Kol Nidre 5771 – Temple Sinai – I Am Dust And Ashes
One of the most difficult tasks I have as a Rabbi is officiating at funerals. The funerals can be joyous in part as the family
and I relate the touching and funny moments of that person’s life. But there is also grief in abundance. Grief and
heartbreak. During those moments I try to put aside my sorrow so as to serve the mourning family. Nevertheless, when I
walk away from the cemetery, I, naturally, reflect on my own mortality and the tenuous hold we have on life. I believe in
the existence of the human soul which lives on after we die but I also acknowledge the weakness of the human body. I
realize our physical shell will, one day, be no more and will eventually blend into the earth. If you think this is a rather
somber topic for kol nidre then that’s ok, it’s meant to be somber. The way we are meant to perceive ourselves on kol
nidre is as if we’re hovering between life and death.
As you mull over this sobering thought let me tell you a story. There was a Hasidic leader, Rabbi Simcha Bunam of
Pshishka. Pshishka, in case you were wondering is a town in central Poland, I’ve been having nightmares about
pronouncing it today, it’s essentially a long collection of consonants with no vowels to be seen! Anyway, Rabbi Simcha
Bunam from the aforementioned place was a great scholar but he was also part of the world, having been a lumber
merchant and a pharmacist. He had a famous saying which is contained within the small envelopes you have been given
on entry. Hands up, honestly, who already opened the envelopes?
Well the saying or story goes like this. Rabbi Simcha Bunam used to say, “Every person should have two pockets. In one,
[there should be a note that says] bishvili nivra ha'olam, 'for me the world was created.' In the second pocket, [there
should be a note that says] anokhi afar va'efer, 'I am dust and ashes.'" PLEASE LOOK AT THE NOTES, I want you to take in
these two phrases. For me the world was created. I am wonderful, I can do anything. Anything is possible in my life. On
the flip side, I am dust and ashes. In other words, I am nothing. I have done nothing. I am humble, small.
So in which situations would we pull out the first note, for me was the world created? (RHETORICAL QUESTION) When
we’re feeling doubtful and fragile and unsure of ourselves and we need a boost. It might be when you walk into a room
and you don’t know anyone like on the first day of school. It could be at a party or social gathering when everyone else is
in cliques. Maybe it’s when your kids talk back at you for no apparent reason and make you feel small or when you were
working towards a project at work and it doesn’t come off. It’s at that moment that we need a boost. We would pull out
that note, For me the world was created. We would be telling ourselves with that note, don’t be stupid, you can do
anything, be anything, find your confidence, your center and show them who you really are.
And when would we pull out the second note, I am dust and ashes? (RHETORICAL) When we’re feeling arrogant, smug
and full of ourselves. People often feel arrogant and smug when they’re drunk. Sportsmen and women feel it when they
have just won a championship. Politicians when they have won an election. I don’t know when you feel smug and
arrogant. For me, it’s when I have given a sermon and people compliment me on it. I think to myself, “Oh you’ve made it
now, what a great Rabbi you are”. That’s when you reach into the other pocket for the note, I am dust and ashes. You
bring yourself back to earth and tell yourself, “Don’t be so arrogant, you’re nothing, you haven’t done anything yet,
you’re not so special”. And we keep both of these notes. Please put them in your pockets now. We need both of them to
give us a sense of balance.
Tonight I will deal with the phrase, “I am dust and ashes” and tomorrow I will discuss, “For me the world was created”.
We’ll do it in this order because tonight, we are meant to break ourselves down and tomorrow, build ourselves up.
Tonight we are meant to feel humility, to feel as if we are without merit, to feel small and insignificant. Tomorrow, as we
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move through Yom Kippur, we start to cultivate confidence and a sense of possibility and hope. The journey we are
meant to go on during Yom Kippur is from death to life, hopelessness to hopefulness.
So we mimic death on the night of yom kippur in particular, we pretend we are dust and ashes and, above all, we try to
cultivate humility, anivut. That’s what we’ve just been doing in the prayer book. For instance we just made vidui,
confession, and we’ve said, “Chatanu, avinu, pashanu, we have gone astray, we have sinned, we have transgressed”. We
break ourselves down, lay ourselves bare and admit our shortcomings.
Avivut, humility, has a long tradition in Judaism. Moshe Rabbenu, Moses our Teacher was known, according to the
Torah, as the most humble man on the face of the earth1. Remember, G approaches Moses at the burning bush and
charges him with rescuing the Jewish people. And Moses doesn’t respond, “Thank you G, I will take on this mission”.
Instead a whole collection of excuses: “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and free the Israelites from Egypt?2 What
if they do not believe me?3 I am slow of speech”4. I’m washing my hair that night. Ok, he didn’t say the last one. The
point is, he was essentially saying, “I couldn’t possibly, choose someone else, I’m not up to it”. He was that humble.
All of the great biblical figures had particular qualities5. Abraham was passionate about the covenant with G, Isaac
excelled in prayer, Jacob valued charity, Aaron pursued peace, Joseph was chaste and Moses was humble. It was like
they all had a superpower and Moses’ was humility. Everyone has a particular, defining quality, someone might have
told you what yours is. Think for a moment what your defining quality is.
So humility is a sought after commodity and tonight, I want to make three main points about it. Even though the story of
Simcha Bunam and the two notes is a simple one, these three points are relatively subtle to please stick with me. This is
the first one. Humility, when balanced, can be a source of strength. If we are too humble, we can be frozen, incapable of
doing anything. But being truly humble can be a way of expressing one’s true position in the world without overelaboration or boastfulness. Moses was one of our greatest leaders but he was also known as the most humble. This was
no coincidence. When you begin by understanding the need for humility you can ultimately achieve greatness.
Let’s go back to those pieces of paper, those two notes in your pocket. You have two because you are meant to have a
sense of balance. Sometimes, like on this evening we have to say we are dust and ashes but not always. If we only
listened to the message on that note, we would completely negate ourselves and the possibility that we might do
anything. There are those inside and outside of the Jewish community who suffer from clinical depression. One of the
symptoms of this is the depressed person blaming themselves for all negative events even if they were nothing to do
with them. Depressed people often don’t take credit for positive things which happen to them as well6. They are
essentially only reaching into one pocket to constantly look at one note, I am dust and ashes.
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Numbers 12.3
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Exodus 3.11
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Exodus 4.1
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Exodus 4.10
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Pesikta d’Rav Kahana 16, 166a-167b
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Pinto A, Francis G. Cognitive correlates of depressive symptoms in hospitalized adolescents. Adolescence. 1993;28(111):661–72
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A more light-hearted example might be the stereotypical self-depreciation of Englishmen. I am sure I have seen some of
my fellow countrymen standing awkwardly either side of a door saying, “After you”. “No, really, after you, I insist”. They
can go on that way for quite a few minutes. It’s exaggerated politeness but essentially what they’re saying is, “I’m dust
and ashes, I’m nothing, I’m nobody, I have no worth”. They’re only reaching into one pocket. If everyone acted like this
the world would come to a shuddering halt, nothing would get done because of excessive humility! So to summarize
point one: True, balanced humility should be a source of strength, not a sign of weakness.
My second point about humility. It gives us a sense of our place in the universe. Imagine you’re on the internet on
Google maps on street view. Can someone explain to the grandparents in the congregation what Google Maps and
streetview is? So imagine you can see your house on your street, possibly even your face staring, shocked out of the
window at being caught on camera. Then zoom out from your street, from Summerlin, from Vegas, from America until
you are staring at our planet through the clouds. Do you get a sense of your place in the universe?
Now zoom into this page of the Torah. Abraham literally says, “I am dust and ashes” in Genesis when he approaches G
to convince him not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah7. Saying I am dust and ashes in the presence of the Creator of the
Universe is not overly humble, it’s just humble. G brought Abraham, just like us, from the dust, from nothingness, and
will return us there at the end of our life. Compared to Him, we are nothing. We are dust. There is no shame in that.
Indeed, it increases the likelihood that we treat others with compassion and love.
So go back to that image of zooming out from Google maps, so you can see your place in the whole universe. You can
see that there is no shame in being humble, in being dust and ashes. We only need to look at the field of astronomy and
physics to understand that8. Scientists have shown us that the earth is not even the center of our universe, the sun is. So
if you want a good reason for humility then try the fact that planet earth, of which we are a tiny aspect, is not even the
center of the world as we know it. And if that was not enough, how about Big Bang theory which suggests the universe
began twelve to fifteen billion years ago. Our human life spans, even the longer ones, do not seem awfully significant
alongside those kind of figures. Abraham knows he is should be humble in the face of G’s power. We know we should be
humble in the face of the universe’s vastness.
The Monty Python team in their film “The Meaning of Life” said it quite eloquently. For those of you who don’t know,
Monty Python films can be a bit bizarre and surreal. In the film an unsuspecting house wife is going about her business,
making dinner for her husband when a man weirdly emerges from her fridge to explain how the universe works. They
step into a starry sky with planets and galaxies and the man sings9:
“Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour, That's
orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned, A sun that is the source of all our power. The sun and you and me
and all the stars that we can see Are moving at a million miles a day In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an
hour, Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way' REPEAT LAST BIT OF MUSIC So remember, when you're feeling very small and
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Gen. 18.27
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Astronomy: A Beginner’s Guide To The Universe by Chaisson and McMillan
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Lyrics by Eric Idle
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insecure, How amazingly unlikely is your birth, And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space, Because
there's bugger all down here on Earth”.
..…..and so on, I won’t sing it all. But why am I making an absolute idiot of myself to sing this? To show you how powerful
true humility can be. When we change our perspective and realize our real place in the universe compared to its
unassailable vastness, we can have proper self-awareness.
So my second idea is that it’s crucial that we know our true place in the universe relative to everything else because: We
might be dust and ashes. We might be small compared to the scope of the galaxy but at least we are nevertheless, part
of that greater galaxy or universe. We know that, at this moment, we, as mounds of dust and ashes, are in our solar
system, on the planet known as earth, in the United States of America, in Nevada, in Las Vegas, in Summerlin, in Temple
Sinai, on seat 34b. I don’t think the seats actually have numbers but this would be a fun way of printing out address
labels for Temple mailings! Just because we are small compared to the universe, does not mean we are not capable of
having a sense of place and self in that same, extraordinary universe. Understanding our place in the universe can make
us feel strong in a similar way we feel strong as part of the Jewish people or as a member of Temple Sinai or as a citizen
of the United States.
Thirdly, if we are all just dust and ashes then all humans are equal. We are all born and we all die. We come from
nothing and will return to nothing. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. You are dust and ashes, you are dust and ashes, I am
dust and ashes. On this one day, as a collective, we confess to the same sins whether we have done them or not because
the process is more powerful as a collective. Whether we are rich or poor, whether we have status in society or not,
whether we are a President or a garbage collector. We are all born and all die. I’m not naïve, those distinctions and
hierarchies exist in real life and we help maintain them. But ultimately, since we all have the same origin and the same
end, they become meaningless.
Rabbi Simcha Bunam had a note in each of two pockets. In the first it said, “For me the world was created”. We’ll deal
with that one tomorrow. In the second pocket, please reach in there now, it said, “I am dust and ashes”. Tonight, on the
evening of kol nidre, we break ourselves down. We practice humility. We are nothing special, merely dust and ashes. We
take care not to be too humble because we would destroy ourselves. But when we are truly humble, it can be a source
of strength. It can lead us to compassion and love for others. It can mean we know our true place in the universe. It can
stop arrogance and help us understand that we are part of something bigger and significant than our individual selves.
And it can remove all distinctions and differences between us as human beings. Amen. Fast well.
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