Rabbis and congregants alike developed the expression “High Holy Days Jew” to refer to someone who is proud of being Jewish, but his active involvement in congregational life is restricted to three days during the year.
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It is no secret that Rabbis usually would like to see their congregants more often at Shul. Rabbis invest a lot of time in preparing classes, developing programs, and bringing scholars, and there is a sense of understandable frustration when half a dozen couples turn for an activity, for which you expected fifty or sixty people.
It is no secret that Rabbis usually would like to see their congregants more often at Shul. Rabbis invest a lot of time in preparing classes, developing programs, and bringing scholars, and there is a sense of understandable frustration when half a dozen couples turn for an activity, for which you expected fifty or sixty people.
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Now, although it is not Yom Kippur yet, I feel that I must make a confession. I was one of the countless Rabbis, who, somehow, felt more admiration and empathy for those Synagogue members who come to services every week, or who attend activities regularly, than for those who –in my own derogatory thought- “remember they are Jewish once a year”. This confession comes together with thoughts of repentance and contrition: I used to feel this way, but not any more.
Today I look at my parents, my brother, my uncles and aunts, and some of my Jewish friends, all of them “High Holy Days Jews” with a new sense of respect. Today I look at you, and I look at me before I became a Rabbi, with a new sense of admiration.
I used to believe that a Jew, who comes to the Shul on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, was paying lip services to a vestige of an old practice. I didn’t understand what the secret of the High Holy Days was. What makes some of you, busy people during the year, removed from daily prayers and complex rituals, want to listen to a Cantor chant old melodies, listen to the Torah reading or the blowing of the Shofar?
The answer to these questions is not in the past year, or the past two years, or the past ten, twenty or fifty years in your lives. The answer to these questions is in the year ahead. Rosh Hashanah is about our future connection, not about our past experience.
All of us are here today, because we are all searchers. We are here because, knowingly or unknowingly, we want to extract some meaning from old melodies, from the Torah reading, and from the sound of the Shofar.
Even someone who will only come for Yizkor, half an hour a year, is searching for a special connection. Maybe this year will be the year. Maybe seeing other Jews, seeing the Torah, or remembering my parents, will give a new meaning to my life.
We all are in the same boat, Rabbi and congregants, “High Holy Days Jews” and those who spend more time here than at their own homes. My parents, my brother, my friends and I. We all are trying to grasp a piece of meaning; we all try to reconnect with our roots. It didn’t happen last year, or the year before, or the year before, but we don’t give up, we are here again, one more time, and we keep trying year after year, and for that all of you deserve my greatest respect and consideration.
Since Rosh Hashanah is about the future, and not about the past, we all have the same potential during this coming year.
And speaking about this coming year, may God bless each of you and your families with a good, healthy, sweet, prosperous and meaningful year.
Now, although it is not Yom Kippur yet, I feel that I must make a confession. I was one of the countless Rabbis, who, somehow, felt more admiration and empathy for those Synagogue members who come to services every week, or who attend activities regularly, than for those who –in my own derogatory thought- “remember they are Jewish once a year”. This confession comes together with thoughts of repentance and contrition: I used to feel this way, but not any more.
Today I look at my parents, my brother, my uncles and aunts, and some of my Jewish friends, all of them “High Holy Days Jews” with a new sense of respect. Today I look at you, and I look at me before I became a Rabbi, with a new sense of admiration.
I used to believe that a Jew, who comes to the Shul on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, was paying lip services to a vestige of an old practice. I didn’t understand what the secret of the High Holy Days was. What makes some of you, busy people during the year, removed from daily prayers and complex rituals, want to listen to a Cantor chant old melodies, listen to the Torah reading or the blowing of the Shofar?
The answer to these questions is not in the past year, or the past two years, or the past ten, twenty or fifty years in your lives. The answer to these questions is in the year ahead. Rosh Hashanah is about our future connection, not about our past experience.
All of us are here today, because we are all searchers. We are here because, knowingly or unknowingly, we want to extract some meaning from old melodies, from the Torah reading, and from the sound of the Shofar.
Even someone who will only come for Yizkor, half an hour a year, is searching for a special connection. Maybe this year will be the year. Maybe seeing other Jews, seeing the Torah, or remembering my parents, will give a new meaning to my life.
We all are in the same boat, Rabbi and congregants, “High Holy Days Jews” and those who spend more time here than at their own homes. My parents, my brother, my friends and I. We all are trying to grasp a piece of meaning; we all try to reconnect with our roots. It didn’t happen last year, or the year before, or the year before, but we don’t give up, we are here again, one more time, and we keep trying year after year, and for that all of you deserve my greatest respect and consideration.
Since Rosh Hashanah is about the future, and not about the past, we all have the same potential during this coming year.
And speaking about this coming year, may God bless each of you and your families with a good, healthy, sweet, prosperous and meaningful year.
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