Sermon—Ki Tetse

August 27, 2004, 11 Elul, 5764

Today was an emotional day for me. If you have a handkerchief or tissues, reach into your pockets and hold them in your left hand. You or your neighbor might need them.

Thirty-seven years ago, on the anniversary of this Torah portion, I was called to read from the Torah for the first time. This week’s Torah portion, Ki Tetse, was my Torah portion when I had my Bar Mitzvah in1967. What a wonderful time that was! As a rabbi, I have been doing b’nai mitzvah services for the past 25 years, and I will assure that I was the funniest looking Bar Mitzvah boy to grace any pulpit during these years. I was a bit chubby (are you surprised?!) with a double chin, an almost crew cut and large horn-rimmed glasses. My mother wore a yellow dress, the same color as Jackie Kennedy’s dress when she showed off the refurbished white house to the American public. My dad was the rabbi of the Temple, and I guess we were the Jewish Kennedy’s of Reform Jews in Malden, Massachusetts. At my Bar Mitzvah lunch, I smoked a cigar for the first time. It made me feel a little puny, but I wouldn’t dare admit it. At my party, I danced with all the girls I wanted to dance with downstairs in the basement of Temple Tifereth Israel, and they all had to dance with me, even the popular girls, because it was my party. I even danced with Janie Franklin, Ellen Grossmann and Norma Weisberg.

1967 was a magical time to be a thirteen year old. We Jews were triumphant and still astounded that Israel won the Six Day War so handily. Jerusalem was reunited. The Beatles released Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. We would watch the Monkeys on TV, and their song, I’m a Believer, was the most popular hit song on WMEX in Boston. Lots of my friends wore Nehru jackets and bell bottoms to my party. The Red Sox would win the American League Championship in the last day of the season in the final game against the Minnesota Twins. They had to sweep all three games to win the pennant, and they did! I went to a lot of baseball games that year in Fenway Park. I snuck into an “R” rated movie and saw Jane Fonda in Barbarella. The Vietnam War, which we watched on CBS news with Walter Cronkite, was still an abstraction to us. John Kerry had not yet gone over there to command his swift boat.

Every year when I read Ki Tetse, I become a little wistful. Those days of 1967, my wonder years, are long gone. I have passed through that era of my life, and some others too. I passed through that era of my childhood, that era of Moshe Dayan, Carl Yaztremski, John Lennon and Micky Dolenz, and Janie, Ellen and Norma. They are all pleasant memories from yesterday—so different from the life I lead today. That door to my childhood is closed now, and I open it up all too infrequently.

Today was an emotional day for me as I mentioned earlier. I woke up at 6:00 and took my daughter Alana and Judi to the airport. Alana is going to college today. I will join them later in the weekend for the official orientation and move in. I will be useful not for my wisdom or my organizational skills. I don’t feel that I have too much of either these days. I will be called upon for my ability to schlep and write checks and wait by the car that is parked in the no parking zone.

Judi has been handling this departure really well. I have to hand it to her. She is a wonderful wonderful mother. Judi has spent the summer preparing, helping Alana clean out her room, buying all the stuff she will need, preparing a going away scrapbook and crying in bed every night. She is prepared, God bless her. Me, on the other hand, I have used the effective coping mechanism of denial. I simply refused to go there. I would not walk into her room if I could help it. That is a great way of coping. I walk around with a chipper outlook, as I would said to myself, “I will wait to feel the loss until I actually have to say goodbye.”

For me, that was a good coping mechanism. Today was my day of reckoning. Today I had to say goodbye, and I felt the loss, like a ton of bricks on my chest. It was a quick goodbye, a strong hug, and a very fast turn around and walk to the parked car. I turned around for the briefest of seconds to wave to her at the check-in counter. I walked through that big revolving door at the airport, and I cried all the way home. I didn’t even listen to NPR. And I felt like I was walking from the cemetery for someone I love.

Now look, I know the difference between a funeral and sending my daughter to college. Nobody here is dead, thank God. I know that Alana is going to the school of her choice. She earned her acceptance through her hard work and fine character. I could not be happier for her or more proud of her. She is beginning her adult life, and she will continue to blossom and grow and show others the fine human being that she is. I have no doubts about Alana or her abilities or her character. But she walked through the revolving door at the airport, and the door has stopped revolving. She is on a one-way journey to adulthood.

The fact is, it just seems that life’s door is a revolving door. But the doors that mark the chapters in our lives are only one-way doors. It feels like we keep walking around and around and around through the years. But our lives are not on a revolving door track. We walk through the doorways of the years, and we don’t come back around. The doorways close behind us. So I rejoice in Alana’s adulthood, and I eagerly anticipate much naches and joy and love and satisfaction from her. And at the same time, I mourn for her the end of her childhood and I mourn for me the end of my own childhood. These losses are good losses, but they are losses none-the-less. And I would have it no other way. I know all the good things that come from this day, and I am entitled to both my sadness and my joy.

This week’s Torah Portion is called Ki Tetse, when you go out . . . It speaks of all sorts of laws that the Israelites are to observe when in short time they will enter Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel. Moses knows that his end is coming. Moses knows that he will not enter the Promised Land. He will see it from afar. He knows that the road ahead is meant for others, for Joshua and the children of Israel to navigate. Without him. As I read the parasha this morning, I burst into tears. Suddenly the nuance of the Hebrew language jumped out at me.

Moses said to the Israelites, Ki Tetse, when you go out. Earlier in the book, he might have said, Ki Netse, when we go out. But he didn’t say that. He had separated himself from his people. Their future belonged to them, not to him. So he says, Ki Tetse, when you go out. You, not us. You, not me. This story, this Torah, this book which bears my name is not about me. This story, this Torah, this book is about you. It is about your comings and your goings. It is about your conflicts and your resolutions. It is about your growth and your development. Moses did not look back. The Promised Land was not someplace in his past. The Promised Land was not somewhere in Egypt or Midian or Sinai or Moab. The Promised Land lay in the future, out there among his children. The Promised Land is always in the future, and that is what the Torah is about.

My daughter begins her future today on her own. I will cheer her on. I know that my life is not over, that I am still trudging towards my own promised land. I have plenty of life and energy and purpose still left in me. This sermon does not bear a morose message, despite my tears today. I do not feel hopeless. The opposite is true. We all live with the idea that those things that are truly great and worth living for lie beyond the scope of our achievement and our years. So to Alana, and to all those children leaving home, and to all those parents launching their children into adulthood, and to all those who read Torah, and to all those who have read Torah, and to all those no longer here but who made sure that I would read Torah during my lifetime, and to all those who paved the way for me so that I could pave the way for my children, so that they can show their children into their Promised Land—good luck. May God grace you with good fortune, with much love and happiness. May sadness elude you and may your dreams come true. And may you know my joy in your own life, and in the life of all Israel,

Amen


Rabbi Jonathan Miller