Take us back to that time at the beginning of creation when everything was new and fresh, and we experienced it all for the first time.
Rosh Hashanah 5781 – 2020
Rabbi Stephen Weiss
B’nai Jeshurun Congregation, Pepper Pike, OH
This evening I would like to introduce you to a man named Bob Edens. I want to share with you his story because it speaks to us during these challenging times.
You see, Bob was born blind, but, thanks to a delicate complex operation, which involved reattaching a detached retina and implanting a transplanted cornea, he has gained the ability to see.
I want to share with you, in his own words, his experience of this new world he has discovered with his new eyesight:
“To me” Bob said, “yellow is amazing, but red is the best, although, I haven’t seen anything yet that I don’t find wondrous. I never would have dreamed that yellow was so, so yellow. I don’t have any words with which to describe it. I am amazed by yellow. I am simply dazzled by yellow. But red is my favorite color. I just can’t believe red.
“Grass is something I had to get used to. I always thought it was just fuzz. But to see each individual stalk, and to see the hair on my arms, growing like trees, and to see birds flying through the air, and everything, it’s like starting a whole new life. It’s the most amazing thing in the world to see things you never thought you’d see.
“I saw the purple and the orange recently in the face of a tiger. I could see the individual hairs and the color of his eyes. I can see the shape of the moon now and I like nothing better than seeing a jet plane flying across the sky, leaving a vapor trail. And at night I look at the stars in the sky and at the flashing lights on the highway. And of course, sunsets and sunrises.
“I can’t wait to get up each day to see what I can see. I am still seeing most of it for the first time.
“And I am learning how to read and write like a first grader. Everything is like a constant high. You could never know how wonderful everything is!”
Bob had been blind from birth. That never held him down. He learned Braille, graduated from Furman University, married, and had a daughter, all before he could see. He even coached a Little League baseball team, while working as a masseur! And he claims that every single governor of South Carolina since l963 has come to him for a massage. But right now, he would rather talk about what he can see than about what he has done.
“I saw some bees the other day,” he confided, almost as if telling a secret. “And they were incredible. And I jumped a covey of quail too. I had heard of quail before, but to actually see them, what an experience!
“And I saw a truck drive by in the rain the other day. It threw a spray into the air. It was marvelous!
“And did I mention,” he said, with rapture in his voice, “did I mention that I saw a falling leaf, just drifting in the air! What a wonder that was!”
I hope that you are as moved by Bob’s description of what it is like to see things for the very first time as I am. We, who see falling leaves or sunsets or birds or yellow or red or blue every day, and who therefore are bored and blasé about them, need to listen to his account of what it is like to see these things that we take for granted for the first time. We need to try to gain or regain some small part of the wonder that he feels and that we once felt, years ago, when we saw these things for the first time.
This year has been difficult for all of us. It is hard to see the beauty around us when we live socially isolated from each other, confined to our homes, in fear of an invisible threat that seems everywhere. It is hard to feel secure when we are faced with illness, financial problems, and loss of employment. It hard to feel joy when we read the daily death toll and when, God forbid, we too are grieving the loss of a loved one. It is hard to feel like our lives are going anywhere when we cannot hold our milestone celebrations that mark important life transitions, like baby namings and Bar Mitzvahs, graduations and weddings. It is hard to be optimistic when new challenges continue to arise one after another, from the economy to systemic racism and social unrest to hurricanes that seem like they will just keep coming one after another and wildfires that are consuming almost the entire west coast. It is hard to feel hope when we cannot yet see the end of the tunnel.
There is a prayer that we say every time we put the Torah back into the Ark. It is the prayer
??? ??????? ???? – Etz Chaim Hi – which calls the Torah our “tree of Life.” That prayer ends with words taken from the book of – ?????? – Lamentations, which was written by the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah, too, lived in intensely challenging times. He witnessed the destruction of the first Temple by the Babylonians, and the desolated state of the land of Israel after their conquest of the Kingdom of Judah. He witnessed his people – our people – taken captive into exile.
Jeremiah’s eyewitness account of that destruction sinks into the depths of despair. At the end of that entire book, while drowning in so much sorrow, Jeremiah calls out these words:
?????????? ?? ???????? ?????????? ?????? ???????? ????????
Hashivenu Hashem eilecha v’nashuva. Hadesh yameinu k’kedem. “Turn us back toward You, and we shall return. Renew our days as of old.”
The Hebrew says ???????? – k’kedem. Renew our days as kedem. No, not the wine. Kedem in Hebrew can mean that which came before. But kedem literally means east, as in Genesis 2:8: “And God planted a garden in the east, in Eden.” So, Jeremiah is saying “Renew our days as they were in the Garden of Eden.” Take us back to that time at the beginning of creation when everything was new and fresh, and we experienced it all for the first time. Give us back our sense of wonder and awe and radical amazement. Teach us not to take anything for granted, for what may seem like even the smallest of things is a miracle of vast beauty and proportion.
That is why we sing Jeremiah’s words. We ask God for the ability to recapture that wonder and excitement that we once had, and that we have lost. For Bob Edens who was never able to see anything until his surgery, each thing that he sees now is a wonder, a discovery, a blessing. We ought to learn from him. Even though we have been able to see for our whole lives, we ought to try to have at least some of the sense of wonder, some of the sense of excitement that he has each time he sees something.
My colleague, teacher and friend, Rabbi Jack Riemer, liked to say that the real opposite of religion is not atheism; it is boredom. He would quote the great Yiddish poet, Aaron Zeitlin, who wrote that God says, “If you can look at the stars and yawn, I created you in vain.”
Zeitlin explained this by saying, “Religion can refute every argument made against it, except a yawn. For if you can look at the stars or at the birth of a child or at red or green or blue or at the opening of a flower or any of the other wonders that are all around us, and not be moved, then religion cannot pierce your callousness and cannot enter your soul.”
So, let this be the wish I have for you on this holy night, the night when a new year begins:
In this New Year, may you and I and all those whom we love see well!
May we see, not just with the eyes of habit, but also with the eyes of wonder.
May we, see with astonishment and with appreciation.
May we see goodness, beauty and joy even in these trying times.
For if we can only learn to see well, how rich, and how very blessed, our lives will be!