Kol Nidre 5785
You can listen to Cantor Zöe's sermon here or read it below.
“I Sing of Hope, and Don’t Know How…”
Cantor Zöe Jacobs, October 2024 / Tishri 5785
Last Simchat Torah, as rumours of the atrocities were starting to be heard in Tel Aviv, one of our closest family friends - Major Benji Trakeniski - jumped out of bed, put on his uniform, and headed south. He managed to get to Kibbutz Be'eri, where - despite engaging in multiple combats with Hamas terrorists - he saved more than 80 members of the Kibbutz, leading them to safety whilst being under relentless fire. Benji was ultimately killed when he went back in to save a wounded friend - just 10 days before his 33rd birthday, and 6 months before his wedding.
In films I watched as a child, I relied on the knowledge that the hero never dies. But Benji’s death told a different story.
Words fail me as I attempt to describe the kind, gentle, wise, brilliant, vibrant, beautiful young man and leader that Benji was. I secretly thought he should one day be Prime Minister of Israel. Actually, not so secretly, because I told him a number of times.
Initially, I was numb. And if I was feeling numb for a close friend, I can only imagine how the immediate families of everyone killed that day must have felt. How many of us in this room struggled; whether we were in close circles of those killed or taken hostage, or affected simply because we are part of the wider Jewish community.
For a while, I channeled all my energy into everything we were doing together here at FRS, and I left my feelings at the door.
Until one day, I realised I was struggling. I was really angry.
I would read other people’s words on social media, hear things on the news, overhear conversations in restaurants, and find myself angry, even furious. Not an emotion I would often identify in myself, before October the 7th.
I found myself dividing people into those who “understood” and those who “couldn’t understand” - those who were right and those who were wrong.
Reading the words of people I might not have spoken to for 20 years, I found it hard not to reach for the keyboard and add to the noise. Fortunately, my husband, David, usually convinced me to step away from the computer.
I was watching people destroying each other on the internet, and was filled with a combination of anger, fear, and concern. People I knew and loved were unable to see anything beyond their own perspective - and sometimes I understood that inability more than I wanted to admit.
I watched a war play out on social media even before it was being fought on the ground. Insults and threats being slung across the internet by keyboard warriors with no care for who was receiving their hatred on the other side of the computer. The whole world seemed to have lost it’s sense of nuance - we were fighting in black and white, without talking to each other or having any interest in other opinions. Life was being conducted in CAPITAL LETTERS.
Martin Buber teaches us about the “I-thou” philosophy, reminding us that it is through meaningful relationships with another person that we can encounter the Divine. Meaningful dialogue is not and can not be found in 140 characters; not on Twitter, not on Facebook, not on Instagram.
Buber suggests that genuine dialogue is a “mode of exchange in which there is a true turning toward and engagement of another person… as a genuine human being.”This sort of dialogue is real work, and in the depths of despair we might struggle to engage in this way without overwhelming emotion. But Buber doesn’t only refer to spoken dialogue: he might suggest simply sitting together in our grief.
In my despair about this war, and the growing polarisation inside and outside our community, I found comfort in a song by the composer and musician, Jason Robert Brown, written when he, personally, was in the depths of despair
HOPE - by Jason Robert Brown
I come to sing a song about hope.
I’m not inspired much right now, but even so,
I came out here to sing a song. So here I go.
I guess I think that if I tinker long enough, one might appear.
And look! It’s here. One verse is done.
The work’s begun.
I come to sing a song about hope.
In spite of everything ridiculous and sad,
Though I’m beyond belief depressed, confused and mad,
Well – I got dressed.
I underestimated how much that would take.
I didn’t break. Until right now.
I sing of hope And don’t know how.
So maybe I can substitute “strength,”
Because I’m strong.
I’m strong enough.
I got through lots of things I didn’t think I could,
And so did you.
I know that’s true.
And so we sing a song about hope.
Though I can’t guarantee there’s something real behind it,
We have to try to show our children we can find it,
And so today –
When life is crazy and impossible to bear –
It must be there.
Fear never wins.
That’s what I hope.
See? I said “hope.”
The work begins.
I started to play this song on repeat, and wondered what it might take for me to find hope at such an impossible time.
You may remember the beautiful story about Rabbi Hugo Gryn’s father, which we so often read over these High holy days. Found in this machzor, it speaks of a conversation between father and son, whilst they were both in Auschwitz:
‘You and I have seen that it is possible to live up to three weeks without food. We once lived almost three days without water; but you cannot live properly for three minutes without hope!’”
But what does it mean to seek hope, to find faith, when we are filled with so much uncertainty? Perhaps even with despair?
Let’s remember - as I often say - that we are “Yisra’el” - literally, those who struggle with God. This struggle is exemplified in Torah, beginning with Adam and Eve, continuing through Abraham & Jacob, and certainly finding space in our story of Moses, who doubts if he can ever lead his people.
Struggle - acknowledging complexity - is in our DNA. We refer to arguments for the sake of heaven. We should not be sectarians. We can not see the world only in black and white. We are Reform Jews.
Midrash is full of questions, of doubts, of struggle. Or, as Rabbi Michael Murmur teaches, “Reform Judaism sees faith as what happens when you acknowledge doubt and live with it. If you have no doubt, you don’t really need faith.”
So perhaps we have no choice but to sit in this place of not knowing what’s right. It’s not comfortable or easy to struggle, but it is very Jewish.
Yehuda Amichai has a poignant poem, called “The Place where we are right”: He says:
From the place where we are right
Flowers will never grow
In the spring.
The place where we are right
Is hard and trampled
Like a yard.
But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined
house once stood.
A brilliant HUC rabbinical student, James Feder, wrote a commentary to Amichai, saying:
“If we observe the world of nuance and doubt only from a distance
as we continue to swim within the waters we know,
then we are destined, damned, to be like the goldfish,
whose container determines how much it can grow.”
When we think of our community, how do we see ourselves? I can’t answer for you, but I’m pretty sure that we are not a group who only stick within safe waters. We take risks. We are not afraid to step outside of convention.
We lead on social justice initiatives, even when other Jewish communities are nervous to do so. We build environmentally-sound buildings. We hire cantors! We leave our fishbowl, go out into the world, engage with others, and even welcome them in. This is one of the reasons I have hope.
Davka because of our community.
Reading the words of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks helped me to understand one more critical difference in this search for hope. He wrote;
“People often confuse optimism and hope… They sound similar. But in fact, they're very different. Optimism is the belief that things are going to get better. Hope is the belief that if we work hard enough together, we can make things better. It needs no courage to be an optimist. It needs a great deal of courage to have hope.… And hope is what transforms the human situation.”
This acknowledgment of the courage it takes to have hope feels critical. When the world can feel so dark, the belief that we can act to make change is courageous, and I am certain it is where the cross-section of love, faith, and hope meet.
As a child, I was taught that when we sing ashamnu, we beat our chests. These days, we teach our children to tap on their hearts. To invite them to open up.
And it makes me wonder. If we could add a little bit of love to our despair, where might it lead us? It is not a weakness to NOT have all the answers. Right now, it could be our greatest strength. We search for nuance. We engage with the world. We talk with real people. We leave space for faith, hear what those we love are saying, and open the door to real conversations. I-Thou. Perhaps it is those very conversations that offer us the chance to experience the Divine.
It has been an impossible year. We have mourned and comforted, cried and despaired. Those we have lost will never be able to add their voices to our community. Their riches are lost forever. Benji won’t ever be the Prime Minister of Israel, no matter how much I am certain he would have been the best. No matter how angry I might feel.
I wrote this sermon in the lead up to the first anniversary of October 7th, and in recent days I’ve come back to acknowledge that, at times, I am still really stuck in my despair. I still want to shout at the radio, and wonder how the views of terrorists and politicians seem louder than the voices of real people. Yet last Monday, more than 250 people came together in our building to reflect - to commemorate so many lives lost, to pray for the release of the hostages, and to pray for a true and lasting peace for all. And there, I found hope.
Our liturgy is full of struggle, of crying out for God to help us in our time of need. We have been fortunate to live in a time and a place where this eternal struggle seemed to be a thing of the past. Now we understand that it is, sadly, far too relevant. But it does remind us that, in our several-thousand-year history, we have been here before and have come through the other side, and I truly believe we will do so again.
May the year ahead allow us the courage to let go of some of our certainties. May it give us permission to doubt, to express fear and concern, and to hear the fears and concerns of others. May we find strength in our faith, and a renewed hope for 5785.
Adaptation of HOPE - by Jason Robert Brown
…And so we sing a song about hope.
In spite of everything ridiculous and sad,
Though I’m beyond belief depressed, confused and mad,
And so today –
When life is crazy and impossible to bear –
It must be there.
Fear never wins.
That’s what I hope.
We sing of hope
Our work begins.
Ken y’hi ratzon - may this be God’s will…
