Rabbi Alexis Berk

Erev Rosh Hashanah 5771    

R.S.V.P.

A few years ago, I worked in an office with a guy with a bothersome habit. I’m guessing you may know one (or so) like him. His computer always had the email up. And he always had at least one eye on it. And, this was when Blackberries just came out, and so he got himself hooked up with one of those. So, then he had that thing in his hand or right next to him on his desk. If a call or email came in he would look at it, click on it and read it, the whole thing. Right while you’re sitting there. It wasn’t subtle.

            But, here’s the kicker. You could never get a response from this guy. He’d never email you back. He’d never return your call. He had a reputation for non-response. Which is so weird, because his secret was surely out. He GOT your message. No doubt about it. Which is why I think he played it sort of strangely. Not a very good big-picture strategy.

Have you ever sent an Evite, and sniffed around at least once a day to see who’s looked at the invitation?  In the days when we only mailed invitations, you couldn’t be totally sure that something didn’t get “lost in the mail” or stuck to some junk mail that wound up in the trash. You could never be 100% sure that a person didn’t put the invitation under a pile of newspapers or something. So, if someone didn’t RSVP, you might be able to extend a bit of benefit-of-the-doubt credit and not be so resentful when you have to make that dreaded call. How does that call even go? “Um, hi…I was wondering if you got the invitation to my wedding.” [Silence]  What comes next? “YES! Yes I did…I’m so sorry I’ve not responded. We’ve been so busy.”  To care. Or reply. Or something.

It turns out –  big news! – this is a real social phenomenon of our times. Do you recognize the problem? Rand Richards Cooper wrote about it in a recent New York Times Op-Ed piece called It’s My Party, and You Have to Answer:  “HERE’S an etiquette experiment for you: E-mail an invitation for a party, one month out, to 45 friends. Request an R.S.V.P. Provide a follow-up e-mail message, two weeks later, politely reminding them to get back to you. 

How many will?

…My initial message brought in a dozen responses, and the follow-up a few more, but days before the event I had a paltry 23. Not 23 who planned to come, but 23 who had bothered to respond. Half my invitees had blown me off. Why? I wasn’t peddling life insurance, after all.

Asking around, I discovered that the phenomenon is widespread. One friend of mine e-mailed invitations to a baby shower, and a third of the recipients failed to respond. Another announced a happy hour at her house and received a dozen yeses — only to find her party besieged by 35 people.

What’s preventing us from executing this basic social task? Is it the medium? Do Evites somehow not feel like “real” invitations? Is it our busy lives, so overbooked and overwhelmed we’ve drawn up the castle gates? Don’t invite me out this month, I’m ensconced! Or is it simple rudeness? Try as I might to understand, I kept feeling dissed.

What’s clear is how hard the R.S.V.P. rubs against the grain of contemporary life. In requesting people to anchor a plan in the distant future of a month hence, you are demanding a kind of navigation that Americans increasingly do not practice. We prefer to remain flexy, solidifying our plans incrementally as the date approaches. Let’s talk tomorrow. I’ll call you when I’m on the road. Cellphones in hand, we microadjust our schedules as they unfold around us. We’re like the air traffic controllers of our own lives.

It wasn’t always so. ….

But back to my party. The day before the big event, I sent a final e-mail message, thanking ‘the half of you who responded for helping keep the dying art of the R.S.V.P. alive.’ This irked missive flushed out a final 10 hangdog respondents. But there remained a gang of 12 — the dirty dozen, the truly hardcore, fanatical nonresponders — who couldn’t even be shamed into R.S.V.P.ing…” [1]

            What is the deal with this? It’s real. We all experience it. We may even recognize ourselves in it – on one side or the other. Or both.

            From Emily Post’s website:

Q: I recently invited 25 people to a cocktail party at my house. Fourteen haven’t responded yet and the party is one week away! Should I call to ask if they are coming?

A: It’s inconsiderate, but unfortunately common, for guests to fail to RSVP. Some forget; others procrastinate and then feel guilty, so they delay even longer. To the host it can seem as if your friends are waiting to see if something better comes along. The sad parts about the demise of the RSVP are it leaves the host feeling (justifiably) hurt and frustrated and relationships can suffer. … Anyone who receives an invitation has an important obligation to reply as soon as possible.[2]

… To help [us] determine the proper etiquette for the RSVP, [Emily Post] included a couple of important tips:

 1) Take your cue from the invitation

If you received your invitation by e-mail, then an e-mailed response is acceptable…  You can judge the required response by the formality of the invitation itself.

2) Respond in a timely fashion – Generally it is best to reply as soon as possible..  …

3) Reply even if you have a potential conflict – If you would like to accept an invitation to an informal or casual event but have a tentative conflict, contact the host or hostess to explain the problem. ….[3]

Perhaps, maybe, this seems like a pedantic etiquette lesson. Is it?

It’s Rosh Hashanah; do we have to discuss responding to an invitation? I think so.

Responding, after all, is the order of the day today. It’s the highlight of our spiritual year. Will we respond? Or..not? Will we show up? Or, shrink back, hide? Will we answer? Or ignore? These are the questions.

            Responding – in this life –falls into the category of simple and profound. And, things that fall into the category of simple and profound often weave their way into one of the most simple and profound works of Jewish tradition – the Talmud. In the Talmud, the rabbis discuss simple matters that are dressed in complex clothing. Because, simple matters rarely are.

One of my favorite rabbinic discussions in the Talmud is this counter-intuitive teaching: Oreach tov – ma’hu omer? What does a good guest say? Listen to this –

A guest should feel that whatever the host serves and prepares is in his honor. The Talmud explains, “What does a good guest say? How hard the host worked for me! How much meat he brought! How much wine he served! How many dainty dishes he prepared! And all this he prepared for me!”

On the other hand, what does a bad guest say? “Did the host work for me? I ate only one roll and one piece of meat and drank only one cup of wine. All the work he did was [really] done just for his [own family]. [There was really nothing special required for me].”(Berachot 58a)

            Rabbis Michael Katz and Gershon Schwartz ask: “Imagine that you are a hospital patient. A friend pays you a visit and you thank [her] for visiting. Which response would you rather hear – ‘It’s no big deal; I was driving by anyway,’ or ‘I really wanted to see you, and I’m glad that you and I had this time together’?”[4] The Jewish response to “thank you” is not “no problem” or “it was really no big deal.” Rather, the Jewish response to “thank you” is “you are worth it.” I went to a lot of trouble to make this meal, come to visit, plan this party…and it was well worth every bit of my work and effort because I care about you.  Most wonderful things are not no-effort.

            When we interact with one another in this gracious way, we are truly responding. We are responding to the innate need within each of us to be worth someone’s trouble.  When we respond to one another – openly, authentically, we give each other message that we are worth one another’s time, effort, energy. It is the opposite of ignoring. It is the ultimate RSVP.  We may not ignore people.

            But, it is not just with one another that we can hone our response. What about our response to our own selves? What does that even mean? How often do we feel that we ignore invitations from within our own souls…and just let them go unopened?  Or, sometimes we peek at them, like the proverbial Evite, then just close the window.

What will it be this year? What will you invite yourself to do, be, feel, experience? Are you open to an invitation from your own self? What would that invitation be?

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “It seems to me a very difficult thing to put into words the beliefs we hold and what they make you do in your life.…And perhaps that’s what we all [have] to do – think out for ourselves what we could believe and how we could live by it .”[5]  Simple and profound, this invitation: to think out for ourselves what we can believe and how we can live by it.

            When would we have time for that, exactly? The rabbis recommend time chosen and set aside to listen for beckoning invitations. This will be trouble. It will take effort. In the parlance of Jewish spirituality, this is called hitbodedut, sometimes translated as meditation, but it really means the practice of being alone.  Can you imagine – intentional aloneness, quiet, simply to listen for an invitation from the inside? When I was in rabbinical school on a retreat, we had an unusual assignment. We were to go spend one hour alone. No books. No music. No talking to each other. Just be. Quiet and alone. One hour. Reminiscing with a dear friend and colleague recently about this retreat, he reminded me, lovingly of how much I FREAKED OUT when this sentence – I mean, assignment – was given. He reminded me that I asked a lot of repetitive questions, like how long, again, was this to be? And, we’re not allowed to read? Or talk? At all?  What are we supposed to do? And this was even before the days of addictive cell phone behavior – texting, emailing, games, calendar. So, imagine trying it now. I lived through it. And, I even found some value in it despite initial anxiety.

Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe wrote: “You can only get a feeling for your internal life when you are alone. With a half hour of being alone you can come to feel things you never knew about yourself and see what you are lacking in spirituality. You will set new goals to reach. This can only be done if you spend time in…[hitbodedut]…”[6] The only way really to respond is to listen closely for an invitation, and then open it, and respond.

            Some people, in moments of sadness – like mourning a death or a divorce, talk about how they’d like to be strong, but instead of being “strong” they are sad or angry or yelling or crying.  I find this perplexing – because, in Jewish tradition, strength is defined differently. It takes strength to respond to intuition and honesty. It takes strength to listen, respond to the invitation, even accept the invitation – from within – to cry, to laugh, to think, to feel. Do not ignore your soul.

            Tomorrow morning, we will read the powerful and confusing story of the Binding of Isaac. The Torah recounts the parable of Abraham being asked to give his son, his beloved son, over to God. We find this a haunting tale, meant to be a hyperbole of “faith” – “faith” being defined as belief in God’s command. Abraham’s acquiescence to God’s command is so unfaltering that he even ties his own child to an alter, atop a pile of wood, ready to set him in flames for a fiery sacrifice. It’s an absurd thing to imagine. I think it’s fair to say not one of us would do the same thing in the same situation. Because for us today, faith is different.  Indeed, faith is not about acquiescence; it is about response.

            Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, in a discussion about relationship with God, has this to say: “Holiness demands a response, an answer…we have ‘heard’ something; something has been ‘laid upon us.’ We feel personally obligated, commanded. To ignore this summons would violate the wonder of the moment and the covenant it whispers. …To our surprise, our ‘response to the Holy’ is neither constricting nor limiting. Rather we are liberated from the vagaries of trend and fashion and reminded that we were created and that we were created for a purpose…often the response of those who have come before us can sensitize us to hearing this commanding voice and help us give coherent shape to our actions. …other times you will need to fashion your own response, one that is unique to your time and situation. ….[Kushner asks this simple yet profound question]: Consider what you do in response to God’s presence in your life. You may not hear a thundering Hallelujah chorus of voices but something more subtle. You become aware you are in the Presence. What then? Silence? Song? Blessing? …Study?…Just these are the beginning of the ‘response.’”[7]  There are infinite potential responses to God. Infinite! They will take effort. All responses do. But, imagine the cosmic insult of …ignoring.

            Cooper’s editorial in the NY Times with the R.S.V.P. “experiment” inspired many questions. How is it that we have become so adept at ignoring invitations that need response – from others, from ourselves, from God? What do we fear will happen if we really respond – show up, interact, commit? What if?

Emily Post did not write the Torah. But, the etiquette of her R.S.V.P. rules could, strangely, apply to many things, simple and profound.

1) Take your cue from the invitation

2) Respond in a timely fashion

3) Reply even if you have a potential conflict.

See what happens.

L’shanah Tovah.

---

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/opinion/15cooper.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

[2] [For more on RSVP protocol, check out: Peggy Post at Good Housekeeping or, Emily Post’s Etiquette 17th Edition by Peggy Post].

[3] http://www.emilypost.com/social-life/invitations-and-announcements/488-the-continuing-importance-of-rsvp

[4] Katz and Schwartz, Swimming in the Sea of Talmud, 76-77.

[5] Jay Allison and Dan Gediman, eds. This I Believe. 201-2.

[6] Alan Morinis, Everyday Holiness. 31.

[7] Lawrence Kushner. The Book of Words. 91-2.