This is the sermon I delivered at Temple Sinai in Cranston, Rhode Island, for the first day of Rosh Hashanah 5786.

Menachem Mendl of Kotzk, also known as the Kotzker Rebbe, was a prominent chasidic leader of the early 19th century. There is some enigma around him because, although he was very highly regarded as a great scholar and spiritual teacher, he essentially gave up his role as the leader of a distinguished chassidic community when he was in his early fifties. He lived in seclusion, away from the community he had led, for the last twenty years of his life. 

We don’t know a lot about why the Kotzker Rebbe chose to isolate himself. There are stories that, even before his self-imposed exile, he would spend Shabbat afternoons locked in his room and would refuse to see anybody, even while his students were singing Shabbat songs and sharing words of Torah. There is a story that one of his students once had the temerity to knock on his door; the Rebbe emerged from his room shouting in a loud voice, “You are all wrong!”

We have collections of the Kotzker’s sayings and teachings, and there are some that seem to hint at the crisis he faced and the reasons for his decision to leave his community. They create a picture of a man who was troubled by the way his followers revered him. The Kotzker knew that he was fallible and that there were others who possessed fine and discerning minds, yet he, “the rebbe,” was considered to be the final word on everything – the virtual link between heaven and earth. That was deeply unsettling to him.

We can also see in his sayings the extremely high spiritual demands he placed upon himself and upon his students. For the Kotzker, devotion to God and Torah was all consuming. He wanted his every breath and moment to be devoted to prayer and study. To do anything less, it seemed to him, was a betrayal that would make him a hypocrite. 

That was what he hated most of all – hypocrisy. Menachem Mendl of Kotzk wanted to be fully himself and he would admit no compromises. This fixed idea of being deeply and authentically himself is expressed in one of the most famous sayings attributed to him:

“If I am I, because I am I, and you are you, because you are you, then I am I, and you are you. But, if I am I, because you are you, and you are you, because I am I, then I am not I, and you are not you.”

Enigmatic, right? Students of the Kotzker Rebbe have puzzled over this saying for centuries and it appears to hold multiple meanings.

Let me read it to you again:

“If I am I, because I am I, and you are you, because you are you, then I am I, and you are you. But, if I am I, because you are you, and you are you, because I am I, then I am not I, and you are not you.”

People love this teaching, I think, because it says something powerful about identity. I can only be myself if my identity is not tangled up in the identity of anyone else. My identity cannot be contingent or dependent upon anyone else. I have to be my own person and not expect anyone else to inform me or define for me what I should be, or must be. 

And, the teaching also says that what is true for me is also true for you and for everyone else. You cannot truly be who you are if you are waiting upon me or someone else to confirm or validate your existence. 

I would like to ask you to consider how this applies to your life. When have you felt like you were most authentically being yourself? When did you choose not to allow your identity to be hijacked by the expectations, judgements or examples of another person or people? When in your life have you best proclaimed, “I am myself and need no one else to inform me of who I am!”

These may all seem like lofty and cloud-minded questions and concerns. They may seem like questions that have no practical value to the way you live your life. But you should know that there are people for whom these questions have real and immediate importance and real-life consequences. For some people, making the choice just to be themselves can even be a matter of life and death.

Most of us grew up in a time when it was not considered socially permissible for gay men and lesbians to live publicly and honestly as the people they are or were. It can still be difficult and painful today to be gay in a family or community where homosexuality is shunned. But, in a time when some people’s sexual identity was literally classified as a “sociopathic personality disturbance” by the medical establishment, in a time when a person’s sex life could literally be criminalized, the level of misery for people who could not choose to be themselves publicly was intense.

As I said, there are still hardships in our society for queer people, particularly young people. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was often fatal. Although there are no statistics to verify it, the suicide rate among gays and lesbians in that era is generally believed to have been very high.

And you probably know that there is a cruel debate raging in our society right now in which some people are still being told that they are not who they think they are, and that they cannot be allowed to express the identity that they know is within them. In some states, laws have been passed and enforced to prevent people from living the truth of their own identity. 

Twenty-seven states have banned gender-affirming care for minors – which almost always means hormonal treatments that temporarily and reversibly pause the onset of puberty. These states have effectively told parents that no matter how certain their children are of their gender identity, and no matter how much the parents want gender-affirming care for their children, they are forbidden to seek care that would allow their children to live their lives with the gender identity within them.

Other states have laws and regulations forbidding teachers to even call students by the names they have chosen to affirm their gender identity. Florida, Indiana and Kentucky, have rules that require teachers to call students only by the names on their birth certificates. Imagine being a six-year-old child known by all of your family and friends as Stephanie, but having a first grade teacher who is required by law to call you Steven. How would that make you feel about going to school each day?

There are statistics on the suicide rate among transgender people in America today, and it is absolutely frightening. Research shows that 82% of transgender people have considered killing themselves. Forty percent have attempted suicide, with suicidal thoughts and attempts highest among transgender youth.

Yet there is still massive amounts of misinformation in our society about transgender people and the care they require. A lot of that misinformation says that transgender people are a new phenomenon, that being transgender is a fad, or that it is the product of ideological indoctrination. None of this is true. Being transgender is a medically documented and understood phenomenon. It has existed, literally, for thousands of years.

Jewish tradition has recognized gender diversity since the time of the early rabbis. The Talmud and other early rabbinic texts from as early as the sixth century CE describe legal categories for a person described as androgynos (a person with both male and female sexual characteristics), tumtum (a person who has sexual characteristics that cannot be assigned to either male or female), ayelonit (a person who was assigned female at birth but later developed male characteristics), and saris (a person who was assigned male at birth but later failed to develop masculine characteristics). 

The ancient rabbis did not have a concept of an internal gender identity. That idea did not exist in the ancient world – even though everyone then knew what gender they were, just as people do today. The rabbis’ categories are about external sexual characteristics, not an internal identity. Yet, they absolutely understood that gender and sex are not a simple binary determined at birth. The rabbis approached the issue with a desire to treat human beings according to the realities of their experience, and not to try to force their preconceived notions onto others.

What rabbinic Judaism did fifteen hundred years ago is what our society should be doing now – recognizing that people are different, that simplistic understandings of human diversity are almost always wrong, and that all human beings should be allowed to be who they are – and not be beholden to somebody else’s idea of who they should be.

I think that the crisis faced by Menachem Mendl of Kotzk had something in common with the experience of people today who are told that they are not what they know themselves to be. The Kotzker's crisis, at least in part, was a product of his extreme discomfort with not being able to be the person he knew himself to be. He could not reconcile himself to being the great and infallible “Rebbe” that other people needed him to be. He knew that he could never be himself if he accepted that role.

But, there is also an important difference. Menachem Mendl of Kotzk could not tolerate being a hypocrite. For transgender people today, not being able to live their lives as they know themselves does not just provoke a feeling of hypocrisy, it creates a total alienation of the self. For many, youth in particular, it provokes a constant state of believing that there is something intrinsically “wrong” or “bad” about them. Some transgender people describe the experience of repeatedly being identified as the wrong gender as a constant scream in their head saying, “That is not me.”

I said earlier that the famous saying attributed to Menachem Mendl of Kotzk can be understood in multiple ways. Here it is again:

“If I am I, because I am I, and you are you, because you are you, then I am I, and you are you. But, if I am I, because you are you, and you are you, because I am I, then I am not I, and you are not you.”

There is another way to hear these words that, paradoxically, is almost opposite in meaning from what I have discussed so far. Maybe the Kotzker meant to say that none of us is really who we think we are. Maybe his intention – or part of his intention – was to remind us that we all have identities that are necessarily shaped by the people around us who teach us, inspire us, challenge us, or influence us. If that is the case, then “I am I” only because “you are you” and that when I think that “I am only I,” I am actually mistaken. 

“I am I,” in part, “because you are you.” I cannot live in isolation from the impact that you have on my life. And you cannot live in isolation from the impact that other people have on your life. Therefore, in some way, it is a true statement to say: “I am not I, and you are not you.” We are all in the process of being people who are made up of ourselves along with all the other people who shape us, inspire us, and influence us.

Think about the people who have had the biggest impact on your life. Could you be who you are today without their influence? Think about the people who have guided you, shaped you, taught you – either for the better or for the worse – aren’t you who you are, in part, because of them? When have you been in the state of: “I am I because you are you”?

This alternative reading of the Kotzker Rebbe can be true, I think, at the same time that the first reading is true, even though they appear to be opposites. The paradox is that both interpretations may be necessary. 

We should strive courageously in life to be ourselves. But there is also a courage necessary to allow others to be themselves, too, and to see how we all need each other and are shaped by each other. Without that courage, we will trap ourselves in the myth that other people are supposed to be nothing more than versions of ourselves – and that anyone who fails to be like us is wrong and invalid. We will live isolated from the richness life offers when we authentically connect with others as they truly are.

What applies to an individual also applies to society. If our society cannot accept people for who they are, how they think, and what they have to say – but tries to force people to conform to a single mindset, a single perspective, a single identity – we will be a society in which no one is safe. In such a society, everyone eventually will be told: You can’t be who you are. You may not live as the person you think you are. 

Unfortunately, we Jews have seen such societies. We should understand how destructive it is when people are not allowed to live as themselves, when being yourself, speaking for yourself, becomes a crime.

“If I am I, because I am I, and you are you, because you are you, then I am I, and you are you. But, if I am I, because you are you, and you are you, because I am I, then I am not I, and you are not you.”

On this Rosh Hashanah, let me wish for you that these Ten Days of Awe be a time in which you rediscover yourself, have the courage to be who you most deeply are, and love yourself for it. May it also be a time in which you grow in courage to allow others to be themselves and for you to delight in the ways that they are a part of your life. May this world be a world filled with people who are connected to each other, each one helping others to be who they are, and who they might become.

L’shanah tovah tikateivu. May you be inscribed for a good year.​

This is the sermon I delivered at Temple Sinai in Cranston, Rhode Island on the first day of Rosh Hashanah 5783, September 26, 2022.
 
There is a moment in the Book of Esther that always stops me dead in my tracks. Every Purim, I cannot read it without pausing and wondering. It comes right after Haman (thank you for not making the noise) is infuriated by Mordechai’s failure to bow down to him and he decides that the Jews must be destroyed. He goes to the King and says, “There is a certain people, scattered and dispersed among the other peoples in all the provinces of your realm, whose laws are different from those of any other people and who do not obey the king’s laws; and it is not in your Majesty’s interest to tolerate them” (Esther 3:8). 

In one verse, the Hebrew Bible sums up two thousand years of antisemitism. So, the question I always ask myself on hearing this verse is, “How on earth did they know?” 

How did the authors of the book of Esther know that, for centuries to come, the Jewish people would be maligned as a scattered, insidious force working to destroy civilization? How did they know that we would be slandered and persecuted for the invented crime of disloyalty to the nations in which we live? How did they guess that villain after villain, like Haman, would rise against us seeking our destruction, all while applauding themselves for their self-righteousness? How did they know?

Let me assure you that I do not make this observation as some kind of proof of the divine origin or the inerrancy of the Hebrew Bible. I’ll leave that to the biblical literalists and fundamentalists – I’m not one of those. But I do make the observation to make a point about the antiquity and persistence of antisemitism. It is, perhaps, the world’s oldest form of hatred, and it is still very much with us today.

Consider these examples:

• At the University of Vermont last year, a teaching assistant made antisemitic remarks on social media threatening to lower the grades of Jewish students. Two student organizations, including a sexual assault support group, boasted that they would exclude students who “expressed support for Zionism” from membership in their organizations. UVM’s President released a statement two weeks ago denying that antisemitism is an issue at the university.

• In Kentucky, the Bracken County Republican Party put a message on its Facebook page accusing the newly confirmed director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms of being part of "a Jewish junta” that “is getting stronger and more aggressive." As at UVM, the county’s party board denied charges of antisemitism with the claim that they would never do that because they have party members with Jewish heritage.

• In Boston, a Democratic City Council member tweeted, “Y’all are letting the Zionists SHAKE YOU DOWN” in response to a federal court ruling that allowed a new law against boycotting Israel to go into effect.

• Right here in Cranston, flyers with hateful antisemitic messages were distributed by a white supremacist organization. Two men with the flyers were arrested in East Providence for refusing to identify themselves to police who witnessed them illegally posting them on utility poles.

We don’t only have anecdotes to show that antisemitism is on the rise. According to a report by the Anti-Defamation League, last year saw a 27-percent year-over-year increase in anti-Semitic messaging from white supremacist groups. The World Zionist Organization reports that it was the worst year in a decade for antisemitic incidents around the globe. 

What is going on? What has been going on for the last 2000 years? Lies against the Jews are practically the same today as they were in ancient Persia when the biblical Haman talked about Jews as an insidious affliction, bent on destroying a decent, law-abiding society – an affliction that could only be stopped by force. 

And why is it that the Jews, of all people, have been singled out for this kind of suspicion, animosity and hatred? Scholars have puzzled over it for centuries. You, too, have probably wondered, “Why us? Why the Jews?” Of all the nations and peoples of the earth, why have we been singled out by those who wish to find a scapegoat for humanity’s ills?

You have probably heard some of the theories: Jews were stigmatized by Christianity with the charge that we were responsible for the death of Jesus. But if that is the root source of the hatred, why is antisemitism also so prevalent among Muslims and other non-Christians? 

Jews have been stereotyped as money-grubbing exploiters of the poor. But if that is the reason for antisemitism, why has the persecution of Jews actually been at its worst when Jews have been desperately poor and exploited themselves, as we have been for most of our history?

Jews revere a singular God of universal morality, and that has been perceived as an intolerable threat to those who revere only their own power. But if that is the source of antisemitism, why are other minority religions that also uphold a moral deity not also singled out for hatred? 

Some people today claim that the State of Israel is the reason for the rise of antisemitism. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is complicated, and I have no intention of doing it justice this morning. But I do note that nothing Israel does actually reduces anti-Jewish hatred. If Israel today pulled out of the West Bank and declared a Palestinian state, does anyone seriously believe that anti-Jewish rhetoric would be reduced? Is that what happened 18 years ago when Israel unilaterally pulled out of Gaza? No. If anything, it has gotten worse, with increasing claims that the Jewish people are actually colonialist invaders in the Land of Israel – the only people in the world who are called colonialists for living in their native land.

The truth of the reason for antisemitism’s persistence may be the sum of all of these factors and more – a perfect storm of prejudices. Maybe. But I want to suggest a different interpretation – the interpretation expressed by Professor Deborah Lipstadt, the American historian best known for documenting the deliberate falsification of history by Holocaust deniers.  

Lipstadt’s observation is so simple – and also so contemporary – that it is surprising that we fail to recognize it immediately. Antisemitism is a conspiracy theory – an unlikely or bizarre explanation of events that depends on belief in sinister, powerful groups. Conspiracy theories gain traction, not because of evidence or arguments, but because of the desire to blame circumstances on a hated group that is defined as evil. 

In the middle ages Jews were accused of killing gentile babies to drink their blood. Today, antisemites spread stories of a Jewish conspiracy to replace the white race by promoting the immigration of black and brown people into the United States. They tell stories of Jews not showing up to work at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, which “proves” that the attack was secretly a Jewish plot. 

When we actual inspect the underlying beliefs of antisemitism, all we see is delusional thinking. We see beliefs so absurd and without a shred of evidence that could only be the product of hatred and imagined terrors run amok. We easily understand that such conspiracy theories are the product of paranoia and irrational rage. They have nothing to do with history, theology, socio-economic or geopolitical trends, policies or facts. Conspiracy theories do not need reasons. Hatred has no logic.

The unsettling idea that there is no “why” behind antisemitism presents a big problem for people who want to combat it. If there is no rational basis for antisemitism, there is no reason to believe that any amount of facts or  arguments will undo it. Antisemites believe that Jews are greedy, evil, inferior, or plotting to overthrow civilization because that is what they believe. They may present so-called evidence in support of their beliefs, but debunking false evidence does not stop them from hating since their hatred was never actually based in facts or evidence to begin with.

Does this all sound familiar? In many ways, we are living in an era of conspiracy theories. Bizarre, ugly lies are rampant today and readily believed by the gullible – about faked school shootings, about the origin of the Covid virus, and, yes, about stolen elections, too.

So, what do we do? How do you stop a hatred that is based on nothing?

We have to admit that the answer cannot just be the main thing we have tried so far – education. The movie, Schindler’s List broke a record when it was shown on television unedited and without commercial interruption in 1997. Sixty-five million people watched it, by far the largest audience of any non-sports TV program that year. People were moved to tears. It was the most compelling piece of public Holocaust education ever conceived. In the wake of it, mandatory Holocaust education programs were enacted across the country, including here in Rhode Island.

And what has it gained us? Twenty-four years after Schindler’s List was shown on NBC, white supremacists marched down the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, chanting, “Jews will not replace us.”

At one time, we might have been convinced that the worst of antisemitism was just among fringy whackos on the edge of society. Not any more. The stories about the World Trade Center and “White Replacement Theory” are not confined to corners of the dark web. They are now mainstream. They are promoted by commentators on cable news and by college professors at distinguished universities. Antisemitism is spreading.

So, what does work? In my mind, there are several important steps to combatting hatred beyond just general public education. Here are four:

1) Speak Up. No antisemitism should ever be ignored or go unchallenged. When a neighbor makes an offhand semi-humorous remark about Jews controlling Hollywood, or the banking system, or what have you – reply without apology or antagonism, “That’s hurtful. You know, some people believe those awful stereotypes. Don’t tell jokes like that.” 

When a small, pathetic group of neo-Nazis posts antisemitic flyers in Cranston or anywhere, we won’t write it off as the product of a few disturbed individuals. We will report it to the police. We will go to the newspapers and demand coverage. We will publicize the names and faces of the perpetrators of hate. If people tell us we are “overreacting,” we will say that we will not be silenced and that all forms of hatred must be confronted. Antisemitism counts as hatred just as much as racism, sexism and homophobia.

2) We must educate ourselves. Maybe in our attempts to educate non-Jews we forgot to make sure that we ourselves understand antisemitism. Learning about the history and patterns of antisemitism will help Jews to identify it quickly and make sure that other people see it, too, even in our everyday interactions. I’ll be teaching an adult education class this year on antisemitism and we will discuss it in age-appropriate ways in our Religious School, too.

3) Join forces. Antisemitism may be the oldest hatred, but it’s not the only one. When we join with Blacks, Muslims, Asian and Pacific Islander peoples, LGBTQIA people and others who are also subjected to hatred, we not only gain allies in our fight, we also gain opportunities to show how the antisemitism we face is painful and harmful to us, and how it hurts them, too. We show that antisemitism is not just some relic from the past. It is here and it is now. 

A recent report in the New York Times showed that antisemitic propagandists have been working overtime posting messages on fake social media accounts designed to drive wedges of distrust between Jews and Blacks, and Jews and Muslims. We can’t be distracted or tricked out of building alliances with other victims of hatred. This is the thinking behind Temple Sinai’s Community Conversations program with a Black church in Providence and our Building Bridges program of dialogue with Rhode Island Muslims. I encourage you to participate with us.

4) and finally, we must dig more deeply into ourselves. Jews are not exempt from our own prejudices and stereotyping. Our reflections on the experience of antisemitism should not wall us off from the suffering of others people, it should heighten our awareness. We should become more determined to acknowledge prejudice and bias that exists within the Jewish community. We need to notice our own tendencies to marginalize Jews of Color, transgender Jews, and queer Jews. We should strengthen our resolve to build a community in which every voice matters. We know that such a commitment will make us better and stronger as people.

The book of Esther, for twenty-three hundred years, has been our warning about what can happen when evil people use conspiracy theories and malevolent lies to gain power. In many ways, we are seeing a repeat of that lesson in America today. It is no wonder that the oldest conspiracy theory of them all is also on the rise at a time like this. Working against the spread of lies is not only important for us as Jews, it is also essential to the stability of our society as a whole. 

This year, in 5783, be an Esther, be a Mordechai by taking action, educate yourself, build alliances, and dig deeply into yourself. Make a difference in the face of rising hatred by proudly being a Jew and fighting for our values.

L’shanah tovah tikateivu. May you be inscribed for a good year.

This is the sermon I delivered at Temple Sinai in Cranston, Rhode Island for the first night of Rosh Hashanah 5782 on September 6, 2021.

At the beginning of our service tonight, we made a blessing for the new Jewish year. We declared this evening to be the beginning of the year 5782. The assignment of numbers to years in the Hebrew calendar dates back to around the fourth century CE – not coincidentally, that’s about the same time that Christians started giving numbers to the years in their calendar, which is now also our secular calendar. So, even though 5782 minus 2021 equals 3,761, that is not how much older the Hebrew calendar is than the Christian calendar. In fact, they both started about the same time. They just each started with a different number.

For the Christian calendar, they guessed how many years it had been since the birth of Jesus. For the Jewish calendar, they guessed how many years it had been since the creation of the world.

Incidentally, both calendars got it wrong. It has not been 2,021 years since the birth of Jesus. Most scholars say the count is off by five or six years.

You won’t be surprised that the count of the Hebrew year is off by a bit more. It has not been 5,782 years since the creation of the world. Today’s astrophysicists say that the earth is actually about 4.5 billion years old and the universe as a whole is about three times older. So the Hebrew year is off by a bit less than 4.5 billion years. If you’re going to be off, you might as well be off big.

But, like so many other things in Judaism, the point of our tradition is not to teach us historical or scientific facts. Rather, it is to teach us truths about our lives and our ability to find meaning and purpose.

Since ancient times, Jews have used the number of the calendar year to find such meaning. All of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet have a numerical value, and there is a tradition at the beginning of each Jewish year to find a phrase in the Hebrew Bible in which the sum of all the letters adds up to the number of the year. Then that phrase can be used as a guiding instruction, a theme, an inspiration, or a challenge for the new year.

What’s a good biblical phrase that adds up to 5782? (Well, actually just 782. By convention, we leave off the thousands.) My friend and teacher, Dr. Daniel Matt, has found more than two dozen candidates for the biblical phrase that matches the number of this year. The one that I find most compelling comes from the book of Leviticus (19:17). In fact, it’s from a verse that we will read on Yom Kippur afternoon. In Hebrew, the phrase is lo tisna, and it means, “You shall not hate.”

How is that for a guiding instruction for 5782? I think it’s perfect. There is way too much hatred in the world today and lo tisna is the commandment we need to hear this year to confront it.

So often in this past year, I have heard people ask, “Why is there so much hatred against Jews today, not even 80 years since the Holocaust? Why is racism still a thing more than 150 years after the Civil War, after the civil rights movement, after Rodney King, after George Floyd and after the murders of Asian women in Atlanta spas last spring? Why does such hatred still persist?
Why must we still endure the pain of seeing people brutalized by police because of the color of their skin, women abused by men and the legal system with hateful disregard for their right to be secure in their bodies and persons? Why is there so much hate?” We want the new year of 5782 to be a year of lo tisna, a year of “you shall not hate.”

So let it begin now and let it begin with each of us. Lo tisna means that 5782 should be a year in which we resolve to embrace people for who they are instead of suspecting, distrusting, maligning or hating them for who they are. Let’s let Lo tisna mean that 5782 will be a year in which we let go of the idea that we should hate people who voted for the wrong party (whichever party you think is the wrong one).

Lo tisna means that we should release ourselves from the belief that our society is somehow defined by hatred – whether it was the hatred of four hundred years ago or the hatred of last week. Lo tisna means that we don’t justify violence and lies with the belief that our enemies – the people we hate – are even worse, so our cruelty and distortions of truth don’t matter.

Lo tisna means that we should relent from the instinct to hate people because they hate us, or because we think they hate us. Lo tisna means that hating will no longer be our response to people who anger, upset or frustrate us. Lo tisna means that, instead, we will deal with people who trouble us and make us feel uncomfortable with honest efforts to listen to them, to understand, and extend compassion to people who are different or who think differently than we do.

Lo tisna means that 5782 should be a year in which we intentionally and methodically develop habits toward kindness; it should be a year in which we intentionally and methodically forgive people who have wronged us. Lo tisna means that we give people second, third, and even fourth and fifth chances before jettisoning them from our lives and sticking labels of hatred onto their existence.

Lo tisna means that where we find hatred lurking in our minds, even hidden deep in the recesses of childhood memories and experiences, we will make the effort to confront it, to ask ourselves questions about where those feeling and prejudices come from, and teach our souls to transform that hatred into love, or, at least, into growth.
​
Lo tisna, the commandment that says, “you shall not hate,” means that 5782 should be a year in which we stop hating ourselves. Lo tisna means that we should forgive ourselves for things we consider to be our failings, our faults, and our weaknesses. Lo tisna means that we should remember we are beings created in the image of God given the gift of wonder, love, and appreciation of beauty. Lo tisna means that we should remember that instead of being our own worst critics, we should be the champions of our lives, believing that we were put here on earth for a purpose that even we may not fully be aware of yet. Lo tisna means that we recognize that each of us is a miracle and that each of us is unfit to be hated, and each of us is unfit to hate. Lo tisna means that we are made for love.

I want to wish you – each of you individually, and this community collectively – a year of lo tisna, a year of “you shall not hate.” In the way you treat the members of your family and your close friends, I wish you a year of lo tisna. I wish you a year of lo tisna in the way that you greet strangers and meet new people,

Let me ask you right now to think of one specific thing that you resolve to do in the year of lo tisna. It doesn’t have to be a big thing. Let it be one small, specific thing that you could start immediately – that you could begin to do in the next ten days – that would help you shake off a bit of harshness and hard-heartedness and embrace love and acceptance of others. Choose it right now… Do you have it? Hold on to it. Let that one small resolution about something that you are going to start doing before Yom Kippur be your mantra to introduce yourself to the year of lo tisna.

May 5782 be for you a year in which you work hard to love people a little bit more deeply. May it be a year in which you forgive people a little bit more easily.

There is so much about this world to love, even when pandemics strike, even when anti-Semitism is on the rise, even when we feel baffled and dispirited by war and global warming, even in a year when the world is still not the way it is supposed to be.

Even then, there is so much to love about a world that is filled with the beauty of nature, the beauty of human creativity, the beauty of the human heart with its capacity to do unimaginably generous and courageous things. I want you to find those reasons to love and not to hate in this year of lo tisna.

May 5782 be the year for you – the year in which you do your part to remove some measure of the darkness of hatred from this world and radiate your special light of love to wipe it away. May it be in every breath you take and every kindness you share with others. May this be your year of lo tisna.

L’shanah tovah tikateivu v’techateimu.
​May you be written and sealed for a good year.

This is the sermon that I delivered at Temple Sinai in Cranston, Rhode Island, on the first day of Rosh Hashanah 5780.

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai was one of the greatest rabbis of his generation. We know that he was a real person who lived in the second century CE. We know that he really was one of a small handful of people who kept Judaism alive during a period of intense Roman persecution. Given his importance and given his reputation for loving the Jewish people so deeply, legends grew up about him. These legends depicted him as a man who would perform miracles on behalf of the Jewish people. Here is one that shows his wisdom and compassion:

A man and his wife are said to have appeared before Rabbi Shimon seeking a divorce. They had been unable to have a child after ten years of marriage and felt that their marriage violated the law to “be fruitful and multiply.” Rabbi Shimon sensed that the couple really loved each other very much, but he was not able to dissuade them from a divorce. So, he told them that, because their wedding had been a festive occasion, their divorce must be marked the same way. They would have to invite all their friends and family for a celebration with food and drink.

The couple did as Shimon told them, and, in the joy of the feast and merrymaking, both husband and wife remembered how much they loved each other at the beginning of their marriage and fell in love all over again. They resolved never to divorce, even if they could not have children. The story concludes with the statement that, through Rabbi Shimon’s prayer, God granted them a child [Shir HaShirim Rabbah 1:4].

During the life of Rabbi Shimon, Israel was under the dominion of the Roman Empire and its Emperor Hadrian. Hadrian was determined to wipe out the Jewish religion. He barred Jews from living in the city of Jerusalem. He outlawed the observance of Shabbat. He banned the study of Torah. Hadrian also issued a decree for the death of Rabbi Shimon.

Determined to keep both himself and Judaism alive, Shimon and his son went into hiding and lived in a cave where, legend says, they were sustained by only three things: the carob that grew on a tree near the entrance of the cave, water that came from a nearby spring, and the study of words of Torah.

According to the legend, after twelve years in the cave, Shimon received a message from heaven telling him that it was safe to come out of hiding. The Emperor had died and the decree for his death had been annulled. When he emerged, though, Shimon saw that the Jewish people had spent the years of persecution engaged only in farming and business, and had neglected the study of Torah. Shimon was saddened and angry to see that the Torah, which he had spent his life trying to keep alive, was now nearly forgotten by the Jewish people. He eyes were filled with such disapproval that his angry glance would miraculously burn people to cinders.

When God saw what Shimon was doing, the legend says, the divine voice called again and ordered him and his son to return to the cave. It seems that the world was ready for Rabbi Shimon at the end of Hadrian’s tyranny, but he was not yet ready for the world. His years of seclusion had allowed him to forget his love of the Jewish people and to forget the humility and acceptance that is required to live in community with others. It was only after an additional year, that Rabbi Shimon came out of the cave to stay [B. Shabbat 33b].

There is a midrash – a lesson in parable form – that is said to have been taught by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai after his years in the cave. The midrash tells the story of passengers on a boat. As the boat pulled away from the dock to begin its voyage, one passenger opened his bag and took out a drill. The other passengers became alarmed as he put the drill bit against the floor under his seat and begin to make a hole in the bottom of the boat. The other passengers, in fear and astonishment, pleaded with him, “Stop! What are you doing?” The man was surprised by their objections. He calmly said, “What business is it of yours? Why should you care? I’m only drilling under my own seat. I have no intention of drilling under yours.” The other passengers frantically told him, “The seat might only be yours, but the water will rise up to drown us all!” [Leviticus Rabbah 4:6]
​
It’s obvious that, of course, no one could be unaware that a hole drilled under one seat would sink the whole boat. We understand that the story of the man with a drill is a metaphor for something that we don’t always see so readily.

The story teaches that we tend to believe that we have the right to do what we want as long as it does not directly affect others. Often, though, we are unaware of, or ignore, how private actions can have public consequences. Our simplistic approach toward our rights, believing that we can behave as we wish without considering the consequences for others, can lead to terrible error and destruction. The story reminds us that nothing we do is really completely separated from others. Figuratively speaking, we are all in the same boat.

Take, for example, the person who wants to build a factory in a residential community. The person may declare, “I bought this lot. I have a deed of ownership. Why should anyone have the right to tell me what I can and cannot do on my property?” But, we know that communities do have a right, and need to have a right, to restrict what people do with their property when it has a negative impact on others. That is why we have zoning laws. A factory that might be well suited to one part of town, could cause unacceptable noise, pollution, or congestion in another part of the same town.

This concept was familiar to the ancient rabbis. The Talmud includes laws that require leather tanneries – which were smelly and dirty – to be placed on the outskirts of a town. Jewish law takes the concept even further by saying we have no right to remove ourselves or withhold our help when we are able to help people in need. We have no right to keep information from people whose wellbeing depends upon it. We are all in the same boat, and we have obligations to all our fellow passengers.

Now, let us consider why it was that Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, of all people, was the one who taught this lesson about the man with the drill on the boat. Remember, it was Rabbi Shimon who emerged from his years of hiding with harsh judgment against those who did not spend their lives studying Torah as he had. It was his angry glance that miraculously turned people to cinders, and it was he who had to re-learn the importance of loving people as they are, not as we wish them to be.

Rabbi Shimon thought that his harsh judgment against those who did not study Torah was a way of honoring the Torah. When he first came out of the cave, he did not realize that such behavior actually desecrates the Torah.

Torah teaches us to see each human being as a reflection of God’s image. We must not isolate ourselves from others or put ourselves on a pedestal above them. We must see each person as our fellow, our friend, and our companion in life’s journey. We must love others and care for them as they wish to be cared for, not always as we wish for them. That is the lesson that Rabbi Shimon required an additional year in the cave to learn, and it is the lesson that he wanted to teach with the story of the man drilling under his seat.

It is a lesson that we especially need to take to heart in today’s world. Consider the ways that we so easily “drill under our own seat” in today’s society.

Global warming is an obvious example. We can convince ourselves that the miles we drive in our cars, the gas or oil we burn to keep our houses warm, and the electricity we use to power our air-conditioners, are nobody’s business but our own. It’s so natural for us to declare, “What business is it of anyone else? Why should anyone care? I’m only spending my own money.” But the truth is that the changes we are experiencing in our climate, the melting glaciers, the rising sea levels, the global food shortages, the spread of disease, and the increase in powerful storms are the result of the choices that each of us makes individually.

We could talk all day about the small things we can each do to prevent climate change, and I encourage you to learn more about them and do them. For now, though, let us notice that we are all drilling small holes under our seats every time we burn fossil fuels in ways that can be prevented.

There are also examples in our Temple community that show how easy it is for us to miss the ways that the personal choices of one person can affect others. My friend Joel Chase, who will be our Torah reader on Yom Kippur morning, tells a story from when he was president of this congregation. There was a family (no longer Temple members) who asked that their Temple dues be pro-rated to the number of services they attended each year. They thought that if they came to only four services a year, they should only pay four fifty-seconds of the standard dues to reflect their actual use of the Temple facilities. That’s another form of drilling under your seat.

Joel also tells a story about a phone call the Temple received from the relative of a Jewish man who was known in the community, but who was not a member of the congregation. The relative called to inform us that the man had passed away. The caller also wished to inquire if the funeral could take place at the Temple. When told that the Temple could only be used for funerals of members, the relative asked how much it would cost to purchase a membership – for his deceased relative.

In both cases, I can assure you that Joel responded politely – a real mensch. He kindly told the first caller that the Temple can only exist if people support it even during the times when they do not personally benefit from it. He expressed his condolences to the second caller, but also said that the Temple needs the support of Jews while they are alive, and throughout their lives, not just when a moment of personal need arises – sadly, such as at a funeral.

If we only think about our own needs – if we say, “What business is it of anyone else’s? I’m only looking after myself” – we are likely to be oblivious to the needs of those around us. We also will fail to see how we will be hurt in the long-run by such behavior. Remember that the man with the drill didn’t realize that he, too, would drown if he drilled under his seat.

So, how do we respond to the person who does not see how his or her actions affect others? I suppose we could yell at such people. We could tell them how selfish they are being. We could try to make them feel badly. That might make us feel good for the moment, but, that too, is just another form of drilling under our own seat. It’s just another way of insisting on doing things our way while ignoring the needs of another person.

Remember that Shimon bar Yochai, who gave us the story of the man who wanted to drill under his seat, was reflecting on his own hurtful past. He was far from a villain. He was actually motivated by love of Torah and love of the Jewish people. But he also was a man who had suffered the pain of persecution and didn’t notice it when he turned that pain against normal, decent people – people who had not endured what he had endured. It took him an extra year of study to realize that when people did things that seemed selfish or unenlightened to him, it was not because they were bad. They just had a different perspective. We can’t all live together if we are not willing to accept and care about people who look at things differently than we do. That was the Torah Rabbi Shimon needed to learn.

So, we don’t yell at the man with the drill on the boat. We don’t wag our finger at the person who wants to build a factory in a residential community. We don’t take a high-and-mighty attitude against the person who turns the thermostat up to 72 degrees. We don’t disgrace the person who wants to support the Temple only when he or she needs it. No.

What do we do instead? We listen to them. We love them. We see them as reflections of ourselves. We all have places in our lives where we need to care for ourselves first. We don’t isolate people or put ourselves above them. We try to see each person as a fellow, a friend, and a companion in life’s journey. We remember that we must love others and care for them as they wish to be cared for. That is how we help people see beyond themselves and connect with others. That is how we keep them, and ourselves, from drilling those holes in the boat.

L’shanah tovah tikateivu.  May you be inscribed for a good year.

This is the sermon I delivered at Temple Sinai in Cranston, Rhode Island, on the first morning of Rosh Hashanah 5779.

You probably have had this conversation before. Probably more than once. You are talking with a person – a person whom, for the moment, we will call “a curious non-Jew.” In the conversation, the curious non-Jews asks you about the fact that you’re Jewish. The curious non-Jew summons up the courage (because it takes courage to ask questions that you fear might cause offense) and asks, “So, what exactly do Jews believe in?”

There is an awkward pause. At first you thought that this might be a good chance to demonstrate how great it is to be Jewish, but after a moment you realize that you’re not sure how to answer. What do Jews believe in? It’s a hard question.

The curious non-Jew tries to fill the silence by adding, “I mean, do you believe in the Bible? Do you believe in heaven and hell? Do you believe in life after death? Do you believe in Jesus? Do you celebrate Christmas?”

If the follow-up questions were meant to make it easier for you to answer, they actually make it harder. You consider taking on the questions one at a time, but you’re not sure that you even know all the answers, and, really, you don’t want to get into a heavy conversation about religion in the office break room, or while you’re watching your kids at the playground, or during your weekly bridge game. You now wish that the curious non-Jew had never asked the question in the first place.

So does the curious non-Jew.

If you are brave, though – and I know you want to be brave – you go back to the original question – “What do Jews believe?” – and try to take it from there. You might say, “Jews believe in one God who is loving and just. Jews believe that the purpose of human beings is to try to make the world a better place. We are supposed to do mitzvot, the good things that God wants us to do – treating people with dignity and respect, loving our neighbors, taking care of the earth, standing up for justice, celebrating Shabbat and the holidays with our families and our community, learning about the Torah and our tradition, and just basically being a good person.”

“Oh, and we don’t believe in Jesus or celebrate Christmas, but my kids go over to my sister-in-law’s house every year to see their tree because it’s so pretty.”

If you managed to say something like that, congratulations. You did great. You affirmed a basic truth: Judaism does stand for something. Judaism does ask us to believe in something. That may not sound like a radical statement, but it is. If you look at the way Jews and Judaism are portrayed in the press and other media, you will see that Jews are often shown, first and foremost, as a people who are interested in themselves – their own history and culture, the state of Israel, the Holocaust, and defending themselves from anti-Semitism.

You have to respect the curious non-Jew who asked the question about what Jews believe in, because, for the most part, Jews are portrayed in popular culture as not believing in anything other than what’s good for the Jews. So, I’m glad you asked your question, my curious non-Jewish friend. Yes, Jews do believe in something more than just themselves.

Now, mind you, I am not saying that Jews should not be interested in Jewish culture, Jewish history, in the Holocaust, in combating anti-Semitism, and in the state of Israel. Those things should all be important to us. But, remember Hillel’s famous teaching: “If I am not for myself, who is for me? But when I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” (Pirke Avot 1:14). We do need to care about ourselves as a people, but we cannot be concerned only with ourselves. The core of Judaism is a call to courageous action to repair the world. It is a system based on core beliefs.

Judaism believes in justice. The Hebrew word for justice is tzedakah, and it means so much more than charity. Tzedakah means that no matter the circumstances of your birth – whether you are black, brown or white; whatever nation you are from; whether you are rich or poor; whatever religion you adhere to; no matter whom you love; whether you are male or female, transgender, or non-binary – you are a human being created B’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), and your life matters.

That means that you do not have to accept harassment or lower wages because you are a woman. It means that you do not have to tolerate being stopped or scrutinized by police because of the color of your skin. It means you should not be branded as a criminal because you are from another country. It means that you should not be denied the essentials of living – food, housing, healthcare, education and a living wage for hard work – just because you are poor. Judaism stands for justice.

Judaism believes in and stands for love. Judaism stands for the idea that the world can only be repaired when human beings truly and deeply care for each other, know each other, and seek peace with one another. V’ahavta l’rei’acha kamocha – “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). Our tradition teaches us to be more interested in allowing different people to live with each other in kindness and acceptance than in keeping them apart out of fear. Judaism stands for a society grounded in awareness that we are all our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers – every one of them. Judaism stands for love.

Judaism stands for reverence – a sense of awe before our Creator, and the awareness that we are not the center of the universe. V’yareita mei’Elohecha, ani Adonai, “You shall revere your God, I Adonai” (Leviticus 19:14). Judaism teaches that we have an obligation to the greater good and not to think only of self-interest. That requires humility – the humility to recognize that we don’t have all the answers and that we need to listen to each other with open hearts.

Our tradition teaches us that when we disagree with other people, it is not an invitation to insult and hate them. It is an invitation to engage in sincere inquiry, discussion, mutual respect, and genuine connection. Judaism stands for reverence.

I know. These are pretty thoughts and ideas. However, they don’t mean anything if we don’t live them. That is why Judaism is also about action. How do we turn our ideals into an action plan?

Step number one, always, is to live our values in our personal lives. Be the person who embodies the world as it should be. Think of every person – those you interact with in your daily life, and those you hear about in the news – as another human being, like you, created in the image of God. Command yourself to treat the suffering of others as if it were your own suffering. Bring compassion and caring to people in need. Make your life an example of forgiveness, acceptance, generosity, respect, and awareness of your limitations and limited experience. Rejoice in the variety of humanity and in the lives of people whose circumstances are wholly different from your own.

But the action plan for living Judaism requires more than just a personal attitude adjustment. Judaism teaches that each of us is more than an isolated individual. We belong to each other and we are at our best when we act together as a community to make our world a better place. Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh, “All Jews are responsible for one another” (B. Shevuot 39a). Judaism stands for something, and we make it real when we do it together.

This summer, a group of Temple Sinai members organized our Outreach Group, which we are calling Bikur Cholim, the Hebrew phrase that means “Visiting the Sick.” People like Phyllis Solod, Ellen Gourse, Sheila Land, and Abby McLean have volunteered to visit elderly people and people living with disabilities in our community who are in need of lovingkindness, care and support. Bikur Cholim is a way to make our Judaism real through the simple act of being with people who need love and attention. I’m asking you today to consider being a part of Bikur Cholim. Help us organize our community to do something for the people who need us.

Bob Haiken and Elaine Land are two of the leaders of our Sandwiches at Sinai group that meets once a month on Sunday mornings to make simple meals, including peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We deliver the meals to “Be the Change,” an organization that serves dinners for the needy at the West Warwick Senior Center. I’m asking you today to consider joining Sandwiches at Sinai on Sunday mornings and helping to feed people who are hungry.

This winter, I am organizing a day for our community to go to the State House to talk with lawmakers about the values of justice that Judaism stands for. I ask you to consider being a part of that experience, too. We will tell our representatives and senators that justice demands that we address Rhode Island’s affordable housing crisis so poor people can find a home they can afford. We will tell our legislators that justice demands that we give immigrants a chance to be successful in America, and that they be treated with fairness and respect. We will tell lawmakers that justice demands that women receive equal pay for equal work.

How will we do that? We will do it in the way that our tradition asks us: We will do it in a spirit of holiness. We will listen. We will be respectful. We will hear what others have to say. We will do our best to serve justice kindly, lovingly, and with humility, and we will do it with determination.

If Judaism means enough to us to come together to pray on Rosh Hashanah, it should mean enough to us to do something about our broken world. If Judaism means more to us than just celebrating being Jewish, then we have to show it with our actions. We have to live in a way that acknowledges that Judaism calls us to moral action on our ancient principles.

We need to be able to tell that courageous and curious non-Jew – the one who asked what we believe in – that our Judaism stands for something. We need to show that we are willing to be courageous, too. Because, you know, you do need to be brave to be a Jew. You need to have the courage to live for something, to stand for something, and to stick with it even when it would be easier not to. You have to be brave to be a Jew. You have to be willing to take risks. That’s what our ancestors did to make sure that Judaism would be handed down to us, and it is what we have to do to make Judaism relevant to the lives of our children and grandchildren. There is no easy way to be a Jew.

And know this, too: It’s not just that one curious and courageous non-Jew who wants to know what Judaism stands for. It is the whole world. For thousands of years, our people have seen ourselves as the conscience of humanity – Or goyim, "a light to the nations" (Isaiah 49:6). The whole world needs to know what Jews are willing to do for the sake of justice, love, and true reverence. The whole world, whether it knows it or not, is waiting for Jews to live up to the values that our prophets proclaimed in the Bible. The whole world depends on Jews being Jews. If not now, when?

Be brave. Be courageous. Be a Jew who stands for something. Make waves. Make a difference. Help to heal the world.

Shanah tovah um’tukah. May you have a good and sweet new 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.

This is the sermon I presented at Temple Sinai in Cranston, Rhode Island, on the evening of Rosh Hashanah.

The Haftarah we will read at tomorrow morning’s service includes one of the most moving stories of prayer in the Hebrew Bible. The story comes from the book of Samuel and it tells of a young woman named Hannah whose life was filled with love and filled with sorrow.

Hannah was one of two wives of a man named Elkanah. We hear in the story that Hannah was Elkanah’s favorite wife, but we also hear that she was barren – she could not bear children. In contrast, Penninah, Elkanah’s other wife, was the mother of many sons and daughters. We sense immediately that this is a family in pain. There is a beloved wife who watches in grief as she sees another woman bearing children for the man she loves. There is an unloved wife who bears children for a man who is in love with somebody else.

Each year, Elkanah took his family to the Temple in Shiloh to bring the first fruits of their harvest as an offering to God. Each year, Penninah took the opportunity to make Hannah feel inadequate for her inability to bear a child. Peninah would say, “Look, Elkanah has given me so much food from the harvest to share with my children, but poor, childless Hannah only has her one meager portion.”

Hannah just couldn’t take it any longer. One year, when at Shiloh, she entered the Temple and stood before the altar of the God of Israel. Tears ran down her cheeks as she silently prayed for a child — a child who would fulfill her dreams of motherhood and who would end her years of humiliation. Her lips trembled as she quietly made her petition to God.

The priest, Eli, saw this young woman with a ravaged face prostrate in the Temple. He saw her clothes, rumpled from lying on the ground. He saw her mouth opening and closing noiselessly. All he could think was, “Who has let this drunken harlot into my Temple?” Eli said to Hannah, “How long will you be a drunkard?  Get rid of that wine you’ve been drinking!”  

Hannah, startled by the priest’s accusation, turned to Eli and protested, “Oh, no, sir! I am no drunkard. I don’t drink wine or strong drink at all! The only drink I have poured is my own heart, which I am opening to God in prayer. Please, do not take me for some kind of a fallen woman. All this time I have only been praying a prayer of my anguish.”

Eli recognized in Hannah’s tears that she was not what he had first imagined. He regretted how quickly he had judged her, and now spoke to her with kindness. “Well, then. May you go in peace. And may the God of Israel grant the request that you have made here.”

The Bible tells us that Hannah’s prayer soon was answered. She returned to her home and became pregnant. Her son would grow up to be Samuel, the great prophet who anointed both King Saul and King David, Israel’s first two kings.

On one level, the story could be read as one in which Hannah makes  a bargain with God — “If you give me a son, I will dedicate him to You.” God takes the deal and rewards Hannah with a son. It is a familiar story and there are many like it in Jewish tradition and in folklore from around the world. Samuel is the “miracle baby” who is destined for greatness. However, like many legends, it should not be read only on that literal level alone.

The point of the story is not that, if you pray hard enough, God will fulfill your lofty dreams. If that were true, then the opposite also would have to be true — if you have not received the things in life you deeply desire or need, it must be because you are not praying hard enough. Imagine what a message that would send to the many "Hannah"s in the world today – women who struggle with infertility.

The story is about something deeper. It is about the human need to express ourselves to eternity. It is a story about prayer as an expression of our deepest yearnings and highest aspirations. It is a story of how prayer can help us to transform our lives.

There is something within almost all human beings, I think, that makes us want to be heard. We want, as Hannah wanted, to speak the great truths of our lives into the cosmos. Even if we recognize that our lives are brief and our needs are petty compared to the vastness of time and space, we still need to shout out our unique selves and affirm that our pain and our joy, our sorrow and our celebration, our gratitude and our awe all matter and have meaning. That is the essence of what prayer is about.

The rabbis of the Talmud, who lived about a thousand years after Hannah’s time, regarded her prayer as the great example of everything that prayer should be. From the verse that says that “Hannah spoke al libah” — meaning that she spoke “to herself,” or more literally, “upon her heart” — the Talmud says that prayer should be “from the heart,” done mindfully with purpose and intention. In the words of Rabbi Eliezer in the Mishnah, “Anyone who will only pray a fixed prayer has not really prayed to God at all” (M. Berachot 4:4). Prayer must be an act of the heart before it is an act of the mouth.

From the verse that says that Hannah’s lips moved as she prayed, the Talmud concludes that we should make every effort to pray with words. It is not enough to just think about our deepest hopes and highest aspirations, we must actually try to express them in words. There is something about putting our best and most soul-shattering thoughts into words that helps us hear them. Without words, our prayers remain muffled and drowned out by the roar of our busy lives by the internal chatter of our restless minds.

The Talmud observes that Hannah prayed silently so that only she could hear her prayer. The rabbis said that this shows that prayer should not be ostentatious. It does not need to be shouted or turned into a display of false piety. Rather, prayer is a quiet experience, soft enough for us to be able to hear our own souls speaking [B. Berachot 31a].

The rabbis of the first century of the common era had other reasons, too, to like the story of Hannah’s prayer and to make it their model for ideal prayer. The story’s conflict between Hannah and the priest, Eli, resonated with them as a metaphor for Israel’s transition from worship through sacrificial offerings to worship through words.

While the Temple stood in Jerusalem under the leadership of priests like Eli, worshipping God primarily meant bringing offerings of animals, fruits, grains and vegetables to the Temple to be burnt upon the altar. Worshipping God through prayer existed in the time of the Temple, but it was not until after the Temple’s destruction in 70 CE that prayer became Judaism’s exclusive means of worship. The story about Eli, the priest, and Hannah, the woman in prayer, might have reminded the rabbis of Israel’s transition from Temple sacrifices to synagogue prayers.

The rabbis also identified with Hannah because the Bible depicts her just as the rabbis saw themselves — sincere, humble, heartbroken, and loyal to God. Her earnest and heartfelt prayer reminded the rabbis how they viewed spoken prayer not as a pale substitute for sacrifices, but as, in every way, the equal of the sacrificial rites of the Temple.

As the centuries passed, the idea of prayer as a replacement for Temple sacrifices faded.  By the medieval era, the Temple and its rites were thought of as a practice from a long-ago time, without much pertinence to their own day. When medieval Jewish thinkers wanted to convince their fellow Jews of the importance of prayer, they hardly ever referred to prayer as a substitute for sacrifices.

Maimonides, the pre-eminent Jewish philosopher of the middle ages, wrote that the purpose of the daily fixed prayers was for our own growth, not for God’s benefit. He said that the practice of prayer trains our minds and hearts in the values that the prayers talk about — love of God, ethical behavior, compassion, reverence and humility. Maimonides saw prayer as a discipline that Jews accept as a daily reminder to live according to the highest values and principles of Jewish belief.

At about the same time, Jewish mysticism developed a different way to think of prayer. To the kabbalists, the fundamental purpose of life is to act as God’s partner in repairing a world that is broken and shattered. Kabbalah claims that we can help repair the universe by becoming aware of God’s hidden presence in the world and releasing that presence by performing mitzvot. According to Jewish mysticism, when Jews pray, we are not just reciting wise and edifying words, we are uncovering the hidden divinity that is within our souls. Prayer helps us to release divine hidden sparks to help repair the cosmos.

By looking at the history of Jewish worship, we see that there is no one way in which Jews have understood prayer. There has been an evolution in Jewish thinking over time and there have been — even in a single age — a diversity of ways for Jews to understand what we are doing when we pray.

And what of us today? What do we believe we are doing when we pray? That’s a difficult question for us to answer because many of us come to High Holy Days services unaccustomed to prayer in any form, or for any reason. We may fall easily back into the habit that many of us have known from childhood of singing along with the congregation or of reading the words in the prayerbook. But many of us do so without a clear answer to the “why” question.  Why do we pray? Why is it important to us? Why should we keep doing it?  

We have a great deal to gain by finding a way to understand prayer as a meaningful experience.  I believe that we need prayer, as much as any generation before us, to express ourselves and the meaning of our lives to the cosmos. I believe that we can improve our lives by find a discipline of prayer that works for us.

Here is a way of thinking about prayer that I believe can work for us. In the twenty-first century, prayer can be our way to find our way back to who we really are in a society that tries so hard to make us into something else.

We are living in an age in which we are bombarded by messages about what we are supposed to want. Whether we are told to want money, power, ice cream, an iPhone, or a really killer set of abs — it’s hard not to feel confused in a society that seems obsessed with the trivial and in which it is so difficult to find clear statements of what is truly meaningful and fulfilling in life. As a result, many people feel disconnected from their values and many struggle to find a higher purpose in their lives.

Prayer for us can be a way to quiet the voices that tell us what we should crave, and focus our attention, instead, on the things that really make life fulfilling: loving relationships, meaningful work, a sense of purpose, dedication to our values, and a sense of wonder for the miraculous world around us.

Let me give you some specific examples of the prayers in our tradition that help us to do this. We have prayers in Jewish liturgy that are about recognizing our physical, bodily needs. In the morning service, we recite blessings for getting up out of bed in the morning, for getting dressed, and even for the ability to use the bathroom. We use prayer as a way of staying in touch with the sanctity of our bodies and our physical needs, which are the foundation for all of our other needs.

We also have many prayers in Jewish liturgy that are about the need to bring justice and righteousness into the world. These prayers seem designed to lift our thoughts beyond our physical needs and into an awareness that we live in a moral universe that is shaped by principles and ideals. These prayers energize our desire to make the world a better place for ourselves, our families and communities. They remind us to live for principles and values, not just for fulfilling our cravings and desires.

Many of our prayers call us to think about our gratitude for the miracle of just being alive. These prayers turn our thoughts away from our momentary desires and into the realm of awe and reverence. We reflect on how we fit into the big picture of a world that we did not create. We open our minds to the obligations that accompany the gift of our existence — what we owe to others and what we owe to ourselves. In prayer, we stand before God and feel ourselves to be a small part of an eternity that stretches beyond our imagination. In that moment, we can rediscover the comfort, joy and equanimity of belonging in the universe. We remember that the meaning of our lives is part of the universe’s meaning — that our lives matter.

Now, I want to ask you something. How would your life change if you took the time on a regular basis to remind yourself — no matter how crazy the world around you may get — that there is a meaning and purpose to your life? How would you, as a person, change if you regularly and intentionally reminded yourself that your life is actually a mission to honor your highest values, to make the  world around you a better place, and to lovingly care for others? How would the way you think about yourself change if you regularly took the time to develop a sense of inward peace?  

This is why, I believe, we can benefit from developing a prayer practice in our lives — it has the potential to awaken our hearts to the things that really matter to us. It can help us join with others to make our community a healthier and kinder place. It can make us happier.

Hannah offered her prayer for a child in a private and spontaneous moment. She had no need of a prayerbook to find the right words to say to God. All she had to do was to open her heart and allow her powerful feelings to flow out of her. That quiet place of the soul where our deepest yearnings live is the place that we can touch and release in prayer. 

Prayer does not require a prayerbook or a prescribed formula to work, but many people find that fixed prayers help them find the words that express what they feel in their hearts. Prayer can happen in the synagogue during regular worship times, or it can happen while we are walking in the woods. It can even happen while we are standing on the check-out line in the supermarket. All it takes is the determination to listen to the yearnings of our own souls in a focussed and disciplined way.

If you are feeling right now that you are unequal to the task of taking on a prayer practice. If part of you is saying, “Yes, that sounds like it would be good for someone else, but I’m not that kind of person,” I want to let you know that it doesn’t really matter what kind of person you are.    

Psalm 69 contains a verse (v. 14) that appears at the beginning of the traditional morning service: “Va’ani t’filati l’cha, Adonai.” Literally, the verse can be read to mean: “I am my prayer to You, Adonai.”  The verse reminds us that all we can really offer when we pray is ourselves — I am my prayer – and that is enough. 

We do not need to pretend to be someone else when we pray. We do not need to approach God as if we were saying, “God, I’m not really a good enough person to be talking to You. I’m not religious enough; I don’t believe in You enough. I’m actually kind of embarrassed just to be talking to You.” None of that is necessary, thank God. If it were, no one would ever bet able to utter a single word of sincere prayer.

“Ani T’filati,” “I am my prayer,” means that your best prayer is the one that comes from you just as you are. You are already good enough. You don’t have to be someone else in order to express your pain, your joy, your hopes and your disappointments to the cosmos. Doing so, just as you are, can do for you what it did for Hannah. It can make you feel heard. It can make you feel that your life matters, that your sorrow has dignity, and that your gratitude for what life has given you can help you better enjoy life. It can bring you a sense of inner peace when you are surrounded by turmoil and it can give you strength to face life’s toughest moments. 

I am my prayer. I am the very thing that I need to say to eternity, and I feel that eternity answers back to me in the quiet and moving moments of my life.

This year, at our High Holy Days services, we are using a new prayerbook, Mishkan HaNefesh. It is, I think, an opportunity for each of us to re-evaluate our relationship to prayer. Maybe this is the first time you have sat in a synagogue using a prayerbook that talks about God in a way that seems approachable. Maybe you miss the heightened language of “Lord,” “King of the Universe,” and “Blessed art Thou.” Or, maybe you are ready to think of prayer as being more like a poem than like a rigid legal formula. Maybe this prayerbook has you ready to think about how you can be your own prayer.

As we go through the Days of Awe together between now and the final shofar blast of Yom Kippur, I would like to invite you to try praying like you’ve never prayed before. Pray as a way of uncovering the things in life that you are truly grateful for. Pray as a way of discovering your sense of your life’s mission and purpose. Pray, like Hannah did, as a way of openning up the places where you feel wounded and in pain. My hope for you, is that your prayer be a source of meaning, joy, discovery and healing.

This Rosh Hashanah, make the choice to include some kind of prayer practice in your life on a regular basis. It could be a moment to look up to heaven while you’re waiting on the grocery check-out line just to say, “Thank you.” It could be including a moment of gratitude for your food before you dig in. It could be a moment to sing Shema with your child before tucking her or him in at night. It could be a moment to hope for the wellbeing of the people you love as you lie down to sleep at night.

Try it. You might find that it eases your pain, gives you a sense of purpose, helps you feel heard in a noisy world. It may make you feel like you can finally hear yourself. And, it might make you feel happier.

L’shanah tovah tikateivu.  May you be inscribed for a good year

This is the sermon I gave on Rosh Hashanah morning at Temple Sinai of Cranston, Rhode Island.

How could there be a more terrifying moment for a rabbi than to stand where I am standing right now. It’s Rosh Hashanah. I am the new rabbi, here before the entire congregation for the first time, and you are all expecting and hoping that I will say something brilliant. I am doomed.

So, instead, let me say something appropriate to this holy day: I'm sorry. Forgive me. 

I am new here, I don’t know all the history and all the customs of Temple Sinai. I will make mistakes. Forgive me when I forget your name at the most embarrassing possible moment. When I stumble through your favorite Hebrew prayer, please, forgive me. I am sorry.

Five years of rabbinic school and fourteen years as a congregational rabbi is a significant amount of time. Over those years, I have learned a lot about how Jewish communities work and how to teach our tradition in ways that touch people’s minds and hearts. I have celebrated with families on their joyful occasions, and held their hands in moments of grief. Yet, despite all those experiences, my rabbinic education is still incomplete. I still have a lot to learn. I look to you, the congregation I now serve, to be my teachers.

So, when you come to me with a crisis in your life and I bumble for the right words to express my concern and sympathy, please know that I am sorry. When the day arrives that you come to services expecting your spirit to soar, and instead, you end up hearing me sing off-key, please know that I am sorry. I have a lot to learn.

I know that I am not the first rabbi you have had, either here at Temple Sinai or at other congregations where you have been members. I know that my predecessors were not perfect, either, but, still, you should know that my mistakes will be different from the ones they made. I will amaze you with my originality.

I know that you have high expectations for me based on your lofty dreams. That’s good. Dreams keep us moving forward, changing and renewing. In the last few months I’ve learned about some of your dreams – the dream of a new start for a congregation that is filled with optimism for its future – the dream of building on past successes with new growth and dynamism – the dream of expanding opportunities for adults to learn about Jewish thought, tradition and practice – the dream of building the congregation’s membership and strengthening its financial health.

Most everyone who studies to become a rabbi does so with some idea that there is – somewhere out there – a community that he or she can make better and that will bring out the best in him or her. Just as you brought me to your community with the hope that I could help you find new directions and realize your dreams, I also came with hopes and dreams of my own.

I come hoping to fulfill a vision of a congregation in which Judaism comes to life, a place where people find new meaning in their lives and a sense of spiritual fulfillment. I hope to help create a place where children and their parents can love learning together, a place where people have new insights about themselves and their relationship with God, a place where “community” is a word that means a group of people who genuinely care about each other, help each other through troubles, celebrate joys together, and find it within themselves to forgive each other’s flaws.

Cantor Wendy, who comes to Temple Sinai with me in this new adventure, also has dreams she brings with her to this congregation, the first she has served as the lead cantor. In the three months we have worked together, I have seen that her dreams, too, are joyful and full of life and hope. I see her passion to serve a community that truly loves to express itself in song.

So, we all have come together to share each other’s dreams. We all have big, bold dreams – probably bigger than we can expect to be realized fully. But that is the nature of dreams. We are in a relationship now – congregation, cantor and rabbi – and relationships are built on mutual commitment, mutual forgiveness, and, most of all, on sharing dreams. The best relationships happen when people are willing to listen to each others dreams and to answer with their own. 

Cantor Wendy and I have been amazed by how much you have turned toward us and shared yourselves with us in welcome and in friendship. We hope that we can reciprocate in turning toward you – but remember, you have a big advantage over us – there’s only two of us.

Relationship building is also a way of describing what the High Holy Days are about. We are called to make t’shuvah, which we usually translate as, “atonement” or “repentance,” but which literally means “answering,” or “turning.” At the most basic level, the Days of Awe are the time when we are called to turn toward God – to answer and continue the conversation, to renew our relationship with That Which Is Beyond Us.

This is a way of talking about God which many Jews find difficult. Entering into “a personal relationship with God” does not sound very Jewish to many of us. It reminds us of the catch-phrases of Christian fundamentalists. But relationship can be a deeply Jewish way of thinking about God. 

To Martin Buber, the great 20th century Jewish philosopher, relationship was the key to understand God as a reality. Buber wrote that God is found in relationships where two human beings accept each other in their entirety without preconception or expectation. Seen in this way, t’shuvah, returning to God, is the process of re-examining the relationships in our lives and striving to accept others just as they are. Our relationships are a reflection of how we relate to God. Repairing our relationship with God means repairing our relationships with other human beings, especially the people who are closest to us.

We ask ourselves at this time of year about those relationships: Have we treated people in a way that respects their unique dreams and aspirations, or have we made them adjunct to our own desires? Have we allowed ourselves to know in their entirety the people who are close to us – their many potentialities along with their faults and shortcomings – or have we befriended only those aspects that are most appealing or useful to us? Are we open to who they are now – constantly changing and growing – or are we stuck in perceiving them as they once were? Are we willing to say, “I am sorry. Forgive me,” when that is called for?

When we truly do make the effort to see others as total human beings – when we seek to know them, understand them, listen to their dreams – we come a little bit closer to reaching our own humanity. 

This is a paradox. Our dreams are what make us real, both to others and to ourselves.

If I do not see your dreams, you will not be real to me. If you do not see my dreams, I will be just an object in a set of robes, playing the role of a rabbi. Since we are in a relationship with each other, we are in conversation. We tell each other our dreams, each answering with our own dreams. Rabbis come to congregations as a place to make a living, to try out their ideas, and to be leaders. Congregations seek out rabbis for their programs and services, for opportunities to learn and to be led. When the relationship really works, though, each finds something more. In coming to know each other, rabbis and congregations help to make each other more real – like the velveteen rabbit in the children’s story. We give each other meaning by accepting each other as we are – our dreams along with our flaws, our triumphs along with our mistakes.

Not fourteen, not twenty, not one hundred years of rabbinic experience could teach me to know who you are. Despite the certificate hanging on the wall in my office that calls me, “Rabbi,” I cannot truly be your rabbi until I have learned from you, who you are and who you yearn to be. It is, of course, a process that can never end, since we are always becoming something new – and we can never be entirely sure just what it is we are becoming. 

But that’s okay. Relationship means acceptance and forgiveness. Please forgive me my shortcomings and failings. I will forgive you of yours. In this way, together, we will continue the conversation and continue to share our dreams. On this Rosh Hashanah, when we seek to turn to God, we can begin by turning toward one another in acceptance. That is how the journey begins.

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

This is the sermon I gave on the night of Rosh Hashanah at Temple Sinai in Cranston, Rhode Island.

Sixteen years ago, my wife, Jonquil, and I made a terrible, irreversible mistake. We had a baby in the month of September. Don’t get me wrong. We love Talia with all of our hearts. She is a fantastic daughter, but her birthday on September 12 is a bit problematic for a congregational rabbi. For the last sixteen years, I have had to take time during my busiest, craziest month of the year and spend it celebrating my older daughter’s birthday. It is her greatest flaw.

As if that was not enough, we went and made the exact same mistake again six years later. Eliana is an amazing child and we love and cherish her, but September 3 is just a very inconvenient time for a rabbi to be planning a child’s birthday party, shopping for cakes, and buying birthday presents. Talia and Eliana, we love you both, but why did you have to be born at a time when Abba should be writing sermons?

But, seriously, now. 

Isn’t this the way that life always works? The big events in our lives seem to come before we really feel ready. When counseling a couple before their wedding, I sometimes hear the young couple talk about postponing starting a family because they want to make sure that they don’t have their first child until they are ready. Like almost all experienced parents, I hear those words and chuckle. We know that nobody is ever “ready” to have a child. There is no such thing as a “good time” for the incredible disruption that is caused by the awesome responsibility of bringing a child into the world.

Children, we know, do many things for their parents. They transform their lives. Amid all of the diaper changes and feedings, along with the sleepless nights and the terrifying fear of, God forbid, something going wrong, parents discover in their children a little piece of the Ultimate. We peer into the eyes of our children and we see ourselves and our partners at different times in our own lives. We recognize, looking at our children, that there really are miracles in this world, and that we have an important role in making miracles. As much as parents shape their children, children shape their parents. They transform us in the way they force us to see ourselves as part of something beautiful and powerful that is much larger than ourselves. We believe that we shower our children with gifts – a home, a family, food to nourish them and love to sustain them – yet we see how we as parents are the real recipients of a great gift.

Sometime, it might be a good idea for us to thank our children for the incredible gift they have given us by allowing us to see ourselves. They have given us the gift of opening our hearts to Eternity. On Rosh Hashanah, we are particularly aware of the gifts that surround us that we usually take for granted.

I remember the day I became a father. Talia was born well after her due date, which had us filled with anxiety and worry. After Jonquil went into labor, the birth did not go as we had planned (surprise!), and we were mentally, emotionally and physically exhausted by the experience. (Of course, Jonquil, did the hard part. She was far more exhausted than I). 

But when I held that child in my arms for the first time, I remember how it felt like the entire universe had changed. Some great, hidden cosmic switch was flipped when I felt that surprisingly small and helpless creature against my body, when I looked for the first time into her little eyes.  I saw a face with many of my features and my wife’s features. She was so much like us, and so different, too. Wonder of wonders. And, when Eliana was born, it happened again. My universe doubled.

Like most parents, I have found that it is hard to maintain that feeling of the miraculous in my everyday interactions with my children. It’s not so easy to feel touched by the Infinite when you’re cleaning up a diaper blowout, chasing a runaway toddler, dealing with a temper tantrum, asking a child to set the table for the fifth time in fifteen minutes, picking up last week’s laundry off the floor, or getting the child to turn off the computer games and get the homework done. Parenthood has plenty of frustrations, but it also has moments of transcendence. Those moments helping my child fall asleep after a hard day still remind me how lucky I am. I stroke her hair and quietly sing to her a Hebrew lullaby:

נומי נומי ילדתי, נומי נומי נים
נומי נומי חמדתי, נומי נומי נים
אבא הלך לעבודה, הלך הלך אבא
ישוב עם צאת הלבנה, יביא לך מתנה
נומי נומי ילדתי, נומי נומי נים
נומי נומי חמדתי, נומי נומי נים

[Sleep, sleep, my little girl, sleep, sleep
Sleep, sleep, my dear one, sleep, sleep
Daddy is going to work, to work he is going
He will return with the rising of the moon and bring you a gift
Sleep, sleep, my little girl, sleep, sleep
Sleep, sleep, my dear one, sleep, sleep]

As I watch her slowly drifting off to sleep, I see my past, present and future all rolled up into one. The child she is … once was me. The comfort I offer her, she will one day offer to her child. And one day, she may comfort me as I lay falling to my final sleep. We are all part of forever. We are all forever being birthed. Happy birthday, my dears, and thank you for this birthday gift you have given me.

Tomorrow afternoon, after each blowing of the shofar, we will pray and the choir will sing these words, “Hayom harat olam,” “This is the birthday of the world.” Rosh Hashanah is, by Jewish tradition, the anniversary of the creation of the world. It is the day that God gave birth to the world with the word, “יהי…,” “Let there be…”

On this night, I think of God as that first-time expecting parent, wondering when might be a good time to bring reality into being, only to find out that there is never a good time. I think of God worrying and fretting over the newborn world. I imagine God looking at the world and marveling at the idea that something beside God exists. Perhaps that is why God created the universe, to keep away the loneliness of being all that there is. 

There is good reason why the Torah says that we are created us in God’s image. We are so much like the inquisitive, creative and lonely God who created us. Yet, we are also so different from God. To God, I imagine, we are a miracle – that anything so small, fragile, imperfect and temporary can also be capable of beauty, love, dignity and determination. God looks at us and is amazed. Look at how marvelous life is! The beautiful world that God has given us as a gift – so full of sky and ocean, trees and mountains – has returned the gift to God a thousand-fold! Wonder of wonders!

As much as God shaped the world into being, I imagine that we have shaped God. God cries over our suffering, is angered by our acts of hatred and violence. God is moved by the way we freely care for each other and have compassion for one another. The God who once wanted to drown human evil with Noah’s Flood has learned from us. It was humanity who taught God that if the only response to wrongdoing is punishment, then the world will not survive. We taught God that, sometimes, a good parent has to be ready to quietly accept the faults and limitations of the child. A good parent must be able, sometimes, to forgive a child more than the child deserves. We taught God – who only knew perfection before we were born – how to live lovingly with imperfection.

Still, it is not easy for a transcendent God to love a world that is filled with things that are so crassly flawed. It is hard for God when we destroy the natural world with our waste and poison, when we run away from our responsibilities, when we get angry enough or senseless enough to kill each other, when we keep making choices that are hurtful to ourselves and others, or when we just plain will not listen to the wisdom we have received. 

For God, too, parenthood has frustrations, but it also has moments of transcendence. I imagine God, after all of the many millennia of the world’s imperfection, still gazing upon us in our sleep, and thinking of how good it is that we are part of this universe. Especially today, on the birthday of the world, God strokes our head to wipe away our pain and sings a quiet lullaby, remembering us as a newborn:

נומי נומי ילדתי, נומי נומי נים
נומי נומי חמדתי, נומי נומי נים
אבא הלך לעבודה, הלך הלך אבא
ישוב עם צאת הלבנה, יביא לך מתנה
נומי נומי ילדתי, נומי נומי נים
נומי נומי חמדתי, נומי נומי נים

I imagine that there must be times when God wonders why we were born, and at such an inconvenient time, too. But, on this day, on our birthday, God remembers that our imperfections and faults are part of what make us beautiful and filled with mystery. The God who is not capable of anything but perfection looks at us, and marvels at a creation that is so much like God, and yet completely different from God. Like any good parent, God sees in us a reminder of eternity.

On Rosh Hashanah, we can pretend to be able to see ourselves as God might see us. On this day that begins the Ten Days of Repentance, we strive to see ourselves as the frail and temporary creatures that we truly are. On this day, we learn new compassion for ourselves. We see ourselves as flawed, but still beautiful. We recognize that for us, it never seems like a good time to be born, or to be reborn. Yet, we must know that it is always the right time to do so. We remember that our sins and shortcomings are part of what makes us human. The punishment we suffer for them is often nothing more than the natural consequences of our own foolishness. We grieve for our mistakes, but we also forgive ourselves – and we accept God’s forgiveness – because we understand that imperfection is our natural state. It is the way that God has made us, and it is the way that God still is making us. 

Tonight, we see ourselves as newborns on the birthday of the world. 

We are given a birthday gift during these Days of Repentance, a chance to remake ourselves anew with the wisdom we have learned. We remember that, to God, we are the gift. We sing to ourselves a lullaby and hear God’s voice echoing the sound in our ears. נומי. Sleep. Sleep my little girl, my dear one. Your Father, your Mother loves you and accepts you. You are dear to Me. I bring you a gift. Be at peace.

L’shanah tovah tikateivu.
May you be inscribed for a good year.

This morning, on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, I was about to get into my car when I noticed a leaf-like blob on the car's roof. A moment before brushing it off with the back of my hand, I realized that it actually was a tiny frog, no more than half an inch long. It looked like a perfect porcelain miniature, bathing itself in the Florida morning sunlight.

People ask me what I like about living in Florida—just over a year since I moved here. They seem to expect me to talk about the warm climate and the lack of snow. To tell you the truth, I actually miss the snow and the frosty mornings of winter up north. For me, the warmth I love about Florida is more about the people than the weather. 

What I do love about being outdoors in Florida is the abundance of life. That tiny little frog on the roof of my car is just one example among dozens that I experience regularly. After our recent brush with Tropical Storm Isaac, my wife and I discovered that our front door was covered with beautiful bright green frogs and there was a two-foot long corn snake seeking shelter in a nearby alcove. 

A few days ago, I saw a peregrine falcon in a tree on our street and snapped a photo of it as it flew back into the nearby wetlands with a twig in its beak. There is a lush pomegranate tree growing in the Temple's courtyard. Majestic sandhill cranes walk through suburban neighborhoods like they own the place.

Rosh Hashanah, which begins tonight at sunset, is a celebration of creation. In the liturgy of the shofar service, we say, "Hayom harat olam!", "Today is the birthday of the world!" This is a day for looking at the world with new eyes and with wonder. If we Floridians spend much of the year hiding out in air-conditioned protection from the natural world, we are likely to miss it. Rosh Hashanah should come to us as a day to remember what a gift it is to live in this place of incredible flora and fauna. 

My wish for everyone over the next two days is that you experience the sound of the shofar as the call of the wild. Let that sheep's horn lure you back into the world of tropical frogs, seagrape trees, amphibians, reptiles and birds. We live in a beautiful place and this is the day to wish it all a happy birthday!


Other Posts on This Topic:
God of the Natural or the Supernatural?
Shanah Tovah Umtukah!