(Rabbi Adam Wright's Erev Rosh Hashanah Sermon, which he delivered on the evening of October 2, 2024. Wright is rabbi at Temple Emanu-El in Birmingham)
There's no doubt in my mind that rabbis tonight will talk about October 7th and the year it's been for the Jewish people - in Israel and in the Diaspora. I also think it's safe to suggest that we've been trying to figure out how to begin such a sermon during the most difficult time of Jewish life since 1939. Earlier in my rabbinate, I remember reading about Saul Teplitz, the late conservative rabbi and remarkable orator who understood how to capture moments of pain during the Hagim.
He said, "The season for greetings has arrived. By word of mouth or through a printed card, people convey good wishes to their family and friends. 'Happy New Year' runs the greetings. But, this is only true in English. The traditional Hebrew greeting, 'Shanah Tova' literally means 'a good year.' The 'happy' and the 'good' are not always synonymous. It is possible for some people to be happy with what is not good." For this new year of 5785, Rabbi Teplitz's words here convey our paradox.
This congregation has been in a painful and emotional rollercoaster the past year. So, I want to begin this sermon with compassion and comfort for this temple family. From this bimah the past long twelve months, I have often said that Jews post October 7th, are living two lives.
The first life embodies our own personal human condition - it's the good and the bad that life throws at us; it's the stress from work, it's the joy we get spending time with our family. It's the uncertainty about our finances and our health. It's the ebb and flow of our everyday realities, which is hard enough.
And that's why we've always looked forward to receiving the special gift that Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur provide us - a perfect prescription that allows us to love again, to hope again, to forgive, and to be forgiven, and the chance to improve our imperfections and repair relationships. Yet, this is the remedy for the first part of life.
But, now, we are forced to take on a second life; it's being Jewish post October 7th, which, makes the teshuva process seem all but impossible. For this reason, I am adamant with myself to be intentionally mindful about my remarks tonight so that they can provide the compassion and comfort that is needed more than ever. Because, for the first time in eighty-five years, we are forced to experience Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur while living with these two lives.
I've never thought that I would say the following as our rabbi: these High Holidays are going to be spiritually brutal for us. The cruelty of this year's Jewish-lunar calendar is maddening. Tonight, we welcome a New Jewish Year. In five short days, this community will gather together at the JCC to commemorate the first anniversary of October 7th. Then, on Friday night, we're right back here, praying to get into the Book of Life well-lived.
I also think about the liturgy that we will hear and recite. And, for the first time as a rabbi - and frankly my entire Jewish life, segments of the Untaneh Tokef became a horrid reality during the early hours of October 7 -
We can take a moment here because it nearly shakes us at our core. But, here is something we all know - we cannot continue to live our lives focusing solely of October 7th; this isn't the way to fulfil a complete Jewish life. This isn't the way we live happy and meaningful lives.
If we want to empower the next generation of Jews who will love their Judaism, who will love God, who will love Torah, and who will love Israel and Zionism, we must find a doable prescription to remember October 7th and the year it's been for us, but also to find the strength to live again.
From the depths of my soul, especially, throughout this long year, I thought our remedy was to rely upon our history. I genuinely believed we could learn - and frankly be inspired as to how our ancestors pivoted calamity after calamity.
I was wrong. I thought the answer was to intellectualize how we responded to the destructions of both temples in antiquity, the persecution and subjugation in Medieval Europe, the pogroms in Eastern Europe, and the Holocaust.
I thought we could be emboldened to how Jews used the power of Torah l'Yishmah to safeguard and advance Jewish tradition. But, the crux is that we are too far removed from events that happened two thousand years ago and even eighty-five years ago. And, October 7th is too agonizingly current for us even to consider such an intellectual or academic response.
Finally - after a true and personal Cheshbon Hanefesh [self-examination process], the right path came to me. It's this- We haven't been able to mourn yet. And, for us to go on from October 7th, we need to lament, we need to cry, we need to grieve, and we need to mourn together. This is what we've always done first when we faced such death and destruction.
A perfect teaching is that Judaism understands Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur as the spiritual death of our imperfections to then start the New Year spiritually alive with a clean slate. And, if the High Holidays symbolically represent our spiritual death, it is most appropriate to recite Ecclesiastes 3, a beautiful selection of scripture often used for funerals because it captures the different experiences of life -
"For everything there is a season, a time for every experience under heaven: A time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted; a time to tear down and a time to build up: a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance; a time to throw stones and a time to gather stones, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to discard; a time to tear and a time to sew, a time to keep silent and a time to speak. A time for loving and a time for hating; a time for war and a time for peace."
We know that in Judaism, our rabbis taught us not to mourn too long or obsessively. They instituted a path to ensure we can live in the world even with a void in our heart - observing the seven-day shiva period, followed by the thirty-day period of shloshim, and then completed by the eleventh month period of shana.[1] [And, the commandment to recite Kaddish during the yahrzeit anniversary.
But, the type mourning for - October 7th (Black Saturday as the Israelis call it) is different; it's novel. This type of mourning is so complex and so multilayered because we haven't been here before - at this moment in time - in nearly nine decades.
This mourning is so painful and utterly offensive when we truly think about it and say it out loud. Because, we are not just mourning the most horrific slaughter of 1200 Israelis and foreign nationals on October 7th, the hostages who were murdered while in captivity, or the brave IDF soldiers who died fighting for us, Israel, and the Jewish People. In Addition:
· We need to mourn the utter breakdown of Western society - the total collapse of Enlighted values who allowed anti-Semitism to reach all-time highs since 1939 - wreaking havoc nearly everywhere - on the streets, in medical organizations, international music competitions, and at holocaust centers.
· We mourn those who believed AI fabricated the massacre - including the slaughtering of babies and burning holocaust survivors alive. And, at the same time, we mourn those who believe that October 7 was real and want it to be repeated not just in Israel, but in America.
· We mourn how our universities became a hotbed of Jew hatred and a center of violence to our Jewish students.
· We must mourn how the media bought in so easily and foolishly into Hamas propaganda, peddling Hamas lies without any factchecking; and, their greatest offense - attempting to justify a moral equivalence between Israel, a western and democratic country and Hamas, a terrorist organization.
· We need to mourn how the United Nations, Human Right Watch, the International Red Cross, and the bevy of humanitarian organizations who egregiously failed to live up to their ideals and values because Jewish lives and suffering didn't matter.
· We mourn the apathy and the total disregard of Women's organizations who did nothing for Jewish girls and Jewish women who experienced the most barbaric and grotesque acts of sexual violence.
· We mourn the silence from some members of the interfaith community. We mourn how these leaders participated in Pro-Hamas rallies downtown using their own distorted understanding of justice to march for pure evil.
· Finally - this one is especially hard for us - we mourn the silence from our greater community partners - those for whom we thought were our friends, allies, and for whom we showed up for during their despair.
But, mourning does come to an end - because it needs to - despite it being so hard. We all know that this has been the most agonizing year for us since the Holocaust. We will forever be haunted by the images we saw on that Saturday morning and what followed next. Just to name a few -
Even as maddening as it is, the mourning needs to come to an end. It needs to come to an end for them. And, all the more so, are we obligated to remember them and especially to live for them. And, it needs to come to an end for us, too. Because, we need to hope again. We need to love again. We need to feel safe again. And, we need to be happy again. And, as Ecclesiastes 3 reminds us, we need to dance again.
On August 9, 2001, Hamas carried out a terrorist attack at Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem, murdering sixteen people [including three children and pregnant woman] and wounding over one hundred thirty during the second intifada.
This attack absolutely crushed Israel's soul. But, Israel found the strength to pick themselves up and experience the joys of life. And, so "We Will Dance Again" was first chanted as the battle cry to reinforce that terrorism will never define nor defeat the Jewish heart and soul.
And, the battle cry "We will Dance Again" has returned to Israel's core identity. "We Will Dance Again" is the charge to live again. This expression is found nearly everywhere in Israel - it's on billboards, it's on posters, it's on t-shirts, and even tattooed on bodies. It's taking to heed what Ecclesiastes 3 tells us to do: live. It's an expression of advocacy and remembrance. It's what, Mia Schem - a survivor of the Nova Music Festival and hostage - wants us to do. Dance again.
Even though we are still at war and there are still hostages, and we know that Judaism and the Jewish People will forever change because of October 7, 2023, Judaism requires us to be with the living. As rescued hostage, Noa Argamani, said while celebrating her birthday -
"It's not ideal that we're having this party while there's still a war in the background, while our soldiers are on the battlefield, while there are over 109 hostages there in Gaza, including my partner, Avinatan Or, who we miss terribly. But, at the same time, I'm happy to celebrate life itself with all of you. To remember that we have to value every day in this life, we have to celebrate every moment that we're here."
In conclusion, I want this congregation to know that dancing again goes for me, too. As your rabbi and spiritual leader, it took me months to figure out how to live in this world to see the good. Part of me felt that I had to remain in a perpetual state of sadness because I genuinely believed the world abandoned us once more. I couldn't get past not just that Saturday morning in October, but the wrath of hate that immediately followed.
But, once some of the hostages were returned to their families, and after seeing the joy from the four rescued hostages in June, it reinforced my obligation to reengage; to seek the good in life - from my wonderful family, this congregation, and the hundreds of strangers in this community who brought their support and comfort. And, I am honored and eager to participate in the rebirth of the Jewish People.
Rabbi Jonathan Sachs said it perfectly, "I think of Judaism as an ode to joy. Like Beethoven, Jews have known suffering, isolation, hardship, and rejection, yet they never lacked the religious courage to rejoice. A people that can know insecurity and still feel joy is one that can never be defeated, for its spirit can never be broken nor its hope destroyed. As individuals we may aspire to the goodness that leads to happiness, but as part of a moral and spiritual community, even in hard times we find ourselves lifted on the wings of joy."
"The 'happy' and the 'good' are not always synonymous," but this is not our final chapter. Our book will never end, chapters will always be written for generations to come. Because even at our darkest moments, we will dance again.