(Adapted from Dvar Torah given at Dorshei Emet, Sept. 25th, 2021)

Today as we leave the joy and introspection of the holiday season behind us, I hope we are taking in the fullness of what this unique experience has offered us.  Our second year of pandemic High Holidays has hopefully allowed us to reflect on so much; on the nature and purpose of community, of responsibility, of loss, of hope and of action.  As we leave those thin walls of the sukkah and head out into the world as changed people, we also have no choice but to be attentive what we hear and see around us.  Outside of the walls of our synagogue, the needs of others, the cries of others, become ours too.  This is the time to step out to listen, and to step up and act.

As we remember the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation today, we remember the moments of pain experienced by the First Nations community over the past centuries, but also hold very close to what we have seen play out even over the past few years.  The uncovering of now multiple sites of mass graves of children at residential schools, the news coming out about the continuing lack of water and other necessities in many First Nation, Inuit and Metis communities, the dozens of cases of missing women and far too many governmental promises unkept.  All of this should bother us, and inspire us to step up and fight, to ensure that all people in this country are able to live in the freedom and security that everyone deserves.  The truths, laid out in front of us are too hard to ignore.  

Yet, as we mark this day, we also can take the time for some reflection on the very nature of these two ideas; to accept the truths of what we and others have done wrong, and to be able to move forward with intention, honesty and strength.  We can do the hard work of fighting for justice, but also as we have learned over this holiday season, leave enough space to celebrate life, and the uniqueness of our culture and all of the cultures of those around us.  While the path for justice may be long and difficult, the perspective we need to move forward may not be as complicated.  In our week of leaving Sukkot, this flimsy little hut can offer us some helpful lessons on the holy path.

The theme of Sukkot, Pesach and in so many ways the philosophy of nearly all of our Jewish holidays is the same-we are perpetual wanderers.  The structure, the entirety of our Jewish story and traditions revolve around the fact that we live with a permanent sense of impermanence.  Even with the sense of safety that we may have now, even with the State of Israel, we as a people, still in some strange and deep way always seem to be thinking that we are not quite safe.  With all that we have experienced in our history, and with the reality of Anti-Semitism and the hatred perpetrated on us throughout history, there is always a sense that we may have to pack up and move again.

This may be why at the end of Pesach, the ultimate holiday of redemption, when we are reminded of our suffering and our eventual freedom, we still conclude with the mindset that we have not quite made it, as we end the seder and say “Next year in Jerusalem!”, each and every year.  No matter how much we work at improving our world, our community and our selves, each year we commit ourselves to continue to do the hard work to make it to the symbolic place of wholeness and perfection–for ourselves and for all people.  And we know that the story of the Jewish people is only realized when it can help us listen to the stories of other people in need of freedom

Our identity as Jews can remind us, as we commemorate the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation today, that  we have to stand up for more than just our own story.  We have to accept the suffering we find around us, and do what is necessary to make change.  Just like we tap our chests on Yom Kippur for the communal sins of Ashamnu  and Al Het during the Yamim Noraim even if we did not personally commit these sins, we cannot step aside and say this was not our fault, this is not our pain.  As citizens of a country that truly is trying hard to be one that holds the values of compassion, respect and truth, we all have to tap our chests in responsibility, but even more do what is necessary to take action.  We can’t let the shame and horror of the evil perpetrated on the First Nations community bring us as individuals or a country to place of such sadness and suffering, that we can no longer step up and fix the brokenness.  

As we have learned about ourselves over these past few weeks, we are all broken, and we are all responsible, but we can’t fall into the trap of feeling a guilt that prevents us from taking action.  Like us as individuals, every country makes mistakes, some of which have caused generations of pain and suffering, and like Teshuva,the process demands that we recognize the brokenness, vow to make a change, and then fight with all of our energy to make sure it doesn’t happen again.  With something as horrible as the residential schools or the current treatment of many First Nation communities, this involves a deep and painful humbling.  We must listen to the stories, and we must move forward to fight. 

But there is more to it than listening and action.

Even the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee made it clear that the lessons learned from this process should have an impact on so much more of our lives, from our relationships to our own communities.  It is not just about righting the wrongs of the past, it too is about turning.  It is about turning to something better. 

The report says “Together, Canadians must do more than just talk about reconciliation; we must learn how to practise reconciliation in our everyday lives—within ourselves and our families, and in our communities, governments, places of worship, schools, and workplaces. To do so constructively, Canadians must remain committed to the ongoing work of establishing and maintaining respectful relationships.”

And Nelson Mandela when reflecting on his own country’s process of Truth and Reconciliation said clearly that we need to constantly remind ourselves of the past, but also partner this with action.   He said, “True reconciliation does not consist in merely forgetting the past”. Like teshuva, it serves no good when we just say I’m sorry and move on.  It involves being able to recognize the places where we can do better, and promise to take action.  With our situation here in Canada, this also means doing all that we can to learn the history of the residential schools, of the oppression of First Nation communities, and doing what we can to make change.  

In fact one of the key roles the Truth and Reconciliation committee took on, according to Commissioner Marie Wilson, was that of educating the Canadian public, which for many years was oblivious to the suffering of survivors. She said “If this educational goal is met with success, it will alter the ways in which Canadians think about their culture and history, challenging their identity as members of a community that knows no violence—a tolerant, pluralistic community. Such transformation, many believe, is the first step toward reconciliation between the two communities.

Transformation.  As we know, so much of our Jewish traditions and holidays are about overcoming our own history of oppression and celebrating our victories.   We tell the stories again and again, year after year, and do what we can to reflect on the truths gained from these experiences.  Yet, because our traditions are also so filled up with ritual and liturgy, rules and sometimes difficult acts of reflection, I do feel that something sometimes gets lost in translation.  We want to leave Yom Kippur more than hungry.  We want to learn and reflect, speak and act so that we leave these days transformed and changed.  When we leave our annual communal experience of the high holidays, of any communal gathering, we want there to be changes.  We want to be transformed.  Yet how often do we get to this point, and what do we need to do to get there?

The Sukkot in which we were commanded to dwell in the past week can be an example of how we can use our tradition as a process of transformative change, and specifically how this holiday can also be a powerful call for justice.  Sukkot reminds us that we can’t ignore what is going on beyond the walls of our homes and our communities.

With Sukkot, we want to keep it simple, and we want to remind ourselves of how little we actually need to survive and enjoy life, but there are limits.  We, like all people, need to feel safe and secure, and we need everyone to not only have what is necessary to survive, but like the idea of a sukkah, we also want to be welcomed, and be celebrated.  In the sukkah, where there are no doors to speak of, we welcome everyone with open arms, ready to listen to see and share the stories of each other, and also do our best to celebrate with joy the power of this connection.

But here’s the thing, no matter how flimsy and fragile our sukkah can be and still be kosher, when the walls start to wobble a bit too much, when the schach starts to fly away in the wind, we also are told can’t just sit back and watch our sukkah be destroyed.  We can’t let the walls fall down.  We must do our best to fix what is broken, to stabilize the walls, to tie things down to repair where repair is needed and ensure that even this simple, impermanent, flimsy hut is something safe enough to stay in.  Put up in a few hours, fixed and adjusted, it will never be something perfect.  It will never be too comfortable, and it will never be something that can protect us from everything that the world may throw at us.  And this is precisely why we celebrate it.  We know that we can live happily in a world that is never fully perfected, but we can’t let that be enough.  We also can’t ignore this imperfection when the brokenness causes the walls, the support and safety to collapse.  

So we can survive, and we can thrive in an imperfect world, in an imperfect sukkah, and in an imperfect community, but if our holiday season has taught us anything, it is that no matter what, we need to pay attention.  We cannot shut ourselves away from the suffering of the world, and we can’t hide in our homes when the wind starts to blow and the walls start to shake.  There is no running away from the truth that surrounds us. In our sukkahs, in our homes and in our lives, we have no choice but to listen and to hear the call for action.  On this day of Truth and Reconciliation, and every time when we are called to pay attention and acknowledge the pain and suffering of so many around us, we are also called to not let the walls fall down.

Let us remember the pain.  Let us hear the stories.  Let us do all that we can to fix this brokenness before it is too late.

Hidden among the gems of news, the usual mix of good, bad, and flat out depressing of these past few months was one headline that I am sure most people overlooked.  Just a few months ago, in Krakow Poland an official in the city made a grand public statement, groundbreaking in its simplicity and horrifying in its obviousness.  But before I can get to what he said, I need to explain what he was responding to.

In markets all throughout Poland, the street vendors and gift shops have all kinds of wares.  There are the traditional postcards, arts and crafts and t-shirts, often, as you would expect, with the unique flavour of the city or region. But especially in those towns and cities which once had large Jewish populations such as Warsaw or Krakow, you can also usually find some Jewish memorabilia. There might be a few paintings of the old Jewish neighborhood, or maybe a rare kiddush cup or mezuzah, but almost always there are also what I called, the “Money Jew”.  Usually these are small carved wooden statues of a stereotypical Hasidic Jew with black hat black jacket, tallit and payes, often smiling and holding in his hand a coin or two. 

You have to admit, they are sort of cute, but during the year that I lived in Poland working as the rabbi in Warsaw, I began to be bothered by what these little tchotchkes symbolized. Once out of curiosity I asked one of the vendors in Warsaw who I often walk past on my trips downtown what these little statues were all about. I was wearing my kippah, as I always did, so I wasn’t sure how he would respond.   “Oh these things? These are just a nice little reminder of the Jewish community that was once here.” “And what about the coin?”  I asked him.  “Well,” he said, “it’s a good luck charm. The Jews are good with money so if you have one of these maybe you will be too!”

While I didn’t look happy with his response, he wouldn’t let me leave until he offered me a deal.  If I bought one of his Money Jews, he would throw in a free postcard of my choice.  Being Jewish, and of course naturally good with money and frugal, I passed up the offer and moved on.

And back to that news story.  After these little figurines had now been on sale for decades, probably taking their place in thousands of homes across the world, bringing good Jewish wealth and prosperity to so many, one official in Krakow, what many call the “Jewish Disneyland” of Poland, came to a shocking realization:

“This figurine is antisemitic and it’s time for us to realize it,” said the city’s representative for cultural affairs, “In a city like Krakow, with such a difficult heritage and a painful past, it should not be sold.”

And there you have it.  Decades in the making, here in the land of Auschwitz, little statues rooted in the anti-Semitic trope of money-grabbing Jews, but sold as good luck symbols, are finally on their way out.  Maybe.

It is obvious to anyone, especially in the Jewish community, that these little statues are just one form, possible one of the more innocuous forms, of anti-Semitism that exist in our society.  Looked at as part of the world of conspiracy theories, violence and hatred that has sadly also become part of our news cycle of late, they might in fact seem somewhat harmless.  Yet all of this is part of one difficult reality that we must contend with as Jews, one which is both about the eternal hatred of Jews, but also the strange and problematic respect for Jewish power, creativity and ability to survive–that leads to at worst violence, and at best, quietly perpetuates the eternal idea that Jews, no matter how ingrained in society, are separate and different.  In this broken world, both these sides of this ceaseless problem will continue to fester and cause suffering unless we act.  Yet how to respond is more complicated than you might think.

In the context of our gathering as a community tonight, confronting the modern scourge of anti-Semitism, is about fighting this evil but at the same time, strengthening our own connection with our Jewish identity and history.  We need both to continue the struggle.

Ultimately, to fight against those who hate us, we need to know also what we are fighting for.  On this day of communal responsibility and reflection, we need to be reminded that fighting anti-Semitism and working to fix the brokenness of the world can be most successful when it doesn’t just make us hate those who hate us, but can also make us more proud of our own Jewish selves.

To be honest, I have resisted writing a sermon about anti-Semitism for a while now. As a rabbi, I’ve always believed that it’s more important to focus on the positive aspects of our community life that we find around us. I always saw it as my mission to bring Joy to Judaism, to find strength in our traditions and community to make our way through the challenges of life.

Never did I think I would take a whole High Holy Day sermon to discuss the status of hatred against the Jewish people. We should be looking forward instead of looking back. I personally have had very few incidences of anti-Semitism in my life or in the communities which I have been a part of, yet there is no denying that anti-Semitism of today, is very real and is taking on new forms which are challenging us in new ways that we have not encountered before.  There is no way to be quiet.

We now have an anti-Semitism that is wrapped up in anti-Zionism, and of course the difficult conversation around what this means has in a very real way torn apart the sense of unity of the Jewish community. We have Jewish university students who are unable to proudly walk around campus with a kippah or a Star of David because they will be accused of, God forbid, being pro-Israel supporters. It’s also the anti-Semitism of the right wing and the white supremacists, accentuated by the growing community of conspiracy theorists, fundamentalists, and domestic terrorists. 

We have white supremacists and nationalist groups growing throughout the world, who are proudly mixing old anti-Semitic tropes into their rants, and creating a new and dangerous mix of racism and ignorance for a new generation of believers.  From the chants of “Jews will not replace us” in Charlottesville just a few years ago, to the Jan 6th riots in the US, and the growing movement connecting all forms of lies to the pandemic, Jewish power and and a plethora of other stories of misinformation, this hatred is everywhere. 

And of course, in just the past few weeks, all over our city and even a few blocks from my house in Cote Saint Luc, posters of Jewish candidates Anthony Housefather and Rachel Bendayan have been covered with graffiti, including swastikas. 

And while we might have become so used to them that we don’t even think about why they are there, in front of this very synagogue space, along with all synagogues across our city, the cement barriers are up for the holidays, along with the apples and honey, letting us know that it is time for the New Year.  A quiet reminder that something is still not right for us Jews.

In such a mess of lies these days where you can have people who will go so far as protesting against doctors and nurses who are risking their lives to save Covid patients, it almost makes sense that one of the most ancient forms of hatred, anti-Semitism would make its way into our lives once again.

We know that while anti-Semitism has ebbed and flowed and taken many forms throughout history, it has been an ever present part of being Jewish as much as the traditions and rituals which have held our community together as we have encountered the challenges around us.

But found among these most obviously difficult forms of anti-Semitism that we are encountering in our community there also is a more hidden form of antisemitism, one which also deserves some reflection.  This is the anti-Semitism of the money jew statues, a delicately insidious view that on the surface honors Jews, but actually causes pain by refusing to acknowledge the current reality of living Jews, of contemporary Jewish life.

Dara Horn puts it well in the title of her new book: People Love Dead Jews.  In the book, she describes many shocking and in some ways uncomfortably funny stories of how this strange form of anti-Semitism has evolved into something possibly less dangerous, but still terribly problematic and challenging to our Jewish identity.  She speaks about the many people, both non-Jews and Jews themselves, who accept the horrors of the Holocaust and the suffering of our past, but where this loss is popularized to the point  that so many are actually more interested in the dead  and in the memories of what once once, then in the continuation of Jewish life and community. 

She shares the story of a Jewish tour guide at the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam who is not allowed to wear a kippah and needed months of deliberating by the museum officials to decide whether the guide must in fact essentially go into hiding and not wear the proud marker of Jewish identity on his head. She shares the story of how the city of Harbin in China, which once had a surprisingly large and thriving Jewish community until they were wiped out.  Remembering this history, the Chinese government built, as Horn calls it, a Disneyland of sorts with realistic statues of Jews in the market  with synagogues, stores, cafes and music with plenty of photo snapping tourists smiling in front of the place where Jews once lived. 

I can tell you that this sort of attitude was something that I experienced nearly every day in my work as the rabbi of the Progressive community in Poland before I came to Montreal. It was made very clear to me from the first moment I stepped in the synagogue in Warsaw that the community was tired of all of the visitors  who came to Poland in search of only memories and pain. They visited the concentration camps  and they stopped by the memorials, they went to academic conferences about genocide, and did all they could to search out what was lost in Poland.  They took plenty of photos, and bought the postcards, and of course, the money Jew statues.  Their focus was very clear.  While there were always lines at  Auschwitz, only a few people ever stopped by for kiddush and conversation at the synagogues filled with actual living Jews. 

You may have heard the stories before. About how Warsaw has a thriving Yiddish theatre, and a great klezmer music scene, with artists and musicians only a few of which are actually Jewish. Or the massive, and quite wonderful Jewish bookstore found in Krakow, it’s filled with an amazing selection of books in multiple languages about Jewish culture and identity that is wholly run and owned by non-Jews. Coffee shops and restaurants with Jewish names proudly serve matzo ball soup and pork on the same menu.  There is more than enough Yiddishkeit and Jewish culture to go around, but very few Jews left to enjoy it.

So there is this.  Whether you call it displaced philosemitism, basic ignorance or flat out anti-Semitism, it is very clearly only the surface of what we have seen around us.  To paraphrase Dara Horn’s book  title, a celebration of dead Jews, is a strange celebration indeed. 

From remembering people who are no more, to wanting to rid the world of those people who are left. 

The author and scholar Deborah Lipstadt who has written extensively on anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, put it very clearly when she described Anti-Semitism as the “autoimmune disease” of society.  This disease is like a festering sickness, living beneath the surface coming out during times of stress in society, and showing up in many forms.  

While there are now laws that prevent the worst outbursts of anti-Semitism, and most leaders now condemn it, it is still growing stronger.  The same ideas, the same lies and the same fear that was present in 1930s Germany is now being used to fan political division between left and right, and to place blame from all sides.  Mix in the power of social networking and the ease of spreading conspiracy theories, and you have a dangerous fire in the waiting.

The most newsworthy acts have been found in the stories about the defaced political posters, and the treatment of Jewish students on campuses, but there is a growing movement of something bigger and even more threatening.  It is gaining followers because of the ease of lies and conspiracy theories flowing through the internet and social networks..  The “Great Replacement” theory warns of a “white genocide” caused by non-white immigrants who are taking over the culture, jobs and values of the countries in which the live.  The contemporary “Great Replacement” theory was popularized by French author Renaud Camus who published an essay titled, “Le Grand Replacement” or “The Great Replacement” in 2011 which warns of “reverse colonization” which will ultimately lead to “ethnic and civilizational substitution” of the white race in Europe and the West.

While not directly anti-Semitic, Camus warns that multiculturalism and the liberal values of the left, a group that includes many Jews, is causing a physical and mental takeover of Western white society, and that all non-white people are to be feared.  The movement is also deeply misogynistic and unabashedly violent.

Just a few years ago, in 2018, Camus published an abridged version of his original essay in English, calling it “You Will Not Replace Us” echoing the familiar phrase “Jews will not replace us” chanted during the march in Charlottesville the year before.

I recently read through sections of this essay, and it seemed hard to believe that such vile garbage could exist in this day and age, but it doesn’t take long to see how easily these ideas can sink in.  We now live in a world where any lie or conspiracy theory can be put on the internet and become a truth as long as it has a good story, a good catchy tweet and enough people who need a scapegoat to take it and run wild.  A quick look at Fox News, or the reports of the anti-vaccine protests of the past few weeks, make it clear that the time is ripe for the lies of anti-Semitism to take hold as easily and as quickly as any other convenient myth of the past few years.

While The Great Replacement theory sees the invaders of whiteness as below them, these new anti-Semites, as is often the case, see the invaders as the elite. They, the Jews are the business owners, the liberal politicians and leaders who are bringing in the immigrants, who are supporting Black Lives Matter, and who are funding and leading all of the liberal causes which they believe are antithetical to their white nationalist values. This may sound familiar.  In many ways, this modern anti-Semitism is just a revision of the core ideas of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and of Nazism.  We Jews have always been taking over the world, and I hate to say it, but there are still those who are out to get us.

So this is one kind of anti-Semitism,and this is the kind of Jew hatred that makes the news, and may make us run in fear.  This is the anti-Semitism which rears its face in obvious hatred and ignorance, and which is evil as clearly as night and day.

And then there are the more hidden feelings of loss of remembering that Dara Horn speaks about.  This is the quiet anti-Semitism of the Money Jews of Poland, or the museum of Jews in China.  It is a recognition that while most would not want to go out and kill Jews, or do anything to hurt them, the Jewish people, Jewish culture is best when dead, quiet and only a memory.  

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, once wrote that anti-Semitism is rooted in the idea that the very existence of Jews creates the idea of difference, and that the hatred of Jews, is at its core a hatred of difference.  He believes that anti-Semitism is much bigger than an evil that affects the Jewish community.  He writes:

“That is our argument to humanity calling anti-Semitism – the hatred of difference– is an assault not only on Jews but on the human condition as such. Life is sacred because each person – even genetically identical twins – is different, therefore Irreplaceable and a non substitution of all. Every language, culture and civilization (within the terms of the universal moral code) has its own integrity because each is different, each adds something unique to the cultural heritage of humankind.”

He concludes: “Antisemitism begins with Jews, but it never ends with them.  A world without room for Jews is a world that has no room for difference, and a world that lacks space for difference for humanity itself.”

I don’t think it is necessary to go over the many ways that we can work together to fight anti-Semitism.  We need to recognize it, and speak up, whether it is a swastika on a campaign poster or a little statue of a Jew holding a coin, it is our responsibility to call it out, and to fight against intolerance in all forms. We need to understand the power of education, of conversation and listening, and know that people can change.  All of this is important.

But I would add to this.  We as Jews, as people who do honor difference, and who have spent too much time as separate, need to leave space in our own Jewish values and identity to ensure that we hold on to the life of Judaism not just the way things once were.  As I mentioned in My Rosh Hashanah sermon, we can’t just live in the past, or live a kind of Jewish nostalgia, we need a living, dynamic and relevant Judaism which can help us fight back against oppression as much as any good protest or social justice movement.

Today of all days, we also need to recommit ourselves to our own Jewish identities and communities.  We need to fight back against the belief, which is stronger than we might want to accept, that Judaism is no longer as useful, or as relevant as it once was, that it is primarily about the past and memories, because if we let this be true, then, then we have lost.  We need to try our best to understand why Judaism matters, and do what we can to learn from our traditions to be more involved and more active in making Judaism and Jewish community strong and alive, both within our communities and also as agents of change in this broken world.  We need to commit ourselves to nurturing a connection with Judaism, and challenge ourselves to find meaning in our brave, wise, inspiring, broken, hopeful, difficult and ancient faith.  Be part of this thousands year old culture, by learning more and making it your own.  We need to show up and we need to be part of community.  There will always be people who hate us as Jews, so let us start by working to remember why what we have is worth fighting for in the first place.

I want every member of the Jewish community to be able to protest and fight anti-Semitism and injustice of all kinds, but I would hope that everyone could say with just as much strength and confidence the reason why they are proud to be Jewish and why Judaism must survive.  We cannot have one without the other.

It is important to not give up.

When we reflect on anti-Semitism, and more broadly, all the division and hatred found in our changed pandemic world, where tragedy and loss has taken on a whole new meaning, and now we encounter daily news that leaves us speechless and sometimes with tears,  this is what we are fighting for.  We are making sure that by not being quiet, by responding with action against those who want to destroy us, we give ourselves a future where we can continue to  have powerful moments of hope and peace, and of the calm that we need to make sense of all that we encounter.   We need a joy to well up from our Jewish lives, purpose from our traditions and our community.  This rebuilding of Jewish life is as much as part of the fight for survival as the fight against those who would try to destroy it.  It takes time, and it takes a commitment to be part of something bigger than ourselves, but we are left with no other choice.  This is how we can honor our past, and this is how we can create a more hopeful future.

Gmar Hatima Tova

Rosh Hashanah Day 1 Sermon-5782/2021

5782/2021

Last year, I’d say around late April or May, I started imagining I was in Anatevka, the fictional shtetl from Fiddler on the Roof.  It may have started, well I am sure it started, after a particularly stressful week of horrible pandemic news and a genuine feeling of being overwhelmed by the tragedy of the beginning of the Covid experience. So what else could I do?  I laid down on the couch after the kids had gone to bed and watched Fiddler on the Roof!  Resisting the temptation to put on my tallis and march around the house singing “If I Was a Rich Man”, if only because it would wake up the kids–I watched the movie play out.  Those scenes of the shtetl, of Tevya and his family, of that strange dream of Tevya’s where he receives an omen that Zeitel should marry Motel, and of course of the many scenes of Tevya prancing through his village, past the run down shacks and farm animals, the little shteibele shul and so many of the quaint reminders of his “tradition filled” shtetl life.  When it was all over, I felt a real longing for something that at first I couldn’t quite label.  I didn’t necessarily want to move to the shtetl, but stuck in the pandemic and feeling a bit lost and fearful, I did want to feel that simple sense of community, safety and comfort that Tevya felt so strongly. Or as he says right before the song begins, that balance.  “And how do we keep our balance?”  “Tradition!”  Still early on in the pandemic, separated from others and confused, it wasn’t just about the movie, I had come down with something that I know so many others were also feeling.  I had a tough case of nostalgia.

I of course am not the first to reflect on how nostalgia has taken hold of us during these pandemic times.  We saw it happen within a few weeks of the worldwide shutdown last year, finding its place in the bags of flour disappearing off the shelves as the sourdough craze began, or as Netflix became the place to go to watch old episodes of TV favorites, and as people started knitting, running, or even going so far as God forbid, closing laptops taking out their pens and writing old fashioned  letters to family or friends.  Don’t worry, I only took it that far a few times.

Of course this may have just had come from a desire to keep us busy during lockdown while we were stuck at home, but there was clearly more going on then simply a few pandemic fads.  In some powerful way, we were stepping back a bit from the painful realities of contemporary society, from truths that were present even before the pandemic, and with the extra time and space gifted to us in some strange way by COVID, we were trying to do something that had been long overdue.  We were trying to see if there was another way to be.

While it is hard to put these experiences into words, in a way, we were and are all homesick–missing the places and people that we believed were part of the “world of our past”, even if at the same time, we are realizing that the past we were remembering was not as perfect as it seemed.  Stuck in this alternate universe of pandemic life, we began to see that maybe the fast-paced world of pre-covid times was not the true ideal.  We were trying to see if there was another way to be.

And in reality, it is not too far-fetched to say that for those months, so many of us were actually sick with nostalgia.  The sadness, the loneliness, the fear. In fact, the word nostalgia is rooted in this idea of homesickness, an actual physical ailment that needed healing as much as a virus or broken leg.

Now a year and a half later, we can see clearly how this pandemic has changed us, and how all aspects of our society have been torn apart even as they have been creatively patched together, sometimes in the most powerful and enlightening ways.  From our own Jewish community, to businesses, schools and other institutions we all had to rethink what it meant to be in community and be in relationship with each other.  Long held traditions and ways of behaving for the first time were being questioned.  We could no longer hug or do la beeze when we met a friend, even meeting together in a closed room became a logistical mess..  Movies, concerts, Shabbat services, restaurants, schools, the list goes on.

Assumptions about the sustaining systems of our society were challenged, causing us to rethink everything from healthcare to politics, to entertainment, to our food, to race relations to environmental destruction, to the way we treat animals and I hope, to the way we treat each other.  It may have been the fact that we were spending too much time at home, but this past year and a half of pandemic life, was also a year of incredible activism and life changing realizations.  From the world shattering protests of black lives matter, to thousands of people quitting their jobs or switching careers as they reflected on the meaning of work, money and life in general– the shock of Covid also allowed so many of us to break out of the expected patterns of our individual lives and our society. 

Hidden among all of the brokenness wrought by the pandemic, to paraphrase Leonard Cohen, some very real light was getting in.

Yet at the same time that we were out on the streets angry and fighting, or sitting along on the park bench or on our couches deeply rethinking our lives, so many of us just wanted to feel not have so much complicated to think about.  We just wanted the simple sense of comfort of the “way things used to be”.  Along with everything else, these feelings of nostalgia have oddly been as uniting a force as the pandemic itself.  

Yet, now a year and a half in, I think we can say that looking back, holding on to this nostalgia as a way of solving these many issues which we find in front of us will only get us so far.  Sourdough and Seinfeld can’t solve the problems of the world.

Let me begin with the experience we find ourselves in right now.  Sitting here in the sanctuary or at home, experiencing this Rosh Hashanah service.

As we gather together each holiday season for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, it is very clear that our connection to the days is both strong and deep, but also as much held together by the mysterious threads of nostalgia as the prayers, melodies and the people.  For some, you are here because of a true search for Teshuva or religious connection with God, godliness or something beyond ourselves.  For others, especially this year, you may gain a quiet strength from the simple sense of community felt during the holidays, the powerful reminder that we are not alone.

And then I know that there are those that would say that the pull to be here, to be with others during these days might even have a bit of guilt–you have to come to at least one service a year!  But I don’t think it is that easy.  These holidays, and I would argue so much of Jewish tradition, hold their power through the way they inspire the deepest kind of longing–one that gives us the space to hold on to the past, but also does not give up on the future.  

Through the context of Jewish community and ritual we can live in the familiar, no matter what else is happening in the world around us.  Through the regularity of the Jewish calendar we can revel in the predictable–and this can be a blessing, no matter where you place yourselves on the religious spectrum.  Shabbat comes every Friday, and Rosh Hashanah comes every fall.  Bagels and cream cheese come every Sunday Morning at 8:30.  Or maybe that’s just me!  This is of course why we often expect the same melodies, the same recipes, maybe even the same seat in the sanctuary when holidays come around.  And on that note, I am sorry to disappoint every single one of you this year!  

But that’s just it.  I think part of what makes this year so challenging, is that so much of the familiar and the predictable has been ripped away from us. In this experience, and in life.  It feels as if we are entering this space after a year and a half of wandering, and no matter how much we can look back at the way things used to be, we don’t know exactly what we should expect as we sit here today.  No matter how hard we try, nothing feels the same.  Just take a look around, whether you are here in the sanctuary or at home.  We know that this is not what we are used to.

But thankfully, while it may be much easier to imagine that the ancient rabbis, the philosophers and scholars who created these prayers, to make this experience  to connect with us on a religious level, to be about prayer, God, and repentance, they knew as well as we do that every experience, especially this one, connects with us on multiple levels.  The prayers may be written on the book in front of us, but they are there to become part of us in a wholly unique way, to become real in the moment.

If as you sit here chanting the prayers of the Yamim Noraim, you maybe are brought back to those childhood memories of sitting in shul with your bubbe or zayde, or even of the foods and the traditions of this season, let that be your spiritual wellspring that guides you through these days.  If you are sitting here with a mind full of questions and maybe even frustrations, but you find strength from the simple fact that we are still here, after thousands of years, still sitting together, in person and online, doing our best to stay connected to our past and to each other, then that can be your stable pillar that keeps you strong during these days.  These holidays were created to be the ultimate uniting force that connects us with our past, gives holy space for nostalgia, reminds us to live in the present, while also giving us hope for a better future.  In a magical way if we let it be, today can be a bit of much needed Jewish time travel.

Yet I would offer a bit of a warning about feeling too comfortable.  In the same way that basing our understanding of Jewish community on the world of Anatevka will lead us to base our identity on a mythological world that never was, our Jewish identity today, and our Jewish community can’t only survive on nostalgia.  This feeling of longing can bring us back to a place that once was.  It can provide us a very real and a very healthy sense of comfort and connection, but no matter how hard we try it can’t always give us what we need to survive the realities of what we live with around us.  Our Judaism no longer can be stuck in a shtetl.  It can only survive if it breaks free to evolve to be even more relevant and if those traditions and rituals can be lived with intention and strength to become part of all of who we are, not just our Jewish selves.  

My dreamed living room rendition of the top hits of Fiddler on the Roof can put a smile on my face, and help me reflect a bit on my life, but it won’t necessarily give me all I need to confront the challenges I find around me.  Nostalgia, Jewish and otherwise, is a necessary and helpful way that we encounter the ups and downs of our life, but only can help us when we both utilize it and also realize its failures.

Stepping out for a moment from our Jewish community, we can see the many ways that this longing is such a core part of how we interact with the world.  It anchors us, but like an anchor, it can also hold us down.

Svetlana Boym, puts it well in her recent book, The Future of Nostalgia:

“…nostalgia goes beyond individual psychology. At first glance, nostalgia is a longing for a place, but actually it is a yearning for a different time – the time of our childhood, the slower rhythms of our dreams. In a broader sense, nostalgia is a rebellion against the modern idea of time, the time of history and progress. The nostalgic desire to obliterate history and turn it into a private or collective mythology, to revisit time like space, refusing to surrender to the irreversibility of time that plagues the human condition.”

“Refusing to surrender to the irreversibility of time that plagues the human condition.”

Isn’t this what has happened so much to us over the past year and a half?  

We find ourselves this year, still stuck in the midst of the pandemic but in so many ways in such a different place than we were last year.  Time has passed, but not enough has changed.  For better or for worse, we now have become used to the realities of pandemic life: the separation, the masks, the lingering fear.  Yet at the same time, the sense of perspective and the opportunity for reflection have also brought us to some new insights.  One of the most important is the strength which we now know that we can’t control everything.  We can put up physical and spiritual walls of protection around us, through our homes, our things, our masks, our vaccines, our technology,  and even our most strongly held beliefs, but we know that one little virus can, with the ease of a single breath, break it all down.  You would have to be entirely oblivious to let the perspective that this time has given us pass you by.  But this doesn’t stop us from trying our best.

Back in the 1980s, the futurist and philosopher, Faith Popcorn–who with a name like that must be trusted–came up with the concept of “cocooning” which she said is when we are “trying to control everything to protect ourselves from a harsh and unpredictable world”.  In the context of the 80s, the time of my childhood, this is why she believed, there were so many wholesome TV shows such as the Cosby show  (which at least back then was wholesome) or the many other laugh track laden shows of happy families, and light and cheesy humor.  According to her, this also led to the popularity of TV dinners, bringing us back to the convenience of home cooked meals, and also in a strange but not surprising way, more gun ownership.  

After the political and social challenges of the 70s and 80s, (think the rise of feminism, racism, drugs, AIDS and urban blight) cocooning took hold in the 80s with abandon.  Yet, as is the case with the creative ways we have survived this pandemic, it did not necessarily deal directly with the issues at hand, but did in a very real way give us a sense of comfort and safety that brought us through these years in one piece.  

And now we find ourselves, once again in a broken world, where we seem to have lost our path, or at least our knowledge of which path we are meant to head down.  Our cocooning, our healing has come from that bread baking, and movie watching, from the taking up of new hobbies, or reminiscing about the mythological shtetl which once wasn’t. 

But…Ashamnu, we may not have done all that we could.

We can’t let our current bout of nostalgia cover up the realities of our world which need not just reflection but action.  We can hold on to the healing powers of all that has held us together the past few years, but we also need to look at what is right in front of us, to see both what caused this pandemic and also how we can find a way out.  

We may hate to admit it, but there is simply no longer any way to deny that our way of life is the root of so many of our societal problems and of this pandemic.  It’s not all on us, but neither are we entirely innocent.  Our actions are causing environmental destruction, the hurricanes, and the floods.  Our political leaders, our institutions and our own behaviors continue to allow poverty and hunger to fester among the most neglected in our society.  For the sake of convenience and our palates, our acceptance of the exploitation and abuse of animals helped cause the very situations which made Covid to run rampant. We allow a world where racism and ignorance can stay strong, and we let brokenness, loneliness and separation hold sway, and leave too much space for darkness to overshadow the light which we need to bring into the world.  Ashamnu.  It may not have been us alone, but we all need to change.

We now know more than ever, that what we do, how we act, does make a difference.

Ashamnu.  We have sinned. But lo lefached klal, we also must not be afraid of the task that lies ahead.

The only way nostalgia, that looking back at our past, back at this past year and a half, and all the way back to the lives of our ancestors can serve its ultimate goal is if we don’t only dwell in the place we find ourselves, but if we move beyond it.

We have to remember that one of the core ideas of these days, teshuva does ask us to turn back.  But are we turning back, a full turn to the people we once were, to the world that once was?  This is not the goal, and we know that this is not possible and not always best.  In fact it is the smallest turns that can make the biggest difference, and what matters most is that we will put ourselves back on track, on a new path that will lead us where we need to go.  This year as we look back at the year that has passed, this year of challenge and separation, we might feel stuck like there is too much brokenness to hold on to, and that change is too difficult.  But what matters is that we start the process of change, and keep fighting, keep turning until we find ourselves in a new and better world.  Start with a small turn, and see where it takes us.

So where does this leave us now?  We need to utilize the nostalgia and the acts of hope that we have created for ourselves to give us what we need to move forward.  Yet no more than I can imagine that the myth of the shtetl of Fiddler on the Roof can be any more than a dream version of a past which was just as broken and challenging as our present, we can’t imagine that living in nostalgia is the best way to move forward.

With the reminder given to us from our Jewish world, we know that while we can survive in a world of feelings, the sense of connection and comfort, familiarity and food that makes up so much of these holidays, Judaism, and life demands action.  This experience of the holidays is meant to be brought out into the world.   We need to remember that it is exactly when things start getting too comfortable that we need to break free and cause a little ruckus.  If the prayers become rote, if the experiences become too easy or too difficult, we need to do what we can to make them our own, to learn more, to connect more, to challenge more, and to make all that we do more relevant.  

Here’s one thing that our tradition tells us, a lesson that extends through our entire lives: if you are not willing to put in the hard work of learning, exploring, falling in love with and being bothered by our traditions and whatever the world throws at you, then it may not give back to you what you want to receive.  Judaism, like life in general, was never meant to be easy, and we’ll need more than catchy songs, or familiar prayers to bring us forward.

This is the time to “see if there is another way”.  This is the time to step out of separation and into community.  This is the time to no longer accept that convenience and comfort will necessarily make you deeply happy, and instead do what is necessary to create a just and sustainable society. This is the time to finally break free from the paths that have held us down, to make those small turns, and chart new trails that may lead us to places and ways of being which we never thought possible.  Amid all of the pain, loss and separation, this pandemic is an opportunity.  This is the time to see if there is another way. 

This is the time to finally, once and for all, recognize that we no longer need to see brokenness as the default, and instead see hope as the path forward. 

Now is the time to step out of the comfort of the past to stand up and fight for the world that we know is possible.  We know now that there is another way to be, and it is up us to find it.

Shanah Tova!