For the Sins of COVID

Two days ago Jews all over the world confessed our sins on Yom Kippur—the Day of Atonement, by reciting a two-thousand-year-old list of 44 sins. What amazes me about that 2,000-year-old list is how little people have changed. The sins of long ago are mostly no different than the sins of today:  A little gossip, some arrogance, a half-truth, fraud, anger, narrow mindedness. In one sense, nothing much has changed in twenty centuries.

But in another sense, almost everything has changed for almost everyone this year.  The authors of that list could not have imagined religion in the time of Covid-19.  For faith to matter, it must be both timeless and timely.  In that spirit, during this strange and difficult time, here are my Covid-19 confessions.

For the sin of underestimating millennials. 

For years I maligned millennials.  They were an enigma to me, seeming to lack the kind of work ethic I grew up with. They were casual, worked from home and coffee shops, spent their lives on social media and communicated mostly with two thumbs flying across their phones.

Millennials, forgive me for being too narrow-minded to see that you were right all along.  The virtual lifestyle you created has literally saved the world during this pandemic. It is the reason that scientists can collaborate across countries, the reason we can get anything and everything delivered to our front doors, keeping us all so much safer, and the reason millions of us can still earn a living while staying home.

Millennials, a lot of us boomers were wrong about you. I was.  Please, forgive us.

For the sin of suits and ties.

You would think a middle-aged rabbi would be secure enough to know that appearances matter little while character, ability, dedication and passion count for much.  But for more than three decades I have worried about looking the part of the rabbi.  That meant a closet filled with 20 suits, 40 shirts, dozens of ties, shoes and belts from Italy and Paris.  I don’t know how many hours and how many tens of thousands of dollars or more I have spent over 34 years dressing the part of rabbi.

What Zoom after Zoom in t-shirts, sweats and stubble have taught me is that I had lost my way for all those years, forgetting the Talmud’s warning “Don’t look at the vessel, but what’s inside.”  I am going to stay looser when this whole thing is over—more authentic, comfortable, and trusting that people see the real me no matter what I am wearing.  For the sin of foolish vanity—please, forgive us.

For thinking I am not racist.

The longest paper I wrote in college was about the great African American writer James Baldwin.  I was the only white kid in the class.  In my first year as a rabbi I started a Black/Jewish Young Professionals program called “Crossing the Line” that won a national award.  Early in my career I spent more time in black churches than I did in other synagogues.  Many of the black preachers in town became my friends.  My wife and I sent our kids to one of the most multicultural schools in the country.  Me, racist?

But, like all of us, I watched those shocking eight minutes and forty-six seconds as George Floyd was murdered three blocks from my father’s business in Minneapolis.  I watched the diner where I ate breakfast with my dad almost every Saturday morning of my childhood burn to the ground.

As the riots raged I called my friends who lead black churches and a few in politics armed with a list of things we could do. Each time, my ideas were met with two words: “Not yet.” Even my friends were too angry to start a dialogue.  I was shocked at the intensity and depth of their anger.  I felt rebuffed and unappreciated.  I’m a good guy trying to help, how can they say no to me? The cognitive dissonance was painful and it still is.

Like it or not, I have some thinking to do; some reckoning with my complacency.  In the year ahead I must ask myself hard questions; examining my own xenophobia and racist tendencies.  I may have done my part 30 years ago, but that was then, and this is now.   For the sin of believing we have done enough—forgive us.

For the sin of the freeway. 

Once a minute is spent, it is gone forever. How many minutes and hours have I spent in traffic—sweating, cursing—for 45 minutes or an hour or more to sit in a meeting with people I could just as easily have Zoomed with?  What I thought was respectful of others’ time and mine turns out to have been the most colossal and maddening waste of time in my life.  For the sin of precious time squandered— forgive us.

For the sin of pessimism.

Thinking about the worst is easy. Maybe that’s because 24/7 news coverage of disease, civil unrest, corruption and scandal attracts more viewers and sells commercials. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t take much, especially now, for us to dwell on the dark side of life.

On the other hand, thinking about the best, most beautiful parts of life takes work. Awe, joy, gratitude, happiness even, are the result of a deliberate, disciplined, daily commitment; a forcing of oneself to seek and embrace something hopeful and good no matter how small.

Too many times these past many months I have allowed myself to sink into despair about the future.  When I lose hope, I must fight harder against despair and cease to catastrophize the future.  This is going to end.  We are going to be ok.  The bottom is not falling out of the world.  Let us each make a conscious, daily choice to seek and celebrate the good. For all the times we have not done so—forgive us.

For the sin of withholding my words and feelings of love.

I miss people so much. I miss hugging my friends and laughing over dinner. I miss being at the game with my kids. I miss my fishing buddies around the campfire. I miss being able to hold people at a funeral when their heart is aching. I miss being able to hug family and friends at weddings when their most beautiful dreams come true.  I miss being able to see my eighty-seven-year-old mom in Minneapolis.

With so much loss and so much missing, I find myself saying I love you to more people more often with a sincerity in my heart that is deep and true.  Why must it take a pandemic for me to express my feelings of love openly and without fear?  Why must it take missing someone so much for me to be able to say “I love you?” May the ease with which I now express love remain when the virus is gone.  For the sin of withholding our expressions and feelings of love—forgive us.

In the year ahead, may we embrace these lessons Covid-19 has come to teach us.  For the sin of disrespecting millennials, for thinking too much of the outer image we thought mattered so much, for the prejudices we have denied but must face, for the time we have wasted, for our pessimism and, most of all, for the times we could have said I love you and failed, forgive us, pardon us, and grant us atonement.  Amen.