I am old enough to remember the band Wham with George Michael and Andrew Ridgely. Back in the day, they had a really famous film clip where they wore t-shirts with big fluro writing on the front saying “Choose Life!” Now we might think they were just 80s pop stars with big hair, fluro shirts and questionable dance moves but Wham were also spreading the word of God, for the command to Choose Life is towards the end of our Torah reading this week. Once again, Moses sets the laws of God before the Israelites. He reminds them that there will come a time when they will sin, they will turn away from the Torah and they will suffer dire consequences as a result. And then, at the very end, he says: “I call heaven and earth to witness before you this day: I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse,: choose life!
Moses and God set before us a choice. We can follow the commandments and have good, fulfilled lives of blessing or we can turn away from them and suffer the consequences which will follow. But what does that mean? How do we choose life?
In our world we are assaulted by choice. Columbia University research says that the average person makes up to 70 conscious choices a day, and Microsoft suggests that figure is 35,000! So somewhere in between is probably the number. That is a lot of decisions and times when we are invited to choose life!
I heard a wonderful TED talk from someone who went to buy a new pair of jeans. The last time he bought jeans he had a choice of two styles. This time he walked in and they started asking: Do you want stone wash, acid wash, dark, light, low rise, high rise, straight leg, boot leg…and the list went on. He was completely bamboozled. He said that he tried on all the jeans and eventually chose a pair. It was probably, he said, the most comfortable pair of jeans he had ever owned, they fit him better than any before and yet he was not happy. He was burdened by the fact that he maybe could have chosen a better pair, maybe one of the other choices would have been MORE comfortable. He said the previous pair which was not as good, made him happier, less choice was better.
But we have these choices about everything, not just jeans. Choice is important but the amount of choice we have is perhaps too much and it is making us less happy, Apparently, the perfect amount of choice is three, if we choose between three options, we will be happy and satisfied with our decisions. Any more and we are overwhelmed. So, when the Torah tells us choose life, it is not so simple, we have so many other options, so many other things which could be occupying our time, so many demands and how do we choose?
Judaism helps to guide us to the choice. It says that to “choose life” we choose family, community, friends, we choose relationships and connections with one another. We choose social justice, we choose reaching out to help others, seeing the injustices in the world and choosing to change them. We choose Shabbat, a day of rest and reflection, a time of stepping away from the pressures of our lives to embrace eternity and instead of imposing our will on the world we live in harmony with it. We choose to be challenged, to think and grapple with what is important. We choose to listen to opinions which might differ from our own, we choose to engage with a timeless text which has wisdom for us today as it did thousands of years ago. We choose to care, we choose life by living in the best way we can, striving to do good, bring justice and walk humbly with God.
So this Shabbat before Rosh hashana, as we reflect upon the year which has passed, we are challenged to ask ourselves: have we chosen life? Have we lived a life of meaning, of compassion, of love? Have we given as well as received? Have we been the best we could be? And as we wipe the slate clean, we begin again, the question remains: will we choose life?
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Jacqueline Ninio