D'var Torah after the Terrorist Attack on 9/11 and my wedding on 9/16 2001
Daniel Kahn 9/21/2001

Martin Buber says in Ten Rungs,

"When a man is singing and cannot lift his voice and another comes and sings with him, another who can lift his voice, the first will be able to lift his voice too. That is the secret of the bond between spirits. "

This D’var Torah has had three versions. When Rabbi Carter asked about my Tisch two weeks ago, it was clear that it would be about Moses' song. Jill, my beautiful bride has chosen "song" as her Hebrew name: "Shira."  Martin Buber and Franz Kafka had rushed in to support my Song as Oral Law parallels. In the darkness of last Tuesday, I discarded that one and created another. On Sunday I gave it at my wedding. Yesterday, I recast it again.  I'm sure Kafka has a great deal to say on my current theme but I still don’t have the emotional energy to research him. As you see, Buber survived the cut.

There are two similar songs that I will try to bring together today. Moses song, come of the sure knowledge that today is his last day. And the song that each of us can learn simply by asking if today might be our last day.

In all ways I am unqualified to give this talk. I am not a writer and I am not learned. Thus far I have known mercifully little death. Last week, while so many others in my city and my country saw and knew enormous horror I spent almost every waking moment organizing a wedding. The world that my beloved and I inhabit diverged from the world of those around us last week and we found ourselves uniquely prepared to celebrate life and spiritual union in the face of reality.

Now we find ourselves coming together again with the world. Not only with its fear and its anger, we are coming together with the “we” who are alive. We in this room are alive. All of us. Completely alive; some of us, because we slept late or missed a train. Perhaps we are alive now after enormous effort and frustrated, punishing heroism. We have life in a city where thousands suddenly do not. We have today's that so many do not. What will we do with today?

This week our parasha speaks of Moses last day. Moses is blessed and cursed to know the day of his death. Suddenly our world is full of the stories of those who shared this blessing and this curse. People who knew that last Tuesday morning was the end. Some ran deeper into danger to rescue others. Some, on the plane that was brought down in Pennsylvania, planned what probably seemed to them a futile resistance. In the process, they likely saved hundreds or thousands of lives. I was moved by stories of those who called out to their loved ones to say "Good-bye", to say "I love you" one last time.

In last week's parasha Moses tells us "Choose Life". This week reveals how Moses, the best of us, chooses life in the face of his death. Moses knows he is going to die this same day. What does he do? Does he bargain? Does he struggle? Does he mourn his own death? How does he respond to the blessed curse of knowing the day of his own death?

Since leaving Egypt he has journeyed, led, written, taught and legislated. Now, on his birthday, after 120 years he must choose a last act before climbing mount Nebo to die as his sister and brother died before him. What is left to do? The Torah is complete. It has been delivered to the priests, the people have arrived at the border of the promised land, the successor has been named. Moses is clear eyed and firm and yet he knows, this is the day of his death. What does a great man do with his last hours.

Moses chooses to write a song of witness and to teach it to the children. To touch them in their hearts in a way that they will remember all their lives. In a way that can be passed from generation to generation and continue to touch. It is a song to remind people when they move off the mark.

Many generations later Hillel says:

  "Do not deceive yourself even unto the day you die."

And Rabbi Eliezer suggests

  "Repent one day before your death. "

Both imply a condition where we know the hour of our death. But what if we are not so blessed?

Rabbi Joe Menashe, who married us last Sunday asked us to find ways to separate, to make holy, our marriage in space and in time. There is a tradition that the couple fast on the wedding day to make a “mini Yom Kippur”. By this mechanism the Bride and Groom are given a clean slate with which to begin their marriage. OK, done… How can we keep this slate clean. In the absence of the blessed curse of Moses how can we hear Rabbi Eliezer?

On the day of my wedding I said “I will not leave repentance until my last moments. These moments will be too precious.” In practical terms I mean to repent at the end of each day. I will regret the mistakes of the day when the day ends and I will not carry the regret forward. I will be free to spend all the moments of the next day for their full value.

There is a cloud in our city. It is a cloud of pain and fear and anger. We will find ourselves, today, and many days, with our thoughts clouded or our paths blocked or our conversation halting as this smoke or some other wafts through our world. Let these sad, painful moments be a signal to grab life. Grab hold and dance, sing, hug someone. Choose Life. Sing! Let the pain also remind us of the life we have left. Let's not waste a moment today.