. We don’t say that paradise awaits the person who believed this, or did that, or avoided something else. Meaning comes from this:

To be able to honestly say, ‘I tried. I tried to live a good life. I did my best. I did my best to show my love to my family and my friends, to let them know they were important to me. I did my best to make this world a better place. I did my best to help people who needed help. I did my best to honor my ancestors by supporting Judaism.’

You don’t have to say, ‘I solved all the problems.’ You don’t have to say, ‘I was never angry, or disconnected, or selfish.’ You just have to say, ‘I honestly tried. I enjoyed beautiful things, and I shared them with people I loved. I tried to help. I tried to ease other people’s burdens, maybe in small ways. I helped my parents when they were old. I helped my kids when they were young. I communicated my love.’ This is all there really is. If you try to live a good life, if you try to help others, that is all that can be expected of you.

Maybe there is some kind of existence after death and maybe there isn’t. Maybe there are rewards and punishments, and maybe there aren’t. It doesn’t really matter. If you can say you did your best to help, to love, to improve, then you will not be afraid of death.

Fearing death is really about being afraid that you did not live well. If you live well, there is nothing to fear. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, may his memory be a blessing, pointed out that all of the religions around Judaism when it was founded were about how to have a good afterlife. Judaism almost completely ignores the question of what happens after we die, because we are concerned only with how to live well.

Nobody wants to die. Gd forbid we should die before our time. That is terrible. We don’t want to leave tasks unfinished. We don’t want our families to suffer. That doesn’t mean that death is easy if we die when we are extremely old, either. It is always hard. It is always sad. If you can say you did your best, you need not be afraid.

On Yom Kippur, we rehearse our deaths. We ask for more life. We want to live. But we know that it is the quality of our lives that is important. Those bio-hackers could live to 150 and they would still be afraid. They could have a billion dollars and still feel poor. They can have ten million followers online and still feel insignificant.

Did you ever have a child sit on your lap while you read them a book? Did you ever give someone a gift and see their eyes light up? Did you ever give a hungry person food? Did you ever make a confused elderly person feel safe? Did you ever hug a crying friend? Then you are all right. You don’t have to worry. You’ll be fine.

On Yom Kippur, we face the fact that someday we will die. We are not afraid. We know what it is to live well, and we know that if we live well, we will die well. On Yom Kippur, we admit that we have not always lived as well as we could have. Give us another chance, and we will live a little better. Give us another chance, so that when the time comes, Gd willing, many many years from now, we will be able to say that, yes, we did our best. And we are not afraid.