In just a few more days, the New Year will be upon us. Whether you will attend our services in person or join us online, we will gather together to express our deepest hopes and highest aspirations. We will pause to look within and examine the people we have become. We will commit ourselves to doing more in the coming year and to being the people we are meant to be so that our world will become a kinder, more just, more loving place. There is much work to be done. Some of it requires wrestling with our innermost selves in moments of quiet contemplation. Some of it can only be accomplished in community, surrounded by Am Yisrael — a People yearning to be God’s partner in repairing the world. In this sacred task, we are supported by a tradition that is thousands of years old, one filled with wisdom that remains urgently [...]

Rabbi Hayim Halberstam of Tzanz (1793–1876) related this parable: A man was lost in a forest for several days. He tried and tried but could not find a way out. He saw another man coming toward him through the trees. He rejoiced, saying, “Certainly now I am saved!” When he came up to the man he said, “Brother, tell me, which is the right path? I have been lost here for several days.” The man responded, “Brother, I too do not know the proper path. I too have been lost here for many days. But I can tell you this: do not try the ways I have tried—these paths will lead you nowhere. Now, come and we will search for a new way out together.” Rabbi Hayim then told his students, “The ways we have traveled up until now—let’s not travel them anymore. This path is the way of those [...]

Rabbi Harold Schulweis shares a beautiful lesson about the shofar that was taught to him by Natan Sharansky, the famous refusenik who later immigrated to Israel and became a member of parliament and then head of the Jewish agency. Sharansky noted that the ram’s horn is narrow at one end and wide at the other. No sound is made if you try to blow the shofar through the wide end. But if you blow into the narrow end, the call of the shofar rings loud and true. Sharansky sees in this a lesson about Jewish identity. It’s through the narrow opening which represents particularism, our Jewish selves, that we can make our voices heard more broadly, more universally. As Sharansky puts it: "Only those who understand their own identity and have already become free people can work effectively for the human rights of others." We don’t have to choose between being a [...]

There is a story told by Rabbi Albert Lewis about a man named Joe. During his lunch break at work, Joe took a seat on a bench next to a fellow worker and began rummaging in his paper sack. He pulled out a sandwich, unwrapped it, and muttered, “Yich, Peanut butter!” He opened the next sandwich, examined it and again muttered in disgust, “Ugh, peanut butter!” Joe left both sandwiches uneaten. His buddy, who was greatly enjoying a cheese sandwich, sympathetically asked, “If you don’t like peanut butter sandwiches, why don’t you ask your wife to fix you some other kind?” Joe frowned at him and said, “Wife? I packed these lunches myself!” Our tendency is to blame others for the disappointments we encounter in our lives. The hard truth, though, is that, often, our actions, our choices, and our decisions led to those disappointments. Part of the teshuvah process is personal [...]

When Hayyim of Zanz was a young man, he set about trying to reform his country from its evil ways. But when he reached the age of 30, he looked around and saw that evil remained in the world. So he said, “Perhaps I was too ambitious. I will begin with my province.” But at the age of 40 his province too remained mired in evil. So he said, “I was still too ambitious. From now on I will only try to lift up my community.” But at 50 he saw that his community had still not changed. So he decided only to reform his own family. But when he looked around, he saw that his family had grown and moved away, and that he now remained alone. “Now I understand where to begin. I need to begin with myself.” So he spent the rest of his life perfecting his [...]