In the latest edition of his Search for Meaning podcast, Stephen Wise Temple Senior Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback delivers his 2022 (5783) Yom Kippur sermon, entitled, “Letting Go – To Grow.” You can view the full video and other High Holy Day highlights here.
The full transcript follows:
Last month, Jacqueline and I dropped our youngest daughter off at college.
This was our third time so we knew the drill: the first order of business after helping shlep their luggage to their dorm rooms is the journey to Bed, Bath, and Beyond.
This wasn’t a thing when I went to school more than thirty years ago. My parents took me to Eppley Airfield in Omaha, helped me check in my duffel bags, hugged me tight, wished me luck, and sent me on my way. A few hours later I arrived at my destination and found my way to the shuttle bus which took me to campus. I dragged my heavy bags to the housing office, got my key, and—schvitzing profusely in the August heat—met my roommates for the first time.
Whatever we had forgotten to bring with us, well, the University Store had many essential items and there was a department store in town that was about a 15-minute walk away. Over the first few weeks of college, somehow, we managed to procure everything we needed to get ourselves set up.
That’s not how it’s done today—at least not in my experience. By and large, parents accompany their kids to school, and today it seems like it’s the parents’ job to procure those necessary items. Enter into any one of these “domestic merchandise retail stores” situated within a thirty-minute drive of a university campus from mid-August to early September, and you’ll see the same thing: parents pushing shopping carts filled with bins, cleaning products, contraband microwave ovens and mini-fridges, and whatever else is on the list that’s mostly likely been texted to them by their matriculating student. You can witness in real-time panic setting in as you see one parent snatching the last twin size mattress pad in the store.
A little more than a month ago, I made this pilgrimage for the last time.
We are now officially “empty nesters,” gradually getting used to our quieter, neater home.
Each of these college drop-offs has taught me something powerful and profound about letting go, lessons that can help us and those we love grow and mature, and especially on this Day of Atonement, lessons that can help us achieve healing and forgiveness.
While some of this wisdom relates to parenting, I want to acknowledge that not everyone in this room is a parent, will be a parent, or wishes to be a parent. But we are all somebody’s child and we all have relationships at our places of work and communities we care about where these lessons are applicable.
The first lesson is that letting go, at the right time and in the right way, is good for others, for our loved ones, our colleagues, or those we mentor. They need us to let go of them.
When our girls were little, we held them so tightly, literally and figuratively. God forbid we’d drop them! We’d check on them in the middle of the night to make sure they were still breathing.
I remember holding their little hands in mine as I helped them take their first steps, releasing them at just the right moment as they’d lurch forward and fall. And then I’d gently help them up so they could try again.
I remember the first time they rode a bike without training wheels, standing there, both proud and heartsick, as the most precious thing on earth to us slowly rolled down the street.
Years later, it was teaching them to drive, me sitting in the passenger seat, gripping the door handle for dear life as they eased the car out of the driveway.
Each of these moments came in its appointed hour, at a time that is deemed appropriate to release our grip just a little bit more so that our little ones can grow up, mature, learn to care for themselves, and ultimately become productive members of society – all for their own good and ours as well.
We must let go, little by little, stage by stage.
Holding on too tight for too long is not healthy for our children or for ourselves.
I see this sometimes with couples I marry. The mother of the groom phones me to discuss her son’s wedding. After wishing her “mazel tov,” I say gently, “Please have your son call me. It’s better to have these conversations with the bride and groom directly. I’ll meet with them in person to discuss the details.”
“Can I come to the meetings?” mom sometimes asks. “No,” I say, “but you can come to the wedding!”
It’s wonderful that parents want to help but this isn’t the best way and our tradition understands this quite well. Stage by stage, our kids are supposed to become more capable, more self-reliant, less in need of our assistance.
Rabbi Yehudah ben Tema, a sage of the 2nd Century, teaches in Pirkei Avot:
“At 5 years of age [children begin to] study Torah; at 10, [they learn] Mishnah; at 13[they become b’nai mitzvah], subject to the commandments; at 15, [they] study Talmud; at 18, [they] marry, [they start their own home]; at 20they embark on a career; at 30, they reach the peak of strength; at 40, they achieve wisdom; at 50, they give counsel …” (Pirkei Avot 5:21)
If we want our children to become self-sufficient, productive adults whom others will come to someday for advice, we have to let them go so they can grow.
We will still cherish one another. We can visit, spend time together. They will still be our children and we, their parents.
Maybe you heard the story about Sammy and his mother? One year on Rosh Hashanah morning, Sammy’s mom woke him up to tell him it was time to get ready to go to Temple.
“I’m not going,” Sammy said.
“Why not?” His mother asked.
“I’ll give you two good reasons,” he said. “One, they don’t like me, and two, I don’t like them.”
His mother replied, “I’ll give YOU two good reasons why you are going to Temple. One, you’re 46 years old and two, you’re the Rabbi!”
If we hold on too tightly for too long, we can cause damage to those we care about.
A 2018 study found that “over-parenting”—defined as overcontrolling, overprotecting, and over perfecting our children—impairs their ability to regulate emotions and behavior. A 2014 study found that over-parenting is associated with higher levels of anxiety and depression in the child, including college age children.
Dr. Deborah Gilboa, a family practice physician who focuses on how parents can build resiliency in their children, suggests that good parenting means letting children struggle, allowing them to deal with disappointment, helping them learn how to work through failure, and empowering them to do the tasks that they are physically and mentally capable of. (I can’t help but suggest that this includes reaching out to the rabbi all by themselves when they are old enough to get married.)
As Dr. Gilboa puts it, “Remembering to look for opportunities to take one step back from solving our child’s problems will help us build the resilient, self-confident kids we need.”
The same is true with those we supervise and mentor. While a good mentor should encourage and advise their mentees, ultimately it is up to the mentee him or herself to experiment, to fail, to recover, to succeed, to flourish, and eventually to move on to the next challenge. Just as a good mother or father shouldn’t “over-parent” their children, a good mentor shouldn’t schedule and attend their mentee’s job interviews or micromanage their mentee’s day-to-day work lives.
The second lesson about letting go is that it’s good for us.
Letting go can help us move forward. On our ancestors’ journey from bondage to freedom, there were moments when they wanted to return, moments when it’s clear that they haven’t let go of Egypt yet, they’re still holding on to that past. When they tire of eating the manna in the wilderness, they cry out: “We remember the fish that we used to eat in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. Now our gullets are shriveled. There is nothing at all! Nothing but this manna to look to!” (Numbers 11:5-6)
As painful as Egyptian bondage was, many of the Israelites simply couldn’t let go, couldn’t move on.
The only way forward was to journey away from Egypt into the unknown, despite the fears, despite the challenges that inherently accompany change.
Once we’ve let go, we know that there’s no turning back, the only way is forward. In fact, one of the 613 mitzvot of our tradition is not to return to Egypt.
Now clearly this doesn’t mean that we forget the past. Quite the opposite: our ancestors remember the good food in Egypt. We tell the story of our Exodus at every Passover Seder, every time we say Kiddish on Friday nights.
But letting go means accepting the fact that if we truly wish to move forward, we cannot return to the past.
This is a global moment for that wisdom. We remember the way things used to be just a few short years ago. We long to return, to make things go back to the way they were. Letting go means accepting that this simply isn’t possible. We must move forward, difficult as it is. To navigate the “new normal,” or the “now normal,” requires us to move on – not forget but move on – from the way things were and to create new (and hopefully) even better ways of doing things. Our high holiday services this year are an example of this. Many of us are enjoying a return to in-person worship and the sense of community it brings. But, also providing a high-quality streaming option allows for those who live far away or who face challenges in being here to participate and enjoy our special community on these special days.
But it’s not just about moving forward, letting go can also be an act of self-preservation, something we need to do so that we can be whole.
Our tradition teaches us this lesson through the example of Moses and the tablets on which the Ten Commandments were engraved. The Torah tells us of the painful moment in which Moses sees the Israelites committing the sin of idolatry with the golden calf.
In Exodus 32:19, we read:
“As soon as Moses came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, he became enraged; and he hurled the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain.” (Exodus 32:19)
Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir, known as the Rashbam, a 12th century sage, shares a profound teaching about this painful moment.
He writes that “when Moses saw the golden calf, [he was so upset that] he became physically too weak to continue to carry the weight of the Tablets and he hurled them away, וַיַּשְׁלֵ֤ךְ מִיָּדָו֙ אֶת־הַלֻּחֹ֔ת, as far as possible from himself so that he wouldn’t drop them on his feet!”
When Moses was carrying the tablets down the mountain, he held on to them tightly because they were so precious to him. God forbid that he would drop them!
But when it became clear to him that because of his anger, because of the trauma of what he had seen, he could no longer hold on to the tablets, that if he tried, he’d surely injure himself, he used the last bit of his strength to hurl them away.
Rabba Sara Hurvitz, a contemporary scholar, explains that “…in Rashbam’s imagination, [Moses] simply could not hold onto what suddenly had turned into a heavy burden, and threw the Tablets away to protect his feet. But why is Rashbam so concerned about [Moses’s] feet? …Rashbam understood that if [Moses] injured his legs, he would not be able to get up and climb the mountain again. If he hadn’t known when to let go, if he had not preserved his physical and emotional well-being… he would not have found the resilience to get up and try again. This act of shattering the Tablets, is what made [Moses] the greatest leader of all times. The formula for [Moses] was knowing when to grasp tightly…” and “…when to let go.”
Moses understood that holding on to the tablets was no longer safe, no longer healthy for him physically or emotionally.
So too with us. Sometimes, for our own well-being, we have to let go of the hurt, the anger, and the pain. And this is the urgent and timely part of my message for this Day of Atonement.
What hurt, what pain, what regret do we need to let go of so we can grow; so we can become our best selves; so we can be whole, spiritually and physically; and so we can forgive and be worthy of forgiveness?
It’s hard work this letting go. Often those who’ve hurt us fail to apologize or attempt to make restitution for the harm they’ve done. Sometimes they might not even be aware of the ways they have wronged us.
I want to be very clear: I am not suggesting that every transgression is forgivable – clearly there are some things that are beyond the pale. But in your own experience, wouldn’t you say that most of the ways others have hurt you can be forgiven? Even if their apology is lame, one of those “I’m sorry you feel that way,” non-apology apologies that tend to make things worse, not better, Rashbam and Rabba Hurvitz suggest that for our own good, for our own souls, for our own selves, we should find the way to let go of the pain, let go of the hurt, and move on.
Letting go can be hard but it’s necessary and it can be healing and nourishing as well. And it is often a release, freeing us from something that is holding us back.
Author Jack Kornfield frames this powerfully through a story about the reunion of two former prisoners of war. One asks the other, “Have you forgiven our captors yet?” The other replies, “No! Are you crazy? I’ll never forgive them!” The first one looks with kindness at his friend and says, “Well, then they still have you in prison, don’t they?”
Letting go doesn’t mean forgetting. I can close my eyes and remember well what it was like to hold their little hands in mine, to have them fall asleep on my chest, my breath lifting their little bodies.
Sometimes I just want to go back. I want that moment again.
But those chapters are over and a new one has arrived. There will be, I trust, satisfaction and beauty in this chapter as well but to experience and appreciate it fully, I must let go of the past.
In this New Year, O God, may we be given the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to discern when to hold on and when to let go.
For those we love, those we support, those we serve—and for ourselves as well.