Yom Kippur 5784
This is a day for fasting, prayer and repentance. We feel regret, and we also feel nostalgic.
We fear God’s judgment. Faults and mistakes, transgressions and sins, come to our mind now. There are so many. We regret having followed our evil inclination, instincts which we could keep under control so easily. We feel so exposed now. Our weakness is in full sight.
And we feel nostalgia for a time when synagogues were crowded, and services were more attended. A time, not long ago, when Jews were more keen on attending synagogues: this synagogues, too. It was a time when, plainly and simply, there were more Jews in this city.
What has happened? Why has a once vibrant community bursting with enthusiasm become thinner and thinner? We have plenty of experts that provide explanations. We Jews always know a specialist who can help.
Demography. Jewish families with many children are now a thing of the past. Young members of our community marry at a later age than their parents. Every year, there are fewer Jewish children than the previous. These are general trends all over the UK; Hove is no exception. This is what the scholars say.
And then there are our faults. Our community is not as united as it should be. In the past, we set differences apart and built inter-communal organisations for matters such as welfare and public representation. They still exist, but many Jews do not trust them anymore. Now, we compete to show each other who is more pious, frum, or more politically engaged, woke.
O Eternal our God, You see this happening all over the Jewish world, and sadly, we know this city is no exception. Such an amount of energy wasted in unhealthy competitions…
Also, our community is not as welcoming as we should be. Jews who feel that they are not frum enough or not sufficiently woke feel so out of place in our community. So they leave the Jewish life. We do not see them in synagogue on Shabbat, and perhaps we do not take notice of their absence. But then we don’t see them on Yom Kippur one year or the following year.
O Eternal our God, You see this happening all over the Jewish world; sadly, we know this city is no exception. We failed. We have not been as welcoming as we should have been.
And there is another, deeper reason why many Jews are reluctant to come to synagogue, even on holy occasions like Yom Kippur. We are ashamed to admit it, but the thing is that we do not know how to pray. We hold in our hand a book, the Machazor. It is in Hebrew and English. The Hebrew pages, shame on us, we almost cannot read them. As per the English pages, I know it’s a terrible thing to say, but I must be sincere: they don’t speak to us. The language is stale. The sentences and paragraphs are too long! Nowadays, we are used to Twitter, typing no more than 250 characters. On Facebook, we do not read more than one paragraph. Our emails are shorter and shorter. This is the way we Jews communicate these days.
O Eternal our God, how can You expect that Your people show up in the synagogue and find meaning in the prayerbook, in these unending supplications, in those long paragraphs, in all the repetitions and reformulations?
And then there is the problem of God. When we pray, we pray to God. But where is God? God is everywhere, says the prayerbook. But where is God’s sovereignty on this planet, which we humans are destroying? How can we trust God? Wherever we look around, we see wars, famines, pestilence and destruction… God allows horrible conflicts to continue, and new wars begin every week.
O Eternal our God, every Jew not coming to synagogue today is an accusation to You. We call You “Merciful”. But You are not showing mercy to humanity.
And I want to be sincere, Avinu Malkeinu, our Father our God. This thing we should engage with today, the teshuvah, repentance or return… it’s scary. We feel You are asking for tremendous changes in our lives, something out of the possibility for us regular human beings, something we feel too weak for. Something impossible
Teshuva is often described as a radical change of habits, the sudden adoption of an observant lifestyle. It implies a revolution in our diet (like eating kosher and only kosher) and our routine (praying three times a day…). But You, Eternal God, already know many of us find it difficult even to come to shul once a week! You offer us to do teshuva, but in reality, You are asking us to do things we really can not do.
When we read about teshuva, we read stories of fierce enmities that suddenly disappear because of a telephone call on the eve of Yom Kippur. We read tales of families split and divided that miraculously find peace. We read of siblings who start talking again to each other as if the years of bitterness and resentment had disappeared.
But, o Eternal our God, You know -and we know- that it is all too good to be true. These stories do not tell us what happens after that phone call or during that conversation, which took so much courage to open. That phone call may have clarified nothing substantial. Maybe that family broke anew.
And You know what? I had my broiges with difficult people; there are felllow Jews I no longer talk to. And I am fine with that. I have stopped trying to please everyone. There are people, Jews also, with whom now I know I cannot get along, and I have learnt to live with that.Those stories of teshuva and reconciliations do not click with me, not anymore.
See, o Eternal Our God, I want to be open. I want You to know why so many Jews do not come to the synagogue anymore, not even today. And I want You to know why the Jews, Your people, feel so estranged from our faith. The reason is, o Eternal Our God, that You seem to demand too much from us, the Jews.
It’s not that we do not feel Jewish. On the contrary, we feel very Jewish. There have been upsurges of antisemitism from the Left, Islamism, and Far Right. And, for the first time in history, the majority of us British Jews did not hide our Jewish identity anymore. We got organised. We have learnt to react. Now we stand up. We speak of Jewish pride, the pride of being Jewish while not observant. It’s a feeling which keeps us together more than the study of Talmud, the observance of Shabbat, more even than going to synagogue.
This is new — for us.
Not for You, Eternal Our God.
Because now that I think about it, I realise that You are used to our lack of observance, our transgressions, and our aveiras. Indeed, today, Yom Kippur, 10 of Tishri, is the day when Moses returned to the people with the second set of tablets. The Israelites had gone astray, very astray. They had built the Golden Calf; they worshipped that idol, and under its shade, they committed acts of violence, even rape.
When he saw that this was happening, Moses furiously broke the first set of Tablets of the Law, with the Ten Commandments engraved. He ascended back to Sinai. And then he returned with the second set of tablets. That was the day when You, Eternal Our God, forgave the Israelites, our ancestors. This is the Biblical origin of Yom Kippur and the mitzvah of teshuva; this is why return to observance and forgiveness are inextricably linked in our conscience.
Avinu Malkheinu, our Father, our King, we open our hearts to You today. We ask You to forgive us, as You have forgiven our ancestors on the slopes of Sinai. We ask You to strengthen us in our faith. I may not be able to come to shul every Shabbat, but I promise I will be here on Sukkot and at least one Shabbat per month. I know my presence will help build the minyan and allow others to pray, even if my Hebrew is a bit rusty, but who knows? I may work on it. On the prayerbook that we use on Shabbat, anyway, there are the phonetics. I may try to pray to see how it sounds…
Eternal our God, we ask You to help us to overcome internal divisions and strives. I may not be able to talk to that specific person I had an argument with, but I can try to be kinder to others.
Adon Olam, Lord of the Universe, we ask You not to look at our rivalries and communal infighting. No one may be able to reverse the polarization that is breaking our communities apart. But I may try to be more welcoming to my fellow Jews so that my synagogue will be a place of worship and a true spiritual home.
And, Avinu Malkheinu, I know it is challenging to perceive You, even if You are everywhere. But together with my fellow Jew, I will try to look for You, to search You harder. I have transgressed, I know. But I am ready to change.
Brighton & Hove Reform Synagogue, Yom Kippur, 5784