Many of you know that I have the great pleasure of reading stories to our Pre-School children. It is always a real joy for me. We have fun together and we sometimes learn something from each other. A while back I was about to read a story and I think it had in it a character who repaired watches. So, to get into the mood of the story, I asked all the children, “What do you do if you have a toy you really like and then it breaks? What do you do with the toy?”

Silly me. I thought someone would say, “You go to Mommy and Daddy and ask them to fix it.” But, no. To a child, everyone said, “You throw it out and buy a new one!” It was completely obvious to them. Even one’s favorite toy is dispensable and replaceable. They have learned, so early, that ours is a world of planned obsolescence, where the belief is that there is always a new toy out there which is the same or better.

I was surprised by that response. Actually, I was a little taken aback and a little saddened. I am an old- fashioned guy. I like traditions and dusty old things. And I like trying to fix things when I can. And I like some stuff even if it stays broken. I like feeling attached to things. I like memories and I like imagining that other people have had attachments and memories.

We are still at the beginning of a New Year. Newness is in the air; it is on our minds. As I mentioned on Rosh Ha-Shanah, it is on these days, more than any others, that we are inspired to come together in synagogues and pray for a new beginning. We greet each other happily, “Happy New Year!” But, let’s pause for a second and consider how we state that greeting in Hebrew. We don’t say –

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Shalom to everyone!

It’s great to see so many fellow congregants and guests, all here together.

As we all know, here at Shomrei, and in countless other communities everywhere, today is one of the 2 or three days in the entire year when so many of us make an effort to come to the synagogue.

Why?

I think I get Yom Kippur. But why have we chosen today – Rosh Ha-Shanah – to do this? We could just as well decide to show up on Passover – the anniversary of our freedom – or Shavuot – the anniversary of our receiving the Torah. In fact, a generation ago, in the Soviet Union, the great day of congregating was not Rosh Ha-Shanah at all. It was, instead, Simchat Torah.

Don’t get me wrong! I think it’s wonderful that we are here together! But I think it might also be great if we tried to understand this phenomenon a little more.

What, then, is the magnetic meaning of this day? The answer is found in our prayers.

Hayom harat `olam

Today is the birth-day of the world

We proclaim – with these words and in many other variations – that today is the anniversary of the creation of the world. We are here to celebrate the world’s existence.

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So – a shepherd was herding his flock in a remote pasture – when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a very expensive suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and Italian silk tie, leans out the window and asks the shepherd, “If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?”

The shepherd looks up and down at the man,  then looks at his peacefully grazing flock and calmly answers, “Sure. Why not?”

The man parks his car, whips out his  notebook computer, connects it to his cell phone, surfs to a NASA page on the internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.

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So much has been said this evening, so much has taken place here, among us. What more can I say?

I hope that for each of us tonight there have been some moments of beauty, of sadness, of exaltation, of warmth, of thoughtfulness, of recognition.

I am so grateful to have helped some of our community members give birth to their new prayers, their new S’lichot – prayers of forgiveness – prayers that we offered tonight.

This night we have gathered to begin a long day’s journey to atonement. We reach deep down into ourselves to confront our sins and failings. And we ask God to forgive us. We pray and recite and proclaim and chant words, words, words of petition and appeals for forgiveness.

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Rosh Ha-Shanah is a wall-eyed day.  It looks this way and that. It has us contemplate two core themes simultaneously. Today is a day of beginnings and it is also a day of returning.

These themes of beginning and of returning pull in different directions –  One theme – beginning – is forward-looking. The other theme – returning – has us turning around and looking back.

Today is a day of beginnings,  for it is the beginning of a new year. The synagogue is bedecked in white, symbol of a clean, fresh start.

And it is a day of returning, for it is the season of teshuvah – of Repentance. We are called to re-think, to review our lives, our actions, our beliefs and goals. The white kittel is like a death shroud, a reminder of our mortality, meant to get us to rethink our life choices and values.

But, while these foci pull in opposite directions, they actually end up launching us into an elliptical orbit powered by their complementary forces. As we spin around these two themes, each one pulls us towards itself and then back to the other.

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יום כפורים תש”ע
כל העולם כולו גשר צר מאד, והעיקר – לא לפחד כלל!

The whole world is a very narrow bridge – but the main thing is not to be afraid at all!
Many of us love to sing this song. Yet -let us be honest – Ours is a season of fear.

Just recently our local Montclair paper – I refer to the NY Times, of course – observed that the Toronto Film Festival was full of “movies laden with doomsday predictions, conspiracy theories (and facts) grim statistics, alarming charts, dire predictions and shreiking, whimpering and failing men and women.” (9/17/09 – Arts section, Manhola Darhis, “Watching a Nation Fall Apart, Entertainlingly). Whether we turn to cultural reporting in the media  or to our political realities, on the national or global level, or when we look to our Jewish concerns, here, abroad, or in Israel, and even if we turn to our mahzor – our prayer book for these Yamim Nora’im – these Fearsome Days – fear is all around us. Small fears and medium fears, and very large fears. What are we afraid of and what are we afraid for?

We are afraid of people and of ideas. And some of them are, indeed, frightening. We are afraid of what is said – and of what is not said; we are afraid of what is – and of what might be; of what is being done – and of what might not be done. We are afraid of God – and we are afraid of those who fear God.

Fear is all around us. And those blessed among us, who are not afflicted with fear, are surrounded by those who are – so that fear is really all around all of us.

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