On the Virtue of Being Yourself

Erev Rosh Hashanah Sermon, 2022/5783

By Rabbi Mark Glickman

Our world pushes us to conform, to be the same as everyone else, to fit the mold, to toe the line, to fade away into camouflaged familiarity and similarity with those around us; to refrain from being red roses shining out from the green, but to be yellow dandelions, instead, just like all of the other dandelions around us.

That’s what the world tends to tell us these days. But about six months ago, in a crowded airport lounge teeming with other travelers just like me, I had an experience that reminded me what a disservice our world does to us when it says this.

Just over a week before, I had gotten a call from two members of our congregation, Elysa and Nathan Morin (I share their names with their permission). They had just had a baby – a healthy little boy they were going to name Finn – like Finkelman – and they were hoping I could officiate at his bris eight days later. I was delighted – this is a terrific couple, they were already great parents to Finn’s older sister, Avery, and hearing the news of their son’s birth was a real joy. I almost shouted my “Mazel Tov” into the phone.

Then I opened my calendar, and my heart sank. How could I have forgotten? “I’m at a conference in San Diego next week,” I told them. “And the day of the bris is the day I come home. There’s no way I can get back in time for the ceremony.” Brises, you see, have to be on the eighth day – even if the eighth day is Yom Kippur, its eighth-ness trumps everything.

I paused. “I’d be glad to try to find another rabbi who could officiate,” I continued. “Or, if you’d like, I suppose I could try to Zoom in from my layover.”

“Rabbi Glickman,” they said, “we don’t want another rabbi there – we want you. If you could Zoom in, that would be great!”

“OK…if that’s what you want,” I said. Secretly, I was overjoyed that I’d be able to be there…and, I’ll admit, flattered that they wanted me to participate as much as they did.

My layover that day was at the Denver airport. No problem, I thought to myself, I’ll just find a quiet place to sit…at the Denver International Airport…and I’ll officiate at the bris over my computer from there. My layover was six hours long, so I figured I wouldn’t have a problem.

I walked off the plane after my San-Diego-to-Denver flight, and stepped into a madhouse. The Denver airport was mobbed. It was as if someone had uncorked the drain of the post-Covid travel delay tank over our heads, and the entire world was gushing out to take a flight that day, every one of which, from the looks of things, went through Denver. It was an international mass of tightly packed humanity. My plan had been to find a quiet place to sit, but I realized that finding a quiet place was going to be impossible. In fact, finding any place to sit wasn’t going to be easy. What was I going to do?

For a time, I wandered the concourse – a roaming, roving, rabbi in search of a nook or a cranny from which to conduct this bris, but every nook and cranny was occupied. It baffled me that the architects who designed that airport could be so completely oblivious to the needs of rabbis doing Zoom brises!

I began to think creatively. Maybe I could see if the nice woman on the loudspeaker could politely ask people to quiet down for a couple of minutes. Or maybe I could Uber out to a Starbucks in the Denver suburbs somewhere. Maybe I could ask an airport administrator to borrow their office. “You see…there’s this ceremony in Judaism…it involves a little surgery…I need to Zoom in….” No, none of these ideas was going to work.

But then I saw it. The answer to my problem. A gleaming, well lit, oaken portal to success, right there in the middle of Concourse C. Why hadn’t I thought of it before. The United Club! It would be quieter, more comfortable, and with six hours to kill, I could get some food and drinks, to boot.

I bought a one-day pass, and was ushered into the quiet – or at least quieter – confines of the airport lounge. There, I got a snack, read my book for a little while, and when the time for the bris drew near, I found a glass of wine that could do a passable job as a Kiddush cup, and sat myself down at a desk in the office section of the lounge.

There were lots of other desks there – rows of them, with people sitting on either side of me and with their backs to me across the aisle. I heard them talking on their phones; I heard them clacking away at the keyboards of their computers. From my left, I heard a man with a deep voice say, “Is this Mrs. Pearson…Yes, this is Jim calling, from FreeFlow Plumbing. You had a question about your drain?”

Then, from the other direction, I heard, “Hey, Vern, there’s two seats over here.” “I’m comin’, Hank, I’m comin’!” was the reply, and two big, scruffy guys made their way to the desks behind me.

I plopped a kippah onto the top of my head, set the glass of wine next to my computer, opened the screen, and booted up Zoom. Within a moment, courtesy of the wonders of modern technology, I was brought virtually into the living room of Elysa and Nathan’s family. Elysa was moving around a little gingerly, but she and Nathan wore smiles the size of the runway not far from where I sat. Their parents were there with them, and the doctor serving as the mohel was getting his equipment ready. And there, in Elysa’s arms, lay the most beautiful baby I had ever seen (except, of course, for my own kids and grandchildren, and about as beautiful as the other kids at whose ceremonies I had officiated…of course.) Nathan looked a tad nervous under his smile, and Elysa a little tired; their parents were kvelling, and Finn had no idea what was coming.

I’ll admit, I was a little self-conscious. After all, usually when I lead Jewish ceremonies, most of the people in the room are Jews. And when there are a lot of non-Jews, they expect me to do Jewish stuff. But very few people lead religious ceremonies from the United Lounge at Denver International Airport. From the moment I put that kippah on my head, I realized that this was going to be a little unusual. I didn’t want to stick out, to draw any unnecessary attention.

Plus, of all the events for me to do sitting there in that semi-crowded room, this one was going to be a bris! It involved…private parts. People might think it was weird, if not barbaric. A wedding or an anniversary blessing would have been so much easier.

And then, of course, there was the fear of antisemitism. There isn’t nearly as much of it these days as there used to be, but still, even now, for our people, that concern always lurks just under the surface, if not higher. I try to preach Jewish self-assurance and pride, but I have to admit that I did experience a tad of trepidation as I sat there that day.

But I couldn’t afford to let those concerns paralyze me, of course – I had a bris to do.

“Hello!” I said, “and mazel tov.”

“Thank you, Rabbi,” said someone from the other end. “We’re so glad you’re here.”

I waited for the doctor to give me the nod, and I began the ceremony. “Welcome, everyone, to one of the most time-honored and sacred rituals in Jewish life.” I found it difficult, because, on the one hand, I had to speak loudly enough for the group on the other side of the screen to hear me, but on the other, I didn’t want to be so loud as to bother the people around me or make a scene. After all, Jim, Hank, Vern, and all the others in the lounge that day were working on their own computers and had their own stuff to do.

I leaned in toward my screen, trying to turn my personal volume dial up to that sweet spot right between audible and obnoxious. “Today, we’re going to welcome this beautiful baby boy into Jewish life, and everyone except one of us is going to celebrate the event.” I didn’t look around for confirmation, but it seemed to me that I had hit the sweet spot on my volume dial. Finn and his family could hear me, and none of my neighbors in the airport lounge seemed to be complaining. I continued with the ceremony. I told a story about how our children are the guarantors of the Jewish future. I said, “Zachar l’olam brito…God remembers the covenant forever, the word commanded to a thousand generations….” I nodded back to the mohel through the screen, and he performed the circumcision as I tried to send comforting vibes to Elysa and Nathan over through the airport WiFi. After the procedure, I said, “Let this child be known among the people Israel by the name, Aharon ben Esther v’Natan.” I said a Mi Shebeirach, praying for his wellbeing and his mother’s healing, I called on Nathan and Elysa, who explained that Aharon was the name of Finn’s great-grandfather – a kind and generous man whose good qualities they prayed would be perpetuated by their son who now bore his name.

We said Kiddush, I recited the priestly benediction, and then led the whole family in a rousing chorus of Siman tov umazal tov, umazal tov usiman tov…. “What an honor it was to participate with you today,” I said. “Thank you, and mazal tov again. Goodbye…goodbye.” I waved into my screen, and they all smiled and waved back.

I sighed a breath of satisfaction, closed the screen of my laptop, and sat back in my seat. Phew!

Then, I looked around, and saw three large pairs of eyes staring at me from just as many sides. It was Jim, Hank, and Vern. They didn’t say anything at first, they just stared at me. And for a moment, I stared at them.

Then, almost in unison, the three of them said, “That was beautiful!”

“I’ve never seen anything so moving,” Jim said.

“It brought tears to my eyes,” said Hank.

“Are you a rabbi?” asked Vernon. “I didn’t know they still did ceremonies like that!”

I smiled, nodded my head, and responded, “I hope I wasn’t too loud.”

“No!” they all told me. “We loved it!”

We chatted for a few minutes after that. They each had a couple questions about being Jewish; they told me about some Jewish friends they had in high school; we shook hands; and then we each went back to our own screens and phones.

That was a great day for a lot of reasons. Not only did I get to participate in a wonderful simchah, but I also learned an important lesson from my friends Jim, Hank, and Vern. In this age of conformity, we often find ourselves afraid of sticking out, of being different. And that day I’m sure there might have been people who would have looked askance at what I was doing, thinking it cruel, unusual, or worthy of a scene from Seinfeld, that really wasn’t my experience in the airport. Others might have seen the kippah on my head and broken into antisemitic epithets, but that’s not what happened, either.

In fact, come to think of it, in my experience, I’ve met far more Verns, Hanks, and Jims out there than the other kind of people – far more people who are fascinated and appreciative of my uniqueness and quirkiness – of our uniqueness and quirkiness – than down on it. It wasn’t anything in particular that I did that drew them in, I don’t think, I was just being who I was – proudly and unapologetically, if admittedly with a little bit of trepidation.

Let’s face it. There is a lot of conformity out there, especially at places like airports. Like huge flocks of sheep, people stream from check-in to gate, or gate to baggage-claim, stopping along the way to eat and gaze into their screens. Modern life in general has a homogenizing effect, drawing us like all the other moths around us to the glittering light of the newest gadget or the shiniest car, or our daily destinations.

But that day, with a cup of wine next to my computer, and an ancient-style skullcap on my head, and in words few if anyone else in that room understood, the people around me saw me step out of the current moment and into eternity, in a way they knew my people had done for many centuries, albeit this time through Zoom. They responded, I think, to me being me, regardless of contemporary pressure to be someone else. They appreciated the connection I had with my people and my past, and they found the ritual to be mystifying and enchanting.

When the great Chasidic teacher, Reb Zusya, was on his deathbed, his students came and found him sobbing uncontrollably. They tried to comfort him, saying, “Rabbi, you have no need to fear. You’re as wise as Moses, and as kind as Abraham. Surely, Heaven will judge you positively for that.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Zusya replied. “When I arrive in heaven, I won’t be asked ‘Why weren’t you more like Moses, or why weren’t you more like Abraham.’ Instead, I’ll be asked, ‘Zusya, why weren’t you more like Zusya.’”

“Zusya, why weren’t you more like Zusya.” My friends, this is one of the key questions of our days, just like it was back then. God, you see, doesn’t make many mistakes. God created you the way you are for a reason. Those aspects of you that you’re proud of – at least in part, they are God-given gifts. And those dimensions of you that you are ashamed of, those parts of you that you’d like to hide, maybe they are failings you need to overcome, but they can make you even stronger and better in the long run. Or maybe they’re not failings at all, but just strengths and gifts in disguise. Regardless, God made you the way you are because God needs you to be that way. And when you try to quash your uniqueness, you obscure one of the universe’s most magnificent creations.

So, as we enter this new year, my friends, my message to you is simple. Be yourself. Proudly. Unapologetically. Always try to improve yourself, but in terms of your uniqueness, in terms of your quirkiness, in terms of those things that make you unlike the crowd – be yourself. Be yourself if it’s weird, be yourself if it draws stares, be yourself even if it makes you uncomfortable. It’s important, because the alternative is for you to try being someone else, and you can’t do that very well. It’s important, because, writ large, the alternative is for everyone to try being like everyone else, and if we were all like one another, that would make for a very boring world, and I think that God meant for this world to be exciting. Why would God have bothered creating a boring world? Why would God have bothered creating an undesirable you?

As for me, the next time I’m stuck in the Denver airport, I’m not going to even hesitate to lead a bris over Zoom, assuming that there’s a willing family and a ready foreskin on the other end. Because this heritage of mine, it’s something I’m proud of. It makes me stick out, and that’s a good thing. And I can’t help but think that being me – the proud Jew that I am – is something God would have wanted me to do in the open.

And if each of us can do this, then I have a feeling it will a better, richer, more vibrant world for us all.

Shanah Tovah