High Holidays: Keeping Hope Alive
Rabbi Tom Samuels
Fall 2020
These are indeed times that challenge our very souls. We continue to shelter-in-place, nostalgic for the lives we used to live less than 1/2 a year ago. It is almost as if, no, it is as if, we are on the precipice of a seemingly endless abyss which separates our current lives, realities, on the one side, and a chasm of an unknown, indeterminate future on the other. מִמַּעֲמַקִּים קְרָאתִיךָ יְהוָה, “From my depths I call out for HaShem’s help.” We are indeed brokenhearted. Broken-down.
In Sefer Bamidbar, the Book of Numbers, we read of Moses, frustrated with the Children of Israel. וּבְעֵינֵ֥י מֹשֶׁ֖ה רָֽע “Moses” the text tells us with brutal honesty, “Moses, was distressed.” Imagine that: Moshe Rabbeinu, Moses our Teacher, our Master. The greatest of the greatest. The only human to lehetabek, to intimate with God, Face to Face, וְדִבֶּר יְהוָה אֶל-מֹשֶׁה פָּנִים אֶל-פָּנִים.
“Moses was distressed.” Where was that soft, still voice, deep within him, when he willfully noticed a bush aflame that was not consumed? Where was the Moses who responded with, Heneini, Here I am, fully present? Our Sages teach us that if even Moses is a fallible, an imperfect human being, vulnerable to the depths of despair, Kol Sh’Ken, how much more so for the rest of us?
As a rabbi, these times are incredibly exasperating. Core, essential to my ministry is relying on close connections, on creating, on fostering relationships. I long for the day when I can sit in the shul with all of you, praying, singing, learnings, sharing. That the return to normalcy is just around the corner. But I know that this is not possible. I know that all that lies on the other side is a new normal, one that cannot be predicted. Imagined.
Sometimes, our deepest spiritual experiences come when we least expect them, when we are closest to despair. It is then that the masks we wear are stripped away. When we are so very vulnerable – and when we are most fully open to God, and when God is most fully open to us. (Rabbi Ed Feinstein) קָרוֹב יְהוָה, לְנִשְׁבְּרֵי-לֵב, “God is close to the brokenhearted.”
The most profound of all spiritual experiences, the base of all others, Rabbi Harold Kushner taught, is the knowledge that we are not alone. God is holding us by the hand, sheltering us, lifting us when we fall, forgiving us when we fail, healing the wounds in our soul through the power of His grace, His Hessed, His love. גַם כִּי-אֵלֵךְ בְּגֵיא צַלְמָוֶת “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death” the Psalmist wrote, לֹא-אִירָא רָע “I will fear no evil," כִּי-אַתָּה עִמָדִי “for You, God, You are with me.”
Though we may fall, we fall into the arms of God… Though others may lose faith in us, and though we may even lose faith in ourselves, God never loses faith in us… And though we may feel utterly alone, we are not. God is there, beside us, within us, urging us to stand and move on. לֹא-אִירָא רָע כִּי-אַתָּה עִמָדִי “I will fear no evil, for You, God, You are with me.”
For there is a task to do that we have not yet completed, and that we were created to fulfill. From the very beginnings of the Jewish tradition, throughout the entire Jewish experience, that task, our task, in this world, is to fight the notion that the world is absurd, devoid of any possibility for hope. (Rabbi Kushner and Rabbi Sacks) While so much of the rest of the world sees only chaos, terror, random death as inevitable, the Jewish people, in the face of millennia of persecution, we see hope. We insist on having hope. HaTikvah. The title of the Israeli National Anthem.
עוֹד לֹא אָבְדָה תִּקְוָתֵנוּ, We have not, will never, loose our hope… הַתִּקְוָה בַּת שְׁנוֹת אַלְפַּיִם, a Hope that transcends time itself…
God commands us on the High Holidays, Tzipita L’yeshua, “Choose Hope.” Choose life. Preserve it. Protect it. Nurture it. Because immortality, Rabbi Feinstein taught, immortality belongs to those who keep hope alive. Please bring your traditions, memories, hopes and dreams to this precious space and time… To these Yamim Noraim, these Days of Awe, these Days of Imagining, of Insisting on Hope.
Rabbi Tom Samuels
Fall 2020
These are indeed times that challenge our very souls. We continue to shelter-in-place, nostalgic for the lives we used to live less than 1/2 a year ago. It is almost as if, no, it is as if, we are on the precipice of a seemingly endless abyss which separates our current lives, realities, on the one side, and a chasm of an unknown, indeterminate future on the other. מִמַּעֲמַקִּים קְרָאתִיךָ יְהוָה, “From my depths I call out for HaShem’s help.” We are indeed brokenhearted. Broken-down.
In Sefer Bamidbar, the Book of Numbers, we read of Moses, frustrated with the Children of Israel. וּבְעֵינֵ֥י מֹשֶׁ֖ה רָֽע “Moses” the text tells us with brutal honesty, “Moses, was distressed.” Imagine that: Moshe Rabbeinu, Moses our Teacher, our Master. The greatest of the greatest. The only human to lehetabek, to intimate with God, Face to Face, וְדִבֶּר יְהוָה אֶל-מֹשֶׁה פָּנִים אֶל-פָּנִים.
“Moses was distressed.” Where was that soft, still voice, deep within him, when he willfully noticed a bush aflame that was not consumed? Where was the Moses who responded with, Heneini, Here I am, fully present? Our Sages teach us that if even Moses is a fallible, an imperfect human being, vulnerable to the depths of despair, Kol Sh’Ken, how much more so for the rest of us?
As a rabbi, these times are incredibly exasperating. Core, essential to my ministry is relying on close connections, on creating, on fostering relationships. I long for the day when I can sit in the shul with all of you, praying, singing, learnings, sharing. That the return to normalcy is just around the corner. But I know that this is not possible. I know that all that lies on the other side is a new normal, one that cannot be predicted. Imagined.
Sometimes, our deepest spiritual experiences come when we least expect them, when we are closest to despair. It is then that the masks we wear are stripped away. When we are so very vulnerable – and when we are most fully open to God, and when God is most fully open to us. (Rabbi Ed Feinstein) קָרוֹב יְהוָה, לְנִשְׁבְּרֵי-לֵב, “God is close to the brokenhearted.”
The most profound of all spiritual experiences, the base of all others, Rabbi Harold Kushner taught, is the knowledge that we are not alone. God is holding us by the hand, sheltering us, lifting us when we fall, forgiving us when we fail, healing the wounds in our soul through the power of His grace, His Hessed, His love. גַם כִּי-אֵלֵךְ בְּגֵיא צַלְמָוֶת “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death” the Psalmist wrote, לֹא-אִירָא רָע “I will fear no evil," כִּי-אַתָּה עִמָדִי “for You, God, You are with me.”
Though we may fall, we fall into the arms of God… Though others may lose faith in us, and though we may even lose faith in ourselves, God never loses faith in us… And though we may feel utterly alone, we are not. God is there, beside us, within us, urging us to stand and move on. לֹא-אִירָא רָע כִּי-אַתָּה עִמָדִי “I will fear no evil, for You, God, You are with me.”
For there is a task to do that we have not yet completed, and that we were created to fulfill. From the very beginnings of the Jewish tradition, throughout the entire Jewish experience, that task, our task, in this world, is to fight the notion that the world is absurd, devoid of any possibility for hope. (Rabbi Kushner and Rabbi Sacks) While so much of the rest of the world sees only chaos, terror, random death as inevitable, the Jewish people, in the face of millennia of persecution, we see hope. We insist on having hope. HaTikvah. The title of the Israeli National Anthem.
עוֹד לֹא אָבְדָה תִּקְוָתֵנוּ, We have not, will never, loose our hope… הַתִּקְוָה בַּת שְׁנוֹת אַלְפַּיִם, a Hope that transcends time itself…
God commands us on the High Holidays, Tzipita L’yeshua, “Choose Hope.” Choose life. Preserve it. Protect it. Nurture it. Because immortality, Rabbi Feinstein taught, immortality belongs to those who keep hope alive. Please bring your traditions, memories, hopes and dreams to this precious space and time… To these Yamim Noraim, these Days of Awe, these Days of Imagining, of Insisting on Hope.