Hearing the Small Still Voice of God: Rosh Hashanah 5781

Have you ever heard the voice of God? What does it sound like? 

I want to take you back to a story from a few thousand years ago that I believe has deep resonance for this Rosh Hashanah and particularly the world in which we live when we're all searching a little bit harder to hear the voice of God.

It's a story about Eliyahu HaNavi, Elijah the Prophet, who lived during a time of great tumult for the Jewish people. Idolatry was rampant. Although following the historic showdown at Mt. Carmel, the people declared their faith for God, Elijah’s life was threatened by Jezebel, the queen of Israel. 

He ran away and found himself at Mt. Sinai, the location of the Revelation where God spoke to the nation of Israel. He was seeking the voice of God and reassurance in his mission. The prophets tell us that a great wind blew and God was not there. An earthquake shook the ground and God was not there. A fire came down and consumed the earth and God was not there. 

But then Elijah, the prophet heard a Kol Demamah Daka, a small, still voice. He knew that it was the voice of God. He understood that in that small, still voice, God was speaking to him. It's that small, still voice that we hope to hear particularly during the holiday season. In fact, in the hallowed prayer Neseneh Tokef, we acknowledge its existence and yearn to tap into this Divine frequency in our lives. Do we hear the small still voice? What does it sound like? 

I believe this year we gained a newfound appreciation for this voice of God in our lives.

We actually experience it every single day and almost every moment. Do we hear it? The voice is manifest in the breaths that we take every day. 

This year, we have become much more attuned to the gift of every breath. Before the pandemic rocked our world, we often neglected it except for the beginning and end of life. We celebrate when a baby is born and exclaim Mazal Tov as the baby inhales the first independent breath on earth. We count the final halting breathes that a human being takes at the very end of his life. 

All too often, we've lost touch with the breaths that we're taking every single day.  There is not a single person alive who at some moment over the past 8 months has not paused to reflect on the gift of a simple breath. The race for ventilators early on made this awareness even more acute.

If there is any holiday that reinforces for us the gift of every breath we take, not only at birth and death but every day it is Rosh Hashanah. Even more importantly, Rosh Hashanah teaches us that this breath is the small still voice of God in our lives. Believing in us, challenging us and calling on us to lIsten and respond to hIs voice in our lives.

What do we celebrate on Rosh Hashanah? The Zohar, the great mystical work, explains that Rosh Hashanah represents the birth of humanity. On the day of our creation, God breathed into humanity the breath of life, our souls. On this day, we are uniquely positioned to tap into the essential element of God endowing us with his life in every breath that we take. Rabbi Moshe Wolfsohn explains so beautifully that for this reason, the main mitzvah of the holiday is a respiratory one, the blowing of the shofar. It can only be fulfilled through the gift of the breath that God endows within us. Every inhale and exhale is the small, still voice of God that speaks to us. 

I believe God speaks to us in the small still voice of every breath in three ways. 

One is the breath that we take reminds us of God's love. The second is the breath that we take gives us God's lift. And the third is the breath that we take inspires us to share God's light. 

There is a story which I've shared in smaller circles that reminds us of this gift of every breath. 

A 93 year old man recovered from COVID this summer and on his way out of the hospital, he was given the bill for one day on the ventilator. When he looked at the $5,000 bill, he started to cry. The doctor asked him, "Are you crying because you can't pay the bill?" 

He answered, “I don’t cry because of the money I have to pay. I can pay all the money. I cry because I have been breathing God’s air for 93 years, but I never pay for it. It takes $5000 to use a ventilator in the hospital for one day. Do you know how much I owe God? I didn’t thank God for that before.

It has been a year when we and others have sometimes searched for the voice of God. Yet, as King David stated in his very last Psalm, kol ha-neshamah, that in every breath I recognize God is holding my soul and my body together enabling me to be on this Earth. King David who recognized God in every aspect of his life, the valleys, the peaks, the challenges remind us that in every breath that God gives us, he's reinforcing his love for each and every one of us saying, "I'm with you. I love you. I'm thinking about you. I have not abandoned you."

In every breath, God is also challenging us. Our lives did not go as planned this year and yet how do we respond? It is fully understandable to ask why something happens in our lives, to mourn, to cry and to be angry. Yet, we are called to realize in time that God may be moving us in a new direction to realize our unique divine potential.

This idea is crystallized in a story in The Language Of The Sycamores by Lisa Wingate. A pastor is speaking in the presence of his grandson Caleb who a few years ago was a star football player in high school. Tragically, he got into a car wreck and sustained internal injuries and serious burns. The minister, Caleb’s grandfather, reflected from the pulpit.  

“You remember that when that accident occurred, I questioned God. I stumbled in my faith. I looked at my grandson, Caleb in his hospital room and I looked at the bed and I asked, 'Why?' I said, 'Here's a young boy who played linebacker on the football team who made good grades and earned a scholarship to college. Who never disappointed his parents a day in his life, a perfect son, a perfect grandson, everything we ever hoped for.' Now, the doctors were telling us he wasn't going to be perfect anymore. If he recovered, he was going to have scars on his arms and legs from the burns. And I said, 'God, why? Why would you take this young, good-looking beautiful boy and leave him the rest of his life with scars?'"

Then he turned to his grandson and everybody there and said, "God doesn't always answer our questions right away. Sometimes he leaves us to think and ponder to find out our way back on our own. Sometimes the answers are so ordinary you could walk by without noticing."

He lined up several old containers, a rusted tin bucket, a dented flower pot, an old saucepan and a new child beach pail along the railing.  "The other day I was outside. And as I was walking in the back," he said, "I saw a number of buckets and pans the kids had left there and I looked around and I noticed something. The perfect buckets had caught rainwater and held it until it became stagnant and black. All the grass around them was dead. The containers that were dented or cracked or had holes probably caught rainwater as well, but they had poured the water out through the holes. There was no stagnant water in them and all the grass around them was growing."

He said, "It's the same with people. It's the little nicks and dents and imperfections of spirit that allow us to flow out into a thirsty world. It's our scars that allow us to relate to the scars of others, our suffering, that connects us to others who suffer. I don't know why God puts scars on my grandson, but I do know that when he becomes a doctor, when he reaches out to those who are wounded and hurting, they're going to realize he's been there. He's going to understand his patients in a way that many doctors never will. And just by virtue of those scars, he's going to show them that life goes on. He's going to be able to flow out into other people in a way that would have been impossible if God has left his life perfect."

Then he picked up the new plastic bucket and the dented one. "Consider for yourselves which life you'd rather have, which vessel you'd rather be perfect," as he dipped the can and he saw that it was blackened with mold “or imperfect?” He showed the inside of the coffee can that was washed clean by the rainwater. "Are we ready to hold in everything that comes our way or ready to pour it out and refill it with new rain, closed to the world or open to possibilities?

In the imperfections, the brokenness, and the harsh challenges, can we find new opportunities? Will we hear the small still voice? I believe in many ways we have heard the voice. Until this spring, I would venture that few of us had ever used Zoom or Whats App but we found ways to learn and pray in ways we never thought possible and discovered ways to support each other. We launched a Whatsapp group “Making Mitzvah Moments”. People joined forces to collectively respond to community needs which were posted in the group and proactively seek and ignite mitzvah opportunities. When in person visits were impossible, we learned how to increase comfort for mourners by creating virtual visits from friends and family from all over the world.

Finally, the small, still voice is not only God's love through every breath that we take. It's not only to realize that sometimes through the brokenness, God is giving us a lift, not to close ourselves off, but to open ourselves to new possibilities, but God is also asking us, "If I am giving you this breath, I want you to blow that breath out into the world. And I want you to give it new light."

A number of years ago, somebody asked Rabbi Avigdor Miller, who was a renowned Torah scholar, “What is the one thing I can do during this high holiday season to help my fate for the coming year. What should it be?" And he said to them, "The best thing that you could do is smile." He explained. 

"There was a business in financial trouble and the consultants recommended to the owner to let go of a few salespeople. The owner said, 'That's fine. You can identify a few, but there's one guy I don't want you to get rid of. His name is Mr. Glee. When people come into the story, he just really lifts them up. He makes most of the sales and people come into the store just to meet Mr. Glee.'  Rabbi Miller said, 'God looks at the world that way. The world is imperfect. The world is in need of healing. The world is in need of hope. And when we are people that smile at others, that lift people up, we're God's partners. God says “I want you on my team. I need you to help me continue to repair the world.'"

Hearing the small still voice means harnessing God’s breath into us and sharing his light with the world around us. One of the greatest challenges in this moment is finding creative ways to smile and lift people up. The world needs our smiles and spirit more than ever. People are struggling and a kind gesture, encouraging words can change a life. 

The Torah offers a profound example. 

The Torah describes a child for whom both parents are convinced based on his current lifestyle that he will grow up to become a menace to society. Both parents must testify to their concerns. He is deemed rebellious and destined for capital punishment. Yet at the last minute if one of the parents says, "I don't want to go through this, the child is saved. The question is why. The child has not changed his errant ways. Why does he deserve to be saved? In essence the parent is saying, "I believe in this child. I believe this child can change." One word of encouragement to this child that he hadn't heard before has the potential to turn his entire life around.

In this moment of greater isolation, increased loneliness, we are tasked to deepen our role in revealing blessings in the world. When God infuses humanity with his breath, He endows us with the power of speech. It is no wonder that this holiday more than any other is preceded by offering blessings to each other. When we wish a Shana Tova, when we smile, when we say Hello to a person on the street, we are assisting God in spreading His blessing. We are taking his voice and using the breath of life is the power of speech to not to divide, demean or diminish, but to unite, to elevate and to energize. 

The small still voice of God is ever present in each moment in every breath we take. God willing, in the year ahead, we will stay attuned to his love when we take a breath. We will not lament our circumstances but discover in the imperfections of life, new possibilities. Finally, smile and be an ambassador of hope, kindness and joy. God needs us on his team and God willing, we will experience a time of  healing for all humanity and peace and joy for the world in the year ahead.