Sermon Text:

I will never forget my first High Holy Days of rabbinical school. I had moved to Jerusalem just two months before, and the sense of excitement in the community was palpable.

My classmates and I dressed in white, as is the custom in Israel, and gathered together in a large room with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the old city. The view was spectacular. The music was incredibly moving. And the liturgy was powerful and thought-provoking.

However, what I will truly never forget is the sound of the shofar: the haunting and triumphant call of the ram’s horn that reverberated in my ears as I looked over the ancient city of my people, the place where the Temple once stood.

When I hear the shofar today, I still think about that moment. Looking at the pale, smooth, Jerusalem stone in the distance, wondering what our ancestors must have heard on Rosh Hashanah generations ago.

There is truly no sound that signals the High Holy Days quite like the shofar. We begin sounding the shofar once a day during the month of Elul, as a wake up call for our minds and bodies to do the important work of introspection about our personal habits, relationships, and work.

Then, like an impatient New York City driver, we sound the shofar 100 times on Rosh Hashanah, a constant and persistent reminder that the work is not yet done, that the gates of life are open and it is up to us to make amends before they close.

At the end of the Neilah service on Yom Kippur, we will hear the shofar once again.

The shofar serves as a bookend to these holidays – calling us to attention before Rosh Hashanah begins, and sealing the envelope of our time together as Yom Kippur ends. Its cry reverberates in our hearts. And it begs the question – How did it come to be that we use a ram’s horn to spur the most essential reflection in our tradition, and what does it signify?

There are many different teachings as to why we blow the shofar. But this year, as we approach the one year anniversary of October 7, As we reflect on the pain and suffering of the past year, And we watch in fear as Iran sends missiles into Israel, one particular Midrash stood out to me.

The Rabbis imagine the scene after the Akeidah, after Isaac’s near-fatal trip up Mount Moriah which we will read later this morning.

Moments after being saved by the angel, Isaac rushes back to his home and finds his mother, Sarah, waiting for him. She asks where he’s been, and he recounts what just happened. How God put Abraham to the test, asking him to sacrifice his son, and how Abraham all but complied, lifting his knife to kill his son until an angel stepped in to stop him, and showed him a ram to sacrifice in Isaac’s place.

Sarah is shocked. She can barely find the words to respond. “Were it not for the angel, you would already be slaughtered?” she stammers to her son.

“Yes.”

At that, the Rabbis say, Sarah screamed six times, corresponding to six shofar blasts. And according to the midrash, she had not finished doing this when, consumed by her grief, she died.¹

The Rabbis imagine that Sarah’s cries are the cries of the shofar, connecting the ram that stood in Isaac’s place to the cries that come from her mouth. Cries that are full of pain and heartbreak.

This year, as I hear the blasts of the shofar, I deeply empathize with Sarah’s intense grief, her inability to endure knowing what she knows, her “unhinging” in the words of Torah scholar Avivah Zornberg.²

The shofar symbolizes Sarah’s distress; she weeps until she can no longer. 

And so it could be for each of us. Imagine if, like our ancestor Sarah, we heard our own cries in the sound of the shofar this morning, Our own wailing and grief as we think about the horrific attack against our people one year ago, and the ongoing wars and violence throughout the region.

Tekiyah

I weep for the hostages. For those who are still in captivity, and for those who have been rescued, only to come back to a world that they no longer recognize.

For the Bibas family: Yarden, Shiri, Ariel, and the almost-two-year-old Kfir, a boy not much older than my own. Full of life and potential and joy.

I weep for Hersh, who survived 11 months in captivity only to be killed days before the IDF arrived to rescue him.  And for his mother, Rachel, who did everything she could to bring him home, and now has to endure a reality where her son does not come back.

I weep for Noam, who, after two and a half months in captivity, ravaged and beaten down, came back to a world without his parents.

And for those who remain in Gaza in darkness, wondering where the Israeli soldiers are to rescue them.

Shevarim

I weep for the Israelis murdered in their homes. For the families who thought they were safe living in their kibbutzim and moshavim.

For those, like Vivian Silver, who worked for peace, who believed in peaceful co-existence with their Palestinian neighbors. 

And I weep for those murdered at the Nova festival. For the kids like Aner who just wanted to be kids, to dance and enjoy themselves, who never got the chance to grow up.

T’ruah

I weep for the fear that we now find ourselves in, and the sense of security that once was here in our own country.

For the times that we’ve taken off or tucked in our Jewish necklaces, afraid of confrontation on the streets, the moments when we’ve realized our friends are no longer our friends, and the times that we avoided protests and encampments on our college campuses, afraid of the large group of people shouting violent words to those around them. 

And I weep for our congregants, friends, and relatives who have been harassed in the streets and feel scared at work just because they are Jewish.

Tekiyah

I weep for my Israeli family and friends whose lives will never be the same, and the Israelis who I don’t know, but are my family nonetheless.

For those who believe they were sold a false promise of security, who trusted that their Military Intelligence was the best in the world.

For those who, years after their army service, were sent back into war and terror, leaving behind spouses and children.

I weep for the generation of Israeli children who should never have known such atrocities, who finally understand a fraction of the trauma that their grandparents and great-grandparents endured during the Shoah.

And because our hearts are big enough to hold more than one thing at the same time, as Rabbi Mosbacher has taught us, I weep for the innocent Gazans who have suffered and been a casualty of this war.

I weep. And it seems to me that many of you weep with me.

But Sarah’s story is not the only proof text we have for the shofar. We find it too at Sinai, where the Israelites receive the Ten Commandments. Here, at Sinai, the Shofar symbolizes peoplehood, covenant, and hope for the future.

When they first hear the jolting sound of the shofar, the Israelites are afraid, as many of us are today. Afraid of God’s voice and of a future they can’t imagine.

But the people soon answer, na’aseh v’nishmah, we will do and we will hear. They take their fear and turn it into faith and action.

In one midrash, the Rabbis tell us that the sound of the shofar is a promising sign for the Jewish people, citing other times throughout the Hebrew Bible where the shofar signals good things to come for people of Israel.³

And in another midrash, we learn that the very same ram whose horn became the shofar from Mt Sinai, also produced another shofar which was “destined to be sounded in the world to come.”⁴ 

For these rabbis, the sound of the shofar is directly connected not to grief or wailing, but to a future full of hope and redemption. And so it could be for each of us.

Imagine if, like our ancestors at Mount Sinai, we heard a sign of promise and hope in the sound of the shofar this morning.

Tekiyah

I hope for an end to the war and an end to the violence. For families to come back together and pick up the pieces of their lives that have been strewn all over the floor. For Israelis and Palestinian civilians to find meaning and joy again, and to look at one another and see not a sworn enemy, but the potential for reconciliation and peace. 

Shevarim

I hope for a resilient Am Yisrael, for the strength and unity of the people of Israel. For more days like New York City’s Israel parade, when Shaaray Tefila members and I walked side by side with all kinds of New York Jews – Reform, secular, Conversative, and Orthodox Jews from Manhattan, Brooklyn, Westchester, and Albany.

On all other days we prayed in different sanctuaries and honored different customs, but on that day we walked together for Israel and for the hostages.

T’ruah

I hope for a return to laughter. And levity. And a sense of freedom and ease that once was. 

For Ariel and Kfir to come home and play dress up and make funny sounds with their action figures.

For Jewish kids on the streets of Tel Aviv and New York to ride the city buses without their parents being afraid.

For the biggest news of the day to be about the latest baseball game – the Mets winning their first playoff game – and not the latest person confirmed dead.

Tekiyah

I hope for a state of Israel that is existentially and physically secure, that lives up to its founders’ dream of being a “country for the benefit of all its inhabitants,”⁵ and a light to the nations. For shared liberation. For a place where all Jews can go and feel at home. For a nation that is democratic, innovative, and proud of its diversity.

When we hear the shofar during these holidays, we have a choice.

Like Sarah, we can let the anguish and the grief consume and paralyze us. The calls of the shofar can signal our collapse from the weight of our sorrow and heartache. It would be very understandable. We’ve been through so much.

Or, like our ancestors at Mount Sinai, the shofar can help us imagine a different future. A time when the covenant of our tradition takes shape and revelation happens for us all.

In many ways, grief and hope are inextricably connected. We often cannot get to hope without first weeping, without grieving the things that we have lost. But once we have grieved, as so many of us have over this past year, and continue to do, it is up to us where we go next. Moving to hope is a choice.

And I want to be very clear that the hope I’m speaking about is not a passive, blind optimism. No, this hope is active, and it is inherent to our tradition.

We Jews, according to the ancient prophet Zechariah, are prisoners of hope.⁶ You might not feel hopeful at this moment, But we would not be sitting here on Rosh Hashanah, in this sanctuary today, without a sense of hope that is alive and well. 

The High Holy Days are rooted in a vision of hope – that we can change, that we can do better, that we can make amends. And when we engage in the act of teshuvah, solemn repentance, we actively move away from the grief of the past and toward the hope of a more promising future.

As psychologist and Jewish scholar David Arnow explains in his book on hope, “Hope reflects our embrace of the possibility of a particular, deeply desired future, and hope fuels our actions to help bring it about.”⁷ Hope helps us imagine the world we want to see, and then gives us the strength to work toward that world.

My hope activates my desire to work towards a state of Israel that is strong, Jewish, and democratic. My hope compels me to say that a deal is possible, that we can bring home the hostages and keep Israel secure.

My hope helps me imagine a Jewish nation that represents my values as a Reform Jew, and then calls me to support organizations like the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, and the Israel Religious Action Center.

My hope gives me the strength to wake up in the morning and come to work every single day, so that my son knows what it looks like to be a proud leader of the Jewish people.

When we experience the great tests of our time, when we feel beaten down and full of despair, as so many of us do now, hope demands that we get up and keep moving, no matter how slowly, because it is only in that movement that we find new possibilities. When we hope, we can transform how we see ourselves and our world.

So the question remains. In the post October 7 world in which we find ourselves today, do we as a people define ourselves based on our grief? Or do we define ourselves based on our hope?

This isn’t the first time that the Jewish people have faced this existential question. Since the Holocaust, there has been debate about whether we as a people should be guided by trauma or by revelation.

In his famous 1982 essay entitled, “Auschwitz or Sinai?” American-Israeli philosopher Rabbi David Hartman asks the same question – how do we orient ourselves as Jews? And what is the consequence of moving forward from grief or from hope?

He argues: “I believe it is destructive to make the Holocaust the dominant organizing category of modern Jewish history and of our national renewal and rebirth.

“It is both politically and morally dangerous for our nation to perceive itself essentially as the suffering remnant of the Holocaust.”

He continues, “The model of Sinai awakens the Jewish people to the awesome responsibility of becoming a holy people. At Sinai, we discover the absolute demand of God; we discover who we are by what we do. Sinai calls us to action, to moral awakening, to living constantly with challenges of building a moral and just society which mirrors the kingdom of God in history. Sinai creates humility and openness to the demands of self-transcendence. In this respect, it is the antithesis of the moral narcissism that can result from suffering and from viewing oneself as a victim.”⁸

Since its publication, this essay has resurfaced over and over again. And it feels particularly relevant in the moment where we currently find ourselves. With all of the tragedies that we have been through as a people, it can be easy to tend towards despair and moral self-righteousness, a resolute certainty that we know what is right and what is wrong.

But Hartman reminds us of the danger that entails. Only when we orient ourselves toward Sinai, toward hope and revelation, do we remember that we are constantly striving to understand and live out our covenant with God in the world. After all, the Israelites could not enter the Promised Land until they cast off “the mantle of the suffering slave.”⁹

Perhaps the same is true for us.

Hartman’s words remind us that the way in which we respond to the events in our history has a lasting impact, not only for ourselves but also for the generations to come. “We must define who we are by what we do,” he insists, “and not by any obsession with the long and noble history of Jewish suffering.”¹⁰

When grief becomes our defining narrative, we see everything through a lens of fear, loss, and victimhood.

But when hope becomes our defining narrative and our driving force, we can envision the world as it could be, and we can work to make it that way, as partners with God in creation. This year, as we hear the wails of the shofar, we are called to make a choice.

We will always mourn the trauma of October 7th. But we will survive as a people stronger than ever because of our hope.

During the Holocaust, Jews in Bergen Belsen risked everything they had to smuggle a shofar into the camp on Rosh Hashanah. In an interview conducted many years later, the daughter of the man who blew the shofar there recalled:

“Nothing had changed. The barbed wires remained fixed in their places. Only in the heart did something stir … hope … hope that someday freedom would bring down the barbed wire fences of Bergen-Belsen and of humanity.”¹¹

As Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl wrote, “Everything can be taken from [humankind] but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”¹²

Even in our people’s darkest moments, devoid of dignity and agency, we have sustained a hope that the world could look different. And the shofar can stir our hearts, and help us get there.

Tekiyah G’dolah

May it be a year filled with hope for us all. 

Shanah Tovah.

1 Vayikra Rabbah 20:2 as seen in The Beginning of Desire by Avivah Zornberg

2 The Beginning of Desire, Avivah Zornberg

3 Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, Tractate Bachodesh 4:7

4 Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer 31:13

5 https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-declaration-of-the-establishment-of-the-state-of-israel

6 Zechariah 9:12

7 David Arnow, Choosing Hope

8 https://www.hartman.org.il/auschwitz-or-sinai/

9 Ibid

10 Ibid

11 https://davidarnowauthor.com/2022/09/01/on-viktor-frankl-and-hope/

12 Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor E. Frankl