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“Look Up to Them”Rosh Hashanah 5780 First Day – September 30,2019Rabbi Jon Spira-SavettTemple Beth Abraham, Nashua, New HampshireWhen I was 22 years old, a man looked up at me at a restaurant and changed my life.What I thought would change my life was the four-year scholarship for rabbinical school, which is why I was at the restaurant. Eighteen of us were selected for this leadership development fellowship from the Wexner Foundation, from all the Jewish denominations. We were flown to New York for orientation -- which was, pretty, swank. Meetings at the office on Madison Avenue, chocolate covered strawberries about every three hours.The president of the Wexner Foundation was Rabbi Maurice Corson. I had never heard of him. After his speech, it was hard to believe I hadn’t. He was just a few years older than I am now, but it seemed Rabbi Corson was the only person alive who had studied with the great luminaries of the Conservative, and Orthodox, and Reform, and Reconstructionist seminaries – with Heschel and Kaplan and Soloveitchik – and he had been a congregational rabbi, and done big-time Jewish fundraising... really every possible Jewish thing other than maybe teaching Hebrew to Rotweillers. The point was he knew every kind of Jewish organization from the inside, and was thus qualified to be teaching us how to fix all of them.My 22-year-old’s perception of the man was obviously over the top. At the time, for me, Rabbi Corson seemed like the very model of…every kind of 57-year-old, overbearing, male authority figure in whose presence I tended to turn into mush. So I ate some more chocolate covered strawberries.That night at dinner, I put myself at the end of the table, by the other young guys. And as dessert was coming – more chocolate-covered strawberries -- Rabbi Corson came over. He’d spent dinner sitting by group members who were older and had some accomplishments already. When he got to us, I wanted to run out to the restroom – I was basically scared of talking to him.And then Rabbi Corson did something that I have never forgotten.He grabbed a chair from another table… and he didn’t try to squeeze it in. He put it a bit behind us. And he leaned toward the table and put his elbow on it, and he rested his head, just like this -- and took this position where he was looking up at us. He asked us, I don’t even know. He talked to us for a few minutes from that posture. All I remember about the conversation -- what I have never forgotten -- is how he looked up at us.He physically looked up at us 22-year-olds, and he listened. And I knew that from 35 years ahead of us, with all the wisdom and authority he had just told us he had, Rabbi Corson was saying with his body: I know only a bit about you, but I see something. So I have decided that biggest thing I am going to do with my dreams is to trust them to you.He didn’t say any of that in words. It was in his actually looking up at us. That moment has never left for me. It helped get me off the ground, and recalling it has sustained me through difficult moments in my career. The time in a restaurant when someone looked up at me.We live in a world of so much looking down on people, and being looked down on. So many expectations that are heavy even when they aren’t worth trying to live up to, but they press us down anyway. Now is a time when we need to know, as much as ever, that we are worth being looked up to. That we are images of the Divine. Each with our own unique subset of the master wisdom and toolbox through which the Divine moves in our world.Rabbi Akiva taught: Beloved and sweet it is that humans are created in the Divine image. But even more lovely and even sweeter is that we are shown that we are created in the Divine image:?????? ????? ????????? ???????. ????? ??????? ??????? ?? ????????? ???????Chaviv adam she-nivra b’tzelem. Chibah y’teirah, she-noda’at lo she-nivra b’tzelem.Rabbi Akiva might have meant – we have the Torah, which tells us on page 1 that we are images of God, and we can read that whenever we want. But Rabbi Akiva knew that it takes more than a scroll. We are the ones who show each other. We can each become a mirror that other people look into when they need to see their own Divine face.Especially when it’s unexpected. Especially when they haven’t seen that for a long time. There’s a midrash that Adam and Eve, for the first few hours of their existence, were the tallest creatures in the Garden of Eden. They towered so high they could see everything at once -- every way the other creatures interacted, and every microscopic process inside of them. Everything looked up at them, so it was easy to know every moment they were created in the Divine image.Then they had their stumble, and they were brought down to what we now call: human size. But even at that instant, God designated a creature whose sole assignment was to look up at the two humans. At the very moment when they were hurting and doubting themselves, when their world was completely misaligned, God made sure the snake was looking up at them. We think of the snake as the pushy villain, but it was also the one who first told Eve what even God hadn’t told her: You can be like God. You will be the ones around here who know good and evil.All around us in our lives are people who need us to look up at them, so they can know, or recover the knowledge, that they are vessels of the Divine. Especially when the world looks down on them, at failures or flaws, or measures them with standards that are superficial. Especially when the world needs them -- needs you -- to fight against what is seriously out of alignment.And looking up at others is good for our own souls.In this coming year, especially, there are at least three kinds of people we should go out of our way to look up at.The first person to look up to is someone who you look at all the time, without even thinking – family, close friend, even a colleague.The second is someone who asks you for help. This is hard, because that’s the very moment when they feel that everyone is looking down on them.The third person to look up to is a leader, someone to admire in a big way. And I’m not kidding about that, not even this week.Let’s start close to home. Looking up to the people who are closest to you.You know, we usually don’t talk about looking up at our spouses or partners or our friends. We are all about equality, respect. And absolutely that’s the important thing.But we default a lot into superior postures in our daily relationships. Power postures, even for little things. Or, we can go days really not looking at each other at all – as we’re doing the logistics of our lives.In Judaism, the word for being married is nasu’i, which means – lifted up, or looked up to. Sometimes, looking up is for something specific that you appreciate. Something you can name out loud. Sometimes, it’s just being dazzled beyond any reason – it’s just: I’m overwhelmed with wonder because of you.We might have coworkers, or partners in a project, that some version of this applies to. I know that I do here. And kids. Look up at your kids, and look up at kids you know through this community. I mean really, literally sometimes, look up at them.Look up at children and teens and young adults – when you see the part of them that is so much more than what is captured in grades or cheers. Look up to them when they are generous and when they are open. Look up at them when they are quiet, when they are quirky, or just because of the wonderful mystery of them.Chibah y’teirah she’nod’at lo she-nivra b’tzelem. As Rabbi Akiva said, most special and sweet of all is to be shown that you are in the image of God.The second person to look up to is the person who comes to you for help.Seeking any kind of help is so hard. To be the one with the eyes looking down, receiving instead of giving.When our ancestor Avraham saw the three travelers from his tent, he knew they needed help. They needed food, and a place to rest, and someone to walk them out toward the dangerous place they were heading. When he got to them, Avraham immediately bowed down to the ground, so he could look up at them.When we ask for help, we need someone to remind us that we are Divine even when we feel broken, that we aren’t defined by what’s wrong.I have found that when people come to see me at times of great difficulty, they show so many things to look up to. Those conversations are more often than not when people say with remarkable clarity who they are, and what matters to them in life. Who in their life they are fighting for and aching for. Or who in their life is so important to be there for, that they are fighting for themselves. Often the ability just to put one foot forward after another, in the midst of pain, is what just knocks me over -- that Divine spirit and spark so visible, even then.Looking down comes naturally – in pity, or because we want to be the big problem-solver -- even when we don’t have a solution or even a good suggestion. Of course you might have a good suggestion. But what we always have is the mirror to hold up that shows: you are still the Divine image. I don’t think less of you for needing to ask for help – if anything, I am in awe that you can, and I won’t forget that even while you are leaning on me.Chibah y’teirah she’nod’at lo she-nivra b’tzelem. Rabbi Akiva teaches: When someone doubts they are still the Divine image, you can be the one to show them they still are.I said there is one more kind of looking up that we need, and that’s to look up to a leader.I believe, even this week, more than ever, that each of us has a need to admire -- to have someone we look up to from afar. Not a role model – this is different, someone who does what we ourselves can’t do and probably can never do.We absolutely should be skeptical of leaders, and even if we think we’ve found a good one, be on guard against idolatry. There may not be, at a given time or a given decade, a national leader who is truly worthy of admiration, even if they have your support.But we each need to have someone alive right now to admire. Without that, we shrink, and humanity itself becomes shrunk. The small differences we make for the good become the ceiling of what we can imagine, rather than the spur to more. Without leaders to admire, we lose hope for tikkun olam, for a real fixing of the world.In the Talmud, Rava says that a person should stand up in the presence of a Sage as much as in the presence of a Torah scroll. It is not ideas that will change the world. It’s people who use these ideas to make blueprints for turning their fierce love for human beings into structures and systems that pull us together and make more from our bounty. Even on a local scale, this is no small thing. We should admire people of such vision, who care about and respect the people they want to serve and the people they collaborate with. Leaders who are relentless without being selfish. Who struggle – with not doing enough fast enough; with the guilt of going home to comfort if they have it, while others suffer another day.To admire such a person, whose integrity and achievements for the world are beyond my own, is uplifting. They do not make me feel small or insufficient, but grateful and hopeful. Find someone like that. Make sure you have one in your life. Keep lifting your eyes up toward them, if they are near or far. Let them know that you are. Tell everyone you know about them. Give your money or your time for their work. If they are local, take them out for coffee, ask how you can make their burdens easier to carry. These people exist – in our own city, and beyond. You have to choose your own to admire – you need someone like that, especially now. Otherwise, I am afraid for you, that your own righteous angers will do nothing but consume you. And at a time when it is so hard to be a good leader, the ones who are need us to look up to them. They can’t go on, they will burn out, if they don’t know someone is looking up to them. The best ones will tell you they don’t need it. But it helps.We need to look up at people. Everyone needs, and deserves, someone looking up at them. You deserve.And looking up at someone else can help us lift off some of the burdens we carry – of having to do or know the answer to everything in our lives and about the world right now. For a moment, look up at someone else wise or admirable or just amazing, and help them carry it instead of you.The shofar reminds us: look up. When you hear the many short notes of the t’ruah, look up at someone who is in the many moments of your daily life. When you hear the three, broken up sh’varim, look up at someone who feels broken and asks for you to help them. When you hear the long tekiah heralding majesty, look up to a leader you admire.You might look up literally, as Rabbi Corson did for me. That physical moment has gotten me through times of professional difficulty and even confusion.Or it can be just the way you carry yourself or the way you say certain things.Chibah y’teirah she-noda’at lo shenivra b’tzelem – Rabbi Akiva says, each of us should be told -- without having to look it up somewhere -- that we are created in the Divine image.When the Torah goes around the next time, the ornaments will pull your eyes up, and you will see next to it each person who is here, and you will be looking up to them. And when the Torah comes by you, everyone here will be looking up to you.And if we can learn to do this more, we will be doing something that the Torah says God does for us. The oldest blessing: Yisa Adonai panav eleicha v’yasem l’cha shalom. May the Divine face look up at you, and bring you peace. ................
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