Category: High Holy Days

Categories
High Holy Days Holiday

It Will Have to Wait until After The High Holy Days

“It will have to wait until after the High Holy Days.”

My children are used to that refrain.  From late August until early October, many of their requests are answered with the familiar phrase:  after the holy days.  The shopping trip to replace the sneakers, the movie they want to see, the party they need help planning – these are the seeming extras that my family is asked to put on hold while I write sermons, work with the soloist, supervise the distribution of honors and listen to Torah readers.   No matter how much we resolve to start preparing earlier, those of us who lead services on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are often subsumed by the overwhelming number of tasks that confront us.

This is a time of year when those who are closest to us are asked to make sacrifices because of the sacred responsibility that many of us have to lead our communities in worship during these powerful days.  Our partner or spouse bears a heavier load of household responsibilities.  Our aging parent reluctantly agrees to skip the weekly lunch.  The new man or woman that we have begun to date is asked to wait a few weeks to go out again.   And it goes on and on.

We know from the work we are doing through surveys and focus groups, that many of us feel this tension, particularly in this season. The feelings of guilt that build up when High Holy Day preparation takes us away from our loved ones only adds to the stress that we feel, stress that impacts those we love and live with.  It is, in the truest sense of the word, a vicious cycle that seems impossible to break.

And then there is guilt. Knowing that my children expect the refrain, “it will have to wait until after the Holy Days” does not make saying it each year any easier.  Now that they are older, they are often the ones to say, “I know that this will need to wait”.  And still, I feel guilty.  The feelings of guilt that we carry about this ever-present tension are especially ironic at this time of year.  We often counsel people about the guilt they carry, about the difference between forgetting and letting go.  So many people are weighed down by their wrongdoings, by relationships that are wounded.  We strive to help them let go of self-recrimination, the ever-present guilt that prevents them from moving forward.  In other words, we encourage them to forgive themselves that they may more freely open their hearts to new possibilities and change.

Yet as with so many things, what we strive to help others achieve is much harder to achieve for ourselves.   There is no simple solution to the feeling of being pulled in all directions, of feeling guilty by the sense that we are failing someone as we work to please everyone. But we have learned from you that reaching out helps.  Know that you are not alone in your feelings, and it might help to remind yourself of that by calling a friend.  It is not admitting failure to do so and in fact, your openness may help the person you call by bringing a common feeling in to the open.  And finally:  forgive yourself.   In so doing, may your heart soften and open to allow true change, healing and growth.

 

—

Rabbi Betsy Torop is the Director of Member Engagement, Support, and Professional Growth for the Central Conference of American Rabbis. 

Categories
Books High Holy Days Holiday

High Holy Day Family Sermon Starters

Oh my goodness, are you so tired? I am so tired. Like, my leg bones ache, so tired. And oh good heavens, there is only a month left until the High Holidays begin. Between the start of the school year and the political situation and just getting to the grocery store so we can have something that vaguely resembles food in the house, I bet you might feel the same.

So let’s just get straight to it. Here are some sermon starters for family service sermons, using non-traditional picture books as the jumping off point. Hopefully, one of these will resonate with you (and make things just a bit easier)

 

Oh No, George!: Maimonides’ Laws of Repentance

Central sermon question: What do we do when we make mistakes? What constitutes true repentance?

Jewish texts you could use:

  • “Who is truly repentant? The one who, when the temptation to sin is repeated, refrains from sinning.” – Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 86b

Modern References:

 

Emma’s Poem: Privilege and Tikkun Olam

Central sermon question: How do we use the blessings we have to help repair the world?

Jewish texts you could use:

  • “Hillel said: Do not separate yourself from the community” – Pirke Avot 2:5
  • “[Rabbi Tarfon] used to say: It is not incumbent upon you to finish the task. Yet, you are not free to desist from it.” – Pirke Avot 2:21
  • 16 Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer. 17 For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. 18 He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. 19 And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt. – Deuteronomy 10:16-19

Modern References:

Having a hard time talking about privilege? Here is one interesting, accessible resource.

 

Pout Pout Fish: Yom Kippur as the Silver Fish

Central sermon question: Can we choose happiness?

Jewish texts you could use:

  • Selection of references asking the Divine countenance to shine upon us: Numbers 6:22-25, Psalm 31:16, Psalm 67:1, Psalm 80:3, Psalm 119:135, Daniel 9:17. “We pray for God to change Her/His face; are we capable of doing the same? Can we find a way to see the positive in a situation we originally considered negative?
  • Shammai says:… meet every person with a pleasant countenance – Pirke Avot 1:15
  • “Just as the hand, held before the eye, can hide the tallest mountain, so the routine of everyday life can keep us from seeing the vast radiance and the secret wonders that fill the world” – Chasidic, 18th Century (p. 3, Gates of Repentance)

Modern References:

Gretchen Rubin’s podcast “Happier”

 

Knuffle Bunny Too:  Second Chances

Central sermon question: Can forgiveness and empathy help form new, meaningful friendships?

Jewish texts you could use:

  • “Who is honorable? One who honors his fellows” (Ben Zoma) – Pirke Avot 4:1 – Learning how to do this healthily can be hard!
  • Yehoshua ben Perachia says, “Make for yourself a mentor, acquire for yourself a friend and judge every person as meritorious.” – Pirke Avot 1:13

Modern References:

  • TED Talk about the Grant Study at Harvard (Crunched for time? Skip to about 6 minutes in)

 

The Thank You Book: Blessings

Central sermon question: What are blessings?

  • Blessings are an expression of gratitude; an opportunity to remind ourselves of what is truly important in our lives – the food we eat, the people we love, the existence of rainbows and wonders (maybe not in that particular order). What are you grateful for? Who are you forgetting? Is it someone or something that you take for granted so much that you need to break the fourth wall in order to thank?

Do you have any other favorite non-traditional children’s books that you love to use as sermon-starters? Join the conversation in the comments below!

—

Rabbi Lauren Ben-Shoshan, M.A.R.E., resides in Palo Alto, California with her lovely husband and their four energetic and very small children.

Categories
Books High Holy Days Holiday Mishkan haNefesh Prayer

Mishkan HaLev: Transported Beyond Words

A prayerbook is a repository of rituals and ceremonies; its language is often formulaic and sometimes feels abstract. Yet the rituals contained within the best prayerbooks also speak to our souls: the recurring idioms (for example, “Baruch atah, Adonai . . .”) create a shared spiritual space in which communities gather to affirm their values and beliefs, define their orientation to the world, and try to make sense of life’s vicissitudes. That is, in addition to teaching us the right steps in the right order, a prayerbook worth its salt must be “real.” Its content should touch our hearts — speaking to the lives we live, while aiming to inspire hope and faith and courage.

And so we come to Mishkan HaLev — a book whose name means “A Sanctuary of the Heart” (or “a dwelling place of the heart”). Mishkan HaLev is largely a response — albeit a partial one — to a single question: how do Reform Jews prepare for the High Holy Days? Here is what we learned by asking that question in a CCAR survey several years ago: (1) serious Reform Jews value preparation because they recognize the unique character of these holy days; (2) some Reform Jews have found interesting, creative ways to prepare for the Days of Awe — the season of introspection, repentance, and forgiveness; and (3) many have yet to figure out how to make time for meaningful preparation, but would like to do so. What is the goal of Mishkan HaLev? Its main purpose is to encourage more people to be better prepared, spiritually and emotionally, for the High Holy Days— and we hope that those who pray its prayers, read its poetry, and study its commentary are enriched by the experience.

Mishkan HaLev is comprised of two sections: Shabbat Evening Service for the Month of Elul; and S’lichot: Songs of Forgiveness for the Season of Return. The Shabbat service is intended for all Friday evenings during Elul, the month that leads to Rosh HaShanah; in addition, it includes the liturgical insertions for Shabbat Shuvah — the “Sabbath of Return” between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. The S’lichot service is the CCAR’s first new S’lichot liturgy since Gates of Forgiveness was published in 1980. Both services contain many choices for communal worship, study, and discussion, as well as diverse options for private devotion and inspiration — in particular, the “Meditative Amidah” for Friday evening and abundant poetry. Both are designed, as well, to serve as resources for educational programs leading up to the High Holy Days.

Many poems appear in these pages, because, as Edward Hirsch has written, “poetry is a soul-making activity.” At its best, poetry celebrates the gift that allows human beings to see things differently, to remake the world, and to reinterpret received ideas and traditions. Reading a poem can stir within us a sense of intimacy and even urgency.

Why have we called this prayerbook “Mishkan HaLev — A Sanctuary of the Heart”?

Love is the theme of the month of Elul, in part because the initial Hebrew letters of Song of Songs 6:3 — “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine” (Ani L’dodi V’dodi Li) — spell out the word Elul. Our Sages saw the verse as expressing the tender mutual devotion that makes t’shuvah possible. If we turn with open hearts to the Holy One, they taught, God is forever ready to embrace us with love.

No prayerbook can choreograph the turning of our hearts to God and to other people; nor can it possibly choreograph their loving responses to us. Such events are profound and unique; often they are transcendent — moments in which we are transported entirely beyond words, and far beyond the pages of the prayerbook. But it is our hope that Mishkan HaLev will challenge all of us to open our hearts and minds to the possibility of such moments in our lives. May this prayerbook help us to make Elul a time of profound introspection, self-examination, and turning.

—

Rabbi Sheldon Marder is currently the Rabbi and Department Head of Jewish Life at the Jewish Home of San Francisco. Rabbi Marder is the co-editor, translator, writer, and commentator of Mishkan HaNefesh: Machzor for the Days of Awe, published by CCAR Press in 2015, as well as the co-editor of Mishkan HaLev: Prayers for S’lichot and the Month of Elul, a companion prayerbook to Mishkan HaNefesh. He is also the contributor to other publications, such as Divrei Mishkan HaNefesh: A Guide to the CCAR Machzor, published by CCAR Press in 2016; and CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly, Summer 2013 issue.

Categories
Books High Holy Days Prayer

Mishkan HaLev: Trying the New S’lichot Service

I am sitting in the Metropolitan Opera House waiting for my favorite moment.  Those majestic crystal chandeliers start rising high into the sky and the spotlight reveals an elegantly attired conductor.  The house goes silent, the baton lifts, and the orchestra begins.  The sounds of the music go straight into the hearts of the 3,800 people who are enraptured.  This is my favorite moment:  the overture.

S’lichot is the overture for our High Holy Days and my favorite part of the holiday.  With sadness, I wrestle with the fact that roughly 0.001% of my congregation is present for the overture.  Would those same congregants walk into the Metropolitan Opera House late?  I have to wonder.

How could we draw more people to be present for S’lichot?  Yes, I know.  It’s the food.  Bring them in with food.  But even food won’t keep them there and wanting to come back.  Neither will a good performance.  They can go elsewhere for good food and good performances. We can only hold them with what we do best:  focus on meaning, tradition, faith, and a touching of that spot in the heart where no one else can go.product_image-4

When the chance came to pilot the CCAR’s new prayerbook for Elul and S’lichot, I jumped.  My biggest challenge was going to be bowing out of the regional S’lichot service that had been a tradition for years, notwithstanding that it was a tradition that, if the feet do the judging, was not working for us because no one came.  The opportunity to pilot the prayerbook for Elul and S’lichot was my chance to make a radical change and offer our own S’lichot service.  Our Cantor was game to try it.  Our Ritual Committee was game to try it.  We decided to try it.  One benefit of our regional S’lichot was that our lack of participants wasn’t so noticeable, but if no one came this time it would be patently obvious for all to see.  But they did come.  And I am convinced that Mishkan HaLev is why they will come again next year.

The overriding reason why Mishkan HaLev works is that it is rooted in joy.  The season is so somber and the work so heavy, how refreshing it is to begin our overture for the High Holy Days in joy.  We actually celebrate the fact that we can change our lives.  The name of the prayerbook – Mishkan HaLev – promises a connection to the other Mishkan prayerbooks in our lives, but also the focus on the heart.  Mishkan HaLev focuses us on the joyful heart.

I am privileged to work with an awesome cantor.  He and I read through the pilot copy together.  We read it out loud with just each other.  We agreed that our purpose was not a concert by cantor or choir.  There was far too much material to utilize, so we had to edit ourselves down.  We were able to do so by noting the individual movements of the service: Havdalah, Entering the Gates of S’lichot, the Promise of Forgiveness, the Path of Return, the B’rit of Compassion and the Call of the Shofar.  We chose our selections from each of these sections to provide balance and direction for the service.  We chose musical selections that we wanted to teach prior to Rosh HaShanah and those that would be familiar and make the heart beat faster.

God bless the Yehuda Amichai poetry throughout the prayerbook.  How does he do it?  A profound tying of the ancient and the modern and a message that jumps out and hits you on the head without being moralistic or pendantic.  “From the place where we are right…” is but one example.  The appearance of that poem alone makes Mishkan HaLev worthwhile.

Praying with a prayerbook that we knew was not yet “cast in stone,” was part of the excitement.  Like our human selves who were present because of the possibility of changing ourselves, so too the draft prayerbook.  How will the draft version continue to change before going to the printer?  I don’t know.  I hope there may be more chatimot following English readings to better connect them to the original Hebrew prayers, and I hope that layout decisions may afford the opportunity, as in Mishkan T’filah, for the open spread to all reflect one body of work with the more traditional on the right and the interpretive on the left.

But most significantly:  I believe that Mishkan HaLev helps to open our hearts to the tasks at hand.  I saw it with my own eyes and our synagogue has already put in its order for the printed version.  It will be in our hands to open the gates of 5778.

—

Rabbi Stacy Offner serves Temple Beth Tikvah in Madison, CT.

CCAR Press offers special pre-publication discounts for Mishkan HaLev.  A preview of Mishkan HaLev is now available!

Learn more about the book on our website.  The order form for large orders can be found here.

Categories
Books High Holy Days Holiday Mishkan haNefesh

Wandering in the Desert with Mishkan HaNefesh

Editor’s Note: Most of the blogs on RavBlog are written by CCAR members. Occasionally, we share a blog by a special guest with a unique message. We are pleased to share this blog by poet Jessica Greenbaum.

I’ve resisted the impulse to tour our country’s beautiful deserts because of my clashing impulse to take a swim most days of my life. These two things just don’t go together. However, caught in that life-cycle moment of watching my youngest daughter gleefully wave goodbye from the window of her freshman dorm, I vowed to set out on new territory myself. Unlike Dante’s mid-life figure of The Inferno who finds himself in a dark wood, I found my mid-life self transported to the squint-inducing sunlight of Mesa, Arizona, which highlighted the orange and red striped canyons, and blue skies of the Tonto National Forest. The “forest” part was clearly tagged on to prize its rarest asset. Like the “green” of icy Greenland. I came to the desert ranch with a tour company that specializes in open water swimming vacations. Yes, they exist! They had mapped out a week’s course through three of the dammed lakes of the Salt River, also within the national forest. So, no problem swimming, but another problem loomed. Yom Kippur fell in the middle of the only week they offered. I took 40 seconds to think. Then, like any good tourist, I paid my money and packed my machzor.

As it works out, and for reasons fascinating only to myself, I was already waist deep in the most solitary experience of the holidays that I can remember. Unexpectedly, Rosh Hashana had been without my husband and girls: just me, Mishkan Hanefesh, and my laptop open on my quilt, for synagogue livestreaming. Whatever the congregation was doing virtually on the screen, I tried to follow on analogous pages. Just when I was getting teary about the yarzheit of my grandmother, I turned the page and—there it was! Stephen Ackerman’s awesome poem, “Effortless Affection,” which begins: “All last requests are granted / and this is mine: grasp my affection / in your hand and hold it there . . .”  Beshert. I had my prayer book, so I had my shul.

Well that had been okay for a Rosh Hashana Plan B in Brooklyn. But determined to hear Kol Nidre in person, I arranged that during my trip I would attend an Arizonan congregation. I brought Mishkan Hanefesh with me in case they were using some old wooden machzor—which they were. I turned to my own when my mind wandered. As uninspiring as the service was, the tiny congregation was hamishe, I was with other Jews, and I needed that. Packing my own machzor made me feel faintly ancient. All those stories of the Jew traveling from one town to another and ducking in somewhere for services . . . all I needed was a donkey.

But what to do on Yom Kippur day? I could return to the shul, but enjoying my first real vacation for nine years, shouldn’t I spend every day of it swimming with the tour? Two words stopped me: Sandy Koufax. If the great pitcher could sit out the 1965 World Series and inspire John Goodman’s line in the movie The Big Lebowski “Three thousand years of beautiful tradition: from Moses to Sandy Koufax,” well, couldn’t I skip a day? The surrounding canyon walls and idiosyncratic menorahs of saguaro cacti designed the most tasteful tabernacle from here to Woodstock. I decided to hang out with Mishkan Hanefesh. I told my fellow swim lunatics to plow on without me. I livestreamed my favorite NYC synagogue and practiced a mix of e-Judaism and reading, wandering around the immediate canyon with my MacBook open and machzor in hand, singing along. The new ner tamid looks like an apple with a bite out of it. Somehow this goes together.

Well, I never spent so long in services. Here’s what I liked about it. At that remove, I happily couldn’t miss the fantasy congregation—of close friends and family—I had never actually had. I was better able to concentrate on the demand Yom Kippur makes on the conscience. I wrote down those aspects of my personality I needed to confront. ( . . . page 2. . . .) The livestream lets viewers chat in the screen’s margin, a cyber gathering of the disenfranchised from all over the world. So you could still tell latecomers what figurative page we were on! If the NYC congregation was mumbling or otherwise leaving me behind, I could page through my machzor and find what I needed, learn what was there for me. I wasn’t bothering anyone when I fidgeted. I wasn’t thinking what I had to bring to break the fast, or if the brisket would be done. I had my prayer book so I had my shul. When the rabbi took a break for two hours, I took a little dip in the ranch pool. I know you’re not supposed to. But a little swim let me return to the pages and the services and take in what I could even if I wasn’t fasting when I was wandering. The desert and canyons surrounded. I was getting someplace, I could feel it.

—

Jessica Greenbaum is poet living in Brooklyn, and is the author two volumes of poetry, Inventing Difficulty (Silverfish Review Press, 1998), winner of the Gerald Cable Prize, and The Two Yvonnes (2012), which was chosen by Paul Muldoon for Princeton’s Series of Contemporary Poets. She is the poetry editor for upstreet,  received a 2015 Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America in 2016. Some of her poems are featured in CCAR publications, including The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, and Mishkan HaNefesh.

 

Categories
High Holy Days Rabbis

Yom Kippur and Hurricane Mathew: What is Normal?

When one is forced to abandon one’s home due to a hurricane or a natural disaster, it feels strange to walk around another community trying to be normal, engage in normal looking activities like eating in a restaurant, or engaging in normal pleasant conversation when seeing other evacuees from one’s congregation. It is almost surreal to inhabit the world of another town while all along one is thinking about what is going on in our community. What is happening to our house or the congregational facility we cherish? Congregational rabbis make themselves available to their congregants in their time of need, and especially if there is an unusual event. Yet, a hurricane?

For me this Yom Kippur was unusual to put it mildly. As a result of Hurricane Mathew, we in Hilton Head, SC had to leave our homes behind and find alternative accommodations in a short period of time. My congregants spread out throughout the region from Charlotte to Atlanta. Our family traveled first to Aiken and then settled down in Augusta, Ga. At first I happily ran into our congregant friends in Aiken, but when we settled into the larger city of Augusta we felt we were on our own.

Of course, we kept in touch with congregants through social media. At first it was nice to see many pictures of folks enjoying themselves and touring the places they visited. We did that too. Yet, as Mathew rolled into the low country and into Hilton Head, I suddenly realized that all our plans and anticipation for Yom Kippur were going up like dust in the wind during an Israeli Chamsin. Yes, I was concerned about our house and our congregants as I received many calls, emails and texts from congregants who were contending with all sorts of issues. I was grateful to receive calls from local and regional colleagues, assuring us that there would be room for my congregants at their Yom Kippur services. I spoke to some colleagues who had experience with Hurricane Sandy, and with other colleagues who were dealing with Hurricane Matthew as well, and I am totally grateful to the colleagues who took the time to reach out to me and offer assistance. I am also grateful to the CCAR, Dan Medwin in particular, who helped with providing technological advice to live stream our services in Augusta, GA.

The truth is that throughout the weekend I was not ready to admit that we would not be in Hilton Head for Yom Kippur. First I contacted our colleague Rabbi Shia at Children of Israel in Augusta for Shabbat Services. We had a great experience and were welcomed by him and the congregation. Even then I felt we would be able to return home. Saturday night we had dinner with our colleague Rabbi Rachael Bregman and a few evacuees from Savannah. I started to feel optimistic again. The Hurricane, I wrongly believed, would veer off to the Atlantic and we would have a light brush of intense wind and rain and that would be the end of it. Not so. Man makes plans and God laughs, the Yiddish adage goes.

By Monday I could see that reports were that the hurricane would run over Hilton Head with a vengeance. Oh how it did. Rabbi Shia invited us to services and his president had us and some of our leadership over to her house for dinner before Kol Nidrei. Shia invited me to sit on the bimah with him and deliver a few remarks. This was the first time I had not been on a bima as officiant for Yom Kippur since I was ordained in 1984. I sat there for Kol Nidrei and spoke to the congregation. Shia provided me with an extra kittel and tallit. He was the most gracious colleague one could ask for in this difficult time. A group of my congregants who evacuated to Augusta showed up and I felt that familiar surge of joy and happiness. I left with a good feeling even though I missed doing my thing as I would always do on Yom Kippur. Sure, I missed all the congregants I have come to know and love. There was an emptiness in my heart, even though I was relieved no injuries had been reported from our congregants, and that was the most important thing. I received pictures of the trees falling down on my house. The Temple was in good shape. I prayed to God on Kol Nidrei to give me the strength to keep my cool, my sense of humor, and to remain optimistic.

Yom Kippur morning was a different story. A group of 200 folks from an independent living center in my community, Tide Pointe, were taken to a hotel in downtown Augusta. We have about 10 or so Jewish seniors there and so after meeting with them we decided to have a service for them.

Wednesday morning: We went over to the Ramada Inn to conduct a small service. I promised the attendees that I would give them an abbreviated service from shacharit to Neilah in one hour. The seniors were grateful and appreciative. We talked about their feelings regarding being relocated.  I have to say that I enjoyed doing the service for them. Yes, it was a real mitzvah and I know it was holy work. I felt good about it. Again these are not normal times. Something told me that I needed them more than they needed me.

Nor was this a normal Yom Kippur. We returned to Children of Israel in Augusta for Neilah. There we were sitting in the back row: very weird for me to sit there instead of being on the bimah. The rabbi did a fine job and with joy and celebration the congregation danced in the sanctuary. We ended the service and went to into the social hall for a break the fast meal.

The folks in this congregation were fantastic and I think we made some new friends. I’m concerned like everyone else about my own house and the trees on our homes or on the ground. My mother always says, “This too shall pass.”

I am anxious to deal with the house issues and get the process of removal and clean up underway. I want to be there for my congregants and help them in any way I can. I want to be on my own bimah to show that life goes on and we as a community will rebuild brick and mortar, and our spirits too. This is what we do as rabbis in congregations. The truth is that I felt highs and lows helping my congregants this time and I know that the long term effects of this hurricane are yet to be felt. We as a community, not just at Beth Yam, Hilton Head but the entire low country needs hope and healing.

From strength to strength I have faith we will fashion a recovery of the material and the spiritual in which we will emerge a more united community in the long term.

—

Rabbi Brad L. Bloom, MSW DD, serves Congregation Beth Yam in Hilton Head, South Carolina.

Categories
High Holy Days Social Justice

How Can We Sleep?

Rabbi Seth Limmer

It was my grandmother who asked me, “Why do rabbis always talk about Jonah on Yom Kippur? Can’t they think of some other subject?”  This year, I can’t help but think that my grandmother’s question will eerily parallel that asked by so many sitting in the sanctuaries of our Reform synagogues: Why is my rabbi always talking about racism? Can’t rabbis think of some other subject?

Jonah is ineluctable: he waits for us in the recesses of our afternoon liturgy, hiding in the plain sight of our assigned haftarah.  We could no more escape talking about the reluctant prophet than could the selfsame prophet escape the Divine command to go to Nineveh.  It makes no difference how majestic are our High Holy Day sermons, how compelling or complex are the main messages we fashion over months, how emotionally exhausted and spiritually spent we might be by minchah: we must confront the Son of Ammitai before the Gates of Repentance close.  Weeping may tarry for the night, and joy arrive in the morning, but Jonah is always awaiting us in the afternoon.

Racism is as unavoidable in America as is Jonah in our High Holy Day experience.  Hammering headlines assault us with brutal facts: the police killings of Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte and Terence Crutcher in Tulsa; a presidential candidate advocating nationwide adoption of stop-and-frisk tactics; the unabated gun violence in my city of Chicago.  No engaged citizen can avoid the American truth that we do not live in a society of equal justice for all: the only way to continue the pretense of living in a colorblind culture is to bury one’s head in the sand.  The lingering legacy of centuries of institutionalized injustice and systematic prejudice is laid bare before us each day in every news outlet in any city or suburb where we make our homes.  No one with eyes open can avoid confronting America’s racial injustices.

Unfortunately, many rabbis think we can—or maybe should—avoid speaking of the plague of racism this High Holy Day season.  We reason that the more we speak of a single subject, the less congregants are likely to listen.  For those of us who addressed these issues last year, we fear being labeled a ‘one trick pony’, or accused of speaking to social issues at the expense of tending to our flock.  Since racial justice—unlike Jonah—isn’t waiting for us in our fixed liturgy, we imagine we might be able to avoid this difficult subject.  That Jews of Color are still the minority in our own houses of worship allows us to feel as if this is not really “our issue”, and we would be better served leaving it to others. The tragedy of the worldwide refugee situation, the uncivility of our presidential election, and the many issues connected to Israel provide us with a panoply of other topics about which to talk.  Each and every one of us could make it through Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur without ever facing the difficulties attached to speaking about race.

Jonah, too, thinks he can avoid all difficulty.  He runs from his Divine charge, and amidst a tempest salts himself away in slumber.  The storm raged outside: everyone felt its wrath, but Jonah chose to ignore it.  But burying himself below deck cannot last: How can you sleep! Our captain, our tradition, challenge Jonah: How can you sleep?  Rashi takes these words to chastise, “This is no time for sleep!”  Isaac Abarbanel deepens the astonishment at the blind eye Jonah turns to the raging sea, “Do you not understand the difficulty of this moment, and sense the great danger we all face?”  The book that bears Jonah’s name summons Jonah to pay attention, to address the turbulent seas on which he sails.  The haftarah we read in the tiring hours of Yom Kippur afternoon reminds us we cannot sleep soundly in our cabins and ignore the raging storms of society.

The message of Jonah is that we all need to be awakened.  Or, as some might say today, we all need to be woke.  This is a true for exhausted clergy in the twentieth hour of the fast as it is for a congregation worn out with continuing reminders of our responsibility to counter the raging storm of racism in America.  As much as we are coerced to confront this challenging issue, let us take our direction in so doing from the story of our sailors.  They move from asking Jonah, “What have you done?” to looking for concrete solutions: what can we do?  This year, amid the tempestuous season of protests and outrage, may we be moved from delineating the origins of our situation to outlining solutions to end structural racism in America.  May we continue to do so with the great partners of our Reform Movement, and may we continue to build relationships with partners across the lines of faith, class and color until the seas around us subside.  May we, whether weary in our pulpits or in our pews, remain awake and attentive to racial injustice.  May we, in moving from examination and understanding to solidarity and solutions, play our part in bringing calm to America’s shores.

—

Rabbi Seth Limmer serves Chicago Sinai Congregation.  He is also the Chair of the CCAR Justice, Peace & Civil Liberties Committee.

Categories
High Holy Days News

What We Can Learn about Placement from Yom Kippur

As my service as the CCAR Placement Director is winding down and my sojourn in New York is coming to a close, I find myself reflecting on my myriad learnings of this six-year calling. At this season especially I cannot help but connect some placement lessons to the High Holidays and to the viddui’im of Yom Kippur.  We all have taught the steps in the process of teshuvah gemurah: 1) acknowledging wrongdoing; 2) feeling genuine remorse; 3) promising not to repeat the behavior and 4) when confronted with similar circumstances, actually not repeating the behavior. This simple four-step process is precisely what is necessary for a rabbi in rabbinic placement.

The first step for a rabbi in placement is to take an honest and sober assessment of oneself. What are my gifts? What are my challenges? In what situations have I succeeded and in what situations have I fallen short? This degree of chesbon hanefesh in our rabbinic life is perhaps the most difficult: holding the mirror up to ourselves and examining our rabbinates in excruciating detail.

Once we have identified our strengths and challenges, we need to come to terms with them. How has each strength and each challenge benefitted me? Hurt me? Enabled me to craft the rabbinate that I currently have or prevented me from realizing the rabbinate I wish to have? Are these strengths and challenges features of my personality, which is resistant to change, or are these skills, which I can learn and unlearn?

Third, if we really want to avoid repeating behavior that has impeded our growth as rabbis, where can we turn? How can we remedy self-sabotaging behavior or how can we build upon proven successes in our work? There are many avenues today to help fortify our commitment to self-improvement. We could go into therapy, we could engage a rabbinic coach, we could attend CCAR webinars and in-person seminars, we could seek out advanced classes at local colleges and universities. The opportunities to enhance our rabbinates are numerous, but first we must identify our needs and resolve to wrestle with them.

Finally, we know that our teshuvah, our process of self-improvement, is complete when we find ourselves in a situation that would have formerly tripped us up but that now we can negotiate smoothly. Our efforts at introspection and learning have made us better rabbis more content in our own rabbinates. Arriving at an honest appraisal of our rabbinates and the impact our rabbinates have on our communities and their participants is the firmest basis for entering placement.

Recently a synagogue president who sat on a search committee said to me, “The candidates who did best in our search were the ones who were most self-aware.” These aseret yemei teshuvah, done right, can bring deep self-awareness which is an essential step in advancing our rabbinates. I wish you all easy fasts and a Yom Kippur full of insight, discernment, and growth.

—

Rabbi Alan Henkin serves the Central Conference of American Rabbis as Director of Rabbinic Placement. 

Categories
Books High Holy Days Machzor

Pulling Out an Old Friend Before the New Year

With the New Year set to begin shortly, I know most of my rabbinical friends are working very hard to craft their sermons and iyunim.  I know I spend time thinking about each and every word and story to shape a meaningful message to my community.

But each year before I begin to write, I engage in my own process of preparation.  I turn to the original Shaarei Teshuvah—Gates of Repentance.  Not our previous machzor-but Rabbi Jonah of Gerona’s book. I use my now well- worn text as my way into preparing myself for the High Holy Day Season. My copy is written in and has dog –eared and paper clipped pages. It still has some of the original book cover. This is a text that I have studied alone in some years and with a chavruta in others depending on the year.

I love re-reading this powerful text on repentance each year.  I deeply hearken to the way it highlights the practical steps to teshuvah.  The text outlines Twenty Principles that help one move from acknowledging the transgressions one has committed to keeping others far from sin.  Many of the principles would be recognizable from anyone who has worked the 12 steps of an Alcoholic Anonymous Program. But Rabbi Jonah goes deeper into each principle helping to lift up the essence of teshuvah with a focus on keeping the person far from sin.

I love reading and re-reading this text as a spark to prepare my heart, my soul, and as a reflection on the process I need for myself at this time of year.  I have found that the preparation I do spiritually-feeding my own soul matters perhaps more than the messages I will deliver from the bima.  Not in some selfish way but rather as a process to lift my intentions higher. The text study and reflection builds in me the spiritual reserve to frame my messages to my community.

But as much as I study and review the Twenty Principles, I love the notes that I have written alongside the text in my book. The sparks of sermon ideas and questions it raised in me through the years are a good review.  My scribbled notes on grammar or vocabulary in Hebrew, my jotted shorthand mentioning another book I may have been reading at the time bring the various years together in one place; the comment of a chavruta partner; all these notes to myself help me to prepare.   And most of all it is a record of my spiritual journey of years when I felt my sins weighed heavy against me or the years when I felt wronged by others.

My preparation for the New Year is not complete without studying with my friend Rabbi Jonah of Geronah.  In these days before the New Year arrives I hope that you feel that you have filled your spiritual reserve enough to share with your family and friends and the communities you lead.

With every good wish for a sweet and fulfilling 5777.

— 

Rabbi Denise L. Eger is the current President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and the founding Rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami in West Hollywood.  

Categories
High Holy Days News

Growing Deep

How to find and offer wisdom in a polarized world?

We live in an uncompromising age, a time of hard edges and bristling polemic.  Our current culture too often confuses strength with bombast, conviction with absolutism, passion with intolerance.   Deliberation and compromise are portrayed as weakness, and unyielding rigidity as power.  Beit Hillel is AWOL.  Rage is all the rage.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Louise Gluck wrote:  “And the mind/wants to shine, plainly, as/machines shine, and not/grow deep, as for example, roots.”  In Gluck’s terms, we live in a machine age:  too readily and too lazily, our minds prefer shine to roots.

And then along come the High Holidays, and urge us to be the klei kodesh of a completely counter-cultural message to our people and to ourselves:  slow down and stop shining.  Look within before you shout without.  Stop.  Reflect.  Struggle.  Consider your responsibilities to others.   Create the space for questions that do not have easy answers.   Permit uncertainties that shake you off center.  Allow for regret and change.  Open your heart to new possibilities.  Grow deep.

Consider the sound of the shofar:  ragged, varied, piercing precisely because it’s not pretty.  It is the sound of roots, not shine.

The Mishnah teaches (RH 3:7) that if the shofar is sounded in a pit or a cistern, if one hears the sound of the shofar, one has fulfilled the mitzvah of listening to the shofar on Rosh Hashanah.  But if one hears only the sound of the echo, then one has not fulfilled the mitzvah.  The Gemara (BT RH 27b) goes on to comment that if the listener is in the pit when the shofar is sounded, then surely the listener hears the sound itself, and has fulfilled the obligation.  But if the listener is standing only on the edge of the pit, then the listener has only heard the echo, and has not fulfilled the obligation.

An interpretation about the opportunity and purpose of these days:  if you stay only on the surface of things, if you do not grow deep, then in fact you have not fulfilled the obligation of these Days of Awe.

None of this is easy.  The sermons weigh on us, the logistics burden us, we apply all sorts of pressure to ourselves, and we get stuck thinking in terms of shine rather than roots.  Unwittingly, we allow the space of self to crowd out the presence of the sacred:  what will they think of me?  Will I be good at this?  How will they react?  We want to get it right and do it well, but it can be hard to distinguish the commitment to calling from the seductions of ego.

Like many of you, I have certain touchstones at this time of year:  passages, poems, teachers on the page who help me stay centered.  For me, the best of these anchoring teachings comes from my grandfather, Rabbi Jacob Philip Rudin z”l.  Because he wrote these words for a series of homiletics lectures at HUC-JIR (in 1959), they refer specifically to preaching.  But they are surely about more than that.  They are about what it means to be a rabbi, and what it means to be human.  They are about speaking and living with integrity and heart, at any season but especially this one.  They are about going and growing deep, despite all the temptations to shine.  They are a gift to me each year, and this year I hope, to you:

If you do not love those to whom you preach, you will not preach successfully.  If, secretly, you do not respect those who listen to you, then you will not touch them deeply.  Preaching must be purged of condescension, of a sense of superiority.  If it isn’t, then you will not talk so that people will care about what you are saying.  By the same token, if you have no deep concern, you may be engaged in a homiletical exercise, but not in preaching a sermon.  If you do not care passionately, you will not convince your hearers that they should.  If you preach from outside your subject, you will leave your hearers outside.  If you preach from within, you will take your hearers into that same inner place. 

May these days be eye-opening, soul-opening.  May the call from the heart of the tradition enter our own.  May we hear it and offer it with courage and strength, and the depth of God’s blessing.  Shana Tova!

—

Rabbi David Stern serves Temple Emanu-El, Dallas, and is President-Elect of The Central Conference of American Rabbis