What a joy it is to share this marvelous evening with all of you, who have come here to celebrate with Lynn and me and with Heather and Jeff and our families! We are grateful to you for this opportunity to welcome Shabbat together in this most unusual service.

Tonight, we have incorporated two distinctly different styles of music in our service, as you have heard. One style has always been characteristic of this imposing sanctuary. It features a pipe organ and professional choir. The music is formal and majestic and can evoke tremendous awe and reverence. I have always loved it and have often been inspired by it.

The other kind of music has been the weekly feature of our 6:00 P.M. Shabbat service. Accompanying the music are an electric guitar, a synthesizer, and percussion instrument. Leading the singing are volunteer singers from our Temple's Intergenerational Choir. The music is lively and exciting, often promoting hand clapping. As one critic of our services once quipped: “At Temple Beth-El, you have a choice between the Mormon Tabernacle Choir or Peter, Paul, and Mary.”

It will not come as a surprise to many of you that initially I did not “cotton to” that second kind of music. However, having led a significant number of 6:00 P.M. services, I must now admit that I have come to love this kind of music, as well.

I came to realize that this kind of music has become typical of that heard in most Reform and some Conservative congregations today and I had better learn to accept it. I could have continued to dig in my heels and resist this change. Change of any kind is difficult for me, as for many of us here.

Many of you who are long-time members of our Temple have told me how agonizing many of the changes here at Temple have been for you. You miss the exquisite words of the old Union Prayerbook. You see more yarmulkes worn in our Sanctuary. You watch our Bar and Bat Mitzvah celebrants, processing with the Torah scroll around the Sanctuary in a Hakafah. You hear much more Hebrew. You feel that it's not the same Temple, where you grew up. These alterations in familiar patterns can be unsettling.

Why do we resist change? The philosopher and longshoreman, Eric Hoffer, once observed that, with every change, we die a little. In life, we need certain places and institutions to remain the same, because we have learned to negotiate and deal with them. We have mastered a certain vocabulary to do so. We have acquired the tools to respond to the various stimuli that are present. When these are altered, we feel out of control and unable to cope.

Perhaps this is the appeal of fundamentalist religions, which keep sacred doctrines and rituals the same for centuries. These religions enable their followers to know exactly what is expected of them, to gain a feeling of assurance and security, and to remain in control of their lives.

Sometimes change involves a loss of ego, as well. For many years, we might have championed a particular idea or cause. When the idea becomes dated or even discredited, we feel a loss of face. I remember visiting a moshav on my first trip to Israel in the early 1960's, when I was rabbinical student. The founders of the moshav were driven by the pioneering spirit of working the land and living simply and frugally.

One elder moshavnik told me how distressed he was that members of the moshav were now buying refrigerators, which to him were unnecessary luxuries. For years, he had advocated the use of old-fashioned ice boxes and other trappings of a simpler lifestyle which had become out-of-date. I am sure he felt diminished by this development.

Yet, change, even with its risks and challenges, is necessary for our personal spiritual and emotional growth. If we do not change, we stagnate. We become irrelevant.

Once we do change, however, others need to accept what we have become and not try to force us to retreat to our former selves. I know that some of my family members who are seated here tonight recall what an obnoxious brat I was as a child. In fact, our Rabbinic teachers warn us against reminding a Ba'al Teshuvah, a person who has improved himself or herself about the less worthy character traits in one's past. I hope that you will take this warning of our rabbinic teachers seriously.

The institution in our lives that illustrates the phenomenon of change most vividly is marriage, the focal point of this Shabbat. Marriage ideally passes through three stages.

In Stage 1, passion dominates. When couples first meet, begin to date, and then later, become an “item,” they are head-over-heels in love. Romance and rhapsody charge their lives with passion. Physical desire is intense. The couple is euphoric. There may be glaring irreconcilable differences between the couple. Yet they tend to gloss over them at this first stage.

There is an insightful Yiddish admonition that instructs us to keep our eyes wide open before marriage and our eyes half closed after marriage. Unfortunately, most couples do the very opposite. They keep their eyes half-closed before marriage and wide open after marriage. They ignore any troubling issues before marriage. However, once the wedding and honeymoon period end, they focus intently on those irritants and impediments in their relationship they previously overlooked.

This is Stage 2, when sobriety and reality take over. Differences in personalities, habits, values, and perspectives assume center stage, where previously they were hiding in the wings. Now we hear the complaint: “This isn't the same person I married.” Husbands and wives discover that the life's partner each has chosen is sorely lacking in certain ways. Conflicts and disagreements sometimes erupt at this stage. Physical passion begins to wane.

In this 2nd stage, husbands and wives begin to try to change each other. Each attempts to win the other to his or her way of doing things, whether it is practicing religion, spending money, dressing, or raising children.

If the couple can eventually forego trying to alter the other in their relationship, they can finally enter Stage 3. Here the challenge is not to change the other, but rather accept the other as he or she has changed.

How this stage is negotiated is critical to the ultimate success of the marriage. We know that all husbands and wives change in the course of a marriage. In fact, there is an ancient rabbinic legend that tells us that, since no other officiant was available at the marriage of Adam and Eve, God alone conducted their wedding ceremony.

However, instead of using only one Huppah, one marriage canopy, God erected ten Huppot, ten marriage canopies. Why ten? Because if a couple is fortunate, the bride and groom will be married at least ten different times, but always to the same person. The Rabbis emphasize in this legend that a marriage is a work in progress.

The goals and aspirations of a husband and wife can never remain static because their life's circumstances keep changing. The addition of children, the search for different jobs, the building or purchasing of new homes, the reality of the empty nest, the time of retirement all impact the evolution of marriages.

Here the husband and wife have accepted the fact that they are not married to the same person they met when they first began to date. Each one has evolved into someone else. At the same time, each has at last concluded the fact that he or she can not change or mold the other, according to his or her design. To do so, would mean stepping over necessary, appropriate boundaries.

In this stage, they can finally harvest the ripe fruits of their marital partnership. Here they can appreciate and rejoice in each other's changes and not feel threatened or diminished by them. Here, they can feel an inner glow in their stunning accomplishment that they have grown together, healthily and positively, without coercion on either side. The humorist Sam Levenson put it well, when he said: “Happy marriages begin when we marry the one we love. Marriages blossom when we love the one we married.”

By looking at the dynamics of marriage, we can derive several lessons about change. First, change is a necessary part of human growth and development. Second, we can not, nor should not, mold or shape a person according to our own blueprint. Third, we need to allow a person to change according to his or her own inner needs, drives and values, and accept that person as he or she has become.

The American poet, Carl Sandburg eloquently describes this positive strategy of confronting change. Here he envisions an individual speaking to his beloved and saying:

I love you for what you are, but I love you yet more for what you are going to be… Not always shall you be what you are now. You are going forward toward something great. I am on the way with you and therefore I love you.

Amen.

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