[Previous sermon: "Torture? - 11/0707"] [Next sermon: "Chanukkah Revisited: Not Letting the Light Go Out"]

High Holiday Sermons

ROSH HASHANAH EVENING
Sacred Conversations

Max Schwartz is a deeply religious man. He prays fervently, and he has a powerful sense of God in his life. He’s the guy who likes to say, “God is like Coke. He’s the ‘real thing.’” Of course, Max comes to shul every Shabbat. Sid Rosen, on the other hand, is an atheist, but he, too, comes to services every Shabbat. Needless to say, the rabbi knows both men well, and one day says to Rosen: “Sid, I understand why Max comes to shul every Shabbat. But why do you come? You don’t even believe in God!” Without missing a beat, Sid replies: “Max comes to shul to talk to God. I come to shul to talk to Max!”

Think about it. Sharing ourselves through conversation is the primary basis for creating meaningful relationships. Think about when you were courting your beloved. I bet there were times you didn’t realize the hours had passed, as you sat together over a cup of coffee or a meal, just talking, getting to know one another inside and out. Teenagers, whose singular goal is managing their relationships with their peers, spend inordinate amounts of time speaking on the phone and on the computer to one another, seemingly about nothing. Yet all that talk is the precious work of testing boundaries, the adolescent dance of exploring intimacy and exerting independence.

Some of us may be here tonight to speak to God, to deepen or rekindle our relationship with the Creator. Some of us are here to renew our relationship with our family traditions, history, values and ideals. Others of us are here tonight to reconnect with Max, our friends, our community. Others may be here lamenting a failing relationship, one that has no more words, no more conversation, no exchange or connection.

I have a lament… a great sadness that I think you share with me but may not yet have articulated….a sadness about the tenor of the conversation between us Jews. If there was ever a time that one could say that there was a “Jewish voice” that united us, today, we Jews are dispersed to the ends every spectrum, each with its own different language. We are a veritable community of survivors of the tower of Babel. Today there are liberal Jews and fundamentalist Jews. We divide and label ourselves as belonging to various different “movements.” Some would even argue, they are different religions: Reconstructionist, Renewal, non-denominational, post- denominational, Orthodox, modern Orthodox, Neo-Chasidic, Bratzlaver, Conservative, Conservadox, Reform Jews, Zionist Jews, cultural Jews and the list goes on and on. We also position ourselves very differently with regard to Israel, some deeply committed, others ambivalent. And in general, we have very different politics, lifestyles, parenting styles, family values and world views. Instead of talking to one another, more often it seems we either talk behind one another’s back, or, if we have the chutzpah and opportunity, we yell at one another.

If we listened to the editors of Jewcy, an on-line magazine for self described “new Jews,” we should just give up the idea that anything connects us because there is no concept of Jewish peoplehood anymore. Nothing makes Jews a family that talks to one another, that is close and connected through the sacred act of conversation, dialogue, interchange.

So what happens when Jews stop talking to one another? The same thing that happens in a tired marriage. The words become fewer and farther between, the love and loyalty fade, and the relationship falls into disrepair. For our people, it means that fewer Jews get involved in formal Jewish life.
Why go through the motions of community with people who don’t know you, really know you, who don’t care about your struggles and your longings, and your desires to become the person you may still hope to be?

To me, the greatest challenge of the synagogue of the twenty first century is to create opportunities for sacred conversations, for building relationships one person to one person at a time, so that we can discover again how to share, how we can go beyond superficial relationships and create relationships of understanding and compassion. We need to discover again what kind of conversations it takes be fathers and mothers, husbands, wives and lovers, devoted children. We need to regain the ability to be families and to be a family of Jews. We Jews love to talk. Schmoozing is our own special word for conversation. We need to reclaim conversation as a sacred art.

For example, some of the conversation in the special Torah portion we read each year on Rosh Hashanah, Akedat Yitzchak, the binding of Isaac, is conversation elevated to sacred art.
Together, we have struggled mightily with this portion over the years. It’s never easy to wrestle a meaningful message from such a spine chilling story of a father willing to sacrifice his son and a God who asks him to do it. I know I have been hard on Abraham over the years, arguing that he fails God’s test miserably. That he should have said no to God.

Nevertheless, I have always been moved by the way he more than exemplifies the highest measure of virtue by being fully present in all the conversations he undertakes. At the beginning of the story, when God calls out to him, without hesitation or knowledge of the enormous request that was to come, Abraham responds to God’s call with a rousing, “Hineni, here I am.” Hineni is a single, Hebrew word that communicates to the one who hears it, that his conversation partner is ready to listen, to really listen with her whole being. This is going to be a conversation more than schmoozing, but sacred art. It was easy this time for Abraham to say Hineni. There are lots of times when it is easy for any of us to be ready for a good conversation. These conversations are the ones that happen within the context of a safe, trusting relationship, or in an intimate relationship, or in a workplace where clear parameters are drawn.

But three days after he says “Hineni, here I am,” to God, Abraham demonstrates a more remarkable presence for conversation. Isaac and Abraham are climbing up Mount Moriah alone with all of the supplies for a sacrifice, but no animal, and Isaac breaks that uncomfortable silence to ask, “Avi, my father!” Abraham’s response again is “Hineni, beni, here I am, my son.” This is a much tougher Hineni. Perhaps Abraham knows Isaac’s question before he asks it. “I am carrying the wood. You are carrying the knife. Where the hell is the lamb?”

But Abraham is there with his son, right there. He has the presence of heart, mind and spirit that our children often require of us, and which we oftentimes miss because we are too busy.

My friends, congregants, fellow Jews, seekers, for a New Year it is our presence of heart, mind and spirit with another person, when all we wish to do is something else, something for ourselves; it is the full presence of heart, mind and spirit to engage with a loved one, a colleague or a coworker you know needs to confront you with a problem both of you might be having; it is the active presence of heart, mind and spirit towards those around you in your community, when you’re feeling you’d rather be anonymous, alone, uninvolved. These are the hardest times to call upon our most genuine selves to “be there,” because in these moments, it is we who are most vulnerable. It is in the space between our vulnerability and another’s that Martin Buber taught that true meeting can happen. This is a sacred meeting, a sacred event in life. The most important thing that Abraham could say to his child, and he did, was that they were on a journey of faith and that God would provide the sacrifice. And Abraham could say that because Isaac was able to ask and Abraham was open to his son’s question.

We read that story of Abraham and Isaac to bring us onto the same wavelength, that same sacred path of being real, of being there, of openness to one another and to the God who enables it to happen. We are supposed to be on a journey of faith which brings us, through God, into one another’s presence. To leave here alone, to leave this sanctuary untouched by human and divine encounter, is not to have made the journey with Abraham at all.

So let’s take the journey. I’d like you to share an important piece of yourself with someone sitting near you. It may feel a little awkward, but I think you’ll agree with me when we are done that there was a special reward. The first thing I’d like you to do is think for a few minutes about a personal experience of Hineni, when someone said to you, “here I am.”
A specific moment when you needed to be heard, understood, perhaps loved, or befriended and someone said, “I’m here.” In the spirit of the Akeda, this incredible moment of sacrifice shared by Abraham and Isaac in the presence of God, I’d like you to take a few moments to think of a time in your life when you were in a bind, and someone’s openness and presence gave you courage or strength or faith or comfort. Don’t talk now. Just think……


So now, I’d like to ask that you pair up with someone next to you, behind you or in front of you, and for the two of you to share your experience and what it meant to you. Do this with someone you don’t know very well or with someone with whom you are very close. But let it be a Hineni moment for the two of you. Turn to face each other, introduce yourselves if necessary, talk for about 5 minutes about your Hineni moment. Listen. Be open to what the other is saying and feeling. Make no judgments or demands and when each of you has shared, perhaps it might be okay to share a hug.

In Pirke Avot, in the Mishnah, we are taught: “When two people sit and words of Torah pass between them, the Shechinah, the Divine Presence, is there.” In other words, sharing sacred conversations not only brings our full presence to bear, but also draws God’s presence close.

Sacred conversation begins sacred relationships. Sacred relationships begin when we share more than favorite television shows, films, sports scores, fun and games, competitions and professions. Sacred relationships begin when we are fully there for one another as friends and lovers and families.

Sacred relationships are what a synagogue community is supposed to be about, a place where we calm one another’s fears and ease sorrows. Where we share joys and fill the emptiness of being with meaning. A synagogue community, like any true community, does not divide into haves and have-nots, into observant and non-observant, into Zionists and anti-Zionists. A synagogue like any real working Jewish community unites us with the only real truth. The truth of the Torah that speaks in many voices, with the rhythms of many hearts, the experience of a thousand generations and brings them together under the wings of Shechinah. If the Torah has been there for us, it is for us to be there for one another.
Shanah Tova, may it be a good and sweet New Year.


ROSH HASHANAH MORNING
Tikvateinu – Our Hope
Rabbi Batsheva Meiri

I am not sure how he does it day after day, but my husband Mark spends most of his free time reading about how the world is going to hell in a push cart. Each morning after my walk, I hear him grumbling in frustration about how there is not enough ground water, we are eating in ways that are unsustainable, and there are too many people on the planet. It is not that he loves to revel in the plights and plagues of our world. On the one hand, he reads these books and articles to keep his teaching up with the latest science findings. And on the other, he believes it is an ethical obligation to know in great detail the realities of the world. The tidbits he shares with me tempt me to pull the covers over my head and stay in bed until the apocalypse. What I marvel at is how, knowing all he does about how seriously damaged our world seems to be getting, everyday day he manages to finish his coffee, get dressed and go to work. That is why it was shocking this summer when, instead of our usual diet of NPR in the morning, Mark was only playing music from his ipod. It was a particularly bloody week in Iraq, come to think of it. To tell you the truth, I had noticed the change in our morning routine but didn’t think much of it until he looked at me with deep sadness in his eyes and said, “I just can’t bear the carnage.” And then my heart dropped. Here before me was the man who hopes beyond hope, who believes that our vegetarianism, composting and energy frugality is a moral imperative, who spends his days teaching the next generation about their responsibility for our planet, had this same man lost his hope?

It is hard to be hopeful when the world gives you enough reasons not to, and especially when the people you look towards for inspiration and hope, themselves seem to be getting discouraged. And this world certainly provides enough reasons to lose heart. Let’s start with the tragedy of Iraq, a war most Americans now oppose but which continues to steal the lives and maim the bodies of our young service men and women and countless innocent Iraqis as well. And even if our greatest hopes of a successful pullout are realized, we are still left with a mess that will take generations to clean up, if we are honorable and assume responsibility for the destruction we caused there. Here at home, the bottoming out of the mortgage industry this summer is still reverberating into the stock markets the world over, and is lending itself to a period of economic uncertainty. But it won’t matter how much money we have if the ever looming threats of climate change, a topic which is now all the rage in the media, take their toll as severely as scientists predict. It should be worrisome to us that in this hurricane season, there was a category-5 storm at the letter ‘D.’ It’s hard to be hopeful when two years after Katrina, we have not yet addressed realistically what climate change means for the long term future of our Gulf Coast, Florida and New Orleans, and all the people living there. It is hard to be hopeful when Iran will have weapons grade nuclear capability in three to eight years, and delivery systems to get them where they want them to go. And if Iran’s government doesn’t use them, they might choose to sell them to Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, or another extremist group with an axe to grind against America or our friends, namely Israel.

It is hard to be hopeful as the United States’ role as a world superpower continues to diminish. Recent foreign policy in Iraq has not only compromised the United States’ respect and credibility, but as we continue not to invest in science and technology to the same degree as other nations, we will lose our competitive edge economically as well. Just read Tom Friedman. It’s hard to be hopeful when we consider the rampant obesity in our country and the scourge of diabetes among our children, and cancer among our family and friends. And it’s hard to be hopeful as Jews, we think carefully about what it means that only 40% of our children are being raised as Jews. In its 60th birthday, Israel celebrates surpassing America in Jewish population. And while that may signal something wonderful for the Jewish State, is it good for the Jews? Will it be good for Israel in another 60 years if the American Jewish community continues to decline?

It is a scary world. There are many truly depressing things that could just suck the vitality out of our hearts and minds. And yet, it is amazing and it gives me a measure of hope that after 2600 years, after destructions, exiles, Crusades, pogroms, statelessness, plagues and Holocaust, wars, depressions, all the terrible things that have happened in the world’s history, we Jews are still finding our way back into schul at this holy time of the year. Indeed it is a testament to our people’s unbroken hopeful spirit. Despite the worries of the world, the synagogue is still a sanctuary, a place to regenerate our sense of hope, a place we can be inspired to keep hoping and keep working to make ourselves and our world better. Hope has been a leitwort for the Jewish people.

Remember, it was we who chose to mark our seasons by the phases of the moon, whose light expands to fullness and diminishes to nothing, in order to embed that message of hope into the fabric of our being. No matter how dark the night, the moon returns to light our way, and times of celebration will return to us, even when that possibility isn’t visible. When the State of Israel was born sixty years ago, it came time to choose a national anthem, we didn’t select a theme of military victory or national pride. We chose, Hatikvah, the hope, as Israel is part of realizing 2000 years of Jews’ hope. So, what has kept the Jews hopeful?

I share with you two stories from my colleague Michael Marmur, dean of the Hebrew Union College in Israel: one story about margarine and the other about herring. In the memoirs of Hugo Gryn, a colleague who spent most of career in London, he writes that as a child in Auschwitz in block 4, he and his father and the Jewish prisoners in his barracks, in anticipation of Hanukkah, decided to set aside some of their margarine rations to fuel a makeshift menorah to celebrate the holiday. They gathered bits of wood and metal and shaped them into light holders. It was Hugo’s job to take apart an abandoned prison cap and fashion wicks from its threads. Finally, the first night of Chanukah arrived, and the prisoners in block 4 gathered around the two melted down portions of the margarine, one for the shamash and one for the first night. As they were saying the blessing thanking God for the miracles God performed for the Jewish people in the past, Hugo tried to light the wicks but the margarine only sputtered and sparked, refusing to light.

The so-called “scientists” in their midst hadn’t told Hugo and his dad that margarine doesn’t burn. Hugo remembers angrily turning on his father about the refusal of the margarine to light. What a waste of precious calories it was. And he remembers his father’s sage reply. He said, “Don’t be so angry, my son. You know that this festival celebrates the victory of the spirit over tyranny and might. You and I have had to go once for over a week without proper food. And another time we survived almost three days without water. But you cannot live three minutes without hope!” The notion that you cannot live for three minutes without hope is one pole of a Jewish understanding of the concept of hope. That is the margarine.

And now, the story about herring. It is told apocryphally that at the height of his power when it appeared that all of Europe was at his feet, Napoleon ordered before him 3 soldiers, a Russian, a Pole and a Jew. And to each of them he told he would grant one request. The Russian asked that the Czar be deposed. The Pole called for the creation of a free, independent Poland. And the Jew requested some schmaltz herring. Napoleon agreed to all three requests. The Russian and Polish soldiers left the encounter feeling proud of the requests they had made on behalf of their people and nations. Napolean’s chief of staff was set with the task of finding the Jew the finest schmaltz herring. When the Jew returned to his village and they learned of his conversation with Napoleon, members of his community came to him wondering why he hadn’t used the opportunity to ask for something more substantial. “Why didn’t you ask for a homeland for the Jews, or for guarantees of security?” The Jewish soldier responded thus, “Do you think Napoleon will really topple the Czar or free Poland? Not a chance. I, on the other hand, I at least have some good schmaltz herring.”

It might appear that unlike the first story, which is a sublime and moving account, an affirmation of hope in the most hopeless of circumstances, this story is nothing but a cynical joke. But I want to suggest that at its heart, this story about the herring has something significant to tell us about how Jews tend to hope and what it is that we hope for. Jewish hope is ranged somewhere between that extraordinary comment from Hugo Gryn’s father that you can’t live for three minutes without hope, and the apparently cynical comment of the Jewish soldier saying, “don’t give me all of those wild fantasies. Let’s concentrate on something tangible, something within reach.” If you look at the Hebrew word for hope, tikvah, you can find two possible etymologies. One links it to the word kav, meaning a line. Tikvat chut hashani in the book of Joshua is the scarlet cord or thread, the line that the prostitute Rahab puts outside her window to let the Israelites soldiers know they are obligated to protect her home when they come to invade the land. There it is: the notion of hope as a line, a thin piece of thread which I can hang onto, and which connects me in my current situation out into the future about which I dream and for which I hope. The problem with this conception of hope in our time, a time when we enjoy a quality of life that is so far beyond the hopes of our biblical ancestors, is that, as my colleague Eugene Borowitz observed, “We have had the experience of reaching a hoped for future and found it wanting.” Our generations go back and forth one moment we have the traditional hope, something that join us with the past and reaches toward an ideal future. And the next moment, we “mortgage [our] futures to pay for pleasures now. [We] do so because [we don’t] trust in the future as much as [our] parents [did.]”
In other words, we no longer consistently feel the tension in the cord reaching to some better, greater future from some ancient or even modern ideal. This is it, and this is as good as it gets. And so some of us give up on hope. And for it, we substitute gratification, which is something quite different. There is nothing transcendent about gratifying our pleasures. Nothing about it which will help us to grow or mature or evolve because our appetite for gratification can never fully be satiated. What does Ecclesiastes say? “The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear enough of hearing.” (Eccl. 1:8) It is a cyclical process. Once we have seen or heard the thing we wanted, once we have acquired what we thought we needed, we are back at the beginning wanting the next great thing which promises to fulfill us. And that is why at this time of New Year, our generations need to try to search for that ever so frayed cord, reaching toward us from a grander vision of a still unrealized future, demanding we take hold of it. Otherwise, hope will be just another loose thread. And the world, as we experience it, merely a cycle of wants and pleasures, wants and pleasures, needs and gratifications, needs and gratifications. You know Jews come back to the Temple every year for 2600 years, not to pray for another good meal at their favorite restaurant, but to pray for the courage to face pain or loss. Jews come back to the synagogue every year not to ask God for the newest gameboy or iphone, but to ask for the insight to work with a challenging child, or the wisdom to communicate with an alienated family member. Jews come back to schul because in the recesses of our spirits we know that war and hatred, can be overcome. We come back here because we know that people are the stewards of the world, given to use its resources not abuse them. We are here because we need to hope, because we need tikvah.

And here I offer another possible etymology of tikvah. And that relates it to the term mikvah, or pool. Here hope is not a thread. Hope is a reservoir.

Hope is where we turn to get the succor and the comfort we need to have the strength to carry on. The Talmud (Tractate Yoma,) recounts that Rabbi Akiva, playing on the prophet Jeremiah’s description of God as mikveh Yisrael, hope of Israel, really means mikvah Yisrael, the pool of Israel. Just as a mikva, the ritual bath, purifies the impure, so God purifies Israel. This idea of pooling and gathering offers another insight into the Jewish meaning of hope. If hope is about the thin read cord pulling us into the future, it is also about the comforting pool that has the promise of regeneration. And this meaning of hope is a vehement argument against the modern existentialism of Camus, who believed that an individual’s challenge in life was to come to terms with the full implications of life without hope. In our tradition, hope and community are irrevocably linked. Community is part of our pool, our reservoir of hope. It links person to person, generation to generation. Even with the persecution and struggles they faced, the rabbis of the Talmud exhorted us, “So long as a person is alive, he has hope.” (Yerushalmi, Berachot 13b) This is true especially if he has a community, a group, a schul, if he or she has a link to the past, to history, and toward the future.

Hatikvah, our hope is not simplistic. We don’t just cheer for good guys and boo the bad ones. It is more honest, more nuanced. It has the spirit of Hugo Gryn’s father. You can’t live 3 minutes without it. And it also has something to do with the little Jewish soldier saying, “Forget about saving the entire universe. Let’s focus on tangible, doable things, things we can take on and achieve. If we do enough of them and stay focused on them, they too can be part of our reservoir of hope.”

My reservoir of hope is filled to the brim seeing a family smiling over the grave of a loved one without regrets about how they loved and were loved, without words left unsaid, or deeds left undone. My reservoir of hope is filled seeing the wonder of my children as they discover the beauty of nature. My hope comes from hearing the story about a temple member staying the night at the home of a fellow congregant ill from her chemotherapy. Or when I learn about the moment a member felt comfortable enough to call on another when he needed help. It comes from the Bar Mitzvah student who truly believes, as his portion teaches, that one person can make a real difference in the world. My reservoir of hope is filled from so many sources, like seeing us turning to one another to connect, as we did last night.

All this leads to a more creative meaning for the word tikvah, hope. We can connect tikvah to another important word for us Jews, tikkun, which means repair, a return to wholeness. Rosh Hashanah is Yom Harat Olam, the day we Jews celebrate the birth of our world. In the Torah’s account of creation, there is a verse which is seemingly unimportant but which forms the backbone of Kabbalistic hope. The verse is: “And a river came from Eden to water the garden.” (Gen 2:10) In the Zohar, the concept of tikkun, of repair, and, perhaps of hope too, is that there is a never ending source, a river which flows toward the garden to nourish all life within it. Like any river, that flow can get stopped up, with rocks and debris, and the garden becomes dry and parched. Tikkun is the act of unstopping the river, one rock, one handful of debris at a time, so that the source of life can reach the living things of the garden. And perhaps that is what this complicated business of hope is about, too.
Hoping is not simply waiting for something better to happen, even if we can and do envision it. Hoping is holding the cord, drawing from the reservoir of communal and family relationships, knowing that I can’t stop holding on, knowing that I can’t stop hoping and knowing that I can’t stop doing something to make my life, your life, our lives, to flourish.


Kol Nidre
Rabbi Batsheva Meiri

On the eve of August 2nd, twenty year old former yeshiva bachur, Roman Koyrakh, felt his car dropping as the bridge on Interstate 35W began to collapse beneath him. He recited the Shema just as centuries of Jews have done as they met their deaths. He was one of the few lucky survivors whose cars plunged into the murky waters of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. And Roman Koyrakh strongly believes it was no less than the very hand of God that redeemed him. And perhaps he reflects that at this time last year, his name must have been sealed in the Book of Life. After that fateful evening in Minneapolis, like a splash of cold water on our faces, or like a shofar blast breaking the still calm of summertime, we all began to worry about our nation’s infrastructure. Every urban planner, every Federal, State and City official nervously began pulling out the maps, checking the bridges, looking for cracks and buckles, just like we Jews at this season unfold our own internal maps, inspecting them for structural flaws. Together, we have reached Kol Nidre, a time for inspecting the strength of our bridges, the bridges which connect us to our families, the bridges that connect us to our friends, the bridges connecting us to our community. This is the time we test the metal and integrity of those bridges, if we have built them with the most durable materials we had at our disposal, or whether we erected them carelessly. We ask ourselves whether there enough bridges in our lives, and if they extend to the places we need to go, to the people who help us get where we want to be.

Kol Nidre is the time to dust off the map of our Jewish soul and check if the bridge that links us to our people, the Jewish people, is firm or shaky, solid or about to collapse. Did we even build this bridge? I’d like you to take a moment, right now, and think about when that bridge between you and the Jewish people was built. What event or events in your life were influential in making you, building you into the Jew you are today. What person or persons helped span the chasm between emptiness and the fullness of Jewish identity? (pause) A colleague of mine tells the story of the year the foundation was laid for his bridge. It was the year he became a Bar Mitzvah, but it wasn’t the service that moved him. It was being called to a life of mitzvah by his youth group advisor, whose name he doesn’t even remember, who wasn’t particularly charismatic, but who remains a memorable influence in his life. You see, his Bar Mitzvah took place in 1967, when at the beginning of the Six Day War, that youth director gathered all the B’nai Mitzvah students, tore pages from the Temple membership list and charged each of them with a profound sense of mitzvah. Israel needed them. They were to call their fellow congregants and urge them to give generously to help the Jewish State. It was at that moment my colleague was taught that he was forever part of the Jewish people, that he was commanded to save lives, obligated to save Jewish life.

That same year, forty years ago, the movement to rescue and aid Soviet Jews began. And on my Bat Mitzvah, my mission, the Jewish duty to which I was called, was to celebrate my Bat Mitzvah with a fellow thirteen year old. I will never forget that her name was Marina Levin. She was a Refusnik locked behind the Iron Curtain. Unlike me, she was not free to openly celebrate her passage into Jewish community.

I filled an empty chair on the bima with a poster about Marina. Over the years, I wrote to Marina, hoping someday she would be free to leave the Soviet Union, but never hearing a reply. No doubt, the government was censoring her family’s correspondence. Nevertheless, I felt tied to her, responsible for her freedom to be a Jew, and as grandiose as it sounds, I knew I was doing something substantial for the Jewish people. More than that, on two levels I was building a bridge connecting my life to Marina’s in the Soviet Union, and I was building a bridge from myself to the Jewish people.

This notion of special responsibility, of connection to the Jewish family is a bridge that is falling into disrepair today. Some say, it is collapsing. In fact, this kind of Jewish commitment, one to the other, each one to the all, is out of vogue. Generally, very Orthodox Jews write off the liberal Jewish community. To them, we aren’t Jews at all. So why care about us? To them, with all of our divorces, remarriages and blended families, we are producing a generation of mamzerim – illegitimate children who can never marry into their community. To them, our intermarriages, our Patrilineal descent are anathema. We dilute the purity of the people. As far as they are concerned, we are written out of our Jewish inheritance.

On the other side of the coin, in our liberal Jewish community, many of us write ourselves out of our Jewish inheritance. We don’t build the bridges. It used to be that you could count on the fact that our children would grow up with a sense of mission, the strong feeling of belonging and the responsibilities that accompany membership in the Jewish people.

A generation ago, our children believed that the Jewish people individually and as a whole could alter the world for the best. That we were indeed partners with God in an ever-evolving society reaching toward universal justice and peace. Jewish children once believed it was worthwhile to live a Jewish life. Those same children believed that we had great responsibility to one another, to build one another up, to build up the Jewish people so that we could affect the world with goodness, and so that the land of Israel would be a haven for all Jews and a light to the nations. Those kids planted trees in Israel at Tu Bishvat and they knew why. They gave tzedakah to organizations that assisted needy Jews far and near, in the inner cities of America and in our homeland in Israel. They believed Jews had a right and a reason for a homeland as they waved flags and marched on Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel Independence Day. But that sense of shared history and mission, that we are a small people but a large family, seems to be slowly evaporating. We Jews, still give tzedakah, but I fear we no longer feel the pull of truly caring for other Jews when we give. By far, the majority of Bar and Bat Mitzvah students from this Bima and I suspect from many others, who choose to give away a portion of their gifts, bless their hearts, choose to give it to the humane society and other community charities, just like their parents might give generously to the symphony or the Cancer Society or the Nature Conservancy instead of to the Associated, United Jewish Charities. The editors of American Prospect magazine estimate that 2/3 of all Jewish giving is going to organizations outside the Jewish sphere. And what do we have for it? Shrinking synagogues, struggling day schools, under budgeted Sunday Schools.

Steven Cohen, a sociologist at Hebrew Union College, has said that the inconvenient truth of North American Jewry is we are losing our ethnicity. Strong bridges to the Jewish people aren’t built by bagels, bialys and yaba baba bim bam. We have to wonder if “Rosh Hashanah Under the Stars” is great Jewish outreach or capitulation to broken Jewish bridges and disconnection. Steven Cohen’s studies show that nationwide, only 1/3 of Jews in their thirties report having mostly Jewish friends. In most cases, Jewish Federation donors come from a much older generation of Jews. Fewer Jewish relationships are a marker for diminished attachment to Israel. If I asked people in this sanctuary to stand up if they belong to a Zionist Organization, would there be more than a handful of us? And fewer Jews now believe that in a time of danger that we have a special responsibility to come to the rescue of fellow Jews.

Jewish Peoplehood with a capital “P” is simple and unsophisticated. As it says in the Talmud, “Kol Yisrael arevim zeh la zeh, all of the Jews, all Israel are responsible one for the other.” (BT Shavuot 39a) Better yet, it says in the Torah, “V’Atem tiheyu li mamlechet Kohanim v’goy kadosh, You shall be for Me a kingdom of priests, a holy people.” (Ex. 19:6) We are nothing unless we are a family, a people, a nation responsible for and to one another. We are impotent to build a better world if we are not deeply connected by bonds of history and of faith. And this simple, unsophisticated identity echoes clearly in the last words of journalist Daniel Pearl, captured on videotape before he was murdered by terrorists. He said: “My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I am Jewish.”

One of Israel’s most eloquent spokesmen, the President of Israel, Shimon Peres, also said it well when he said: “I am a son of this people, a nation that is adamant about remembering its past, inspired by its heritage, receptive to change.” And Ariel Sharon, in his last interview with the foreign press declared: “I am a Jew and that is the most important thing to me.”

We are here tonight to decide as individuals and as a community how it is that we are going to better say in the coming year, “I am a Jew and that is the most important thing to me.” Tonight is the night we vow that our lives are about more than just living and dying, being born and being buried and just coping with everything in between. We are not here on earth or in this synagogue tonight to get better at being consumers, to accumulate the best stuff at the cheapest prices. We are here to accumulate connections, to think about ways to make our lives meaningful everyday, all day. We have to make it our mission to connect with the God who unites us and connect with the people to whom we are bound.

There is a well-known story that Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of the village of Berdichev had two clocks in his house: one was always set to “Berdichev time,” but the other was always set to “Jerusalem time.” The image is apt: Even though Rabbi Levi Yitzchak was physically in Eastern Europe, at some deep, inner emotional level, he was also in Jerusalem. Jerusalem in this sense represents the totality of the Jewish people- our history, our values, and the hopes we all share. We need to build a bridge to be more on Jerusalem time while we are living here in Baltimore.

Bridges are at the heart of so many great cities of the world. London Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge, the Bay Bridge. Who can imagine San Francisco without the Golden Gate Bridge? Bridges aren’t just for commerce. They are a metaphor for connectivity. Four hours a week on the internet bridge can never equal four hours once a year on Mitzvah Day. On Rosh Hashanah, I talked about connecting to one another, husbands and wives, parents and children, grandparents and friends. But on this Kol Nidre eve, we’ve got to set our sights even higher and there is nothing more important than this folks. We’ve got to wake up everyday consciously knowing that we are Jewish and go to sleep consciously aware that we are Jewish. Perhaps beginning and ending our day with the Shema, or making a Motzi before eating will help us begin. We need to pause over the stories of Jewish interest in the newspaper- you know, all those stories about Israel, the articles written by rabbis, and discuss them with our children at the dinner table. Let no moment pass that has an opportunity to connect you intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, with your Jewish people, your tradition, your inheritance. After these Days of Awe, we have to rise from our slumber everyday knowing its eight hours later in Jerusalem. Maybe we all need to set a clock and look at it in the morning.

I am far the first rabbi to teach this. A thousand years ago, Maimonides taught that if one enters a synagogue to pick up a child or to see a friend, he should pause for a few moments and read a few words of Torah then go on with his errand. This is you won’t have entered a synagogue for purely personal reasons. A synagogue is never a place to fulfill our personal needs, though I hope it often does just that. It is the place we reach beyond ourselves, even when we are in a hurry.

But Temple is not where it ends. Tonight, a Past President of this congregation asked you to give with a whole heart. And I am saying, yes, that’s right, give to your Temple, but with a whole heart. Not just because. Give what you can because you feel and know in your heart that this is the place that bridges your life with the life of the Jewish people, past, present and future. And I’m asking to think about all of your charitable giving. Examine your check stubs and see the balance of your contributions and ask yourself, where is your heart?

When I went to Jerusalem this summer with our teens, and prepared them for their first encounter with the Western Wall, I invited them to approach the wall thoughtfully. To place their hands and head directly on the stones and see if they could feel a connection with all the people who ever cried at that wall, a connection with all the prayers of generations of our people that have been offered in that very same, sacred place. Afterwards, when I asked the kids what their experience was, with tears streaming down their faces, they said they all felt something they had never felt before. See if you can feel it, right now. You are sitting in seats that hundreds of people have sat in before. You are breathing air in a room that is never empty. Put away your rationalism and know in your deepest heart, that this place holds, embodies and preserves the wishes and fears, the hopes and the dreams of tens of thousands of your people. And that they are YOUR people. And for that matter, put away your critical analysis of the Torah. We all know it is not revelation, per say. It is rather a mosaic of the Jewish people’s experiences, not a memoir of God’s utterances.

The Torah is, in its way, a record, not about what really happened in the past, but a record about how we chose to remember our past. So what if there was no Egypt. So what if there was no Exodus, as scholars and history suggest. So what if there was no revelation. What is important is that our ancestors chose to believe that our people were once slaves. That God wanted us to be free and to exercise our freedom in a land of our own. And from those materials, you and I build our view of life. That God is a God of freedom and freedom belongs to every human being. That we are a people who in some ways belong to God and to one another and are destined, determined, responsible for bringing freedom and wholeness to others. In this sense, the Torah remains an extraordinary symbol of the Jewish aspiration for justice and for truth and for a measure of meaning in a seemingly meaningless world. The next time you go to work or to school, think those kinds of Jewish thoughts. Such a Jew can cry at the reports from Darfur, and such a Jew can smile when she hears Russian spoken in Pikesville and thinks that Marina Levin may be living happily nearby.

One of the giants of the previous generation, Rabbi Shlomo Heiman, was considered to be a world class Talmudist and pedagogue. In 1935, he was invited to head the famed Torah Vadaat yeshiva in New York. He quickly became a prominent luminary in the Jewish world raising many disciples and molding them into the next generation of rabbis and teachers. On one occasion, he was lecturing to a mostly empty hall. It was a shame, except for the few students who lined the front rows, because Rabbi Heiman was especially brilliant that morning and loud, too. One of the students mustered the courage to say, “Rebbe, we are only a handful of students today. You don’t have to speak so loudly- we can hear you just fine.” To which the rabbi responded, “Do you think that I am speaking just to you? I am speaking to you, your children and their children.”

This is perhaps the boldest and most audacious, but central claim of our tradition – and it is contained in the Torah reading we will read tomorrow morning. Moses, gathers the entire people together “to pass into a covenant with God… in order to establish [the Israelites] as a people…” And then Moses says what Rabbi Heiman repeated 2600 years later, “And not with you who are standing here today… but also those who are not standing here with us today.” Not just Moses’ generation, but all generations. The Jewish people are the original global people- transcending even time, space and geography. We are in a sacred covenant, the bridge connecting us all together. May we each, in our own way, feel that covenant more deeply, that its light may shine more brightly in our hearts and in our deeds. Amen.