And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it.
Somehow, we do it.
Somehow, we’ve weathered and witnessed
A nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.— Amanda Gorman, Inaugural Poet, from “The Hill We Climb,”
recited on January 20, 2021 at the Inauguration of President Joseph R. Biden
and Vice President Kamala Harris
This week marks a new beginning for our unfinished nation.
We Jews know about new beginnings and fresh starts. Our liturgy reminds us that each day is a new beginning for through God’s goodness, the world is renewed and the work of creation continues.
We are God’s partners in this sacred, ongoing task. The world is not yet complete—we are, together with the Holy One, completing it.
There is much that needs finishing, but nothing is so broken that it is beyond repair.
So let us roll up our sleeves and work diligently to make things better, to build a world of justice and compassion, to fix what needs fixing so that we might bring healing and goodness to our unfinished nation. As President Biden just reminded us, we must meet this challenge together because our work requires “the most elusive of all things in a democracy: unity.”
In the ongoing work of creating a more perfect union, establishing justice, ensuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, and securing the blessing of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, we need each other and we need hope, the belief that all of these things, including that most elusive unity we desire, are possible.
This is a defining moment for all of us as Americans. Let us find inspiration as individuals and as a congregation in Ms. Gorman’s wise words: “The new dawn blooms as we free it. There is always light, if only we are brave enough to see it—if only we are brave enough to be it.”
— Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback