Everyone told me not to do it. People want to be inspired on Kol Nidre, they all said. They want to hear about profound matters of the spirit; words that touch their souls, give wings to their deepest longings for meaning and purpose. They are even willing to look deeply into their own failings and shortcomings of the past year and let you remind them of the importance of self-examination, of teshuvah – of repentance and the miracle of forgiveness. But whatever you do, don’t talk about Israel – because you can’t win – no matter what you say you are going to upset part of your congregation. No matter how you do it, you will end up alienating some, irritating others, frustrating even more. Rabbi suicide – don’t go there.

No, I am not going to point the finger of blame – not at young Israeli soldiers frightened out of their minds, fearful for their lives, feeling perpetually under seige, surrounded by a hostile enemy. And not at young Palestinians either – who grew up with mythic tales of the messianic days to come when the Jews would be no more and their families would return in triumph to long-remembered olive groves and abandoned homes in ancient villages. Growing up under the oppressive thumb of occupation, the constant reminders of their powerlessness, the poverty and the squalor of permanent refugee camps.

This past week in our religious school, one of the teachers had just finished a lesson on teshuvah/forgiveness, and to make sure she had made her point she asked her class, “Can anyone tell me what you must do before you can obtain forgiveness for sin?” A little girl’s hand shot up. “You’ve got to sin first,” she said.

I have watched the news reports all week from Israel and Gaza, Jerusalem and the West Bank and I have cried as these very words – al het sh’khatanu lefanekha – for the sins we have sinned against you echoed over and over in my heart. What incredible irony it is – this war between Arabs and Jews. The anger, the hatred, the fear, the jealousy, the rage – particularly today - at this High Holy Day season. We just read on Rosh Hashana about Isaac and Ishmael, both sons of our patriarch Abraham. How Abraham himself almost killed first one and then the other. And now this.

But isn’t that so often the way it really is in life? That brothers and sisters do fight with one another? Just last week a young woman sat in my study with tears in her eyes, grief in her heart, and guilt in her soul. And her story is so typical it is practically a cliché.

So there she sat in my study with her head in her hands, lamenting the lost opportunity to make it right; to look into his eyes, and tell him she was sorry; to tell him that none of it was really important enough to cause that chasm between them – between them now, forever.

For Isaac and Ishmael, Israelis and Palestinians have so much to give each other - so much they could build together – so much they could create together, if they ever gave each other the chance.

Every year on Rosh Hashana we read the story of how Abraham takes his beloved son Isaac to the top of Mount Moriah to offer him as a human sacrifice. Each year we can’t help but feel a sigh of relief when we get to the part of the story where an angel calls to Abraham and stops him with the slaughtering knife in mid air.

This week it felt as if we were all too late. Palestinian youths burned tires and bombarded Israeli soldiers and the police with rocks and firebombs; Israeli troops responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition. In the Torah, the only time Isaac and Ishmael stood together, was when they were burying their dead father. This week they buried the peace together. Perhaps sometimes, even the angels arrive too late.

It was just a few hours before sundown last April. Soon we would be gathered around a seder table, feeling once again the power of liberation and freedom. And there we were, aboard a small boat, silently contemplating what we had just experienced for the past few hours on a tiny island just a few short miles out of the harbor of Cape Town, South Africa. It was the infamous Robben Island – a place known the world over for banishment, exile, isolation, imprisonment and institutional brutality. For 400 years, Robben Island played cruel host to unwilling inhabitants from slaves to leprosy sufferers, the sick, the poor, the mentally disturbed, French Vichy prisoners in WWII, common criminals and most recently political opponents of the apartheid regime.

Never again would freedom seem so commonplace. Never again would I be content with the cliches that come so easily to my lips and my teaching and my sermons. Just a few brief hours before Pesah, and there we were standing in front of the tiny cell in the maximum security prison where Nelson Mandela spent 18 difficult years of his life on the long road to freedom. Our guide was Elias Mboto, a former political prisoner who had spent twelve years imprisoned on Robben Island for speaking out against the racism of apartheid. It’s been nearly ten years now since the last political prisoners were released from the Island, but Elias’s words were haunting – “I still can’t sleep at night,” he said, “there are always the nightmares.”

He told us of secretly tearing small strips of cloth from their blankets, painting them with polish and somehow turning them into small candles by whose light they would read all night, lying on the floor of their cells in the dark with the straw mat and blanket pulled over their heads to hide the candle light.

And then Elias told us this story: “When they finally released me from the Island,” he said, “they transferred me to Kimberly in the North of the country to live, even though my whole life I had lived in Cape Town. I had to report three times a day to a prison official and was forbidden to be in the company of more than two people at any one time.

“I walked away shaking my head in wonder – I had just hugged a guard. What made me do that? What was going on? And then I realized this is what life is about – we are all prisoners, we are all guards. And if we are to live in this world together, we must be able to extend the hand in tenderness and not in brutality and fear. We must hug each other. We must.” Elias Mboto and an anonymous guard. Searching for and finding their common humanity. In spite of all the nightmares of the past, still searching for a common dream. Didi and I listened to his story in awe - told so simply, so quietly we had to strain to hear the words. No bravado. No boasting. It was the quiet inner strength of rightness and knowing - forged in the harsh and bitter flames of racism and cruelty.

Several years ago a colleague of mine officiated at a funeral. When the service was over, the mourner refused to leave the graveside. The rabbi tried to lead the man away after the coffin had been lowered. He said, “The service is over now. You really should be going home.”

Perhaps every one of you can make this your promise tonight as well – that tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, you will speak to your brother, or your sister, your mother or your father, your child or your childhood friend, and tell them that you love them. Tell them that you are sorry. Ask them to forgive – before it’s too late.