Last summer, I discovered that the pain I was living with in my arm was a simple case of tennis elbow. For the first time in my life, I went to physical therapy, visiting the center weekly for about a month to get treatment and learn exercises to cure the pain.

Sitting in the open room, resting my arm on the treatment table, I saw a most unsettling sight. At every table, a different body part was being exercised, iced, stretched, massaged, heated, treated. Attached to each of these body parts was a person. Shoulders, knees, backs, wrists. None of these parts went together. It was like Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones, scattered throughout the room, except that each part was living and breathing, flesh and blood, in the process of healing. Each of us worked alone in this room full of people.

We were not healing together. Each person came and went at their appointed time and few of us ever interacted, except when we spoke to the therapists.

On the other hand (so to speak), my injury was not just a matter of "fixing" my elbow. The pain shot through my arm. The exercises I did involved my wrist. As I progressed, I became more aware of how I lift up a jug of milk, or how I carry heavy bags, or pick up objects with one hand or two. In other words, my body part was not separate from me, but part of an intricate network of muscles and nerves, mind and body, working together for healing and learning to prevent further injury.

Now, very few people knew that I even had tennis elbow. As far as everyone else was concerned, I was a healthy, whole human being. But think about times you have seen someone with a neck brace, or a cast, or a wheelchair. How often do you look at them and focus only on what’s broken, forgetting that that neck or back or leg is really only one broken part of a whole human being? How many cancer survivors appreciate being called "cancer survivors"? I’ll never forget Madelyn telling me that she wanted to stop going to the support group for people with brain damage, because she doesn’t want to think of herself as a brain-damaged person. That broken part does not define us.

Since last September 11, there has been a tendency to view the world as if it were the sum of its broken parts. A knee on this table: Terrorists are one broken part. Our government justifies questionable civil rights infractions, unilateral decision-making, and tremendous defense budgets at the expense of health care, based on the ongoing "war on terrorism." A shoulder on that table: Security systems are another broken part. When we travel on airplanes or go to the baseball game, we have learned to excuse the handbag searches and the ID checks. A back on the other table. The peace process in the Middle East is broken. When we think of Israel or the Palestinians, we are consumed with anguish over this one aspect of life there. Yet all of these are simply unhealed parts of a world that is aching to be whole.

How do we remain whole in a broken world?

The broken glass at the wedding reminds us of the sorrow we feel when remembering the destruction of the Temple. Why did our ancestors need to be reminded of sorrow? For much of our history, (though not all of it) our ancestors lived in difficult circumstances. From our perspective, they lived with sorrow. They needed the joy of the wedding to lift them up out of their circumstances. The broken glass appears superfluous.

We live in a relatively calm, prosperous, comfortable time. Until 9/11, troubles of the world belonged to other people, for the most part. Disease, war, famine and destitution are far from our experience. When we break the glass, we are reminded that the world is still in pieces, that our joy only extends so far, and fails to reach so many others. When we break the glass, we remember dramatically and poignantly, that our perfect world is torn by the suffering of others. We also acknowledge that our simchas can bring healing and tikkun, holy repair, to the broken places of life.

For the truth is, actually, that we all live with brokenness. As comfortable as we are, many of us live in broken families. We live with broken hearts. We dwell in broken neighborhoods. How we make sense of our own broken selves and our broken lives can shed light on how to face the tragic brokenness that seems to pervade our world, and threatens us with despair. And how we make sense of the tragedy of last September 11, one year later, undoubtedly will offer lessons for facing the small, but heart-breaking tragedies of our individual lives.

A memory from this past year

In March, returning from my annual rabbinic convention, I was riding on a train from Philadelphia back to Boston. Enjoying the long hours of quiet uninterrupted reading, I chanced to look up from my book just as we crossed New York Harbor and faced Manhattan. As I stared at the skyline of lower Manhattan, the empty space in the sky was a silent reminder of uncountable losses. I stared and stared out the window, tears running down my soul like a windowpane. It was my first glimpse of ground zero. Even though I was across the river and removed from the rubble itself, the impact of that "empty sky" brought tears to my eyes. I wondered, what do other people think when they see this view? If you’ve been to Ground Zero, or seen the New York skyline, think back on what question was uppermost in your mind.

When observing monumental destruction, whether the World Trade Center or the Pentagon, the Temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, or the ravages of the Shoah, human beings often immediately jump to the cosmic meaning behind these cataclysmic events. We ask God—why? Or we blame God: How could You have let this happen? You whom we credit and praise for the glory of Creation. You whom we exalt for the intricacy of the human mind, for the vast beauty of mountains and oceans and for the magnificent and dependable balance of forces in the universe! You must have had a role in this awesome tragedy as well! And if you didn’t make it happen, then you, God, are responsible for simply letting it happen.

But this thinking lets people off the hook. Why would God—a presence who, above all, is not evil, not desirous of suffering—why would God help in any way to cause this? By omission or commission, would God be the source of such an act, big or small?

The Rabbis teach us that all is foreseen, but free will exists. They knew, as we sometimes forget, that just as we are not in control of the universe, neither is God. The world is not whole, because we humans are constantly working to take it apart and put it back together. If God is blamed, then the perpetrators are absolved of responsibility

But why do we prefer to ask, where was God? Because we’d like to believe that God will save us from ourselves. We prefer the easy magic of God bringing change than the hard work of going about changing ourselves. We want and expect God to put the pieces back together again.

So where is God in all this?

In the Book of Psalms, a classic work that should be in every therapist’s bookshelf and on the night table of anyone who has ever been sad or ill or lonely, the poet writes that God is the healer of broken hearts, harofeh lishvurei lev. (Psalm 147:6) You undoubtedly have a variety of your own responses to the question, where was God. I take the theological approach of Mordecai Kaplan, the creative mind behind Reconstructionist Judaism. For me, God is the power that is present in human experience, representing all that is good and all that humanity hopes to become and achieve.

God is the power that enables us to rediscover hope and purpose.

God is in the connection that lifts people up out of their grief.

God is the untapped energy that propels us forward to rebuild—buildings, cities, families, lives.

God is also the creator of the natural laws that we depend on, that enables gravity to pull down disabled buildings, or that creates cells that multiply, whether benign or malignant, that causes water to flow, whether clear and life-sustaining or toxic and polluted, whether watering our gardens or flooding Europe’s cities.

God provides the power, but we need to respect it and recognize its capacity for destruction as well as for creation. God doesn’t make the decisions about how to use jet planes, we do. God doesn’t watch over the security cameras, human beings do. When we seek to use technology for good, we are being godlike. When we reach out to help and not harm, we are being godlike. When we look at the broken world and step forward to work to make it whole once again, we are being godlike. We are doing what God calls us to do, and being the best human God challenges us to be.

An aside:

[As I said, this is my own way of understanding how God functions, for me and as I see the world. It is the approach of one Jewish thinker. If this question appeals to you, if God is a question for you at all, I hope that you will consider studying with me later this year, as we explore a variety of authentic Jewish approaches to theology.]

One of the most powerful examples of how Judaism accepts the brokenness of the world, even as we reach toward wholeness, is an image taken from the Torah and the Talmud. You may recall that when Moses came down the mountain with the two tablets containing ten commandments, he became angry when he discovered the Children of Israel dancing around a golden calf. Do you remember what he did at that moment? He threw the tablets on the ground, and they shattered into pieces. After the Israelites repent and destroy the Golden Calf, Moses returns to the summit and brings back a second set of tablets.

But do you know what happened to the fragments of those first tablets? Because the Torah is vague about the first tablets, the Rabbis suggest (Tractate Berachot 8B/Baba Batra 14B): "The intact tablets and the broken tablets were both kept in the ark." Both, because both had value. Their content was the same. Had they been in a file drawer, we would have tossed one and kept the clean copy.

But the rabbis understood the symbolic weight of the broken tablets kept side-by-side with their intact replacement. As my colleague, Rabbi Richard Hirsh, explains, "To live in the real world is to experience brokenness, incompleteness, and frustration." We experience the brokenness, but we are called to seek wholeness. The kabbalistic explanation for our fragmentary existence begins at the beginning, with the creation of the world. According to the teaching of Rabbi Isaac Luria, who knew the pain of those who were refugees from the Expulsion from Spain, when God created the world, God filled the physical shell with a powerful divine light. But it was so powerful that it shattered the new vessel, sending sparks of divinity in every direction. Our task as human beings, according to the kabbalah, is to engage in tikkun, in holy repair, to find the divine light within the shards that tear at our fragile existence.

Each of us must do our own acts of tikkun, holy repair, every day. For some, that can be rebuilding broken walls, for another, warming broken hearts.

Lest you think that there is an end to this work, that perfection is attainable and wholeness is eternal, guess again. The concept in physics of entropy describes a similar state—that the components of the universe are constantly diffusing, moving away from one another The work is never done. It is the essence and the engine of a meaningful life—to bring healing to the broken places.

Or, as the Hasidic master, Rabbi Menahem Mendl of Kotzk taught, "The only whole heart is a broken one." Here, in this sanctuary, as we enter the New Year, we bring our broken hearts as an offering, with the hope that by Yom Kippur we can emerge whole, if only for one powerful, inspiring moment. As Rabbi Hirsh teaches, "The second set of tablets, given after the rebellion of the Golden Calf, became a symbol of forgiveness and reconciliation -- and of healing. The second unbroken set of tablets teaches us that what has been shattered can be repaired. We are given a second chance, a glimpse of what can be, and the hope that it may yet come to be."

What can we do to bring about this tikkun, this holy repair? Three simple things.

1. Give thanks for what is whole and nurture it. Enjoy the small things that make up a whole life, not just the brokenness.

There's a cute story told about having a positive attitude. It's about a man whose life was far from easy.  In fact it was downright difficult.

But whenever someone asked him how he was, he'd say: "Great!" Not just 'Good,' but 'Great'.

Finally someone asked him: What's the story?  Sure it's good to be upbeat. But 'Great'?

And he smiled and said: 'I'll never say it's bad. Because the last thing I need is for the 'heavenly court' to say: 'He calls that bad?' We'll show him what bad really is.'

But this way, who knows? Maybe they'll say: 'He calls this great? We'll show him what great really is!'

2. Engage in acts of tikkun

The Rabbis of the Talmud, Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai and Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Akiva lived through the worst destruction in Jewish history, long before the horrors of the Shoah. They saw the burning of Jerusalem, the exile of its leaders, and the decimation of our holy places. They saw the failure of the Bar Kochba rebellion, whose aftermath left them in a worse condition than following the destruction of the Temple itself. Their world was left in ruins. And out of that desolation, they created the Mishna, the collection of Jewish law and tradition that was the basis for the Talmud, and for the rules that Jews have lived by ever since, and at its heart, Pirke Avot, Ethics of the Fathers, a morality manual on bringing goodness into a world of hatred and destruction. Study of Torah and observance of mitzvot, deeds of compassion and integrity, became the foundation of Judaism when its thousand-year old Temple traditions were decimated.

And so the everyday acts, of giving thanks for our food, and of sharing food with others, of covering our bodies in rituals garments, and in clothing the naked, the work that we do to bring holiness and wholeness to those around us, is a time-honored Jewish approach to life in the midst of brokenness.

3. Don’t despair. Find something hopeful in every day.

Martin Buber has written, on hope:
"Either we have hope within us or we don't; it is a dimension of the soul, and it's not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart.

"Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.

"Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

It is also this hope, above all, which gives us the strength to live and continually try new things. "

Every Rosh Hashanah offers us a new beginning. This past year, we were reminded by tragedy, by an empty sky over Manhattan, that we were not just invited, but we were obligated to begin again. Every generation learns that to be human means to remain whole in the face of our brokenness. May we who have witnessed tragedy and loss, and been touched by fear and despair, find a way to see the wholeness of our world, to look beyond the headlines and the security lines. May we find hope each morning and gratitude each night.

Ken yehi ratzon

Rabbi Barbara Rosman Penzner

Rosh Hashanah 5763/2002