Shir Tikvah - Kol Nidrei Yom Kippur 5782

i [Music] i [Music] [Music] i [Music] i [Music] i [Music] [Music] i [Applause] [Music] i [Music] [Music] i [Music] i [Music] so [Music] foreign [Music] hmm [Music] foreign [Music] hey [Music] ah [Music] me so good to be with you tonight to our service participants here and to those of you joining us on the live stream i invite you to do whatever you need to do at home to be present to this beautiful moment these 25 hours of atonement and reflection and being our best selves to light our young tov candles tonight are yom kippur candles we've invited up tom citrum heisem and bob boyce representing all of the newlyweds who have forged against the pandemic and gotten married over the past year since last rosh hashanah we are on page nine they'll light the candles as rabbi laka rosenberg leads us in the blessing page nine hello [Music] [Music] him we welcome up our board chair bruce manning to give the president's welcome i'm bruce manning i use he him pronouns and i am the president of the board of church on behalf of the community i welcome you to services to this fierce and loving synagogue if you're a guest frequent or first time the guest who is considering becoming a member drop us an email through our website and we'll chat we move tonight from the sweetness of apples and honey to the hard work of yom kippur aware that even as we commit ourselves to this difficult and heroic task of interpersonal repair and repentance we will fall short it is exhausting to recognize that in the next 24 hours we will give so much travel so far and still break our fast with work to do on ourselves and work to do for and toward others given all the work we do and all the years we have gathered annually to do it i for one would like to get to dunn to get a ribbon a gold star a brassy plasticy trophy i would like to be finished i suppose that there is a moment when our prayers are accepted our slate wiped clean but very quickly we screw it up again the bridge from here heavy with our errors shortcomings ignorance unfulfilled good intentions each stanza of the video we are great confessional prayer still unsung and unmarked the bridge from here to there a day from now does not actually get to there if there is a definitely defined and enduring atoned status if this isn't about getting there this holy day as old as the golden calf must be about the journey since no head pat is coming from the divine or even from the rabbis i will try to turn my focus in the coming hours to the journey of our yom kippur our travel along the bridge from here to it's not the point from here and what of this bridge rabbi nachman of breslau wrote know that a person needs to cross a very narrow bridge and what is essential is not to be afraid we most often encounter these words in song sarmayod all the world is a narrow bridge fear of transversing narrow bridges especially of narrow bridges high in the air over treacherous things it's an entirely sensible thing to have fear of what lies below what might be following us what might be ahead just how well constructed is this spindly rope bridge anyway this is all perfectly natural what is rabbi nachman thinking telling us that it is essential not to be afraid that seems perhaps a challenge too great except if you'll allow me in my lawyerly way and i'm sorry i can't help it the word narrow is not exactly well-defined is a minnesota goodbye long or short by most standards it is long but on a geologic time scale well actually it's long there too it's a bad example but the point is that nero must be defined in relation to something else narrow doesn't mean anything absolute it doesn't mean anything in a vacuum if nachman of breslau had wanted putting aside the time difference problem but if he'd wanted he could have written know that a person needs to cross a bridge about the width of a middle seat on a commuter jet and what is essential is not to be afraid but he didn't write that so here narrow means less generous in proportions than other things as long as there's something wider out there then the thing in front of you can be defined as narrow and with that in mind i propose that the good reviews bridge is wider than you might initially think it is wide enough for the ashley rook's gay pride parade it is wide enough for the march for our lives it is wide enough for the women's march it is wide enough for the poor people's campaign it is wide enough for refugees and dreamers it is wide enough for the movement for black lives it is wide enough for water protectors it is wide enough for all of us sritika it is wide enough for our benemits vote for our torah study groups for our simcas and for our markings of yard sites and our counting of the omer and when we go on to the bridge together arms locked voices raised and song when we go on to the bridge with the courage and strength of our values and the connections we have built to each other through our tradition our rituals through our shirtika when we go on to the bridge together like that the bridge is not narrow at all and i am not afraid i hope shirteefa does the same for you and that you will help make it do so for yourself and for others thank you to our hard working rabbis lay leaders musical ensemble our staff all those who enable our walk on this bridge and thank you for your support of them and their work great work awaits us in the year to come shanatova thank you so much hi on this night when we open our senses to the holy melodies and the words of this holiest time of the year may we find nothing stale nothing wrote just our hearts here together seeking a path forward with courage humility and love as we pour our voices and our intentions into the spiritual container of these words we join generations of jews who have gathered in times of plenty and in times of struggle to seek the way forward together it's no coincidence that we undertake the process of teshuva of personal transformation in collective spaces and we keep challenging what it means to be in collective space it's no coincidence that the majority of the prayers and the poetry that we articulate in the next 25 hours is expressed in collective form our text and our tradition remind us that we need each other we need our support our talents our compassion our humor our love to make it to the other side so over the course of the next 25 hours we will each release ourselves into the strangeness of this fast day of this day of repentance and renewal we undertake the challenge of disconnecting from our everyday lives which means that you're invited to turn off your phones to close the tabs on your computer to find a comfortable space for your body you have tools to help you move through this time in community page numbers will always be displayed at the bottom of the right-hand corner of the screen a complete transcript of the service is linked on our shirt for high holy days website www.shirthikfahiholidayshiholydays.org and you're invited to access ava ava.com if closed captioning would support your experience and i want to note that while ai captioning technology is remarkably accurate when we speak slowly in english its hebrew captioning leaves much to be desired so think of hebrew captioning as a surrealist poem and if the captioning is inadvertently offensive or confusing just take this as an opportunity to forgive this is the season for open-hearted forgiveness after all so we stand together in these holy hours to remind ourselves to seek clarity and to recommit may this fast be meaningful however we undertake it and may our prayers reach their destination we know this yom kippur there is so much at stake may we pray with our hearts proudly as we push forward for more justice more love and more peace i'm going to invite our board president bruce manning and our stifty president noah simon latz to join us on the bma for colney dre i'm going to invite you to please find a way to open yourself to the sacred by rising by laying down by wrapping yourself in a blanket as we open the ark the mark may we be sealed in justice health and for life in the year to come um [Music] come come whoever you are even though you've broken your vows a thousand times come come again come come whoever you are even though you've broken your vows a thousand times come come again come come whoever you are even though you've broken your vows a thousand times come come again come come whoever you are even though you've broken your vows a thousand times come come again come come whoever you are even though you've broken your vows a thousand times come come again bishop [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] even though you've broken your vows a thousand times come come again uh hey [Music] daddy [Music] indeed [Music] [Music] day is [Music] [Music] do [Music] yes [Music] me [Music] [Laughter] [Music] me [Music] [Music] [Music] be [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] the is [Music] [Music] [Music] hello [Music] a [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] oh [Laughter] cold [Music] a [Music] oh [Music] [Music] there [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] call [Music] the [Music] is [Music] [Music] cool [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] hola is [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign we thank god for keeping us alive and sustaining us and allowing us to reach this moment with the shahianu on page 9. [Music] [Music] [Music] there as we now welcome the darkness with maariv let us bless what we discover in the unknown may its mysteries give us life give us hope and give us love and for those of you who are sitting down i invite you once again please to rise as we continue with the baraku the call to worship page 22 followed by maariv aravim you can sit down for that one page 24. [Music] i [Music] i [Music] my [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] i [Music] me [Music] page 28. shimmer i don't know oh [Music] yo [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] a i am so delighted to welcome up to the bema rina herald a newish member of shertika and a member of our board of trustees when jace asked if i would be willing to offer a kavanaugh this evening before the prayer mikhamoha my first inclination was to decline the opportunity in spite of the fact that i have studied hebrew for many years have traveled to israel many times and celebrate our many holidays the notion of kavanaugh was new to me i didn't see myself as a prayerful jew and i don't believe in or pray to an interventionist god except perhaps when i fly and so the idea of sharing my thoughts with all of you about davaning mihamoja with focus and intention was difficult to contemplate what knowledge did i have and what insights could i impart that would be meaningful jace invited me to think about what brings me to cole nidre in the first place and what a gateway into this prayer might look like i'd like to encourage you to join me in these questions why are we here together and what intention and meaning do we ascribe to the experience of this particular prayer these are my favorite kinds of questions because there is neither just one answer nor a right answer as a child my memory of the high holy days were of a time to do an accounting of the year and of myself the message seemed to be to come up with a positive tally to be sure that we would be written into the book of life it didn't seem like a metaphor at the time and probably was akin to my neighbors who celebrated christmas and wanted to be on santa's list of nice as opposed to naughty my child self was always a little concerned that i might not quite make the cut and so when i learned the song for yom kippur let's be friends make amends now's the time to say i'm sorry i thought this might be the key to staying on the right side as an adolescent i found the idea of making amends even more appealing as i was able to broaden the definition and think about how to enlarge the circle to include not only the people i knew but issues of social justice how could i think about broadening my own understanding of my still very small world how could i atone for my own shortcomings and begin to help with tikkun alam would this ensure that i would end up in the right book as an adult i have broadened these concepts even further i still use this time to contemplate ways in which i would like to make amends to individuals in my life and how to set an example for our children and grandchildren as well as for the students i have taught about how to take our personal values and live them out loud in the greater society sometimes i think i succeed and sometimes i think i have far to go but i no longer worry well as much about being inscribed in the book of life i come here tonight with my family to a firm life to celebrate the awe and wonder of our traditions and yes to think about how to make a difference in the lives that i have a privilege to touch the prayer mihamoha who is like you among the gods adonai comes from the song of the sea in exodus 15. it appears after the jews have crossed the red sea and they exalt god for bringing them out of slavery in egypt historically this was a time when many gods were worshiped and this prayer acknowledges that the god of moses is awesome and wondrous and that no other god can compare does this question come as a result of being saved is it a way to say thank you is it a way to just appreciate a new day a way for us to be in the moment of affirming life for ourselves and perhaps as my partner linda wondered is the real issue not that our standing in the book of life is decided by an external accounting of our worthiness but rather by our desire and willingness to choose life to grab onto it to live it to the fullest to rejoice in our coming through the challenges of our time and continuing to struggle going forward why do i come to col nidre i come to participate in tradition i come to reckon with the past and i come to commit to hope for the future gamora katima tova thank you reena we'll take your words to heart as we sing mikhamucha page 40 followed by venue on page 42. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] i [Music] i [Music] i [Music] i [Music] is [Music] m [Music] hello [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] our prayers put into words our longings and aspirations for ourselves and for community as well as for god to remember us for life to inscribe us for life in the book of life as we enter our silent amidah we're invited to align ourselves with the prayers of our ancestors how might these words and intentions actually transform us for life for schlemut wholeness and well-being we invite you to rise and turn to page 46 in your makhsour to begin our silent prayer together um [Music] um [Music] [Laughter] ah [Music] i oh [Music] i [Music] i [Music] [Music] i i [Music] o says [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Music] oh yes [Music] is [Music] is doctors in new york and california have diagnosed among homosexual men 41 cases of a rare and often rapidly fatal form of cancer eight of the victims died less than 24 months after the diagnosis was made the cause of the outbreak is unknown and there is as yet no evidence of contagion forty years ago this past july third this first article appeared in the new york times on page 20 about a quote rare cancer seen in homosexuals it was the beginning of what has become known as the aids pandemic a virus that has killed more than 36 million people across the globe after college and a year of backpacking around that very same globe i moved to san francisco with my best friend ann kinneroth of blessed memory there inside cafe floor at the intersection of 36th and market and noe she found her beloved mark in november of 1993. it took me another 14 years in the internet to find my besher michael simon i was a little slow the early 1990s was the peak of the aids epidemic san francisco was its epicenter thousands of people were infected with hiv thousands more died from complications from the virus they died from callousness and neglect and a health care and political system that discarded them and dehumanized them in february of 1994 i went on a date with a nice jewish boy a lawyer named david he had harry potter style glasses long before harry potter was a thing and tight curly dark hair with the most beautiful deep brown eyes he was 26 and i was 23 and we'd been set up by a mutual friend we met at a chinese restaurant and i was immediately smitten it was by all accounts a perfect first date we told stories about college and our jobs laughed about our upbringing and navigated our way through a menu with a man who ate everything him and my sort of kind of kosher vegetarian style dietary limitations i gazed across the table at him dreamy eyed throughout the evening and then as my mother is fond of saying i opened my mouth to change feet i mentioned something about rabbinic school which resulted in an interesting discussion about theology but i was used to that one and then rather casually i mentioned that someday i hoped to have children david's reaction was immediate volcanic and enraged how dare you talk of having children when we're all dying he screamed before shoving fried rice in my lap threw two 20 bills on the table and then stormed out of the restaurant there was no second date 15 months later nine days before i flew to jerusalem to begin rabbinic school i went to david shiva his mother pulled me aside after we choked out kaddish you're the fellow who's going to be a rabbi and have kids she whispered into my ear i nodded she pulled me into a hug and sobbed he wanted to be a dad too for 30 minutes i held the hands of a woman who earlier that day shoveled dirt onto the casket of her only child so many broken dreams and busted hearts and shattered lives truth be told how could i have possibly been angry with david so many of us were sick how can you imagine a future when everyone around you is dying why 18 months into this covid pandemic on cole nidre am i bringing up a 40 year old virus because i believe that the leaders of the hiv aids movement have much to teach us about this moment in history and while i could speak about the inspiring political work of act up who transformed american health care and who by the way sped up the process with the fda to ensure that we could all get our vaccines what i'll speak about tonight though is the names project aids memorial quilt if you haven't seen it this majestic quilt was woven from the suffering and the grief of people who witnessed their loved ones dying on mass every story was individual of course but the names project literally stitched them together to provide a creative agonizing heartbreaking beautiful tribute to those who had died from aids and it nodded together those of us who love them today the quilt contains more than 49 thousand squares it's the largest quilt and piece of public art in human history memorializing the dads the lovers the children the moms the siblings and the best friends who died from hiv aids over the past 40 years so why a quilt quilt said cleve jones the founder of the names project made me think of my grandmothers and great grandmothers it evoked images of pioneer women making camp by the conestoga wagons or enslaved africans in the south hoarding scraps of fabric from the master's house it spoke of cast offs discarded remnants different colors and textures sewn together to create something beautiful and useful and warm comforters i imagine families sharing stories of their loved ones as they cut and they sewed the fabric it could be therapy i hoped for a community that was increasingly paralyzed by grief and rage and powerlessness it could be a tool for the media to reveal the humanity behind the statistics and a weapon to deploy against the government to shame them with the stark visual evidence of their utter failure to respond to the suffering and death that spread and increased with each passing day how does a public quilt work each panel of the quilt was made by individual family or friends and the panels displayed the name of the person who died some had photographs sewn in some had school letters or sequins or rainbows many have heartbreaking messages gone too soon sing with the angels sleep well my sweet prince each panel of the quilt tells the story of a human being who lived who was here who had a family and a community and people who loved them as songwriter michael callan of blessed memory who died from hiv nearly 30 years ago sang we are counted not as numbers but as names why does collective morning matter first i want to take a slight detour there was an article recently in the new york times it was by a guy named adam grant and it was about collective effervescence it's about the power of what happens the energy that's created being together physically in a shared communal activity about what we've missed during covet and what we're longing for grant closed his brilliant essay with the unforgettable verse joy shared is joy sustained joy shared his joy sustained i understand the deep human need for collective effervescence to experience life and joy together and like you i am so desperately hungry to sing and to dance and to laugh and to weep and to clap and to be together it's that moment during vayatayu on roshina morning or at the end of nila when we sing and we dance and we pour our hearts and our love into the community and into the world it's it's spiritual electricity to feel that joy we can only experience in community and i know in the depths of my being that we as a society must also tend to our collective grief we have lost so much we have buried so many and to move on without acknowledging them is just not the jewish way we don't do that in reflecting upon the quilt and this pandemic we are in i've been focused on the jewish custom of kriya for those who may not yet know kriya is the ritual we do that upon hearing of the death of a loved one it's so visceral right we we immediately tear the clothing over our hearts and today instead of tearing clothing many folks instead choose to tear a black ribbon that we have fixed to our clothing over our hearts my beloved colleague and friend rabbi david shuk teaches in moed katan the talmud discusses the question of whether one can stitch up the creature presumably because you know in talmudic times people couldn't afford to tear a shirt and then dispose of it but the law is codified in a stunning way in in the mishnah torah rambam maimonides writes all of these terrors should be rent to the extent that one reveals their heart one must reveal the tear reveal the heart and the tear though the rambam is talking about the size and the placement of the tear it's of course not coincidental that our hearts have to be exposed we take our broken hearts and we show them to the people around us the creature in in our shirts binds us that we are open to reveal the brokenness left in the wake of death but the next part of the mishnah torah is really curious one is permitted to sow the tear up as long as one uses a stitch that is irregular and preserves evidence of the terror it's forbidden it's us sir to to use what was known as the alexandria stitch apparently those egyptians were really good at repairing clothes um and the alexandria stitch was so precise that it eliminated evidence of the terror itself it was as if the the jewish law was saying your loss your broken heart will heal in time but it will never fully disappear you will carry that loss with you always just like you can run your finger across the stitched up tear and feel its jagged edges the same jagged edges will heal into your heart here today on this day of remembering we run our fingers across the jagged edges of our hearts over every stitch that we carry some of which have faded and others of which we have not yet even started to sow because the tear is too raw the names project memorial quilt stitched together grief and memory and love and anguish and hope and inspiration it was a collective weaving to bring private grief into the public square and compel us as a society to mourn together it was a public crea albeit sort of the inverse of visible and powerful stitching together of love and of death and perfect and visible for all of us to bear witness sarah labaton writes mourning a person in the moment is more powerful than mourning a historical anonymous collective a defunct institution an abstract tragedy as dr butler teaches learning to mourn mass death means marking the loss of someone whose name you do not know whose language you may not speak who lives at an unbridgeable distance from where you live to serve as an agent of change collective mourning must be in dialogue with personal mourning born out of these epics of agony can be extraordinary gifts of human intellect and spiritual creativity notes rabbi ed feinstein out of moments of discontinuity the possibilities for redefinition reimagination and reinvention in this time of covet he argues there's no back to normal catastrophes change us trauma changes us there's no going back to what was we are reshaped all of us the alchemy of our lives is forever different how do we imagine a future when so many around us are dying this is a moment that calls us not to privatize our grief and our pain but to bring them into the public square safely of course we have the tools for epic spiritual resilience built into our jewish tradition as the philosopher dr jewish judith butler explains a purely private form of mourning is possible but cannot assuage the cry that wants the world to bear witness to the loss i have stood with so many of you at the graves of your loved ones the shutter of kriya the tearing ripping through our hearts the first shovel of dirt hitting the coffin as it's lowered into the earth echoing across the generations of our people back to the boats back to the shtetls back to the ghettos back to the expulsions back to the exiles back to yavina back back to the temple back to sinai in that moment those who are grieving are at once alone in our unique pain and are profoundly connected to every other mourner who has choked out kaddish and wept for the lover the parent the spouse the child the friend the date who is now dead i wish the quilt was never necessary i wish that david had lived to his 28th birthday and had the chance to be a father i wish that four and a half million people hadn't gotten infected with covet and were here today praying their hearts out with us well at least some of them i believe we are called to make meaning out of these catastrophes we best honor our dead when we say their names and when we teach the torah they taught to us this is not the moment to return to business as usual this is the moment to look to the artists and the poets and the musicians and the thinkers and the writers and the mimes and the painters and the actors and the dancers and the playwrights and the quilters and the chefs and the needle pointers and the tweeters and the creative souls whom we desperately need in this moment at this time to help us as a society draw the shape of our wounded hearts and give voice to the tears and the tears which have ripped us asunder even if you don't fancy yourself an artist of any kind it's time for each of us to take up our needle and thread as we stitch together a beloved community over our very raw and shattered hearts this is not the time to give credence to those who deny the devastation of this moment the peddlers of cynicism and the soldiers of disinformation there are those who seek to minimize the deaths of more than four and a half million souls from kovid because the numbers are too overwhelming because these deaths don't fit neatly or conveniently into their political world view because they literally profit from denial by denying the holocaust the massacre at sandy hook the murder of our neighbor george floyd or the insurrection on january 6th our public grief is testimony to the lives of those who died it speaks of their presence and their impact our public grief proclaims unequivocally they were here they existed and they mattered we cannot and will not permit a single human being to be erased we deny our souls and our society when we don't grieve and when we don't grieve we are stuck and when we're stuck we can't move forward toward the vision of collective effervescence we dream of sharing mourning according to sarah labaton is not the resolution of grief or the restoration of an imagined reality prior to loss but rather the acknowledgement that the loss of another person has utterly altered the mourner herself i know we are weary i know we are tired i know that coved and the impact it's had on us these past 18 months has knocked us on our terraces and it would be all too easy to give up and retreat to our own private spaces to weep alone to close the doors to our hearts to buy new shirts to cover up the tares and the tears but this hour calls to us to each one of us for our compassion and for our creativity for our wisdom and for our questions for our righteous rebellion and our tender care of the suffering this hour calls to us in the words of rabbi abraham joshua heschel with the full force of our moral grandeur and our spiritual audacity there is no collective effervescence without collective mourning we know this is jews this is our calendar in order to get to sukkot literally what the rabbis calls mansim katinu the season of our joy we must first spend time in yizkur on yom kippur in the agonizing grief and remembrance of our dead to rejoice we must face our pain as the psalmist teaches azor and medina those who sow in tears reap in joy what tears we have shed what joy we shall reap after the tearing comes the stitching together after the kriya comes the quilt it is time friends to gather our needle and our thread to collectively mourn our dead to weep to touch the tares and shed the tears and to proclaim the memory of our dead boldly and resolutely and then someday very very very soon i pray we rejoice together holding one another amidst the greatest torrent of soulful tears and collective effervescence that our world has ever known episode so [Music] gather up the brokenness and bring it to me now the fragrance of those promises you never dare to vow the splinters that you carried the chains you left behind come healing of the body come healing of the mind and see that let the heavens hear it the penitential hymn come healing of the spirit come healing of the limb behold the gates of mercy in arbitrary space and none of us deserving of cruelty or the grace or solitude of longing where love has been confined healing of the body come healing of the mind oh see the darkness yielding the tore the light apart come the healing of the reason come healing of the heart troubledness concealing an undivided love the heart beneath is teaching to the broken heart above and let the heavens falter and let the earth proclaim come healing of the altar competing of the name longing of the branches to lift the little bud the longing of the arteries to purify the blood and let the heavens hear it the penitential hem come healing of the spirit come the healing of the limb oh let the heavens hear it the penitential hem come healing of the spirit come the healing [Music] we take a moment now to call to mind and heart our loved ones who are suffering from illness whether in body mind heart or spirit tonight we also offer a special prayer for those who live with mental illness which is invisible and can be devastating this is written by rabbi elliott kukla may the one who blessed our ancestors bless all those who live with mental illness their caregivers families and friends may they walk in the footsteps of jacob king saul miriam hannah and naomi who struggled with dark moods hopelessness isolation and terrors but survived and led our people just as our father jacob spent the night wrestling with an angel and prevailed may all who live with mental illness be granted the endurance to wrestle with the pain and prevail night upon night grace them with the faith to know that though like jacob they may be wounded and shaped and renamed by this struggle still they will live on to continue an ever unfolding unpredictable path toward healing may they not be alone on this path but accompanied by their families friends caregivers ancestors and the divine presence surround them with loving kindness grace and companionship and spread over them shalom a shelter of peace and wholeness and please join me in saying amen as we sing the healing blessings which are a1 in the supplement or the transcript we invite you to say aloud the names of all whose healing of body mind or soul you're praying for we sing you healing we sing you care we sing you [Music] we sing you prayer [Music] we sing you healing we sing you justice we sing you prayers [Music] love we sing you healing we sing you care we sing you justice we sing you gay hair we sing you healing we sing you care we sing you justice we sing you prayer [Music] [Music] [Music] love we welcome harry adler to introduce us to the vidue we are about to say the vidue prayer where we together ask for mercy forgiveness and atonement for the sins we have committed against god and each other we see a list of lines while traditionally tapping our heart each beginning with al hate followed by sin we and i mean we have committed such as rebelling stealing and being arrogant as i read through this prayer in advance of writing this kavanagh i found myself troubled by the use of the word we in the line for the sins we have committed against you through denial and deceit i really wanted to say they instead of we that word denial pushed my button i or we here hadn't denied the pandemic hadn't denied the election results or hadn't denied institutional racism but as i found myself denying any denial and judging the others that did deny i suddenly found myself committing the sin of hardening my heart another one we asked forgiveness for with the juxtaposition of these two lines my chest was pounding even though i wasn't hitting it with my hand this prayer is hard i find myself untethered to the hole as my mind divides us in the we they polarized culture more closely to the jewish community i have felt the tension of the we they through the polarization from the struggles in israel palestine and gaza there is tension to take aside and not budge as a thirteen-year-old in 1971 i felt pride in israel the kubatsim a land of milk and honey being created in desert and a land of refuge from my people who had suffered so much but as i became more aware of the moral complexities i chose for many years to withdraw and not deal with the tension it was easier to not think or feel and instead to deny or avoid the issue of parallel narratives my immobilization was in itself simple i cannot do that anymore i want to confront the pain i've learned to tolerate the tension of having an open heart recently i read in this place together a palestinian's journey to collect a liberation which tells the story of sulaiman khatib a palestinian who was imprisoned by israelis at age 14. i was moved by how he opened his heart to understand those that he had learned to hate the book gave me hope and a blueprint of what it means to truly listen to others we all have our own personal journeys with the meaning and hopes for israel given our different ages experiences and family connections i look around today at those here in person and think of those connecting virtually i want to hear your stories i don't want to deny your personal narrative i want to know your values and hopes for the future i believe this community and all communities we belong to will become more whole and less divided when we truly connect with each other as i say this upcoming prayer i will say we knowing that humility is of great value i need to acknowledge my own denial and open my heart to listen to others instead of traditionally tapping with a closed fist i plan to tap and open my hand ready to receive and learn oh we can't take back [Music] so let us lay down our fears oh we can take back what is done what is start from here no we can't take back what is is past so let us lay down our fears no we can't take back what is done what is from here please rise in body and spirit as we open up or we can take [Music] so let us lay down our feet no we can't take back what is done what is so let us start from here [Music] no [Music] oh we can't take back what is done what is so let us lay down our fears [Music] what is done what is past so let us start from here [Music] um [Music] oh we can't take back what is done what is so let us lay down our fears [Music] so let us [Music] start from here [Music] we can't take back what is done what [Music] lay is our fears [Music] what is past so let us start from here we continue with the long v confession the vidue rabba beginning on page 86. [Music] [Music] [Music] the [Music] a [Music] [Music] in this tender moment we invoke the 13 attributes of god rabbi yochanan imagined god majestically robed in a talit teaching moses the order of the prayers saying to him whenever israel misses the mark let them read the thirteen attributes in my presence and i will forgive them this portrait of an intimate relationship with god conveys a spiritual promise of relationship for this is the moment when the veil is lifted from our faces and we no longer hide from our maker this is the precious moment when we reveal our true selves and renew our relationship with the one who makes us whole [Music] [Music] a [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] i [Music] [Music] we pour our voices out on page 110 may the one who answered answer us [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] m [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] m [Music] as we turn to a vino volcano we call out shimakolenu hear our voices we'll open the ark and i pray that we pay attention to the cold mamma daka that tiny small voice inside of each of us that voice that's calling us to attention and calling us to humility and calling us to the chuva we need to undertake you can find avinu malcanu on page 114. thank you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] i [Music] i [Music] all right and steve miles at this time i'm jolene gittis and this is my husband steve we've been members of shirtika for over 32 years but way before that when i was 11 years old the young assistant rabbi at my synagogue traveled to the south to participate in an interfaith movement for civil rights he was arrested briefly jailed some powerful members of the congregation objected to his participation and insisted that the rabbi make clear that he was acting as an individual and not representing the synagogue the young rabbi's contract was not renewed this was my introduction to moral leadership i grew into a disaffected adolescent with a fierce opposition to organized religion as i became involved in more movements for social justice however i began to appreciate how the moral weight of religious leaders and institutions could promote efforts to effect change around this time a movement emerged to provide sanctuary in houses of worship for refugees fleeing persecution in central america i joined a synagogue for the first time in my adult life with the goal of making it a sanctuary congregation the social action committee brought in speakers we made a proposal to the congregation a shabbat service was devoted to discussing the issue the rabbi gave a compelling sermon reminding congregants that throughout our history jews have been all too familiar with the status of the refugee he recalled our living memory of being refugees after world war ii all that remained was board approval the proposal was presented to the board of directors but an influential member raised legal concerns when asked for guidance the rabbi responded that nothing in the torah says we have to provide sanctuary and the motion failed i resigned from that congregation i remembered the young rabbi of my youth and began a years-long search for a congregation devoted to justice and tiki no lum my search ended with the founding of jirtikva from the first woman rabbi in minnesota to providing sanctuary for a refugee family shir tikvah has demonstrated what moral leadership looks like we are an inclusive congregation we don't always agree or share the same priorities but we know what it means to stand up and show up and we do now i'm asking each of you to stand up for shirtikva with a contribution to help us sustain this beloved community thank you i'm steve miles and i approve this message [Music] let's turn together let's turn together to the elenu thank you so much youtube we'll sing vahashevota the fourth line from the bottom three words in [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] oh oh [Music] we call to mind and heart loved ones whose lives on earth have ended tomorrow during our years for service we'll have spacious opportunity to remember each of our departed beloveds the custom for now in this moment is to invoke those who have died recently or at this time in years past may their lives be up may their memories be a blessing and may our lives be enriched for having known them please rise and join me in the mourner's cod dish on page 122. um may the source of peace bestow peace on all who mourn and may we be a source of comfort for all who are bereaved as we prepare to seal our tefila tonight i want to get us oriented about what what is coming we will meet each other tomorrow god willing at 9 00 a.m on zoom for our morning offerings please find the zoom links on our website shirtfaceholydays.org for youth and family service our community singh and our torah study which will all take place at 9am at 10 30 tomorrow morning we'll begin shakari davening together our services will be live streamed and can be found on youtube and our high holy day website please see our website for all of our yom kippur afternoon offerings yaskar will begin at 4 45 and nila at 6 15. that feels like a world away we'll get there the stifty board would like to invite you to donate to their annual food drive for the second year in a row we've decided to donate to the organization cappy cappy provides food and assistance to immigrants and refugees in needs donations will be collected during sukkot programming september 19th through 23rd and please bring your donations when you come to shitika for sukkot to find out everything that's happening at sukkot please check our heart high holy day website wow that was hard to say thank you so much thank you for your prayers thank you so much to our amazing asl interpreters to this beautiful group of musicians to jolene and steve to the whole team to our staff to twin city sound and st joan of arc what an incredible potluck of of offerings of good spirit to be able to bring us to this moment we'll seal our practice with yale page 96. [Music] [Music] a [Music] [Applause] [Music] i [Music] a [Music] i [Laughter] [Music] i [Music] [Music] a [Applause] a [Music] [Applause] go [Music] i [Music] i [Music] see you soon senator you

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Published: Thu Sep 16 2021