Shabbat Shalom!
Thank you all for coming
this morning. This is an amazing week,
for not only am I am becoming a bar mitzvah, but I’m also getting my black belt!
I’ve worked all my life to
become a bar mitzvah and seven years to become a black belt in karate, and it’s
all coming together right now.
It wasn’t planned this
way. There’s only one time a year when
you can test for black belt. It’s a
three-hour test, and the date was moved up from December to next week.
As for my bar mitzvah,
that date was planned three years ago, but really it was set when I was born,
13 years ago on September 30th.
And although today’s service is not a grueling three hour test, because
it’s Sukkot it’s not much shorter, and this service has lots of special
features.
So you can imagine that
the past couple of months have been especially intense.
So this is what I’ve had to prepare:
For my bar mitzvah, I had
to do everything you see here today. In addition to that, there’s my mitzvah
project, plus keeping up with my Hebrew studies, plus writing this speech.
For my black belt, over
the last several weeks I’ve had to complete 7,500 exercises, practice all 18 of
my forms 100 times, and hardest of all, I had to complete 300 random acts of
kindness; things like holding the door for someone, taking out the garbage,
helping the janitors clean, and returning a lost driver’s license, etc.
So I’ve been very
busy. Oh yes, I’ve also had to eat and
sleep and occasionally do homework. (Pause)
While working on these two
big events together, I’ve discovered that there are some amazing similarities
between getting a black belt and becoming a bar mitzvah, especially when the bar
mitzvah happens to take place on Sukkot.
One of the names for Sukkot
is זמן שמחתינו - “the time of our happiness.” But Sukkot isn’t a happy time in the way that
Purim is – with lots of celebrating, singing, costumes – and drinking (for
those who are over 21). It’s not happy
in the way that Pesach is, with all that eating, staying up late and, um… those
four cups of grape juice.
Sukkot is a different kind
of “happy.” Today we read from the book
of Kohelet, which states, “ לֵךְ אֱכֹל בְּשִׂמְחָה לַחְמֶךָ, וּשְׁתֵה בְלֶב-טוֹב יֵינֶךָ”
“Go eat your bread with
happiness and drink your wine with a glad heart (if you are over 21).”
The idea is that life is
short so you need to enjoy all that you have and be satisfied with it. With the harvest collected and the days
getting colder, this holiday is really a holiday of appreciation. When the pilgrims landed in Plymouth and were
celebrating their first harvest, they looked to the bible for a holiday as a
model for the first Thanksgiving. That holiday was Sukkot.
As the rabbis stated in
Pirke Avot, “Who is truly wealthy? The one who is satisfied with what he has.”
I can recall a similar
lesson being taught in karate class. My
teacher often says, “Be happy but never satisfied.” It’s a great quote, made even greater because
it came from Bruce Lee.
It means that we should
always be pushing to improve, but we should also be content with what we’ve
accomplished and with who we are.
Judaism also says we
should try to constantly improve, which is what we focused on during the High
Holidays. But right after Yom Kippur is
done, it’s a custom to immediately start to build our sukkahs. So Yom Kippur is the part where we are not
satisfied, and Sukkot is the response, that, no matter what happens, we should
be joyous and appreciate who we are.
That’s actually pretty
easy for me, because my name, גיל, which means joy.
Unfortunately, there are
people close by who can’t be so satisfied, because they don’t have enough food
at home. For my mitzvah project, I am
working with 3Square to donate bags of food to kids who aren’t as fortunate as
I am. All the food you see here on the
bimah (instead of flowers) and the food bags on the tables later will be
donated to the local children who don’t have enough to eat on the
weekends. I am looking forward to going
to distribute the food myself in a few weeks.
All in all my bar mitzvah
has been joyous and it’s been a great adventure like sukkot.
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