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 morning of Yom Kippur 5781.

In April of 1963, the month in which I was born, eight notable white clergymen in the city of Birmingham, Alabama, wrote a public letter in objection to what they saw as the racial tensions rising in their city. They wrote:

“We are now confronted by a series of demonstrations by some … directed and led in part by outsiders. We recognize the natural impatience of people who feel that their hopes are slow in being realized. But we are convinced that these demonstrations are unwise and untimely…

“We also point out that such actions as incite to hatred and violence, however technically peaceful those actions may be, have not contributed to the resolution of our … problems.

“We urge the public to continue to show restraint…

“We further strongly urge the Negro community to withdraw support from these demonstrations, and to unite … in working peacefully… When rights are consistently denied, a cause should be pressed in the courts and in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets. We appeal to both our white and Negro citizenry to observe the principles of law and order and common sense.”

To me, reading this letter, I can’t help but think about the calls I hear today criticizing the protests that are spreading across our country in response to the killing of George Floyd four months ago or the shooting of Jacob Blake four weeks ago. There is a similarity in the focus on the violence that sometimes comes with large-scale public protests. There is a similarity in the reassurance that the legal system and negotiations are a better way of addressing racial tensions than public protests. I know that there are some people listening to this sermon who agree with that approach.

The letter was written in response to marches and sit-ins organized by a 34-year-old Black minister from Atlanta named the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King wrote a letter back to the signers of this statement while he was incarcerated for his role in the demonstrations. King’s response is known as the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” It was published across the United States and became a central text of the civil rights movement.

King wrote kindly to his eight fellow clergymen and recognized their good intentions, but he said that their calls for restraint and negotiations, rather than demonstrations and direct action, missed the point of what was actually going on.

King asked the clergymen why their letter had no words of rebuke for the bombings of Black churches, the legal exclusion of Black people from white-owned businesses, the racial segregation of public accommodations, the brutalization of Black people by the police, the grossly unjust treatment that Black people received in the courts, and the way that “the city's white power structure,” in King’s words, “left the Negro community with no alternative.” How, he wondered, could they ask him to wait, when Black men and women had tried using the courts and negotiations to no avail. King asked them to recognize that the time had come for more aggressive action, even if it made some white people feel uncomfortable.

Nowadays, Martin Luther King, Jr., is regarded as an American icon of justice and the struggle for racial justice. We celebrate King’s birthday as a federal holiday. Consider, though, that King was not treated with that kind of respect during his lifetime. Far from it. The Director of the FBI publicly called him, “the most notorious liar in the country.” Even after Dr. King won the Nobel Peace Prize for the non-violent movement for racial justice, 75% of Americans said they disapproved of him.

The criticisms of King then were much like the criticisms against the Black Lives Matter movement today. King, too, was regularly called a “Marxist,” “anti-white,” and accused of fomenting a “mob mentality” that would lead to violence. Today, Black civil rights protestors have even been called “paid anarchists” who are “trying to destroy America.”

Just as King charged that his critics failed to acknowledge the realities lived by Black people in 1963, today’s critics of today’s civil rights movement generally fail to acknowledge the experience of suspicion, intimidation and violence that today’s Black Americans have with police. We all abhor the violence and looting committed at public protests by people with a wide range of motives and ideologies. But, like the clergymen who wrote their letter about Martin Luther King in 1963, we need to make sure that we are not missing the point of what is actually going on.

According to a recent poll from the non-profit, non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation, 41% of Black Americans say they have been stopped or detained by police because of their race. Twenty-one percent of Black adults say they have been a victim of police violence – pushing, shoving, beating, killing. One in five. Think about how that makes it feel to see a cop in America if you are Black.

According to the independent non-profit organization, Mapping Police Violence, more than 750 people have been killed by police in the United States so far this year. And the people who are being killed are, far out of proportion to their numbers in the population, Black people. A Black person is three times more likely to be killed by police than a white person. Black people are also 30% more likely than white people to be shot by police when they are unarmed.

Police don’t kill Black people as often as they do because Black people are bad. Police kill Black people because of an ingrained bias against Black people in American society that presumes them to be dangerous, untrustworthy and criminal. It is a bias that can be traced back for centuries, beginning with nearly two hundred fifty years of slavery and another century of legally enforced racial segregation after that. It is a bias in which Black people have been regarded and treated as inferior to white people.

Bias and discrimination against Black people is not a problem with American police. It’s a problem with American society. It’s a problem with all of us, but it is not a problem we cannot solve.

This morning, we heard the prophet Isaiah warning us about treating other human beings shamefully – true today as it was more than 2,500 years ago. Isaiah said that instead of just fasting on a day like today, we should be working to “break the bonds of injustice” (Isaiah 58). God wants that from us far more than our prayers on Yom Kippur.

In America, in the year 2020, we need to hear Isaiah and recognize that it is far past the time when racial bigotry should be acceptable. Yet, it has become such an integral part of our society that most white people don’t even notice it. It’s like the air we breathe.

How many white people take it for granted that they can walk in an unfamiliar suburban neighborhood without being followed, interrogated or searched by law enforcement because they “look suspicious”? How many white parents never worry when their teenager goes for a jog in their neighborhood that he will be mistaken for a criminal fleeing a crime scene and be arrested or shot? How many white drivers never consider when they are pulled over for a traffic stop that they might spend that night in a jail cell or worse? Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old Black woman who was pulled over for a routine, minor traffic violation in Texas in 2015, ended up dead in a jail cell three days later.

Black Americans – including Black Jews – take none of this for granted. For many Black people in America, the names George Floyd, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and Breonna Taylor play in the back of their heads like a siren every time they see a police officer. If those names are not familiar to you, it is probably because you are white. Just about every Black American adult knows those names and many more – Black people who have been killed by police in just the past few years.

As Jews, we need to hear echoes of such torment from our own history. We have known what it is like to be singled out by an entire society. We have known what it is like to live under law enforcement that presumes us to be criminals. We have known what it feels like to hear politicians talking about us and our people as a “mob” and as an “infestation.”

But our reasons as Jews to stand up against racial injustice are not just about our past. The white supremacy machine that vilified Martin Luther King in the 1960s is still at work today convincing people that there is a conspiracy of lawless, anarchistic People of Color who are set to destroy America – and that Jews are the ones pulling the strings. We cannot afford to be blind to the danger we face when conspiracy theories like QAnon, convince many people that being a good American requires them to be suspicious, and even hateful, of Jews.

So, what are we to do?

Again, Isaiah has some advice for us. The prophet teaches us to befriend the stranger, to see ourselves as the equal of people who are different from us. In the book of Isaiah, God says, “My House shall be called a house of prayer for all people” (Isaiah 56:7), teaching us to count all righteous people of every race and nation as our brothers and sisters.

What is more, Isaiah commands us, “Devote yourself to justice. Aid the wronged” (Isaiah 1:17). We are living in times that test whether we really are willing to pursue justice as our tradition teaches. We must decide whether we will enjoy the temporary comforts of privilege, or recognize and oppose the hatred that has plagued this continent for 400 years. We have the choice of turning a blind eye, or standing as allies with our Black friends who are leading the movement for racial justice.

Let me ask you today to consider doing three positive things for racial justice:

One. Examine your own bias. It is not shameful to distrust people who are different from you. Actually, it’s human. But you don’t want your bias to cause you to treat people unfairly or to presume the worst about them. Take some time to think about the attitudes you were exposed to as a child about race. Question whether those lessons need to be re-examined.

Two. Take some risks to have conversations about race. I’m taking a risk right now in giving this sermon. Am I worried that, as a white person, I might say something “wrong” about the experience of Black people? Of course I am. But it’s a risk worth taking. Our society won’t move forward on the issue of race as long as white people are too scared to even talk about it.

Three. When you hear people say things that seem cruel, insulting or even hateful about people because of their race, say something about it. Every nasty racial joke that gets a snicker instead of a challenge helps to confirm that racial bias is acceptable. Be a mensch. Say something.

Now is the time for us to decide to do what Isaiah asked: Devote yourself to justice. Aid the wronged. Today is the day for us to be on the right side of history and to be allies in the work of making a better world.

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

This is the sermon that I delivered at Temple Sinai in Cranston, Rhode Island, on Kol Nidre night of Yom Kippur 5781.

What do you do, when it’s just you, and there is no God in sight to tell you what to do?

What will you do when it’s all up to you to figure out how to get through life’s pain and hard choices, too?

What will you do to find out what is true when there is no God to make it easy for you?

The book of Genesis opens with God loud, powerful and very present. God announces, “Let there be light!” and light comes pouring into reality out of the nothingness (Genesis 1:3). It’s God’s world. It’s all about God.

But God needs there to be more than just God. So, as Genesis progresses, God creates human beings. Then God gets frustrated with the human beings, their disobedience, their arrogance, their violence. God decides that it’s time to drown the human beings because they can’t learn how to behave (Genesis 6:6-7). And just when it looks like the story is going to end before it even gets started, God sees Noah (Genesis 6:8). God sees that despite all the darkness of humanity, Noah tries to increase the light, to do what’s right, to be a mensch. For his sake, for Noah’s sake, God decides to keep the experiment with humanity going, just to see what these human beings might be capable of.

God makes a covenant and decides that Abraham will be a messenger to show other human beings how to do things right (Genesis 12:2). Abraham’s great. He’s faithful and loyal. He passes every test, until, one day, God asks him to kill his son, just to see how loyal he really is. And Abraham, well, he almost goes through with it (Genesis 22:10).

That may have been God’s first moment of saying, “Now wait a minute. Was that the right thing for Abraham to do? Was that the right thing for Me to ask him to do? How much longer do I want to keep treating these human beings like puppets on a string, an experiment in my laboratory, swooping in with punishments, rewards, tests and judging everything they do? Maybe, they need to learn to get along without Me. Maybe, I need to learn to back off, and not be such a helicopter God.”

And that’s when God begins to fade from Genesis. Oh, sure. God talks to Issac (Genesis 26:2-5) and has a wrestling match with Jacob (Genesis 32:29). God shows a ladder between heaven and earth (Genesis 28:12) to remind us that there is still divinity in the world, even if it’s really hard to see most of the time. But no more tests. There are no more one-on-one chats with God in the book of Genesis. No more warnings about what challenges are around the corner. God decides to start letting us figure things out for ourselves.

And then there is Joseph. God spoke to Joseph, but only in dreams. And these dreams were almost like they were written in code. Joseph had to decipher them, find a key to unlock them. Joseph only got to see God in the darkness of slumber-time shadows, never by the light of day.

Poor Joseph. He never saw what was coming. Here he was thinking that God was going to be his personal guardian, like God was for Abraham, Isaac, and his father, Jacob. Joseph thought God would show him everything in those dreams to pave his way to success and glory. He could not have been more wrong.

Joseph did not even notice how much his ten older brothers hated him (Genesis 37:4) when, BANG, they threw him into a pit (Genesis 37:24). He was still hoping that they would have pity on him when, BANG, they sold him into slavery (Genesis 37:28). He thought, surely, God would send someone to save him, when BANG, he was thrown into prison on a false charge (Genesis 39:20). He was alone in the darkness with no family and no friends, just a very quiet God (Genesis 39:21).

Joseph had a lot of growing up to do in that prison cell. In the damp dark, he must have felt really alone, isolated, friendless. He must have thought a lot about God’s new plan for human beings. He must have thought a lot about how, if he was going to have a future, he would have to create it for himself. He must have become determined that he would do it all himself.

And then, one day, opportunity came. Pharaoh’s baker and wine steward were thrown into the prison cell with Joseph (Genesis 40:3). What’s more, they had dreams – Joseph’s specialty. He listened to them, told them what their dreams meant, and figured it was just a matter of time before his extraordinary talents would get him out of jail (Genesis 40:14). And so it was.

The next time Pharaoh needed someone to solve a dream, there was Joseph. Joseph told Pharaoh what he needed to hear, gave him a plan to conquer seven years of drought, and Joseph got himself a job as Pharaoh’s number one grain storage and distribution agent. Joseph had done it all himself, without his murderous brothers, without his family, and without God saying even a single word (Genesis 41:38-40).

And then, one day, Joseph’s past showed up at his front door, the painful past that he thought he had put behind him. Ten brothers he could never forget. What’s more, they were desperate for food, and he was the one person who could give it to them. Ten brothers who had once thrown him into the pit, sold him into slavery, left him for dead. Ten brothers who had no idea that their fate was now in the hands of the one man who had reason to hate them beyond hate (Genesis 42:3).

What was Joseph going to do? God wasn’t there to tell him. All he had was a memory of pain, anger, frustration. And so, Joseph decided to bide his time. The brothers would not recognize him through the mask of his new Egyptian identity, so why not indulge in a little bit of – emotional torture?

He asked them about their family. They told him a sorrowful tale about their two youngest brothers. One, they said, had died long ago. (And Joseph must have said to himself, “That’s me and they don’t even know it.”) And, they said, the very youngest of them all, still a boy, was the darling of their dead brother and the apple of their father’s eye (Genesis 42:13)

“Bring this youngest one to me,” Joseph demanded. “We can’t,” the brothers said. “Our father would never allow it! Not after already losing one son.” But Joseph just cut them off and said, “Bring him or starve. Your choice. You decide” (Genesis 42:15).

Joseph was not done with torturing his brothers. He knew they would have to come back with Benjamin, his little brother, and then he would get his payback. He would hurt those men who had stolen his childhood, stolen his father, stolen his light and left him in the darkness.

His plan was to frame them. He planted a silver goblet in Benjamin’s grain bag (Genesis 44:2), had him arrested, and told the others that he would make Benjamin his slave (Genesis 44:17), just as the ten older brothers had made Joseph a slave so many years before. Revenge is sweet.

Until it isn’t. Which is what happened when one of the brothers -- Judah, the one who had the idea long ago to sell Joseph into slavery (Genesis 37:27) -- began to speak. Joseph heard him, still wearing the mask of his deception, and his brother’s words cut into his soul.

“Please,” the brother said. “Don’t do this,” the brother explained, “Not for our sake, but for the sake of our father. He is so old. He has grieved every day for the loss of his son, the one who disappeared all those years ago. If he loses this youngest one, too, he’ll just die from the pain (Genesis 44:22).  Please,” he said, “Please, take me instead, for how can I bear to see my father tortured? Take me instead so I don’t have to see it all happen again” (Genesis 44:34).

So, what do you do, when it’s just you, and there is no God in sight to tell you what to do?

What will you do when it’s all up to you to figure out how to get through life’s pain and hard choices, too?

What will you do to find out what is true when there is no God to make it easy for you?

Joseph howled. He cried from deep in the pit at the bottom of his anguished soul. In that moment, he may have realized the price of loneliness, of giving up on sharing his life with other people, no matter how imperfect they may be.

Joseph ripped off the mask and showed himself to his brothers, who were, frankly bewildered. In that moment (Genesis 45:2), Joseph decided that he would let go of his pain, his anger and his desire to hurt, hurt, hurt his hurtful brothers. In the dark place within him that felt so unloved and so robbed, he decided to make his own love, grow his own hope, and find his own way of making things right.

Jospeh decided that, even if there were no God around to tell him what to do, he would behave as if there was. He would himself stand in the place that God had left empty and create his own light out of the inky nothingness. For the sake of life, for the sake of love, for the sake of what’s right, Joseph would fill the void.

And this, you know, this is us, too. Right? We don’t live at the beginning of Genesis, either, when God was right at the center of it all, pulling the strings and making the miracles fall like fruit from a tree. God, for us, is not that at all. God for us is less than a rumor. God has pulled into the shadows so tightly that we only catch small glimpses of God in miraculous sunsets and the cries of newborns. God is still here, but God feels so very far away when we need answers to life’s struggle, challenges and pain.

So, what should we do, when we know it really is just us?  The choices are right there. Succumb to the darkness, or make our own light. There are days, we admit, when it feels it’s all pointless and morality is a fantasy. We want to put ourselves first and let others taste the pain. After all, what point is there is being a sucker in a world that doesn’t care?

Or, we can be Joseph. We can wake up from the darkness with a howl and say, “Not today. The darkness of despair and meaninglessness is not going to win today. Today, I’m letting go of my hurt feelings. Today, I am admitting the scars I carry with me, but I’m also going to start filling the emptiness by living the love I know is in me. I’m gong to nurture my grown-up hopes. I’m going to make things right, no matter how wrong they may be right now.

“And, if there is no God around to tell me what to do, I will behave as if there is.”

It’s up to us. We can choose to try to increase the light, to do what’s right. We can choose to forgive, to reject our darker impulses, admit our mistakes, love people as if our hearts have never been broken, live with our pain but not allow the pain to control us, and to be imperfect beings who, despite our imperfections, take responsibility for building a better world.

It’s Yom Kippur. It’s the day to decide. Which choice will we make? If God is no longer doing it for us, will we make our own light out of the nothingness? Because, I have to tell you, it’s just us. God is not giving us any more instructions. God has decided to let us figure out for ourselves how to let go of our pain and create our own love. The choice is ours now to do what’s right.

God is waiting. Let’s decide. What will we do?

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

The Next Day…And Every Day After

T’shuvah does not end with Yom Kippur. It never ends. For those seeking closure or some sense of completion, Yom Kippur offers this advice: Go and live your life. Do the best that you can to make wise and compassionate choices. Know ahead of time that you will make mistakes and that the same mistakes will keep coming up again and again in your thoughts and actions.

That is inevitable because we human beings are imperfect. That is the way that God designed us. That is the way that God wants us to be. It’s okay.

It’s okay because the doors of t’shuvah are always open. It is always possible for us to look at our mistakes, learn from them, and grow. You will never be perfect, but you will always have another chance to become better, to get a little bit closer to living the life that God wants for you. And that is enough.

​In Jewish wisdom we understand that the effort we make to come closer to being the person we should be … is itself being the person we should be. As we read in Pikei Avot, “It is not up to  you to complete the task, nevertheless you are not free to give up trying” (Pirkei Avot  2:16). Keep trying. Keep striving. Live your life that best way you can. When you make a mistake, return.

DAY 40
Monday, September 28, 2020
Tenth Day of Tishrei 5781
Yom Kippur

Today is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonment. Shabbat Shabbaton. The Sabbath of Sabbaths.

On this day, review the work you have done leading up to this day. Acknowledge your accomplishments. Recognize the ways that you have changed. Ask for forgiveness and notice what this day does for you.

Practice for this day:
Review the teachings and your responses to the practices over the past forty days. If you have not read or completed the practices for some of the days up to this point, or for any of them, do not become discouraged. T’shuvah is a lifelong process. There are many opportunities to begin again. There is no better time to start than right now. After all – it’s Yom Kippur.

As you look over the teachings, are there any ideas or responses that seem particularly powerful to you? Are there any ideas or feelings you particularly want to remember? Are there any thoughts you have written that you now wish to revise?

Jot down your thoughts here:

____________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________

The process of t’shuvah does not end with Yom Kippur. Continue to make commitments to ways you still would like to change and grow. Jot down your thoughts here:

____________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________

DAY 39
Sunday, September 27, 2020
Ninth Day of Tishrei 5781
Erev Yom Kippur

Here is a teaching from Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav (Likutei Mohoran 282) to help you prepare for tomorrow, Yom Kippur.

“Know this. You must judge everyone favorably (Pirkei Avot 1:6). Even for a person who is completely wicked, it is necessary to search and find in that person some point of goodness, some little bit that is not wicked. By finding that point and regarding that person favorably, you genuinely elevate that person in the scale of merit and can bring that person to t’shuvah…

“Likewise, you must find some good point within yourself, too! You must take care to be happy always and to keep very far away from depression. It may be that when you begin examining yourself, you will see no good in yourself and believe that you are filled with sin, allowing your own harsh judgment to push you into depression and sadness. God forbid! It is forbidden to fall into such despair!

“Rather, you must search until you find in yourself some little bit of good. For how is it possible that you never once did some good deed? Ah, but even when you do find that good deed, you will say that this, too, is filled with flaws and contains no purity. You will think that your holy deeds are comprised of impure motives, external thoughts, and many other faults. Nevertheless, how is it possible that this good deed did not contain even a little bit of good? There must be some good point in what you did.

“You have to search and seek to find in yourself some little bit of good in order to revive yourself and bring back your joy. By searching until you find a remaining little bit of good in yourself, you genuinely move from the scale of guilt to the scale of merit and can return to God in t’shuvah…

“Once you gather more and more of those good points from the darkness and impurity within you, you can begin to join them together like musical notes to create melodies. Then, you will be able to sing them to give praise to God. In this way, you will bring vitality and joy to your life!”

Practice for this day:
Find the points of real goodness within yourself. Find another. Sing your song.

____________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________

​____________________________________________________________________________

DAY 38
Saturday, September 26, 2020
Eighth Day of Tishrei 5781
​Shabbat Shuva

Today is Shabbat, the most holy day in Jewish tradition. It is our day of rest and our day of joyfully feeling God’s presence all around us.

This particular Shabbat is called Shabbat Shuva, the Shabbat that falls between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Its name comes from the Haftarah portion we read today. In that reading, the prophet Hosea says, “Return [Shuva], O Israel, to Adonai your God, for you have fallen because of your sin.” In response, God says, “I will heal their affliction. Generously will I take them back in love, for My anger has turned away from them” (Hosea 14:2,5).

This is the essential teaching of t’shuvah and of Yom Kippur. The Jewish idea of repentance is not, as many people suppose, to feel guilty about our misdeeds. God does not want us to feel guilty. Rather, God wants us to feel forgiven. In order to get there, though, we need to recognize what we have done, raise ourselves up, return to the right path, and accept healing love. It is not an easy thing to do. It is not supposed to be. But it is a process that is meant to make us feel good about ourselves.

Compare this to how a loving parent treats a child who has misbehaved. Parents help their children to recognize what they have done wrong, to apologize, and to learn to do better in the future. Ideally, parents do this out of love for their children, not out of anger or vindictiveness. They do it because they know that their children’s future happiness can only be improved by learning to behave well, to do what is right, and to become self-knowing and self-regulating. That is also what God wants for us. It is what t’shuvah is all about.

Practice for this day:
Knowing and feeling God’s love for us is a central idea of Judaism. The blessing we recite at every service right before the Shema states that God loves us with a great and eternal love. Feeling and accepting God’s love is difficult for many people.

As we prepare for Yom Kippur, it is a good time to open yourself to feeling God’s love. Take some time to sit comfortably, close your eyes, and allow yourself to feel God’s love shining on you like sunshine on your face on a summer day. Breathe in and breathe out, feeling God’s love with each breath.

How does it feel? Where in your body do you feel it? Write down your thoughts and feelings.

____________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________

DAY 37
Friday, September 25, 2020
Seventh Day of Tishrei 5781

The second confessional prayer on Yom Kippur is called, “Vidui Rabbah,” Aramaic for “The Long Confession.” This prayer is commonly referred to as the “Al Cheit” for its first two words.

The Al Cheit is really just an elongated version of Ashamnu. Instead of just one word for each sin, there is a full sentence in which we say, “For the sin we have sinned against You by…” At three points through the list of sins, there is an interlude in which we pray, “For all these, God of Forgiveness, forgive us, pardon us, grant us atonement.”

The Al Cheit is recited at all the services of Yom Kippur except for Ne’ilah, the closing service. During that service, our prayers become more urgent and compressed. At Ne’ilah, we recite only the short confession, Ashamnu.

You may have noticed that many people hold their hand over their chest while reciting Ashamnu and the Al Cheit, tapping or thumping on their heart as they name each sin. Sometimes, people think of this as a form of self-flagellation, as if we are punishing ourselves for our sins. But this is not the best way to think about the gesture. Judaism does not teach us to punish ourselves for our misdeeds. In fact, we believe the opposite – we believe in the need for self-forgiveness.

Rather, you can think of the gesture as a way of “knocking on the door” of your heart. Each tap is a wake-up call to your conscience, stirring yourself to feel remorse for your misdeeds. Reciting the confession should be an experience that encourages and motivates you to think deeply about the things you have done that have hurt others and yourself, and to resolve to change your behavior. As we have seen, we are required to say out loud the remorse we feel and our determination to change. Ashamnu and Al Cheit are prayers that are intended to motivate us in that process.

Practice for this day:
The tapping or thumping that we make on our hearts during the confessional prayers may help us to feel remorse and the need to change, but it is not the only thing we can do to elicit that feeling. What other things do you want to try to do to help you remember and to stay motivated to change for the better

____________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________

​​____________________________________________________________________________

DAY 36
Thursday, September 24, 2020
Sixth Day of Tishrei 5781

At each of the services of Yom Kippur, we recite confessional prayers called Selichot. In these prayers we admit that we are arrogant and stubborn people who spend much our lives thinking that all of our mistakes and misdeeds are somehow justified or unimportant. In the Selichot prayers, we back down from this position and admit that we have done wrong and that we have to reconcile ourselves with the people we have hurt and we have to reconcile ourselves with God. We admit that without such reconciliation, we will lead futile and meaningless lives in which we will just continue to make the same mistakes over and over again.

The focal point of the Selichot prayers are the two confessional prayers. Today, we will consider the first of these prayers, called Vidui Zuta, Aramaic for “The Short Confession.” It is also called “Ashamnu” for the first word of the prayer.

Ashamnu is recited by the entire congregation while standing. The prayer is really a list of words that begin with each letter of the Hebrew alphabet in order. We begin with the letter aleph and say, “Ashamnu,” meaning, “We have been guilty.” We continue with the letter bet and say, “Bagadnu,” meaning, “We have betrayed.” Next, we say, “Gazalnu,” which begins with the letter gimmel and means, “We have have robbed,” and so on through the entire Hebrew alphabet.

Now, you will notice that not everyone in the congregation will have committed each of these sins. Some person might say, “Why should I say ‘Gazalnu’ if I never robbed anyone in my entire life?” It’s a good question. The point of the prayer, though, is not that we have all done all of the sins listed. It’s not even that the list of twenty-four sins (three for the letter tav) is comprehensive and exhaustive. Rather, with this prayer we stand together in solidarity with all the other members of the congregation in confessing our communal responsibility.

Think of it this way. You may not have robbed anyone, but somebody has. In reciting the prayer, you accept that person, accept their confession, support them in their striving for t’shuvah, and accept your responsibility for making sure that it doesn’t happen again. None of that is easy, but it is a necessary part of t’shuvah. It is a way of recognizing that none of us can make t’shuvah without the strength and support of everyone else to help us.

Practice for this day:
Is there a misdeed or mistake for which you feel particularly guilty or ashamed? Can you identify why that one hurts you more than others? Does it help to know that other people support you in your quest for forgiveness, even if they don’t know specifically what you did? Do you feel that your support helps others?

____________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________

This is the sermon that I delivered at Temple Sinai in Cranston, Rhode Island, on the first day of Rosh Hashanah 5781.

I am sad today, and there is no way for me to deny it. I’m sad that we are meeting like this, of all days, on Rosh Hashanah. We should be in our comfortable and homey Sanctuary. We should be listening to the Cantor in-person, singing beautifully alongside our wonderful octet choir. We should be greeting each other with warmth and tenderness, exchanging hugs and kisses.

We should be standing before the open ark on Rosh Hashanah and feeling God’s presence, because the Sanctuary at Temple Sinai is the place where so many of us have felt that presence before – at bar and bat mitzvahs, at weddings, and at funerals, too. When we see the Torah scrolls in the open ark with their white mantles on Rosh Hashanah, it means something to us. It makes a take a deeper breath and feel that we are experiencing holiness in a holy place. It means something that no video conferencing application can replace. It makes me feel sad not to be experiencing that with you right now.

And it is all because of a deadly virus that has turned our world upside-down. And it is all because of a law – not a law of the state of Rhode Island or an executive order from the Governor, but our law – our Jewish law – demands that there be no commitment higher than saving a life. We cannot have the Jewish experience we crave this year, because Judaism itself says that there is something else that must come first. We must love life even more than we love being together on Rosh Hashanah. It’s tough love that we are practicing today. And it hurts.

Pikuach HaNefesh. That’s the name of the law in Jewish tradition. Literally it means “The Saving of a Life,” and it is one of the highest values of Jewish tradition. According to the Talmud, one may override or temporarily cancel almost any other commandment in order to save a life.

There is a famous story about this in the Talmud about Hillel, the man who grew up to be the greatest rabbi of the first century B.C.E. According to tradition, Hillel moved from his birthplace in Babylon at age 40 to Jerusalem in order to study Torah with the two greatest sages of his time, Shemaya and Avtalyon. Hillel was a poor woodcutter, chopping tree trunks into logs with an ax to feed people’s fires. He could barely afford the half dinar that was charged every day to attend the house of study. The Talmud says that Hillel worked every day to earn that half dinar to attend. One day, he could find no work and was unable to afford even the small amount to enter. So, what did he do?

In ancient times, it was common to build houses in the Middle East with a large circular opening in the roof, called an oculus, to let in the sunlight. There was such an open roof on the house of study. Hillel, determined to learn as much Torah as he could, climbed up the side of the building onto the roof, and sat at the edge of the oculus to hear words of Torah taught by Shemaya and Avtalyon. You can imagine him perched on the edge, some twenty feet above the floor, straining to hear the words of his teachers.

Maybe that is why the story tells us that he didn’t notice when it started snowing. Maybe that is why, when he started to shiver from the cold, he didn’t move from his perch. So, let me ask you:  today, what would motivate you to sit outside on a cold, snowy day? Watching your children play in a sporting event? Going hunting or ice-fishing? Teaching your grandchildren how to make a snowman? For Hillel, it was Torah that kept him on that roof.

Down below Hillel’s perch, in the house of study, it was Friday evening, Shabbat was beginning. As they Shemaya and Avalyon taught their students, Shemaya turned to Avtalyon and said, “Avtalyon, my brother, at this time of day, the study hall is usually bright from the sunlight, but today it is dark. Is it such a cloudy day?” They both looked up and saw the image of a man on the oculus, partially blocking the light. The two sages went up onto the roof to get Hillel. According to the Talmud, he was buried in four and a half feet of snow.

They dug him out and brought him down into the study hall. He was shivering, confused, and had difficulty even speaking. But what could they do for him? It was Shabbat and the Torah forbade any work that might save him. Shemaya and Avalyon directed their students to build a large fire in the fireplace to warm Hillel, despite the Torah’s explicit prohibition against kindling fire on Shabbat. Avtalyon said to Shemaya, “This man is worthy for us to override Shabbat for him” (B. Yoma 35b).

Certainly Shemaya and Avtalyon admired Hillel for his determination to learn Torah. However, the Talmud goes on to explain that the same would have been done for any human being. When a life is at stake, almost any law can be overruled to save that life.

You may know another famous story that seems even more pertinent to our current situation. This story is of Rabbi Israel Salanter, the founder of the 19th century Mussar movement, an approach to Jewish character development. When a deadly cholera epidemic broke out in his city of Vilna, Lithuania, reaching its peak just before Yom Kippur of 1848, Rabbi Salanter recruited his students to travel through the city to care for the ill.

On the eve of Yom Kippur, he went himself to all the synagogues in the city to announce that people should not fast in order to preserve their strength to survive the epidemic. He urged that Yom Kippur services be shortened to reduce people’s exposure to the disease. The next morning,, he went even further. He stood at the front of the synagogue with wine and bread. He made kiddush and ate in front of the entire congregation - on Yom Kippur. He asked everyone to eat and he taught a lesson on the talmudic principle of Pikuach haNefesh, the saving of a life.

Today, we are taking the ancient principles of Hillel, Shemaya and Avtalyon, we are taking the early modern teachings of Rabbi Israel Salanter, and we are applying them to our own situation. It is not something we do easily, but we do it meaningfully.

We should be gathering at Temple Sinai today to welcome in the new year of 5781, but we cannot. Instead of doing what our hearts yearn to do, we will do what our minds and our morality command us to do. We will act to save lives.

And we should note that this imperative to save lives goes far beyond abstaining from in-person services on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The same principle asks us to take courageous action to save lives in many other ways. This certainly includes wearing masks in public and maintaining social distancing. But it also means even more than that.

In order to save lives, we all have to be willing to go the extra mile to speak up and take action against life-threatening situations. We need to be mindful of the dangers facing medical providers, health and public safety professionals, custodians and sanitation workers, teachers, and others who are on the front-line of this public health crisis. When they are pressured to work in unsafe conditions, it is up to all of us to do something about it.

For example, that is the situation of workers in Rhode Island nursing homes – the place in our state where most COVID deaths have originated and occurred. Nursing home workers have been asking for years for regulations to provide minimum standards for safe staffing levels, as exist in every other state in New England. A new Harvard study shows that they are right. It demonstrates that the higher the staffing in nursing homes, the lower the number of cases of COVID-19. The lower the staffing levels, the more COVD – both for healthcare workers and for residents. By being forced to work in stressful conditions with inadequate staff, they and their patients are at heightened risk for failures in infection control that can lead to (and have led to) more death. As Jews, we have an obligation of pikuach nefesh, saving lives, to take action. It’s what our tradition expects of us. It’s a matter of our morality and of character.

But the epidemic we are now facing does not just test our character. It also reveals our character. Over the last six months I have heard so many stories, and I have seen so many times with my own eyes, how members of this community have stepped up to do what is right. It’s the person who checks in regularly on an elderly neighbor who is isolated and frightened. It is the hospital nurse who is working extra shifts in an unfamiliar unit to do her or his part in the fight to contain COVID. It’s the parents who are spending extra time with their kids to help them manage the anxiety and the challenges that come with distance learning. It’s the person who is taking extra time to be with a friend who is grieving the loss a family member in the midst of this plague. That is character.

As a community, we may be sad today about not being where we ought to be on what should be one of the sweetest days of the year. We can be hurting over the losses and loneliness we are feeling. But we can also know that we have the moral courage, the strength and the character, to turn this dark moment into an opportunity to shine our light and to find sweetness amid the bitterness.

L’shanah tovah umtukah tikateivu.
​May you be written for a good and sweet new year.