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Repentance Wants to Be Your Facebook Friend, Do You Accept?

Sep 21, 10:44 AM

The following is my sermon for George Mason University’s Rosh Hashanah morning service.

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There’s an old story, I’m sure most of you are familiar with it. There is a town gossip. He wants to change his behavior and comes in one day to his Rabbi for advice. The Rabbi hands him a pillow and says "Here, take this pillow and drop the feathers inside all over town, and then come back to me." The man leaves the Rabbi, goes out into the streets, spreads the feathers to the winds and returns to the Rabbi. The Rabbi sees the empty pillow and tells the man, "Go back out and collect all the feathers."

The man looks at the Rabbi and says: "But Rabbi, that’s impossible."

"So too," the Rabbi replies "is retrieving all the things you’ve said about others."

Things have changed a lot since then. Now it feels like those feathers, floating to the four corners of the Earth, could just as easily be a metaphor for our whole lives.

Tomorrow, you will be walking down to the Mason Pond and performing Tashlikh, throwing bread crumbs into the water. It is a fine tradition, but did you know that, historically, a number of biblical scholars, including the Vilna Gaon, have objected to the practice? They were concerned that people would think that by throwing their sins to the water, they would escape them.

Rabi Isaiah Horowitz teaches us that we throw the crumbs to the fish, not only because they illustrate man’s plight, caught by evil in the same way that fishes are taken in by a net, but also because the fish symbolize god for "as fish have no eyelids, and their eyes are always wide open, they symbolize god, who does not sleep."

Our sins are not thrown into the lake to turn into absolution. They are thrown in as a reminder that the things we do are, like those feathers, un-retrievable.

This has never been more true than now. Today, more and more of what we do finds its way online.

Either by accident or by our own volition, what we say, what we do, the places we go, and the things we see, follow us through our lives on the internet.

An ugly photo on Facebook, a cruel word about a friend or acquaintance on Twitter, a nasty e-mail, all will now last forever, thanks to our wonderful technology.

I was reading a blog the other day, and there was a picture from someone’s Facebook wall. A women had posted a message saying that her boss was ugly, hit on her, smelled funny and gave her mindless work. Underneath, a man had made a comment, it started with "Hi, I guess you forgot that you friended me on Facebook. First of all, I’m gay. Second, since you don’t like the work, don’t bother to come in tomorrow."

Unthinking, we live our lives in public and don’t stop to think about what consequences might follow our actions. Like the gossip’s feathers, our lives are published to the world and we will never get to hide them back inside that pillow again. This isn’t just true for college age students like myself, almost half of Facebook users are over 26 and just over the last four months the growth of members in the 44 to 54 range is enormous. Even without a Facebook account, we all leave behind footprints, someone could track your cell phone, see your pictures, check your email, see what marketing data has been collected about you, and find out more about you in a single glance than ever before. This issue is everyone’s.

Not only that, but our words, because they have more reach, have far more power. When what we say can reach the world and be saved forever, even an indirect biting comment can be indefensible.

Why is this important to think about today? Rosh Hashanah is a holiday whose focus is on god’s coronation, as the King of the Universe, in order to prepare for His judgment. Unlike most other religions, we Jews believe that we are judged before god every year. Before that judgment is made final, you get 10 days to make yourself righteous and find forgiveness, in order that your name might be inscribed in the book of life. You are responsible for finding forgiveness. Not from god, but from those around you who you’ve wronged. Even that forgiveness is not enough. You must promise never to repeat your sin again.

We must learn that there is no scapegoat. However, believe it or not, we have it easy. We know that our actions may very well be saved in perpetuity, which means we should be thinking before we act, taking deep breaths before we speak—or type—something we may regret. We have the opportunity to be more self-aware and therefore have more self-control. For the first time in history, the books of account are open, not just to god, but to all mankind. We can see for ourselves the deeds of the righteous, the wicked and the rest of us in-between. We can see what we’ve done and we can do better—every day.

Ketiva ve-chatima tovah.

May you be written and sealed for a good year.