Three years ago, on Erev Rosh Hashanah, I stood on this bima in pain. It was a pain I could not yet speak about, certainly not from this bima on my first High Holy Days at TAE. And, it was a pain I had already lived with for years. My consolation -- my escape that night -- was prayer, blessings and the excitement of meeting so many of you for the first time. At the same time, I dreaded our sacred text. I knew that we, along with millions of others during the day time service, would read the story of Hannah from our Haftarah. Hannah, in the First Book of Samuel, is a woman who comes to the Temple at Shiloh and pours her heart out in front of the altar. A woman who has searched her past to uncover what she did to deserve her lot. A woman who has explored her soul to discover the flaw, the mark, the meaning to her story. A woman who could not conceive and bear a child with her husband Elkanah. A woman much like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Michal. A woman, a couple . . . that I know so well. One who has tried all the methods, has been questioned and tested and is exhausted from years of waiting, years of hoping. I know Hannah, because I have walked in her steps. And on that day, three years ago, before we could sit down for an Erev Rosh Hashanah dinner, before we could catch our breath and prepare to welcome in the new year with blessings, Corey and I made one last trip to the fertility doctor. After years and years of saying one more step, one more step, we finally said, this is our last try. We had traveled so many different avenues, so many doctors; even amulets, pilgrimages and prayer. But we received no angelic visitor to announce our good fortune. No religious figure to tell us that we should have no worries. No blessings. . .no blessings. . . Only disheartening images on an ultrasound; only quiet sullen phone calls from the doctors’ office.

This time three years ago, when we said “one last try,” we decided to simultaneously begin an adoption from China. A process that should have brought a little girl into our lives in just over a year has again, instead, brought us the pain of empty arms. There are all sorts of reasons -- many political -- that our adoption will end up taking about four years total, but for now, we wait. . . again.

So today, after 17 years of marriage, we have no teenager to teach to drive, no 13 year old to teach to read Torah. We have no child to hold up to this community to say: “Look at what God has given us!”

This is my pain. . . .

This is my pain. And, though it may be different than your experience with a death of a spouse, a terminal illness of a grandchild, an abusive parent or the stranglehold of an addiction, it is a pain that on some level we all may share. A gnawing emptiness, a helplessness, a loss, a weight on our shoulders that sometimes makes it hard to take even one more step. And yet also, it is a pain that I have accepted. Without ignoring it, without being consumed by it, but rather choosing to “be with” it.Rabbi Ted Riter p2 I know that for some it is hard to understand why we kept this to ourselves. For at least six years we told few friends or even family members. We did this purposefully, knowing that all too often people want to give advice. Even though their words are well-meaning, they are rarely new and often add to the pain.

At the Temple it is not uncommon to receive a call from a congregant who is undergoing one procedure or another or has just received a difficult diagnosis and does not want their information to be publicized. They call us so that we can support them as clergy, but they realize that if others hear the news, they will spend more time on the phone consoling their friends than receiving their support. I have always been curious about this phenomenon in which the supporter becomes the supported and the comforter becomes the one seeking comfort. For those living with long term illnesses or grieving the loss of a loved one, it can become an extra unwelcome burden to tend to the needs of others.

For many years, Corey and I have consoled others for our many miscarriages and failed pregnancies. Knowing looks from across the room, repeated questions on progress and next steps, and others’ excitedly told anecdotes of happy endings for other people. We have answered many quest ions and spent many hours comforting those who only really want the best for us; those who only wish that our dreams of having a family be fulfilled; those who have taken on our pain as their own.

We have also discovered many “doers” who inst inctively jump into “fixit” mode when they learn that something is wrong. We all see this kind of “doing” all the time. When a crisis happens for us or for others, people jump into action – calling doctors and making appointments, researching on the internet and looking for expert advice. We are going, going, going. . .doing, doing, doing. . . looking desperately for an answer. But when answers are not to be found? When “doing” seems like it is not getting us anywhere? We are at a loss. We cannot let go. We are paralyzed by our own pain or even someone else’s.

Pain, it seems for some, even becomes an identity. We are the diagnoses, the disability, the particular challenge. Though we voice a desire for health or change, we unconsciously hold on to the pain, afraid of loosing our sense of self. I’m not sure what we gain by taking on such an identity of seeing ourselves as martyrs or as victims. Perhaps it allows us to give ourselves an excuse for holding back. “It’s because of whatever that I am where I am today.” We choose to be helpless, to be stuck in place. We choose to “be the pain” personified, and actually allow that pain to take over our lives.

Some of us even take on the pain of another. Because, if I can be so wrapped up in someone else’s pain, I do not have to face my own pain. If I can talk about all the woes of someone else, I can avoid my own feelings. I can again be the martyr. But whether we are wrapped up in our pain or that of someone else, this all-consuming experience ironically prevents us from experiencing the full spectrum of human emotions. And on some level, we stop living.Rabbi Ted Riter p3 I’ve always thought that one thing that served me as a rabbi is that I am able to jump from one thing to the next. My days are never identical and in any given day I might go from organizational meetings, to private study sessions, from grief counseling to wedding preparation. A few weeks ago I even had a wedding, funeral and baby naming all in one day. I think that I have always had this talent – moving seamlessly between one experience and another -- not missing a beat as I change liturgies, venues and even clothing. Being able to easily shift gears with my thoughts and emotions; neatly fashioning my life into small boxes; not letting one spill over into the other.

I discovered over the years that my system of small boxes seems to work well not only in carrying out each day as a rabbi, but that compartmentalization also seems to work great for my own pain. It allows me to be fully present for others when they are in need. It even enables me to support others with their joys of pregnancy, birth, brises and baby namings. It is, after all, what made it possible for me to stand on this bima three years ago to lead a joyous holiday, even while my pain waited patiently in the wings. Although it gets me through the day, if I am going to be honest, I have also learned that in the end it does not really work.

I did once think that it was a great asset and even last week a congregant came to see me and marveled that her husband was able to break life into small manageable cubes of experience. But the human capacity to segment our lives ends up cutting off part of our emotions. We all have a spectrum of feelings from joy to grief, from excitement to numbness, from fulfillment to emptiness. This full range of human emotions is honest, authentic and true. But somewhere along the way we learned that it was preferable to only experience one side of this spectrum – the joy, the excitement, the fulfillment. The other part – the grief, numbness and emptiness – we relegate to movies. We can watch other people struggle with these feelings on the big screen or even in real life, but we keep it at a distance.

I believe that if we are cutting off the edges as we compartmentalize our lives, we are loosing something in the process. If we are shielding ourselves so that we will not feel the pains of life, we are also stunting our ability to feel the blessings on the other side of the spectrum. We can roll ourselves up with bubble wrap, thinking that we are insulating ourselves, or our kids, or other loved ones from pain, but the plast ic will eventually lead to our own suffocation. So how do we ensure that we can breathe? If being totally wrapped up in pain. . . if becoming our pain is not a healthy answer, and if compartmentalization is not a healthy answer, what are we to do?

The story goes that there is a woman who lives at the beach. At first, she loves it, but she eventually grows tired of the waves – the sound of them rushing in and out and crashing on the shore. She tries insulating her home, but every time she opens the door or a window she hears the waves crashing into the shore. She draws her blinds shut but quickly realizes that the loss of lightRabbi Ted Riter p4 makes her feel trapped. By shutting herself off completely from the beach she finds that she is shutting herself off from life.

One morning, she wakes up and decides that she is going to go out to the beach to stop the waves. At first, she stands at the water’s edge. As she looks out at the abundance of waves, she knows that she will be out there all day with this task. As the small white water constantly comes up and over her feet, she holds up her arms and yells, “Stop!” This goes on for a good part of the day, but the waves keep coming.

She looks into the ocean and is fearful of the bigger waves, but she slowly wades out into the waters. The waves are foreboding, as they get bigger and bigger and the woman is overwhelmed, but again she hoists her arms, struggling to stay above the water and yells out to the ocean, or to God, or to someone, “Stop!” But, to no avail. In fact, the waves get bigger and bigger until the woman finally has to swim back to shore.

Upon returning to the sand and feeling totally dejected, she slowly walks back toward her house. She is overcome by thoughts of the waves that had taken their toll on her that day. And, she is already worried about the waves that will continue to come tomorrow. And as she walks up her path, her neighbor says, “How lucky you are to have spent this beautiful day at the beach.” Sometimes we cannot stop the waves. We can try. We can close ourselves off, shutting the windows and closing the blinds. We can tread water fighting gravity, trying to change things over which we actually have no control. We can go, and go, and go. We can do, and do, and do. We can distract ourselves with busy things that momentarily take our minds, hearts and souls out of the pain. . . .

Or, we can simply choose to spend the day at the beach. We can “be with” the pain. We can expand our capacity to be with that which is painful so that it actually becomes less so. It is a muscle that we are not used to flexing. Or perhaps better, it is muscle we are not used to relaxing. In the end it is our choice. Do we want to be defined by our pain or amputate our emotions to avoid pain?

People come to see me all the time looking for an answer. A broken marriage, a sick child, a cloud that seems to follow them. I often say that if I only had some kind of pixie dust that I could use to make things better, I would. But, I don’t. Sure, sometimes there are very real things that we can do to make things better. But often times, “doing” is just a way of avoiding the “being”. And “being” is where we experience “living.” Living does not always involve comforting feelings. There is pain. And, we can fight it and risk frustration and paralyses, or we can learn to “be with” it.

As our Torah portion reminds us tomorrow, our lives are filled with choices. We have choices between curses and blessings. We have choices between “doing” and “being.”

“Being” is a real option. It is a choice we can make and it is embedded in Jewish tradition. Our mourning practice, for instance, guides us to make sure we understand the realness of death.Rabbi Ted Riter p5 Unlike other traditions that celebrate death as a departure to a better place, we mourn our loss in this world. We tear a ribbon, we help bury our loved ones by placing earth back into the ground, we sit shivah. All of these practices are to support us in realizing the pain. We do not hide our pain and grief away in some hermetically sealed box on the top shelf. Because if we do, we know that one day when we take it down and open it up the pain will be perfectly preserved and waiting for us. So we experience “being with” it. We experience the full spectrum of our human emotions. And, when shivah ends, we are taught to walk around the block. We are encouraged to sew up a kriah ribbon when the year of mourning has ended. We are counseled to put our lives back together, never forgetting our loss, but also never forgetting our life. Corey and I will never forget what it has been like to struggle with our infertility. The repeated losses, the cycle of hope and hope dashed and then hope renewed again. For years we put that “hope dashed” into our little boxes, preferring to focus on the positive, on the possibilities, on our faith and trust that it would be OK. We tried to master the waves of the ocean and we tried pulling the blinds closed. We did that. . . and, it only got us so far. Eventually we recognized that protecting ourselves was preventing us from experiencing all of our emotions. It was a wall of strength that shielded us from the pain, but in the end it was only a façade. Our experience has given us a new lens to see the world, it has forever changed the way we look at our sacred texts about our barren matriarchs and patriarchs, and it has strengthened the way we approach our lives. Our hope is still to have a child. God willing, by this time next year we will have completed our adoption that we began three years ago at this time. We do not expect the joy of adoption to erase the pain of infertility. But our pain is not something in which we have enveloped ourselves. And our pain is not something we have compartmentalized away. Instead, it is something we have chosen simply to “be with”. And that lesson, in itself, has been a blessing.

In this new year, may we each have the strength to be with the pains that life sometimes brings us, and our families and our loved ones. And may the tears of experiencing that pain be the blessing that waters new growth within our hearts and souls.

G’mar Hatima Tovah – May we all be sealed in the “Book of Life” for the new year.