Finding Hope Within Great Suffering, Rosh Hashanah 2024
Lay person led Rosh Hashanah services with Mending Minyan havurah in Edgerton Park, New Haven, CT - October 2024.
I was asked to offer the Rosh Hashanah D’var (sermon) as part of the Mending Minyan havurah Jewish New Year services in New Haven, CT, October 2024. Below are the words I found to share on this day in this time of great suffering.
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Rosh hashanah calls us to welcome the start of the new year with sweetness. To cut open an apple, dip it in honey, and let the taste fill our being - or we might select a piece of candied quince or a luscious date - and welcome in the sweetness that nature and life has to offer us. It is truly a gift to have this sweetness to taste and this beautiful ritual to welcome in this time of new beginnings. But such a simple and seemingly uncontroversial request - to welcome sweetness - can at times fill us with great conflict.
For those of us deeply attuned to the injustices and suffering in the world, this invitation to celebrate and welcome sweetness can sometimes feel unwarranted. Genocides, oppression and the severe exploitation of people and the planet have been present throughout our lives - but this year has felt particularly difficult. It has been devastating to witness the unfolding of genocide on the Palestinian people, and now a regional war, while the leaders of our country, white nationalists, mainstream Jewish leaders, and many in our community and extended families support it. The massacres in Sudan, deaths of Israeli hostages, the escalating climate crisis, mass incarceration… there is just so much suffering. --- Despite my understanding of systems of oppression, the power of mass organizing and the potential of deep relationship building to bring about transformative change, this daily escalation of violence and the steady undoing of human and environmental rights policies in our country can leave me, and I think many of us with a feeling of desperation and despair. It can feel like the urgent fight to end this genocide and other injustices is all that matters, and that sweetness, while a nice sentiment is not so important given the work at hand - or maybe it just makes us feel guilty for celebrating while others die or suffer.
When I feel this way, I often think of my grandparents who met and fell in love in a Nazi death camp. How they could find and feel love while witnessing the extermination of their families and starvation and murder of people all around them is mind boggling - and also, it is TRUE - they did. I have always thought it was that sweet love and connection that helped them to have hope, to have the bravery to fight and escape and actually survive. So yes it is not only ok to welcome this sweetness, it is VITAL for us to do so in this life we are so blessed to have.
I invite you to turn your gaze up to the sky - to look up and imagine a big crescent smile spread across the blue sky - staring down at you. Take a breath. Now feel a smile spread across your mouth, - feel the corners of your eyes lift in a smile - - Now feel the smile spread into your mouth and throat and breathe it in. Yes, you can welcome this joy and sweetness in. We must welcome this sweetness in. It strengthens and fortifies us to take these first steps into the new year.
Rosh Hashanah is a time of new beginnings. A time to reflect, ask forgiveness and contemplate how to do better in the year to come. But how do we learn to do and be better? The dominant society around us is so out of balance and has been for so long. It teaches us that some people are considered more human and deserving than others, that nature is ours to use and exploit, that division and opposition is the norm, and that consumption and excess are what success looks like. Where can we turn for teachings that help us to bring the world into balance, where all beings have the opportunity to thrive. While there are some amazing humans, movements, and spiritual traditions that serve as great teachers - when I am overwhelmed with the suffering in the world, I often look to nature for help.
Sometimes I stand at a bend in the river noticing how the river finds the path of least resistance to get where it’s going and how the seemingly gentle water has the power to wear down the hardest of rocks, millions of years old. Such an important teacher.
Trees are also particularly helpful to me. I don’t imagine them to feel greed, self doubt or guilt. Isn’t that beautiful?! They stretch their arms up to the sky with certainty and take only what they need from the soil, but nothing more. Their scale can dwarf me, making my worries feel like small human problems, reminding me that there is much more to life than what we humans think and create.
Let us feel our feet rooted into the earth, touching by extension the roots of these trees around us. Close your eyes for a moment and feel your breath. In -- and slowly out…. In and slowly out…. Now open your eyes and look at these trees around us. Feel your breath, in and out…. As you exhale - the trees are inhaling your breath - as they exhale, you are inhaling their breath. A beautiful interconnected and interdependent relationship of humans and nature. We are part of a natural ecosystem, which when in balance - each part takes only what it needs, and gives back enough for the needs of others. How can we take these teachings to build a world that actually supports this interconnection and interdependence - collective liberation for all people and all beings?
The milpa - the three sisters garden cultivated by peoples native to this continent also teaches us about each being doing it’s small part and offering it’s talents for the good of all: corn standing supportive and tall, beans winding up their stalks taking nitrogen from air and fixing it back in the soil, squash spreading her wide leaves along the ground, keeping weeds at bay and soil from being sun scorched. This is a beautiful teaching for our families, communities and movements - how do we each do our piece of the work and find others whose work compliments our own. Each choosing the role we are best suited for and bearing sweet fruits from our efforts. No one being, doing too much or too little, and no one unsupported.
As we step into this new year, entering the 10 days of awe between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, how can we turn to nature to learn how to manifest our best selves, personally and collectively? The machines and horrors of war, capitalism and all systems of oppression are so big and strong it is necessary to have a teacher as vast and foundational as the whole natural world.
The Hebrew word Teshuvah is often translated as repentance, however, the root of the word is actually “to return”. Teshuva which we are instructed to do during this sacred time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur can be seen as a RETURN to living in right relationship: where our actions are nourishing rather than destructive, and when we make mistakes and cause harm, we hasten to repair and restore. Judaism is an earth-based tradition with our days and rituals determined by the cycles of nature. We can see Teshuva as a profound return to the foundational teachings of creation and nature and all that it can show us about how to repair ourselves and our world.
On this new year's day we have the opportunity to envision a new world to live into - one that is the best version of ourselves both personally and collectively. Let us envision a world that no longer uses the tools of violence, punishment, exploitation and oppression to build a society. Let us envision a world that manifests b'tzelem Elohim - the Jewish belief that each person is made in the image of god, that all people are valued equally. - - Let us walk out the door of the new year and take steps to ensure that all people have a right to their land, food, water, culture, peoplehood, and a safe home. May we see an end to the occupation and genocide of the Palestinian people, and an end to poverty across the world. May we see successful protections for reproductive, gender and environmental rights, and a forwarding of all movements for justice. And may we be strategic in our actions to keep a fascist out of the office of President so that all of this work of collective liberation is more feasible.
As we step into the new year, let us remember to find some sweetness each day to make this all easier - maybe it’s enjoying a perfectly ripe berry, cuddling with a child or beloved, a great compassionate conversation or a song to lighten our spirits in the year to come.
I will end with a poem from beloved friend, gardener, and liberation worker Kristiana Smith
I ask my tomatoes,
“Who are you to thrive when so much around you dies?”
I see the roses and lavender resplendent in blossoms and ask,
“How do spring flowers have new life in autumn?”
My sunflowers shout and buzz and I ask,
“Why have you picked the season of the harvest to dance?”
With one voice they answer,
“What is hope but that which blooms in the face of doom?
How will you survive the winter if you forget what is possible come spring?
If we can inspire as so much wilts - is it not our responsibility to do so?
And then with a smile one only feels in a garden they say, “Isn’t this what we have taught you little one? Do you not dance inside of the cracks of terror with us?”
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May we all have a sweet start to this new year.
L’Shana Tova
October 4, 2024
