Rosh Hashanah 5777 - Day 1
“The Day the World Changed”
Rabbi Julie Pelc Adler
15 years ago, rabbis everywhere scrambled to re-write their High
Holiday sermons after September 11 happened. In 2001, September 11
occurred just one week before the first day of Rosh Hashanah. So by
September 18th, 2001, the
beginning of the Jewish New Year, our headlines announced the possibility of
terrorism by mail (the Anthrax scare). The panic that ensued caused
Congress to be closed, and the antibiotic used to treat Anthrax disappeared
quickly as individuals - and government offices - stockpiled it. The FBI
conducted one of the most intensive and extensive criminal investigations to
locate and persecute whomever was responsible for the Anthrax mailing.
September 11th, 2001 became known as “The Day the World Changed”. At the
time, I think it meant that we no longer could imagine a world where we could
take our physical safety for granted just because we lived relatively
comfortable lives as citizens of a country known as the home of the Free and
the Brave.
We would no longer imagine that terrorism was something that
happened to other people, in other countries, away from us, our
workplaces, our schools, our homes, our places of worship.
In 2001, police security became ubiquitous at synagogues on the
High Holidays. Congregants worried anew that it was not safe for Jews to
collect in large numbers in any one location. The High Holidays
themselves became a time of terror amidst our people and our community.
There were televised readings of the names of the victims of the
terror attacks, front page newspaper coverage telling the stories of each of
the 2,996 people who died, stories of heroism and decimation at Ground Zero, a
unique kind of humanitarianism in New York City in particular, but in pockets
throughout the world, too, as we joined one another in a sense of camaraderie
and community.
We struggled to find meaning in our collective suffering - in our
fear, in our pain - we reached out to neighbors and strangers with kindness and
compassion.
The death toll may have been fewer than 3,000, but each of us, all
of us, were irrevocably affected by the events of 9/11. The Day the
World Changed. But did the world, in fact, change?
Terrorism has existed here in our country and abroad for much
longer than 15 years. International terrorism has long been in
acute crisis mode and continues to this day to be so. But why is not this
day - or every day when terrorism reigns at home and elsewhere - a Day the World
Changed?
Have we become numb to the suffering that exists all around us?
Maybe it’s just more information to process than any of us can take?
How do we go on having hope and faith in a world so torn by violence and
pain?
Has the world changed? Or have we?
We can go on YouTube and watch any number of violent acts
occurring live - with our mobile devices we can record and publish police
shootings, ISIS mass-executions, acts of terror committed against marathon
runners, the San Bernardino Health Department, elementary school, high school,
and college students, people dancing at a gay bar, people going to the movies,
people walking down the street or driving on the highway, people sitting at a
cafe, eating pizza, sleeping in their beds.
We say we stand with Paris, Tel Aviv, Orlando, Syria, Jerusalem.
We say we support international journalists reporting abroad, government
officials doing their jobs, women and children, people of color just going
about their daily lives. We believe that All Lives Matter.
But how do we go about integrating our ideals of a world at peace
- a world not torn by violence and pain - with our world, the world we live in
today?
When does it all become too much? When do we have to turn
off the news, avoid reading headlines, delete certain people and political
ideologies from our Facebook newsfeeds?
Where can we turn for comfort, for hope, for faith?
We come here, to our community of faith; to our friends and
families, to the traditions of our parents and grandparents. To the words
uttered for generations and generations of our ancestors, each of whom lived in
an age of violence and pain before ours.
We pray to Avinu Malkeinu, our God, and we ask for justice.
We beg for mercy. We cry out for compassion. We start here. We
start every year right here, in our machzor, our High Holiday
prayerbook, because the themes of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur remind us, year
after year, that we have the opportunity to renew our dedication to healing, to
helping, to hoping.
We pray to God for the strength to go on living for another year;
we pray for the people we love and those we will never know. We pray for
neighbors and strangers, people in far away lands and closer to home than we
know, with skin colors and religions different from our own. And we pray
for those we sit beside and among. We pray for ourselves.
But what does it mean to pray? In 21st century North America, many of us don’t know
why or how religion can possibly help us, how it can possibly help our
children, our community, our world.
What if we don’t believe in God? What if we don’t know what
it means to believe in God? Why are we even here today? What role
might a synagogue (or a rabbi, for that matter) play in a modern world?
Isn’t all of that stuff just ancient history?
Well, yes. And that’s the point. It’s ancient history
that’s still terribly relevant today. And it’s been relevant in every age
and in every generation. These are the words that link us across time and
space - to all who came before and all who will come after us - each struggling
to understand and integrate our ideals of peace with the violence and pain we
see all around us. These are the words that generations of individuals
and communities have turned to when it seemed as if there was nowhere to turn.
We look inward, we look to our sources of wisdom, we look to our
leaders, we look to one another for guidance, friendship, and support as we
navigate this business of being human in an imperfect world.
And that’s ultimately why we come to Rosh Hashanah services and we
open up this ancient book with unfamiliar words and ideas, in a language we
don’t really know.
Because today the world isn’t that different than the worlds that
preceded it. Our world frightens us, makes us feel alone and disempowered
and afraid, too. There is so much we don’t know and so many things we
wish we could change. We want the world to be better for our children and
grandchildren - for the generations that come after ours.
We start by opening our lips, and slowly, slowly the music, the
rhythm of the liturgy, the words and ideas themselves, and the silence between
the words begin to crack open our hearts: we allow ourselves to open to the
harsh realities we so often must shut out in order to stay sane in this insane
world.
The synagogue is a place where we can be safe to voice our fears,
our hopes, our dreams, our pain. The words of the liturgy may be in a
language we hardly know, but it’s designed to give words to feelings we hold
inside for which we don’t have words.
Let’s look at just one example from one of the central prayers of
the High Holidays: U’netaneh Tokef.
The great shofar sounds, and a still small voice is heard.
Whose is this still small voice? Is it ours? Is it the
voice of our unconscious mind? Is it the quiet whispering inside our
hearts that so often guides us in the right direction in our lives but we so
rarely listen or allow it to be heard aloud? Today is the day to listen
to that voice, to give it permission to lead you. It may be quiet, but
it’s urgent. It’s essential to helping to direct you and your life to the
path you’re meant to be on.
What is your still small voice inside saying to you?
Listen to it now. Is it urging you to make a change in your
life? What does that small voice inside say to you just beneath your
conscious awareness?
Today let the great shofar sound and let that cry into the silence
release your still small voice. Let the cry of the shofar give your heart
permission to say what it needs, what it wants in this life. Let the
blast of the shofar announce your truth.
All who enter the world You cause to pass before You, one by one,
like a flock of sheep. As a shepherd musters his sheep and causes them to pass
beneath his staff, so You pass and record, count and visit, every living soul,
appointing the measure of every creature’s life and decreeing its destiny.
We so often feel like sheep - but without a shepherd, without a
leader to guide us toward safety and sustenance. And so we evoke this image
on the High Holidays and we assign God the role of shepherd: seeing us, knowing
us, remembering us.
Let this day, the first day of the Jewish New Year, be the first
day of your renewed life - your life rededicated to those people, places, and
passions that mean the most to you. Let this be the day that begins a new
year for you. Let it be an invitation for you to go out and become
your best self.
Howard Thurman, an influential African-American author,
philosopher, theologian, educator, and civil rights leader, was known for
saying,
“Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask
yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what
the world needs is people who have come alive.”
He’s right. And though it may be naive to
think that each of us becoming our best selves can change the world into a kind
of utopia, it’s also true that the stories of kindness and generosity that
poured forth after 9/11 are the balm that soothes the wounds in our hearts and
spirits after a tragedy.
We cling to these stories - the wounded healers
reaching out to one another in love and compassion - reminding us that there is
yet goodness in the world. And there is hope. Becoming our best
selves is the healing salve we can offer the world when life seems unfair, scary,
random, chaotic, violent.
We open our arms and our hearts to one another.
And we make every day The Day our World Changed.
My prayer is that we help the world each day to
be changed for the better.
Amen.
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