Rosh Hashanah 5782 (2021) - First Day Sermon

Rosh Hashanah, Day 1 - Sermon
Every year, I deliver four main sermons on the High Holidays. I also speak at the Erev (evening) RH service, offer introductions to the Torah reading, kavvanot (prayer intentions) through the service, and speak at the afternoon (Mincha) and evening (Neilah) services on Yom Kippur. BUT, the four primary, top-billed, big ticket sermons are the morning of Rosh Hashanah (so right now), tomorrow morning for the second day of the holiday, Kol Nidrei at the start of Yom Kippur, and Yom Kippur morning. This is my thirteenth High Holiday season at Ohev Shalom, so I guess it’s kind of like my Bar Mitzvah celebration year! Mazal Tov to me!

For each of the previous twelve years, all four of those principal Divrei Torah have been on one, shared theme, which I try to expand and expound upon as the holidays pass. This year is no different, both with a single-word theme that I will return to four times, as well as an image that I plan to associate with each talk. So, let’s dive right in:

For the High Holiday season of the Hebrew year 5782, I am going to offer four sermons on the theme of resilience. First, because we desperately need to tap into our own, internal resilience and perseverance, as we muddle our way through the start of another year in the shadows of the coronavirus. We worry and speculate about what lies ahead, with vaccines, boosters, variants, mask mandates, social distancing, and all the other terms we’ve had to learn over the past year-and-a-half that we would love to just forget and never have to contend with ever again. But we can’t forget them, can we? Not now, and likely not for a while. Our resilience is also called upon in facing the environmental disasters plaguing our planet, the constant polarization of our politics, various crises abroad in Afghanistan, Syria, or elsewhere, including, of course, ubiquitously, volatility and violence in Israel. 

That is A LOT. I want to pause for a minute in my sermon to invite us all to breathe, whether here in person or at home. Close your eyes, focus on breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth, several times, with your feet planted on the ground and sitting upright but relaxed. We need so much resilience right now. This is tough. If we’re going to focus on building strength and endurance, we need to be kind to ourselves, acknowledge the challenges… and breathe. So let’s do that for a minute, as you think about what resilience means to you. (If you’re reading this sermon on the blog, you may want to pause and breathe for a minute or two as well…)

Many of you are probably aware that resilience is also an important theme in something else happening at Ohev Shalom right now. This incredible curtain you see behind me was designed by the phenomenal Indian-Jewish artist, Siona Benjamin. And Siona has just concluded a SECOND project for us, which we’re calling Megillat Lostice; A Scroll of Resilience.

Over the course of several years, I had been researching the history of our Holocaust Scroll, our special Czech Torah that survived the Second World War. And its story left such an impression on me - and I feared that very few people might ever actually know this awe-inspiring tale - that I wrote a four-chapter history of how this particular Torah came to Ohev Shalom. A few years ago, Ohev Shalom started celebrating Lostice Shabbat, an annual commemoration of the small Moravian town whose Jews were killed by the Nazis, and we incorporated the reading of these four chapters as a ritual to solidify the tradition.

If you think about it, that’s how Chanukah became a holiday, or Purim, or even secular holidays like the Fourth of July or Thanksgiving. They come with origin stories, frequently written down so as not to forget, that are then ritualized to help explain what we’re doing, and why this matters. In an effort to formalize further this particular legacy, our four-chapter account was handwritten on parchment paper by another artist, Judith Joseph, and then Siona Benjamin created four amazing painted illustrations, making our new Megillah an illuminated manuscript (of sorts). 

Each of my four sermons on resilience is going to focus on one of Siona’s four pieces of artwork, which will also allow me to explain some of the imagery she and I chose for each. It is also important to me that this not just be a convenient vehicle for my talks, or that I merely tell you about historic resilience; I want us to think about how to build ourselves up. We have endured a lot, and this historic pandemic isn’t over. We need some new tools and ideas for how to cope, endure, and even - just maybe - thrive and grow stronger as a result of our perseverence. 

Therefore, I also intend to incorporate a few essential practices for building greater resilience. You see, we might *think* that some people are just more resilient than others; it’s just a personality trait or a characteristic that some have and others don’t. I disagree. And according to the American Psychological Association, there are actually four elements (conveniently for me and my sermons…) that we can develop in order to build resilience. So one painting for each sermon, and one internal assignment for each of us to work on. 

So why is it important to work on these skills? Well, the APA’s definition of “resilience” helps to explain this a bit better than I could. It states: “Becoming more resilient not only helps you get through difficult circumstances, it also empowers you to grow and even improve your life along the way.” In other words, it’s not just about coping, enduring, hanging on, and barely surviving. Cultivating our capacity to be more resilient allows us to also excel! How does this happen? Well, trauma is unavoidable. It is simply part of life.

At some point, we will each have to confront illness, tragedy, loss, and death. Now, you can hear that statement and feel totally depressed: “Gee, rabbi, thanks for being so positive and so light-hearted.” However, I maintain that pretending those things won’t happen just makes us *less* prepared or mentally fortified to deal, when bad things inevitably DO occur. Burying our heads in the sand won’t stave off hardship and pain… it’ll just leave us less prepared when it happens. Instead, we can learn to not just bounce back from difficulty and be ok; we can grow, learn, improve, and become stronger BECAUSE of what we’ve experienced. 

The APA’s website goes on: “like building a muscle, increasing your resilience takes time and intentionality. Focusing on four core components - connection, wellness, healthy thinking, and meaning - can empower you to withstand and learn from difficult and traumatic experiences.” I think of them as fortifying four areas of our core being. Connection - physical and spacial; wellness - emotional and spiritual; healthy thinking - mental and intellectual; meaning - intentionality and purpose. 

So let’s look at the first one, connection. We cannot do this alone. Which is a particularly frustrating principle, when COVID-19 guidelines tell us to socially distance, avoid gatherings, stay at home, and remain in quarantine. Nevertheless, we need to remind ourselves, and be reminded by others, that we are NOT alone in our difficulties. Struggling alone can make problems seem infinitely more insurmountable, and we descend into self-critical, toxic thinking. We need one another, we need community, and we need to feel supported and held. This can be challenging, because it’s easier to be there for other people, to make yourself a resource and a support for someone ELSE. It’s harder to admit when you’re the one who needs help. But we DO need help, and we need one another. 

The first chapter of Megillat Lostice is about that small little bustling town in the region of Moravia, in northwestern Czechoslovakia. Jews had been living in that area since 1571, and that’s only according to official records! I’m sure it wasn’t an easy life, but I also know that Jews were successful and regionally influential for much of that time. I won’t go into all the details now, but if you come on Lostice Shabbat, you can hear all about it when we read from the scroll for the first time! One thing that Siona and I discussed at length was the LIFE of the Jewish communities of Europe, not just their deaths. Some of you have heard me repeat this frequently, but it bears frequent repeating: We do ourselves a great disservice when we associate so much of Jewish history with oppression, persecution, and death. Yes, the fate of Lostice’s Jews, like millions all across the continent, ended tragically in concentration camps. We cannot ignore that, and we forget about it at our own peril. But shouldn’t we also celebrate the joy of being Jewish? They lived there for four HUNDRED years! Is it really fair to sum up their entire existence with train cars sent off to Theresienstadt? 

The painting that Siona created for this first chapter features Fanny Neuda, the wife of Lostice’s rabbi, Abraham Neuda, in the 1840s, who wrote the first Jewish prayer book ever written FOR women BY a woman. We also see the synagogue sanctuary in Lostice, with scrolls sitting in its Ark; one of which would eventually make its way to the cabinet just behind me right now. To me, this first painting is about community and connection. The synagogue was truly a Beit K’nesset, the Hebrew word for synagogue which literally means, a House of Gathering. It was full of life, study, singing, and worship. And it was a place of safety, security, and home for the Jewish residents of Lostice.

One of the ways we build resilience is to surround ourselves with community. The APA website, the one that defines resilience, suggests: “[Find] trustworthy and compassionate individuals who validate your feelings.” It also recommends that you join a group. The social support of either a civic group or, conveniently enough, a faith-based community (ehum, ehum) can help us reclaim hope, feel like we’re working for something larger and longer-lasting than just ourselves, and can remind us over and over again that we are not alone. We are here for one another, and we are stronger, more resilient, together.

In the painting, Fanny Neuda’s skirt melds into the rolling hills of the Moravian countryside. She is seemingly part of the land, just as the place and the community are a part of her. Which is not to say that we, or she, or anyone should be subsumed in community, but just that it should hopefully and ideally be a symbiotic relationship. You put a lot in, and you get a lot back. Fanny is a part of her community, and it is a part of her. It may also remind us of the power of home, and how rooted and confident we feel when we belong somewhere. 

There are additional symbols and intentions in this painting, as there are in each of the four, and I can’t point out all of them now. But I do want to highlight and shine a light on… well, the light. Siona and I asked ourselves, how do you paint resilience? For us, and for our Megillah, the answer became “light.” You’ll see in each image that light is indestructible. It shines through. It cannot be contained or blotted out, no matter how hard someone may try. For Chapter One, the light source is the glow of the Shabbat candles. This represents history, tradition, ritual, and communal warmth. When we embrace the light of connection, of leaning on one another in tougher times, it can warm us, heal us, and light our path forward. 

I hope you’ll come along on this journey with me, and with Siona Benjamin, whether in-person or over zoom. And my sermons will be on my blog online, after first Rosh Hashanah, and then Yom Kippur. I am certain we could all use some more training to build or rebuild our resilience. This year, the High Holidays aren’t just about apologies and forgiveness, being written into the Book of Life, or hearing those shofar blasts. We need more from, and for, one another. Together we can work on building up our resilience, and we can grow and even thrive, despite the obstacles and the concerns that lay before us. So let us walk this journey together, as we prepare to take on whatever lies ahead in the new year. 

Shanah Tovah!