Kol Nidrei - Wednesday, September 15, 2021

[Music] [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] uh [Music] so oh [Music] is [Music] uh [Music] foreign [Music] is [Music] is [Music] is [Music] see so [Music] to you all it's wonderful to gather together i'm grateful to so many of you who are here with us on our wise campus here in our sanctuary at long last and to all of you who are joining from home thank you for being part of our worship it's such a powerful moment to share as a community and through months of planning we're able to gather together and it fills us with great joy it's an honor now to invite to light our yom kippur candles alison binder and sandy siegel and joining us online with a virtual honor jeff and pam bolton please remain standing [Music] oh [Music] hello [Applause] creation you bring us here [Music] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] new [Music] is [Music] page 164 please join me responsively we are entering the holiest moments of the jewish year for colney dre and yom kippur to have their greatest meaning it is not the words of the rabbi the voice of the cantor or the prayers in the moxor that are paramount those words melodies and prayers we trust will inspire us to stand uncovered before god discovering the deepest recesses of our souls the power of this day is in our hands let us each with great honesty respond what parts of my life do i want to be different in the coming year and what do i need to change in my life to get [Music] over there and now on page 166 joining us for our virtual honor for this reading warren breslow and gail buchalter tonight we kindle the lights of yom kippur they offer us illumination not to see the world but to see within ourselves may their spark ignite a journey of sincere introspection may their light illumine the dark recesses of our souls may their warmth melt our icy barricades of arrogance and conceit may their radiance reflect the divine that resides within us on page one hundred and sixty eight beshiva shall mala and then colney dre and for the honor of holding the tourist scrolls i want to invite steve brown the president of our congregation judith ashman and robert gerst who are here with us in the sanctuary and joining us for a virtual honor online ginny and arthur khan [Music] so [Music] [Music] by the authority of the heavenly tribunal and of the court below with divine sanction and with the sanction of this holy congregation we declare this congregation a lawful gathering which welcomes all transgressors into its midst besief no [Music] [Music] sorry [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] ah [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] shall we [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] in [Music] me [Music] [Music] need [Music] [Applause] [Music] our side [Music] [Music] russians [Music] i want to take this opportunity to thank and acknowledge a son of our congregation ben braham who arranged that beautiful version of colney dre thank you ben please be seated we continue on page 110 god of forgiveness forgive us our unfulfilled pledges our vows to ourselves the exercise we promised the mindful rest we swore to uphold each sabbath the healthy habits we forsook our vows to our loved the ones we forgot the phone calls we ignored the embraces we withheld our vows to our world pledges given by idealists well-begun but half-done measures that never succeeded in feeding the hungry or giving dignity to the oppressed our vows to our people promises made by boys and girls yearning to be adults left unfulfilled as we pass by the house of worship the house of study and the house of community without entering our vows to you to be a better parent a better child a better sibling and a better friend to be a better human a better jew a better citizen and a better me help us to reach our potential help us to fulfill this sacred vow and should we fail forgive us our failure and give us the courage to try once again please rise for the baraku at the bottom of page 170. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] god your word brings on the evening and twilight the heavens proclaim your glory and we your creatures on earth behold and wonder your endless miracles help us to recognize your guiding power in distant galaxies and in our own souls parent of peace bless our worship may our meditations find favor in your sight so that like the changing seasons the days and nights our lives too will proclaim your glory [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] the time [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] okay [Music] is [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] me [Music] is [Music] oh [Music] yourself you shall love i deny your god with all your [Music] and all these words which i command you on this day shopping in your heart shall be in your heart and you shall bind them for a sign upon your hand and they shall be forfeited [Music] [Applause] [Music] of your house [Music] [Music] and do all of my commandments and be holy [Music] unto your god unto your god unto your god [Music] thank you natalia for sharing your beautiful voice and spirit with us invite you to join me as we continue on page 177 what does it mean to be a jew you shall be holy what does it mean to be a jew you shall be a holy people to hold fast to our vision of truth to retain our faith in tomorrow holy in our past is the memory of redemption from egyptian bondage holy in our day is the hope of our redemption we still awake twice holy in our past are those who gave their lives to hallow this world holy is the jew today and tomorrow who bears witness to the goodness of life and holy are those whose lives are songs in freedom's cause [Music] [Applause] [Music] i [Music] um [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] me [Music] who froze [Music] shelter us we need thy ways [Music] keep oh safe throughout the night till we wake with morning slide t-shirts [Music] [Applause] amen [Music] oh [Music] we continue on page 181. on yom kippur we speak our sins again and again we miss the mark in words we speak that hurt in words we speak that harm on yom kippur we speak aloud together on yom kippur we speak aloud we stand and ask forgiveness from god from our families from our friends from ourselves prepare us to stand before you prepare us to open our mouths that we may speak our failures and our hopes that we may speak your praise in a moment we'll invite you to rise for the ami silent amidah over the course of that amidah we're going to invite andy and jeff levy and aaron hendon and nick berman who will be carrying the torah for the third of our call nidres and sally and don jones who are offering that honor from home online during this time of personal prayer we invite you to reflect on and with the sounds of colney dre please rise [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] ah [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] um [Music] ah [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] is [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] she [Music] jesus [Music] [Laughter] r [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] please be seated thank you to our tor holders here with us this evening and also to those who are with us online sally and don jones you know as i look around and i see the rose in between and how we stay away from each other i think of what holiness meant in biblical days when you think of holiness today you think of holi as something you want to get close to the torah scrolls the western wall we want to touch it in the ancient world though holiness was dangerous and you didn't want to touch things that were holy if you weren't eligible to touch them one could die so i'd like to suggest that we call colony dre a holy night anyway but especially tonight because we're reminded of the sanctity of our own lives and how distance preserves and protects us that each of us is that much holier tonight because of our lives because of our capacity to be here and because we recognize that of utmost importance to each of us is the health and safety of the people around us which is what it really means to wear that mask i find myself often as a rabbi walking into rooms filled with sorrow in this case i walked into a room when the family's matriarch had died and her daughters were sitting on the couch holding hands her sons with their arms around their spouses the grandchildren sat on the floor i sit in my place in a chair open my tablet my pen ready to write and i start with the questions that i always ask how would she describe her childhood what was she like as a mother as a grandmother what were your favorite times with her slowly they begin to speak they tell their stories of course there's laughter and there are tears and i'm writing frantically because i don't want to make sure to get the bits and pieces of their memories down so i can recount them accurately when i tell her story at times they bicker good-naturedly it wasn't like that it didn't happen that way what do you mean i was there i saw it no i was there too it didn't happen that way you've been there you know how that works and after an hour or so to be honest i'm tired because careful listening takes work and sometimes as i'm listening it seems there's a bit more to the story and i know i have to push just a little harder to get behind the story to learn a bit more about them i'm trying to understand after all the nuances of human being of love of family dynamics and i'm trying to capture it so that i can turn it into the words i'm going to share and do this woman and her family justice and offer the appropriate respect i rarely walk out of those times unchanged i mean how can you sit with a family in a moment like that and not walk out profoundly different than when you walked in after all these years 30 years hundreds of stories i've learned lessons that i take into my own life from sitting with you in your homes or in my office or these days over zoom hearing you talk about your loved ones i hope my own character is shaped by your stories i thought about that how do you capture that in description martin buber the great philosopher he had a word for it he called those moments of profound engagement i thou a time when we truly meet another without judgment with love with appreciation with care and concern and then if just for a short time we enter into a relationship of such depth that both of us walk out transformed so as i did my own cheshbon hanefesh and the counting of my soul of the holy days i thought about the state of my soul as a husband as a parent a friend a rabbi a citizen and i thought about buber's i thou connection and i came to understand something about myself my wife would appreciate this i need to listen better without judgment with curiosity and i don't think i'm alone because i think too many of us fail at listening we fail to listen with love with compassion with understanding and it's as much a pandemic as this covet 19 because it's the root cause of so much of the anger and hostility in our society it's the core of the rage that leads to the yelling the posting the vicious tweeting we're not listening to each other we're shouting at each other now we listen long enough to refute or applaud if we agree we listen long enough to condemn or to condone but i believe that in our determination to be right or to win or to debase or to troll we've ended up closing our hearts to each other and that's a tragedy a tragedy for this community and a tragedy for our country how often do we listen to another person to understand and to know that's what i try to do when i sit with a family as they talk about their loved one i'm truly trying to embrace them with my open heart maria popova is a blogger she's a thinker a writer her blog is called brain pickings it shows up in my mailbox about once a week she wrote have ceased to meet one another as whole persons and instead collide as fragments we've become colliding fragments bang my words crash into yours bang your post flashes on my screen crash our ideas collide like meteors in outer space disintegrating each other because that's no way to build community that's the way to tear it down piece by piece by piece if we're serious about meeting the problems in our world if we're serious about meeting the problems as jews countering anti-semitism sustaining israel about teaching our children to love their identities as jews we can continue to have these verbal collisions and if we're siri about serious about building this nation this nation that provides us with such a secure home we've got to stop colliding with those whose vision of the future is different from our own we jews we really once knew how to listen it's so to speak in our dna and we can i think once again learn and set examples for the world of how to disagree with love how to challenge with respect and how to embrace an ideological mosaic with sincerity centuries ago the great talmudic academies led by rabbis hillel and shamai often took diametrically opposing views on issues of jewish law one said ours is the right way ours is the answer the way to go as a jew the other said no ours is the correct interpretation of jewish law and year after year and they disagreed and disagreed and disagreed until finally it said a divine voice called out from the heavens and said elu the elu devre elohim these and these are the words of the living god and the voice went on and it said but the word of hillow prevails the ancient scholars asked as they do if eileev these and these are both the words of the living god how come hillel prevails and they analyzed and they said well it's because hillel was agreeable and forgiving it's because hillel taught their school's position as well as that of the other of shamai and when they wrote their decisions down they also recorded those of shamai but not with derision not with rancor and ridicule but with honor and respect hillel wasn't recognized because every judgment was somehow better than shamai's no he was recognized because he was respectful his school was respectful his scholars honored the other and even when they disagreed the scholars listened they weren't colliding fragments they were loving and respectful adversaries more importantly hillel scholars are praised not because they stubbornly stood by their positions and this is important but because very often when they were met with the arguments of shama that made sense to them they changed their minds now if you heard rabbi noble's sermon on the second day of rosh hashanah it's online i recommend you listen to it he used this story as well and what you'll notice is our sermons are not the same but they rhyme and that's a good thing because they're complimentary so i invite you to listen online but not to a modern example of how listening changed far more than one life the columnist david brooks maybe you've heard of him he had it all millions read his words thousands came to hear him speak and learn from his opinions about current events and the moral issues of our society he received huge honoraria he was at the top of his game or so he thought until his life fell apart his marriage ended his kids went off to college he was all alone he looked out from his broken home and realized that what he thought counted for success wasn't success at all after all he spent his life speaking at people he'd write his words in solitude he'd fly into a city speak before adoring crowds and then he'd eat dinner alone he had no real relationships when he found himself in that valley of despair and loneliness there was no one to reach a hand in to help him out it was then that he understood that he had to re-weave the fabric of his life and he realized that re-weaving required more than speaking it required speaking less and listening more so he started with his kit where he decided that it was a good thing to offer far less advice and far less judgment parents good advice from david brooks and to be far more patient and accepting and then he started listening to americans of all shapes and stripes and all political persuasions and all religious denominations and perspectives and he stepped down off the podium and he stepped into the lives of people and he experienced a reweaving and that reweaving of his own inspired him to create a movement you can probably guess the name called it weave and he's determined to engage americans in the re-weaving of the frayed and torn social fabric that used to bind communities that used to strengthen individuals that used to elevate lives of course listening is not the only way we encounter people whose ideas are different from our own we can read the thoughtful observations on paper or on screens of deep thinkers whose ideas are challenging and here again this written perspective of discord and dissonance it's not an aberration in our tradition actually it's at its very core i spend a lot of time in my career studying the bible and what i've learned over all these years is that the bible is a rich mosaic of actually contradictory often and complicated and different ideas parts are written in iran parts are written in babylonia parts are written in egypt parts are written in israel and every single author writing in a different time in history has a different perspective and they're all together on one book and i have to tell you these ideas don't collide they blend beautifully and throughout the text there's a particular word that's repeated over a hundred and seventy times shema listen listen israel demands the bible to be israel is to be a nation of listeners not the nation of talkers that it seems like so many of us well we're jews that's what we do right listening to divergent voices and seeking to understand different perspectives reading divergent literature and allowing it to challenge us doesn't make us less intelligent it actually makes us wiser stubborn adherence to one's ideas that's not a sign of wisdom quite the contrary that's reflective of a small mind and i want to be clear there is a limit to listening rabbi rabbi sarah rabbi laffer introduced me to the words of james baldwin which i think capture it importantly we can disagree and still love each other wrote baldwin unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and in denial of my humanity and right to exist let me read it one more time it's that important we can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist profound words when we listen to understand when we listen to find common ground when we listen with the possibility that our own ideas might be changed when we listen with the awareness that our own knowledge might be limited when we listen so that we can entertain divergent ideas in our mind and walk out confused a little bit that's a good thing when we listen to the members of our community with love we will surely increase our wisdom not diminish it our commitment to listening is critical especially if we want to engage the next generation of jews it is fruitless to lament their apathy or decry their jewish and secular choices because they may not be our own and we can't talk at them we can't yell stridently or invoke the specter of the holocaust as a means to bring them in it's not going to bring them in it's going to push them away we've got to instead listen meet them where they are hear what they have to say and be willing to adapt this 3 000 year old tradition to meet their desires their interests and their passions you see with careful and empathic listening that seeks to understand and embrace we will weave our community together in such a way that it will make us stronger it will make us better able to confront the challenges to jewish life and to human existence that pervade our world so the first step for we re-weaving is listening the next is hillel's practice of honoring the other and the last is that personal transformation that comes from deeply engaging others that's martin buber's i thought so here's what i'm committed to doing this year and hopefully for the rest of my life to ask more questions and actually wait for the answer to read more things that challenge my ideas to avoid verbal collisions whether on social media in person or even in my writings here at the temple to engage rather than convince to see each encounter with another as a chance to learn and grow and expand my own ability to think more deeply of course i wouldn't be standing here in front of you sharing these words if it wasn't to invite you to do the same this year i invite you to do more listening than talking this year i invite you to ask more questions this year i welcome you to seek ways to engage rather than confront this year together we can re-weave the fabric of our community and it can start with this congregation and i promise i'll fall short sometimes but i will do my best to walk with you on your journey and so let's begin by listening to the voice that draws us in wakes us up and calls us to action please rise tequila gadola [Applause] [Music] amen thank you on page 201 shall we listen and hear the words of our prayer book please join me responsively in the middle of the page on yom kippur the book of remembrance is sealed it speaks for itself each of us is an author writing with deeds in life's great book no song is so trivial no story is so commonplace no kindness is ever done in vain each mitzvah leaves its imprint help us to remember always that what we do will live forever [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] i [Music] [Music] [Music] i [Music] [Music] oh [Music] oh can [Music] [Music] oh [Music] reno oh know [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] she [Music] oh [Music] [Music] there are [Music] [Music] know [Music] on page 200 page 203 invites you to please rise for the video for our communal confessional i'll read the first part in hebrew and then ask you to join me in the english for the sin we have committed against you deliberately and by mistake and for the sin we have committed by the words we have spoken for the sin we committed against you by hardening our hearts and for the sin we have committed through careless speech for the sin we have committed against you through lies and deceit and for the sin we have committed through slander for the sin we have committed against you by judging others unfairly and for the sin we have committed by disrespecting parents and teachers for the sin we have committed against you through insincere apologies and for the sin we have committed by mistreating our neighbor for the sin we have committed against you through violence and abuse and for the sin we have committed through dishonesty in business for all these things god of forgiveness forgive us pardon us grant us atonement [Music] for the sin we have committed against you openly and secretly and for the sin we have committed by lack of self-control for the sin we have committed against you through sexual immorality and for the sin we have committed through glory for the sin we have committed against you giving into our hostile impulses and for the sin we have committed by greed and exploitation for the same we have committed against you through cynicism and scorn offensive speech and for the sin we have committed by selfish and petty behavior for all these things god of forgiveness forgive us pardon us grant us atonement [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] new [Music] i [Music] i [Music] [Applause] [Music] is lords knew [Music] i [Music] rashford [Music] new [Music] i [Music] the honor of opening the ark from their home jaime and susie gesundheit and hannah and ira greene who are opening the ark here met here on yomma atsuma ut what here what year did you meet here what will you do few years ago what year did we meet we'll be right with you everybody they met in 2010 here and your wedding i remember it well it was in 2013. so lots of reasons to come to shul continue with the avinu malcano page 208 avinu in the book of life in the future [Music] [Music] um [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] amen foreign [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] um [Music] [Laughter] [Music] please remain standing for the elenu page two hundred and twelve [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] then [Music] my oh [Music] [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] ah [Music] on page 213. the mourner's kaddish words recited in memory of the departed and yet there is no word of death overflowing with words of praise to the almighty the glory of god the greatness of god these chilling uplifting two thousand year old words they once walked alongside us now they walk the streets of heaven there's a beautiful teaching i learned a few years ago which has shaped my thinking it taught it's a hasidic teaching that when you say kaddish for a loved one particularly a parent you elevate their soul so think about that just for a moment we often think what can we do for a loved one who is no longer with us as a way of saying thank you by saying mourner's kaddish we elevate the soul of the loved ones whose memories we all embrace at this moment the mourner's kaddish is found on page 214. or 215 if you prefer the sephardic or midraki tradition they almost may the one who makes peace in heavens make peace for all of us and all israel together we say amen can i ask you to stay standing we're going to offer a pre-sleep and addiction to each other you can find it a little bit further ahead in your max or on page 262. these words come from the book of numbers they're more than three thousand years old cantor's gonna sing the hebrew you can join in the rabbis are gonna respond with the translation if you have your talit with you you can use it to if you're here with friends or family you can use it to cover each other or you can just kind of think about people that you'd like to be cuddled up next to you in that talit with you maybe it's someone who's far away who's joining us online or maybe it's someone who's not here in this world anymore but is with us right now in our heart let's bless each other with these words from our tradition [Music] i don't know [Music] may god's light shine upon you and may god always be gracious to you [Music] [Music] may god bless you with wholeness [Music] and may god grant you our most precious gift the gift of peace foreign [Music] our closing song is not in the moxor the words are very simple though if we're going to build a world of love and compassion in part it'll be as rabbi stern suggests to us by listening better to one another if we're going to build a world of love and compassion we're going to do it in community by being together at moments like this whether we're physically together in our sanctuary as god willing we'll have many more opportunities to do in the months and years to come or whether you're joining us online there are ways that we can work together to make the world a better more loving place you'll catch right on and join in with us [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] i [Music] will build this world from love [Music] fill this world [Music] [Applause] [Music] from here [Music] god [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

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Length: 96min 54sec (5814 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 15 2021