Delivered Yom Kippur morning by Rabbi Jill Maderer
A woman sits at an airport gate, reading her book and eating a bag of cookies… begins Valerie Cox in her poem, “The Cookie Thief.” The woman at the airport realizes the man next to her– a stranger– is sticking his hand into her bag and eating her cookies! How dare he do such a thing? Her row is called, she boards the airplane, settles into her seat and reaches into her handbag for her book. And there it is. Instead of the book, she pulls out her unopened bag of cookies. The bag at the gate belonged to the man. He had quietly let her stick her hand into his cookies. She was the cookie thief!
What was this man’s disposition, that he simply allowed a stranger to share his snack? And what was this woman’s attitude, that she assumed the worst in someone else? How much does a response to a small everyday, situation say about who we are? Jewish tradition teaches that both the large life turning-points and those daily small moments reveal our character, or spiritually we might say, our soul.Continue reading
