Kol Nidre

ready i'm ready good to see everyone good to be back here with you we are going to start with minha before we get to call needre so lee is going to lead us in minha on page 431 um it's customary to put on a talit aftermath for cole nidre um and i think that's all we need to know for right now so page 4318 uh [Music] foreign hallelujah we rise on page four hundred thirty-two yet kardashian is [Music] [Music] we continue with the first blessings of the amidah page 433 [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] hallelujah we continue silently yes uh hmm oh um [Music] um so if you haven't finished dabbing please continue we join together again for kaddish shalem on page 441 please rise [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] music [Music] [Music] [Music] you can please be seated except those of you joining me for mourinho on page 443. [Music] please be seated one very important announcement before we continue with our service there's a very important principle of halacha of jewish law that god cannot give us commandments that would do us harm so while there are commandments that are given to the whole community if a certain commandment would cause you some sort of physical harm you are actually not permitted to fulfill that commandment it's very important for us to remember today on yom kippur if you are not able to fast please don't if you are not able to stand up for any reason at any point in the service please don't and while i have to insist that you wear a mask over your mouth and nose in the sanctuary please feel free to get up take frequent mask breaks go outside get some fresh air walk around come back in it's a long day folks you have to take care of your body even as we're also here taking care of our spirit so please remember that's not cheating that's not anything bad that is in fact what we are supposed to be doing on this day so before we uh before we go on to cool nidre i just want to acknowledge that since we last spoke we had an upsetting act of vandalism here on our property sure you've heard about it um thursday morning one of our very kind and caring neighbors called the framingham police to report some graffiti scratched into the blue sign at the top of our driveway framingham police responded quickly and appropriately the vandalism was reported to the cjp security team and to the adl there are no known threats to our safety at this time and we continue to maintain our strict security procedures and so although we believe that this is a petty act that poses no immediate threat i have been adamant that we do not dismiss this as thoughtless or ignorant whoever carved their anger into our sign chose these symbols knowing they would be hurtful to us as jews they knew what they were doing and they were responsible for their actions but more importantly i am so moved to share with you that the voices of love are louder than this very small voice of hate i have received every form of communication from everybody in the city from every colleague neighbor and city official and i'm overwhelmed by their love and their offers of emotional and material support we continue to live rich jewish lives we are a vibrant and resilient community and we will not allow this act of malice to detract from the sweetness of our new year so with that in mind we move on we move forward into cole nydre we will in a moment we will open the ark and rise on page 204 and it is our custom to invite all past presidents to join us on the bma we are not going to do that this year we decided that the loudest most uh enthusiastic cantorial moment of the liturgical year was not the time to have a crowded bema so i am going to open the ark on their behalf but i want to take a moment to acknowledge all of the presidents current past and hopefully future who make this place what it is so we thank them very much we rise and we open the ark on page 204. [Music] [Music] [Music] a [Music] receive [Music] mmm [Music] [Music] i'm [Music] we forgive not because we believe that what was done was unimportant but because we are prepared to put aside our anger long enough to hear words which reflect remorse and regret long enough to begin to believe that people have the potential to grow we continue with cole nidre on page 205. [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] [Music] on [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] ah [Music] oh [Music] [Music] oh your own [Music] in [Applause] me [Music] [Music] [Music] ah [Music] [Music] yay [Music] oh [Music] is [Music] i [Music] [Music] pouring [Music] oh [Music] your three [Music] three [Music] rey [Music] [Music] ah [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] the ah [Music] [Music] no [Music] [Music] your whole [Music] [Music] ah [Music] [Music] [Music] m wow [Music] [Music] is [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] it is my pleasure to invite our esteemed president diane wilbert to the bema for a few remarks [Music] awesome [Music] an attack on any faith is an attack on all our faiths barack obama anti-semitism is a noxious weed that should be cut out and has no place in america william howard taft hate it has caused a lot of problems in the world but has not solved one yet maya angelou racial prejudice anti-semitism or hatred of anyone with different beliefs has no place in the human mind or heart billy graham there is always something you can do rena finder i had planned to talk tonight about our annual strength to strength campaign and our need to increase volunteerism maybe i'll circle back to those toward the end but right now i feel the need to talk about the senseless act of vandalism that took place here at tbs last week as you all know by now someone carved a pair of swastikas in our blue sign at the top of the driveway it's not clear how long they had been there we have no idea who did it we may never find out it may have been kids maybe not whoever did it we can't write it off as trivial or oh that's just kids because whoever did this knew enough to know what they were doing they knew the connection between judaism and that awful symbol of hate hate may not have been the intention but they may never realize how strong that image is for the jewish people they probably knew it was wrong but for them it was a minor incident for us it has a major impact and it can't be taken lightly we know anti-semitism exists we know occurrences of anti-semitism are on the rise but it still shocks us when it occurs in our own backyard in our home it's surreal this is something we see on the news we shake our heads we we are disgusted we feel sad but we kind of still don't expect it to happen to us but it did and it's disturbing and unsettling we don't really know what to do we don't know what to say our friends reach out to us and still we don't have much of a response we feel harmed unsteady but we are resilient and soon the troubling feeling will fade will always stay with us but it won't be hanging so heavily over our heads we will go on being publicly and proudly jewish we will pray here we will celebrate here we will gather here we will make jewish life happen here we will build a sukkah have you guys seen the sukkah yeah oh my goodness from what i heard it was the largest number of volunteers and was done in record time so we built a sukkah but we will have dinner around it we're having a dinner next friday night please rsvp we will have shalom pet shalom flex and that's this saturday by the way we will educate our children we will have meetings we will have events we will have celebrations and yes we will donate and we will volunteer see i told you i'd come back to that so let's crush it this year let's show whoever did this to our sign and every anti-semitic fool out there that acts like this will not destroy us so yes give to strength the strength if you can manage it give more than you have in the past we've got a lot of work to do around here and unfortunately our dues just don't cover it all and just so you don't think that we're always asking you for money we always want your body your mind and a little of your time too we have a wonderful core of volunteers but we are being stretched too thin so think about your talents your skills what you do for a living is there something that you could do around here to help out we need volunteers dinners events phone calls show bodies marketing ritual education security young family social action youth we need as many of you as we can get to give just a little bit so please whether it's this last week's incident that moves you to give or whether it's something else please consider helping your donation financial or time will make a difference and help us to continue as the vibrant resilient community that we all know we are thank you [Music] yeah diane it is it has been my pleasure to spend my first two years here working under the mentorship of our immediate past president evie kinser shori and it's now my great pleasure to continue that work with diane wilpert so many thanks to you both i have just a few words about what we're doing here this evening this whole project of cole nidre in my second semester of rabbinical school i studied the book of shmot the book of exodus with my teacher my rabbi art green i'm only one sentence into this sermon but you might be thinking rabbi why are we talking about the book of exodus today is yom kippur not pessa don't worry i know but i learned the most important lesson about yom kippur in this class that ostensibly tells us the story of passover so recall the passage about the israelites standing at the foot of mount sinai the mountain is enveloped by smoke and fire the people hear the sounds of 100 shofars echoing off the mountainside god begins to speak but after hearing just the first sentence the israelites are too overwhelmed to continue hearing god's voice so they send moshe up the mountain to receive the rest of the commandments on their behalf he has unfortunately gone so long that the people grow afraid and they turn to a golden calf to comfort them when moses finally does return he sees the golden calf and he is so angry that he throws the tablets of the commandments onto the ground and these beautiful tablets which god wrote god's self with god's own finger are shattered in the dust after settling the israelites and assuaging god's anger moshe returns to the top of the mountain to write a new set of tablets this time instead of being inscribed by god's finger they are written in moshe's hand forty days later moshe returns once more to the israelite camp today yom kippur is the anniversary of that date today is the date on which moshe returned to us and on which we received the second set of tablets we placed the new set in the ark of the covenant alongside the shattered pieces of the original and the lesson i learned from rabbi greene is why why would we carry the shattered tablets of the ten commandments a reminder of our most grievous sin in the ark along with the holy re-written tablets lest you think that moshe made an error a midrash teaches us that this is one of three actions that moshe took of his own initiative and of which god later approved so why why did they think that it was a good idea to carry around the broken pieces of our biggest sin god and moses knew that the broken pieces of the original tablets would serve as an important reminder to the israelites not to shame them not to scare them but to help them move forward by doing better than they had in the past while the tablets continued to remind the children of israel to strive for excellence they were also an important reminder to god and to moses about what the children were capable of god and moses had perhaps expected too much of the children when they left them alone for 40 whole days so soon after the trauma of leaving egypt god moshe and the children of israel are not the first or the only to hold on to something broken for the sake of the future the japanese art of kinsugi translated as golden joinery is a craft and a philosophy that has been practiced for hundreds of years the basic premise is that the artist repairs broken pieces of pottery with gold or silver or platinum to highlight rather than hide the seams of the break this highlight is a physical and visible encouragement to embrace change even the kind of change that we did not want or expect the cracks are not flaws they are just events in the life of an object and illuminating them in this beautiful way indicates our acceptance of life's difficulties and it's an acknowledgement that our difficult experiences contribute to who we are this same concept also turns up in our own anatomy people who strength train literally tear apart their muscles and the enhanced tone comes from the body rebuilding the tissue that's why the kids these days call it shredding when they lift certainly we should never purposely cause harm to our bodies but the lesson is that one type of tissue has to disintegrate in order for the next set of muscles to emerge and difficult moments in our past can also contribute to future success in her memoir the beauty in breaking dr michelle harper writes about how her traumatic childhood prepared her to respond to patients as an emergency room physician as she explained in a recent interview the pain of my childhood is that there wasn't a rescue option this gave me the opportunity as i was growing up to explore and to heal and to think to myself i want to be part of a safety net for other people when she eventually became a doctor her own experiences with violence made her even more aware of the terrible ways that people can treat one another and at the same time more compassionate toward the patients who came under her care as a result of such violence returning to our own tradition the shattered tablets are not the only example of keeping something broken as we walk boldly into the future you might remember the hanukkah story the greeks captured the temple and turned it into a shrine for their own gods when the maccabees went to rededicate the temple they knew they could no longer use the stone that the greeks had defiled with their pagan rituals but they didn't throw it away they kept it because they knew that these stones were imbued with spiritual and historical significance and when king herod renovated the temple a hundred years later he built a special room to hold these stones there was no practical purpose for them but they were deeply meaningful and informative as the jews of that era looked to the future all of these stories and philosophies these broken tablets the broken pottery the anatomy of our own bodies the preservation of the altar all of these remind us that our most tragic losses can also be the catalyst to some of our most significant changes as beth tells randall in a recent touching episode of this is us it is the tragedies that define our lives they are they are the fence posts on which the rest of our lives hang look at what you hung on your fence post her point i think is that really sad bad terrible things can happen it's just part of the human condition and there isn't a lot we can do about it but there is a lot we can do about how we respond it's up to us to decide how we build the fences in between in our best moments this allows us to transcend our past without denying it the children of israel kept the broken tablets so that they and the generations that followed would always remember the most important mitzvah ani hashem eloquecha i am the lord your god they didn't deny the sin of the golden calf in order to overcome it in fact the constant reminder of this sin is the very thing that continuously motivated them to do better while loss may lead to change the inverse is also true change may lead to loss and we have to be prepared to let things go if we want better for the future sometimes we're not as prepared as we think we are and this is what keeps us from moving forward in fact psychologist lori gottlieb suggests that we cannot experience change without loss and this is why so often people say that they want change but stay exactly the same but for us as spiritual seekers our feelings of discomfort or anger or anxiety can be useful signposts for learning so let me ask does this feel true for you as you consider the changes you want to see in your life this year maybe you find it useful to consider what about these changes do you like do you find comfortable what about these changes do you find difficult and is that discomfort really a bad thing perhaps some of these things that feel like losses won't be so terrible or really are terrible now but might grow into beautiful things in the future many things may have broken in our lives over the last year and a half and while we never wish this brokenness on ourselves or others we can take a lot from what we have done to rebuild as we reflect on cole nidre all of our broken promises from the past year and all of our aspirations for the year to come we know we've broken some of them on our own we know our circumstances have broken some of our promises but we need not fear that brokenness as we recite the words of col nidre we ask god not to hold our promises against us and we have every reason to believe that god will heed this request if the israelites can be forgiven for their most egregious sin building the golden calf right after hearing the prohibition against idols we have hoped that we can be forgiven for anything we will carry the pieces of whatever we broke and if we do it right those pieces will remind us of how far we have come how strong we have been and how we will be able to face the future i wish you all a sweet year and be sealed for sweetness in the book of life over the next 24 hours we will continue with the mario service which you can find on page 207 i ask you to briefly rise in body or in spirit for bar food [Music] please be seated [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] with everlasting love you have loved your people israel teaching us torah and meets vote for they are our life and the length of our days never take your love from us [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] have [Music] more food [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] i know [Music] [Music] is [Music] join me in reading responsively page 211 allow us adonai our god to sleep peacefully and awaken us again to life our sovereign spread over us [Music] shield us remove from us enemies pestilence sword starvation and sorrow remove the evil forces that surround us [Music] you sure are going and coming for life and peace now and forever [Music] who spreads the canopy of peace over us over all the people israel over jerusalem we turn to page 212 and we rise for hats [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] 213 wow uh okay so uh so [Applause] okay so if you haven't finished dabbing please continue we continue on page 223 it is customary to remain standing through this portion but as i said earlier please sit as needed we continue on page 223 and cantor dubrow is going to chant alternating verses [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] ah we continue page 225 [Music] [Music] [Music] the [Music] a [Music] oh [Music] we continue at the top of page 226 [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] said thereof [Music] 227 [Music] [Music] notes [Music] oh [Music] me [Music] as iron in the hand of the blacksmith who forges or withdraws it at will so are we in your hand support of the poor recall your covenant do not heed the accuser as the helm in the hand of the sailor who holds the course or abandons it at will so are we in your hand good and forgiving god recall your covenant do not heed the accuser as glass in the hand of a glazer who shapes or melts it at will so are we in your hand partner of sin and transgression or call your covenant do not heed the accuser as cloth in the hand of the draper who drapes or twists it at will so are we in your hand righteous god recall your covenant do not heed the accuser beyond hearts or [Music] the [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] the whole [Music] we continue with schmackhole in the middle of page 233. [Music] the wrong [Music] [Music] on [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Applause] your um [Music] [Music] me [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] please be seated we continue in the middle of page 234 [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] in a moment we'll turn the page and we'll rise to the site make have do say go and get are the second through seventh most common verbs in the english language often unfortunately a lot of those actions get in the way of the most important and the most common verb to be we are about to recite another list of verbs about the ways we aired in the in the past year let us take this opportunity to reflect on how we would like to be and how we let less important concerns get in the way of those goals and how we can be more true to ourselves we rise for our amnu page 235 [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] we continue with the long form confession on page 237 you can follow the red triangles to see where cantor dubrow is going to pick up and recite out loud page 237 okay okay [Music] [Music] to long [Music] i i'm [Music] foreign [Music] please read responsibly with me we have sinned against you by throwing off all restraints [Music] we have sinned against you by plotting against others we have sinned against you through superficiality we have sinned against you by rushing to do evil we have sinned against you through empty promises we have sinned against you by betraying trusts [Music] for all these things forgiving god forgive us pardon us grant us atonement we continue on page 243. [Music] you know um [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] um [Music] foreign [Music] my [Music] [Music] to [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] we remain standing just for two more pages as we turn to 2 45 for cadiz is [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] yasher kawak to lee for leaving minha ascherkoff to canter dubrow if anybody has come into possession of matt goldberg's maxor you would know because it has a bunch of blue post-it notes and his name in it and he needs it tomorrow morning so if you have it please return it to him promptly thank you so much um as diane mentioned we have so many fabulous things going on here that are made possible mostly by you i am the only full-time employee of this fine institution so i am acutely aware of how much all of you do to make it the fabulous place that it is so thank you so much thank you to everybody who has volunteered and who has assigned tickets and who has ushered and who has already built our sukkah as diane said in record time and we are looking forward to so many events in that sukkah you've heard about some of them you've seen some of them in the lobby but great things are coming so keep reading your emails and through through the end of this busy month of tishrei keep reading those emails i wish you all meaningful fasts may you be sealed for only blessings in the book of life as we pray together for the next day we will conclude you don't really conclude on yom kippur but we'll conclude this section of our observance with yggdal on page 250. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] oh foreign you

Channel: Temple Beth Sholom

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Length: 120min 44sec (7244 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 15 2021