Subdue & Till, Conquer & Tend - Elevating All of Who We Are

Subdue & Till, Conquer & Tend - Elevating All of Who We Are
Erev Yom Kippur - Kol Nidre 5776 - September 22, 2015

You can’t dance at two chuppahs with one tuchus.  For those less familiar with the yiddish-isms, you can’t dance at two weddings with one behind!  This timeless adage expresses both the simplicity and the complexity of our lives.  The human experience, certainly in the hustle and bustle of our modern lives, is one fraught with so many competing commitments.  There are so many moments in our lives when we are forced to decide, so many different places to be.  On a base level, have you ever paid attention to the reality that cereal occupies an entire aisle at the grocery store?  Do we really need that many options?  Choosing between things as simple as cereal and toothpaste can sometimes be overwhelming and by most accounts these are inconsequential.  What about the big ones?  What about decisions concerning higher education and medical decisions?  The challenge of choice is not a new phenomena, rather an ancient one.  Our great sage Hillel is famed for teaching us:

אם אין אני לי מי לי, וכשאני לעצמי מה אני
If I am not for myself, who will be for me, and if I am only for myself, what am I?

Hillel elevates this challenge to the natural tension between being selfish and selfless….seeming opposite sides of the spectrum.  The choice he presents could be used as a decision making framework to understand the impact of our choices.  These questions are our human challenge...every day.  They actually emerge in the story of creation, early in the Torah story.

At the very outset of this story, we encounter this well known story of creation.  The six days of work and the day of rest - Shabbat.  The clearly defined and well articulated creation of the world and its inhabitants.  This isn’t the only version, though.  The story continues with a second account of the creation of humanity in the second chapter of Genesis.  Most of us learned the first story in our young lives but may not have been exposed to the more challenging aspects or the contradictory accounts.  In the first chapter of Genesis we experience the creation of the first human being, male and female both are created.  Yet, we may be less aware that the whole rib removed from Adam to create Eve part of the story, is actually a different and distinct creation story.  These tales, their details and distinct parts can be a framework for understanding our lives, what drives us and inspires our passions.   

While the outcome of the two accounts is similar, it is their details that remain distinct.  In the first, it is בצלם אלוהים - in the image of God that human is created.  Both male and female are created in that very moment.  The task of this first human is וכבשה ומלאו את הארץ - to conquer and fill the earth - to rule over the other creatures.  The second chapter tells quite a different tale.  It is a moment when the Divine forms man from the dust of the earth and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life - making him a living soul.  The charge this time around is different too.  Here it is לעובדה ולשומרה - to till and tend the earth.  The third big detail to notice, is that in the first chapter, male and female are created together - at once - created in relationship.  While in the second chapter, the story relates how the first human yearned for relationship, and required a counterpart, an עזר כנגדו. 

Our Jewish tradition has expounded in beautiful ways highlighting the importance of each account.  One commentary from the Talmud touches on the human struggle between good and evil.  Explaining that in one story (Gen. 2:7) a simple word choice teaches that we have both desires within us.  The desires for good and for evil are in constant struggle…within us…think cartoons:  angel versus devil on your shoulders.

The great Bostonian Rabbi known as the Rav, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik outlined and gave articulation to this reality of being human in his book, The Lonely Man of Faith.  In it, he outlines this discrepancy in the Torah narrative.  He describes the first being from chapter one and the second from chapter two, not as separate created beings, not as two different kinds of people.  The Rav weaves brilliant commentary together with a compelling description of our own human experience using these two divergent tales to expose the duality of being human.  He describes them as two parts, which each of us holds within.  It is about the duality of being man; it is about the dichotomy of being woman. 

To describe these parts of ourselves, Soloveitchik names them Adam I and Adam II.  Whereas Adam I, he says, is the creative doer, the one made in God’s image meant to subdue and conquer the natural world, Adam II is less concerned with the “how” of the world, the achievement, but rather the “why”.  This second part of us yearns for deeper and deeper understanding, is compelled by awe, wonder and bliss and…eventually humility.  That humility expressed when Adam II yearns for the עזר כנגדו - that helpmate and counterpart.  (pp. 13ff and 21ff)

So, what do we see in ourselves?  Do we live the life of the Adam the first, creating, doing, earning and succeeding?  Perhaps we are more Adam the second, always in search of meaning, sometimes at the expense of values venerated by economics and our culture of success?  That is ultimately the question we find ourselves asking as we understand this seminal text of our Torah.  We, at this time of year, must yearn to know ourselves just a little bit more than we did at this time last year.  The key moment of this evening’s act one to Yom Kippur is the Kol Nidre.  While it may be in the formula of a vow, it has taken on the meaning of prayer.  It is more of a pre-nuptial with our future self.  We ask for forgiveness before we have even failed.  We lay out in the formula of Kol Nidre that we know we are only human, that we will struggle to reach our best self, albeit with honest effort, we will still discover our mortality.  Not necessarily in the ultimate sense, but rather in that we are merely mortal - we are human - we will err and make mistakes and not live up to all we promise to ourselves and others.  Soloveitchik points this out as the foundation of being human - that we have competing desires - each and every one of us. 

David Brooks, the New York Times columnist and author of The Road to Character, elaborates on these same notions.  For TBY’s Book Club November selection, we’ll be engage in what he teaches and shares in this piece.  Brooks contextualizes Soloveitchik’s Adam I and Adam II in language that we can truly grab on to.  Adam I, he writes, is the resume driven one, while Adam II is driven by the eulogy.  If you consider this juxtaposition for a moment, and consider the last resume you read or prepared and the last good eulogy you experienced; what did you read, what did you hear?  Think also about how you can find programs online and examples for how to build your resume, but do we have self-help literature about creating a great eulogy for yourself?

The resume Adam, harnesses the values and qualities uniquely suited for the marketplace, Brooks writes.  This component of us seeks to build, to create, to achieve and to succeed.  The eulogy values driven, Adam II, does as well, but wants more than being someone who does good, she wants to be good.  This is made of the deeper depths within each of us.  It is who we are at the core of self, made from the nature of our relationships, the moments we are bold, loving and dependable.  These are the words we yearn for less on our resume but certainly to be spoken in our eulogy. 

Brooks writes that our lives are filled with this perpetual self-confrontation.  Yet, there is a problem he contends:  We live in a society that favors Adam I and forgets the second.  It is a human existence that not only forgets, but fails to nourish the eulogy builder and falls flat in modeling the skills to articulate, express and even live such values regularly.

On this day, perhaps more than any other day of the year, we find ourselves asking the big questions.  The meaning questions of life are drawn to the foreground as the liturgy motivates us to sift through our thoughts about ourselves.  We may be focused on one moment in the past year, or even further back on our personal timeline, weighing and considering a choice we made.  For others of us, we are examining a pattern of behavior that we know is the root cause of challenged relationships.  Perhaps we are pondering how others have treated us...even interacted with us in the past year and examining our own role in those exchanges. 

At its core, Yom Kippur ought to inspire us to such reflection.  It is after all about our relationships.  For the liturgy constantly reminds us that for sins between us and the Divine:  בין אדם למקום, we can work through that in our own ways.  But, for transgressions between us and another human being:  בין אדם לחברו, we must engage in that work - Teshuvah. 

Yom Kippur is about relationships - all of them:  With God, with others and even with ourselves.  This day of days, this Shabbat Shabbaton - Sabbath of Sabbaths is the day long experience that provides us a framework for engaging in this work.  The season of the Yamim Noraim - Days of Awe reaches its crescendo at this moment of the Kol Nidre service.  These questions and fundamental components of our reflection also inspire us to understand our own drives, and to question our motivations.   

Just as the story of creation is rendered twice, each with its own understanding, we have to look at both.  Each one explains a set of purposes we may find within ourselves.  Soltoveitchik contends, quite rightly I believe, that both sets are within each of us.  They are the duality of being human.  The push and pull we feel, often when competing commitments and choices present themselves, is because both are part of that perpetual self-confrontation. 

David Brooks employs these parts as not just in confrontation, but that one is better than the other, working by different logics, he says.  The first Adam, he says, is the logic of economics while the Adam II explores moral logic.  He goes further, teaching us that Adam I builds on our strengths, as we are guided throughout our early lives, especially in this country, but Adam II fights our weaknesses and through those challenges, our character is built.    

So, on this day, on Yom Kippur - the Day of Atonement, we ought to ask ourselves which do we think about most?  Which matters most?

I have a better question though:  How do we elevate both? 

How do we harness the creativity, the drive for success, the economically driven passions within, to ensure we care for ourselves.  Adam I, helps us answer Hillel’s first question:  If I am not for myself, who will be for me? 

Adam II, our inner focused self, the moments we are more deeply committed to character, when we yearn for relationship and connectedness is our response to Hillel’s second question:  If I am only for myself, what am I? 

Interesting that Hillel concludes with, “what am I?”  Not with the “who”.  We, perhaps, become less than human when we forget this second part of the question.  This is the task of Yom Kippur.  This is the time to engage and re-engage in what it means to be ourselves, to use our Jewish tradition to help us understand the foundation of what it means to be human.  Hillel’s final question:  ואם לא עכשיו אימתי - And, if not now, when?

Now!  Yom Kippur is the time to sift and discover what’s behind our deeds, our actions and our behaviors.  It means that we have a drive for more…always wanting to succeed, as defined by the world around us, our context.  It means we also have a drive, one that may be relegated in our current milieu, to seek counterparts, relationships, build community, a drive to build the character that we want lauded when we are gone from this earth. 

Yom Kippur confronts our mortality in this way.  If forces us to elevate all of ourselves, to be both Adam I and Adam II, to:  Subdue & Till together, to Conquer & Tend simultaneously.

May this day of days, give each of us the space to elevate what is tucked away, to look deep within and discover the Adam we are hiding and to ensure the parity we uncover in this year is more balanced than last year.

G’mar Chatimah Tovah - May We all be Inscribed for a Good Year, Tzom Kal - An Easy Fast and Shanah Tovah!