WATCH: Rabbi Mosbacher's Sermon on Rosh Hashanah 5786
Hope in a Deep Field
Sermon by Rabbi Joel Mosbacher on Rosh Hashanah
September 23, 2025 / 1 Tishrei 5786
Sermon Text:
I remember the first telescope I ever received.
It was my big request for Chanukah when I was about 7 years old, and I remember looking up at the night sky from suburban Chicago, on a bone-chilingly cold December night.
I can still remember my dad showing me how to focus the telescope. I remember him being so patient with my impatience to make a world changing discovery, to discover a planet that had never been seen before.
Breaking news: we did not find one.
I remember thinking how amazing it was to see light through the telescope in places where, without it, I could only see darkness.
I began to read books about space travel. I obsessively watched movies and videos about the Mercury and Apollo and Space Shuttle launches.
I am proud that I have passed at least a little of that obsession on to our daughter Lili. She and I now talk about the latest goings on with rocket launches and Mars rovers, and more.
I wish my dad, Lili’s namesake Lester, were here to look into telescopes with Lili and me.
Of course, Lili and I are far from the first people– far from the first Jews– to be awe-inspired by the night sky.
If you look up into the heavens at night sometime when you’re outside of New York City, you will see the very same thing that the author of the biblical book of Job saw more than 2500 years ago– something so prominent and awe-inspiring that Job alludes to it twice as proof for the existence of God.1 Job looked up into the northern sky, and he saw a constellation he called Ahsh.
Later societies called it Ursa Major, Latin for the Big Bear.
Job, from a place of deep suffering, and pain and loss in his own life, still found awe in this image that seemed to him painted by God onto the sky.
I have to say that, when I first saw Ahsh through my Chanukah telescope, I was in awe, too.
Human beings, people of faith, ancient astrologers and, more recently, scientists and astronomers, have always looked to the sky with awe and wonder. And, at times when the sky is darkest, human beings have often found light in unexpected places.
In the early 1990s, when the Hubble Telescope was launched into space, scientists wanted to see what this technology could do. And so, they decided to start by pointing it at the darkest part of Ursa Major. As far as scientists knew thirty years ago, there was nothing there, so it was a good place to begin to calibrate the complex instruments on this new tool of intergalactic exploration.
One of the astronomers working on the Hubble Telescope team suggested pointing Hubble at this particularly dark patch of sky for 10 days straight, which was a kind of bold and ridiculous suggestion. Time with the telescope was very precious and very very expensive, so pointing it for 10 whole days at an area of the sky where the smartest scientists in the world “knew” that there was nothing to see seemed a waste of time and money. But that’s what NASA did.
For 10 days straight in December 1995, they pointed Hubble’s lenses at this dark spot in the heavens, and the result was very surprising. It turns out that the part of space that Hubble had been staring at had, in fact, thousands of galaxies in it- galaxies that each contain thousands of stars and, likely, tens of thousands of planets.
The image became known as the Hubble Deep Field.I don’t know about you, but to me, it looks like someone threw glitter on a black floor. You see big and small objects, greens, yellows, oranges, blues, whites and reds.
I don’t know exactly what Job felt when he looked up into the dark sky 2500 years ago, but I know that I felt a great sense of awe in early 1996 when NASA first released this photo.
And I felt a new sense of wonder just three years ago when NASA’s newest and largest telescope yet, the James Webb Space Telescope, looked at the same spot in the Big Bear, and saw the Deep Field to an even greater degree of detail.
And here’s a gratuitous and awe-inspiring other image from the James Webb Space Telescope called “Pillars of Creation” for all of you space nerds like me.
I listened to an interview recently2 with extragalactic astrophysicist Dr. Charity Woodrum, who studies the physical processes that make galaxies dim and sputter out.
Dr. Woodrum grew up in Oregon in a town called Canyonville. Growing up in a very rural area as she did, young Charity got a really good view of the clear night sky. She would go out into the backyard most nights when she grew up, partly to escape her deeply dysfunctional family, and partly because she was amazed by the thousands of galaxies she could see.
Her dream from an early age, was to work for NASA one day, but that was an audacious and seemingly out of reach goal for a poor kid from rural Oregon who had never met a scientist.
In the interview, Dr. Woodrum also reveals a personal story of devastating loss in her own life. In an almost unimaginable tragedy, her husband and young son were swept out to sea on the Oregon coast by a freak wave right in front of her in 2017. And there was nothing she or anyone could do to save them. Charity shares that horrifying story in the interview.
I listened through tears to Dr. Woodrum’s story, knowing how devastating and debilitating it can be for human beings to go through the experience of loss of all kinds, and how challenging it can be to come out on the other side.
As the interview continues, Dr. Woodrum also talks about her winding path to ultimately earning her PhD in astrophysics, and how she came to work at NASA on the James Webb Space Telescope, and how she made a groundbreaking discovery in the darkness of space, and how she ultimately started a foundation in the name of her son Woody, to help poor kids from rural areas like Canyonville, Oregon have the resources they need to go to college. As I listened, I was amazed by Charity’s resilience, amazed by what she discovered in the darkness of space.
Her story gave me strength in these challenging times for the Jewish people and for the world- so much so that I’ve invited Dr. Woodrum to share her painful and inspiring journey with the congregation this coming Friday night during our Shabbat Shuva service.
I know you come to shul a lot in these 2 weeks–please come Friday if you can!
Extragalactic astrophysicists like Dr. Woodrum study galaxies outside of our own, and they continue to look for light in the darkest places in the sky. And when Charity does this, she focuses on the red galaxies in particular.
The red orbs are dimming and dying galaxies, and Dr. Woodrum studies them, doing a kind of autopsy on them, trying to ascertain what made them fade towards galaxy death. She did this day after day, galaxy after galaxy, until one day, Dr. Woodrum observed something wholly unexpected; that in some dying red galaxies she observed, there was a rejuvenation of sorts taking place. There was new star formation happening where astronomers were convinced it should not and could not be.
It turns out that, when she stayed with it, when she looked long enough she could see that some of these fading red galaxies were coming back to life.
How does that happen?
Sometimes, she observed, the black hole in the center of these galaxies surges with an unexpected burst of energy that allows new stars to form. At other times, there’s a sudden inflow of gas from another galaxy passing nearby. And at still other times, a huge collision of galaxies eventually form one new and renewed galaxy.
Dr. Woodrum’s patient and persistent research uncovered the reality that dimming galaxies, long presumed to be at the end of their life, literally out of gas, can sometimes be renewed, even after long periods of decline.
This discovery surprised astronomers everywhere, and it got me thinking about what it might mean for us as individual human beings, and what message it might inspire for us as a community on this new year.
As I listened to Dr. Woodrum,I thought about the story from the Torah about the beginning of the world– the beginning of the world that we celebrate today on Rosh Hashanah.
As we know so well,on the first day of creation–God said: (say it with me!) “Let there be light.” But our Jewish sages wondered: What kind of light was this? After all, the sun and moon were not created until the fourth day.
The sages taught: the light on the first day was a different kind of light, a light so radiant and pure that it illuminated the entire world. And yet, God saw that that light could not remain in its fullness. It was too intense for an unready world. So God hid that light away, tucking it into the depths of each of God’s creations, to be revealed only at just the right moments when the world and its creatures most needed it.
If our sages were right, this feels like a moment when we need that light, don’t you think?
In the last year, in pastoral meetings and interactions I’ve had with so many of you, one fundamental question has come up again and again. And when I think about my own reflections in daily meditation and in therapy and in conversations with friends, I notice that the same question keeps arising in me, too.
The question is:“How will we ever get out of this?”
Sometimes the context of this questionhas to do with deep and painful personal struggles people are having– experiences of illness in their family circle, job loss, divorce, drifting from friends, and more.
Sometimes it arises from communal concerns around issues like antisemitism, about which I’ll have more to say next week.
Sometimes the question emerges around the profound and shocking undermining of the democratic norms that we have come to rely on in this country– norms that have been essential for Jews to thrive on these shores.
“How will we ever get out of this?” you and I have both been asking.
What happens when we’re burned out, when we feel like we’re fading away, losing our life force,like we can no longer stand to even hear what’s going on in the world, because our hearts are already so broken?
What happens when we as a community, as a people, as a nation, start to feel like perhaps all of our best days are behind us?
When terrible things happen to us individually or collectively– and so many of those things have happened to us in recent years– we sometimes grieve, we sometimes lose ourselves, we sometimes lash out with what little energy we have left against the people around us, against those who love us the most, against members of our own community, against the world, against God.
And who can blame us?
And when these terrible things happen to us, we might respond in one of two ways. And in my 27 years in the rabbinate, I have seen people respond in each way many times.
There is a version in which, traumatized by personal or communal loss, we begin to fade away as individuals.
Like a galaxy that is older than our own star system, we contractinto denial, anger, depression, hopelessness; we become a shell of the people we once were. We look into our own hearts, and we see nothing but the darkest, coldest place, with no light or promise of light to be found.
And so we stop looking; we stop seeking; we give up hope that things can get better, give up hope that we can make them better. Our light begins to flicker out.
The truth is, the world is an especially painful place right now. Members of our own community are sinking into that pain at this very moment. I know that, because you’ve shared your sacred stories with me. I am holding you in my prayers for strength and renewalon this New Year. It is indeedso hard right now, to see where the light will come fromin this dark time.
And yet, sometimes, there is another chapter after despair. The biblical Job lost his wealth, his family and friends, and his physical health. And yet, he still looked up into the sky and saw the light of Ahsh, the Big Bear.
And, in spite of all of the terrible things he had endured, Job went on. He came back to life– a life that looked nothing like the life he had envisioned, for sure, but life, nonetheless.
Charity Woodrum overcame a traumatic childhood, and then, as a new parent, endured the worst possible day, and yetshe fulfilled her dream of exploring galaxies beyond our own. And she’s still here. Despite it all.
I’ve had my own personal experience of the sudden death of my father, and yet, I’m still, somehow, most days, a person of faith in God and in humanity.
I have pastored thousands of people in my rabbinate who have faced the darkest nights of their souls and have come out on the other side– scarred, for sure; changed forever, and, having found new meaning, connection and purpose in their lives.
Not always, but sometimes, after we sit for a while in the despair and darkness of the totally legitimate question, “how will we ever get out of this?” we find well-springs of light and new life from within or without.
Like an internal burst of energy from a once-dying galaxy, we might find sources of hope and possibility from within our own souls, finding ourselves re-entering life– not in the same place, for sure, but in a new place, driven by some inner strength deep within us that we did not know we had. On these holidays, if we look into the darkest places of our own soul, painful and painstaking as that might be, we might find light that has been there all along.
Or, we might find our inner flames relit by other people. So many of youhave told me stories like this. Some of you have found yourselves surrounded, embraced by friends and family, co-workers, who refused to let you implode altogether, who made you tea and sat with you in silence, who stayed with you in your ugliest cries, who refused to take it personally when your anger overcame your compassion, who saw strengths and gifts in you that perhaps you could no longer see in yourself.
The spark of light in other people,perhaps placed there in the time of creation of the universe, can make it possible for us to first survive, and then, just maybe, someday, maybe, to thrive again.
Having found ourselves smushed seemingly randomly into the same sanctuary on a busy corner in Manhattan with a thousand other souls, I hope that we each might find ourselves embraced by a congregation whose commitment to every member can help bring us back to life again after the time we needed to just sit in the darkness, to be with the pain.
May we find ourselves surrounded by other people, even people with whom we don’t see eye to eye politically, who don’t try to pretend that they know what we feel, but who do know what loss and pain feel like to them, and who also know that the worst thing for a soul in grief and despair, or for a community in grief and despair, is to leave that soul or that community feeling alone, out of life-giving hope.
We might even find ourselves connecting to something larger than humanity– call it faith, call it Mother Nature, call it God, call it whatever language is accessible to you– and, if we do,we might emerge from loss and anger and despair to find spiritual connection and comfort and inspiration to carry on– perhaps with unexpected groundedness for the next chapter of our journey.
When fading galaxies interact, life-giving nutrients can flow between them. Elements as old as the universe itself can flow from a star-forming galaxy to a dimming one and reignite star formation.
So too, untapped inner strength, other individual human beings, a community of people, or the Holy One of Blessing can help us find the way in the darkness– not because they have all of the answers, or because they can fix all the brokenness or undo all the hurts that have been done to us or replace all the losses we’ve experienced, but because a spark of light in them can reignite the spark of light in us.
Even after tragic and heartbreaking loss, even in a world gone mad- a world that feels legitimately scary, we can find our spirits lifted, our hopes reignited from a dark place from which we never thought we would emerge.
To me, the world right now feels a little like it did when I first looked up on a cold cold December night in Chicago with my dad when I was 7 years old with a new Chanukah telescope.
It feels like that dark part of the night sky in Ursa Major that Job looked up to, that Charity Woodrum looked up to,and improbably found new life in the years after the worst days imaginable.
Rising anti-semitism, a seemingly forever war in Israel and Gaza, and the tenuousness of our democracy make me wonder whether all of our best days are behind us as a people, as a nation, as a world.
Some days, I’ll admit, I just want to curl up into a ball.
But just as astrophysicists used the Hubble telescope to find light in the darkest part of the sky, and just as Charity Woodrum discovered previously unthinkable renewed life in dying galaxies, we, too can find and create light in our darkest moments, and in the darkest moments of those around us. We can be a source of strength and rejuvenation for one other.
On Rosh Hashanah, as we step into a new year, we stand in the tension between darkness and light. We know the brokenness of the world—our personal shadows, the pain of our people, the fear that the future may hold.
But our tradition insists that even when the world feels shrouded, the intense light of the first day of creation is not gone. It is hidden, waiting to be discovered. Every act of kindness, every step toward justice, every word of forgiveness we speak—these are ways we seek and uncover that light.
How will we ever get out of this?
It’s simple. And it’s hard. And we will do it, because we can, and we must. There’s only one way: together.
Together, may we write a future in the book of life filled with more light than we’ve ever seen.
Shana tova tikateivu.
Job 9:9, 38:32
Radiolab, “Galaxy Quenching,” August 1, 2025
