High Holy Days 5787 – Yeder mentsh hot zikh zayn pekl

For the fourth year in a row, our pop-up synagogue is where we gathered to welcome another Jewish year. The same ingredients: the same rabbi, the same chazan, the same familiar prayers and the same deeply prayerful atmosphere. There is something quite amazing about the way a temporary space can acquire such a strong sense of belonging. Once the prayers begin and the voices rise together, the room becomes part of our Jewish story.

Many new faces

New this year were the many visitors and friends joining us for the first time, each seeking community during these important days of teshuvah, of return. Some arrived knowing familiar faces; others took that first, sometimes rather daunting, step into a room full of strangers. Their presence brought new warmth and reminded us how much a welcome can matter.

Together, we did what Jews have done across the generations: we gathered, prayed, remembered, questioned and renewed our commitment to life, in spite of the hostility around us and the painful divisions that sometimes arise within our own midst. Simply coming together carried its own quiet determination. We celebrated the gift of another year and our continuing place within this ancient, occasionally exasperating and deeply precious people.

The challenge of choosing differently

Throughout Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, my sermons returned to the question of what this difficult year is making of us, and what we might yet make of ourselves. Like clay in the potter’s hands, we remain capable of taking another shape. Our experiences leave their marks, while teshuvah opens the possibility of choosing differently when a familiar moment comes around again. An apology, a conversation resumed or a kindness previously withheld can become the beginning of that change.

One image accompanied us through these reflections: a small light in a dark hallway, enough to help us take the next step. There are times when life feels very dark indeed, when personal sorrow and the anxieties of the wider world make it difficult to see a way forward. We long to know where the journey is taking us and whether everything will eventually be all right. Often, we have to move with much less certainty than that. Yet we can still find enough light for the step immediately before us: in a familiar prayer, someone’s patient listening, an unexpected kindness or the presence of a person willing to walk beside us. Sometimes we find that light through another person; sometimes we help someone else to find it.

‘Everyone carries their own bundle’

We reflected, too, on the old Yiddish saying, Yeder mentsh hot zikh zayn pekl: everyone carries their own bundle. Behind a smile or a reassuring “I’m fine” may lie grief, exhaustion, anxiety or a struggle we cannot see. A sacred community grows through the care we offer one another, often before we know what another person is carrying. Our confessions were spoken in the plural, reminding us that even the most personal work of these days takes place among others who are also trying to find their way.

Keeping tenderness alive

The shofar called us to lift our eyes, to notice another possibility, to find the courage to change direction. We considered how to disagree while remaining responsible for one another, and how to keep tenderness alive when so much encourages us to harden. Conviction and humility belong together; listening carefully is itself an act of care.

Those themes found expression in the life of our temporary synagogue: familiar voices alongside new faces, shared prayer and the welcome that helps a stranger begin to feel at home. Every person who joined us helped shape the community we became during these days.

May we carry that spirit into 5787, with enough light for the next step, enough humility to keep learning, and enough love to walk together.

Rabb Brian