“You inscribe, seal, record, recount and recall all forgotten things”
High Holiday Prayerbook

We’re all familiar with magazine and newspaper spreads on the last day of the calendar year. We learn what’s in and what’s out, who is no longer with us among the famous and the forecast of higher-ups for the year ahead. We note important current events of the year gone by and read the recollections of those in power about the note-worthy happenings in the universe. But, by and large, it’s not our universe but that of someone else who is larger and more noticeable and usually has better hair and skin than we do.

And then we get to the Jewish New Year and suddenly we read in our prayers that God notices each and every one of us. Like sheep passing through a small opening in a corral, we each come under theological inspection: “You open the book of records and…the signature of every person is in it.” While this may seem terrifying, it is also comforting. It means that we matter, each and every one of us: “You count, number and review the soul of every living being” – not just those who seem to be more special. The message couldn’t be clearer. We are each created in God’s image. And so each of us must undergo an annual spiritual performance review.

In the world of supervision, we spend time working with people because we care about their development. We believe that everyone has the capacity to improve, and our recommendations are there not only as professional responsibilities but also as a manifestation of the profound belief we have in the capacity for change and our respect for humanity. Otherwise, why bother?

And many supervisors don’t bother. They hardly meet the people they supervise, and some barely know them. They think they know enough to make judgments. Or they believe that you leave well enough alone. They either don’t care enough, don’t feel enough ownership in the job or they don’t believe they can make any difference in the performance of someone else (and usually don’t believe that they can improve either).

Offices all over the world house two kinds of supervisors: those who invest in people and those who do not.

We have all kinds of images of God in our High Holiday prayers. God is a King and a Father, a Potter and a Judge, a Shepherd and a Witness. God is also the Ultimate Supervisor. God examines our deeds, writes them down metaphorically and recalls that which we forget.

It’s this last expression that can be the most frightening. Over time our memories fail us; we don’t remember infractions and breeches of trust. We forget the needless gossip we spoke, and the hurt we caused. It all becomes blurry. But reminding us of wrongs shouldn’t scare us; it should make us feel genuinely loved.

In a performance reviews dishonesty does damage. When we give someone the false impression that they are doing a great job or failed to deliver in detailed ways we deny them the opportunity for growth and potential promotion. We all know people who have been passed from one job to another because no one had the guts or the integrity to tell them the truth. The book of Proverbs says that if you correct a wise person he will love you, but if you correct a fool he will hate you. We all need feedback. We need people to remind us when we are betraying our best selves, professionally and personally. A colleague of mine often says that the most important thing she learned in her degree in social work is that people crave feedback and generally get too little of it.

Rosh Hashana is our annual performance review in the realm of the spiritual. Did we treat those around us with dignity? Did we care for the most vulnerable? Did we have enough patience with our children? Were we forgiving enough to a spouse? Did we make our colleagues feel good about themselves? Did we show appropriate gratitude to God for the many, many blessings in our lives? We stand, each and every one of us, to be counted. Our deeds are recorded, not to frighten us, but to let us know that we each matter profoundly.

Wishing each of you a year of meaning, health and peace.

“Ben Hey-Hey says: ‘The reward is commensurate with the effort.’”
Ethics of the Fathers 2:23

 Remember the days when you were little and went to the dentist? All the anxiety of the visit would melt away when you got to put your hand into the big prize box or the large treasure chest shaped like a plastic tooth. In one scoop you got to take out a spider ring or a pirate eye patch or some other worthless treasure that never really made up for the fact that you just had a cavity filled. From our earliest days, we’ve gotten used to rewards, even for simply sitting in a dentist’s chair.

Rewards are often the only way we believe we can motivate people to do things they might otherwise not want to do. If I pay you enough then you’ll do the most menial, boring job or withstand the pain of a dental drill. But Ethics of the Fathers suggest that intrinsic motivation might just be enough. The reward is profoundly connected to the effort.

Ben Hey-Hey, an ancient Talmudic sage with a terrific name, in only a few short words, tried to shift the emphasis away from prizes to self-awareness. Maimonides used this expression in his laws of Torah study (3:6) to suggest that the reward for learning is the gift of more learning. Intellectually, we grow and are shaped by what we work hard to understand. He connects this expression with another from Ethics of the Fathers -  that we are not obligated to finish the task but are not free from it either. In other words, we do get an “A” for effort when we immerse ourselves in the acquisition of knowledge even though we will never have complete mastery.

Ben Hey-Hey also challenges us to rethink how we motivate not only ourselves but others. Anyone in the people business, from managers to stay-at-home moms, thinks about the best way to motivate the people around us to do what must be done, from completing a project to finishing a chore. We live in an incentivized society where from Wall Street bonuses to gold stickers, we’re told that working hard has its extrinsic rewards. We’re so used to getting materially rewarded that when we don’t get that kind of acknowledgment, we might feel slighted or insulted. “If they really liked my work, they would have given me a raise by now.” “What’s the point of doing a good job in reading if the teacher doesn’t give out prizes?”

Deep down, all of us know that the best reward is praise from people who matter to us and the self-satisfaction of knowing that we were able to get something done, that we stretched ourselves to our limits. Today, we know a lot more about the nature of motivation and, according to author Daniel Pink, we are moving out of the era of extrinsic rewards to internal satisfaction. Pink, in his new book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us writes cogently about how extrinsic rewards can backfire.

The carrot-and-stick pattern of motivation, what Pink calls motivation 2.0, is giving way to the recognition that people have a stronger drive for purpose and meaning than they do for rewards, what Pink calls motivation 3.0. Bonuses and other rewards work well for short-term gains but can become an obstruction to long-term satisfaction. If you do something for the money or the sticker, then you forfeit the real reason people want to work at something – as a display of autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Pink uses research in psychology that shows that reward-based motivation can narrow focus, promote unethical behavior to achieve certain ends, can decrease cooperation and can decrease intrinsic motivation. The big prize that you thought was getting people to get the job done can actually be getting in the way of real satisfaction.

Ben Hey-Hey understood long before today’s research that what produces reward is effort. When we work hard in the gym or the research library or the classroom we realize that the activity itself – doing our best – is the real motivator. Everything else is just a distraction and maybe even a deterrent to giving us what we really need from our actions: a sense of purpose.

Shabbat Shalom

This is a season of many new beginnings. Children begin new grade levels. Adolescents start college. People move into new jobs, or new houses or new countries. All of us, every Rosh Hashana time, step into new lives, lives that ask us to change, to question our assumptions and to deliberate over our character flaws and celebrate our accomplishments.

Why are all beginnings challenging? Well, the familiar is always easier, even when it's stale or unappealing. We know how to navigate waters we've been in before. It's always harder is to chart our course in unfamiliar seas. This newness is often so frightening that we prefer to stay in safe places, not challenging ourselves, not moving forward. In spiritual terms, such paralysis is almost always a step backwards.

Think of a new situation you face. The thrill is there but also the apprehension. Will I be rejected or accepted? Will this new adaptation work or not? Did I make a catastrophic mistake that will have long-term consequences? We second-guess ourselves. Sometimes the difficulty of newness is mostly in our minds, tucked into all of our anxieties, consuming a great deal of wasted psychic energy.

New beginnings are uncomfortable. We do not yet know our place or how much we can assert ourselves. We do not know the people and if they will like us surroundings. We do our best to cover our fears but sometimes they spill through. In the world of spirituality, however, there can be no personal growth without discomfort. It is the discomfort that makes us question ourselves and prompts us to change.

Rashi, the eleventh century Bible and Talmud commentator from the south of France, quotes an ancient midrash on Exodus 19:5 right before the acceptance of the Torah at Sinai, as a comment on the expression: "And now, if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant..." This new change in the status of a people presents a collective challenge and will not be easy at first. All beginnings are difficult. Nothing that is worthwhile is easy. Imagine for a moment if we as a people would have existed had our initial fears at Sinai gotten the best of us and we turned around and went to Egypt. Our beginnings were difficult, but they were never insurmountable.

A few verses earlier in 19:1, Rashi comments that the Israelites came into the desert of Sinai "on the same day," meaning that the commands of the Torah should be "to you each day as something new, as though He [God] has only given them to you for the first time on the day in question."

I once saw a t-shirt that made an unmistakable impression on me: "When is the last time you did something for the first time?" It's a question we should carry with us always because we only have one life to experience all the richness and beauty and majesty of life. We must dare ourselves to do more and become more. We have to stretch ourselves and aspire to more. We have to treat Judaism as if we are confronting the newness of it each day. And maybe, we also have to challenge ourselves to do
something new within Judaism that we've never done before.

The Buddha once said, "There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth...not going all the way, and not starting." The first Jew, Abraham, begins our religion with a start to a new land where he knows no one and has no frame of reference. He accepts God's challenge of newness and through it becomes the father of a nation.
Every Rosh Hashana, we too are given the magnificent gift of newness. It always coincides with the beginning of the school year. Along with our new pencils, and new notebooks, and the crispness in the air, we have the opportunity to become new people. Rabbi Shlomo Carlbach, the father of Jewish music, once explained why the mitzva of building a sukkah begins the moment Yom Kippur ends: "When you're a new person, you need a new house."

So as we begin the year ask yourself, "When is the last time I did something for the first time?" Don't let the challenge of beginning stop you from embracing the thrill of newness.

Shabbat Shalom

"Rabbi Yitzchak Said: 'A person's evil inclination tries to renew itself against him every day."
BT Sukkah 52a

I've often heard it said that every day is a battlefield. We fight ourselves to have patience, trust, and sensitivity. We tackle problems and challenges daily like parenting, professional growth, weight loss and health management. We argue our way through relationships and differences. It all starts to sound like a pretty hostile and adversarial world. And then we read this telling quote from an ancient Talmudic sage. Why do we have to fight so hard? We fight because the evil inclination renews itself against us every day.

In Jewish tradition, we live with a duality of drives. The motivation to do good is called the yetzer ha-tov, the good inclination. The drive to do wrong is called the yetzer ha-ra, the evil inclination. The two play a tug-of-war with our hearts and minds, and we each find ourselves victims at the center. Each day presents multiple choice points for deciding which voice will whisper more loudly in our ears. Will it be the inclination to do good or will it be the inclination to betray our best selves?

If the evil inclination renews itself each day, we understand why the tug-of-war is so tiring. We can trace this battle all the way back to the earliest chapters of Genesis. Right before Cain is about to kill Abel God whispers in his ear (4:7): "If you do good, will you not be lifted up? And if you do not do good, sin crouches at the door. You will desire it, but you may rule over it." Sin, poised like an angry cat at the threshold, will always be there if you open the door to it, but you have the strength to overcome it. Sadly, Cain did not listen to these wise words and picked a course of action that would reverberate throughout history.

How is it, we wonder, that the evil inclination renews itself each day? A different Rabbi Yitzchak, Rabbi Yitzchak Blau, author of a wonderful contemporary book on the power of midrash, Fresh Fruit and Vintage Wine, offers his understanding of this Talmudic saying. We need to make psychological adjustments over the course of our lives: "Our personalities change over the course of time, and the religious and moral temptations we face change as well." Temptation does not stay static. The evil inclination morphs and changes; it renews itself as a drive that touches our innermost desires, which themselves are changing all of the time.

Rabbi Blau quotes the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard in his book Either/Or on the loss of drive that leads to boredom:

My soul has lost its potentiality. If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible...Pleasure disappoints, possibility never.

What would it look like if the drive for good was renewed each day, if we woke up to that marvelous sense of Kierkegaard's possibility with each sunrise? The end of this Talmudic quote says that although the evil inclination restocks itself, God gives us the help to overcome it. In the battle over the best self, we are armed with renewed energy for good, and How is it, we wonder, that the evil inclination renews itself each day? we also have divine support.

Shabbat Shalom

"You are the children of God, your God; you shall not cut yourselves nor make a bald patch between your eyes for the dead."
Deuteronomy 14:1

Ever wonder about a young person in love who tattoos a name on his or her body and then breaks-up? I always do. You sometimes see the name scratched out or an attempt to laser it off but the mistake is there, an almost permanent mark of what went wrong. People often tattoo names of deceased loved ones as an everyday reminder of loss. It's touching, but what does Judaism say about it?

Many of us know that tattoos are prohibited in the Bible. The verse above adds another dimension to our understanding of this prohibition. We just read this verse this past week as part of the Torah reading. It's a verse that has always confused me because each clause does not seem to cohere with the next. What does being a child of God have to do with making a bald patch between your eyes?

This past Shabbat I read an excellent interpretation that put it all together. Rabbi Samson Hirsch, an 19th century German scholar, observes that in the ancient world, marking the body with the name of a loved one was a customary mourning ritual, a way to say that that person is close to your heart always. But in the act of marking one's body, the person is also making a statement about self. Sometimes others become so significant in our lives that we falsely believe that we will have no life without them. In Rabbi Hirsch's words:

No personality may chain us so closely to it, allow us to be so absorbed into it, that when it departs from us we may throw our own personality after it, as having no longer any value, as would be what the permanent sign of cut or baldness on our body is meant to express.

So many books, from Greek tragedies to Romeo and Juliet to contemporary novels play off the destructive power of love, a lovesickness that causes loss of self instead of actualization of self. Listen to Shakespeare's own words in his most famous play on the topic: "These violent delights have violent ends, and in their triumph die, like fire and powder, which as they kiss consume."

Rabbi Hirsch connects the verse contextually to its preceding chapter on the false prophet, a charismatic leader who engaged followers, often with a cult-like force. People often surrender their lives to the decision-making of another, foregoing their autonomy, independence and sometimes their common sense. This has enormous spiritual ramifications, as Rabbi Hirsch observes: "Spirituality, social position, relationships and friendships are not to exist for us as soon as they make themselves instruments for defection from God."

We know that a warning sign of domestic abuse is a relationship that sucks all of the individuality out of one person allowing another to dominate and control. This explains the connection to the verse's first clause, "You are children of God." We answer and subjugate our will to God but not to other human beings, so much so that we may not mark our bodies permanently with the presence of someone else. No one but God can occupy that place.

This week we ushered in the Hebrew month of Elul, known as an acronym for "I am my beloved and my beloved is mine." This is a remarkable statement about the dialogical, reciprocal nature of love. True love enhances the individual strengths of each of its partners; it does not subjugate independence but fosters respect and dignity. It is these thoughts that carry us in a month of spiritual romance as we prepare for the Days of Awe ahead.

Shabbat Shalom