A Life Complete: Yom Kippur Kol Nidrei 5786 Sermon

In the fall of 2018, Myra Sack gave birth to a beautiful baby girl whom she and her husband named Havi Lev, meaning “life” and “heart.” A year and a half later, they learned that Havi had Tay-Sachs disease, a devastating neurodegenerative condition once common in the Ashkenazi Jewish community. Myra wrote: 

“After Havi’s diagnosis, against all advice and norms to ‘move on,’ or to acquiesce to people’s comments about ‘silver linings’ and ‘God’s plans,’ we decided to celebrate what we knew would be her short life and to show her as much of the world as possible.

We embarked on a three-week journey along the California coast, which we called our ‘Havimoon,’ and then returned to our home in Boston, where we were surrounded by a core group of friends and family members who relocated to be in Havi’s orbit. We transformed Friday nights into birthday parties—’Shabbirthdays’—to replace all those that Havi would never have. We celebrated 57 Shabbirthdays, each one with a warm challah, a special outfit for Havi, Shabbat candles and, most importantly, family and friends who held Havi so that she only knew love and comfort.”

Havi died on January 20, 2021, at the age of 2 and a half. Since then, Myra and her husband have dedicated themselves to supporting families who have lost children. 

It is so clear that Havi died far too soon. But in celebrating each moment of her short life, Myra and her husband sought to make it feel like a complete life – for themselves and for their daughter. 

I thought of Havi’s painfully short life when I read about a very different situation a few months ago. Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel-prize winning academic who is considered the father of behavioral economics, died in the spring of 2024 at the age of 90. Kahneman’s life was, by all accounts, remarkable. Born in British Mandate Palestine in 1934, Kahneman was raised in France and lived through Nazi occupation by hiding in a converted chicken coop. Daniel later graduated from Hebrew University in Jerusalem. As a platoon leader in the newly-formed IDF, Kahneman brought his psychological knowledge to bear on how to train and assess soldiers. It was during those years that he first formulated the ideas that would ultimately win him a Nobel prize and revolutionize psychology. These ideas are articulated in his best-selling book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, as well as Michael Lewis’s account, titled The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed Our Minds. 

I read Kahneman’s obituary in the New York Times with some sadness, knowing his work from The Undoing Project and, of course, from my wife, who is a fellow psychology professor at Princeton. But the idea of dying at age 90, after a long and successful career that changed the world in positive ways, didn’t seem tragic. 

It was a strange feeling for me, a few months later, when it came out that Kahneman had not died of natural causes but had chosen to end his life in Switzerland, where aid in dying is legal for both residents and visitors. Later, the brief note that Kahneman wrote to his close friends and family was released, which included these lines: 

“I have believed since I was a teenager that the miseries and indignities of the last years of life are superfluous, and I am acting on that belief.

I am still active, enjoying many things in life (except the daily news) and will die a happy man. But my kidneys are on their last legs, the frequency of mental lapses is increasing, and I am ninety years old.  It is time to go.”

Two lives, each complete, each cut short in very different ways. 

What is a complete life? What makes a life long enough, rich enough, full enough? We know that 2 and a half years old is far, far too short, and we know that 90 seems about right. But is a life ever complete? 

Jewish approaches to the right length of life are varied. As Jason Robbins spoke about at his bar mitzvah last January, characters in the book of Genesis live absurdly long lives: the first human, Adam, lives for 930 years; a few generations later, Methusaleh lives to 969. The lives of biblical characters become progressively shorter and shorter until Moses sets the generally accepted upper limit at 120. 

But the tradition also understands that few people actually live to the age of 120. Psalm 90 reads: 

יְמֵֽי־שְׁנוֹתֵינוּ בָהֶם שִׁבְעִים שָׁנָה

 וְאִם בִּגְבוּרֹת ׀ שְׁמוֹנִים שָׁנָה 

The span of our life is seventy years, or, given the strength, eighty years.

This psalm feels much truer to our human experience, even as life expectancies in the US continue to climb beyond 70 and closer to 80. How rare and wonderful that Danny Kahneman lived until 90! 

And yet…could he have lived another 10 years? Another 20? Even ad me’ah v’esrim, to 120? What new ideas could he have hatched in those 10, 20, 30 years? Whose lives could he have touched? How many times could he have cuddled grandchildren, whispered words of care to his partner, made someone feel connected and loved? What did he fail to complete because he felt that he was done? 

Kahneman’s decision to end his own life recently came up in conversation in my family. Among my family members, opinions were very different: some felt that what he had done was bold, brave, and rational. As an article in the Wall Street Journal asserted last March, Kahneman was “the world’s leading thinker on decisions” – and this was his last decision. How very logical – to decide that one’s life had been long and meaningful, that the years ahead were likely to be painful and unpleasant, and to cut off the possibility of further suffering and decline. A few members of my family even shared their desire to make a similar decision when they came to that point in their lives.

But one member of my family was appalled. “When I am old and in a hospital bed,” this person told me, “if I am even breathing, please do everything to keep me alive. I want to live.” 

To live is nothing short of a miracle. Judaism makes it clear that holding onto life at all costs is the most important thing, even if it means breaking nearly all of the other mitzvot. The Conservative Movement, in legal responsa written in 1990 and revisited in 2020, prohibits physicians from aiding in another’s death – in all but the most extreme cases, in which a person has been deemed very close to dying and is in uncontrollable pain. But the legal responsa, much like modern medical ethics, is torn on this issue, and I won’t pretend that there is one clear answer other than the affirmation that life is precious. 

Modah ani, we say each morning upon waking, “I am grateful,” God, that you returned my soul, my breath, my life to me today. To wake up is a sign of God’s endless love and grace. Every breath is a miracle. Every breath we take is Hallelujah.

Those who have taken care of loved ones at the end of life, though, do not always see each breath as a miracle, especially when these breaths involve intense pain. In the last six months of people’s lives, they typically experience more suffering and more medical intervention than in all of the years prior. The average American sees a physician more than 24 separate times during this period. Family members sometimes speak of a loved one’s passing as a blessing, a relief after months or years of struggle and anxiety. “We really lost him years ago,” I’ve heard people say about family members with dementia. 

But I’ve also heard, and experienced, an enormous sense of loss when someone passes, even when their medical state has been in decline for years. There is a chasmic difference between a person who is alive, whether suffering or at peace, asleep or awake, confused or alert, and someone who has died. To cross that unbreachable barrier between life and death is to never return, and that fact is so, so painful for the living. There is no return. How can we be certain, before we cross that bridge ourselves, that we’ve done everything we were meant to do on this earth? 

Perhaps, then, there is no such thing as a “complete life” – a life that has been totally fulfilled. There is always more that can be done. With a child of two and a half, it’s obvious. With a man at 90, it’s not so clear. But always, more is possible. How, then, should we live, knowing that few, if any of us, will reach that peaceful plateau upon which Daniel Kahneman apparently stood, that certainty that life had reached and even surpassed its pinnacle? 

Judaism does not give a clear checklist of “things to do” to live a complete life. For some, following the mitzvot to the best of our ability is enough. But for most of us, the idea of trying to do everything well, all the time, is overwhelming. There are always ways in which we feel we are lacking. Am I a good enough parent? A good enough spouse? A good enough worker? Human being? Is my career good enough, illustrious enough, important enough? Do I give enough to charity? When’s the last time I volunteered? Crowded with thoughts like these, it’s easy to crawl into a hole of our own self-doubts and anxiety, blocking out the noise with social media, television, sports, anything to distract us from life’s greatest questions. 

But I find wisdom in many of Judaism’s teachers who encourage us not to zoom out our cameras too far – but also not to block our vision entirely. In Likutei Mohoran, an early 19-century Chasidic work, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov looks at a line from Psalm 95, which many of us know from Friday night services as “Lechu Neranena.” He turns to the seventh verse of the psalm, which reads:

הַיּוֹם אִם בְּקוֹלוֹ תִשְׁמָעוּ

“Today! If you will heed God’s voice.” 

In context, the verse seems to be a rebuke of the recalcitrant Israelites, constantly complaining in the desert despite their miraculous liberation from Egypt. But for Rebbe Nachman, the line is not a rebuke but an invitation:

זֶה כְּלָל גָּדוֹל בַּעֲבוֹדַת הַשֵּׁם 

“It is a general rule, in serving God,” he writes,

שֶׁלֹּא יָשִׂים לְנֶגֶד עֵינָיו כִּי־אִם אוֹתוֹ הַיּוֹם

“That one should only focus on that very day.”

For Rebbe Nachman, this life, this service to God, this being Jewish in the world, can sometimes feel like a tremendous burden. A burden that is too heavy to bear. But then he continues:

אֲבָל כְּשֶׁיַּחֲשׂב שֶׁאֵין לוֹ רַק אוֹתוֹ הַיּוֹם, לֹא יִהְיֶה לוֹ מַשָּׂא כְּלָל

“But when you think that there’s nothing but this very day, it doesn’t feel like a burden at all.”

I can do this for one day, he thinks. I don’t know if I can carry this burden, this pressure, every day, for the rest of my life, but I can carry it right now, right at this moment.  

This is why, too, it is essential for Rebbe Nachman never to procrastinate, never to say, “I’ll do that tomorrow”: 

כִּי אֵין לְאָדָם בְּעוֹלָמוֹ כִּי אִם אוֹתוֹ הַיּוֹם

“There is nothing in a person’s world except that very day”

 וְאוֹתוֹ הַשָּׁעָה

“And that very hour”

 שֶׁעוֹמֵד בּוֹ

“Which stands before them”

 כִּי יוֹם הַמָּחֳרָת הוּא עוֹלָם אַחֵר לְגַמְרֵי

“Because the following day is an entirely different world.”

There’s something remarkable in this teaching. The next day is a different world. I will not be the same me tomorrow, so I don’t know what I will do or how I will act. Science, too, teaches us that our cells are constantly regenerating, creating our bodies anew – skin cells, in fact, regrow every single day. I can make plans and to-do lists, but what really matters is what I do now, today. 

And this is exactly the teaching of Yom Kippur. In rabbinic literature, the Day of Atonement is known as “Yoma” – literally, “the day.” Hayom. This is the day that God has created for us, the one that the Divine has given us in great mercy to help us become the people we are supposed to be. Just moments ago, Rabbi Yosef sang:

כִּֽי־בַיּ֥וֹם הַזֶּ֛ה יְכַפֵּ֥ר עֲלֵיכֶ֖ם לְטַהֵ֣ר אֶתְכֶ֑ם מִכֹּל֙ חַטֹּ֣אתֵיכֶ֔ם לִפְנֵ֥י ה’ תִּטְהָֽרוּ׃

“For on this day, atonement shall be made for all of you, to purify you from all of your mistakes. Before God, you shall be pure.”

This day, hayom, is the most powerful day of our lives up to this point, because it is happening right now. At this moment, how will I be? Will I continue to carry the same resentments, the same anger at my parents, my spouse, my children, my friends, my colleagues, my political opponents, that I carried yesterday? Or will this be the day that I start to work towards a sense of completion? Is this the moment I give that apology that, deep down, I know I need to give? Is this the day that I start transforming my career into one that serves to make humanity better, healthier, safer? Is now the time when I give to the poor, to the causes that I believe in, not at the bare minimum but at the maximum that I am able? Is this the day?

This past summer, I visited an older cousin in California. Her husband recently celebrated his 80th birthday. I asked what they’d been up to in their retirement – had they been traveling the world, doing all of the things on their bucket list? “Truthfully,” she told me, “we did a lot of that in the first decade after we retired. We went to all of the places we’d always wanted to visit. Now, we mostly stay home.” For them, a peaceful, quiet life a mile from the beach is enough to keep them going. They aren’t checking items off of a list anymore. They are living each day as it is, however it is. 

Myra Sack and her husband could not give their daughter the gift of a full life. They could not extend her health beyond what her genetic code had decided for her. All that they could do was hold her, and love her, and make each moment special during the short time that they had together. To make her feel, with all of her Shabbirthdays and travels, as complete as Daniel Kahneman did at 90. 

What makes a life complete? How does a person know when they have done enough, achieved enough, to let go? I am convinced that, in the end, no life is ever complete. Judaism teaches us that each day is a universe, that each day has infinite possibility. Some of us know in our kishkes when it is time to go; most of us never have that great privilege. All that we can do is live hayom, this day.

And so I ask you: on this day, hayom, what is it that you need to do? What is it that God is asking of you? What will be your service in the world? To seek the answer to this question is to begin to answer it. This is the moment in which I find myself. Whether I have 2 years or 90 years left to live, this is the day. I pray that I will use it wisely. Gmar chatima tova.