Drash for Yom Kippur Afternoon

Yom Kippur Afternoon

Seven Habits of Highly Effective Jews

Step Three:  Continuous Self-improvement

I began Rosh Hashanah by presenting an important premise.  That premise is that it is important to be effective.  To make a positive impact.  When we feel that we’ve been effective, then we can feel that we’ve lived a life that matters.  And this task – to live a life that matters – is a task placed before each one of us.

          A popular notion holds that, when we die, we will face a Divine Tribunal.  And before that Tribunal, we will behold a life’s accumulation of our misdeeds.  This image is found within our prayers on Yom Kippur.  As we have worked our way through the machzor, we have heard language suggesting this image.

          While nobody knows the mechanics of how the Divine Tribunal might work, many of us imagine that we will face it.  The notion supports the hope of Divine Justice.  We look to the world-to-come for the settling of accounts.  But I think we over-emphasise the aspect of accounting for all our misdeeds.

          Some people are evil and spend their lives working to circumvent laws that they know are good.  They might not seek specifically to do harm to others, but because they are focused so totally on themselves they are willing to do evil to achieve their goals.  Others find it convenient or even amusing to hurt others.

          But that does not describe everybody in this room.  It probably describes none of us!  Most of us mess up, and frequently.  But it isn’t because we want to do so.  Sometimes, try as we might to stay on the straight and narrow, we allow our passions to lead us astray.

          I’m not going to tell you to forget the Divine Accounting.  But I do recommend that you shift your focus from the list of your misdeeds.  Instead imagine the Divine Judge asking you:  did your life matter?  Did you bring goodness into the world?  Did you, despite your mis-steps and lapses, attempt to live a life that made a positive difference in the world?  And if you did, did you succeed…even in small measure?  If so, that’s being Effective.

          So it is important to be Effective.  It doesn’t mean, to be a macher.  It doesn’t mean, to be successful.  It means that, when you will have passed by, someone would be able to point to a positive difference from your having been there.  That’s where The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People comes in.  Dr Stephen Covey researched the Habits of people who were certifiably Effective.  He pulled out those Habits that, he’d found, were common to most.

If you’ve been following my presentation of The Seven Habits, you may have counted only Six Habits.  On Rosh Hashanah I presented the first group of Three, those calculated to take you from dependence to independence.  And they are:  Be Proactive.  Begin with the End in Mind.  Put First Things First.

          In the course of Yom Kippur up to now, I have presented the second group of Three Habits.  These are calculated to take you from independence to interdependence.  And they are:  Think Win-win.  Seek first to Understand, then to be Understood.  Synergise.

          So what about the Seventh Habit?  The Seventh and final Habit is the one that is calculated to enable you to achieve continuous self-improvement.  And that habit is:  Sharpen the Saw.

          When Clara first moved to the USA, she was aghast that Americans build homes out of timber.  In Israel, the chicken coops are built of timber.  And if you’ve been to Israel, you know why.  There are no old-growth trees there.  The forests have all been planted since the 1950’s.  And with little annual rainfall, the species that grow are not the kind that yield timbers suitable for building homes.  Plus there’s the threat of attack from the air.  So houses and other structures are invariably built of concrete blocks.  But a chicken coop…you can build that out of any scrap timber.  Cow shed?  Concrete blocks.

          But in the USA, at least in many parts of the country, we have sufficient quantities of useable trees to build many homes out timber.  And timber is a fine building material.  It provides a degree of natural insulation.  It breathes and gives to the forces of Nature.  Timber isn’t used in the parts of the country that are subject to hurricanes, because clay bricks or concrete blocks are more likely to withstand high winds.  But in Colorado, there are no hurricanes.  And little chance of tornadoes.  So they build from wood.  The home that we bought, when I retired from the Air Force, was a timber home.  And it had a timber deck wrapping around two sides of the structure.

          Timber is not a difficult material to work.  And if you have a timber home, you’ll have to work it a lot.  Because individual boards dry out, or rot.  Or otherwise weaken.  The timber must be painted periodically.  And the owner of a timber home often finds himself sawing wood to size.

          A saw is a wonderful tool.  One feels a great deal of satisfaction from the process of measuring the amount of board to be cut off.  And marking where the cut will go.  And then you make one stroke of the saw with almost no pressure.  That makes a notch in the board.  And then you put your back into the act of drawing the saw through the board.  If the saw is sharp, it cuts right through.  Hardwood requires more effort, but the sharp saw still goes through quickly.

          But if you use the saw repeatedly and do not sharpen it, its teeth become dull.  It begins cutting through the timber only with difficulty.  Until it will barely cut at all.  The saw must be sharpened if it is going to keep working.  If it is going to be effective.

          So you take the saw and get it sharpened.  Because it makes no sense to just replace it.  If you want it to keep doing its job, you get it sharpened.  And likewise we must sharpen ourselves, as if we were a saw, if we’re going to continue to be effective.

          So how do we sharpen ourselves?  We’re not saws, are we?  Of course not.  But like saws, we can’t work constantly and expect to be effective.

          Obviously, we need rest.  Both physical and mental rest.  That’s why Shabbat is such a gift.  For one day in seven, if we’re honouring Shabbat, we have an opportunity to rest and refresh ourselves.  We avoid physical exertion.  But we also avoid creative exertion.  We give our minds and spirits a chance to recharge.  We take time to praise God and to learn a little something from His Torah.  But there are lots of hours in Shabbat that we’re not in shule.  During those hours, we take time to be with people whom we don’t get to see every day.  Otherwise, instead of getting on the computer, we read.  Instead of mild entertainments, we enjoy a walk outdoors or something cultural.  Instead of running errands and shopping, we allow ourselves a rest.  I’m not expressing some theoretical ideal that none of us does.  This is certainly how Clara and I spend our Shabbat, and afterward we feel refreshed.  We make much about the differences in practice between Orthodox and Progressive Jews.  Some of us look with some contempt upon practices such as pre-tearing the toilet paper.  But except for a few details like that, and the use of automobiles and switching on a coffeemaker, I would submit to you that there is little difference between the ‘ideal’ Orthodox and Progressive Shabbat.  Obviously, not everybody in this room is living up to, or even attempting, to reach this ideal.  If you’re not, this is not an admonition.  Rather, this is sympathy.  You need and deserve the rest and refreshment that Shabbat brings, and you’re missing out.

          There are other aspects than rest to Sharpening the Saw.  Various forms of recreation help revive the spirit.  When I take my boat out for an afternoon, or spend an evening playing ukulele, I feel refreshed.  Physical exercise helps.  Getting away from our routines helps; holidays away are very restorative.  As is learning.  People who go back to school – for an advanced degree or to learn a new skill – in middle age usually rave about how it makes them feel younger in the sense of being more energetic and having a fresh outlook.  But you can experience that same refreshment without enrolling in uni in your fifties.  You can get it by attending a casual class, learning for its own sake.  Among the possibilities here, is my Judaism for Dummies class that meets Wednesday evenings.  It’s well-attended, but we always have room for one more!

          Finally, people who have retired from their life’s occupations often experience a sense of being redundant because not as many people are depending upon them.  An antidote to this is volunteering.  There are so many opportunities for volunteer service in our community that nobody need feel unneeded.  Even if you’re still working, volunteering is a great thing.  You may know that your rabbi is an active member of the Southport Volunteer Marine Rescue.  I man the radios about twice a month at the Seaway Tower.  I’m a busy enough man without the extra duties.  But I find that it’s spiritually refreshing to do something different, for the benefit of a different part of the community.

          You’ve heard all this before and in truth, the notion of how to recreate and refresh yourself is more-or-less self-evident.  But then, as I pointed out before, most of the content of the Seven Habits is self-evident.  Most of us don’t practice these Habits.  And those who do, sometimes struggle to do so.  But it isn’t because they’re rocket science.  It’s because they require intentionality.  They require that we go against other, longer held habits.  One must really work to live according to the Seven Habits.  But the effort is well-spent.

When we think about Yom Kippur – about the Day of Atonement – we often internalise that we’re supposed to approach it with a spirit of regret.  I did this – or I failed to do that – and it did not avail me.  But if we can’t get past that spirit of regret, then we haven’t achieved anything.  Do we focus on regret, on where we missed the mark, but not find a way to teach ourselves how to do better in the next year?  If so, then we are only setting ourselves up for failure in the coming year.  If we are sorry for what we didn’t succeed to do in the past year, the antidote is to march forward and do better.  And if we did fail, chances aren’t that we are evil.  Rather, we simply didn’t have the right tools to succeed.

The Seven Habits are great tools to succeed where we failed before.  Take these simple, almost self-evident principles to heart and work to put them into effect in your everyday lives.  Then you will have increased your chances of a different, and better result next year when we again enter this sanctuary to proclaim, Ashamnu, Bagadnu…  The Seven Habits are not the only such tools available.  But they have worked for millions of people.  Clara and I can attest most definitely that they have worked for us.

Do regret the past when it is regrettable.  But do not forget to look forward.  Do not forsake the effort to free yourselves of those aspects of your past, which you’d rather leave behind.  Consider these Seven Habits of Highly Effective People as worthwhile tools to adopt.  Let’s do some smart things to ensure at least the probability that we will come upon Yom Kippur next year with a sense of success putting spring into our steps.  Ken yehi ratzon.