Amidst the Breakers

I almost drowned one day. I grew up a swimmer and loved to ride giant waves. The only hard part was getting past the breakers. The משברי ים, as they are referred to in Psalms 93, from the Hebrew root ש-ב-ר, which means “to break,”. It was a blustery day on the New Jersey shore, about 15 years ago. The sea looked rough...but I’m an ocean boy, so I can handle it. As long as I can get past those breakers.

I went out a few feet. Within seconds I was in water too deep to stand. Right at the point that those משברי ים were breaking. One after the other. Too quick. The placid place beyond the breakers was so close, but I couldn’t get there. The shallower water was feet away, but beyond my reach. I was using all my energy to push up, vertically, keeping my head above water that I had nothing left to push forward, horizontally, towards the shore. All of this happened in under 30 seconds. And I nearly lost my life.

That near-drowning was all too real. But metaphorically, we are, all of us, trapped in משברי ים these days. Barely staying afloat, and lacking energy to make progress. However good we were at swimming the ocean of life before 2020, so many of us are flailing now. Using every muscle group in our body to keep our head above water. 2020, and COVID, and societal unrest, and financial worry and emotional distress have been an equal opportunity tsunami. I know from conversations with so many of you that we wake up and hear the news. Which can make it impossible to then try to sleep the next night.

Is my home safe?

Is my job safe?

Will the world I knew ever return?

People have lost savings. Friends. Lives.

Things are not OK. And we don't really know when they will be.

I will never forget the conversation I had this summer with the proud professional in this community, his income battered by COVID, who wept as he described his fear that he would lose his house. Nor the chat with a generally blessed colleague who said to me that, at least once a day, he sits down and cries. One member who came to the ark for one of those short blessing visits with the clergy told me, “I wake up sad. Every day.” So many are asking, about this year, this moment, “How do I live this life? How do I stop the pain and worry?”

We are amidst the breakers. Yelling, in our minds, for the crashing waves to stop. For these unforgiving breakers to give us a break. How do we celebrate a new year, and life itself, when we cannot catch our breath?

Perhaps my infatuation with Hebrew roots can help. And also a core image from the HHD liturgy. And also Kintsugi, a unique Japanese art.

First, the root. ש-ב-ר. In its standard form, lishbor, It means to break. In it intensive form, l’shaber, it means to pulverize. And, as I mentioned, we have the משברי ים, the powerful sea-breakers, that give no pause, and are hard to survive, and emerge from. The core meanings of the root describe all too well so much of current human and American misery.

And yet, the root opens up like a lotus flower when you pay more attention. ש-ב-ר also denotes sustenance, and nourishment, sort of the opposite of ruin. Yosef as feeder of all of Egypt? That role is called משביר, a word some of you may remember as the eponymous department and grocery store that used to sit at the top of Ben Yehuda street in Jerusalem. To be משביר, to give ש-ב-ר, is to provide for all of someone’s needs.

So the root connotes brokenness amidst wholeness. Or, better, wholeness despite brokennes. Light, itself, is illuminating. Health, wellness and thriving are blessings in their own right. But light from darkness is a revelation. Health from illness? Wellness after struggle? Thriving in the aftermath of suffering? These are miracles. And they are all within those three letters.

Believe it or not, being born is part of our ש-ב-ר root, as well. The word משבר, built from that root, means crisis. That seems appropriate. But it also means, wait for it, birthing stool. The midwife would perch on the mashber, stool, witness to the mashber, crisis, of the woman in labor. And coax new life, and new breath, out of that moment.

This word-play might be giving us a pearl, from across the centuries: the breakers are all around us. More inescapable than ever. And...the people we are still in the midst of becoming, the lives we have yet to live, are inextricably linked, and perhaps even enriched, by what we are suffering through, right now. There is hidden nourishment in this brokenness. And our job is to find it, and extract it, like diamonds encased in coal. For in this shever, this broken moment, we are on the mashber, still being born.

Rabbi Jack Riemer Riemer tells that at some point this summer, COVID-boredom and headline-overload nearly drowned him. After spending days walking up and down his halls, he decided to call old friends. One day he decided to call Stanley Goodblatt, his oldest friend. They had not been in touch in years. He, a rabbi in his early 90s, said he felt excited and giddy as he dialed the #. The phone picked up, and a strange voice answered. Stanley’s wife. “Can I speak to Stanley?” First, there was silence. Then “Stanley died 6 months ago.” Rabbi Riemer says he mumbled words of comfort, and hung up. This intended act of kindness, and hoped for pick-me-up, initially sending him deeper into the sea.

He badgered himself, “Why didn't I call him all through those years? Was I so busy? Did it really take a pandemic that I should be in touch with my best friend?”

And then, a shift. A move from shever, broken, to mashbir and mashber, sustenance and birth. Rabbi Riemer made a vow that he would spend the years he has left connecting with as many people, and old friends, as he could. Never again would he regret not being in touch. He couldn't reach Stanley. But he could reach so many others. For Rabbi Riemer, some light came out of this darkness. Some wholeness, mashbir, emerged from broken shards, sh’varim. You might even say that precisely when so much was lost, and so many were dying, something new and wonderful was being born.

The image of new life, and new birth, resonates powerfully with this very day, Rosh Hashanah. היום הרת עולם. Often translated as “today is the birthday of the world.” Pesach marks the odometer of the Jews, one more year since redemption. But Rosh Hashanah marks the odometer of the world, one more year since Breishit, creation. The phrase in the Mahzor comes right after the shofar blowing in Musaf. And it suggests potential, as the world is born anew.

According to an evocative midrash in the Talmud, the shofar blast represents a baby’s first cry. Like a woman who has suffered miscarriages and stillbirths, for whom that first cry is a sign of vitality and viability, the Talmud imagines God trying over and over to create the world. In vain. Trying to pull something out of chaos and nothingness. But even for God, the task is hard. “Each and every year on the day of the world’s birth, the Holy One sits upon the mighty throne, the supernal mashber, birthing stool, and does not pay heed to Israel, to the world, until God hears the blasts of the Shofar. Like the first cry of the baby. Immediately, God’s heart is opened, and mercy flows.” Hayom harat olam. Today, the world is born.

This moment is pregnant. We are somehow in the womb, waiting to be born. And there are no guarantees. And we are the womb, fostering and nourishing life in uncertain circumstances. Worry abounds. We don't know if or how we will live through it. The mashber birthing stool waltzes a chaotic waltz with the mashbercrisis, as we try to extricate ourselves from mishbrei yam, the sea’s crashing waves. It is a moment when, like me on the NJ shore, just breathing seems like a triumph.

For there are times when you and I are dealing with things that are so overwhelming. I don't know about you, but in such times I just feel paralyzed. Stuck. Trapped. Shavur. Broken.

Which brings me to Kintsugi. In the late 15^th century the Japanese art of Kintsugi, or golden repair, was developed. This artform fixes cracked pottery and ceramics with gold. The chip or crack is not hidden, the pot or vase is not thrown away. The imperfection is glorified. Gilded. The art form would not exist without the shv’arim, the breaks. These repairs often resulted in making the original object even more beautiful. And gave the object new life.

You and me. All of us. We must be Kintsugi artists. I quote my sister, Dr. Jennifer Novick, who wrote beautifully about this last year. “Many of us in this room look at ourselves in the mirror and see imperfections. We wear long sleeves to cover the place where melanoma got removed. We wear long pants to cover knee surgery scars. We buy clothes that cover stretchmarks. But maybe we are seeing things backwards. Our scars tell our stories. They are marks of victory. Of survival. And maybe we can wear them like medals. The difficulties we endure, and survive, make us who we are. And, in order to not see ourselves as damaged by our lives, maybe we can learn from the Japanese and heal our brokenness with gold. Take our life experiences, especially those with less than perfect outcomes, and write a gilded ending to the story.”

What is the end of this year’s story? We don’t deny reality, nor our own or others’ pain, by turningshever, wreckage, into mashbir, sustenance. Or mashber, the place where birth happens. We can’t undo 2020. We can’t bring back lives lost, or livelihoods lost. We cannot undo Zoom school, and lost family reunions, and living masked. Those scourges are real, and are still really with us. But we can be artists, fill the cracks with gold, and force beauty to be born from this crucible. We must at least try. For there is, there must be, nourishment in every crevice.

And, of course, this is a delicate thing. There is nothing easy about it. While one person is ready to see the possibilities, and achieve the shore, others are still in the breakers. They can’t breathe yet. It can be obscene to say to someone “It will be ok for you” when they are in mashber, crisis. This is going to be hard until it is not. And we don't all rise to Katsugi level at the same pace. But swimming towards that shore is the goal. And it may be more within reach than it seems when we are stuck.

At some point during COVID, the modern Jewish hero Natan Sharansky, who spent years in a true quarantine, in the Gulag, shared some tips for surviving. He said that one of the things that got him through was remembering that he was not alone. He kept thinking to himself, “A lot of people in the world care about me. And are with me.” Though he suffered loneliness we cannot fathom, he was not alone.

One antidote to loneliness is God. You know the joke, that Greenberg comes to shul to talk to God. And Goldberg comes to shul to talk to Greenberg? Well this year, whether you come to shul or Zoom to shul, might be the year to talk to God. In your prayers. Even and especially if you don’t usually do so. This year, I think, we must. Because it will make us feel less alone. And will be its own gold, filling in deep cracks.

Another antidote, another way to be mashbir, nourishing, amidst משברי ים, the breakers is to do...something. To break the paralysis with productivity. To resist the urge for one more Netflix binge. But rather, call an old friend. Start the home project you have been putting off. Adopt a dog. (perhaps a partially paralyzed, middle-aged Cockapoo, just as an example!) Consider a doable mitzvah that will help another. Doing work, or just about anything, can distract us from the heaviness and zap us back into life.

And yet another antidote to loneliness is community. And shul. And me, we, your clergy, your rabbis, your spiritual family. We are here for you, and with you. Our offer to reach out to us does not expire. Our calendars and hearts always have room for you. To talk with you. To hold you. To share with you our own fears through this moment. Our own paralysis in the breakers. And to try to find a way forward, and out, together. Please call on us.

And speaking of the breakers, let’s go back to me on the Jersey Shore. I don’t really know how I emerged. Some combination of a will to live. Grit. Belief against all odds. Mustering muscle power and breath capacity that, under normal circumstances, I would lack. Eventually, and at the last minute, I found a tiny bit of footing. And pushed and crawled forward. The beach lifeguard, who didn't see me initially, finally reached me as I had just pulled myself out of the surf. Face down, hands clutching the sand. Almost no breath left. When I think about that moment, I shudder. I re-enter the paralysis. What could have been. What almost was.

But there is gold in that crevice. And there was something born out of that crisis. A few weeks ago, I started teaching Lev how to navigate that part of the ocean. As I’ve taught his sisters. Now that he can swim confidently, he is ready for those breakers, the משברי ים. I honor my earned fears of that very place. And, with my son, I surpass them.

I teach him, “Have healthy fear of the sea, for it is powerful. But so are you. You walk out just to where the waves are crashing. Don't stand still. They will overwhelm you. And if you turn away from them, they will crash down on you, and you will tumble and be confused and not know where you are for a second. And gasp for air. But if you swim up the wave just before it crashes? It can carry you. You are more buoyant than you realize.”

You must have rational fear of what can harm you. And, like, a midwife crouching on a mashber, you can and must coax life out of chaos. Find the vessel that holds you afloat on stormy seas. Be that vessel, for your self and for others. Turn your traumas into new beginnings. This year, when the shofar blows sh’varim, meditate on what is breaking this year. And pray towards what is birthing in this very moment.

I miss you. I love you. Shanah Tova