Last Friday as I came into the synagogue to prepare for Shabbat services, our Hazzan Sheni Beth was standing in the foyer with her husband, Ira and their 4 year old son, Jonah. Beth turned to Jonah and said, “Say Shabbat Shalom to the Rabbi, Jonah.” He looked up at me with that 4 year old innocent look and said, “My mouth doesn’t feel like talking.”

Didi keeps in regular touch with a Jewish inmate from a former congregation who is in State Prison in Northern California. I want to begin this New Year with a story he told her last week: Two Jews who are riding on the same train. The one looks across the aisle at the other and sees that he’s reading an unusual looking newspaper, so he leans over to get a closer look and lo and behold the other Jew is reading the English language edition of . The first Jew gets indignant and challenges the one reading the paper – “Why are you reading that trash? Why are you reading that disgusting anti-Semitic, anti-Israel diatribe?”
AL JAZEERAH


It’s the New Year – 5766. And in Gamatria, Jewish numerology, 5766 is the equivalent of the Hebrew words, . Not a bad way to start the year: “5766 – May blessings comes upon you.” So I want you to know that you, this synagogue of Kehillat Israel has been my blessing for the past 20 years. Because tonight marks my 20th anniversary High Holy Days at KI – the beginning of my 20th year as your rabbi. 20 years privileged to work side by side with Chayim Frenkel as my cantor. 20 years of the incredible privilege to be an intimate part of your lives. 20 years of more blessings from all of you than Didi, and Gable and I could possibly count.

20 years ago when I first arrived we were a congregation of less than 250 households in an old, funky building. The stairs were broken and dangerous. The pipes under the building were clay and falling apart. The congregation dreamed of reaching the as yet unreachable goal of 300 families. And when I first arrived, this congregation had gone through 3 rabbis, 3 cantors and 3 educators in the previous 6 years.

The KI culture is very, very different now – 20 years later. Ask anyone and they will tell you. To be on our board of directors is a privilege, a pleasure, a reward, an opportunity to discover even greater meaning, and depth of character and purpose in your personal and spiritual life.

What you probably don’t realize is that those 3,500 individuals represent at least another 15-20,000 relatives, friends and members of the community to whom we provide services - religious, social, educational and communal every single year.

This enormous super computer hummed away for an hour and then printed out it’s one-word answer…YES. The generals looked at each other, somewhat stupefied. Finally one of them submits a second request to the computer: YES WHAT?

That has always been my dream – my vision. A synagogue that is a YES in people’s lives. And a synagogue that people want to say “yes” to and become part of as well.

“Within them” and not “within it” even thought when talking about a sanctuary “it” seems to make more sense - because for Jews God is found not in buildings and monuments no matter how lofty and beautiful and inspirational they might be. Instead, we discover God in the hearts of human beings, holiness in the creation of community, and life’s meaning and purpose in numberless acts of kindness and justice, Tzedakah and Gemilut Hasadim that being part of a “kehillat kodesh” a “sacred community” is ultimately all about.

But “typical synagogue standards” have never been my goal, for the Jewish world is filled with thousands if not millions of adults whose childhood experiences with rabbis, and religious schools and the financial practices of “typical synagogues” have turned them off to organized Jewish life for good.

But since Rosh Hashana is a time of confession and repentance, let me confess that we sometimes talk a much better community than we walk. Just last week I got a call from one of our members – a single older widow who has been a member of KI far longer than I have been here – I am sure over 30 years.

That phone call broke my heart. That is not OK. That is not community. And with all our remarkable success and our beautiful building – if no one calls you for a year to check if you’re OK – then what kind of a “sacred community” are we - we are failing to live up to what we can be, and what we must be.

For there is only one way that they can possibly survive in the awesome, freezing, harsh and hostile environment in which they live. One way – thousands of them huddle together, providing each other enough warmth to last through the most brutal subfreezing weather. And most remarkably, they take turns walking around the outside of the huddle while those in the middle sleep. Survival depends on each one giving to the community unselfishly – staying connected – recognizing that each individual’s destiny is inextricably bound up with the other.

When Didi and I were in Africa a few years ago we heard the legend of Yameel – the fastest runner and messenger in all of Africa. He was legendary for his swiftness of foot, his incredible sense of direction, his uncanny ability to find any location from the most remote tree to the largest village.

Yameel replied, “I have been running so fast that I have left my soul behind. I am standing here waiting for it to catch up to me.” Sometimes that’s KI as well. We’ve run so fast, grown so fast, we’ve moved so fast, we sometimes leave our soul behind.

The Yiddish proverb says, “If you are going to be miserable when you are sick, be thankful when you are well.” It’s all about gratitude. It’s not about the running, but the stopping to experience how blessed we are every day.

If you woke up with more health than illness – you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week. If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation, you are ahead of the 500 million people in the world who have. If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead, and a place to sleep – you are richer than 75% of the people in the world.

In one of her last columns before she died, she wrote, “Gratitude begins in awe, in seeing the whole human enterprise as audacious. It rejects the very notion of the mundane and sees the extraordinary even in the ordinary. Nothing is taken for granted…Thankful, not greedy. Humbled, not entitled. Beholden, not exempted by the great mystery of survival; the realization that the turkey, the trimmings, the easy breath and the easy flight are all divine.”

Shortly before he died, George Bernard Shaw was asked by a reporter, “If you could live your life over and be anybody you’ve known, or any person from history, who would you be?” “I would choose,” replied Shaw, “to be the man George Bernard Shaw could have been, but never was.”