Rosh Hashanah Day 1, Sermon – Breaking Our Hearts Open

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Rabbi Julie’s sermon for Rosh Hashanah Day 1, 5785, October 3, 2024 

On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed.  Who shall live and who shall die. Who will live a long life, and who will come to an untimely end. 

My friend Brenda’s nephew, Benayahu Bitton grew up in an unusual family.  His parents were originally secular and became ultra-Orthodox.  He was the fifth of seven children – he had grown brothers and sisters who weren’t religious, from his parents’ previous marriages.  Benayahu grew up Haredi, but he didn’t like it.  That’s why he was at the dance festival.  He wasn’t going to go, but then his friend called him and said he had a free extra ticket.  Benayahu had just gotten out of the army.   He was very musical – he played all these instruments when he was a kid, and he was really, really, good at the guitar.  He was a happy twenty-three-year-old kid.

“You know how he died, right”, my friend Brenda said.  He managed to get into his car, but there was a traffic jam going North so he drove South, to Kibbutz Be’eri.  He arrived at the gate, maybe forty seconds after the Hamas guy smashed the window of the guard booth.  Only he had no idea. The gate to the Kibbutz opened, and when he drove through, another Hamas guy came from the side and shot him, killing him instantly, along with his two friends.  They took one of his friend’s bodies to Gaza, she said, but threw my nephew’s body out of the car.  Benayahu was the first casualty of Kibbutz Be’eri, and he didn’t even have anything to do with it.  He was a kid.  A light-hearted kid.  “And they killed him”, Brenda said.  “Him and like 1200 other people.”

On Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed.  Who by fire and who by water, who will be at peace and who will be troubled. 

My nephew Chaim lives in Haifa with his wife Rebecca and their two red-headed sons, Yonatan and Nadav, ages 3 and 1.  Chaim is a mechanical engineering student at the Techniyon. This summer I met him at the train station in Haifa, at Hof Ha-Carmel, the stop right next to the beach.   We unloaded swimsuits and sunscreen and shovels for the sand, beach towels and snacks and water bottles and little sun hats, you know the ones with the strap for under the chin.  Yonatan thought it was so funny that his saba, his grandfather, was my brother and he giggled and ran back to the big moat of water he was making that he insisted wasn’t big enough for both him and his baby brother to sit in.

And beside the crashing waves, I asked Chaim about his reserve duty on the Gaza border where he spent Passover seder this past year.  What I remember most was that he had to always wear his uniform, ready to mobilize within 60 seconds.  And now every time I think of him, I picture the handle on the back of the neck of the uniform, made from a material that cannot catch on fire.  What do you mean, a handle, I said?  And Chaim explained with a gesture that there was a handle, made of a material that’s completely inflammable, on his uniform at the back of his neck, so that someone could grab him to pull him out of the tank, if God forbid, it caught on fire.  Earlier this week, Chaim was called up again, reporting to duty just after Yom Kippur.

On Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed.  Who will be serene and who will be disturbed, who will be bought low and who will be raised up. 

Upon hearing that children had been evacuated to hotels in the Dead Sea, a kindergarten teacher, Avital Liman went to volunteer.  She wrote this poem, ‘Nowadays One Has to Check.’

In the evacuee’s hotel
By the Dead Sea
She carefully gathers
The doll’s hair with a ribbon
She attaches a sparkling pipe cleaner
To the ribbon.
And then she asks, “Tell me, am I alive?
And how would they know if I were dead?”
What would you say
To a four-year old girl?
“Only the living can hug.
Come, let’s hug and see if
We’re alive.”
Later she says:
“Tomorrow morning let’s check again.” 

And this is just a piece of the pain on the Israeli side. It doesn’t address the political divides in our own families or the rising fear of antisemitism. Nor does it address the devastating deaths of entire Palestinian families and foreign aid workers, or the hunger and displacement of millions of Palestinian families from their homes, schools, and mosques.

I feel no matter how many stories I could tell, how many images I could paint, how many words I could utter, ein milim, there are no words to capture the shattering tragedy of this past year.   I considered showing up today without a sermon and just standing here and crying, crying out, sobbing, sniffling, shuddering, in grief and rage and despair and pain and fear and heartbreak.  Because there are no words to describe the feeling deep down in my bones that I wish I could go back to last year at this time, to the time before shiva b’October, the time before October 7th.  Think for a moment back to last year at this time, to Rosh Hashanah and the start of last year, when we didn’t know and could not have imagined what would happen.  How do we enter this New Year with hearts that are broken or callused and numb?

In the haunting words of the U’netaneh Tokef prayer, recited on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur during the Musaf service, before the open Ark, we sing, B’rosh ha-shanah yikkativun, u-v’yom tzom kippur yeihateimun.  On Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed.  Who will live and who will die, but Teshuvah – retun, Tefillah – prayer, and Tz’dekah – giving, ma’avirim et ro’ah ha’gizeirah, these actions have the power to transform the harshness of the decree.

When I was in rabbinical school, twenty-five years ago, I read an essay that forever changed how I understand this prayer.   In my early years, I read this prayer quite literally, picturing God writing my fate each year in the Book of Life and thinking that the actions of teshuvah, return, tefillah, prayer, and tzedakah, giving, if performed with enough intensity and sincerity could impact the very fate of my life in the coming year.   As if God was deciding our fate based on our merits and these three actions could tip the scales in our favor.

But then, after reading Rabbi Myriam Klotz’s essay[1],  about responding to suffering, I let go of the question, ‘How could God let this happen to us?’ and embraced instead the question, ‘How are we going to respond to this immense suffering?’  In the paradigm not why do bad things happen to us, but when bad things happen to us, the three spiritual tools of teshuvah, tefillah, and t’zedekah – return, prayer, and giving offer us a pathway into the New Year.   My challenge to you these High Holy Days, is to not only consider my interpretations, but to find your own.  For each of us possesses the power and the birthright to make these 3 spiritual tools our own.

For many of us, October 7th marked a return to intergenerational trauma, fueled by the words, this was the worst attack in the history of the Jewish People since the Holocaust.  In Jerusalem this summer, Yossi Klein HaLevi made an impassioned argument that this framing negates the fulfillment of the dream to be a free people in our Land.   Instead, he urged us to speak of October 7th as the worst attack in the history of the Jewish People since the establishment of the State of Israel.

The difference, he argued, is between a narrative of victimhood and sovereignty, between acknowledging as we do on Passover that we were slaves in Egypt but also that we were freed from Egypt.   He reminded me that this tragedy, as earth-shattering as it was and remains, does not eradicate the existence of the State of Israel and that though we feel vulnerable, maybe far more vulnerable than we thought we would ever be again, we are not as vulnerable as we were before 1948.  Part of teshuvah, of return, is returning not only to intergenerational trauma, but also to intergenerational dream-building and resilience.

Part of teshuvah is returning to the spiritual tool of hakarat hatov, of recognizing the good that exists even in the face of tragedy.  No one modeled this more powerfully than Rachel Goldberg-Polin in her eulogy for her son Hersch, one of the six hostages killed at the end of August.   Standing in a white T-shirt torn at the right shoulder from k’riyah, with the number 332 written on a piece of masking tape on her left shoulder, Rachel acknowledged that Hersh wasn’t perfect but said ‘he was the perfect son for me.’  And then in an act of spiritual fortitude I will never forget, she said in front of the thousands gathered in the cemetery in Jerusalem and tuning in online around the world:

And I am so grateful to God. And I want to do hakarat hatov and thank God right in front of all of you for giving me this magnificent present of my Hersh.  For 23 years, I was privileged to have the most stunning honor to be Hersh’s mama.  I’ll take it and say thank you.  I just wish it had been longer.

If in that very moment, when she was burying her son, who was killed just a day or two before being rescued by Israeli soldiers, if in that moment, Rachel could find space in her heart for gratitude, even amidst all the pain and grief, even more so, we should be able to do it too.   Part of teshuvah is returning to gratitude for everything that was good in our lives in this past year – big and small – and remembering to practice hakarat hatov, in the year ahead.  In this way, when we say Shanah Tovah, we mean that we will see, and acknowledge, and hold up the good in the year ahead.

Part of my own personal teshuvah is confronting why I haven’t responded more to the suffering of Palestinian mothers and children,, why I have so much trouble listening to their cry, why I can’t seem to make much space in my heart for their pain alongside my own. Is not each of them created in the image of God, each of their lives representing a whole world?  Somehow, even throughout her nightmare, Hersh’s mother Rachel was able to hold space in her heart for the suffering of the hostages and the suffering of civilians in Gaza.[2]

The second spiritual tool is tefillah or prayer.  One form of prayer is crying out, or tza’akah, and in the Babylonian Talmud, it is crying out, tza’akah rather than prayer, tefillah that overturns the harsh decree on Rosh Hashanah.[3]   There are numerous reminders in out tradition that some of the purest forms of prayer on the High Holy Days transcend words.  Hannah, desperate for a child of her own, prays from deep within her heart without making an audible sound[4].   Hagar, banished to the wilderness with her son Ishmael, bursts into tears when they run out of water.  God hears the cry and responds, affirming the penetrating power of tears as prayer and modeling for us compassion for the pain of the other[5].

And then the shofar itself echoes the promise that when we allow ourselves to venture below the superficial level of wholeness to examine the brokenness underneath that we can emerge on the other side more whole.  The single long blast of tekiyah is followed by the three shorter notes of t’ruah and then the wailing of the nine notes of sh’varim, which itself means brokenness.  But always the broken notes are followed again by the wholeness of t’kiyah.  In the words of Rachel Posner, a therapist and rabbinical student, “When there are no words, there is shofar, the voice of God:  I was whole, I became broken, I will become whole again.  One hundred times: Whole. broken. whole.”[6]   And that interplay between sadness and joy, between remorse and hope, can be heard throughout our prayers on the High Holidays.  In Judaism, sadness and joy can exist side-by-side, in our heart of many rooms, just as they did on the day of my daughter’s Bat Mitzvah, one week after the six hostages were killed by Hamas.

Let us turn now to the third spiritual mechanism offered to mitigate the severity of the decree – tzedakah.  There are of course many worthy causes to support at a time like this and the funds from our Sunday morning minyan tzedakah collection are being donated to support the emergency war campaign of the Masorti Movement, the branch of the Conservative Movement, in Israel.   In a way that’s uncharacteristic for me, I am now going to pitch participation of every member of the Shomrei community in one specific tzedakah effort.

I am asking each and every one of us who is eligible to contribute $5 to register to vote in the upcoming World Zionist Congress elections.  The World Zionist Congress, established by Theodore Herzl in 1897, to give voice to Jews from around the world still meets to this very day.  The World Zionist Congress allocates $10 billion dollars annually on behalf of the Jewish people and if we want those funds to be distributed according to our values, we need to vote!   Despite there being nearly one million self-identified Conservative Jews in the United States, our party, MERCAZ USA only received 15,000 votes in the last election.

You can vote for any party, but by not voting at all, we let religious and political extremists have disproportionate control of the largest Jewish non-profit in the world.   There is a national campaign happening this year at Conservative synagogues throughout North America and Shomrei is participating.   The elections won’t take place until the spring, but there are flyers in the gallery that explain how you can pre-register now.  This is one way not only to allocate $10 billion dollars in tzedakah funds, but also to reclaim Zionism according to your values.

The Kotzer Rebbe, a Hasidic master from the 18th century, teaches ein shlaem k’lev shavur, there is nothing as whole as a broken heart.  It doesn’t always feel that way, in the midst of heartbreak, but there is a deep truth to this teaching.  Because we know that there is no love without loss, that connection and vulnerability carry risk and that eventually, the people we love will leave us and die.   We are more whole, the Kotzker Rebbe teaches, because of the love and compassion and connection that sometimes leaves us heartbroken.  And there’s another meaning.  The Kotzker believed that in the places where our hearts have broken, there are cracks and these fault-lines are openings that can let the light in.   In this sense, a broken heart, when self-examined, can lead to growth and healing, becoming more whole through the process.  And yet there are times when we also need to protect ourselves, to exercise self-compassion, or to take a break from taking in all the heartbreak of the world.  That too is ok.  The challenge is to never close our hearts off completely, to always leave them open enough to let love in.

But maybe, maybe that’s what these High Holy Days are all about.  Through teshuvah, through returning to resilience and recognizing the good, through tefillah, through crying out and making space for sadness and joy to coexist, and through tzedakah, through taking actions to help others and make our voices heard, maybe just maybe our broken hearts will break open.   And when our hearts break open, as Parker Palmer says, we let in “the largeness of life”, and a “greater capacity to hold both one’s own and the world’s pain and joy.”[7]  May 5785 be a year of healing and compassion, a year of connection and love, and a year where this war in Gaza and Lebanon finally comes to an end and the hostages are returned home.

 

[1] Rabbi Myriam Klotz, ‘Wresting Blessing: A Pastoral Respons to Suffering’, Jewish Pastoral Care.

[2] https://time.com/6968288/rachel-goldberg-polin-interview-israel-hostages

[3] Babylonia Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 16b.

[4] I Samuel 1:12.

[5] Genesis 21: 16-17.

[6] Posner, Rachel, ‘Kol Shofar’, AJR High Holiday Supplement After October 7, p. 54.

[7] Parker Palmer, Deepening the American Dream: Reflections on the Inner Life and Spirit of Democracy, p. 232

 

 

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