GOD THE PALM READER

Who will live and who will die? Is this a rhetorical question or are we supposed to search for an answer?

For starters, we know that there is an answer to the question since we know for certain that everyone standing in a synagogue during the Yamim Noraim will either be standing in the synagogue again next year, or be dead. However, this does not mean that the question is answerable any more than I can tell you that your come-out roll in craps will definitely be a 7 or 11. Does God determine a Jew’s fate on the Yamim Noraim? We simply don’t know. But don’t fall into the trap of thinking that the only questions worth answering are the questions that have unambiguous answers. That’s so 21st Century.

Here’s why the question matters: When we stop living our lives with the awe of being alive and the persistent (yet ever so subtle) ache that our lives can disappear in the blink of an eye, we begin writing the story of indifference and arrogance. The last chapter of that story usually ends with the protagonist alone, wistful for what might have been. When we openly ask the question of who will live and who will die, we are reminding ourselves that the answer could be me. We are reminding ourselves not to get too comfortable with the state of our lives. Striving for and accepting the goal of comfort is, as Einstein put it, the recipe for a system of ethics good enough for a herd of cattle. Being comfortable is the most convenient way to settle into dried up, lifeless patterns of living. An antidote to this eschatology of comfort is to ask the question that the Yamim Noraim put in our mouths: Am I living my life in a way that means something? And when I ask the question, I don’t mean merely stating the words of the question while we sing it together in synagogue. A computer program can do that. I mean starting today, right now, on this first day of the month of Ellul, to ask yourself how you would feel about the way you spend your time if you were to die tomorrow. What would you be proud of? What infuses your days with significance? What are you giving to other people? We tend to think: “Only other people die tomorrow.” So we (un?)consciously conclude that we have time to coast along. We don’t need to take stock and live our lives the way a person on her deathbed is proud to have lived. So Unataneh Tokef forces us to ask:

Who will die by earthquake and who by sword?

The challenge that I have with Unataneh Tokef, the central prayer that asks this question each year, is not its graphic descriptions of the shapes and forms of death- fire, water, strangling, affliction, wild beast, etc. (Though these descriptions do send a chill down my spine each year.) The challenge is remembering that the prayer’s answer to our existential angst is nothing more than a fantasy. After we ask who will live and who will die, and after we masochistically recite the long list of the ways in which some of us will die, the prayer asserts that “repentance, prayer, and charity remove the evil decree!” But I know this is not true, even though each year I have a profound wish that it is (who does not want to have control over Death?). I know that many of the people who died over the past year were beautiful people who gave to the needy, who did teshuvah when appropriate, and who turned to God for strength. So why continue to answer the question if we know that prayer, repentance, and charity do not comprise a magical tripartite death avoiding formula?

Maybe because when we stand together in synagogue and chant this fantastical formula for avoiding death’s cold grip, what we are really saying to the malach hamavet, the Angel of Death, is, “Go away! I have life yet to live.” We are declaring that we will toil vigorously to be spiritually alive this coming year. We are proclaiming that will work hard to value our relationships, to express vitality, to appreciate and marvel at our world, and to serve causes that commence healing. And of course, we are speaking to ourselves.

The reason it is so hard to get something out of the yamim noraim is that it requires us to face the reality that we could disappear from the living at any moment - not your neighbor or your sick parent or a vaguely familiar name in the paper’s obituary, but you. To face that in an honest way takes incredible amounts of emotional energy; it’s far easier to just show up and tune out. But if you have the courage to face these questions, you just may open the door to feeling alive rather than merely being alive.

I wish you a month of Elul full of serious and thoughtful introspection.

-David Schuck

David Schuck is the rabbi of the Pelham Jewish Center and is earnestly praying that the Philadelphia Phillies secure the wildcard spot in the MLB Playoffs.