October 2014

The following is Rabbi Margie’s sermon from Rosh Hashanah

On Rosh Hashanah, we celebrate the birth of the world, the birth of a new year, and the possibility of rebirthing ourselves into the people we want to be. On Rosh Hashanah, we celebrate our victories from the past year and reflect on how we have fallen short. We commit ourselves to making tshuvah, to transforming ourselves into the people we hope to be. We commit to doing our best to heal our broken world, one year at a time.

Yet, as we know, change is hard. How many of our new year’s resolutions have we kept from last year? How many of us pledged to be kinder, more patient, more generous? How many of us pledged to listen better, to arrive earlier, to be more loving to ourselves and others, only to fall back into old habits as the high holidays faded into memory?

Change is hard, not only personally, but communally. Right now, as the election approaches, our politicians promise that this year, things will be different. “If you elect me, I will usher in healthier schools, safer streets, better jobs!” And yet we face the same problems year after year. If you are like me, you may even get involved — join campaigns, offer your time and your tzedakah.
And yet so many of the problems persist.

So, even though I’m an optimist, I find myself asking, how can I possibly hope things will be different this year, when so often I find myself repeating the same mistakes? And, when change is so hard to come by, where can I get the strength to keep working for it?

I believe we come here, to synagogue, to High Holiday services, to be with community and God. Because deep down, we know that a key piece of change involves faith and hope — the lifeblood of the Jewish tradition.

In an ancient midrash, or rabbinic legend, the Israelites have just fled from slavery. The Egyptian army is at their backs. They get to the Red Sea, and panic — caught between a murderous army on one side and a huge body of water on the other. Moses says to the people, “Don’t worry! God will save us!” God says to Moses, “Ma titz’ak elai?! Why are you talking about me?! Go tell the people to go forth!”

We all know how the story ends – Moses raises his staff and the sea parts. But the midrash says there is more to the story. The midrash says that as the Israelites stand there, terrified, and God tells Moses to raise his staff to split the sea. Moses does so, but nothing happens. As everyone else stands paralyzed, not going forth, one man, named Nachshon, steps forward, and wades into the water. He walks up to his knees, his waist, his neck. He walks all the way in, and only when the water level touched his nose does the sea split open paving a path to freedom.

As the rabbis imagined it, one person had to take the first step – and it wasn’t even Moses who took it – and then God met them half way. The impossible only happened when someone believed it could. So often, change only happens when we have faith that it can. Though some of us may experience faith in God and others may not, at least not in any traditional sense, we come here to cultivate faith and hope that change is possible. We come here to find the strength we need to do the slow work of tshuvah. We come here to be inspired.

So, as I have prepared for these days of awe, I have been asking myself and wise teachers, how does this all work? How might the high holidays – and Jewish practice in general – help us to find the hope and faith we need to keep working for change?
We find hope and faith by telling our stories.

First, through our Rosh Hashanah liturgy, we tell a cosmic story. We tell a story of the birth of the world of God’s unfolding and evolving universe, whose breadth and scale are beyond our comprehension. Though I expect few of us believe literally in the Bible’s story of creation in 7 days, the story invites us to notice that before there were people there were animals, and before that there were plants, and before that there were stars. My dad, who’s passionate about astrophysics, tells me that many scientists believe that virtually every non-hydrogen atom in our bodies comes from the interior of stars that exploded more than 5 billion years ago. The universe is always changing. Our bodies are literally made from matter that used to be ancient stars!

On Rosh Hashanah, our cosmic story reminds us that even though from our tiny perspective it is hard to see the whole universe is changing. Change is built into our world, into our bodies, into our very being.

In the Amidah, in our Torah and Haftarah readings, and in our prayers we tell the story of our people. In the Torah reading, we remember Hagar, alone with Ishmael in the wilderness after Abraham exiled them. They have no food or water. She thinks he is going to die and cries out to God. Then, she looks up, and sees a well of water. Hagar felt hopeless, and yet, her prayer was a bridge between despair and hope that opened her eyes to the possibility that things could change.

In the haftarah, we remember Hannah who longed for a child, who discovered her prayer gave her hope, and her hope gave her peace. We remember how Hannah had a child after she had almost given up.

In the Amidah, we remember the Israelites in Egypt. They were so used to slavery that they became silent. They went through the motions, affixing stones and mortar, building great pyramids for the pharaohs who oppressed them. And yet, on a day like all other days, they cried out–lamenting and protesting the pain of their circumstance, overcoming their fear of Pharaoh’s power. They cried out, admitted that they believed more was possible and then everything changed. They became free. As the Meah shiloach writes, the cry itself is the beginning of redemption. When we admit our longing, we connect ourselves to the possibility of a different future. Our prayers become a bridge between despair and hope.

To tell you the truth, I am not sure if these stories literally happened. Did the sea really split? Did hundreds of thousands of Israelites really stage the biggest strike in history? Maybe. And yet, for me, regardless of their historicity they are deeply true.
We tell and retell our Jewish stories because we breathe new life into them when we connect them to our lives. Every year on Passover and every week during the Kiddush blessing over wine, we retell the story of the exodus – yitziat mitzraim. We are invited to ask ourselves how we have tasted freedom in our own lives. When we retell these ancient stories, passing them from one generation to another, we remind ourselves of all the moments in our lives when we have heard them when they have woken us up to the liberation in our own stories. And then, through our own personal prayer and reflection, we are invited to retell our own stories.

We dig into our own histories and find the moments that give us strength and courage.

Think of a moment when your life changed — maybe the first day of a new school or job, the day you moved away from home, or moved to a new home, your wedding, the day you had your first child or grandchild, the day you met a good friend. Or, think of a time when you were resigned that something in your life would never improve and then things got better, in unexpected ways.
For me, I think of how much I wanted to find a partner and how very scared I felt in my early thirties and still single and then I remember the moment when Jeremy proposed to me giving me 1000 paper cranes he had folded himself. I remember how I not only felt happy and, frankly, relieved, but also deeply aware that this felt like a miracle, a moment of the impossible becoming possible.

I also think of how nervous I felt in rabbinical school wondering whether I would perhaps wind up feeling stifled in some lifeless and impersonal congregation. And then I think how grateful I feel now to look out into this sweet and vibrant community, filled with so many people I love and respect, and I remind myself that life can change for the better.

We tell ourselves these stories not because we are Polyanna-ish, not because the fact that things got better in the past means that everything difficult is going to be okay. There is real hardship out there. There is real hardship in here. People have lost parents, and spouses, and even children. No story can take that pain away. But I hope our stories can remind us that we are capable of strength and growth. I hope our stories can remind us that though sometimes we feel stuck. At other times, like the sea parting for Nachshon and the Israelites, we find a path we didn’t know was there.

So, over the next 10 days, I invite you to reflect on which stories give you hope, faith, courage –Where do you find wisdom, or inspiration?

We come here not only to recall stories ourselves, but to help those around us find new meaning in their stories and their lives. Sometimes we have to remind each other that change is possible. Sometimes, we give each other hope. Our task as individuals is to find the courage to believe we can really change. Our challenge as a community is to bolster one another – through friendship, love and empathy – so that change becomes a burden light enough for each of us to carry.

This year, may we have the creativity to rediscover ourselves in the stories that give us hope and motivate us forward
May we have the wisdom to see each other deeply to help others see the next chapters of possibility even when they cannot
And for us, the Jewish people, and all the inhabitants of the world, may this be a year of peace.