Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation

High Holidays

Yom Kippur Workshops

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Workshop #1: Deborah Dash Moore on Mordechai Kaplan 2:00-3:10pm

Workshop #2: Niggun Circle 2:00-3:10pm

In this “workshop” we’ll be calming ourselves down by chanting melodies and prayers that focus on healing.  Interspersed in this, there will be opportunities to share what you need to.  

There’s nothing I’d rather do on a Yom Kippur afternoon (or any other time, TBH!) than sing.  If you are so inclined, please join us. – Deb K

Workshop #3: Listening through Grief in a time of Middle East upheaval: Communal Yizkor 3:15-4:25pm

This is a listening session for anyone who has experienced grief (in the largest sense) related to the Middle East over the past year and wishes to process it as a community as a step towards tikkun olam and personal Teshuva. This will be a space to listen with respect and kindness. Our intention is not to discuss policy, to engage in debate or to challenge each other’s experience but rather to deepen our sense of community. Sign-up now, if you want to reserve a spot. Please arrive on-time. We will be starting promptly.

Children and Family Programming and Childcare for High Holidays 2024

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AARC offers an engaging and flexible series of High Holidays learning opportunities and services for children and families. To take part, please fill out the Childcare & Children’s Services Signup form below.

Childcare & Family/Children’s Services Signup

High Holidays Family/Children’s Services Schedule

  • Thursday, October 3rd, 2024, 10:30am: Rosh Hashanah Children’s Service at the UU
  • Saturday, October 12th, 2024, 10:30am: Yom Kippur Children’s Service at the UU

If you have any questions about this programming, please email us. We looking forward to sharing this sacred time together!

High Holidays Childcare Signup

  • Childcare is offered for children 2 years of age and older.
  • The childcare room is located in the hall behind the registration table. Vaccinated teens over 12 can be supervised in the teen room across the hall.
  • Both rooms will be staffed by qualified caregivers.
  • Members: Childcare for members who sign up by October 1 is free of charge. Members who do not sign up by the deadline will be asked to pay $10 per child per day. Without advance reservation, childcare will be offered on a space-available basis only. Sign up online below.
  • Non-members: The cost for non-members is $20 per child per day.
  • Payment is due by October 1. Payment can be made by mailing a check or using the Donate link to pay online.
  • Please note that children under 13 must remain in childcare or be supervised by an adult at all times; children are not permitted to roam on their own while on the Unitarian Universalist Congregation premises. Children may leave childcare only if an adult picks them up.

High Holidays 2023 at the Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation!

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High Holidays Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation Shofar

Looking for a place to celebrate the High Holidays? Join the Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation for services that honor tradition while exploring new and meaningful Jewish paths. Our musical and participatory services will be led by Rabbi Gabrielle Pescador, accompanied by a musical collective of AARC musicians and vocalists. 

High Holiday services at the Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation are well known for providing a warm and inviting environment that welcomes everyone from all walks of life.

This year, we are offering 2 points of access for our services: In person, and online.

Our High Holiday services are open, ticketless, and available to all. All Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur services can be accessed online on our YouTube Page. Both in person and online services will be available to members and non-members.

All attendees, whether members or non-members, attending in person or online, must register in advance. Please visit our website to register.

Unless otherwise noted, all in-person services are held at the First Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Ann Arbor, 4001 Ann Arbor-Saline Road.

We are committed to providing a heartfelt and meaningful prayer experience that is accessible to everyone. If an accommodation would make our services more accessible to you, please email us. We look forward to spending this sacred time with you; if you have any questions or concerns, please email us! 

Plans for our highly anticipated Yom Kippur workshops are in the works. If you have an idea for a workshop that you would like to lead or an idea for a workshop that you would like someone else to lead, let us know!

High Holidays Schedule

WhenWhatTime and Details
Fri, Sept. 15Erev Rosh Hashanah7:00 – 8:30 pm
Sat,  Sept. 16Rosh Hashanah Day 1 services10 am – 12:45 pm
Children’s Service10:30 – 11:30 am
Sat., Sept. 16Tashlich (In Person Only)4:30 pm. Gather at JCC and walk to Mallet’s Creek
Sun., Sept. 24Kol Nidrei7:00 pm gathering and candle-lighting. At 7:00 sharp, Kol Nidrei begins
Mon., Sept. 25Yom Kippur Morning 10 am – 12:30 pm
Children’s Service10:30 – 11:30 am
Workshop #12:15- 3:30 
Workshop #23:45-5:15 
Yizkor 5:45 – 7:15 pm A non-traditional service offering a guided meditation for connecting with departed loved ones as well as offering mourners the opportunity to share some reflections.
Ne’ilah and Final Shofar7:30-8:30 pm
Break FastAfter Final Shofar Please RSVP  by Sept. 5th using the Sign up for Break Fast button on the right. More info

Letter from Rabbi Debra to The AARC Community

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Dear AARC,

Just a week ago today I returned home (to Minneapolis) from two amazing holidays with you in Ann Arbor. It was an honor and pleasure to accompany you through Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur this year, and a treat to work so closely with Deb Kraus (as well as Gillian and Etta!) in all the planning. 

I’m remembering so many powerful moments of community: the gorgeous harmonies of the davening team, beginning with Hashkiveinu on Erev Rosh Hashanah and ending with Karov at the end of Yom Kippur; deep, soulful reflections (kavanot) from nine community members; engaging conversation about our reluctant prophet Jonah and how we are/aren’t like him; moving stories of deceased loved-ones; members who could be present stepping in last-minute for those who couldn’t (especially Molly on our final shofar!); music and Haftarah from our teens; and more. And outside the services, so many of you helped with communications beforehand, with setting up and cleaning up for services, and preparing the break-fast! The genuine sharing of community was truly manifest during these High Holy Days; you held these core Jewish activities together and I hope you feel really good about it.

More than ever this year, I’ve been appreciating the brilliance of our Holy Days cycle, with Sukkot pairing with the holidays we celebrated together. During Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, along with the time leading up to RH and the 10 Days of Awe in between, we have space and rituals for deep reflection on our mortality, on our past year(s) and on how we want to live going forward. While we enact this process in community, the inner work is about how we show up individually to our relationships and communities. There is a severity of tone as we ask ourselves, How can I do better?  

Sukkot, which begins four days after Yom Kippur, sends us back into the physical world, to be together, to rejoice in our shared fragility and the abundance of our lot. It is predominantly social, and agricultural, celebrating cycles of the earth rather than the linear trajectory of our lives. R’ Yitz Greenberg points out the fallacy of considering the fast of Yom Kippur to be more holy than the feast of Sukkot. As humans, we are meant to experience the full range of the human experience. Sukkot is known as z’man simchateinu, the Season of our Joy! The biblical command is to be joyful – in the sense of fully embracing all of what life has to offer, and in the sense of sharing our abundance with those less fortunate. 

My hope is that you have had or will have the opportunity to relax in a sukkah with loved ones. My prayer is that you, together, gain clarity of vision for your next phase as a community, while continuing to show up profoundly and sustainably with and for one another and the wider community.

Thank you for the opportunity to be with you this season.

L’vracha, with blessings, 

Rabbi Debra Rappaport

debrarappaport@gmail.com

Yom Kippur Community Kavanot

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This Yom Kippur brought more opportunities to learn from the incredibly wise members of our congregation. There is enough wisdom and perspective within this blog post to keep you thinking all year! Mazel Tov to our Kavanot team on your incredible insights, your contributions are deeply appreciated.

Green sprout in parched earth

Al Heit , Sins Against Our Future

By Joshua Samuels

When speaking of different transgression we should atone for on Yom Kippur an important  learning from the Mishna states:

Sins between a person and Makom, Yom Kippur atones for, between two people, Yom Kippur does not offer atonement until the wronged person is made whole. (Rabbi Elazar Ben Azariah Mishna yoma Het Zayin)

I have left the phrase used for God in the Hebrew form, it is a less commonly used name, and also means place in Hebrew.

This teaches us those transgressions where we have sinned against the creator can be atoned through prayer, but those against our fellow person require us to make them whole again. 

If we take the word Makom in its simple everyday meaning, we can view this as sins against our place, our world can be atoned for on Yom Kippur. Unfortunately, the havoc and destruction we are wreaking on our environment is a transgression not only against Makom, in all its meanings, but against future people who will live on this planet, against our children and our children’s children.’

From those people of the future, as yet unborn, we cannot ask for, nor obtain forgiveness for the world we leave them.

While we cannot ask for forgiveness from the people of the future, we can strive for atonement through our actions.

There are many things that I do in my everyday life, that with a bit more awareness and thought would have less of an environmental impact.

It can be succinctly summed up as consuming less and producing less waste, but behind that lies a myriad of choices.

There are many things that I do out of lack of attention, quotidian things such as

I forget my reusable bags and use plastic bags from the store

I run the garbage disposal instead of collecting the scraps for the compost heap

I make multiple trips in the car when I could consolidate with some attention and so on, the list is long.

And there are changes in habits, such as changing what I eat to eat more local food and less meat.

Many choices are a question of changing habits or opting for a bit less convenience when the cost in resources is high, but some choices are far more challenging and there are things I am not willing to give up. Travel, particularly to visit family, is not something I am ready to forego. There is value in making these choices consciously, in weighing the global cost against the personal benefit

It is at times overwhelming when we feel that the actions we take are but a drop in the ocean, but the ocean is composed of drops, many drops.

So for this Al Het I will say in Hebrew:

Al Het Shehatanu neged Atid Olamaynu

For sins against the future of our world.

So let us strive to consume less, produce less waste, live with more disorganization and imperfection. Embrace entropy, it saves energy.

Releasing What Does Not Serve Us 

By: Seth Kopald 

We have finished the days of repentance when we asked our family and friends for forgiveness for our harmful deeds throughout the year. We have cleansed our actions. Yet, perhaps there’s more. Deep in our cells, our bones, our muscles, and our energy, our ancestors have transmitted to us many things, gifts and burdens. 

Our ancestors carefully crafted life rules to live by, ones that kept them safe, free, and prosperous. Perhaps these rules include: don’t shine too brightly, don’t advertise who you are, be the best at everything no matter the cost, or be alone because we get hurt when we are in numbers. Yet, they have also given us gifts. Like, the value of learning, community, singing and dancing, questioning authority, and having personal connections with G-d. 

Kol Nidre, the namesake prayer of this service, is an aramaic prayer revoking vows made before G-d and it is a call to reconnect with our ancestors. We were born into these vows and we are called to release them, the ones that don’t serve us. We are called to make a choice – to embrace life and live it fully. In order to do that, we must release the burdens that keep us from living. 

As we uncover burdens passed down by our ancestors, perhaps you may hear voices inside saying, “we can’t let it go, or we will lose connection”, or perhaps ”These burdens help us to never forget”. From my experience, when we ask our ancestors if this is true, they tell us, “You will always remember and we will always be here, but you don’t need the pain and these restrictions to life.” They want us to be free. 

We are now moving into the Amidah, a silent prayer, and in this place there is an opening, a moment to connect with G-d and our ancestors. I want to offer you a brief mediation to free us more deeply into that experience. 

So now I invite you to notice in your body any energy, beliefs, or unnecessary rules that have been passed down to you, ones that keep you from living and being your full Self. 

Now notice the gifts that have been passed down to you. 

Now, put them in two separate piles. 

See if it is ok to release the burdens. Perhaps you can send them back to your ancestors and they can be cleansed by sending the burdens over the horizon. Perhaps you need time to decide if this is ok and you want to temporarily put the burdens in a sacred container and save them, in case you do need them. Either way, you can experience what it is like to be free, to release the vows of our ancestors that no longer serve us. You can bury them with honor, like we would an old Torah that can no longer be used. You can step into a mikvah in your mind and allow the waters of Miriam to wash them away. See what, if any of this feels right for you. 

Now, embrace the gifts, and allow your natural qualities to emerge: curiosity, calmness, compassion and courage. Let them fill you up. With those qualities and gifts, let’s enter the silent Amida together, a chance to connect with G-d, one-on-one. As you do, if it feels right, invite your ancestors to be with you as we all turn toward G-d’s essence.

How To Approach The Process of Change

By Deb Kraus

Today is a day we afflict our souls.

It’s a day where we rehearse our own death.  Where we say over and over again all the sins we could have possibly committed, even ones that wouldn’t have occurred to us, and ask God to forgive them.  We beg to be written into a book of life that most of us don’t really believe exists.  We abstain from eating, from drinking even water, from bodily pleasures, from adorning ourselves.  We spend all day in shul.

In other words, it’s a day we can really “get our self-hatred on.”

So why, out of all the holidays of the year, is Yom Kippur my favorite holiday?

Possibly because I reject most of that.

Somehow, along with the orthodoxy I was raised with [which had me worrying one year about having turned on—and then immediately off—the light in my bedroom as I went to sleep after Kol Nidre (clearly I was more afraid of my mother than I was of God)] I was also brought up with the idea that to change, you had to really hate yourself.  As a clinical psychologist with 35 years of experience, I know that I’m not the only one to have gotten that message. 


But I also know that it’s not true.  You can’t self-hate yourself into self-acceptance or change.

Instead the radical notion, the one that actually works, is that we can love ourselves into changing.  I have three ideas about how we might do that:

First, if you are here trying to become a better person, in the sense of becoming someone other than you are, please be kind and know the impossibility of that.  As Nadia Bolz-Webber, the tattoo’ed Lutheran pastor of the House of Sinners and Saints in Denver says, “we can grow in wisdom but we still fundamentally remain ourselves.”  In other words, let’s try to stop being someone else or some ideal version of ourselves, and become, instead,  the best “us’es” we can become.  It’s the Rabbi Zuzya story all over again:  when asked what his main concern was in dying, he said “God won’t judge me on why I wasn’t more like Moses.  He’ll ask me why I wasn’t more like Zuzya.”

Second, we can take a lesson from one of my more self-loathing clients, who nonetheless parents very well. He says to his toddler daughter, “there’s nothing wrong with you that you can’t fix with what’s right with you.”  I love that, and I offer it to all of us.  “There’s nothing so wrong with us that we can’t fix it with what’s right with us.”

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, I know we don’t believe in the actual book of life, but in case you do, I have it on good authority (that is, a podcast) that we come into this holiday already written in.  If we believe we need to be saved on this day, know that we already have been. 

What if we took these three ideas into our day of prayer?  As we take this deep-dive look inside ourselves, cataloging all the ways we missed the mark once again this year, what if we did it with the idea that together, with a combination of God, community and ourselves, we can fix it.  And become the best versions of ourselves that we can.

As Rabbi Ora said at this point last year,

 “…it is love – the love we receive, the love we transmit – that enables us and energizes us to change. It’s not that we will be more worthy of love if we change. It’s that love – being loved, and being loving – is precisely what enables us and energizes us to undertake the holy work of teshuvah.”

She concluded with an invitation.  “Let’s start from that loving place.” 

Thoughts on Elul By Rabbi Debra

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Rabbi Debra Rappaport will be leading this year’s High Holidays services

Greetings! As I write to you, we are at the beginning of the new moon of Elul, the month that precedes the new moon of Tishrei – also known as Rosh Hashanah. ELUL is known as an acronym for the phrase Ani L’dod v’Dodi Li – I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine. Who or what is the Beloved to whom we need to return this season? 

The work of this season is called cheshbon ha-nefesh – taking stock of our own souls and our relationships. Where have my actions not been true to my values? Where do I need to make amends and/or change course? Teshuvah – making amends where appropriate and returning to our best selves, to the ineffable Beloved, is the other part of our season’s work.

Though we are new to one another, we may share some of the same sentiments… for example, wondering as the season approaches, How have I changed? What difference did all of last year’s resolve make? Or, What more can I do to stem the destruction and injustices I see around me?

Believing that we can change, and that repairs can be made, matters. It forms how we choose to show up to every moment. The Talmud (Pesachim 54a) describes teshuvah as a possibility created even before the world itself was created! The possibility of choice and change exists in our very essence. Not just regarding the big things but in every moment. Not just as individuals but collectively. Think of how a tiny course correction on an ocean liner leads a ship to a different landing place. Likewise, tiny moments of showing up differently in our own behavior can change our life’s trajectory – and hopefully our country’s and our planet’s – for the better.

MyJewishLearning.com offers some ideas for practice for the month of Elul.  If you’d like to do some learning and reflecting together, please do join one of the High Holy Days workshops starting September 18.  Sign up here!

In any event, I am truly looking forward to meeting you in person, and making the journey of the holy days together. In the meantime, may all have a nourishing Elul.

L’shalom,

Rabbi Debra Rappaport    

Children and Family Programming and Childcare for High Holidays 2023

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AARC offers an engaging and flexible series of High Holidays learning opportunities and services for children and families. To take part, please fill out the Childcare & Children’s Services Signup form below.

Childcare & Family/Children’s Services Signup

High Holidays Family/Children’s Services Schedule

  • Saturday, September 16th, 2023, 10:30am: Rosh Hashanah Children’s Service at the UU
  • Monday, September 25th, 2023, 10:30am: Yom Kippur Children’s Service at the UU

If you have any questions about this programming, please email us. We looking forward to sharing this sacred time together!

High Holidays Childcare Signup

  • Childcare is offered for children 2 years of age and older.
  • The childcare room is located in the hall behind the registration table. Vaccinated teens over 12 can be supervised in the teen room across the hall.
  • Both rooms will be staffed by qualified caregivers.
  • Members: Childcare for members who sign up by September 1 is free of charge. Members who do not sign up by the deadline will be asked to pay $10 per child per day. Without advance reservation, childcare will be offered on a space-available basis only. Sign up online below.
  • Non-members: The cost for non-members is $20 per child per day.
  • Payment is due by September 1. Payment can be made by mailing a check or using the Donate link to pay online.
  • Please note that children under 13 must remain in childcare or be supervised by an adult at all times; children are not permitted to roam on their own while on the Unitarian Universalist Congregation premises. Children may leave childcare only if an adult picks them up.
Childcare & Family/Children’s Services Signup

Elul Workshops with Rabbi Debra Rappaport

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We approach the High Holy Days during the Hebrew month of Elul. ELUL is referred to as an acronym for Ani L’Dodi V’Dodi Li (Song of Songs 6:3) “I am drawn to my Beloved and my Beloved is drawn to me.” And so we begin with love as the foundation and container of the hard work of teshuvah, aligning our actions with our values.

Here are three invitations, three moments, to learn and reflect in community with Rabbi Debra Rappaport. Each one stands alone; each speaks to a different big question of the season. Each session support participants in preparing our hearts to arrive at the High Holy Days with clear(er) intentions. The focus is on text-based reflection (in English), so the sessions will be inclusive of all, regardless of Jewish background. Please rsvp to attend HERE.

Thursday, September 15: 7:00 – 8:15 pm Turning inward, Teshuvah (turning, returning)

How can the teachings of the season support our cheshbon ha-nefesh (taking an account of the state of our souls) and our teshuvah (making reparations and returning to our highest selves)?

Thursday, September 22: 7:00 – 8:15 Reaching outward, Din V’Rachamim (Justice/Judgment & Mercy/Compassion)

What are the implications of the Rosh Hashanah image of a heavenly court in which perfect justice is weighed against compassion and forgiveness?

Thursday, September 29: 7:00 – 8:15 Confessing together, Al Chet

By Yom Kippur, we are to have made amends with those whom we’ve harmed. What, then, is the significance of the confessional words we recite together on Yom Kippur? Why do we recite as a community when we didn’t necessarily commit all the transgressions? Do the traditional words convey all we need to say at this moment in history?

Introducing Debra Rappaport, AARC’s Rabbi for the High Holidays

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The Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation (AARC) is delighted to announce that Rabbi Debra Rappaport will lead our High Holiday services for the fall of 2022 (Hebrew Year 5783). 

Rabbi Debra shares this warm greeting:

“Greetings from Minneapolis! My name is Debra Rappaport, I use she/her pronouns, and I share a home overflowing with plants with my husband Bobby Zelle and our fierce funny cat Ozi. I have served two wonderful congregations for seven years each since my ordination from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 2007, one in Vail, CO and one in Minneapolis, MN. I’m really excited to be with you this High Holy Days season! Though we don’t really know each other yet, I have been moved by the way the AARC values member engagement at every level.

I’m inspired by the way the people I’ve “met” (by Zoom) are approaching the High Holy Days, with active roles for as many people as possible. And I’m really excited to meet more of you!”

A bit more info on Rabbi Debra: she is co-chair of the Minnesota Rabbinical Association and she served as co-chair of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association Bi-Annual Convention in March 2022. Before becoming a rabbi,  she had a career in sales, marketing, and change management, earning  an MBA from the Wharton School in 1990. AARC Board Co-Chair Debbie Gombert shared that after a just a few conversations, she felt connected and thrilled that we will be sharing High Holidays and partnering with Rabbi Debra this year.

In addition to leading Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services for the AARC, Rabbi Debra will also lead several workshops around the high holidays.  The first workshop will be for a Kavanot (intentions) team on Sunday, July 31. Rabbi Debra will also lead three adult education/workshops via Zoom on these Thursdays: September 15, 22 and 29th to help us get spiritually ready for the holidays. Mark your calendars!

We are at this time forming a Kavanot (intentions) team for those who would like to contribute liturgy in the form of stories, poems or intentions to the High Holiday services. Here are details from Rabbi Debra:

The first opportunity I will have to meet some of you will be a
Zoom gathering on Sunday, July 31st, 1:30-3:00 pm ET with Deb Kraus as your local host.

This gathering of what will be the Kavanot team is for folks who feel moved to write and share something during our Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur services. Everyone is welcome! 

You don’t need to know what you want to write at this point; together, we’ll start to explore the themes of the services and the questions that inspire reflection. Please RSVP to Deb at drdebkraus@gmail.com by Friday, July 29.  

Alternatively, if singing, chanting, musical prayer, and making music in general suits you better, please be in touch with Etta Heisler at ettaqueen@gmail.com.
The “Davenning team” is beginning to convene this month as well. Likewise, everyone is welcome – it’s about bringing our voices together in prayer, not about performance.

Stay tuned as more information about plans for the High Holidays 5783 will be available in future blog posts and emails. As a community, we have a lot to plan and a lot to look forward to, and we are grateful to have Rabbi Debra Rappaport as our rabbinical leader for this season.

Leaving Behind the Idol Shop; Or, Enthroning An Orientation Towards Love

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By: Rabbi Ora Nitkin Kaner

Rosh HaShanah 5782/September 7 2021

Rabbi Ora Nitkin-Kaner

I want to start with a story—maybe one you’ve heard before. It’s a story about Abraham, back when he was known as Avram, and his father, Terach, and how Abraham smashed the idols. The story goes like this: 

Abraham’s father Terach sold idols for a living. Occasionally, he would go out of town, and when he did, he’d leave young Abraham in charge of the idol shop. 

One day, when Abraham was minding the shop, a woman came in with a plateful of food and said to Abraham, “I want to give this food to the idols.” As soon as the woman left, Abraham took a large stick and smashed all the idols except the largest one, and then placed the stick in its hands. When Terach returned, he was shocked to find the contents of his shop smashed to smithereens. 

“What happened here?” he demanded of his son. 

“Well,” said young Abraham, “a woman came with an offering for the idols. One idol announced, ‘I must eat first,’ but then another insisted, ‘No, I must eat first.’ Then the largest idol rose up, took that stick, and broke them all.” 

“Don’t be absurd!” said Terach angrily. “Idols can’t move or speak!” 

“Did you hear what you just said!?” Abraham asked. “If they can’t move or speak, how much power can they really have? How could we worship them?”

Then Terach, silenced and enraged, sent his son away.

This story—from Bereshit Rabbah—is an origin story of the first Jew; how Abraham started on his journey toward the idea of one God. The story makes it clear that even as a youngster, Abraham could see that believing in idols was silly; and we, from our 21st century vantage point, agree. So naturally we think of Abraham as the hero of this story, and Terach as the misguided villain. But lately, I’ve been less curious about Abraham’s iconoclasm and more curious about his father’s experience: how it must have felt for Terach to come home and find his livelihood and his faith shattered by his own son.

I’ve been thinking about Terach lately because I believe we’re living through a time of our own idols being smashed. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think anyone in this kahal actually has figurines of Baal or Asherah in their homes. But I do believe that as a society, we’re experiencing what it’s like to believe in something, to invest emotionally in that thing, to consider it sacred, and then have it shattered.

What am I talking about? 

I’m talking about the delight we took in Bill Cosby, America’s most loveable dad, and then finding out he sexually assaulted dozens if not hundreds of people throughout his long career. I’m talking about Andrew Cuomo, and Louis CK, and Michael Douglas, and Kevin Spacey, and Junot Diaz, and Sherman Alexie, and on and on.

I’m talking about growing up trusting police, and then watching George Floyd be murdered while calling out for his mother, and hearing about how Breonna Taylor was killed in a raid of her home. I’m talking about memorizing Tamir Rice’s 12-year-old grin, his wide cheekbones and his mischievous eyes, from his obituary photo.

I’m talking about growing up with the idea of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, or the Israeli Defense Forces as the ‘most moral army in the world.’ And then coming to learn that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were deliberately displaced in the founding of the Jewish state, or that Israel is a flawed country like any other. I’m talking about living through May of this year as Israeli rockets killed 67 children in Gaza.

I’m talking about learning to feel pride in America as a democratic ideal, with trust in the basic decency of our government leaders—and then witnessing endless wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. I’m talking about half the country electing an abhorrent abuser in 2016. I’m talking about living through January of this year, watching his mob break into the Capitol, wearing t-shirts that said ‘6 million wasn’t enough.’ I’m talking about this past week’s abortion ban in Texas.

I’m talking about growing up with a basic sense of trust in one’s fellow citizens, and then seeing people refuse to wear masks, refuse to do the minimum to keep one another safe during a pandemic.

I’m talking about faith, and the loss of faith; I’m talking about trust, and the loss of trust; I’m talking about belief, and the loss of belief.

It’s human nature to believe in goodness. It’s human nature to believe in the goodness and stability of the systems we create and the people we put in charge of those systems. So what happens when those systems are revealed to be fundamentally damaged or damaging? What happens when we find ourselves surrounded by the shattered remnants of the idols we once believed in?

Or, to ask this question differently: What have you been feeling these last weeks, months, years? Anxiety, sorrow, despair? Outrage, disgust? Alienation, mistrust? Bitterness, confusion, shame?

These are these emotions that accompany the psychological state of ‘moral injury.’ 

Moral injury is a reaction to a traumatic experience—a traumatic experience that violates our sense of how the world should work. It happens when our meaning systems confront something chaotic or disastrous; when we witness events that shatter our deeply held values. But moral injury doesn’t only occur when we are witnesses. It also happens when we come to understand that we are the perpetrators or perpetuators of an unjust system; it happens when we find ourselves complicit in things that we don’t want to be complicit in. Like as Jews, when we find ourselves defending some of the more immoral decisions of the Israeli government. Like as people with white privilege, when we come to understand how we benefit from systemic racism. Like as Americans, when we see how our taxes feed the American war machine. And how helpless we feel to change any of these realities. 

What’s wounded in moral injury is our sense of the world, and our place in it. 

We have a fundamental need to engage with the world in a moral way. When we feel like we’ve lost our ability to do that, it’s disorienting. It’s painful. And it’s also isolating. Moral injury messes with our ability to connect to other people. Or, to put a Jewish spin on it: it leaves us in a state of alienation from goodness—which is what we call sin. 

In Judaism, sin is the opposite of a mitzvah. The word ‘mitzvah,’ or ‘commandment,’ comes from the Aramaic root ‘tzavta,’ meaning ‘to bind together, to connect.’ If a mitzvah is something that connects us—to God, to our past, to family and community, to others in need, to our own deepest values—then sin is something that leads to a disruption of these connections.

Judaism teaches that idol worship is perhaps the greatest possible sin, from our second commandment (not to create idols or worship them) to the rabbinic saying: “Whoever endorses idolatry, rejects the entire Torah.” (Sifre Deuteronomy 28)

Why is idol worship such a focus of our tradition? Why is it such a sin, to guard against? Coming back to the smashing of idols and how painfully disorienting it is to live through such devastation: maybe we were taught that idol worship is a sin not because God is a jealous God, but because our tradition contains deep wisdom: the wisdom that it is hard to live when we place our faith in fallible things. Because inevitably, our idols will be smashed, and that will be devastating to us. 

We need our gods to be immutable. We need our gods to be eternal. This is the deep truth of our tradition. 

Only an hour ago, as part of the Rosh HaShana morning liturgy, we read a kavanah for ‘HaMelech,’ the liturgical moment of divine enthronement. The kavanah stated: “We have a need to re-enthrone meaning in the face of the chaos of our lives” (Kol HaNeshama Machzor, 269). We do. Perhaps never more so than today. Because we cannot survive as modern-day Terachs. We cannot abandon ourselves and one another to this present-day idol shop, surrounded by smithereens and turning the stick on one another and on ourselves. We need an act of re-enthronement. We need a God that cannot break, a world that will not keep shattering.

With so many of our idols destroyed at this point, how do we trust again? How do we figure out what to believe in?

Recovering a sense of trust, in our world, in our leaders, in one another, isn’t easy. We’ve lost a lot. And losses create suffering. And fear. And doubt that we actually know how to do this, that we’ll know how to make the right choices this time around.

But we do know how to do this. This power of discernment is deep in our ancestral DNA. We inherited it from Abraham, from the very first Jew: the ability to differentiate between what is eternal and what is temporary; between what is sacred and what is not. And to enthrone what is eternal, what is fundamental, and what is the deepest truth of life. Which is: Love.

What’s the first thing we know when we come into the world? Love. We are created out of love, and it is what sustains us, literally keeps us alive when we are infants. Love creates life. Love sustains life. 

And love is embedded in the heart of our tradition. What’s the most important prayer in Judaism? The Shma. The Shma is at the core of Jewish belief. On the surface, the Shma seems like a simple declaration of monotheism: Listen, Israel, Adonai is our God, Adonai is One. But if God is One, if God is Oneness, if we all contain that sacred, unified wholeness, then the only possible imperative is to love: Ve’Ahavta. When we really integrate the awareness that we are one, then we have nothing else to do but love one another by receiving, resting in, and transmitting abundant love. Our God becomes a God of love, and our life’s work simplifies into seeing love, receiving love, integrating love, and extending love outwards.

Ve’Ahavta: And we will love. On this first day of a new year, we have the chance to acknowledge our old idols, even honor what they gave us. We can gather up the broken pieces, bury them with care, and enthrone an eternal truth—Ve’Ahavta—a truth that will not break, no matter the challenges of the year to come. 

Committing to a new enthronement in the face of chaos is an invitation to believe again. But in this process, how do we make sure that we’re not just setting new idols on the throne?

The way to do this is actually relatively simple. We ask ourselves one question: Is this oriented towards love? This is the question we have to ask ourselves, in every relationship, inside every belief: ‘Does this idea, this person, this leader, this system, orient towards love? Does this maintain and promote a field of care?’ And if the answer is no, then it may well turn out to be another idol. Which means it’s not right for us, and for our tender, yearning hearts. 

Just think of what is possible for us, if we enter the new year holding up the banner of this question for ourselves: Is this oriented towards love? This email I’m about to send my coworker: Is it oriented towards love? This text I’m about to send my friend: Is it oriented towards love? This politician’s platform: Is it oriented towards love? This non-profit I’m donating to: Is it oriented towards love? This community I’m joining: Is it oriented towards love?

We are deserving of a world that doesn’t shatter, and break our hearts along with it. We are deserving of, worthy of, capable of building a world that merits our trust. We are deserving of a world built on love.