Rabbi Sklarz - Kol Nidre 2024 Sermon

Finding God Through Cancer 
My Spiritual Curriculum to Temple Judea 
Kol Nidre Sermon  

By Rabbi Andrew R. Sklarz 

“Der mench tracht un Got lacht” (translation: man plans and God laughs) were the Yiddish words a dear congregant at Temple Beth Torah in Northeast Philadelphia would say to me when something seemed to go awry. 
 
I must admit that I found the sentiment deeply troubling. The implication that God would thwart our plans and find amusement in doing so sounds terribly cruel, as it suggests that humans are no more than mere playthings on a string. Such an idea defies the Jewish belief in free will and moreover, is antithetical to the essential theological call that we are to have faith in God. 
 
Although an ordained rabbi, at that stage in my life I was nevertheless wrestling with the existence of God and God’s role in our lives. As I have shared, it was not my relationship with God, at least not on a conscious level, that had led me to the rabbinate. Rather, my calling was related to Judaism’s prophetic call for social justice and a love for humanity. 
 
Some twenty-six years ago as a young rabbi, I came to the City of Brotherly Love for the first time when I was invited to serve as the rabbi of Temple Beth Torah. As a suburban New Yorker and city person, I was excited to experience life in a city of such prominence and happy that Beth Torah had a robust membership. However, I soon realized that Northeast Philadelphia’s heyday was quickly fleeting, and I questioned the long-term viability of the congregation.  
 
There were board members who shared my concerns and we formed a team to search for potential sites for a move. I strongly advocated for Bucks County, as it seemed to be a growing frontier. However, older members, many of whom were founders of the temple, expressed the sentiment that it would be impossible to replicate the grandeur of the sanctuary, a building of such a size, and most of all, they were wary of driving beyond their comfort zone. I heard and honored their concerns and despite my affection for the congregation, in the fifth year of my contract, I decided it was time to look for my next position. Susan and I loved living in Yardley with our then six-year-old daughter and infant son and were saddened by the prospect of leaving Bucks County. 

However, upon learning that Temple Judea in nearby Doylestown was beginning a rabbinic search, my interest was immediately piqued. We were drawn to the colorful population in the area and one day came to see the building on Swamp Road. 
 
Although Temple Judea was considerably smaller than Beth Torah, I sensed that this was a temple with much potential. How exciting was the prospect of nurturing the congregation and seeing it flourish and grow. And so, twenty-three years ago, the first thing on a Monday morning, I called the director of placement of the CCAR, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and requested that he forward my application to Temple Judea. I was so excited to begin this process as my gut told me that Temple Judea would be the right fit for me and our family. 
 
That Wednesday, I went for my annual physical with the cavalier assumption that all would be routine and that as in the past, my internist and I would spend the appointment waxing philosophical about our lives, our families, his patients and my congregants. 
 
However, when my white-clad friend opened the door, his smile was not the broad one I had previously known. Rather, he had a somber appearance as he grimly informed me of a very serious abnormality in my standard bloodwork.  

Hoping this was a lab error, he immediately ran my bloodwork again. However, in less than an hour, the results were identical. My life as I had known it came to a screeching halt. And so with a heavy heart, the next morning I called the placement director to tell him that we could no longer send my application to Temple Judea. 
 
Soon after, the diagnosis of leukemia was confirmed and I was essentially handed what was then considered a death sentence. It seemed as though a guillotine had been placed above my head, and a snake whose impulse was to strangle me was placed inside my belly. How my heart sank as I looked at Susan and our children. I loved them all so much. I had had such dreams for a future together. How could this be happening to me and why was this happening were questions that relentlessly reverberated in my tortured head. 
 
As I groped in the darkness for answers, plagued with misery beyond words could capture, I wondered if this was divine justice for some transgression on my part. In rabbinical school it meant so much to me to receive the Prize for Human Relations and the Chaplaincy Award for my work at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, but perhaps the God whose existence I was unsure of considered that “rabbi” was a fraudulent title for me and that I was just not worthy of living. Perhaps, I deserved to be punished. I reflected upon the countless times when I had sat by the bedside of those who believed their illness was divine retribution and how I attempted to reassure them that there was no correlation between a perceived sin on their part and a diagnosis. But now that I was wearing their shoes, I was searching for a spiritual reason for my diagnosis. 
 
And then 9/11 took place. Had the world suddenly gone berserk? 

I immediately immersed myself in creating a community wide healing service, reaching out to victims’ families and preparing for what I believed  would be my last High Holy Days. 
 
Several weeks later, just hours before Erev Rosh HaShannah, I lay on an examination table at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania waiting for a renowned bone marrow specialist to tell me if I was a candidate for transplantation. As I lay on the cold table, I thought of the liturgy I would soon recite, fearing how I might burst into tears with the reading of the passage known as Unetoneh Tokef —  the piece that begins with the dreadful words: “Who shall live and who shall die?” I questioned how I would get through the evening services and in the morning, muster up a playful presentation for the family service. 
 
When the guru of bone marrow transplantation entered the room my one hope for survival was shattered as he informed us that the oncologist I had previously seen was incorrect when telling me my brother had been a transplant match. Until that moment, I had held tight to a prayer that my only sibling held a magic bottle inside that could save my life. I left the appointment without a glimmer of hope, feeling as if the walls were quickly closing in on me from all sides. 
 
And so four hours later, I put on my white robe — the same robe I wear tonight —and stepped onto that grand bimah. The pain in my heart was beyond awful as I looked out at my congregation, believing this would be the last Erev Rosh HaShannah service I would officiate. And what was I to tell my sweet six-year-old daughter? How could I look into her eyes or those of my baby boy? Would she remember me after I was gone? For certain, he would not. Perhaps she would have a faint memory of her daddy and my son would have some pictures of me cradling him in my arms. 
 
As I put myself on a list for an anonymous bone marrow donor, I was told that the only way to keep myself alive in the interim was with a drug, one that was known to wreak havoc on the body and induce clinical depression. Thus, my immediate goal, while I still had the strength, was to stand before my congregation as best as I could before the ravages of the treatment would take its toll. 
 
I hoped for one last time to appear as the rabbi my congregation had known and I was able to feign my persona for Rosh HaShannah evening and morning services. But during the family service the next afternoon when I invited the kids up to the bimah, my little daughter gave me a big broad smile and it was just too much. I turned to the ark with a face full of tears. 
 
Above the Aron haKodesh — the Holy Ark — appeared the Hebrew words Da Lifnei Mi Atah Omed (Know Before Whom You Stand), the same words that appear over our ark at Temple Judea.  

More than ever before in my life I sought to know God and understand why my life was to be cut short as I prayed for a miracle. As I searched for answers, I was barraged with invasive questions by mostly well-intentioned people who never considered how insensitive, excruciating painful and inappropriate it was to ask what they must have felt was “fair game” to bring to the rabbi. As I looked to the medical world for a cure, I groped in the darkness for a theological answer to why this was happening to me. 

During my rabbinic internship at Sloan-Kettering, I developed a closeness with many patients, especially those who were battling leukemia. I remember how we prayed that a bone marrow match would be found, how we celebrated when it came to fruition, and how I cried with their families when the treatment failed. As a result of these experiences, I was keenly attuned to these developments. Two months before my diagnosis, when playing on the floor with my baby, my attention was caught by a TV report on a clinical trial that might represent a breakthrough for leukemia patients who had exhausted all options. When I asked my then oncologist about the possibility of trying this protocol, he flatly refused, saying that it was too new, without sufficient long-term data. But I was not content with his answer. 
 
And so I arranged an appointment at Sloan-Kettering immediately following the holidays. Susan and I arose at 5:00 a.m., hugged and kissed the children goodbye, drove to the station, and took an early train to the city. As I exited Grand Central Station, my stride outpaced all others on the street. Perhaps I thought I could outrun the cancer in my body if I ran fast enough. 
 
How strange it was to enter the same doors and walk the halls I had gone through so many times before, only this time, I was a patient, not a pastoral counselor. My rabbinic cloak was off and replaced with a gown and I was filled with countless emotions. However, after a full day of meeting with various teams, I was given the authorization to begin this new protocol. Of course this was an unknown entity and to some people including my then-local oncologist, I was playing medical Russian roulette, but my gut was telling me that God was with me. It seemed as though I was hearing a voice from Sinai. Within my depths of despair, I suddenly had a glimmer of hope and to the complete shock of the medical community, some fifty-six days later when I had my next bone marrow biopsy (ouch), there was no detectable trace of the disease. The leukemia had gone into remission, and my body’s response had been faster than others in the clinical trials. It seemed that I had been granted a miracle, yet of course, no one knew how long it would last, and even twenty years later, living on the daily chemotherapy, I await the report of blood tests every three months. 
 
With remission, life began to take on some sense of “normal” — a normal for which the unknown every day remains above my head. The “normal” I had once known and taken for granted no longer exists. Rather it is my task, with the help of God, to take the reality before me and make it as purposeful, productive and meaningful as I can. 
 
Anyone who has ever received a diagnosis of a life-threatening or potentially incurable illness will attest that “normal” takes on an entirely new meaning, with thoughts and emotions we had never known. 
 
And as that sense of a new normal prevailed, a new me began to emerge. On the surface, I was not terribly different than before my diagnosis, as I have always been energetic and enthusiastic. But nothing will ever be quite the same. Most of all, a driving need to pursue my passions like never before took hold of me: I began cycling, entering marathons and becoming a yoga enthusiast. I returned to a passion put on hold at fifteen when a freak accident with a glass window resulted in the permanent partial loss of movement in my hand and I stopped playing my cherished instrument — the piano. But my new normal led me nearly thirty years later to resume lessons and return to the beloved world of Beethoven, Chopin and Mozart. Confronting my mortality compels me to savor every moment by working and playing hard. The blessing of life truly renewed my resolve to partner with God and work for a better world. 
 
My friends, my theology — my personal belief in God — has deepened and developed through my journey with illness. Our lives are uniquely our own and our journeys — our spiritual curriculums — are between ourselves and God. It is up to us to unravel the reason our plans did not come to fruition and why God has brought us to certain junctures. Through uncertainty, pain and deep reflection, I have come to believe the voice of God is there for us to hear, and the divine hand is at work in our lives. 
 
Although I still bristle when I hear the expression Der Mench tracht un Gott lacht and my professional and personal trajectories have played out far differently than I had anticipated, I believe God has a plan for each of us and that we are called upon to try to understand it.  
 
Life has certainly been different than I expected, but here I am – some twenty-three years later than I had planned — standing on this beautiful bimah as the proud rabbi of Temple Judea of Bucks County. 
 
My friends, I have shared these most personal of thoughts tonight to convey my heartfelt belief that God is truly with us especially at the moments when we least feel it. And so, as we embark on the new year, uncertain of what lies ahead, let us hold fast to the belief that God has a plan. 
 
As mere mortals, it may be beyond our comprehension to truly understand God’s reasons, but let us have faith that within our journeys we are far from alone. G’mar Chatimah Tovah — may we all be inscribed in the Book of Life.  

Ken Y’hi Razon: May it be your will Oh God and let us say, Amen.