Hearing the Call, Answering the Call: Vayikra 5778

A version of this sermon was delivered on Friday, March 16 at Temple Emanu-El of East Meadow.

Happy New Year!  

I know, it’s not Rosh HaShanah or January 1, or even Tu BiShevat, but according to the Torah, today, Rosh Chodesh Nisan, when there’s no moon in the sky, is the first day of the first of the months.  During this month, in 14 days’ time, we will celebrate Passover.  And the special Shabbat we celebrate tonight and tomorrow, known as Shabbat haChodesh, the Shabbat of The Month emphasizes the importance of this New Year ’s Day.  Each year on the Jewish calendar, the Shabbat preceding the first of the month of Nisan gets this special treatment.  It just so happens that this year, the first of the month falls on Shabbat.  So, again, Happy New Year!

Now a question, Mah nishtanah ha Shabbat ha-zeh mikol hashabbatot?  Why is this Shabbat different than all other Shabbats?  Well, on all other Sabbaths, we read our Torah portion, but on this Sabbath, traditionally, in addition to our weekly Torah reading from Vayikra, the first verses of the book of Leviticus, we also would read 20 verses from chapter 12 of the book of Exodus where God commands Moses and Aaron to tell the people that this month is to be the first month of the year.  [Don’t worry, Josh, we’re not asking you to learn any more Torah for your Bar Mitzvah at the last minute; I’m only going to talk about it tonight.]  We read in these 20 verses from Exodus, the basic rules for Passover.  It’s like a Rabbinically programmed reminder popping up on your smartphone: Ding! Passover is coming soon. Ding! Remember don’t eat leaven for 7 days.  Ding! Don’t forget to prepare your lamb for the sacrifice.  Ding!  Don’t forget to get yourself ready for the freedom that is imminently at hand.

So, as we begin this new month, this first of the months, we recognize that our calendar begins with a call from God to get ready for freedom.  Our new year begins with a sense that God’s redemption is close at hand, but requires our participation.  Our year starts with preparation for an intimate encounter with God. The message of the call, therefore, is much more than it seems on its face: “This month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you.”[1]

It’s especially fitting when this special Shabbat HaChodesh falls on the week we read from the first verses of Leviticus, the third book of the Torah which outlines primarily the sacrificial system among other laws.  This confluence of Torah and Shabbat HaChodesh won’t happen again until the year 2029 or 5789, for those keeping count.  Like the verses from Exodus which are traditionally read for the special Shabbat, this week, we read of a call from God to Moses, and a call which has underneath it a lot more than it may seem at first glance.  Like the call to Moses and Aaron announcing the new month, this week’s Torah reading begins with God calling out to Moses, but in a special way.

            וַיִּקְרָ֖א אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֑ה וַיְדַבֵּ֤ר יי אֵלָ֔יו מֵאֹ֥הֶל מוֹעֵ֖ד לֵאמֹֽר׃

“The Eternal called to Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying...” (Lev. 1:1)  The first word, Vayikra is important, and worth mentioning.  Whereas many times in the Torah God calls to Moses or Moses and Aaron the use of Vayikra emphasizes a special call, a call of divine purpose.  Rashi teaches us that, “The word Vayikra precedes all [Divine] commandments and statements, which is a term of endearment used by the heavenly angels.”[2]  Here, Rashi points out that the Angels in heaven also use this term when calling out to one another, as we hear in our Kedushah prayer, thus emphasizing the special nature of this word.

But Rashi also teaches that this moment, the Vayikra moment for Moses, was special.  No one else heard this call from God, just Moses.  It allowed Moses a personal moment with God before he was then told what he needed to focus on in terms of the sacrifices.  As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks points out, the literal translation of the verse seems to be redundant in terms of God’s speaking to Moses: “[God] called to Moses, and God spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying …”  Why does the Torah need to tell us that God called to Moses and then God spoke to Moses?  Sacks answers: “God’s call to Moses was something prior to and different from what God went on to say. The latter were the details. The former was the summons, the mission – not unlike God’s first call to Moses at the burning bush where [God] invited him to undertake the task that would define his life: leading the people out of exile and slavery to freedom in the Promised Land.”[3]

This is an important notion in Judaism: a call before the details.  Judaism has always been a religion that focused on a sense of being divinely called to perform commandments, and act ethically in the world.  It is that pull inside of us which draws us to the side of good and right, and the side of compassion and consideration rather than the alternative.  The call comes from within, but that piece within us is divine.  Like the Vayikra in our portion that only Moses could hear, only we can hear the divine voice in our souls calling us to goodness and chessed, lovingkindness.

We all can hear the call from God, the call to action, the call to make things better.  Without the call, the drive from deep within our soul, the details of creating a Divinely-inspired existence on Earth cannot come to be. 

This week, and in the last few weeks, it has been wonderful and moving to see so many young people across this nation answering a call, as they walk out of their classrooms and schools to protest the violence in their schools and in our nation, and the sacrifice of their safety that our politicians have made in order to appease the gun lobby and manufacturers.  These young people have started a movement for change that seemed impossible just a month ago.  Whether they feel they are called by God or not, they are answering a drive deep within themselves to demand change, to demand that the nation live up to its ideals of life, liberty, and pursuing happiness.  They rightly claim that they are being denied their right to life in order to ensure others’ rights to guns. 

These young people are showing, and will again on March 24 as they March For Their Lives, the greatness in America, that people can feel compelled and called to demand a change for the better, and then use their voice, their feet, and their vote to work to make it happen.  

For the first time in a long time, many feel like the tide has begun to turn on this issue.  It frustratingly didn’t happen after Sandy Hook.  It didn’t happen after the Pulse or Las Vegas Massacres or after Charleston, or any of the others for which we have mourned and wrung our hands.  But now, a wave of change seems afoot.  New laws restricting gun access are being passed.  More people than ever are engaging in the issue.  We can attribute this shift to many reasons; among them, we see within these young people a drive to say out loud that the way of the world, the way of allowing all these guns, is not ok with them.  

The nation was crying out for someone to answer the call.  We adults had seemingly given up.  We adults had given in.  We had been beaten down.  “Who will I send?  Who will go for me?”  God demands in the book of Isaiah.  And Isaiah answers the call: “Here I am, send me!”[4]  These young people, thank God, the March for Our Lives movement, the #NeverAgain movement, have stood up and responded like the prophet when the adults around them did not.  Here we are!  Send us!  

We didn’t answer the call previously.  Now, they are leading the way.  They need our support.  They need our prayers.  They need our feet marching alongside them.  I will be with them in Westbury on the afternoon of the 24^th.  You are welcome to join me.

Our support can commence by hearing the divine call within our souls.  Listen…Vayikra, and God will call us to do the right thing.  Listen…Vayikra, and God will call us to compassion, to justice, to life.  Listen…Vayikra, and God calls out to us, reminding us that we know what we need to do.  We just need the will. 

May the divine call give us that will.  May this New Year of our freedom beginning tonight be filled with our hearing God’s call.  May it be filled with the freedom to live without fear in our schools, at our concerts, our movie theaters, our places of worship, and our dance clubs.  May we hear God’s call and respond, and work to make this year a year of peace and of life.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy New Year!

---

[1] Ex 12:2

[2] Rashi on Lev 1:1

[3] Sacks, Jonathan . The Call Vayikra 5778,

[4] Isaiah 6:8

Yom Kippur Yizkor 5778: The Gravity of Memory

A version of this sermon was delivered at the Yizkor service at Temple Emanu-El of East Meadow on Yom Kippur 5778

A little over a month ago, the United States witnessed one of the great marvels of the heavens, a Total Solar Eclipse.  For a few moments, everyone’s eyes pointed upward, trying to catch a safe glimpse of the occluded sunlight, as the moon made its pass between the light of the sun and us here on the earth.  On Long Island, we had a little over 70% occlusion, and were able to see the crescent shaped shadows from the muted rays of sunlight.  But we could not look upon it with our eyes.  We needed either special glasses or to look through a pinhole.  We can only safely see an eclipse by not looking directly at it.

Almost 100 years ago, a total eclipse was used to prove Albert Einstein’s theory about light and the nature of space-time.  Light travels through space.  It comes from the sun to earth, a relatively short distance, taking but minutes to bask us in its glorious golden rays.  It comes from distant stars, taking years, centuries or millennia to arrive as a gentle twinkle, only visible in the night sky.  Einstein suggested that the path of light’s travel through space is changed by the mass of large objects like the sun.  The gravity of the star pulls the light of another toward it, as it creates a curve in space.  This is also impossible to see without special instruments and without special circumstances.  It is only when the sun is completely blocked that scientists and astronomers can measure the effect that the sun’s gravity has on the path of the light of distant stars before we see them.  Einstein used the eclipse 98 years ago to record this phenomenon, for the first time.

Einstein’s theory was proven thanks to the solar eclipse, and it upended centuries of Newtonian thought and understanding of the universe.  An eclipse literally changed the way we understand the foundations of the universe.  This predictable dance between the two great lights allowed humanity to come to a greater and fuller understanding of how the universe works, and how light travels through it.

This past summer, the National Geographic channel aired a truly magnificent docudrama biopic about the life of Albert Einstein, called Genius.  The series was based on the biography of the same name by Walter Isaacson.  Both trace Einstein’s life, his discoveries and calculations, through the early years while he was still trying to have his ideas accepted, until his later years, when he worked hard to fight against the proliferation of nuclear weapons, which his calculations helped bring to fruition.  We also learn a lot about his relationships, his triumphs and his regrets.  His life was marked, like all of ours, with love and loss, joy and tragedy, war and peace, belief and doubt.

Toward the end of the series, in a scene near the end of his life, Einstein comments to his friend Niels Bohr that he has regrets in his life, and he wishes he could turn back the clock.  Bohr jokes that perhaps time travel could be his final achievement.  Einstein retorts: “There are many moments I would like to relive and many ills I'd like to fix.”  Bohr ends the conversation with the truism: “Time is a tricky thing,” while complimenting that it was Einstein who taught him as much.

Time is a tricky thing.  Often a day feels like but a moment; we blink and it has passed us by.  Then we experience a moment that lasts for what seems like an eternity.  Sometimes we move past occasions of great joy in an instant.  And sometimes we dwell in our sadness and mourning, seemingly endlessly.  Our loved ones were at our side yesterday, it seems.  We can still hear their laugh, smell their perfume, feel their love.  Our loved ones have been gone forever, also.  It’s hard to remember what color that chair was in their house, the smell of my brisket is never quite the same as hers.  I can never tell that joke in the same way.  An eternity has passed no matter how long it has been since they were at our sides.   

Well, Einstein and Bohr never achieved the ability to time travel with the help of a machine.  Today, however, each of us becomes a time machine.  We hurtle through space-time toward the past.  It is through our memories that we are able to do the scientifically impossible.  We travel through time through the act of memory, through Yizkor.  Take a moment and allow yourself the journey.  

We travel back to our youth and experience anew the first look we ever had of our beloved, and we feel the love as we did then.  We travel to the moment we heard those words of wisdom our parents gave to us, and then to the moment we passed them on to our children, and we connect them in our hearts.  We arrive at the fight we had with our sister, or spend time reliving the trip we took with our brother, when we became closer and began to appreciate each other as adults.  We remember and experience again the joy at a simchah, and the sadness of a loss or an illness.  We travel back and forth between now and the past in our most sacred of obligations, the obligation to remember, the obligation to keep alive our loved ones through the blessing of their memory.

We journey through our memories, like a beam of light through space-time, pushed and pulled by the gravity of our memories.   But, like in an eclipse, it is only when the light of the sun is blocked that we can truly see the effect the sun has.  So it is with our loved ones of blessed memory.  As we travel through time in our memories, we come to realize that too often, the effect they had on us can only truly be understood and calculated after they are gone.  After their light has been diminished.  It is only then that we may truly come to appreciate what they meant to us, how they affected us, how the course of our life was altered by their presence.  Like the eclipse, we cannot look upon our memories with our own eyes, we need special tools, the tools of memory.

When Einstein and Bohr bantered about time travel, they knew it was only barely theoretically possible.  When we speak of memory, we know it is all very real.  We know it is real because we time travel.  We travel through time on this Yom Hakippurim and recall the relationships in our lives that were important to us.  We travel as a beam of light, through space-time, feeling the pull of blessed memory on us and our actions, feeling the force of those blessed memories on our souls and our lives.

Energy.  Mass.  The speed of light.  These explain the expanse of the universe.  But memory, memory explains the expanse of the heart.

Let us begin that journey to the past.  Let us begin our travel through time.  Let us experience the past anew, though our sacred work of memory.

Yom Kippur Morning 5776: Back to the Future!

A version of this sermon was delivered at Temple Emanu-El of East Meadow on Yom Kippur Morning, 5776.

The future is here. It is 2015, and this is the year that Marty McFly visits in Back to the Future Two. Now, I don’t bring this up just because of the potentially sacrilegious number of prayers that I have said that the movie’s prediction of a Cubs’ World Series victory this year actually come true, but because all year, all of 2015, we have been living in the future, and Yom Kippur is the perfect time to talk about the future. 

“Great Scott!” you might say. “Aren’t we supposed to be thinking about all of our sins, all of our accomplishments, all of our deeds and vows over the last year?” Yes, we are.  But there can be no mistake that this day, perhaps more than any other on our calendar, asks us to peer into the future as we commit to being better versions of ourselves in the coming year.

If only we had a time machine that could take us back before the concrete began to crumble in our sanctuary. If only we had a DeLorean, that when it hit 88 miles per hour would take us to the future on tire tracks of fire, a time after all the difficult decisions have been made, and after all the discussions have happened, a time after the chaos when we will look back in wonder at how we ever did that. Well, we may not be able to travel thanks to 1.21 gigawatts of power, but we will make it to that time, as long as we do it right. The best way to predict the future is to create it. Getting it right in the future is in part about looking back with the right perspective. That’s the easy part, really. The harder part is looking forward with the right perspective.

There are a number of ways to look toward the future. Will we be resigned to our future? Will we look at whatever comes as a blessing? And will we make the commitment to be a part of it, whatever it may look like, because there can be no future if there is no one to experience it?

A story is told of King Solomon, who put his servants to the test in order to teach them a lesson in humility. As servants to the king, they were accustomed to treating those beneath them with a certain disdain and superiority. “I have heard,” the King announced, “of a ring of magical powers. This ring has the power to make the happy man sad and the sad man happy.” Solomon ordered his servants to scour the countryside looking for such a ring, though it was the product of his imagination. They had no idea where to go.

“How will we find this magic ring?” one servant bemoaned.

“I bet it doesn’t even exist!” one of the servants shouted.

“It’s probably some wild goose chase for one of his wives!” another joked angrily.

Four servants went out from Solomon’s palace toward the four directions, each hoping to find this ring for the King and gain prestige and status in his eyes.

The first returned from the west, over the sea, empty handed. “I am sorry, King, but there is no such ring in the west. Though I prayed to God I would find it, I could not.” And with that, he retreated from King Solomon’s presence.

The next returned from the south, the lands of Ethiopia and Sheba, and he had brought with him an assortment of rings, hoping that one of them would meet Solomon’s needs. “My Lord, these are the finest of rings from the south, you may have your pick!”

“None of these does what I ask.” Solomon dryly responded. With a wave of the King’s hand, the servant exited, humiliated.

Well, the same thing happened with the servants who went east and north. One came back empty handed. The other, having heard what happened when a variety of rings were offered to the king, selected one ring, a beautiful, jewel-encrusted, shimmering-in-all-colors signet, from what he had gathered

But, Solomon was not swayed. “This is not the ring I’m looking for. This does not make the happy man sad and the sad man happy.”

But Solomon’s most trusted servant had not yet returned. Which direction had he gone, anyway? Well, Benaiyah had decided not to go far, but to dig deep. He went from alleyway to alleyway, starting in the center of Jerusalem working his way to the outskirts, near the walls. He pored over the wares of each and every jeweler and junk dealer twice, just to be sure. He worked systematically, quietly, on official business of the king. That was all he would tell people when they asked after him: “I’m on official business of the King.”

One day, not long after the last servant was sent away from the king, Benaiyah had just finished looking through an elderly man’s makeshift shop, if you could call a blanket spread out on the ground a shop, for the third time. Not having found it, Benaiyah collapsed against the wall for a break. 

The old man looked at him and asked: “My young friend, what is this official business of the King that he has you rummaging around in shops like mine, in these forgotten corners of the city? What could the king want that I have?”

“He is looking for a ring, a magical ring, with the powers to make happy men sad and sad men happy.” Benaiyah put his head in his dirty, tired hands.

“I have such a ring!” the old man exclaimed. And with that, he took a simple gold band, polished it with an old cloth, etched a few letters into it and handed it to Benaiyah. “Here, my son. This is what the King asks for.” Benaiyah looked at the ring’s engraving and smiled wide. He leapt to his feet and bounded back to the castle. 

He burst into the King’s chamber and, out of breath, presented him the ring.  “This, my King, is the ring you seek!” He handed Solomon the ring on which was engraved the words “Gam zeh ya’avor. This too shall pass.” Solomon’s surprise turned to dismay and then quickly to resolve as he commended Benaiyah for having completed the task.

“Well, Benaiyah, you certainly have done it.” Solomon didn’t even look up, he was so transfixed by the ring. Immediately, he took off all his jewels and robes and declared that rather than teach a lesson in humility, he learned a lesson in impermanence. Nothing lasts forever, Solomon declared. With that ,Solomon went on to write the book of Ecclesiastes, Kohelet.[1]

Nothing lasts forever. The difficulties we are facing are not permanent and not impossible to overcome. The challenges we will struggle through together have an end, and together we can reach that end. This story of Solomon teaches us that while we may feel stuck in a situation, time continues to move forward, and even if not immediately, situations change.

Gam zeh ya’avor, this too shall pass: reminds us that we can always create change. The future is uncertain and therefore, unwritten. Though we spend much of these days of awe asking for inscription in a book of life, and meditating on who will live and who will die through the words Unetaneh Tokef, it is the line after that reminds us that our future is not preordained, that reminds us that our current situation is not fixed. We remind ourselves that we have the power in us to change the future, through the work of prayer, repentance, and charity. Gam zeh ya’avor is not a prescription merely to wait for change to come; it is also a call to act to make change happen. This too shall pass is a helpful tactic when we’re faced with difficulties, and a reminder not to take the good in our lives for granted.

There is, however, an issue with living an exclusively gam zeh ya’avor lifestyle: we may be tempted to consider our past less than critical. If everything changes, what good is dwelling on the past…or the present? King Solomon even tells us in Kohelet that all of life is fleeting. If wherever we are is impermanent, why make a record of it at all? Because, while our situations may change, our values do not. Kohelet, we must remember, is only one book of the Bible for a reason. Our past reminds us of our values and of where we came from so that our future, the future we bring about by causing our situation to pass, ought to be informed by all that we have learned in the past, lest we repeat the same mistakes. Gam zeh ya’avor: one way to prepare ourselves for an uncertain future is to recognize that our current state is not permanent. That might be enough to push us to action.

A second story, this one from the Talmud[2], and this one also including the word ‘gam,’ meaning also. Rabbi Akiva was accustomed to saying "Everything God does is for the good". Once Rabbi Akiva was traveling with a donkey, rooster, and candle and when night came he tried to find lodging in a nearby village only to be turned away. Although Rabbi Akiva was forced to spend the night in the field, he did not lament his fate. Instead his reaction was as it always was. “Everything God does is for the best.” 

With that, Akiva settled in for the night. A wind came and blew out his candle. Later, a cat ate his rooster. And then, a lion came and ate his donkey! Each time, Rabbi Akiva's reaction was “Everything that God does is for the best.” That night a regiment came and took the entire town captive, while Rabbi Akiva who was sleeping in the field went unnoticed and thus was spared. When Rabbi Akiva realized what happened ,he said, “Didn't I tell you that everything that God does is for the best?” Rashi explains that if the candle, rooster, or donkey would have been around, the regiment would have seen or heard them and would have also captured Rabbi Akiva.

But Rabbi Akiva didn’t just come to this outlook on life by happenstance. He was taught. And his teacher’s name was Nachum – you can see why I like this story – but he was known as “Ish Gamzu.” The Talmud explains that his nickname came from the fact that his reaction to anything that happened to him was always “gam zu l'tovah this, too, is for the good.”

One time, the Jews wanted to send a present to the Emperor in Rome, and they felt that Nachum Ish Gamzu would be the best emissary as miracles are always happening to him. So they sent him with a chest filled with treasures. On his way to Rome, he stopped by an inn and during the night the innkeepers emptied the jewels from the chest and filled it with sand. When the chest was offered to the Emperor, he opened it and saw the sand. Naturally the Emperor was infuriated. Nachum Ish Gamzu just said, “Gam zu l'tovah: this too is for the good.”

Eliyahu Hanavi, Elijah the prophet, came disguised as one of the Emperor’s men and suggested that maybe the sand was from Abraham who threw sand and it turned into swords. The Romans tried out the sand on a nation that they had difficulty in conquering and were able to defeat them with the aid of the sand. The Emperor sent Nachum back with great honors and a chest full of treasures. Gam zu l'tovah, indeed.

The beginning of Nachum’s story has him being sent to the Emperor, in Rome. And then later, this unknown rabbi from Judea, an outpost of the empire and from a defeated people no less, gets an audience with the Emperor. Perhaps this is a signal that this story, and indeed its lesson, is meant to be taken with a grain of salt. A miraculous story in the Talmud teaches us that everything will turn out ok as long as we hope or pray it will. But, we know that the clouds of difficulties and hardships sometimes don’t have silver linings.

So, what do we learn from Nachum ish Gamzu? Even when the most beautiful of things suddenly become sand, that doesn’t mean it’s all bad. There can be good that comes out of a bad situation. There can be, and in fact, ought to be, a way to look at every situation that pushes us not only to mourn what we have lost, but to make the best out of a bad situation, and it starts with mindset. Are we ready to direct our energies positively in the year ahead? Are we ready to look at what we have before us and make the statement: Gam zu l'tovah, even if we might not know what good will come? When we are ready, the story seems to tell us that God will help us. God sends Elijah to Nachum’s side, to give him the strength to see everything as if it truly is letovah, for good.

But as with gam zeh ya’avor, this too shall pass, gam zu letovah comes with a caveat. Nachum isn’t the least bit concerned for his safety over the fact that he has been robbed. His optimism and positive let’s-make-lemonade-out-of-lemons attitude overwhelms his ability to see the reality before him. 

And, while in his case it’s not detrimental to him, we know all too well that neglecting to see the reality, neglecting to face hard truths, and neglecting to prepare for the future can have very dangerous consequences. Optimism and positivity can carry us far, but if they are not tempered with realistic expectations, we may all find ourselves sleeping in a field.

One final story[3]: In a mountain village in Europe many centuries ago, there was a nobleman who was concerned about the legacy he would leave to the people of his town. The man spent a great deal of time contemplating his dilemma, and at last, decided to build a synagogue. In the course of his planning, he decided that no one would see the plans for the building until it was finished. Apparently, centuries ago, there were no Temple Boards. He had scaffolding erected and a large tent covering the construction site so no one could see what was going on. The construction took quite a long time – much longer than he anticipated—because doesn’t it always?

But at long last, the project was completed. A grand opening was planned. The townspeople were excited and curious about what they would find upon seeing their new synagogue unveiled. There was a great ceremony and with great fanfare. The cover was dropped from the building and the people marveled at the synagogue’s magnificence. No one could ever remember so beautiful a synagogue anywhere in the world.

The townspeople entered the beautifully appointed building and marveled at the careful woodwork and the beautifully crafted floors in the entrance way, inlayed with different colors of wood in patterns of such grace and beauty. They continued to move through the building and began to examine the walls, so expertly joined together. Their eyes travelled to the high ceilings, expecting to see some grand candelabra, but there was none. For a few minutes no one said anything about it.

Then, noticing the seemingly obvious flaw in the design, one of the townspeople asked, “Where are the lamps? What will provide the lighting? Are we to pray to God in the dark!?” There was nervous laughter from the crowd and all eyes turned to that nobleman who had commissioned the building.

The proud nobleman pointed to brackets, which were strategically placed all along the walls throughout the synagogue. He then gave each family a lamp as he explained, “Whenever you come to the synagogue, I want you to bring your lamp, and light it. But, each time you are not here,” he said, “a part of the synagogue will be dark. This lamp will remind you that whenever you are absent, some part of God’s house will be dark. Your community is relying on you for light.”

The light of our community relies on each one of us, bringing our lamp, hanging it up at the Temple and proclaiming that our little corner of God’s house will not be left dark. Regardless of where our lights have been in the past, this day is about looking to the future. We need to recognize our roles in our future. We need to see ourselves as bearers of that light, and understand that the light that we each bring is a necessary part of our community. That is true today, and it will continue to be true tomorrow and next week and next year. We may look toward the future with the gam zeh ya’avor attitude or the gam zu letovah attitude, but it won’t make a difference if we don’t all commit to bringing our lights.

Last night, our Cantor and Choir helped us to time travel by evoking the memory of generations past with their beautiful rendition of the Kol Nidre prayer. Our memories are of the past, those moments of years gone by when those melodies filled our ears and our souls. Yes, the prayer pulls us back, but it asks us to look forward. “Mi yom kippurim zeh ad yom kippurim, haba’ From this Yom Kippur to the next Yom Kippur.” The vows we make, all that we pledge and promise, we pray that we not be held responsible for breaking those vows. The future is not certain, but it rests in our hands. Kol Nidre, and indeed all of Yom Kippur, asks us to understand who we have been and use our experience to strive to be better moving forward while at the same time recognizing the realities as we look forward.

We don't need a DeLorean.  We don't need to physically travel back in time to learn from our past and improve our future. We are already equipped to handle the difficulties before us. As we exit this Yom Kippur, as we celebrate the new year with our families, breaking our fasts with sweetness and togetherness and a good number of bagels, let us not only consider ourselves cleansed from our previous deeds and our past year. Let us also consider ourselves prepared for the year ahead and for the future. Let us consider ourselves prepared to handle the challenges before us with the right mindset and the right opportunity. And finally, let us all commit to installing our light as often as possible.

Shanah Tovah

[1] יש אומרים
[2] Based on B. Ta’anit 21a and B. Berachot 60b
[3] Thanks to Rabbi Robin Leonard Nafshi for the base of this story, which she titles: The Nobleman’s Legacy.