Drash on Yom Kippur 2024
Rabbi Dean Shapiro
Beth Shalom, Auckland NZ
“Abre los ojos. Abre los ojos.” Those words sent a jolt down my spine, summoned me to wakefulness. Sitting in the dark, watching a Spanish film later remade as Vanilla Sky, a voice called out to me: “Open your eyes. Open your eyes.” “Wake up,” it was telling me. “You’ve slept too long. There’s something bigger and deeper and more important for you out there. Stop dreaming and start living.”
On Yom Kippur we face the mystery of life. We confront the dreadful reality that we will die, and that we do not know when. For 364 days of the year, most of us accept the illusion that we’ll live forever. We busy ourselves with what outfit to wear, what to fix for dinner, what others think of us. But one day a year, Yom Kippur, we peel back the veil and gaze at the great gaping mystery, the dreadful truth of our mortality.
What are we to do in the face of such ominous Truth? What difference does any of it make, if it all ends? Small and helpless as I am, what do I even matter?
We are not alone in the tension between fruitfulness and pointlessness.
“Abre los ojos—Open your eyes.” Jonah, the erstwhile prophet, heard the same voice long ago. I imagine him, a young man sitting on the dock of the bay, dangling his legs over the water with nothing much to do, thinking he was nothing much, just a guy. But one day, as he slept, he heard a voice calling to him: “How can you be sleeping so soundly?” (1:6) “Open your eyes to the plight of the world. There is suffering around you and you need to do something about it. Get up, get out of your complacency, of your lethargy, and realise your potential. You are called to greatness,” God told Jonah and each one of us. “You are called to greatness and your only choice is whether to accept that fact, or run away from it, hiding behind outfits, apps, and imagined slights. You have a gift to give to the world. You have a message to deliver. You—unique, precious you— have a purpose.”
We say it in other ways. The Shofar blast is the great wake up, a sound that resounds in our souls, telling us to get up, to get on with it, that time is ticking away. No wonder we conclude Yom Kippur with t’kiyah g’dolah!
May we hear its primal call all year long, prompting us to live truly, fully, purposefully.
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