Rosh Hashanah Day 1, 5782

Forever

Shanah Tovah U’m’tukah to us all, may we all be written in the Book of Life for only good things. May the year 5782 bring you nothing but joy, and may you always be blessed. And when I say ‘always,’ I mean ‘for a long time.’

Although we often use words like ‘always,’ ‘forever,’ or ‘eternity,’ Judaism says that there is no such thing as forever in this world, and science agrees. The Torah makes no authoritative statement about the end of the world, but the traditional Jewish belief is that, because the universe was created, it will some day come to an end. The Messiah will come, the dead will come back to life, and many, but not all, will go on to a different world, Olam HaBa, the ‘World to Come.’ The great rabbis differ as to whether or the World to Come will last forever or not.

Science tells us that the universe is expanding, and may someday contract. There was a Big Bang, and either it will all crash back together or it will all dissipate, leaving us with nothing with a few atoms flying away from each other in cold, dark, space. But don’t worry! That may not happen for another hundred trillion years, and our sun will likely burn out long before that! Unless we figure out the puzzles of interstellar travel in the next five billion years or so, human beings are unlikely to see the end of the universe.

If you think about it, it is a little depressing. So don’t think about it! We have enough to worry about here on earth in the next fifty years, even in the next two years. Why bother to think about problems that will arise in thousands or millions or billions of years? Why think about what will happen in the end? In fact, most of the time, we defiantly deny that there is anything impermanent about our lives at all.

We talk about ‘best friends forever,’ and say ‘I will never forget what you did for me.’ Even more than in our secular lives, we talk about eternity in religion. We say ‘May his memory always be for a blessing,’ and every prayer that has ‘לעלם ועד’ has ‘forever and ever’ in it. What do we mean when we say ‘forever?’ Why do we talk about ‘forever’ so much?

There are a number of reasons why we speak of forever. The most obvious, and the least attractive, is that we are afraid. We are afraid of endings, we are afraid of non-existence. To deny the fact that we are mortal, to forget that the universe is not permanent, to hide from the fact that human endeavor will not always endure, we say ‘forever’ over and over again.

On the other hand, I know plenty of people who are not afraid of dying who still say ‘forever.’ Do they speak of eternity to comfort others? If a person tells his small children that he will love them forever, that he will always be there for them, he may do it so that they will not be frightened. But then they grow up, and he still says he will love them forever.

Another reason we may say ‘forever’ is not because we, individually, will last forever, but perhaps because we, as a group, may last forever, or, if not forever, for a long time, a time beyond the comprehension of a single person. The Jewish people, collectively, will never forget the Holocaust. We will always remember our victory over the Greeks that we commemorate on Chanukah. “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand lose its cunning...”¹

As human beings, too, we have created ‘immortal’ works of literature and art. Great men and woman live on in our hearts. Deeds of compassion and generosity are not forgotten. We also always remember, to our shame, terrible things that human beings have done to one another, acts of cruelty and betrayal. Those we would like to forget, but they are acts that we will always remember, generation after generation.

Of course, that is a long time, not really forever. But there are other things we mean when we say ‘forever.’ Judaism accepts the possibility of eternity. The Torah tells us that Gd existed before the universe was created. That means that Gd has an existence outside of time as we know it. For Gd, there is no before and after, no passage of time. Gd, the Eternal one, is really eternal. So anything that is connected with Gd will, in a sense, never come to an end. When we bind ourselves to our Gd, we partake of Gd’s infinity.

Yes, an individual person will live and then die. Yes, an individual Torah scroll will be written, read, and eventually become unusable, and be buried in consecrated ground. But the holy spark within us, the thing we call the soul, that part of us that is intimately connected with the Divine, that will remain eternally with Gd.

This is why we say, at a funeral, “It is only the house of the spirit which we now lay within the earth; the spirit itself cannot die.”² It is hard for us to say goodbye to those we love, but surely Gd never says goodbye. Why would it make a difference to Gd if those we love are alive or dead, if they exist in the past, present, or future? By standing up and saying that we are Israel, we link our names to Gd, and thus break free of our temporal and physical limits. We participate in eternity.

This is a Reform synagogue, and I know that there are many different understandings of the Divine here. Some envision Gd as outside time and space and some do not. Some feel that Gd has a plan for us, and others feel that Gd is beyond any kind of connection with humanity. Some feel that Gd is an anthropomorphized depiction by human beings of all that is holy, all that is beyond the physical, while others believe that Gd is a metaphor for all that is good and fulfilling in existence. Many think that Gd exists, but may never have spent too much time trying to decide that that means. And then there are those who deny that there is any Gd at all.

Have no fear. Whatever your concept of Gd, there is still a path to eternity. There is still a way to break out of the doom of impermanence, a way to embrace forever.

We are only mortal. We are prisoners of our minds and our bodies. We can only do so much. We can only understand so much, see so much, hear so much. Yet there is a part of us, also, that transcends time and space. When I think of my grandmother Essie, alavah hashalom, when I think of how she loved me, that love seemed greater to me than the limits of this world. I still feel that love today, almost forty years after her death. And when I tell my children that I will love them forever, I mean it. I know I won’t live forever. But that is my honest expression of the way I feel about them.

When we tell someone we will never forget her kindness, that is true, subjectively that is true, although we will not last forever. At that moment we hold eternity in our hand, and at that moment we truly make a commitment to forever.

Last year, in Lunch and Learn, we studied the Psalms. One of the most famous is the 23rd Psalm, which, in the King James translation, begins ‘The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.’ It ends “Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.” In Robert Alter’s translation, he renders the Hebrew וְשַׁבְתִּי בּבְיֵת־ײַ לְאֶֹרךְ יָמִים as the more accurate translation “And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for many long days.”³ Alter adds the word ‘many’ to indicate the sense of אֹרֶךְ יָמִים, literally ‘long days.’

Alter indicates in his note that he does not want the later Jewish belief in an afterlife to color the psalm, which may well have been written before the afterlife became part of Judaism. For this reason, he did not use the word ‘forever.’ But there is an emotional truth to the word ‘forever’ that is missing from the words ‘many long days.’

Do we want to dwell in the House of the Eternal for three weeks? For six months? Even for ten or twenty years? No. We want to dwell in the House of Gd forever. There is a good deal in religion that is not logical. There is a good deal that contradicts science. Some of that is ignorance and superstition, which we rightfully reject. But we must not, we cannot reject all that is illogical, and all that is unscientific. Some of those things are grand and awesome concepts that give our lives glory and meaning. Eternity is one of those things.

I know that I won’t live forever. It is true that no civilization, no culture, no people is without end. But it is also true, in a different sense, that I will love my children forever. It is also true that I will always remember those who helped me when I was at my lowest point. It is also true that I, and you, all of us, will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.

Do we poor mortals have anything that is permanent? Absolutely we do. We may only be here temporarily. But we do have forever. Even if we only have it for a short time.

1. Psalm 137:5
2. Rabbi’s Manual CCAR, NY 1988 p. 159
3. Alter, The Book of Psalms W.W. Norton NY, p. 80