Taking Responsibility
Kol
Nidre
September 24, 2004
A rabbi and a priest get into a car accident and it's a
bad one. Both cars are totally demolished but amazingly
neither of the clerics is hurt. After they crawl out of
their cars, the rabbi sees the priest's collar and says,
"So you're a priest.. I'm a rabbi. Just look at our cars.
There's nothing left, but we are unhurt. This must be a
sign from Above. God must have meant that we should meet
and be friends and live together in peace the rest of our
days." The priest replies, "I agree with you completely.
This must be a sign from God." The rabbi continues, "And
look at this. Here's another miracle. My car is completely
demolished but this bottle of Manechewitz wine didn't
break. Surely God wants us to drink this wine and
celebrate our good fortune." He says passing the bottle to
the priest. The priest agrees, takes a few big swigs, and
hands the bottle back to the rabbi. The rabbi takes the
bottle, immediately puts the cap on, and hands it back to
the priest. The priest asks, "Aren't you having any?" The
rabbi replies, "No...I think I'll just wait for the
police." I'm embarrassed by that rabbi.
The story I'm about to tell is about another rabbi, me,
and it is in a different way somewhat embarrassing but in
the intimacy of this gathering, I'll share it
nevertheless. I know it won't go any farther. This past
summer, Jordana and Elana sublet an apartment in
Washington D.C near Georgetown. Elana was working with an
Israel advocacy group and Jordana was working at the
Jewish Community Center. In late July, Janie and I drove
down to help them bring some of their belongings home.
Jordana warned us that after 7:00pm it would be impossible
to find a parking space but we already had plans to have
dinner with my sister and family in Rockville Maryland so
we would have to take our chances.
Jordana was right. After we doubled
parked and filled the car, I could find absolutely no
parking space. I drove around these winding streets near
Georgetown again and again and could not find one free
spot. I thought of parking in a no parking zone but the
girls' car had already been towed during the summer and I
didn't want to replay the hassle. It was now close to
midnight. I had been riding around 45 minutes. I was
exhausted. For some reason I hadn't slept well the night
before which is rare for me being the very talented
sleeper that I am. I finally found a spot some distance
from the apartment.
To make the embarrassing part of this
story short, as I was parking, and I'm not sure I can
explain this, I hit the car in front of me with a good
enough force that when I went out to look, I saw that our
SUV did some apparent damage to the poor car parked in
front. Now what do I do? It's late. It's dark and the car
in front of me is damaged. In the world of auto body
repair, its doesn't take much to run up a bill for $1,500
or $2,000.00 dollars. So instantaneously all kinds of
thoughts went through my mind. I caused the damage but
then I rationalized. The car was clearly well past its
prime. Even in the dark, I could see that the paint on the
car had long since faded. Whoever owns this car should
have replaced it ten years ago. This car wasn't worth more
than the $2,000 dollars in body work. After flirting with
all kinds of thoughts, I realized there was one of two
things I could do. Call Janie or not call Janie! After a
few minutes, I called Janie and told her what happened. At
that point, I told Janie that there were two things I
could do. Either I would call the police or I would leave
a note on the windshield with my cell phone number. How do
I call the police - 911? But it wasn't an emergency.
It was late, I was tired. I was leaning
towards leaving my phone number on the windshield and
just at that moment, a police car happened to drive down
the street. He wasn't driving to me and he almost drove
past me but I flagged him down and told him the story.
He asked me if I knew who owned the car I damaged and of
course I didn't. I didn't even know what street I was on.
Through the license plate, in minutes, he learned the
owner lived in a nearby apartment building. He went over
to the building, rang the buzzer and within minutes, a
young lady in hospital scrubs, apparently awakened, was
standing with us. I quickly learned, her name was Ann
Friedman. She was a medical student at G.W. The car was an
86 Buick until that moment in mint condition of course.
The two and two that I put together was here is a young
medical student without great means driving a car almost
twenty years old. The repair work which would be necessary
given that one of her rear lights now looked light the
glass at the end of the wedding might be more than she
could afford. I apologized to this young lady more than
once and I felt a certain relief. While I had done such a
dumb thing, I would make it possible for her to repair
her almost antique car at no cost to herself.
We spent some time filling out some
forms and during that time, the police officer must have
remarked to me no less than five or six times how good it
was that I flagged him down to report this. After the
second time, I realized what he was saying, how unusual it
was that someone would flag down a police cruiser to say I
did this. At one point, I said to the officer, "well, we
have to take responsibility, for what we do." At which
point he could have said to me "listen my friend, this is
Washington D.C. Nobody takes responsibility for what they
do. This is the capital of 'I didn't do it' or let me tell
you that what the other guy did was ten times worse.
The police officer either thought I was
a decent citizen or one of the biggest schnooks he met
that week but by this point we were kind of bonding. He
asked me where I was staying. I told him it was five, six
blocks or more away. He told me to drive back to the
girls' apartment building and park where the sign reads
"no parking from here to corner." He would write out a
ticket which I would place on the windshield but would not
send in and the car would be safe until the morning. This
was pretty inventive I thought. I asked if the car might
be towed. He said it wouldn't. The worse that can happen
for parking there is you get a ticket and I'd already have
one. If I had known this an hour and a half ago, I would
have happily made a donation to our nations capital in
exchange for a parking spot The officer did me another
kindness and followed me back to the apartment so he would
know exactly where I'd be parking.
That police officer was somewhere
between amazed and amused I think. My ever so brief
comment about the need to take responsibility runs counter
to what seems to be our cultural norm of "I'm not
responsible." You remember Kenneth Lay of Enron who told
us he did nothing wrong while stockholders were left with
nothing, hundreds of employees lost their entire
retirement packages, were out of work while he had amassed
millions. I did nothing wrong and there's a long list of
Kenneth Lays. How many years ago was it now, on the eve
of Kol Nidre, O.J. was found not guilty. He said I didn't
do it and the jury said you didn't do it. If you can
afford the best attorneys and the best jury pickers than
you can do it and get away with it. There's a long list
of elected officials, business leaders, public figures
avoiding responsibility and saying I did nothing wrong.
They admit nothing until they are so caught in a corner
they realize there's no way out. We wonder why we should
take any more responsibility than they.
I know and have worked with people who
are totally unable to take responsibility for their
mess-ups, misdeeds and errors. It is never their fault.
They're never wrong. Their excuses and rationalizations
are fast, furious and fantastic. I find them frustrating
and exhausting. The Torah is equally frustrated by these
personalities and if you want to meet them, you don't have
to look too far.
In only the third chapter of Genesis,
Adam ate the fruit of the tree which G-d explicitly told
him to leave alone. G-d asks Adam why he ate of the
forbidden fruit, Adam blames everyone else he knows in the
whole world Eve and G-d. "The woman You put at my side
-she gave me of the tree and I ate." At that moment
Chutzpah was created. It's your fault G-d for creating
her. One verse later Eve blames the serpent, the serpent
duped me and I ate. You can almost here Flip Wilson's
Geraldine " The devil made me do it." You don't have to
roll the scrolls too far to the first capital crime when
Cain kills Abel. When G-d catches Cain red handed and
asks "Where is Abel your brother?" , Cain slyly says "Am I
my brother's Keeper?" Who me responsible? Rabbi Joseph Telushkin tells the story in his Book of Jewish Values
A Day to Day Guide to Ethical Living "I know a man who
seldom acknowledges his errors. Whenever something bad
happens to him, he invariably claims that it is either due
to bad luck or is someone else's fault. Of all the people
I knew, he was the one for whom I felt least optimistic
about the future. Since he was never to blame for any of
the bad things that happened to him, there was nothing he
could do to improve his increasingly unhappy life. He
could only hope that he would stop having bad luck, and
that other people would stop treating him unfairly or
getting him into trouble.
We finally meet a biblical figure
willing to take responsibility. King David commits a
pretty big sin in his affair with Batshevah and sending
her husband Uriah off to the front lines of battle. The
prophet Nathan comes to admonish the King and David says
in response "I have sinned before the Lord" chatati
lefanecha. David who sins with the best of them
shows a far different character here. chatati
lefanecha. I have sinned before the Lord. If G-d
could be, G-d had to be flabbergasted that someone finally
fessed up and took responsibility. David paid a price but
his punishment was reduced and it is out of the house of
our beloved King David that Messiah will one day come.
Last Friday morning, I spoke about the gift of the Present
and the value of the past in learning from it. If you
remember the teaching: "Look at what happened in the
past, Learn something valuable from it. Use what you learn
to improve the present. It is important to use the Past to
learn from your mistakes or if you've done well in the
Past, look at why and build on your successes." I know
that some of the things I do or get right as a rabbi
today, I learned from mistakes of the past. As
uncomfortable as they were then, I'm sort of grateful for
them now. Some mistakes, errors in judgment go back to
my teenage years or early twenties, some to my earlier
years as a rabbi and some are as recent as this past
year. There are still times, after a good number of
years in the rabbinate now, I still say to myself, how
did I do that? How didn't I see that and therein is hope
that I can be better and do better this coming year. It is
in the act of taking responsibility that we can grow.
Tonight we will recite the short
confessional ashamnu, bagadnu, gazalnu, deebarnu dofee I
have been guilty, I have betrayed, I have taken what is
not mine, I have spoken wrongly - and the longer
confessional Al Chet for the misdeed of and
there is a long enough list but these words are meaningful
only if we can look more into our hearts than the
Mahzor and take responsibility for our own personal
misdeeds of this past year.
And so I would ask you now to think
about that act you committed this past year that was
just plain wrong. Until this point you may have overlooked
it, you may have denied it, you may have rationalized it,
you may have excused it but on this sacred day when we are
to afflict ourselves you can afford the discomfort of
admitting the wrong and taking responsibility. Judaism
calls this act, this art of taking responsibility
hakarat hachet- the recognition of the misdeed. This
may sound easy but its not. It is hard to admit to
others, it's hard to admit to ourselves that I've done
something wrong and I'm responsible. Only with taking
responsibility and recognizing our misdeed can we move on
to the next step of Teshuvah, asking forgiveness
from the person we have hurt, asking G-d for forgiveness
and then rectifying the situation as much as possible.
It's quick thinking to hand the bottle
to the priest and it's easy to point a finger at the other
person. This is standard fare in our society today but I
then ultimately get the short end of the stick. I lose the
opportunity to recognize what I have done, feel any
remorse, plan differently for the future, grow from it,
behave differently and do better the next time around.
This day provides us an opportunity for
a different way. Hakarat Hachet, we recognize our
misdeeds, take responsibility, ask others, G-d and
ourselves for forgiveness, hope, plan to do better and
then get it right the next time. With a glass of
Manechewitz wine, in about twenty four hours, we can drink
to that.
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