​​​​Benjamin Fried​

Chris first saw Dana in Williamstown, Massachusetts, when Dana sang in the local Cabaret club.  Maybe it wasn’t love at first sight, but she certainly caught his eye, and the two quickly began dating.  Four years later, they married, and soon after Dana gave birth to their beloved son William.  Tragically Chris and Dana would not get to enjoy a life of bliss for long.  In an equestrian competition, Chris was thrown off his horse and crashed headfirst, shattering his first and second vertebrae, paralyzing him from the neck down.[1] 

 

Christopher and Dana Reeve, as you may know, would take this tragedy as an opportunity to spend the rest of their lives fighting on behalf of the disabled community.  They founded the Christopher Reeve Foundation and championed extended use of stem cell research for people with debilitating spinal injuries.  Sadly, Christopher could not withstand the sepsis that infected his broken body, and he died in 2004.  But perhaps the most devastating part of this story is that Dana, who had to endure the physical and emotional toll of being a caregiver, developed lung cancer and died in 2006, 44 years old.[2] 

 

This story breaks my heart because it feels so unjust.  How could this horrible spinal injury happen to Christopher Reeve, our Superman, who so many people looked up to?  Where is the meaning in Dana, who was so dedicated to a life of service and care giving, dying at such a young age?  The Reeves were good people, and it troubles us profoundly when bad things happen to good people. 

 

It is only natural to assume that there should be a sense of justice in the universe.  After all our tradition often expounds on the belief that God grants the righteous peace.  In the prayer Barukh She’amar, which is part of our morning liturgy, we chant Barukh m’shalem sachar tov lirei’av, “Blessed is the One who rewards His followers.”   This theology that God rewards those who follow His way comes from our Torah.[3]  In Deuteronomy, Moses tells Israel repeatedly that reward and punishment, life and death, stand before them, and that they must choose to live a righteous life and walk humbly with God in order to live a life of peace.  This tells us that we always have an existential choice to make:  live a moral life and receive blessing, or live an immoral life and receive curses. 

 

This theology is also deeply engrained in our secular lives.  My parents taught me throughout my childhood that to ensure myself a good job and a comfortable lifestyle, all I had to do was work hard and do my best.  This is the American Dream, based on the Puritanical work ethic, which teaches us that we can have the house and the family and the retirement account if we put in the hard work to earn them.  Just like Deuteronomy, our culture tells us that we are masters of our destiny, able to choose between success and failure.

 

Of course these vexing questions of destiny and reward and punishment are a central theme during these High Holy Days.  The U’n’tane Tokef prayer, which we recited this morning during the Amidah, says that on Rosh HaShanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed who lives and who dies, who gains fortune and who poverty, who lives in peace and who in anxiety.  Our liturgy creates the imagery of the Book of Life—the belief that God keeps tabs on our actions, judging us as either righteous or sinful.  If we have not lived a perfectly moral life, these ten days of awe are meant to help us change our fate through repentance. 

 

Now, the theology behind U’n’tane Tokef, these High Holy Days, and the belief in reward and punishment is an important part of many of our belief systems.  But for us rational, post-modern spiritual seekers, the thought of God keeping tabs on us in a gigantic book is not very meaningful.  Furthermore, we know from our experience that a formulaic belief in justice is far too simplistic.  The perpetual suffering of the Jewish people through exile, persecution and Holocaust, cannot fit into the belief in a God who metes out justice.  Even the American Dream cannot hold muster, given the number of hard-working people cheated out of jobs and financial security because bankers engaged in reckless speculation.  And how can we explain the story of Chris and Dana Reeve if we believe in divine justice?  We have to be honest with ourselves:  we don’t live in a world where people always get what they deserve.

 

This rather bleak reality can also be found in our tradition.  The strongest challenge to the notion of God’s justice comes in the book of Job, which demonstrates that bad things can indeed happen to a very good person through no fault of his own.  Job is an upright man.[4]  But despite this, Job’s children die in a tragic plague, his livelihood is destroyed, and he develops painful sores all over his body.[5]  Job cries out at what he perceives as God’s injustice, speaking some of the most agonizing poetry in the Bible: “Why did I not perish at birth, and die as I came out of the womb?”  “Why is light given to those in misery, and life to the bitter of soul, to those who long for death that does not come.”[6]  He at once despairs at the human condition, which he sees as filled with arbitrariness, and demands that God justify his suffering.  God ultimately affirms that Job did not deserve his plight.  However, God does not show compassion.  In fact, He rebukes Job, asking him: “Who is it that obscures my plans with words without knowledge?...Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?”[7]  In other words, Job has no standing to question the justice of God, because Job does not have God’s all-knowing perspective.  By extension, God also rebukes us, telling us that our finite perspective prevents us from claiming to know who deserves reward or punishment.  Job might have been right, but it does not matter.  The suffering of the just will not provoke God to action.  We have to accept a universe that can seem random and uncaring.

 

Perhaps the reason why I find the book of Job so compelling is that this God, this grandiose but heartbreakingly aloof God, is the God that so many of us know.  As I hear about horrible violence against innocent people, like Oscar Grant or the children of Sandy Hook, or think of my wonderful friends who have to navigate the hells of depression, I sometimes cannot help but think that there is no justice in the world.  However, these prayers that we say during the High Holy Days still move me to tears.  These words that affirm that repentance leads to a better life still have meaning for me, and I suspect, for many of you as well.  So how can we understand these sacred words and these sacred days in a meaningful way?  How do we understand God’s love in the face of the suffering of the righteous?  And what could our tradition say to the children of Christopher and Dana Reeve?

 

It is true that terrible things happen to good people for no reason at all.  Behaving morally cannot protect us from natural disaster or disease, and it often seems that the wicked prosper through dishonest means.  However, I deeply believe that conducting our lives in an honest and compassionate manner has very real rewards for us.

 

One of my favorite Chassidic tales illustrates this belief.  This story tells of a rich man Yosele, who has a reputation for being a complete miser.  In fact, he would regularly demean and verbally abuse the beggars on the street who would ask him for money.  His reputation was so bad that he alienated everyone he knew and ultimately died with no friends and no one to mourn for him.  But after his death, every poor person in town came to the rabbi, because the anonymous source of weekly charity that would sustain them through the week and keep them off the streets had suddenly disappeared.  As you may have guessed, our rich miser was actually supporting every poor person in town.  His stinginess was only a façade meant to protect the anonymity of his donations.[8]

 

In this story, we see that Yosele did not worry about the material or personal reward for his holy actions.  Despite keeping many beggars off the street with his anonymous donations, Yosele did not receive the benefit of friends or family or a reputation for generosity.  But none of that mattered to him.  The joy of giving tzedakah, of doing just a little to repair our broken universe, was more important to Yosele than receiving an earthly benefit.  This story teaches us that performing acts of loving-kindness has implicit value, a spiritual reward, even if it does not grant us a material reward.

 

But why does this matter?  Why should we live morally if we can lie and cheat our way to success?  Are spiritual rewards actually important if they can do nothing to protect our health or lives?  Yes, they are.  To explain why this is the case, Rabbi Shelly Donnell presented the idea of the “Mirror Test.”  The question that he presented was this:  When we look in the mirror, is the person we see looking back at us the father, son, brother, friend, or lover that we would want for ourselves? If we can answer yes, if we see someone who is open-hearted and who tries his very best to do the right thing, then we will have the spiritual attributes that we need to transcend suffering without despairing.  I truly believe that when we are the best people we can be, our lives are filled with blessings.  We will have the inner peace and resoluteness in our character to withstand hardship.  We will have the friends, mentors, and family that we need to support us.  On the other hand, if we cannot answer the “Mirror Test” in the affirmative, no amount of wealth and power can fill the inevitable void that will appear in our lives from broken relationships and a troubled soul.  Inner peace and contentment come not from material fortune, but from the spiritual rewards of the fulfillment of our character.

 

Professor Randy Pausch, author of The Last Lecture, is one of the most moving examples of why this Mirror Test is important.  In his lecture Professor Pausch persistently said that a good life is one in which we value people over material possessions and always conduct ourselves with the utmost of integrity.  Even though Professor Pausch achieved many of his childhood dreams, he says his life was most fulfilled through his ability as a professor to help others achieve their dreams.  He cared not for his house or his beautiful convertible, but for his children, his students, and his wife.  In short, his life was an archetype of loving kindness, selflessness, and honesty.  It should be noted that as Professor Pausch gave this moving lecture, he had terminal pancreatic cancer and would die only a few months later, leaving behind three small children.  He was not Pollyannaish about his situation—he knew that life dealt him a crappy hand.  Despite the injustice of his circumstance, he never gave up his fundamental belief that living a good life is the only way to achieve a profound inner happiness that is neither shallow nor fleeting.

 

Still we have to answer the question of how we understand our High Holy Days and the U’n’tane Tokef prayer, which say that material prosperity and our very lives are tied to good behavior.  Can we really believe this when we think about Randy Pausch or Christopher and Dana Reeve?  Perhaps not.  However, a literal translation of the Hebrew in the climactic line of U’n’tane Tokef helps us find a more realistic belief about reward and punishment.  Traditionally, it is translated as “repentance, prayer and charity can prevent an evil fate from happening to us.”  A direct translation of the Hebrew, however, reads closer to “Repentance, prayer, and charity can help us pass through the pain of our fate.”  Our destiny still stands.  We should not fool ourselves into thinking that we can always control our fate—many of the evils that befall us are simply unavoidable.  However, we can always control the way we react to them.  So, in many ways we do have the choice between life and death.  When we face hardship, we can despair of life, like Job, wishing we were never born.  Or, we can be like Randy Pausch, always choosing life.  For in choosing life, we will find that the joy of living a life connected to each other, connected to the totality of existence, and connected to the best within ourselves is a joy that can transcend pain, disease, suffering and despair.

 

Baruch m’shaleim sachar tov lirei’av.  Blessed is the One who rewards His followers.  These words are not just meaningless niceties that the rabbis inserted into our prayer.  If we allow them, these words can be the reality we live by.  For we know that even in the midst of ultimate suffering, it is good to be alive.

 

 

 

[1] Reeve, Christopher. Still Me, Random House, 1998, 18-25.

 

[2] Morosini, MD, Deborah (sister of Reeve) (Summer, 2007). "A Hole in the World: Dana Reeve's death revealed the other face of lung cancer.". CURE (Cancer Updates, Research and Education).

 

[3] Deuteronomy 28.

 

[4] Job 1:1.

 

[5] Job 1-2.

 

[6] Job 3:11, 20-21.

 

[7] Job 38:2, 4

 

[8] Cooper, David A. God is a Verb:  Kabbalah and the Practice of Mystical Judaism. New York:  Riverhead Books, 1997, 186-188.