This is the sermon I delivered on Yom Kippur morning 5777.

In my years as a rabbi delivering sermons on the High Holy Days, there is at least one thing I have learned: Nobody ever changed his or her mind about how to vote in an election based on what the rabbi said. Nobody. This year, maybe more than ever before, I don’t see the point of trying to tell anyone how to vote on November 8th. With the election now 27 days away, with presidential candidates who are so far apart on the issues, qualifications, and temperament, if you have not yet decided for whom to vote, don’t expect me to help you make up your mind.

This has been an election like none other in our lifetimes. It might be like no other election in our nation’s history. But I am not going to talk today about what will happen between now and Election Day. Rather, I would like to talk about what will happen after the election, regardless of the outcome, when we try to pick up the pieces of our democracy.

No sane person could have wanted this election to go the way it has. Even before the election lost its “PG rating” on Friday, no one could have wanted the ugliness of this election and the deepening divisions in America. This election has lowered us into some dark places in our national character. The lies, the personal smears, the name-calling, the media ambushes, the sleaziness of this election have left us numb. No sane person could have wanted this. 

To be clear, I am not drawing a false equivalency between the candidates. Both major party presidential candidates are unpopular, for sure. Both have said divisive things. One candidate, however – Donald Trump – has repeatedly said that, for him, ignoring past standards of civility, even at the risk of offending people based on their gender, race, ability, religion, or national origin, is a necessary corrective to our society’s problem with “political correctness.” Mr. Trump has reached heights of divisiveness never before seen in an American presidential campaign – even going so far as to call his opponent “the devil” and brag that he will throw her in jail if he is elected.

It seems that many Americans like the way that Mr. Trump “shoots from the lip” regarding Mexicans and Muslims, and they like the way that he ridicules his opponents. So, even Trump’s supporters will agree that this election has broken new ground in the way politicians can denigrate religious and racial groups and insult and threaten their opponents. They will agree that this election has been different from previous elections in the way that the integrity of the media has been attacked, and in which charges have been made that the very apparatus of our democracy is “rigged.” 

Last Sunday’s debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was the first American presidential debate ever broadcast on Iranian state television – no doubt because the Iranian government wanted to show its people just how crass and insane American democracy has become. Regardless of how you feel about each of the candidates, it is important to think about where our democracy is heading. It’s important to think about the long-term effects of such vitriol and anger on our society after the ballots have all been counted. How will our society be changed after the new president has been sworn in, in a country where politics has become a full contact sport?

As it stands today, the United States is divided by a widespread belief that “the other side” is hopelessly corrupt and malevolent beyond redemption. If nobody declares a halt to the divisiveness and anger even after the election is over, will the victor of this election – with just a few percentage points more votes than his or her rival – march triumphantly up Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day and ignore the way our country has been so painfully divided? Will the losers stew in their resentment, declare the results illegitimate, and allow their pain to boil over? 

We have seen over the last decade how bad the hyper-partisanship in American politics has gotten. We have seen the federal government shut down for weeks because of partisan bickering. We have seen the Senate refuse to hold hearings on a Supreme Court nominee for seven months and counting. Who doubts, if this trend continues, that the next President will face even worse: Government shutdowns that last, not for weeks, but for months … Senators who threaten to never approve any Supreme Court nominee from a president they don’t like … articles of impeachment delivered on Inauguration Day? That seems to be the way we are heading, and it is a recipe for national disaster.

Or, we will find another way. Because, you know, there is another way. We can learn about it from our nation’s history.

Near the end of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln spoke in his Second Inaugural Address about the divided nation. He did not preach domination over the vanquished Confederacy, as many in the North wanted him to do. Instead, he said, “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right – as God gives us to see the right – let us strive on to finish the work we are in: to bind up the nation’s wounds,… to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” Lincoln’s vision for the end of the war was for the country to awaken from its divisions and to start healing itself. 

How long after Election 2016 will it take for us to listen to this other way? The time to start healing our nation is right now. The opportunity is now to say that during the term of our next President – whomever that may be – we need to set higher standards for civility and for a government that actually governs. The time is now to say that after all the name-calling, bullying and breaches in standards of civil conduct, we must be one people, one nation.

Think about what the benefits of such a national shift after the election could be. If political adversaries were able to engage in honest dialogue, we could begin to address issues that have been back-burnered by this era of hyper-partisanship. Our economy would benefit from real compromise on the federal budget and on debt-reduction. Democracy would benefit from an honest meeting of the minds to make elections more fair with sensible  and transparent campaign funding rules, secure voting systems, fair ballot access, and an end to the gerrymandered districts that make the outcome of most legislative and congressional races a foregone conclusion. The world’s stability, and the future of Israel, would benefit greatly from a clear bi-partisan strategy on America’s military and diplomacy in the Middle East. We have so much to gain by working together.

Moreover, imagine how much our country would benefit if we would could agree to restore civility and thoughtful, respectful dialogue. Imagine what a better nation we could be if both the winners and losers of the November election realize how much they have to gain if the integrity and ethics of our political process are raised – not lowered.

We can also learn about this “other way” to face hurt and resentment over the past from our own Jewish tradition. We have a concept in Judaism that corresponds to Lincoln’s call for binding up our wounds with forgiveness and humility where there has been hurt and resentment. We call it t’shuvah. It is the word that we often translate as “repentance,” but the word actually comes from the Hebrew root that means “turning.” 

It is the call to turn away from the broken and turn toward the whole. It is the call to relent from arrogance and to give way to humility. It is the call to forgive and to allow ourselves to be forgiven. It is the call to let go of the need to be right and to embrace the need to be kind. It is the minute shift in our soul that takes us from unappeasable self-righteousness, and to turn instead to yielding and open-hearted peace. It takes us from a place where we see other people as enemies, and begin, instead, to see them as fellow, flawed human beings.

Last night, I talked about how an individual can take on the difficult task of healing his or herself through t’shuvah. This morning – on Yom Kippur, the day that is entirely devoted to t’shuvah – I offer the same prescription for our society to turn away from the fear and anger that have become the dominant, driving emotions of our society. This is a prescription for us to turn instead toward working together to build a better society and a better world. 

Here are three suggestions:

• Step One: Admit mistakes. The first step of t’shuvah for individual healing is to look honestly at the ways that we have caused hurt to others and to ourselves. We apologize where apologies are due. We ask for forgiveness. 

We need to do the same on a national level. Part of what has made so many Americans so disgusted by this election season has been the constant and repeated denial of past mistakes. There is plenty of room for Americans on both the left and the right to admit the ways in which we have mistrusted and mistreated each other. We can admit that we have put winning ahead of the best long-term interests of our nation. We can admit that not all of the policies and solutions we have sought in the past have worked to our satisfaction. Whether it is war or healthcare, deregulating Wall Street or confronting terrorism, we won’t be able to move to better solutions until we admit that some of the solutions we have tried have not worked as well as we believed they would.

• Step Two: Relent in your hard feelings about the past. Last night, I talked about how we, as individuals, all have pain and scars from our past and how we can examine them and release them from controlling our future. On a national level, we need to do the same. 

This election has shown just how much anger and resentment has built up within the American people. We can allow those feelings to fester after the election as a dark and destructive force, or we can choose to allow those strong feelings to fuel our determination to make our country better. Step two will be for our nation to release itself from the instinct to hold this election over the heads of our political adversaries forever. I don’t know about you, but the idea of re-hashing the insults and anger of this election for the next decade absolutely sickens me. No matter who wins, we are going to need to let it go.

• Step Three: Connect with other people. Just as self-healing depends upon our ability to connect to something larger than ourselves, national healing depends upon our willingness to reach out to one another. Our country has been damaged by rhetoric that treats political opponents as if they were demons and monsters. 

No doubt, the internet and social media have added to a climate in which people hear only the voices of those with whom they already agree. We sit at our computers and stare at our screens not to learn about issues, but to find confirmation of what we already think. We have to re-learn the habit of having respectful and constructive conversations with people who disagree with us. We have to re-engage with people and be willing to be part of meaningful and diverse communities.

I am enough of an optimist – or perhaps just naïve enough – to believe that our national habits can change. I believe that if individual Americans become more honest with themselves, more thoughtful, more forgiving, and more connected to each other, we can become a society in which people are able to listen to each other, to disagree with civility, and to see each other as real and true human beings.

If you think I am being unrealistic, let me remind you that it was not that long ago that our politics was much less polarized than it is now. There used to be socially liberal Republicans. There used to be fiscally conservative Democrats. It used to be that not every vote in Congress could be predicted along red and blue lines. In 1947, Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg declared that “We must stop partisan politics at the water’s edge,” and the principle of a bipartisan foreign policy held for more than half a century. We used to have thoughtful conversations about difficult issues. I believe it can be true again. 

It better be, because the stakes have gotten too high for failure. Let’s each decide right now that we will strengthen and not undermine the basic premise of democracy – that people of different opinions can live together with shared responsibility, that they can connect with those who see the world differently, that they can compromise. Let us choose to be a civilization that values civility. Our nation can make t’shuvah by softening our hard hearts and finding forgiveness.

On November 8th, I beg of you, please vote in our local, state and national elections and make a choice. And the next day, I ask you, elect to become a part of the change that will heal ourselves, our society, and our world.

G'mar chatimah tovah. May you be sealed for a good year.

I delivered this sermon on the evening of Yom Kippur 5777.

This is a story about Emily, although “Emily” is not her real name. In truth, though, this really is a story about all of us.

Long ago, when Emily was ten years old, she had a terrible problem with bullies in her school. In the first week of fourth grade, one of the girls in her class decided that Emily’s frizzy hair was ugly – and she told her so. She also told all the other girls in the class, “Emily is the ugliest girl I have ever seen. Her hair looks like it is made of straw and it won’t stay straight no matter how much she combs and brushes it. Maybe someday she will find a man who is just as ugly as she is to marry her. Maybe she won’t find anyone.”

Emily went home that day and cried. She told her mother about what the other girl had said about her. Her mother wanted to help, so she offered advice, “Ignore them. Show them that their words can’t hurt you. If they tease you, just tease them right back. Don’t be a victim.” She gave Emily the message that she could stop the bullying by changing her behavior, but Emily heard the advice as confirmation that she was the problem, not the bullies. She was being victimized because she was allowing herself to be a victim.

Bullying was not a thing, in those days. There were no helpful articles about it psychology magazines; there was no good advice about it in parenting books. There weren’t academic studies on bullying, its effect on young people, or how to stop it. The popular stereotype in that era was that children were bullied because of their own insecurities and annoying behaviors. Emily’s mother responded to her daughter being bullied in the same way that most parents of that time would respond: She told her to smile more, make friends, fit in, and not to be so sensitive to other children’s taunts.

Emily wanted to follow her mother’s advice, but the bullying just got worse. When she tried to ignore the bullies, they just saw it as a challenge to make her crack. When she tried to return their name-calling by calling them names, the bullies howled with laughter and thought of worse names to call her. 

Emily came home from school every day, threw herself on her bed, and sobbed into her pillow. She prayed to God that the bullying would stop. She started pulling on her hair until it became a constant nervous habit, as if she were trying to yank the frizzy hair out by the roots. Her parents took her to a doctor when her scalp was red and bleeding. The doctor told her, “If you keep doing that, you’ll make yourself so ugly nobody will ever want you.” She believed him. She believed the girls in her class who told her that she was already the ugliest girl in the world. She believed her parents when they said that the words of bullies couldn’t hurt her, so she believed that she, and not the bullies, was the real problem.

Fourth grade was the worst year of Emily’s life. Things got better in the decade that followed. By the time Emily was in college in the early 1970s, frizzy hair was considered “cool” and she stopped hearing about how ugly her hair was. Instead, she heard people tell her how much they envied her thick and wild hair. Women and men told her that she was beautiful, and she tried to believe them. But, even if the memories of being bullied had faded from her, she had not lost the feeling in her bones that there was something wrong with her. 

All of those hurtful words – from her classmates, from her parents, from her doctor – left their mark. Today, Emily is 64 years old. She doesn’t think about the fourth grade much anymore, but the scars are still there.

Today, when a co-worker dismisses her good ideas, when one of her clients cancels an appointment at the last minute, or when the plumber take three days to fix her water heater, part of Emily becomes that little girl again and she believes what she was told as a ten-year-old. She thinks, “It must be my fault. There must be something wrong with me. I am not lovable. I am not worthy of love. It is my own fault that I am a victim.” Even when she realizes the harm she is doing to herself by believing those things, she blames herself for not being stronger in confronting people who treat her badly. And, so, the cycle continues.

The faded memories from childhood, and the feelings those memories have drilled into her mind, have become like a pebble that Emily has carried in her pocket for the last half century. The pebble keeps slapping up against her thigh as she walks in her blue jeans. She has gotten so used to it that she hardly notices it anymore. But, it’s always there. Often, it hurts. Despite Emily’s success in life by most conventional standards, that pebble can still make her feel worthless.

I tell Emily that she should take this pebble out of her pocket sometimes and look at it. I ask her to think about whether the stories the pebble tells about her are true. I say to her, look at the pebble and ask yourself if it’s true that you are ugly. Is it true that you are unlovable? Was it your fault that you were bullied? When people treat you badly, is it because you let yourself be a victim? Thinking back on her memories with intention and purpose – really looking at the pebble carefully – Emily begins to answer the questions, and the pebble begins to lose its power.

“No,” she says. “It was a very painful experience to go through as a helpless child, but it’s over now. I am not a child anymore. I am not helpless. I can still cry and feel sorry for the pain that that I went through back then, but I am not that little girl anymore. At 64 years old, I don’t have to be controlled by what some nasty ten-year old girls said to me fifty years ago.”

In a way, Emily has taken the pebble out of her pocket, inspected it, stared at it, even tasted it – and she has decided that it’s just a pebble. She can keep it, or she can throw it into a pond, but she doesn’t have to let it hurt her anymore.

We all have pebbles from our past that we carry around with us. They are the memories of the hurts, and the failures, and the disappointments, and the losses we have suffered in life. 

Some of us have pockets that are so full of pebbles that they weigh us down. Some of us have pebbles that chaff against our skin and cause us pain without us even remembering what they are. Some of us walk through life with resentment and anger about the pebbles that fill our pockets. But, for the most part, we don’t often take them out to look at them – to see what they really are. We don’t ask them questions. We don’t wonder how much more suffering we need to endure because of all those pebbles.

And one of the true things about these pebbles is that – if we never actually look at them, question them – in our minds, they can turn into boulders. Emily says that she thinks that’s what happened to her when she was in her forties. Her marriage was in trouble. Her daughter was going through a painful “I hate my mother” period of teenage rebellion. Her career was in a stalling pattern. And she just hated herself. All of those messages she had heard as a child about how awful and unlovable she was, they turned into a full-sized boulders standing between her and any possibility of happiness.

We usually think of Yom Kippur as a day for apologies and forgiveness. We apologize to God for the things we have done that we regret and we ask for God’s forgiveness. We apologize to the people we have hurt in our lives and we forgive the people who have hurt us. But there is one person to whom we usually forget to apologize, one person we forget to forgive – ourselves. There is enough pain in life without us continuing to hurt ourselves with the pebbles we carry around that makes us feel ugly, or unloved, or abandoned, or angry, or unhappy. 

Yom Kippur is not only a day for unpacking our sins. It is also a day to notice our pebbles and to look at them carefully. It’s a day to decide how much you need that pebble – a day to decide if you want to keep carrying it around with you in your pocket.

Right now, I would like to ask you to pick one pebble that you are carrying with you today – a memory from your life, or a story you tell yourself, or an image you have of yourself that causes you suffering. Take a moment to choose one. Maybe it’s not “the big one.” Maybe it’s just a small one that you only notice sometimes. 

In your mind, take that pebble out of your pocket. With your mind’s eye, look at it. Ask questions about it. “What is the negative story about myself that this pebble keeps telling me?” Ask yourself, “Do I believe that story? Does it control me? Do I want to keep it?” Take your time. There are many hours left in Yom Kippur (and in your life) to decide what you want to do with that pebble.

There is a word in the Jewish mystical tradition that can be applied to those pebbles we carry around with us. They are called “k’lipot,” which literally means “husks.” They are the barriers that prevent us from noticing and celebrating the holiness of the world and of ourselves. In Jewish mysticism, every act of holiness, every mitzvah we perform, is a step toward removing a k’lipah. When we treat others with kindness and dignity, we learn how to be kind to ourselves. When we engage in holy action, we shatter the pebbles and discover that they are only the hard, outer layers of the holiness that fills all of creation.

Today, Emily has seen her own daughter grow up to have children of her own. She is close with her daughter and her grandchildren. She tells me, though, about how, when her daughter was a little girl, she had the same frizzy hair that Emily had as a ten-year-old. She still remembers combing through her daughter’s hair every night as she helped her get ready for bed. She remembers her daughter’s tears, crying, “It hurts!” when the comb would get caught in the knots and snarls. 

And Emily remembers how she said to her daughter, “I know it hurts. I’m so sorry. But you have luscious, beautiful, wonderful hair. It reminds me of the hair I had when I was a little girl. I did not know it then, but this thick, wavy, wild and woolly hair is a gift. It is God’s way of reminding you what a wild and wonderful person you are. It will always be here, right on the top of your head, to remind you of how much I love you, and how I want you always to love yourself and to know how beautiful you are – inside and out.”

When Emily thinks about that memory, she recognizes that the pebble  – the one that keeps slapping up against her thigh as she walks in her blue jeans – has been transformed. Instead of seeing the pebble only as a memory of pain and self-loathing, she has turned it, in part, into a pathway toward love, compassion, and self-forgiveness. Day by day, she is shattering the pebble and discovering that, within it, there is holiness.

Our pebbles remind us about the pain we have experienced in life. But they also can remind us of how we can turned some of that pain into love. They remind us that our past does not have to rule our future. They remind us to be kind to ourselves, to forgive ourselves, and to know that we are beautiful and holy.

G’mar chatimah tovah.
May you be sealed for a good year.

This is the sermon I delivered on Rosh Hashanah morning.

If you have had a child become a bar or bat mitzvah at Temple Sinai in the last two years, or if you will have a child reach that milestone in the next year or so, you know that I like to meet with the family of upcoming b’nei mitzvah about a year before the service to talk about the process of preparation. 

At that meeting, which is often in the family’s home, I like to start the conversation with a question. I ask the parents about their memories of their own coming-of-age. For parents who were themselves b’nei mitzvah as thirteen-year-olds, I ask about their experiences on that special day. I also ask parents who did not celebrate becoming b’nei mitzvah, for whatever reason, about their coming-of-age experiences. They, too, tell me about their first communions, confirmations, quinceañeras, or other rituals marking their transition from childhood to adulthood.

I ask all of these parents, “What did it mean to you at the time?” “What are your lasting memories from that occasion?” “What does it mean to you now?” I want them to tell me their story. More importantly, I want their children who are about to become b’nei mitzvah themselves, to hear the story and the meaning their parents give to that story as they begin the process of creating their own story about what it means to grow up, what it means to be a Jew, and what it means to make a commitment to something larger than themselves.

On many occasions – I would say about half of the time – after the parents tell their coming-of-age stories, the child tells me that he or she had never heard the story before. I almost always notice that the child seems less anxious and more interested in talking about their own bar or bat mitzvah service after hearing about the parents’ experience. I can almost see the gears turning in the twelve-year-olds head, saying, “My mom and dad have been through this. They seem to be calm about it. They remember good stuff about it. I can have a good experience, too.” I find that those stories do more to prepare the child than anything I can say.

Stories do that for us. They help us connect with other people and with ourselves. Storytelling is the way that we human beings make sense of the world and they are the way that we prepare ourselves for our futures. Stories are how we understand ourselves.

Some writers have proposed that the scientific term that we use to name our species, homo sapiens, Latin for “knowing person,” does not properly identify our most distinctive feature. Plenty of animals, they argue, are capable of “knowing” to one degree or another. The thing that really makes us unique as a species, though, is our habit of storytelling. Some suggest that we should call ourselves homo narrans, “storytelling person.” We are, indeed, the only species that can tell stories that describe our past, our hopes for the future, our fears and our sorrows. Perhaps, more importantly, we are the only species that can listen to other people tell their stories and be moved by them.

I believe that the style and substance of Jewish tradition strongly agrees. Storytelling is at the heart of what it means to be a human being and it is at the heart of how Judaism relates and finds meaning in our most important human experiences.

Consider the story we heard today in this morning’s service. The story of the Akeida, the binding of Isaac, is filled with contradictions and nuance in conveying what it means to have faith, in conveying some of the powerful emotions of being a parent, in conveying the pain of sacrifice. These are ideas we can talk about and discuss, but, somehow, a story has the power to explore these nuanced and complex feelings and experiences more deeply than an analytical approach ever could. Storytelling allows us to emotionally enter difficult human situations and to wonder, “What does it feel like to be in that place?” “What would I do if I were there?” “What does this mean to me?” 

Today is Rosh Hashanah, the day that we call the “birthday of the world.” That is a kind of a story, too. We don’t, of course, believe that today is the literal and factual anniversary of the day the world was created (not even the ancient rabbis agreed on that). It is certainly not the anniversary of the Big Bang or anything that science could teach us. Rather, Rosh Hashanah, the “birthday of the world,” is a way of understanding the world the way that a storyteller might describe it. 

Rosh Hashanah is “In the beginning.” Rosh Hashanah is the cosmic “Once upon a time.” Rosh Hashanah is the holiday that reminds us that, in order to understand the meaning of our lives, we must assume that the world began and is here for some reason, and so are we. Rosh Hashanah reminds us that our lives are not just a random and meaningless occurrence. God put us here for a purpose, whether that purpose is to “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and have dominion over it,” as the first chapter of Genesis teaches, or whether that purpose is to be God’s partner in repairing a world that was broken almost from its first moments, as later rabbinic tradition would teach.

The story of Rosh Hashanah is the story of our own origin – the origin of the world and the origin of each of us as individuals. Rosh Hashanah asks us to wonder, “Why was I created? What am I here for?”

Let me ask you, right now, to take a moment to think about your own story, the story of your life so far. How would you describe to someone you know what you have found out through your life’s story about why you are here? What does your life’s story teach you about what life is all about? What does it have to say about how we should try to live our lives? 

Take a moment. Think about it. Think about what you would like to tell me about your story and what it means to you.

I have been the rabbi of Temple Sinai for just over two years now. I know that I am really still at the beginning of my story with this congregation when I consider that there are so many members of this community whose stories I have not yet heard. Over the course of this year – 5777 – I am going to set a goal for myself to hear the stories I have not heard. In order to truly be your rabbi, I need to learn about who you are. I need to hear your sacred stories.

So, today, I ask of you – if you get a call from me over the course of this year asking if we can have coffee together sometime, or if we can meet at the Temple or in your home – take a little time to meet with me and let me get to hear some of your story. Also, you don’t have to wait for me to call you. My commitment to you is that, any time you like, I will gladly make the time to hear you and to learn from your story.

Getting to know each other, of course, is a two-way street. To be your rabbi, I want to get to know your story, and, I imagine, you want to know some of mine, too. A Rosh Hashanah sermon is not an invitation for a rabbi to tell his or her entire life story, but let me just tell you one small story to get the storytelling ball rolling between us. 

Unlike many of my classmates in rabbinic school, I didn’t always want to be a rabbi. My interest in studying Judaism did not begin for me seriously until I was already in my thirties. In fact, as a teenager, I didn’t think that being Jewish was a very important part of my life. In fact, I dropped out of Confirmation class when I was in ninth grade because I didn’t feel like I had much to confirm. I was more interested in saving the world than in studying Torah. 

I worked as a young adult for a national environmental organization, and that, to me, felt like it was my life’s calling. After about eight years, though, of doing that important work, I noticed that most of the people who started with me in the organization had left. They had gone off to law school or to work in the business world – and who could blame them? Working on environmental campaigns is hard work with long hours and not much pay. Also, you don’t get to celebrate too many victories for all that work. 

I started asking myself, “What makes me different? Why is it so important to me to save the world?” I spent some time really thinking about this. My job was in downtown Boston and I remember spending my lunchtime sitting in Boston Common, eating a sandwich and wondering, “Why do I keep doing this? Why do I think it’s my job to make the world a better place?”

The answer I eventually found deeply surprised me. From my early childhood, my parents had put me in Religious School and explained that I had a duty to learn about being Jewish because God expected me, as a Jew, to be a good person and to do the right thing. 

The internal lesson I took from that, even as a child, was that because I was Jewish, I really didn’t have an option when it came to choosing between making the world a better place or just doing whatever was pleasing to me. My job, as a Jew and as a human being, was to live up to high moral standards, to help those in need, to repair what humanity has broken, and to heal this wounded world. I thought it was my job. I knew that I was commanded.

It was not too long after those summer afternoons in Boston Common that I came to a decision that I needed to learn more about what it means to be a Jew. Once I started learning and studying, I was hooked. I became a youth group advisor for a Temple in Lowell, Massachusetts. I started teaching Religious School at a couple of different congregations. Two years after that, I moved with my new wife to Jerusalem and began my studies as a rabbinic student. 

And that is the story of how I got to the place where I am today. That is a part of my story. It is the story that teaches me who I am, what is most important to me, what I want to do with my life. It is even the story that tells me the reason why I was born. 

We all have stories like this. We all have a storyteller within our minds that tells us the most important things about ourselves. On Rosh Hashanah, the birthday of the world, we think about the origin story of the world, and, I think it is also a good time to think about the origin story of ourselves, too.

Let me ask you to spend some time this holiday, while you are enjoying your apples and honey, to tell a bit of your story to someone who should hear it. And make sure to hear it yourself. It may teach you something you had forgotten about who you are, why you are here, and the reason why you were created. 

What’s your story? I can’t wait to hear.

L’shanah tovah tikateivu. May your story be written for a good year.