Seven score and 17 years ago, Henry David Thoreau began felling trees to build a one room hut on the banks of Walden Pond among the 14 acres owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson. He was building the hut because he had come to a rut in his own life. In 1837 he had graduated from Harvard College. And his subsequent years were marked by some successes but also a great deal of frustration and failure in becoming a writer. In 1838 he started a school with a loan from Emerson and then he moved into Concord Academy that had recently closed. His brother John joined him to run the school. But, despite individualized instruction, the school floundered and closed because it failed to attract enough students. In 1839-40 Thoreau courted one Ellen Sewall, a woman his brother John had also fallen in love with. She turned down marriage proposals from both Thoreau boys.
In 1840, Thoreau's first poem, "Sympathy"--and his first article on a Greek satirist were published in the the transcedentalist journal The Dial. After his failed marriage proposal and closing of his school Thoreau moved in with the Emersons. Yet Emerson also began growing impatient with Thoreau's lack of progress in writing. And tragedy struck, In early 1842 his brother John died from tetanus. His first original work, his first real nature writing, The Natural History of Massachusetts, appeared in the Dial in 1842. In January 1843 he and Emerson had a major fight, Emerson finding Thoreau threatening and generally socially ill adept. The living together in close family quarters certainly did not help. In May 1843 Thoreau accepted a teaching job in New York City, tutor to Emerson's nephew. He sold some writing in New York City, but in general he was not happy and hated his writing for dollars. In November 1843, Thoreau returned to Concord. In September 1844 Emerson bought 11 acres around Walden Pond and then 3 more of forest to protect his initial investment. Ellery Channing suggested that Thoreau build himself a cottage on the Pond to write his book about his trip down the Concord and Merrimack Rivers with his brother John.
In the spring of 1845 Thoreau built and moved in, as he famously says, on Independence Day.
Thank Sam Fox for asking Linda and Thank Linda for saying she was not prepared to do it. Disclaimer, This speech was not cleared with my boss, it represents the views of the author and not the DHHS or NIH. But it is consistent with President Bush's faith based initiative, lecturing to enlighten souls even at religious gatherings as long as my government salary does not contribute to the actual religious service is find according to the new rules. So I did not have to do this as an outside activity. Plus as many of you know there is not a spiritual bone in my body, all of them having been crushed long ago, so the chances I would say anything religious is negligible, so the ACLU and its supporters in the room can be happy too.
Thoreau writes about his reasons for going:
"We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor… Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hours.… I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived… I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as toput to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."
Walden is Thoreau's true account of his living. He moved away from Concord but not far, less than 1 mile, so all in town could still see his experiment, so he could awaken others. Thoreau makes clear he is leaving, giving up the old, especially as he makes clear in Economy, the first chapter, the money making economy and life dependent upon the social standards, the unsimple, the being a "tool of our own tools." He moves for the purpose of re-creating his life, of consciously, deliberately make a life that is worthy of contemplation as he implies on a death bed. Walden is filled with the actions of re-birth. The listening intently to sounds, the watching of ants fighting, the taking the depths of the ponds and finding them interconnected, and most importantly the cleansing swims in Walden Pond, the baptisms that mark the re-creation of his life. Of course the last chapter, save for the conclusion, is a chapter entitled Spring. We begin with Economy and shedding and end with re-birth in Spring. This is the chance to shed the life of sin and be renewed. He writes:
"In a pleasant spring morning all man's sins are forgiven. Such a day is a truce to vice. While such a sun holds out to burn, the vilest sinner may return. Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors. You may have known your neighbor yesterday for a thief, a drunkard, or a sensualist, and merely pitied or despised him, and despaired of the world; but the sun shines bright and ward this first spring morning recreating the world, and you meet him at some serene work, and see how his exhausted and debauched veins expand with still joy and bless the new day, feel the spring influence with the innocence of infancy, and all his faults are forgotten. This is not only an atmosphere of good will about him, but even a savor of holiness groping for expression…"
Thoreau makes clear this is a spiritual journey that is quintessentially human, that "I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the good." Torn between the beast and angel, attracted to both the animal and God like we are. He also makes clear this is not just a personal journal but one for all … that he is writing to awaken us all.
Walden was originally noted by critics for its nature writing. Readers were told to ignore Economy and Where I Lived and What I Lived For to concentrate on Sounds and The Bean Field. But Thoreau's self-re-birth is quintessentially American and Walden's fame justly rests on his expressing a fundamentally American experience.
But it is only one of three characteristically American modes of re-birth, the secular if spiritual one. There is also the religious one epitomized by the Puritans and many subsequent revivals. And there is the materialist one, typified by Benjamin Franklin and labeled by Henry Clay as the self-made man, that is so American.
So Tupper is muttering did this guy pick up the wrong lecture this morning, get the assignment mixed up in his Palm. What the hell does Henry David Thoreau have to do with Rosh Hashanah?
Well for one thing, I personally have a bit of identification with Thoreau. In July 2002 the Emanuels moved houses, not to a one room hut I built with my hands on Walden Pond, but to a house on the Lake that we will make our own through changes and rennovations. And one of the great pleasures is to see the new day dawn at 6 am, the boiling orange sun come up, and to run and sweat and then dive into the Lake to be re-freshed, renewed, and rejuvenated. In addition, for the Emanuels this Fall represents a new birth with one daughter going off to have a moment of self-creation. Finally, yesterday, erev Rosh Hashanah, was my birth day, always a chance for a re-birth.
But more importantly for us, Thoreau is an incomplete forefather. I think there are close similarities between Thoreau's awakening and what we need to feel at Rosh Hashanah, and important differences I will come to at the end.
With today's service we begin the ten Days of Awe. And one approach to this time is one of awe, supplication, trepidation, begging God to forget and forgive. This is well captured in the morning Amidah which contains words of awe, fear, trembling before God. We are sinners. And everyday we commit, knowingly and accidently, terrible sins. Certainly this year I have been guilty of terrible sins, since for which the most severe punishment is called for. From the perspective of atonement, we have little to redeem us for our sins. Thinking of our transgressions, appealing to God in three days of prayer, begging to be re-inscribed in the Book of Life, pleading for mercy rather than for justice to be done. This can be seen as a black period in which begging is not too strong a sentiment.
But we are Jews, the people who not only invented the dialectic, but perfected it. That's why we have all the lawyers in the minyon. Trepidation, supplication are commingled with another perspective. After all why should God bother with us miniscule beings if we were not important, why should we catch His eye, why should He even expend any energy worrying about whether to put us in the Book of Life or not. More importantly, why can some human appeal to His caring to induce Him to act in certain ways, to bargain with Him. These days are not only filled with awe but I want to focus on the other side, their being days of liberation from past failures and filled with joy at the possibility of self renewal and re- creation.
Rosh Hashanah is the New Year. It begins not just 10 days of reflection but a month of endings and beginnings. It ends with Simhat Torah and the ending of the reading of the Torah and re-starting the reading of the Torah. One purpose of this time is to re-think our life, re-examine not just the sins we commit each day, but the direction of our life. We examine who we are, what we have done, our actions and choices. And the examination is not sufficient, we believe we have choices and can make different choices. We are told to use the transgression as a means of deepening our understanding and re-directing ourselves. Most of know that the most powerful moments in our lives are not our successes, but our failures. The old saying that success is born of wisdom and wisdom is born of failure. It is the failures, our sins and problems, our mistakes that give us wisdom to see and renew and change.
It is this day that begins our period of Tschuvah. A distinction is made between atonement and tschuvah, between confession and repentance. Confession is about acknowledging our sins to others and asking forgiveness. Atonement is the social part. Tschuvah is about self change. About recognizing our transgressions internally. I leads to self-renewal, rebirth, self-re-creation. The idea that we can, that there is this possibility of self renewal and re birth, is very much antithetical to supplication, begging trepidation. It is assertive, liberating, the other side of recognizing sin.
This is Thoreau as our forefather, or more accurately the Jews as Thoreau's forefather. But there are important differences that I think are worth highlighting which make clear that Transcendentalism and American style re-birth falls short of Jewish re-birth. I want to highlight just three differences.
One difference is a matter of timing. There is no calendar that relates to Thoreau's going to Walden. Yes he went on Independence Day but that is not the purpose of the day and nor is the day an annual moment of self-reflection. Judaism has built in an annual cycle. Each year a person is forced to confront his transgressions, given the opportunity to learn from the errors and sins, to renew and be re-born. Judaism does not leave the possibility of self re birth to a bolt out of the blue, a moment in a life, individual insight, it builds this into the fabric of life, indeed to the annual cycle, and in some deep ways forces us to choose whether we take it the opportunity or not. We cannot miss that there is an opportunity of renewal and re-creation before us, although we can fail to seize it.
There is another difference in timing. The key season for Thoreau is Spring, the time of renewal. Spring is the real Jewish new year, the start of the Jewish calendar, so our real new year. But Rosh Hashanah, and the time of renewal, occurs not in Spring but in Autumn. Why? One reason of course is that at the time of the Torah, Jews were an agricultural people. Spring is a busy time, it is rebirth of the land and therefore the time of sowing, tending, harvesting. For any agricultural people, it begins the busiest time. The Fall is the harvest and then a long winter hibernation. Hybernation is the time of thinking, of change, less frenzied and rushed. Alternatively, Jews knew 3,000 years ago that the Fall would be the start of the new school year, it would in fact be the New Academic Year. So that for men, if not Nature the New Year is Fall.
A final possibility is that Thoreau misunderstands the importance of Spring. To have a Spring, when the new bud is born, one needs to put the bulb in the ground in the Fall. Thing do not spring forth full born, they must develop. To be re-born in Spring, requires planting and re-thinking in Fall. So Jews appreciate development necessary for renewal and re-birth in a way Thoreau fails to.
Second is the difference of content. For Thoreau and America there is no direction to the self-renewal. It is what an individual feels called to. For Jews there is a direction, a direction set by mitzvoth, by halahaka, by getting closer to God. This is important. God is a mathematician, just ask Josh. He does not like randomness, even random walk. As a geometrician, He prefers upward slopes. And upward slopes requires a direction to the slope.
More importantly, I want to highlight the different role of community. Thoreau goes off to Walden Pond, away, but not out of sight of his fellow towns folk. He goes alone and his baptismal swims are alone. Yes he is attempting, in his writing, to awaken others, to show them about the possibility of this kind of re-birth and renewal. Nevertheless, it is fundamentally an individual event, individual rejection of society, affirmation of his own as separate. Indeed, Walden and Thoreau's action is so popular because it is a classic expression of American individualism.
Jews are a clannish people. We do not go away from each other for re-birth, we come together as a community on the Days of Awe for renewal. While this is a moment for self-renewal, and self re-creation, that it is linked with Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and through Simhat Torah, means that it can only occur linked to the community. There is no self to be created apart from the community. Indeed, the self we are creating is ours, it is a self, but it is not individualistic. We all have the same direction, mitzvot, and halahka. There is individuality in the path, but the direction is always up and always together. We cannot, as far as Jews, do this alone. We can do it only together. This is one of the magical things about Jews, they understand the individual and communal, the inter-digitation. There is no way to be individual without being in the community.
Go home.