When Enough Is Enough
Yom Kippur Sermon - October 2, 2006

Can you guess what is the most popular course among Harvard undergraduates? It is not physics, it is not economics, it is not philosophy or computer science. It is a course about happiness taught, incidentally, by an Israeli professor. Why would a course in happiness be so popular? The answer lies in the data revealed by that professor’s own research: that almost half of college students in the last year had depressive episodes so serious they could hardly function.

I think I know why so many of these students are depressed. Look at what they have to look forward to. How many of you read the article in the New York Times two weeks ago about a company called Seamless Web? It caters, literally, to thousands of New York’s highest paid workers so that they don’t have to leave their desks to eat. These elite employees simply log onto Seamless Web and order, at their firm’s expense, their breakfast, lunch or dinner. The order is then transmitted to the some of the finest restaurants in Manhattan. The meal is delivered to the office building and is picked up by an office clerk who delivers it piping hot to the executive glued to his or her desk.

Brian Wong, a 27 year old financial analyst, who says he works a 14 hour day, estimates that by ordering this way, he saves at least five minutes a day because he doesn’t have to dial a phone number and fumble for money to pay the delivery man. Mr. Wong points out that if you multiply five minutes a day by 300, the number of days he works, you realize that he saves 25 hours a year, which is half a work week.

Many of the firms using Seamless Web are housed in buildings that also have gyms, salons, dry cleaners, dentists, and florist shops so that employees have no reason, no need to leave the building – or their desks – for significant periods. Some employees even use Seamless Web to order their Diet Coke so that they don’t have to waste time walking down the hall to drop change in a vending machine.

So this is the life that Harvard students have to look forward to. And you wonder why they are depressed? What about taking time to smell the roses?

Long before Harvard offered a course on happiness, Judaism provided advise on how to achieve it – and it is not through working 14 hour days and ordering breakfast, lunch and dinner on Seamless Web. The Talmud declares, hayav adam levarech me’ah b’rachot b’chol yom. “A person ought to find 100 occasions a day for which to say a blessing.”

I suspect that way back in the Talmudic era, it was pretty difficult for people to find 100 reasons to be thankful. Most people were poor, life was often bleak, there were few effective cures for rampant disease. Nevertheless, a person was expected to find 100 happenings and occurrences each day for which he or she was grateful.

In the 21st century, finding countless reasons for saying thank you God should be a “slam dunk”. We have everything a person could want. We have homes so large that they contain rooms we hardly use. Some of us even have a second and third home. We have more clothes than we can wear. We have beautiful cars. We have home computers and lap tops, blackberry’s, cell phones and Ipods that keep us connected to businesses, family and entertainment in ways other generations could hardly have conceived of. We are healthier and are living longer than any previous generation in human history. So why aren’t we the happiest generation that has ever lived?

There are several answers. One is that we haven’t mastered and internalized a word we spoke or – more accurately sang – just six months ago at our seders: dayeunu. Dayeunu means enough. We need to say dayeunu and not just on Passover. Each day we need to acknowledge that we really have more than enough; and, therefore, we should be content and happy and thank God in a hundred ways for all the blessing we enjoy.

But many of us are not prepared to utter dayenu. Several years ago, David Letterman was earning $30 million a year. That is about $150,000 an hour. Slightly above the average wage. And yet he threatened to leave CBS unless he got a raise.

Martha Stewart was worth about $420 million at the time that she decided to do something a little shady in order to make $50,000 more.

How much does it take to make us happy and satisfied? When do we say dayenu and just relax and enjoy the abundance that we already possess? When do we say, “today I have 100 reasons to be thankful and that is enough?”

Last year Dr. Peter Whybrow wrote a book titled: American Mania: When More is Not Enough. Dr. Whybrow is the director of the Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA. He maintains that Americans are driven by the brain’s pleasure centers to live turbo-charged lives in pursuit of status and possessions. He warns that in our addictive, compulsive drive for more, we are making ourselves sick.

He writes: “For example, why are 1/3 of the American population now struggling with the complications of obesity? And why, amid our drive for wealth and self-improvement, are the best selling drugs on the American market those prescribed for the stress related diseases of ulcer, depression and high blood-pressure?” Ironically, he notes, “In our demand-driven, debt-saturated culture many families find themselves too pressured to even enjoy their affluence because free moments that once balanced a busy life have all but disappeared.”

Living a balanced life is crucial to our happiness and to our personal and professional fulfilment. Several months ago, my wife gave me a book to read. Its title is Chasing Daylight and it was written by Eugene O’Kelly. At age 53, Eugene O’Kelly was in the full swing of his life as chairman and CEO of KPMG, one of the largest accounting firms in the United States. Then a year 1/2 ago, he was diagnosed with late-stage brain cancer and was given four months to live. His book, written in those four months, contain his reflections on life, death, love, success, spirituality and the search for meaning. I advise that you read that book. Some of you may even have known Eugene O’Kelly professionally and his book would then have special meaning for you. But for the moment let me refer to just one page of that illuminating volume.
He wrote:

“I like to think that I did a good job as CEO back when I was healthy. But had I known then what I know now, maybe I would have made an even better executive. Almost certainly I would have been more creative in figuring out a way to live a more balanced life, to spend more time with my family.

“While I wasn’t one of those CEO’s who felt he had to be the hardest-working person in the firm, I certainly felt I had to be one of the hardest workers, or others in the firm would think less of my leadership.

“But what if I hadn’t worked so hard? What if in addition to doing my job and doing it well, I had actually used my position to be a role model for balance? However even a few months back, I had not even considered limiting the 80 hours I worked each week. It took inoperable late-stage brain cancer for me to understand that had I put in fewer hours, not only would I have had more time with my family, but I also might have been even more focused at work, more creative, more productive.”

Dr. Peter Whybrow in his book: American Mania: When More is Not Enough, writes that “American society . . . seduces us with the message that given money and lots of hard work everything is possible. But that same cultural message, then drains us of the time and energy required to achieve intimacy and personal happiness.”

He offers as a poster woman for this seduction a Vietnamese refuge named Kim. Despite being poor, she managed to attend college and then law school. With stellar grades and recommendations, Kim landed a job with a prestigious and highly competitive law firm. Although she and the other junior associates had to put in more than 300 billable hours each month, still she enjoyed the high powered, high pressured acquisitions projects she was involved in. She said, “there were many nights I would go home totally exhausted but also feeling incredibly happy.”

Then while working on a merger that required constant shuttling between Paris and her office in Los Angeles, and living on coffee and little sleep, she ended up in a Paris hospital because of stomach pains. At first, the diagnosis was appendicitis, but after numerous tests, her doctors declared her to be suffering from “nervous exhaustion.”

The anxiety attacks persisted over many weeks. She finally sought psychiatric counseling. She told her psychiatrist, “I am admired by others as a smart immigrant who made it. I am a respected and skillful attorney. I live in luxury and have professional success. But I’m also forty years old, I am divorced and childless, and running on a treadmill that others control. It’s not that I feel I am a fake lawyer, but sometimes I do feel like a fake person: that I have lost a sense of meaning in my life.”

At one session with her psychiatrist, Kim glanced out through his office window and declared, “Look at this beautiful land. How wonderful it is! America has given me everything that I hoped for and more. In Vietnam I dreamed of survival; however, I never dreamed that I would be a successful international attorney closing deals worth billions of dollars. But now the big question in my mind is: will I survive the American dream?”

Do you know the words “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity?” They were spoken by the Biblical figure Kohelet. Like Kim, Kohelet sets out to make lots of money. He is quite successful at it because he is both bright and ambitious. He writes, “I built houses and planted vineyards for myself . . . I had male and female servants, and great herds and flocks, more than anyone else before me. I gathered for myself silver and gold.”

Kohelet seems to have everything going for him that a person could possibly want. And yet Kohelet feels something is missing. Everything he possesses leaves him unfulfilled. They are all - vanity of vanities.

Kohelet’s unhappiness lies not only in never seeming to have enough. His despair is rooted in the realization that even as he gets more and more, he is no happier; he doesn’t perceive that his life has purpose.

The German poet, Goethe, makes a similar point in his classic dramatic poem, Faust. Dr. Faust is a middle aged scholar and scientist who has just about given up hope that he will ever learn the true meaning of life. That is when he makes a desperate deal with the devil, promising his soul to the devil in the hereafter if here on earth he can experience just one moment so satisfying he will be moved to say, “let this moment linger; it is so good.”

The devil gives him everything – wealth, political power, the ability to travel anywhere in the world and be loved by any woman he desires. Yet, however much wealth Faust acquires, however many women he seduces, there is still an unsatisfied hunger within him.

But why am I telling you about Dr. Faust? He doesn’t seem that different from Kohelet or even from Kim, the immigrant lawyer? Why am I repeating myself? Because in the end Faust is a changed man. At the end of the drama, we find a different Dr. Faust. He is building dikes to reclaim land from the sea for people to live and work on. And as a result of helping people and of doing something significant for humanity, Faust is able to say for the first time in his life, “let this moment linger; it is so good.”

Kohelet and Kim never savored that moment. The closest they came was to realize that material things ultimately did not, could not, satisfy their hunger for meaning in life. Faust, however, went a step further and learned how to find meaning through helping others.

Let me make clear that I am not preaching against material success. How could I? Didn’t I sing along with you the words of b’sefer hayim where we specifically ask that God bless us with parnasa, with prosperity in the new year ahead? Wealth definitely has its benefits. It enables us to provide well for our family; to travel and thereby experience the various cultures of our world. Wealth provides the means to attend concerts and see theater. It allows us to have luxuries and goods that bring enjoyment and pleasure which are necessary for our sanity and sense of well-being.

But I submit to you that our lives are most fulfilled when they serve a purpose beyond self-gratification. As Rabbi Hillel said, “If I am only for myself what am I?” When do we feel the deepest satisfaction? It comes when we unstintingly give of our love, our devotion, our time, to our children, to our spouse, to some important cause. We find it when we bring happiness to an elderly family member by a visit and a warm smile. In caring for others, we find a meaningful role for ourselves.

Our wealth, also, can give purpose to our lives as long as it is not used solely for our own indulgence. The synagogue, UJA-Federation and other charities; universities, hospitals, museums and the arts; all depend upon the generosity of successful people sharing the fruits of their success with them. I promise you that by putting your hand into your pocket, you will not feel you are losing your wealth but that you have gained the blessing of knowing that by your generosity, you have made a difference.

We who are Jews can feel that our lives have transcendent significance because we are part of the Jewish people. As individuals we are no more than a quick flash of light passing through an ageless and limitless universe. But as members of the eternal Jewish people, our lives take on an aspect of eternity. Our birth is no longer the beginning but a continuation; and our death is not the end but a chapter in an ongoing saga.

Our existential need for significance, can be satisfied, also, by striving to make our lives holy. A beautiful midrash says that the way to be holy is to follow God’s example:

“Just as God is gracious and compassionate, you too must be gracious and compassionate. Just as God is loving, you too must be loving.”

We become holy when we take the Sabbath day and sanctify it by our rest. We become holy when we take the act of eating, which we share with the animal kingdom, and choose to eat the way Jews eat with rules, with reverence, with an appreciating for the miracle that a meal represents.

How do I know that the way we achieve a meaningful life is by being charitable and loving; by being moral and ethical and by striving for holiness? How do I know this is true? I will tell you how. In a few moments, we will recite yizkor for our beloved dead. In my 37 years as rabbi, I have spent hundreds of hours with families mourning a deceased loved one. And let me tell you what I heard them say and what I never heard them say? I cannot recall ever hearing a bereaved child bragging about the car his father drove or about his mother’s expensive wardrobe and her extensive array of costly jewelry. But I have heard children proudly recollect that their father was a man of integrity, that he was fair and generous. I have heard a child say about a mother: “We could talk about everything and anything; and while my mom had a very strong sense of right and wrong which she tried to communicate to me and my siblings, nonetheless, she was always accepting so that I never felt judged.”

I remember a young man in his twenties reminiscing about his grandfather who called himself the "delivery man.” Every Sunday morning his grandfather would bring bagels and lox to the grandson’s home. It was a weekly ritual that strengthened the loving bond between them.

Another grandchild told me, “I remember the Shabbat dinners at my grandparents’ home with the candles and challah. I remember the lighting of the menorah on Chanukah, the Pesach Seders, the Rosh Hashanah meals we had together. As for the material things my grandparents gave me, they were nice and they were important to me then, but the other memories are what I think about now and talk about all the time.”

So here is the vital lesson I have learned in hundreds of houses of mourning and which I now share with you: when we think back upon those we love, our fondest thoughts are not about their attainment of wealth, power and status, the very things that preoccupied Eugene O’Kelly, Kim, Kohellet, many Harvard students and many of us. What stands out about those we remember at this time of yizkor are their love, their understanding and wisdom, the sacrifices they made for us, their deeds of kindness and caring, their ethical fortitude and their religious devotion.

One day our dear ones will be remembering us. And what will they remember us for? Hopefully, for the many beautiful ways we brought blessing into their lives.

But for us to be remembered that way we must live that way – which is why on this holiest of days we engage in introspection and self-evaluation. Our confessions and our beating of our chest are meaningless if they do not lead us to see more clearly how we can be better parents and more caring spouses, more devoted children and more loyal Jews. In striving for those goals we gain two benefits. We make our own life fulfilling and purposeful, and we leave our personal mark on our loved ones, our friends and our community that will constitute treasured memories long after we are gone. Working on that legacy must be our priority, indeed our obsession, in the new year ahead.

G’mar hatima tova: may we sealed in the Book of Life for a healthy, prosperous and, above all, a meaningful new year.