Years ago, before Miriam and I and our children moved to Massachusetts, I made my last trip to the Day Care Center of McLean County - a publicly financed and subsidized day care center for the poor families in the area. This was the place where you found pre-school toddlers who had their only hot meal all day, there at the center, at lunch time; this was the place where you found children who wore the same the outfit every single day in succession for a week. I had been a supporter, I suppose, something of a private patron of the Day Care Center of McLean County for several years. Its director said to me before I left Illinois, "the kids are always so happy when they see you coming."
Well, in anticipation of our move then, I took quite a few stuffed animals, games, puzzles and toys to the day care center for the children. And as I was delivering many children's books, I noticed a book by an author familiar to me which I have never read. The book was called "The Missing Piece," by the famous author of children's books, Shel Silverstein.
"The Missing Piece" is the story of a round stone that was missing a piece, like a wedge. And so when it rolled, like a flat tire, it could not go very fast. It would roll slowly. It was very frustrating to roll slowly, so it kept looking all over the world for the missing piece that would make it whole.
And so it rolled along slowly because it was lacking something. It was incomplete. As it rolled it would talk to the flowers, talk to the insects, and talk to the singing birds. And it would go along humming and singing to itself: "I am looking for my missing piece, I am looking for my missing piece. Where will I find it? I am looking for my missing piece."
And it would try all sorts of pieces that did not fit. Some were too short, and some were too long. Some were too square and some were too pointy, and none of them fit. So it kept rolling along looking for its missing piece.
And then it found a piece that fit perfectly, and now it was whole. And because it was whole and because it was now perfect, now when it rolled, it rolled so much faster.
And it rolled so fast that it missed the songs of the birds, it missed the beauty and fragrance of the flowers, it missed the uniqueness of the insects. It went too fast and it could not talk to the insects anymore and it could not smell the flowers. When it realized how much faster it was going now, in other words, whole and complete, and how much was missing from its life because it was going so fast, it stopped. It put down the piece that it lacked and it resumed rolling along slowly, singing: "I am looking for my missing piece." The point of the story, which I stood there reading on that afternoon, was that in a strange paradoxical way, we are more whole when we are missing something.
Vayavoh Ya'kov Shalem. "And Jacob became complete - Shalem." This is right after Jacob struggled with the angel. He is limping; he is permantly crippled; he has been hurt. Yet he is shalem - whole - in a way he has never been whole before. Why? First, the person who can give something away and not feel it very much is more whole than the person who keeps it. We all know there is something wrong, there is something psychologically incomplete about the person who has it all and cannot give it away. There is a psychological term for this, and we do not have to get into that, but we know that this person is sick. If you are rich enough to be able to be charitable and generous but you cannot bring yourself to do it, you are in deep psychological trouble. The person who can give something away and not feel it very much is more whole than the person who keeps it. In exchange for God's promise - in exchange for Jacob becoming the progenitor of his people - he willingly endured the permanent injury to his thigh. What he received in return for what he now missed made him feel complete, whole, shalem.
There is a famous midrash on Jacob and Esau. Remember when Esau sold his birthright, he says hiney anochi holaych lamut. "I am going to die."
Why is he going to die? Presumably, because he did not catch anything in the hunt. But that cannot be! Esau is, after all, ish yodayah tzayid. He is the best hunter in the world. How can he hunt all day and not catch anything?
Some of the rabbis say he did catch something, but it was his first catch of the year, and as the Torah and Talmud both make clear, you have to give the first kill of the year as a korban mincha. Ah, but when a rasha - a wicked person - has to give charity, it kills them. You see, there was something less about the person - here Esau - who has something but cannot give a part of it away. And there is something less than whole about the person who has everything. If you have everything you will never know the joy of wishing for something - of longing, of hoping. Nobody can make you happy by giving you something you wanted because by definition you have it all. There's something terribly spiritually and emotionally improvised about the person who is perfect, who is complete. He or she cannot grow, he or she cannot do a lot of things that they want to do. In a paradoxical way, we are more whole when we are missing something.
The second way Jacob our Father teaches this lesson is the way that he shows us that it is possible to survive after losing someone we love. Such survival can make us whole. To lose someone you love and turn around a year later and say that you realized that you have come to an understanding that love is stronger than death - this is another example of how we are more whole when we are missing something. Love is stronger than death, and our memory permits us to hold on to more than we had when we had it before us. There is a wholeness that comes to us. There is a strength that comes to us with the knowledge that love is stronger than death. And when you've gone through the experience of losing and surviving, there is a way in which you are more whole than you ever were before. When Jacob our Father comes near the end of his life, his son Joseph comes to visit him, and there only two things that Ya'kov remembers. One, he remembers maytah ahlei rachel - he remembers "my lover Rachel is dead." He loved somebody and that person died. But he was able to go on living. And that was the memory that sticks with him. Here is a man who had lived in a time where nobody locked their doors. He has lived in three different countries. He has been rich and poor and rich and poor again and rich again. He remembered that he loved somebody who died, and he survived. And he also remembered that once when he was young, God appeared to him and said, "I am going to make you someone special. I am going to make you the father of the people which will be my example for the world. They will be called after you - the children of Jacob, B'nai Yisrael."
Everything else has been forgotten by the aging and weak Jacob, except these two things. These are the two things that remain with him, these are the memories that he cherishes. He has survived having lost someone he loved, and he is more whole for it. And the third way we can be more complete if we are missing something is when we finally liberate ourselves from dreams which sustained us for years but now haunt us day in and day out.
In his book, "Seasons of a Man's Life," Yale psychologist David Levensen talks about the past and our mature years. One of the things he talks about is liberating ourselves from the tyranny of our dreams. If when you were young you started out with the dream of how successful you would be; if you started out with the dream that you would be a great teacher, or scholar, or political leader, or professional, or business tycoon; how many people would come to seek your counsel, advice, opinion and reactions; what books you would write, how perfect your future marriage would be, how great your children would be, of how you would handle great success in your business, seeing your name on the door and perhaps on the building, what kind of beautiful house you would live in - we have had all of these dreams.
And now you're not so young anymore; and you have come to terms with the fact that these dreams are not going to come true. What do you do then? You have two choices. One is that you can continue to think of yourself as a failure. You can think of yourself as a person who did not succeed.
There are respected professors of science and mathematics in universities all over the country who think of themselves as failures because they never got a Nobel Prize; and if perhaps a colleague did, their sense of failure is reinforced. There are authors whose books are cherished by tens of thousands, but they never receive the Pulitzer Prize, and they were never on the New York Times best seller list. They're filled with self-loathing and self-contempt for their abject failure, in their own eyes. That is one choice.
The other choice is to liberate yourself from the tyranny of those dreams. Instead of holding on to those dreams which will not come true, we change our dreams. We can trade them in for more realistic ones. I do not know what my future in Connecticut will bring, but I hope I will always give my standard answer to my children or any others who ask me if I am famous.
"I am," I always reply, "to those who know me."
Sefer Vayikrah - in the Book of Leviticus, when it talks about the korban, begins in the first chapter as follows: adam kee yakariv - "A man who brings . . . ." Three or four times it uses that language and then when it comes to the korban mincha - the afternoon sacrifice - it changes the wording and it says nefesh kee takriv - no longer a man who brings but "a soul which brings. . . ." A soul which brings?
Midrash Rabbah on that verse asks what kind of korban - what kind of sacrifice - does the soul bring? Listen carefully to its answer: if there is something you want very badly, something your soul yearned for, but you realized you were never going to get it, can you let go of that dream? Can you sacrifice that dream? Can you come to terms with the fact that you will not have what your soul has been craving? This is nefesh kee takriv. This is the korban - the sacrifice that the soul brings and lays on God's altar and walks away feeling more whole than it has ever been.
This day of Yom Hakippurim - this singular Day of Atonement - may be a time when we can consider whether less is indeed more. Shel Silverstein's little children's book is monumental in its meaning: we are more when we are less. When we acknowledge that we are imperfect, striving to be better, needing to liberate ourselves and rejuvenate our dreams, we are the best people we can be.
We are named after the one who wrestled with the angel and emerged crippled for life. But because he lost his arrogance, because he lost his sense of perfection, of completeness, of totality, because he acknowledged a missing piece and wore the permanent mark of imperfection, we are privileged to call ourselves after his name, which was changed at that moment from Jacob to Israel.
We are the children of Israel. And we are called this day to act in accordance with our great name. We are not great because of what we have, we are great because of what we acknowledge we have not, and because we acknowledge that there is more than we want to be. And so these people pray to God for another chance, for an acknowledgement of failure, for God's forgiveness, and for God's love. And God responds that shalom - wholeness, completeness - will come, to those who know what they are missing, and to those who strive for their rest of their life to find it.
V'chein Yehi Ratzon.