Rabbi Jonathan Blake, Westchester Reform Temple

For me, this Yom Kippur service began way back on a bright spring afternoon while driving home from a cemetery on Long Island, listening to WQXR Classical Radio. 

Fittingly for a post-funeral drive, on came the familiar strains of Mozart’s Requiem, the Catholic Mass for the dead, an undisputed masterwork that the master left unfinished at the time of his death at the age of 35.  A little “light traveling music.”

As it turns out, this recording of the Requiem jarred me right up in my seat:  it was, first of all, fast: too fast, I thought; dance-like, even.  Gone was the usual sense of gravity and grief, and, in its place, a vigor and something like mischief.  

No surprise, this new recording has attracted its fair share of detractors and defenders, with one critic in the former camp describing it as “brusque and perfunctory,” and another in the latter praising its “immediacy” and “intensity.”  

In any case, I was able to track down the recording, which was released in March and features a performance by a small (26-piece) period instrument ensemble called Les Concert des Nations, comprised of players from different countries, and a small (24-voice) choir from Spain¹ under the direction of the Catalan maestro and virtuoso string player Jordi Savall.

The liner notes feature an essay by the 81-year-old conductor, a bit of which I’d like to share with you now:

“The course of my whole life would undoubtedly have been very different,” he begins, “if, one October evening in 1955, I had not been fortunate enough to hear a live rehearsal of Mozart’s Requiem. 

“A few months earlier, on 1st August, I had turned 14, and luck would have it that my teacher… decided to prepare the work with the choir of the local Schola Cantorum. That evening I was on my way to the Conservatoire to attend my usual counterpoint and harmony lessons with him; for some reason, I didn’t receive the message telling me that classes had been cancelled due to a rehearsal of the Requiem.

“So I discreetly sat in on the rehearsal at the back of the hall, where the choir… was accompanied by just an organ and a string quartet. From the very first notes, I was totally fascinated by the incredible beauty of the work and the expressive power of the melodies, by every movement, by the originality of the various themes and the perfection of the counterpoint and the richness of the modulations. By the time the final bars sounded, I had been profoundly moved by this extraordinary experience, which transported me to a dimension I had never experienced before. 

“As I walked home, I said to myself that if music could touch a person’s soul so powerfully, I wanted to be a musician.

“A few days later, I went to Barcelona to buy a second-hand cello. On my way home, I tried to play a little and, after the first few moments of hesitation, I suddenly felt a great affinity with the instrument. The fingers of my left hand positioned themselves and moved easily and deftly on the neck of the instrument, while, with little effort, my right hand was quickly able to control the quality of the sound with the bow. In short, I had the wonderful feeling of being able to sing again and I felt completely at home! 

It was then that I understood the unique feeling described by Mark Twain when he said that ‘The two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.’”² 

I read this story of the 14-year old Jordi Savall hearing Mozart’s Requiem for the first time, picking up his first cello, dragging the bow across the strings, hesitantly at first, then with greater confidence and ease; in time feeling the instrument vibrating in tandem with his body; developing the muscle memory to know where to put his fingers on the neck; his hands, ears, head and heart gradually falling into alignment; learning, by doing, how to make it sing—and I remembered a time in my life where, for lack of a better way of putting it, it all came together.  

It was early fall, 1992, the beginning of my sophomore year of college, and I had just turned nineteen.  Most of my classmates had spent freshman year figuring out the answers to important questions like these: 

• Rounding to the nearest 30 minutes, what is the minimum amount of sleep that I need in order not to come off like an idiot on my chemistry midterm?

And,

• Expressed as a percentage, how much of my monthly budget can I reasonably spend on (the admittedly excellent) slices from Antonio’s?

Meanwhile, I was turning myself into knots over this question:  

What am I going to do with my life? 

I may not have been the most fun to be around, but I was definitely going to be the first of my roommates to figure out my career path.

I had spent most of freshman year second-guessing my plans to major in geology and pursue a career in environmental science.  An exploratory dinner conversation with a hydrogeologist (that is, a person who tracks groundwater for a living) was (I know this will shock you) dry as a bone, and a field trip to unearth clamshells for a course in invertebrate paleontology, left me cold, especially the part where I found myself knee-deep in thick Cape Cod muck at 7 AM wondering how I would ever survive a career with so. much. dirt.  

Long story short, I began to contemplate alternative pathways for my life that felt like a better fit. 

Monday, September 28th, 1992—Rosh Ha-Shanah—was a quintessential New England early fall day:  bright sunshine, crisp breeze, temperatures in the mid-sixties.  As sunlight streamed through Johnson Chapel, the ecumenical space where Amherst and Smith College Hillel chapters join forces for the High Holidays, I sat in a pew about seven rows back and, some time during the chanting of the Unetaneh Tokef, a realization struck me.  I’m sure it didn’t take the form of words at the time, but, to me, it felt like the universe saying:  “You’re supposed to be up there on that bimah.”  

In that moment, many pieces of my life came together:  my love of Judaism, my desire to share it with others, to share its message of hope and its profound insights into the human condition in word and in song, in art and ritual, to teach and to learn, to shape lives in a direction of meaning:  these are some of the vibrations that resonated within me during that service.

Within days I had changed my major to English literature and set an appointment with the Hillel director, Rabbi Yechiael Lander (still alive and well at 96 years old!), to talk about my aspirations.  From the very first, he encouraged and supported my path and assured me that becoming a rabbi was a wonderful profession for a nice Jewish boy.

I feel blessed that, for me, “the day you find out why” happened when I was 19 and turned out to have spoken true and clear.  I have also come to believe that a “calling” is not reserved for clergy and does not require any special connection to God or spirituality.  

Each of us has a calling, maybe more than one.  Probably more than one!  Each of us can respond to an urging that comes from either within or without:  a way through life in which we can participate with purpose and presence in the unfolding of the world.

To hear the call, to feel the urge, to respond with our innermost being:  these are not privileges reserved for people of the cloth; any person in any clothing can discover what resonates with one’s soul.  

“Calling” is also not to be equated with career.  The two may overlap entirely, or partially, or not at all.  We know people who practice medicine, law, economics, psychotherapy; who are teachers and cooks and copywriters, athletes and entrepreneurs and countless other ways through the world, each of whom experienced a day they found out why.  

We also know people who who “found out why” the day a child, or grandchild, or pet, or another grown person came into their lives, transforming one another through relationship; people who “found out why” when they studied with a teacher, or read a book, or heard a song, or saw a work of art that changed the direction of their life; people who heard the call in the solitude of a mountain hike and people who heard the call in the crowd.  

Every moment of calling is about recognizing a connection with something greater than ourselves.  Some people would call that something “Nature,” others, “The Universe,” still others, “God.” 

Maestro Savall heard the call when he picked up a cello and felt a sudden affinity for the instrument.  The bow in his hands passed over the strings and instantly the vibrations of the strings passed through his hand into his body.  

It is like this, I think, for many of us:  a moment, hard to put into words, but perceptible nonetheless, when the vibrations of the universe resonate at the same frequency as the vibrations within us.  If this was you—as you sit here today and reflect—can you think of such a moment?

But what of those of us who haven’t felt the vibrations, who haven’t heard the call, who haven’t lived “the day you find out why?”  

And what about those who have felt the vibrations, but doubted them when others pooh-poohed them?  Maybe they told you your purpose was invalid, not worthy—especially if untethered to a paycheck.

Or what of those who once heard the call, but then things changed?  I know so many people who describe their greatest fear, or their greatest sorrow, as “lack of purpose.”  Many of them have suffered the loss of a person or profession that infused their lives with beauty or goodness, energy or meaning or all of these.  A brilliant surgeon debilitated by neuropathy, where the physical pain pales next to the injury to vocation (and sense of self-worth); a parent who has buried a child; a business owner who built the operation from scratch and had to close down during the pandemic.  

And what about those for whom the call stopped sounding, the vibrations stopped vibrating?  Last year, the New York Times featured a podcast interview with Dan White, Jr., a former church pastor who was diagnosed with symptoms of PTSD brought on by the stress of managing his congregation in a climate of growing political rancor, increasingly vindictive criticism directed at church leaders, and just plain burnout.  He noticed that he was not alone; he would meet pastor after pastor whose love for the church remained undiminished but who found the role they were asked to fulfill in the lives of others to be unlivable for themselves, and decided to call it quits.  Now Pastor White spends his days coaching and helping other pastors through their challenges.³  This “Great Pastor Resignation” mirrors recent trends in the Jewish clergy world as well; and, just as clergy are not unique in the ability to have a calling, so too are they not unique in their ability to hear the call no longer, to have it snuffed out.  

Things change.  The “day you find out why” turns out just to be one day, a day that mattered when it mattered, but not a day that should dictate all the days of your life.      

In 1958, the journalist Hunter S. Thompson wrote a letter to his friend Hume Logan in response to a request for life advice.  What he wrote in that letter offers wisdom far beyond the author’s 22 years.  

It also illustrates why Thompson became an icon of the counterculture.  In the letter, he takes direct aim at the conventional advice that a person should set goals and follow them, telling his friend instead that the real question is “whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal.”

“[T]he tragedy of life,” he goes on to say, “is that we seek to understand the goal and not the man.”  He illustrates:

When you were young, let us say that you wanted to be a fireman. I feel reasonably safe in saying that you no longer want to be a fireman. Why? Because your perspective has changed. It’s not the fireman who has changed, but you….  As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on. Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective.

So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle every day? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything other than galloping neurosis?

The answer, then, must not deal with goals at all, or not with tangible goals, anyway….  So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.”⁴

What Thompson is saying is that, until or unless we love where we’re going, we should spend our time floating rather than swimming.    

This is a great truth of existence:  The universe is in constant flux, and we along with it.  In the Vedic tradition, the great source of Eastern spirituality that flourished in the Indian subcontinent around the same time that the Torah was taking shape in Eretz Yisrael, we learn of the flow, the never-ending cycle of existence: Creation, Maintenance, and Destruction.  

Naturally resistant to change, we human beings often seek security in the maintenance of the status quo when in fact Nature insistently prods us toward destruction or creation: of the self, our goals, our way through the world.  Indeed, both are necessary for evolution: destruction clears the way for creation of the new; and the natural order of things is that destruction begins the moment after creation.  Life is meant to be dynamic.  Life is fluid, so why not your purpose?  Maybe we’re spending all this time swimming toward a goal, when, all along, we should have been figuring out how to float. 

So here we are, having floated all this way to the Yom Kippur message that I hope you will carry with you.  It comes to us from Avraham Yitzhak Kook, the Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of pre-State Israel, and one of the most influential Jewish thinkers of his age, or any age.  

Rav Kook teaches:

“The primary role of Teshuva… is for a person to return to oneself, to the root of one’s own soul.”⁵

For Rav Kook, Teshuva should not be translated the way we usually do, as “repentance,” a “word that conjures up a negative sense of feeling sorry and broken for our misdeeds or moral shortcomings.” For Kook, Rabbi Aaron Goldscheider explains, “Teshuva is empowering and invigorating. Teshuva is a return to our true selves – bringing ourselves back to center.”⁶

Rav Kook affirms:  “Teshuva is when the soul feels the healthiest.”⁷

The essence of Yom Kippur is not the fasting, the beating of the chest, the confession of transgression.  We do not come here today to indulge in self-flagellation, to wallow in guilt or pity, “to put on sackcloth and ashes and bow our heads like a reed,” as the Prophet said.⁸  The essence of today is Teshuva:  to nurture our souls back to health and vitality.  To bring ourselves back to the center.  To stop swimming for a day and remember what it feels like to float.  

And if we’re still seeking the way, if we’re still hoping to “find out why” we’re here in the first place, consider this approach: instead of casting about, waiting for our purpose to announce itself, waiting to hear the call, we can just float in the direction of serving others.  There’s a world of need out there; countless ways to serve; countless ways to connect to something greater than yourself.  Who knows?  Maybe some other fellow seekers will find their purpose for the first time when they meet you.

“The two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.’”   

Well, maybe, Mark Twain, but maybe not.  Maybe it’s not just two days.  It could be thousands.  Who can say?  Who knows when you’ll find out?  Maybe it’ll be tomorrow, or the tomorrow after that.  Who knows?  One of these days might just turn out to be the most important day of your life.

1. Capella Nacional de Catalunya. ↩︎
2. You can read Savall’s essay, and explore the recording, online at https://www.highresaudio.com/en/album/view/e84q8a/jordi-savall-w-a-mozart-requiem-in-d-minor-k-626. ↩︎
3. See/listen to “A Pastor Ripped Apart by our Divided Country,” recording and transcript available at New York Times (online edition), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/opinion/a-pastor-burned-out-by-our-divided-country.html. ↩︎
4. You can find Thompson’s letter online; I recommend seeking it out among the many other fine entries in the book Letters of Note: Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience, ed. Shaun Usher.  Edinburgh/London: Canongate UK, 2016. ↩︎
5. Orot Ha-Teshuva, 15:10. ↩︎
6. Rabbi Aaron Goldscheider, “Reimagining Repentance,” as cited on the website of the Orthodox Union, https://www.ou.org/holidays/reimagining-repentance/. ↩︎
7. Ibid, 5:1. ↩︎
8. Isaiah 58:5, which is taken from the Haftarah for the morning of Yom Kippur. ↩︎

Sunday, September 24, 2023

Rabbi Jonathan Blake, Westchester Reform Temple

Did you know that, with the newest iPhone software, you can undo a text message for up to two minutes after sending it?

Now, don’t take out your phones.  Trust me.  It works.  But, it’s not foolproof.  For starters, it notifies the recipient that your message was recalled.  And, it can’t prevent the recipient from seeing the message when it first comes through.  So, actually, it’s pretty useless.

The desire to hit “undo” strikes me as fundamental to human nature and fundamental to this Day of Atonement.  Aren’t we all here because of things we wish we could undo?

Unfortunately, in real life, all sorts of things can’t be undone.  Yom Kippur things.  Words that can’t be unsaid, promises that can’t be unbroken, feelings that can’t be unhurt.

And so we arrive at Kol Nidre: 

….כל נדרי ואסרי Kol Nidre ve’esarei …

All vows and oaths… that we have undertaken are hereby undone….  Our vows are not vows; our pledges are not pledges; our oaths are not oaths.

The Kol Nidre prayer is a preemptive “undo” button:  it’s a Medieval legal formula designed to annul, to undo, any vows that we might take upon ourselves from now until next Yom Kippur.  Most prayers plead with God.  This prayer pleads with us to think carefully about our future actions, to stop ourselves before we do something we’ll regret.  Something we can’t undo.  

I offer this interpretation because we have arrived at what I have come to think of as a “Kol Nidre moment,” a point beyond which there is no going back, for which there may exist no opportunity to “undo.”  

Many of you remember where you were, 50 years ago this day on the Hebrew calendar, October 5-6, 1973, when the Yom Kippur War broke out.  It is not uncommon these days to hear Israelis comparing this moment to that moment. Many have concluded that this moment is no less existentially consequential.

For the last 37 weeks, every Saturday night, including last night, mass protests have filled Israel’s streets.  To give you a sense of scale, if Israel were the US, its population of about 9.5 million scaled to our population of about 330 million, this would be like 10 million people taking to the streets in every major American city, week in and week out.

What has generated such a maelstrom of civic unrest is the pervasive sense that Israel is on the brink of decisions that have no undo option, no Kol Nidre to avert fundamental changes to the nature of Israeli democracy and Israeli society.

I want to make it clear that what I share with you tonight will not be a foreign policy talk but rather a family conversation.  When we talk about Israel, we aren’t having a “foreign policy” discussion, because, for us, Israel isn’t “foreign.”  Israel, for us, is home, identity, mishpacha.  As my friend and colleague Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh recently put it:  “Talking about Israel is like talking about your Momma.”¹ 

Here’s the crux of what’s happening:  in late 2022, after four elections that failed to establish a government, Israel’s citizens democratically elected a government that, because of the way in which coalition politics works, is comprised of one big right-wing party, Likud, plus five smaller parties, all of which are considerably more right-wing, most of which don’t really care whether or not Israel remains a democracy, even after 75 years of democracy.  The simplest (and, forgive me, oversimplified) explanation for this lurch to the far right stems from the uncomfortable fact that only these parties, and their ideologically extreme leaders, will offer Prime Minister Netanyahu, currently under multiple indictments, the political protection he seeks.  The moderates simply won’t join a coalition with Bibi.      

In February, I visited Israel for the first time in four years.  Among the highlights of my trip was a chance to catch up over coffee and pastry at a charming Tel Aviv café with the Zaidenberg family, natives of Israel, who had affiliated at WRT for several years before moving to Switzerland and then back to Tel Aviv with their children and grandchildren.  Amnon Zaidenberg, a soft-spoken and sensible financial executive, greeted me with a warm embrace before launching into this speech: 

“I have watched this country grow for nearly 70 of its 75 years, have served my homeland in uniform, and I am telling you, Jonathan, you have arrived at the most critical juncture in Israel’s history.”

And then, without taking a breath, he leaned in and said, “So, what are you going to tell your congregation?”  

I said, “Nice to see you too.  How’s the danish here?”  

For two hours we all sat and talked.  I heard their anxiety, their heartbreak, and, to a lesser but still discernible extent, their hope.    

That Saturday night I attended a mass demonstration in downtown Tel Aviv, marching with a delegation of over 200 Reform Rabbis.  I had tried to coordinate a meet-up with the Zaidenbergs, but our bus got snared in traffic and we had to walk about a mile to join a group already 170,000 strong.  All of a sudden, in the middle of the crowd, I turn around and Amnon, Zafy, their son Itay, who was in my first Confirmation class at WRT and who is now married with a baby girl, their son Amit, at whose Bar Mitzvah I officiated, and Amit’s girlfriend, are standing three inches from me, grinning.  

I said, “How’d you find me?”  They pointed to the giant banner overhead, which read, “The Reform Movement Stands for Judaism and Democracy,” and said, “We followed the sign.”

There we were:  standing in a throng where virtually every adult has served in the IDF.  We marched with military reservists and high-tech executives.  We marched with people old enough to remember Israel’s founding, many with children and grandchildren.  We marched with Jews who call themselves “Orthodox,” and Jews who think of themselves as secular, but who also believe that living in Israel is a fundamental demonstration of Jewish commitment.  We marched with LGBTQ Israelis in their alarm about homophobia espoused by several government ministers, and alongside Jews of color, whose families come from Ethiopia and Yemen, Africa and India, in their distress over the uptick in racist rhetoric and policy positions.  We marched alongside thousands who love the Jewish State, care about the rights of Palestinians, and are worried about the possibility of government annexation of the West Bank.  We marched with several hundred women dressed in red cloaks and white bonnets, like Margaret Atwood’s Handmaids, decrying proposals that would force women to dress according to Ultra-Orthodox modesty codes and sit in the back of the bus on public transportation.

And Reform and Conservative clergy cannot just stand on the sidelines.  There are crucial issues at stake for us and our communities, too; issues that, for us–for all of us–are personal, not political, including the right to have the marriages we solemnize, the conversions we oversee, and the synagogues we lead and attend, recognized by the world’s only Jewish State.  Do you have someone in your family who converted to Judaism under non-Othordox supervision?  Think about what this could mean for that person’s right of return, or the Jewish status of their children.    

However disparate the protesters’ concerns may seem on the surface, they all converge at one flashpoint issue:  the government’s determination to overhaul the way that the Israeli Supreme Court functions, with the intention to strip it of significant authority.

It’s easy to argue that there are two sides to this story, that each side has a legitimate grievance.  Those in favor of a “judicial overhaul” argue that Israel’s Supreme Court enjoys power above and beyond that of high courts in other Western democracies.  They will tell you that the makeup of Israel’s Supreme Court, predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish justices, does not correlate to the demography of present-day Israel and therefore cannot truly represent the will of Israel’s citizens.  Members of the Knesset who support the overhaul “say that as elected representatives, they have a democratic mandate to govern without being hobbled by the court, which they portray as a bastion of the left-leaning elite.”²     

Such arguments merit public debate but hide the coalition’s intention:  to undermine the only real institutional check that Israel has on its legislature, the only balance that Israel has to halt the government from summarily passing whatever laws it likes with a simple majority of 61 Knesset votes, removing the essential process of judicial review that can question a law’s validity.  

Meanwhile, the government has given false assurances of plans to provide new and better guardrails for a future Supreme Court, details left “TBD.”  And it has disregarded pleas for compromise with the opposition, despite the tireless efforts of President Isaac Herzog to broker one.  

No wonder the opposition does not trust the coalition.  Reneging on promises again and again is like reciting Kol Nidre with no intention of changing one’s ways. 

And so we have 37 consecutive weeks of angry but non-violent protests, a mixed multitude chanting this easy-to-translate word: “DEMOKRATIA.”  

A number of rabbis serving in Israeli congregations have brought the protest movement to the heart of their synagogues:  next to the holy ark, at the front of their sanctuaries, they have affixed Megillat Yisrael, Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which says, in part:

THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture…..

For Israel and those who love Israel, these are holy words, deserving of their place next to the Holy Torah.  They also make clear that Israel, like every democracy, is, as my friend and teacher Rabbi Jan Katzew puts it, “a state of ideals, not an ideal state.”  We of all people should appreciate how fragile democracy can be.

A few months later, I returned to Israel, this time joining a delegation of a dozen American rabbis brought together by the American Israel Education Foundation, an educational charity affiliated with AIPAC:  Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform, lovers and outspoken supporters of Israel all.  Since February, the pro-democracy movement had grown dramatically.  Our attempt to board a return flight was nearly thwarted by a mass protest that shut down the arrivals terminal of Ben Gurion Airport.  

Everywhere we went, we interacted with leaders from across the spectrum of Israeli life:  diplomats and ambassadors, journalists and politicians, military experts and hi-tech entrepreneurs, religious leaders and civil rights activists, Jews and Palestinians.  Conversations swirled around open-ended questions like these:  

• How far will this go?
• If Israel’s democracy is weakened or altered beyond recognition, what will happen to the millions of Israelis (and others across the world) who no longer feel at home in Israel?
• What will these potentially sweeping changes inside Israel mean for those neighboring Arab countries, who have begun to normalize relations with the Jewish State after decades of treating Israel like a pariah?  Will this government disregard those regional advances that are reshaping the Middle East?
• And, even as we fear that these changes inside Israel will bode dangerously for religious minorities, the LGBTQ community, women, and non-Orthodox Jews, what will they mean for Palestinians living in the territories that many in the government believe is land rightfully claimed by Israel?

At least for now, no one I know has the answers.  

But this is no time for sitting on our hands, paralyzed in worry. 

Kol Nidre is, when all is said and done, a prayer of hope—a Hatikvah prayer, if you will—because it forces us to think about how the coming year could be different.  If despair is, as has been said, “the belief that tomorrow must be the same as today,” then Kol Nidre says the opposite: tomorrow could be different.  We can’t undo what is done, but we can choose a different way before it’s too late.  

And what can we do?  The advice I can offer is not my own; I sourced it from Israelis:  friends, colleagues, and the people I met on these recent trips.

Not surprisingly, opinions ran the gamut; this is the Jewish State we’re talking about.

But taken together, they offer direction and hope, tikvah.  Here are some takeaways:

First, this is no time to abandon Israel.  The words came back time and again, resoundingly:  “We need you now more than ever.”  And, “Continue to love Israel no matter what you think of the government.”  And, most of all, “We are family.”  

Second, do not withhold support.  This advice is directed to individuals, organizations, and the US government.  All talk of conditioning aid should be off the table.  “We are not allowed to forget the existential threats,” says my friend Gilad Kariv, a Reform Rabbi and member of Knesset who sits in the opposition Labor Party.  “We need to understand that there are a few red lines that we cannot cross.  Conditioning foreign aid is one of those bright red lines.”  Each one of us can contact our Members of Congress to remind them to support critical financial aid to Israel which ensures its safety and security. 

At the same time, Israel needs to hear from our elected officials that if Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State is at risk, then Israel’s security and the US-Israel relationship are also at risk, along with the strategic and economic gains, actual and potential, brought about by the Abraham Accords.

Third, stay up to date on the situation.  Please do not rely solely on your rabbis and cantors, well intentioned and informed though we try to be, to be your Israeli news station.  And, for heaven’s sake, please stop getting your Israel news exclusively from American media or, worse, from social media!  On your way out of the sanctuary, you’ll find a resource sheet that directs you to reliable news sources, most of them Israeli, that also present a diverse array of opinions and which are consistent with the values of WRT and the Reform Movement.

And finally, connect.  Reach out to friends and family in Israel.  Call, text, email them to let them know you’ve been thinking about them.  Haven’t spoken in ages?  The day after Yom Kippur is the perfect time to pick up the phone.  And make plans to visit.  Cantor Kleinman and I are excited to lead our next congregational trip to Israel in December, for which registration is, alas, already closed.  The good news is that we’re already planning our next congregational trip for 2025.  We need you with us.  There is no reason why we can’t bring 50, 60, 80, 100 congregants to Israel for the trip of a lifetime, every time.  

Especially if you’ve never visited Israel, will you make this trip a priority?  Don’t worry.  It’s just something to consider. I’m not asking you to take a vow.    

….כל נדרי ואסרי Kol Nidre ve’esarei …

Kol Nidre insists: the future is not predetermined; our choices matter.  And even as the fate of the Israeli Supreme Court hangs in the balance, in the Heavenly Supreme Court, our deeds will dictate our fate.  

I pray that, in the year to come, we will all follow the sign:  the one that proclaims, “The Reform Movement Stands for Judaism and Democracy.”  

I pray that Israel’s leaders will negotiate a way to preserve these twin pillars of identity that have distinguished Israel as a light unto the nations for 75 years.  

I pray that our congregation and the American Jewish community will make known to Israel our love, our concern, and our investment in an Israel that is vibrantly Jewish, pluralistic, and that honors the Divine Image in all its people.

We cannot undo what cannot be undone.  But there is much we still can do.     

On this Kol Nidre, this night of nights, we can pause, and pray, and, with God’s help, choose our way. 

1. Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh, spoken at the RE-Charging Reform Conference in New York City, May 30-31, 2023. ↩︎
2. Associated Press, “Netanyahu’s Judicial Overhaul Faces First Legal Challenge in Israeli Supreme Court,” September 12, 2023, 10:27 AM EDT.
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Saturday, September 16, 2023 | 1 Elul 5784

Rosh Ha-Shanah used to go by a different name.  In Talmudic times, it was called Yom Ha-Zikaron¹, “The Day of Remembering.”  

Today I’m remembering Judy Weinberg, z”l, the last of WRT’s Founders, who died in July at the age of 97, marking the end of an era.²  

So join me in a collective act of Zikaron, remembering back to our beginning:  

With the Baby Boom booming, the story of WRT begins like that of countless other American synagogues in the post-War era:  young couples moving to the suburbs, raising families, forming communities.  News of an initial planning meeting convened by eight couples in April of 1953 spread quickly.  By mid-summer, interest had grown to fifty families, spurred by a letter circulated by our Founders:

“For some time,” it says, “the feeling has been expressed that it would be desirable to create a new Liberal Jewish Organization for our area in Westchester County.  This movement will be a forward-looking, creative undertaking.” 

Within weeks, we had become a congregation.  Volunteers rolled up their sleeves, pledged to attend Shabbat services at a rotating roster of nearby institutions, and built a little, handmade Ark, which lived in the Weinbergs’ basement and was transported by station wagon each week to wherever services were held. 

Our first first Rosh Ha-Shanah service took place on September 9th, 1953, at the Scarsdale Congregational Church, with Rabbi Eugene Lipman at the helm. 

By October, membership stood at over 100 families.  Dues were set at $100.

In one of his first letters to the congregation, Rabbi Lipman wrote:  

“The essential virtue of Reform Judaism is our ability to grow and change as our living needs as Reform Jews grow and change.”³

We are struck, hearing these voices from WRT past, by the clarity, positivity, and farsightedness of their message.  All look to the future.  All speak of growth and change, creativity and progress.  Not one links the establishment of WRT to the survival of the Jewish people even though less than a decade had passed since the gas chambers and the crematoria.  Not one mentions antisemitism, although in 1953 there were still neighborhoods in Scarsdale where it was an open secret that our people were not welcome.  

We remember, on this Yom Ha-Zikaron, back to the days of our Founders.  But when we listen to what they had to say about who we are, and how we got here, we hear an invitation to remember forward, the other kind of remembering.  

For the Jew, memory works both backward and forward.  

Zikaron, memory, comes from the Hebrew root Zayin – Kaf – Resh, or Zecher [.ז.כ.ר], a verb that means both “to bore down,” like a drill, and “to point,” like an arrow.   

Amazingly, this Jewish understanding of memory, memory that works both backward and forward, mirrors a scientific understanding of memory.  Neurological imaging has established that the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory, is also active in dreams and imagination.  What memory does is not so much preserve the past, word for word, image for image, but, rather, link the past, present, and future:  a combination of remembering and imagining.⁴ 

Memory both drills down, through layers of history and experience, and points forward, to undiscovered vistas.  

Without memory—where we’ve been, what we’ve discovered along the way—we cannot imagine where we’re going.  Without memory, we cannot dream what we might become.

So join me now in another act of Zikaron, as we remember forward.

The year is 2053.  

I have just turned eighty, and I feel grateful to share these remarks, delivered on the occasion of WRT’s 100th birthday:

Shabbat Shalom.  

How honored we are to return to WRT for this auspicious occasion.  These days it takes a lot to get Kelly and me on an ElectroJet, especially given the option to Zoom our holograms anywhere on the planet without spending $6,000 on a so-called “economy” round-trip hypersonic ticket.  

Still, for WRT’s 100th, only in-person will do, and I feel especially grateful for all the kind people who have told me that I don’t look a day over fifty.

Appearances notwithstanding, much has changed since I last spoke from this bimah.  Long before WRT officially changed its name to We Reform Together in 2038, this community understood that in a global era, our vision and mission could not remain provincial.  Judaism is not only that thing we do inside a sanctuary or around the dining room table; Judaism is a comprehensive approach to life.  It invites us to apply its wisdom to an ever-changing world, inspiring us to meet the challenges of our time—every time—with courage, integrity, and dignity.  

From the very first, Judaism emerged as a tradition rooted in creative responses to communal trauma:  

Out of bondage in Egypt, we emerged as a People of God, who would never again serve a Pharaoh or any human master, but only God, the One Source of all.  

Out of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans, we emerged as a People of Torah, dedicated to reading together, learning together, praying together, united by the accumulated wisdom we call Torah.  

And out of the smoldering embers of the Holocaust, we emerged reborn as the People of Israel, bound by our determination to revitalize our identity, our culture, and our faith, both within and beyond our ancestral homeland. 

These identities intertwine, a threefold cord that will not break.  Now, in the year 2053, we see how we have had to summon all three identities in confronting the great challenges of our time.  As People of God, People of Torah, and People of Israel, we have had to marshal our People’s collective spiritual, intellectual, and communal resources in order to meet the defining trials and tribulations of our era:  the ravages of climate change, the rise of artificial intelligence, and the global lurch toward authoritarianism.  

Each of these crises has forced us to lean into the transcendent values of God, Torah, and Israel which have always anchored how we, the Jewish People, creatively respond to a complex and challenging world.  

Our desiccated and desecrated little planet now has few communities left unscathed by climate change.  (I say this fully aware that some of you are watching this service on the Immersovision from your summer homes in Nova Scotia and Greenland.)  

We do not use the word “Holocaust” lightly, reserving it for its proper historical definition as the systematic murder of millions at the hands of the Nazis.  But when spelled with a lowercase “h,” holocaust means “to be entirely burned,” and it is no exaggeration to use this word to describe how we have exploited countless ecosystems, endangered and exterminated unprecedented numbers of species, and precipitated the displacement of close to a billion people, making the present-day global refugee crisis tenfold what it was in 2023.  

Amid this grim backdrop we nevertheless applaud how WRT has consistently responded: from building the world’s largest environmentally conscious synagogue (2008), to inaugurating the first major synagogue effort to achieve Zero Waste (2013), to converting to renewable energy at the twilight of the fossil fuel age, to your present work, resettling climate migrants from drowned communities nearby as the Far Rockaways and far-flung as Sri Lanka.  

In order to do all this, we’ve had to remember that we are a People of God, that takes as an article of faith our responsibility to safeguard God’s creation, to stand before the vast and mysterious Universe in humility, awe, and gratitude.  

Technology advances.  We become ever more powerful masters of the world.  We can now manipulate genetics, regenerate tissues, organs and limbs, grow animal proteins in a lab, and, as announced just last week, terraform six square kilometers of Martian soil into a working farm, with seeds from the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway.  

But Judaism would remind us that the godlike ability to create and destroy worlds does not entitle us to use and abuse the world for industry, profit, and human benefit.  

Said the psalmist:  לַֽ֭יהֹוָה הָאָ֣רֶץ וּמְלוֹאָ֑הּ תֵּ֝בֵ֗ל וְיֹ֣שְׁבֵי בָֽהּ׃

The Earth is God’s and the fullness thereof, the world and its inhabitants.⁵  

We are but tenants here.  We are not God; we are the People of God, tasked with caring for God’s world.  

Our Jewish values inform how we nurture the world around us, as well as the worlds within us:  the realms of conscience and character that ennoble our humanity.

Could the Founding Families of WRT have envisioned how thoroughly Artificial Intelligence would change our lives, to the point that we now stand on the cusp of a new era in human civilization, one that will fundamentally redefine the nature of human consciousness?⁶

And yet, our Founders labored so that their forward-looking, creative undertaking would never shy away from applying the creative genius of the Jewish tradition to unprecedented challenges. 

Reform Judaism honors tradition while embracing modernity.  It proposes that no matter how much may change in our world, no matter how far we advance in intelligence or power, we must maintain our moral compass. 

To this end, we appreciate that the technologies of our age have allowed us to live longer and healthier lives, to eradicate dreaded diseases, to lift millions from poverty, to explore new worlds.  We enjoy an endless array of consumer goods, entertainment and diversions, comforts and conveniences, custom-tailored to our every preference.  Piping hot synthetic Korean fried chicken from a vending machine?  Sure.  A 3-D-printed bespoke suit and one-of-a-kind Louboutins at the push of a button?  We can do that.  1-hour drone delivery of a custom-built family hovercraft?  Easy.  A streaming holographic sitcom featuring simulated likenesses of all your best friends?  Done.   

At the same time, we have traded off privacy, choice, and autonomy.  Imagine a time, not distant from now, when your thoughts can be uploaded to the cloud, stored, retrievable, transmissible.  You’ll never again forget an appointment, but every mistake you’ve ever made will be remembered, accessible to all of humanity in perpetuity.

Even with the democratization of information made possible by the internet, it should surprise no one that the information technologies of the 21st century have managed to turn our data into profit, allowing powerful interests to become ever more powerful.

And yet, we’re here today for reasons whose value could never be reduced to data points.  We’re here to affirm a powerful idea:  a conversation encompassing millennia and a multitude of voices, all conveying how to live with purpose and creativity in a reeling world.  We are the People of Torah.  We affirm with our lives what Torah affirms with its words:

That life is a gift, not an entitlement.  

That to harm or hurt or humiliate another person violates our dignity and dishonors the image of God in the human being.  

That we are summoned to live beyond ourselves, in service of those who have less and who need more.

Torah principles transcend time and circumstance.  They usually defy what’s trendy, popular, or socially encouraged.  They speak, as my friend and teacher Rabbi Larry Hoffman memorably put it, “in a register that does justice to the human condition.”  That is why they matter now more than ever.  

At some point, everyone agrees (although no one agrees exactly when), artificial intelligence did become intelligent.  Extremely intelligent.  Writing prize-winning biographies / negotiating international treaties / re-conceptualizing particle physics-intelligent.  Throughout human history, deeds both heroic and horrific have been carried out with advanced intelligence.  But we are Jews, People of Torah, and we prize wisdom above intelligence.  Our Founders would be proud that you have continued to embed Torah at the heart of everything WRT does.

In one further way you have kept the flame of our Founders’ vision burning brightly, even in darkening shadows.  The erosion of democracy and the global lurch toward autocracy must continue to be forcefully resisted.  Democracy is not a birthright; it is a struggle that must be won by every generation, in every election.

At the dawn of the new millennium, many optimistically hailed the 21st as the “century of democracy.”  Authoritarian regimes like Malaysia, Myanmar, and Tunisia all became democracies.  Across the globe, the future looked bright.  

What we can say now, in hindsight, is simply this:  we were wrong.

A vast array of contributing factors to democratic backsliding accumulated in rapid succession:  

A rise in violent extremism following 9/11; the swift ascent and crushing fall of the Arab Spring; the social-media-fueled proliferation of conspiracies and lies; the growing disdain for international norms; the exploitation of xenophobia for political gain; the leverage wielded by anti-democratic regimes like Russia, China, and Iran to erode Western confidence in democracy; the silencing of dissent; the banning of books; the empowering of autocrats and their sympathizers.  Meanwhile, with every passing year, checks on abuse of power have deteriorated and “democracy’s opponents have labored persistently to dismantle… [the post-World War II] international order and the restraints it imposed on their ambitions.”⁷

Many of us, watching this disaster unfold in slow motion over the first twenty-five years of the new century, crossed our fingers and held our breath, hoping it would just be a phase. From the view today in 2053, when more than half of the world’s ten billion people live under authoritarian rule, we know better.

Still, this wouldn’t be a Jewish message if I said, “all hope is lost.”  For we are the People of Israel, and we were born to resist tyranny.  From antiquity, Judaism has warned against rulers who arrogate authority unto themselves.  Moses feared that a king would hoard treasure and accumulate stables and harems; that a king would inevitably “bring the people back to Egypt,” which may or may not have been a metaphor.  So Moses demanded that the king must keep a scroll of the Law by the throne at all times.  No person, not even the king—especially not the king—is above the Law.⁸

So you should take pride that, shortly after our rededication as We Reform Together, WRT also became a chartering member of the Alliance for Human Advancement (“AHA”): a collective of spiritual communities and civic institutions all dedicated to the advancement of human freedom, to open spiritual expression, to the promotion of democratic principles.  Since its founding in 2043, AHA has grown from 100 member institutions to over 25,000, operating chapters on every continent, in over 170 countries, and in all 52 United States.  

You have come to realize the great good we can accomplish together as a congregation; but what we can accomplish together as a global community is orders of magnitude greater.  

Throughout my rabbinate, I’ve heard innumerable objections to “organized religion,” a common trope among those who extrapolate a damning appraisal from the (admittedly too many) examples of willfully ignorant fundamentalism and violent extremism.  Such critics, though well-intentioned, paint with too broad a brush, neglecting the unsung heroism of spiritual communities like ours, that do God’s work here on earth, day in and day out, that magnify and multiply the good that any one person could do, acting alone.

We desperately need our congregations, our spiritual collectives.  As the 21st century dawned we entered a period of hyper-individualism.  Families, social clubs, bowling leagues, and especially congregations, began to disintegrate, their prominence in American life fading with each passing year.  

By 2023 the great “dechurching” of Americans had reduced congregational affiliation by at least 15%, with no end in sight.⁹  We began to spend more time with our cell phones than with other people, taking in only those curated sound-bites that would corroborate our already-held views, increasing our isolation even as we boasted of how “connected” our tools had allowed us to become.  We endured not only pandemics of pathogens but pandemics of loneliness, aimlessness, loss of purpose.  Many of us lost our way.

Many forgot that, above all else, our Founders cherished community and understood that Judaism cannot thrive without a People to live it and love it.  We, the Jewish People, have to shoulder the responsibility to keep our sacred enterprise vital.

But you, who have carried this torch of commitment to WRT for a century, understand that congregations must aspire to so much more than providing life-cycle rituals and High Holiday services in exchange for something called “dues.” 

Congregations are a force-multiplier for good.  Congregations are where we, the People of God, Torah and Israel, come together to speak in a register that does justice to the human condition.  Congregations are where we remember: who we are, what matters, what we will accomplish together.

Every time you renew your membership at WRT, you re-member.     

And what you have remembered along the way marks the fulfillment of our Founders’ vision:  that we are not an island, but part of an ecosystem, one in which we all take turns giving and receiving, needing and being needed, and where our actions make a difference that we may not perceive here and now, but which will bless the generations after us.

This ecosystem needs to be nourished and nurtured, day by day and year by year:  not just by your clergy and professional staff, but by you–the congregation.  For all our advancements, when it comes to building a flourishing congregation, there is no substitute for rolling up your sleeves, showing up, and doing the work.

And that, my friends, is what I hope we will remember—backwards and forwards—on this first day of the next one hundred years of our journey.

But, oh: The flasher on the ChronoSync is telling me to wrap this up, and I hear that Jack from Standing Room has prepared a lovely Oneg for us (some things never change), so Kelly and I will look forward to greeting you on the rooftop holodeck¹⁰ after services.

Chazak ve’ematz:  be strong and of good courage, WRT, and may God bless our work, our community, our People, the human family, and this little home we call the world.

1. This is the term favored by the machzor, the High Holiday prayer book; see, for example, the language of the Yom Tov Kiddush and the blessings after the readings of Haftarah. ↩︎
2. Judy z”l and her late husband Charles Weinberg z”l (1920 – 2015) were the last of the original eight founding couples to remain affiliated with WRT until the end of their lives. Their support for WRT remained steadfast throughout our seven decades of growth and evolution, and their descendants continue to remain connected to our congregation. ↩︎
3. Gratitude to WRT congregant, author Barbara Josselsohn, whose essay chronicling WRT, 1953-2018, “Generation to Generation,” presents this background. ↩︎
4. See this article and its bibliography for more. ↩︎
5. Psalms 24:1. ↩︎
6. I would encourage you to read Danny Schiff, Judaism in a Digital Age: An Ancient Tradition Confronts a Transformative Era. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. Schiff’s book deeply influenced the direction of this sermon, and my thinking about the future of Judaism. ↩︎
7. Sarah Repucci and Amy Slipowitz, “The Global Expansion of Authoritarian Rule,” as reported on FreedomHouse.org, 2022. ↩︎
8. See Deuteronomy 17:14-20. ↩︎
9. See Jessica Grose, “The Largest and Fastest Religious Shift in America is Well Underway,” New York Times (Online Edition), June 21, 2023 ↩︎
10. As popularized by the TV franchise Star Trek. ↩︎