Everything I Needed to Know this Year I Learned from My Daughter

One of Noa’s favorite questions is, “What are you doing?”  It actually comes out sounding like, “Abba, what y’doing?”  Hearing her ask about this is a treat — it demonstrates that she is aware of what is going on around her and that she wishes to make sense of her world.  She wants information and she wants details.  “Abba, what y’doing?”  Very cute.  The more amusing part comes after I answer her.  The conversation might go something like this:

Noa: Abba, what y’doing?

Rick: I’m folding my laundry.

Noa: Abba, what y’doing?

Rick: I’m folding my laundry.

Noa: Abba, what y’doing?

It’s at this point that I remember one of the great pieces of wisdom that is so pertinent at this time of year, when we are engaged in the process of t’shuvah, personal transformation:  The adage goes, “Insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”  Who’s insane here?  Certainly it is not my child.  I conclude that if she had the vocabulary, she would be phrasing her question differently, not just repeating it.  Clearly, there’s more she wants to know.  She simply doesn’t have the tools to articulate this quest for knowledge and understanding.  I’m the one who needs to work a little harder here.  I need to get into her head and determine what is it Noa really wants to know — what’s she asking?  If my goal is to bring satisfaction to my daughter — or, at the least, to get her to stop asking me these questions — then I need to stop answering the same way.  The basic answer isn’t working, at least not for Noa — and she’s the one I’m dealing with right now; I need to adapt my approach to fit the situation.

So, perhaps Noa wants to know what “folding my laundry” means.  I answer,

“I’m taking my clean clothes and making them neat and tidy before I put them away.”

Noa asks again, “Abba, what y’doing?”

Maybe she understands the action I’m engaged in and the basic reason why, but wants a broader perspective.

Rick: “I’m keeping the house organized.”  That is, after all, one way of seeing the bigger picture.

Noa asks again: “Abba, what y’doing?”

Rick: I’m keeping myself organized so that I don’t feel so cluttered — so I can feel more balanced in life.”

Noa: Abba, what y’doing?

Broader, Rick — go broader.  Maybe because of Noa’s limited vocabulary, she’s actually asking a very different question or is looking for a radically different answer.  I can try some nonsensical answers and see if that makes any difference to her.

Rick: I’m making pancakes.  I’m climbing a mountain.  I’m playing the piano.

Once again: Abba, what y’doing?

And now, given how adorable this whole thing is, the real truth starts to come forth…

Rick: I’m loving you, Noa.  That’s what I’m doing.  And if I knew she’d understand, I’d continue like this: “I’m taking the time out to talk to you, no matter how ridiculous the conversation.  Because I know that what you really want is the comfort of knowing that I’m here, that I’m present in your life, that I notice you, that I care about you, that I care about being in relationship with you.

After all, Noa is not a mere objective reporter, just looking for a quote or the facts.  She’s my daughter, someone who looks to me for guidance, for inspiration, for learning more about the world and how to relate to it, how to live in it.  I hear her questions as a call to consider what matters most in my life, to be able to provide significant answers for myself, to see and articulate how my actions can have a truly transformative effect on the world.

What are we really doing?  Are we paying attention to our actions?  Do our deeds have meaning?  Can we justify them, make sense of them?  See them in the bigger picture of what we’re really doing — here, on this earth, in this life, at this time?  These are the questions of these Yamim Noraim, these Day of Awe.  Traditionally, we have heard this question coming from God.  We hear it all the way back in the Garden of Eden, when Adam is hiding from the Eternal One.  “Ayeka?” God asks Adam.  “Where are you?”  The Alter Rebbe, one of the early leaders of Russian Chasidism states:  “The same question G-d asked Adam, God asks every person, at every point in one’s life. At all times, G-d is asking us, ‘Where are you? What are you doing to fulfill your purpose in life.’”

We hear the question in the story of Elijah, who is fleeing for his life from the murderous Queen Jezebel.  Arriving at the same mountain where God’s revelation of Torah first occurred, the Divine voice asks Elijah, “What are you doing here?”  Elijah responds as I first did with Noa, by offering a simple answer of facts:  “I have been very zealous for the Lord God of hosts; for the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword; and I am the only one left; and they seek my life, to take it away.” 

This answer appears unsatisfactory to God.  For one thing, Elijah doesn’t answer God’s question.  He seems to be saying that he has appeared at the cave because he is in hiding for his own survival — “and they are seeking to take my life!” is how he concluded his explanation to God.  Perhaps the best way to sum up what he’s doing is “fleeing.”  Or, “giving up.”  He is resigned to his prophetic career being a failure.  While he maintains his steadfastness towards God, he recognizes that he has not moved the Israelites in that direction.  He overstates his failure, claiming to be the only one, a fact that God later refutes:  “I will leave 7,000,” God says, “who will not bow down to Ba’al.”  Elijah’s disappointment about the lack of Israelite devotion to God and his fear for his own life has left him paralyzed.  He is not doing.  God needs to redirect Elijah — back onto a path of action. 

The first part of Elijah’s transformation is inner and spiritual.  God directs Elijah into the cave where Moses stood, where the prophet witnesses a stunning display of wind, earthquake, and fire.  But the text tells us that God was not present in any of those things.  Elijah then hears a “still small voice,” or more accurately, “the voice of fine silence.”  This draws Elijah, in humility and awe, out of the cave, where God asks again, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”  Strangely, Elijah gives exactly the same answer that he gave moments before, before he experienced this chilling demonstration that taught him to find God in the stillness, in the silence.  How could he answer by giving the same report of his situation.  Has nothing changed?

Elijah has changed.  As a prophet, he already had a sensitivity to hearing God’s message.  There were messengers all around.  But from the cave he receives the reminder that God is not always in all the dramatics and pyrotechnics.  Sometimes, God is in the soft, quiet moments that come after the “big show.”  We can imagine Elijah emerging from the cave and hearing this same question again, but this time not like a child called to account for his actions, but as a more mature, spiritual being receiving the opportunity to humbly and calmly share his truth in relationship with the One asking the question, the source of Holiness that yearns for us to take ownership of our life’s situation for ourseleves as vessels of the Divine image, not as frenetic and detached human beings simply caught up in our own affairs. God needed Elijah to enter into relationship.  Apparently, the content of Elijah’s answer didn’t matter.  What mattered was the way in which Elijah approached God, his understanding of God’s awe-inspiring nature, even when that nature appeared, on the surface, to pale in comparison to the more emotionally evocative images and experiences that we tend to “expect” when thinking about God in old-fashioned ways.  Just as God had demonstrated that the essence of Divinity is beneath what can be seen or heard, Elijah demonstrates that his own true essence is evident beneath his words—his relationship to God is deeper than what he gives in a verbal answer.  It is in Elijah’s humility that he communicates the real answer—I am submitting to you.  The same answer I gave you before—that’s all I’ve got.  I don’t have all the answers myself, and I look towards a greater source of holiness and wisdom to guide me on the right path, the one on which I must travel to fulfill my purpose.

God appears satisfied with the answer this time, because God’s response is to send Elijah back to Damascus to do more Divinely-ordained tasks.  “Lech, shuv”:  Go!  Return!  Or, Go — make t’shuvah.  Take a new course of action.  This renewed entry into a life of action comes, however, with a price:  Elijah will not continue to serve as a prophet.  Rather, he will pass his mantle — literally — onto Elisha, his successor.  The Midrash Yalkut Shimoni claims that Elijah was unbending in his zeal for God. God commanded him to appoint Elisha as his successor, for God said: “I cannot do as you would have me.”  The relationship has reached something of a stalemate, much like the absurd conversation between Noa and me.  “This isn’t working anymore,” God seems to be saying.  Yet, as I discovered with Noa, what matters is that we’re still talking, still engaged in relationship.  According to this midrash, God also charges Elijah: “Instead of accusing My children, journey to Damascus…”  Don’t worry about the fact that the Israelites have abandoned me.  That’s my problem, not yours.  You will not remain my prophet for the rest of your life but rather will have to pass on this role to another.  … This doesn’t feel so much like a punishment, but rather as another honest statement about the ever-evolving relationship that each of us has with God throughout our lives.  Our roles change.  Sometimes we note our mistakes and recognize that the future needs to be different.  Sometimes we need to listen for that instruction that helps us set out in a new direction.

We hear God reminding us: Reevaluate our role in life and change our direction.  Take this renewed inner awareness of what really matters, our apprehension of God’s presence, and find the courage to encounter it with humility and to respond to it by changing our ways.

These are the challenges that lie before us—to hear God’s question and remember that there is holiness and divinity even when we’re not in the headlines, part of the spotlight attraction.  In those grandiose moments, we might be more likely to hear God’s question.  But can we hear God’s question each moment?  Can we hear an innocent 2-year-old as a messenger of that Divine question?  Can we feel with each breath, in each moment of still silence, the opportunity to stand before the Creator of the Universe and enter into a dialogue based on personal responsibility and openness to action we might not have considered in our frenetic moments?

This uttering of the question comes to us in a special way on Rosh HaShanah—through the blasts of the shofar.  Although thunderously dramatic, the sounding of the shofar that we will all hear tomorrow, also contains a timelessness in which these primal sounds blur into one general sound, the audible equivalent of white light—the unifying of all colors—a sound that grabs us in its nullifying of all other sounds, its paradoxical sound of silence. 

Traditionally, we are commanded to hear the shofar.

Like the shofar, we also need to hear the question.  Are we hearing the question? 

How is it being asked of us this year?  And how can we answer it with an answer that is authentic to who we are in our relationships with self, others, and God—not simply giving the answer we think someone else wants to hear?

When Elijah answers with emotional and spiritual honesty and authenticity, God not only gives him his new instructions.  God also reassures Elijah with an explanation that there are still 7,000 people in Israel that have not turned towards the god Ba’al, but have maintained allegiance to the one, true God.  Now that Elijah has been pulled out of the depression that focused on his failure and left him paralyzed, he is able to hear another larger truth about the world around him.  “You’re not alone,” God reassures him—and us.  In the N’ilah service of Yom Kippur, we will ask declare, We can’t ask you, “ma tif’al?”  God, what are you doing?!  We are not so righteous to be turning to you with that question.  The message for me is that we need simply to hear God asking the question of us.  We are the ones who can act.  We are the 7,000 who do God’s work in the world.  “You are not alone,” God tells Elijah and us.  We are here together, hearing the question, hearing the shofar, and preparing to respond to the call—to the question—with an honest assessment of where we are in life and where we’re going; with a commitment to change our direction where necessary; with a renewed faith that we are not alone in this journey—we have each other, and we have a loving God that yearns to help us on our way.  What are we doing?  We are starting over.  We are transforming.  We are finding God and our authentic selves.