Each year I choose a theme for the Days of Awe at CBI. Some months ago I chose the theme of gevurah, which means strength, power, heroism, courage, boundaries, determination. People were getting vaccinated. The weather was warming up and we were about to begin offering safe outdoor / hybrid services at CBI. I could already imagine writing my high holiday sermons this year about the strength it took for us to stay apart last year to keep each other safe, and the heroism of medical professionals in every COVID ICU around the world, and how our determination had brought us safely through this pandemic. 

“Man plans, and God laughs,” the saying goes. Though this year it feels more apt to me to say “humanity plans, and God weeps.” I imagine God has been weeping a lot over the last fifteen months. Whatever we hoped for a year ago, I think it’s safe to say that we haven’t made it there yet, and the path from here to there feels fraught and uncertain. 

And our theme for the year couldn’t be more apt. Wow do we need gevurah this year. 

We need strength: the strength to keep going when the path ahead feels uncertain, when we don’t know the right thing to do, when we don’t know how to keep each other safe. We need the strength to help each other find hope, especially when the world feels dark. We need the strength to discern what’s right, and which voices we should be heeding. We need the strength to forgive ourselves and each other, especially in these difficult pandemic times — especially because we’ve moved from “this difficult pandemic year” to something longer and of more uncertain duration. We need the strength to see the world differently than we have before, so that we can live into that vision, making the world better than it was before. (Stay tuned; that’s a sneak preview of sermons to come!)  

Gevurah helps us be courageous: it helps us strengthen our hearts and keep our resolve firm even when we’re frustrated that this pandemic is becoming endemic.

Gevurah helps us have good boundaries. Gevurah reminds us that we never know what difficulty another person is facing, so our sacred task is always ladun l’chaf z’chut, to give one another the benefit of the doubt and see one another through generous eyes — even as we strive to hold ourselves and each other to the highest ethical standards. 

Gevurah gives us strength to speak up for what’s ethical and just, and the courage to protect the most vulnerable among us. Gevurah helps us be giborim, heroes, for and with each other as we lift each other up and keep each other safe. 

And gevurah is a necessary part of teshuvah: repentance, return, re-alignment, turning ourselves around to live out our best and highest purpose in the year now beginning. 

May the spiritual journey of this High Holiday season open our hearts, deepen our resolve, and give us the gevurah we need to make 5782 a year of holiness and strength, a year of community and connectedness, a year of justice and joy. 

This is the very brief d’varling that Rabbi Rachel offered at our erev Rosh Hashanah Zoom seder. (Cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi) Stay tuned for actual sermons in days to come.

Congregation Beth Israel North Adams

Dear Congregation Beth Israel members and friends,

It scarcely seems possible, but the Days of Awe are right around the corner. On August 28 we’ll officially enter into the high holiday season with Selichot, our annual service of forgiveness prayers to stir the soul, high holiday melodies to open the heart, and an opportunity to write down some of the places where we’ve missed the mark in the last year — a first step toward letting them go and committing to change. That service will be offered both onsite and online; if you’re joining us onsite, please wear a mask (we’ll be in the building, socially distanced, with doors and windows open.)

Preparing for this year’s Days of Awe has been unlike any other year — even last year. Last year, it was clear that the correct course of action was to shelter-in-place and make our homes holy. This year has been a rollercoaster of ups and downs, from the cresting of hope when vaccinations became available to the emotional plummet when the Delta variant reached our community. The CBI Board and I spent all summer planning for three possibilities simultaneously; consulting with the URJ and with other congregations both locally and regionally; discussing risks with medical professionals; and always circling back to to our sacred path of mitzvot and to the Jewish values that guide us. I believe that our current plan will allow us both to protect the vulnerable and to give those who wish to be onsite an opportunity to do so… and I’m mindful that if the situation worsens in the coming weeks, we may need to pivot again. 

Last year when the Days of Awe were over, you told us that our Zoom services helped you feel connected; that our time together on Zoom felt real; that you appreciated the interweaving of ancient words and modern technology; that you were moved by the opportunity to see each other on Zoom; that you felt like you were part of a community even though we weren’t all in the same room. I hope and pray that this year will be equally uplifting. I’m excited to share some new things with you — including new music to carry us through the season, hopefully some piano accompaniment on Yom Kippur morning thanks to one of our new members, and a brand-new Jonah play for Yom Kippur afternoon. And I’m also looking forward to continuing our longstanding traditions, the words and melodies and modes of prayer that have sustained us for generations.

Hopefully if you wish to attend a service onsite during the holidays, you’ve already filled out our online registration form and indicated which service you would most want to attend onsite. That registration form will close at the end of the day on August 25 so that we can turn to figuring out how to (hopefully) enable each member who wishes to be onsite to attend one of their top-ranked services onsite. Of course, all of our offerings will be open to you online throughout the season. 

We’re also preparing now for the coming Hebrew school year, which is slated to be onsite and masked just like local schools. We’re planning a series of monthly Family Programs, from an apple orchard outing in September to midwinter Saturday afternoon pajama parties with storytime and havdalah. If there is interest, we can reconvene our monthly Shabbat Zoom dinners to stay connected over the winter. And of course we will continue to offer Shabbat services and festival observances all year long, as always.

Your donations make all of this possible. We can’t operate on revenue from dues alone; that revenue does not fully support the work of our synagogue. Your contributions make up the difference and allow us to do all of the things we do, including offering memberships to those who cannot afford to pay full dues. In Torah we read that each Israelite gave a half-shekel to support the spiritual life of the community. We also read that many Israelites gave a t’rumah offering, a freewill offering from the heart over and above the half-shekel that everyone was obligated to provide. Regardless of amount, supporting spiritual community is a Jewish obligation. Giving is a religious act, and our sages teach that when we give tzedakah, we prime the pump of blessing to flow into the world.

Please support CBI.

Thank you.

Thank you for being a part of our synagogue community. Thank you for gathering with us, learning with us, and praying with us. (Please encourage farflung friends and family to join our email list so that they can join us for Zoom Days of Awe!) And thank you for your support of the synagogue of northern Berkshire county. Please give as you are able. We need your support especially in these difficult pandemic times. The only donation that’s too small is none at all.

Looking forward to being with you soon during the Days of Awe. May the rest of this month of Elul open our hearts and souls to transformation, and may the spiritual updraft of the holidays lift us ever higher.

Blessings to all —

Rabbi Rachel 

Dear Congregation Beth Israel Members and Friends,

The CBI Board and Rabbi just met to discuss current COVID rates in our constituent towns and across the county, and to re-evaluate our high holiday plan in light of current realities. As of now, our plan for the Days of Awe is as follows: 

  1. We will be holding hybrid / multi-access services, limiting capacity to ~45 so that pods can be 6 feet apart. Masks are required, with no exceptions. As a reminder, our erev Rosh Hashanah offering will be a Rosh Hashanah seder, held online only; here’s a list of items to have on hand for that digital community experience.
  2. All onsite participants over the age of 12 must be vaccinated. Parents who want to bring unvaccinated children (under the age of 12) with them into the service may do so, as long as the children remain masked and socially distanced, and as long as they are pre-registered for a seat or can sit on a parent’s lap. We will not require proof of vaccination; we trust our members to be truthful.  We will check people off the registration list at the door so that we can facilitate contract tracing in the event of a COVID diagnosis. 
  3. Childrens’ services will be held outdoors at 10am on Rosh Hashanah morning 1 and on Yom Kippur morning, with masks and social distancing. Please register with the CBI Office if you are bringing child/ren to the childrens’ service so we know how many kids to expect. (If there is mist or light rain, bring an umbrella or rain jacket to childrens’ services! If the weather is truly inclement, we will not be able to hold childrens’ services — in that case we will post on the CBI Facebook that morning to let everyone know.) 
  4. All are welcome to join us online in the synagogue Zoom room. We will offer a robust Zoom option so that those participating online can fully take part in our high holiday experience. This allows us to welcome those who are immunocompromised, those who are at greater medical risk, and those who are homebound to participate in our Days of Awe — as well as those who aren’t on the onsite list for any given service. 

Our guiding Jewish values in this decision are pikuach nefesh (saving life) and kol Yisrael arevim zah bazeh (all of us are responsible for each other; we are responsible for our community together.) Our job, as Rabbi and Board, is to serve this community and to keep this community safe. This is our best sense of how to live up to those values.

Now that we have evaluated recent local COVID levels and reached this plan, we will work on figuring out who can come to each service onsite, based on your responses to our registration form (sent in July and in every weekly announcements email since.) If you have not yet responded, please do so by August 25. Registering and ranking your preferred services is the only way to get on the registration list for onsite services. We may not be able to give everyone their first choice. We will do our best. We are compiling registration lists now for each service, and we will be in touch to share those lists so you know which service(s), if any, you will be attending onsite.

Some have asked why we’re not renting a tent. When we explored that option early in the summer, we learned that in order to proceed with a tent, we would need to reserve and pay for one immediately. The expense would be large, and we would still be limited in space / configuration because of the layout of our available land. At that time, the Delta variant had not reached us. Based on these factors, and based on the results from our survey of the membership about what people wanted, we made the decision then to forego the tent. 

This is our current plan, crafted with our deepest hopes for a sweet and meaningful holiday season. And, as we’ve learned in the past year, we need to be prepared to pivot if the situation shifts. Please continue to keep an eye out for communications from CBI. If the COVID situation worsens, we will move to offering all-digital services as we did last year.  

Wishing you blessings as we approach the Days of Awe,

The CBI Board of Directors 

(Chris Kelly, President; Natalie Matus, Vice-President; Michael Smith, Treasurer;  Paulette Wein, Clerk; Joe Apkin, David Lane, Darlene Radin, and Ben Rudin) 

and Rabbi Rachel Barenblat

Dear Congregation Beth iIsrael members and friends,

The moon of Elul is waxing. In a short two and a half weeks we’ll celebrate Rosh Hashanah. The Days of Awe are coming soon!

Roadmap of the season — our spiritual runway to transformation.

Coming up

Join us for Selichot at 8pm on August 28 — the service that launches the high holiday season with music, contemplation, and an opportunity to write down the places where we missed the mark in the old year so that we can begin to let them go and prepare to change. (Onsite and online.)

Join us for our annual cemetery service at 2pm on August 29 at the CBI cemetery. (Onsite only.)

And join us for an erev Rosh Hashanah seder at 7pm on September 6 as we enter the new year together. (Online only.) Our full schedule of high holiday offerings is here.

Preparing for Rosh Hashanah

Our Erev Rosh Hashanah celebration this year will once again be a Rosh Hashanah seder interwoven with the evening service, featuring symbolic foods and drinks to cue up the inner journey of entering the new year. Many of you told me that last year’s Rosh Hashanah seder was a meaningful way to launch the new year together from our dining tables. I’m looking forward to being with you on Zoom for that experience this year.

If you are joining us on Zoom on Rosh Hashanah eve (7pm on Monday, September 6), these are the ideal items to have on hand:

  • candles,
  • wine or grape juice,
  • a round challah or cracker,
  • some apple slices and honey,
  • something bitter or spicy (wasabi paste, an onion slice, a spoonful of vinegar),
  • and dates or anything sweet (any dried fruit would work well, or in a pinch, even just a little bit of sugar.)

And if there are items on this list that you can’t find or don’t have, don’t worry about it: we will make it work with whatever we’ve got!

And one final note

If you are waiting to hear back from us about which service/s you may attend onsite, please bear with us.

The CBI Board is meeting tonight to look at local COVID data and information from other congregations, and will make a final determination about our plans. Once we have that information, we’ll work on figuring out how each service will unfold, and we’ll be in touch as soon as we can. Thanks for your patience as we navigate shifting pandemic realities and public health guidance.

Blessings to all for a meaningful journey through Elul —

Rabbi Rachel

The runway. Right now we’re in the Seven Weeks of Consolation.

Dear Congregation Beth Israel members and friends,

This past weekend we observed Tisha b’Av, the spiritual low point of our year. Deep thanks go to Jen Burt and family for setting up the “ruined” sanctuary in which we sang Lamentations and opened our hearts to grief — to Rabbi David Markus and the TBE community for joining with us — to everyone who participated onsite and online, for willingness to be real together — and to all of our onsite participants for so quickly and sweetly helping us restore our prayer space to its usual shape and form as part of our ritual of repair.

Tisha b’Av is an experience of descent for the sake of ascent. We open ourselves to grief (both historical and present-day) in order to feel the depths — not for the sake of wallowing, but because this tradition encapsulates a deep spiritual truth. Only when we allow ourselves to feel grief can we also open ourselves to healing, to hope, and to joy. Tisha b’Av is the springboard that launches us on our journey to the Days of Awe. Now we journey through the Seven Weeks of Consolation as we prepare ourselves for the spiritual work of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

The High Holidays offer us a journey of heart and soul. Stirred by the ancient melodies of that holy season, roused by the call of the shofar and by Torah’s timeless questions, we will ask ourselves: who have we been, and who do we want to become? What in our lives is “working,” and what needs repair? Which of our patterns serve us well, and which need to change? What work do we need to do in our relationships with each other, with our communities, with our traditions, with our Source, in order to be whole enough to heal our broken world?

In seven short weeks we’ll gather together, both onsite and online, for the Days of Awe 5782. (If you haven’t yet filled out our survey to indicate which services you want to attend onsite, please do so — priority will be given to CBI members. If you can’t find the survey, contact the office and Ollie can re-send it to you.) Between now and then, here are two weekly opportunities for learning and reflection:

Lifting Higher: Weekly Teshuvah Practice for the High Holy Days  

Sundays 8:00-8:30 pm (with after-schmooze time) July 18 – August 29

Join Rabbi David Markus and Dr. Shari Berkowitz for a weekly kabbalistic (mystical) journey up the Tree of Life for seven weeks leading to Rosh Hashanah. Each week will be themed to the sefirot (just like the seven weeks of counting Omer, except in reverse), with inner practices to support preparation for the High Holy Days. Free to all. No experience necessary. 

RSVP by email to [email protected].

And:

Reverse Omer Group With Jen Burt

Join Jen Burt as we begin in Malchut (Presence) and work our way back to Chesed (Lovingkindness) while studying the haftarot of consolation and moving from summer into fall and the start of high holidays. The group will meet over Zoom for 7 consecutive Tuesdays from 5pm to 6pm beginning July 20. During this time, Jen would like to encourage you to consider the reconnection and social, political and business “re-opening” we are experiencing with their positive and negative impacts as this overlaps with our spiritual season change.

If you are interested in attending or would like more information about this group, please email Jen at [email protected].

May our journey toward the new year open our hearts to new possibilities and strengthen our readiness to work toward a better world. I can’t wait to ring in 5782 with all of you.

With blessings to all,

Rabbi Rachel

Onsite: 45 people maximum (pre-register via High Holiday Registration google form by 8/25), masked. Please note that first priority for onsite seats will be given to CBI members.

Online: in the CBI Zoom room, open to all of our members and friends.

The Runway

Tisha b’Av, Sat. July 17, 8:30pm, onsite & online

Selichot (“Forgiveness“) service, Sat. Aug. 28, 8-9pm, onsite & online

Cemetery Service , Walker Street, Sun. Aug. 29, 2-2:30pm, onsite only

Rosh Hashanah

Rosh Hashanah First Evening Service and Seder, Mon. September 6, 7pm, online only

Rosh Hashanah First Day morning service, Tues. September 7, 10am, onsite & online

Children’s service, 10am, outdoors, onsite only (cancelled in event of heavy rain)

Tashlich (casting bread upon the waters) to follow at Tourists suspension bridge

Contemplative Second Day morning service, Weds.Sept 8, 10am, onsite & online

Yom Kippur

Kol Nidre Weds. September 15, 6:30pm, onsite & online

Music Before Kol Nidre – starting at 6pm. Before Kol Nidre, our new member R. will play contemplative / classical music on the synagogue piano for half an hour. Please join us on Zoom for music streamed from the sanctuary to open the heart before we enter into Yom Kippur.

Yom Kippur Morning service, Thursday September 16, 10am, onsite & online

Children’s service, 10am, outdoors, onsite only (cancelled in event of heavy rain)

Yizkor /Memorial Service will take place at the end of the morning service

 (all afternoon, all are welcome to enjoy our labyrinth and pollinator garden)

Yom Kippur Mincha and Avodah service, 4:30-6pm, onsite & online

Yom Kippur Ne’ilah service, 6:30-7:30pm (sundown: 7pm), onsite & online

Sukkot

Shabbat Sukkot Celebration in the Sukkah, Fri. Sept 24, 5:30pm, onsite & online

Please RSVP by Yom Kippur. 

Shemini Atzeret services, with Yizkor, Tues. Sept. 28, 10am, online only

 

cbiweb.org, www.facebook.com/CBINorthAdams, 413-663-5830, [email protected]

Congregation Beth Israel: 53 Lois Street, North Adams MA 01247

Dear Congregation Beth Israel members and friends,

Please take a few moments to read and respond to this survey about the High Holidays this year. We ask that you please respond by 5pm on Sunday so that we can move forward knowing what would work best for you.

Blessings to all,

Rabbi Rachel and the CBI Board

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpWpqQBiaWI]

I gave my sermon “live” on Zoom in realtime, and also pre-recorded it to go live with this blog post around the time I was offering it. If you prefer to watch the sermon, it’s above (and here on YouTube.) If you prefer to read it, the text appears below.

 

A few weeks ago, a congregant said to me: you know, it’s weird. Sometimes, especially reading Facebook, it feels like life is normal. We’re seeing everybody’s first day of school pictures, even if school is “from home” this fall. There are pictures of new kids or grandkids. Life seems to be continuing. And then other times I wake up and I’m immediately swamped by fear about the future of democracy, despair about the pandemic, and anxiety about totalitarianism, and nothing feels normal anymore at all.

I was really struck by that description of the disjunction between first-day-of-school pictures and creeping anxiety about what our world might be becoming.

I think we’ve all been living in that disjunction. It’s a normal day — and here are the latest case numbers in the global pandemic. It’s a normal day — and the news headlines are so outrageous that I feel numb. It’s a normal day — and nothing feels normal at all… As Rafia Zakaria wrote recently, “We live constantly with the weight of these juxtapositions between the banal and the utterly devastating.”

In pastoral conversations over the last six months, I’ve heard a lot of anxiety. About illness and covid-19 and our children and everything that’s happening in our world. About the coming election, and fears of authoritarianism, and the future of democracy, and a sense that everything could be about to unravel right before our eyes, and about whether this nation is a safe place to be Jewish, and whether anywhere in the world is safe. Colleagues who are therapists tell me they’re hearing all of these anxieties, too.

Several of you have asked me: if things really are that bad, then what can we do?

Here’s my answer: if things are really that bad, then we take care of each other. We protect the most vulnerable among us. We stand up for those who are more at-risk than we are. And we cultivate hope for a better world, and do what we can to get closer to that ideal in our lifetime.

And what if things aren’t that bad? If our democracy is actually pretty robust, and there isn’t going to be a civil war, and we’re not staring down the barrel of totalitarianism, and modern medicine finds an excellent vaccine for covid-19 and good government policies make it available to everyone, and together we can pursue the dream of a more perfect union with liberty and justice for all?

My answers don’t actually change.

We still need to take care of each other. And protect the most vulnerable among us. And stand up for those who are more at-risk than we are. And cultivate hope, and do what we can to build a better world. That’s our responsibility as Jews and as human beings, in the worst of times and in the best of times.

Over the last year, several friends and I have been studying the writings of the rabbi of the Warsaw Ghetto, R’ Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, sometimes known as the Piazeczyner.

The Piazeczyner was writing under incredibly difficult circumstances. The community he served was confined to the ghetto and their rights were being continually diminished. (Eventually, of course, they would be rounded up and taken to the camps… though he didn’t know that when he was writing these weekly commentaries.) Although he wrote these divrei Torah some eighty years ago, I have found his words to be deeply relevant to the spiritual needs of this moment.

The Piazeczyner writes that when times are tough, we feel “exiled” or distant from God, and those times are precisely when we feel the most powerful longing for God. (Aish Kodesh on Shabbat Ha-Gadol, 1941.) I think we can understand this as: when times are tough we despair, and we feel frightened about the world around us, and we yearn for safety and hope.

And, he says, when we “accept the yoke of the mitzvot” — when we accept our obligations to each other and to God — we grow in holiness. And when we do, it’s as though God’s own self becomes greater and more active in the world, because in our spiritual growth we become greater and more active in the world.

He could have said, these are terrible times. The world is broken, and we are not safe, and God has abandoned us. Instead, he said: the world is broken, that very brokenness arouses our yearning for a better world, and our yearning is the first step toward making it real. He said, remember the Exodus from Egypt. Remember the story of walking into the waters of the sea. Only when the waters reached our nostrils did the seas part.

The story of crossing the sea reminds us that we have to keep going “day and night.” We have to keep trying, and doing mitzvot, and building a better world. Even in times of pain and fear. Even — he wrote this in 1940 — when we’re confined to home and “commerce is brought to a standstill and businesses are closed, God forbid.” (Aish Kodesh on Beshalach, 1940.)

Torah tells us that when our spiritual ancestors wandered in the wilderness, a pillar of cloud went before us by day and a pillar of fire by night. The Piazeczyner teaches that this isn’t just a literal teaching, but also a spiritual one. The fire that we need to light our way forward is here for us, if only we will open our eyes. We need to hold on to our Source of strength and hope, and that will carry us through. In the words of Psalm 27, which we read each year at this season, “Keep hope in the One. Be strong and open your heart wide, and keep hoping in the One!”

I know that for some of us the word “God” is … complicated. Maybe we don’t believe in a God Who will step in and save us. Early in the pandemic, my son overheard me studying the Piazeczyner late one night with some colleagues. We were reading a commentary on how when the Israelites cried out in the hardships of slavery, God heard our cries and saved us. And my kid came into my study and said, “Mom, if we’re still the children of Israel, why isn’t God saving us from covid-19? Are we just not crying out enough?”

So we talked about whether God reaches into the world and changes things for us, or whether God acts in the world through our actions, or whether we find God — as Mister Rogers famously taught — “in the helpers,” in the doctors and nurses and scientists working to help people with covid-19. And I remember thinking: this may be the moment when his childhood theology falls away.

Even so, the psalmist’s instruction to be strong, open our hearts, and keep hoping is good spiritual medicine. And so is the Piazeczyner’s reminder that we have the inner resources to get through even the most difficult of times — and that the “yoke of the mitzvot” makes us responsible for and to one another. The mitzvot ask us to “be the helpers.”

As my friend and study partner Rabbi David Markus teaches, love is an action, not just a feeling. This is why the mitzvot commit us to taking care of each other: because love reaches its fullest potential when we not only feel, but also act.

Memory too is an action. The traditional silent Yizkor memorial prayer includes an explicit invitation to act. It says that we will give tzedakah in the memory of those who have died: tzedakah, not “charity” but a kind of giving that is rooted in tzedek, justice.  (The version of the prayer we will say this morning pledges to “live justly and lovingly” in their memory.) That’s the Jewish way to remember: giving, and justice, and action.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg z”l died on the cusp of Rosh Hashanah. During these Ten Days of Teshuvah many of you have shared with me your grief at her passing, and your heightened fear of rights being eroded now that she’s gone. I feel those things too.

Justice Ginsburg will be remembered for standing up for the rights of women, from the right to have a credit card in my own name to the right to control my own body. She’ll be remembered for dissenting against stripping federal protections from voters of color. She’ll be remembered for asserting the full humanity of people with disabilities. What kind of giving, justice, and action might we undertake in her memory?

In the days since her death, I keep returning to these words that she offered to law students:

If you are going to be a lawyer and just practice your profession, you have a skill—very much like a plumber. But if you want to be a true professional, you will do something outside yourself, something to repair tears in your community, something that makes life a little better for people less fortunate than you.

That’s our Jewish obligation and our human calling: to do something that makes life better for people less fortunate than we. That obligation feels more important than ever before.

So many of the prayers we recite today are written in the plural: not “I,” but “we.” Torah also frames our obligations to each other in the plural. No matter what comes, we have responsibilities to each other.

Whether or not the world is spiraling out of control, our work of repairing the world, caring for the vulnerable, and pursuing justice doesn’t change. And maybe in fulfilling our obligations to each other, we can become for each other the pillar of fire that the Piaceczyner evoked: a beacon shining in the darkness, lighting each others’ path.

 

This is Rabbi Rachel’s Yom Kippur morning sermon (cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi.)

 

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwH0sNVtr9s]I gave my sermon “live” on Zoom in realtime, and also pre-recorded it to go live with this blog post around the time I was offering it. If you prefer to watch the sermon, it’s above (and here on YouTube.) If you prefer to read it, the text appears below.

 

 

The first things I saw on the tarmac at José Martí international airport were palm trees and military vehicles. That’s when my friend Rabbi Sunny, the head of Cuba America Jewish Mission, reminded us not to photograph soldiers — in fact, not to photograph anything at all until we had cleared the airport, just to be on the safe side. Right, I thought. I’m in a Communist country. Note to self, don’t photograph the army.

Last November, with Temple Beth-El of City Island in the Bronx and with Cuba American Jewish Mission, some CBI members and I spent ten days traveling around Jewish Cuba, from Havana to small cities and towns across the countryside.

Everywhere we went, we brought bags of medical supplies: everything from aspirin, vitamins, and prescription medications to anti-fungal cream and tubes of toothpaste. The synagogues there run pharmacies, and they make these pharmacy supplies available to anyone in need, whether or not they are Jewish. When we arrived, there had not been a mission like ours in six months, and their pharmacy shelves were close to bare.

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Havana is incredibly beautiful. The sea crashes up against the wall on the Malecon, the main thoroughfare. One day we saw people clustered at that wall, throwing roses into the sea in remembrance of Camilo Cienfuegos, who died in a plane crash over the sea after the revolution. The sunlight was golden on stately buildings with sometimes cracking plaster and peeling paint. There was extraordinary music, everywhere. Young musicians there learn music on the state’s dime; they play in bands and on rooftops and in the streets. It’s facile to say that when one lives with hardship, the gifts of music and of spiritual life are more palpable. But I kept having that thought anyway.

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As we moved deeper into the countryside, we started to encounter people who would come up to us with a hand out. They weren’t asking for money. They were asking for soap or shampoo. Everyone in Cuba is guaranteed health care, which is pretty extraordinary. But once we left the city for the provinces, a lot of people didn’t have soap. “Rite Aid or Walmart is like a fantasy to us,” said one person who had traveled abroad and had seen American big-box stores and pharmacies.

I’ve thought of that often since the pandemic began. And when Stop and Shop in North Adams started running out of things, early-ish in the pandemic — you remember: for a while there, we couldn’t buy flour, or dried beans, or toilet paper — I thought of the mostly-empty shelves in the Cuban stores we visited.

In the spring when here in the US we faced simultaneous food shortages and produce rotting in the fields, I remembered stories of Cubans going hungry after the Soviet Union fell. They told us about eating grass to try to fill their bellies while citrus fruits rotted in the fields because there was no gasoline to transport them. And I thought of how our Cuban cousins must be doing now, as the combination of pandemic and trade embargo keeps their shelves even emptier, and keeps their Jewish cousins from abroad away, with our tzedakah and our care and our desperately-needed duffel bags of aspirin and soap.

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And yet when I think of the Cuban Jews we met last fall, what I remember is not what they didn’t have, but what they did: their warmth and their kindness, their connectedness and their pride. I remember the music, everywhere. I remember their beautiful synagogue sanctuaries: the Patronato in Havana, which seemed plucked right out of the 1960s just like the classic cars that serve as taxis, and the beautiful little painted synagogue in Santa Clara where we celebrated the coming-of-age of a Cuban bat mitzvah — rebuilt with tzedakah from the Cuba America Jewish Mission and travelers like us.

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Most of all, I remember their love. One day we visited Rebecca Langus in the provincial city of Cienfuegos. The entire Jewish community there is eighteen people. They meet for services in her living room, on white monobloc plastic chairs that otherwise sit stacked on her tiny mirpesset next to her laundry line. She teaches the Hebrew school, which is currently three children, using books donated by Jewish visitors from abroad, like us. She works tirelessly to keep her community alive. After her prepared remarks, the four rabbis on the trip chatted with her. We asked her how she does it, and what gives her hope.

“Everything I do, I do for love,” she said simply. That could not have been more clear: her love for her community, for our shared traditions, for Jewishness itself, shone from her like light.

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She told us that when they meet for Shabbat, they always have a minyan. I thought: there are only fifteen Jewish adults in this city of 150,000. Two-thirds of the Jews in town need to show up if anyone is going to say kaddish. And… they do. And if there is a fuel shortage, which often there is, they catch a ride on a donkey-pulled cart, or they walk. Because of love: for our traditions, for community, for each other.

Love brought the Jews of Cuba together to celebrate a bat mitzvah while we were there. Many walked miles, some for days, because new US sanctions had contributed to another fuel shortage. Our tour bus was able to secure fuel, but most locals weren’t. So they walked. Because it was worth it to them to be there for each other.

I felt that same extraordinary sense of community love on our final stop in Cuba, the Spanish colonial city of Camagüey. That community meets in a rented house, where they have a beautiful tiny sanctuary with a hand-painted ark, and a little social hall where we gathered to learn from them and to share songs together. There are 32 people in the Jewish community there. We sang “Am Yisrael chai” — the people of Israel yet lives! — which took on a new poignancy there, where for so long the state forbade the practice of any religion at all.

That visit to Camagüey was our last day of the trip, and after a meal with the community there, I listened as my friend and colleague Rabbi David — who is fluent in Spanish — asked a young man why he has chosen to stay in Cuba. His answer: sure, he could go anywhere. But the closeness of the Cuban family and community is precious. It is worth more than whatever money he could earn if he were to decide to leave.

Ten days does not make me an expert on the Jews of Cuba. (I suspect that ten years would be insufficient.) But our trip still resonates in me. The Jews I met in Cuba inspired me with how proud they are to be Cuban and to be Jewish. They inspired me in how they show up for each other. Even in a place where for so long it was illegal to practice any religion at all. They inspired me with their love for our traditions, their love for community, their love of country, their love for each other.

The Jews of Cuba live with profound hardship. That was true a year ago; it is even more true now. And yet… when the pandemic began to rage in the US, they reached out to me via Facebook to make sure that we were okay. Because their love and care flows so naturally, even toward we who have so much.

Tonight they too are hearing the words of Kol Nidre, words that release us from the vows we won’t be able to live up to. But I don’t want to be let off the hook for my promise to keep our connections alive across borders and differences.  Communist or capitalist, Cuban or American, rich or poor, we are part of one Jewish family.

Because of the pandemic, it will probably be a long time before we can gather together again in person in physical space. And… the pandemic also highlights how deeply interconnected we are, even when we’re apart. Covid-19 spread around the world because the whole world is interconnected: what happens there has an impact here. What happens to me has an impact on you. This is a deep spiritual truth. It’s also a practical one.

And covid-19 is also teaching us other forms of connectedness. Over these pandemic Days of Awe, we’ve davened with members of our community who live in other places… and with far-flung friends and family who maybe never felt connected with our little shul before. What if we keep all of these connections vibrant and alive in 5781? Imagine the strength and hope and courage we could share with each other through the pandemic winter that is coming. We can be there for each other as our Cuban cousins are there for each other — and we don’t have to walk miles to do it: our connectedness is as close as the click of a computer key.

For that matter, we can be there for our Cuban cousins, too. Rabbi Sunny tells me that right now it’s almost impossible to send tzedakah to Cuba. As of this week, a wire transfer sent in July via Panama and Israel has yet to materialize, and a package of much-needed medicines has been missing for sixty days. But we can support the Cuba America Jewish Mission so that when it becomes possible to directly bring help to Cuba again, there are tzedakah dollars to bring.

Talmud teaches that all of Israel is responsible for one another. Our Cuban Jewish cousins live that truth — not because it’s in Talmud, but just because of who and how they are. This Yom Kippur, may we find uplift in the knowledge that under unbelievably difficult circumstances they are praying these words with us too. May we go the extra mile to be there for each other in community, as do our Cuban cousins. And may we find uplift in the knowledge that we share one tradition; that we share one heart; that love connects us all.

 

This is Rabbi Rachel’s Kol Nidre sermon (cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi.)

 

Shofar-in-front-of-stained-glass

כְּנֶ֙שֶׁר֙ יָעִ֣יר קִנּ֔וֹ עַל־גּוֹזָלָ֖יו יְרַחֵ֑ף יִפְרֹ֤שׂ כְּנָפָיו֙ יִקָּחֵ֔הוּ יִשָּׂאֵ֖הוּ עַל־אֶבְרָתֽוֹ׃

Like an eagle who rouses their nestlings, gliding down to their young, So did God spread God’s wings and take [us], Bear [us] along on God’s pinions.

(Deut. 32:11)

This verse from this week’s Torah portion, Ha’azinu, leapt out at me this year. The metaphor of God bearing us on eagles’ wings, lifting us out of slavery to Pharaoh and out of our constricted places, is not a new one. But what struck me here was the word יעיר, to arouse or to wake up.

Rashi says this image is meant to evoke an eagle who doesn’t want to scare its nestlings, so the eagle flaps its wings a few times before coming in to the nest, to wake the young ones up and ensure that they feel strong enough to receive the eagle’s coming.

Later in the passage, Rashi says an eagle carries its young on its wings rather than in its claws, because the eagle reasons, “if there is an arrow, better the arrow should pierce me than pierce my young” — the eagle protects its young, and that’s the quality of love that God has for us.

I love the idea of God carrying us on vast eagles’ wings, seeking to protect us and uplift us. But even more than that, this year, I’m moved by this language of awakening or arousal.

God’s love for us is both protective and a little bit pushy. Torah here imagines God carrying us and keeping us safe — and also nudging us to wake up.

Just as the shofar’s call nudges us to wake up.

Just as this whole season nudges us to wake up.

The commentator known as the Or HaChayyim agrees: “Moses uses the simile of the eagle to show that just as the eagle rouses its young first, so G’d rouses the children of humanity to warn that we have to put our spiritual house in order.” This is the season for doing exactly that.

Shabbat Shuvah is our wake-up call. God is the eagle hovering over the nest, flapping mighty wings to urge us to rise up with all our strength and to do what’s right. God is the shepherd taking account of each of our lives as we pass beneath the staff, reading the Book of Life that we have written with our choices. God is in the shofar’s call — which sometimes sounds like triumph, and sometimes sounds like anguish — begging us to wake up.

Not because Yom Kippur begins tomorrow night, although it does.

But because the world needs us to wake up. Our community needs us to wake up. Our souls need us to wake up.

To what do we need to wake up at this moment in our spiritual year?

To what do we need to wake up at this moment in our national life?

Much is going to be asked of us in this new year. We need to wake up. We need to strengthen our souls and strengthen our resolve to stand up for what’s right.

God is here to wake us up. To rouse us from our sleep. To arouse in us the yearning to do what’s right. To enflame our hearts with a passion for righteous acts and justice: on a personal scale, on a communal scale, on a national scale.

Will we be woken?

This is the d’varling that Rabbi Rachel offered on Shabbat Shuvah (cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi.)