#Rosh Hashanah sermon

[bee2111]

17/9/2023

Sunday service

[gaelic-symphony]

My friends, I share with you Rabbi Angela Buchdahl's sermon from Erev Rosh Hashanah this year, which I found incredibly moving and helped me process a lot of my grief from the past year. I hope it can help some of you who are struggling to find comfort and clarity in your mourning as well.

[shadowweaver06]

If you observe, I hope that you all had a lovely Rosh Hashanah. Mine was busy, to say the least. And the entirety of the chag was overshadowed by Oct 7th, which, while expected, did add a tint of melancholy to the holiday. I will admit, the level of the holiday being overshadowed by Oct 7th happenings by my shul was a bit offputting, to say the least, and I found myself feeling wrong-footed. Our rabbi talked about it both on Erev RH and during morning services on Thursday - and if I had been smart, I'd have heeded his disclaimer about the topical discussion of his sermon on Thursday morning before opting to sit through it. Instead, I did sit through his entire speech, and it left me feeling uncomfortable. Now - I've gotten pretty used to the array of feelings around what is happening with Israel and Gaza and whatnot. As much of a peacenik as I am, I still find myself vacillating between anger, grief, frustration, and rage, both about what happened on Oct 7th and what is still happening both to Israeli citizens and to other non-combatants unlucky enough to get caught in the way, and even more so now with Lebanon and Iran getting themselves involved in the fray.

Our Rabbi's discussion rehashed all the atrocities of last year (which I could have done without the reminder of... like we've all borne witness to it, repeatedly), and then veered off into congratulating the congregation for their increased Zionism. Which I found... weird. Like, sure, congratulate us for being more observantly Jewish and involved in our community, and engaged in doing mitzvot, but congratulating us for an ideology just seems... I don't know, odd? I just found it troubling, and it was not the type of message I expect to hear during a holiday sermon I guess - I expected more of a hopeful, 'dawn of a new year' message. (I will admit, this is my first time spending HHD at a Conservative shul, so maybe this is the norm and I'm just not used to it, I don't know). It was also heavily flavored with some us-vs-them rhetoric, which I also did not care for. (Ultimately, though, I very much lack the generational trauma of my co-religionists (I was not raised as a Jew), so I expect that lack of trauma is strongly flavoring my view on things). I don't begrudge people for feeling the way they feel - it's certainly valid. I suppose this is a lot of what the congregation here wants to hear, which is why he wrote it, but... I don't know if it was what I needed to hear in that moment. Like I'd already been reflecting on the last year and what we've lost as a community as I was praying - and having that note layered on top of it made it feel even more bitter. 2nd day was better - but we joined our friends with their kids for the family service, which was shorter and more interactive (since we're the only other folks they know at this shul, they asked us to be with them so they didn't feel so abnormal, since they are new to this shul as well). We went to a RH party thrown by a friend on 2nd night - we catered the majority of the food (we smoked an enormous brisket, I made gluten free challah and regular challah with rasins, and apple honey cake, vegetarian matzah ball soup, and diri djon djon (it's our little taste of Haiti - and a staple of our shabbat table, which is usually a mix of Kosher-fied Haitian or lebanese/middle eastern dishes). On Friday evening I had company over for Shabbat - my friends (who aren't Jewish) came with their daughter and one of our other Jewish friends who needed a break from her kids came by, and I made an absolutely amazing pomegranate molasses roasted chicken recipe, ktiztzot with leeks and swiss chard, roasted squash and root vegetables, glazed carrots, a tossed salad, and a really tasty herb salad with apples and pomegranate seeds (which I am absolutely making again for Sukkot because it was amazing). Saturday night after Havdalah, we walked down the street and made an appearance at my best friend's birthday party, and I am 98% certain that I ate my body weight in tacos. Yesterday I woke up with a terrible cold. And now I'm sitting in bed typing this after waking up for the second time today after sleeping for 99% of yesterday, and a good chunk of the day today. So yeah. That's been the last week or so in a nutshell. Still feeling rather off-kilter given that it's the Oct 7th anniversary, and I sometimes feel like as a convert, my opinion doesn't really matter on these things - I don't have family ties to Israel, just religious/emotional/theoretical ties, so it's something I don't really feel like I sometimes have a right to have an opinion on, because so many other people do, and have lost someone either to the violence on the 7th, or to subsequent skirmishes. It's just a weird, somber, and reflective time, and I'm spending my day praying for an end to the cycle of violence, and for something approaching lasting peace for folks who live there. If nothing else, that is something I can do, and don't need to voice a personal opinion on.

(Forgive me my rambling - I'm all manner of doped up on cold medicine).

[streetkid-named-desire]

As I mentioned before, it’s OK to turn up the heat from time to time, to call out, to castigate, even to cancel. What makes cancel culture problematic is not that it happens, but that we as a society do not provide an avenue for someone to return from it, to become uncanceled, to climb back into our good graces. And to learn how to do that, we need look no further than our sacred Jewish sources. For centuries, Jews have wrestled with notions of forgiveness. There is little question that our tradition speaks unequivocally about the need to forgive. In fact, so important is forgiveness that our Rabbis teach “one who overcomes their natural tendencies [to hold onto a grudge] and instead forgives [finds all his] sins are forgiven. (Rosh Hashanah 17a). However, not everyone who asks is deserving of forgiveness. Writing about the importance of forgiveness, Maimonides lays out the steps one must take before they can reasonably assume others will let them back in. He writes: The offended person is prohibited from being cruel in not offering forgiveness, for this is not the way of the seed of Israel. Rather, if the offender has [resolved all material claims and has] asked and begged for forgiveness once, even twice, and if the offended person knows that the other has done repentance for sin and feels remorse for what was done, the offended person should offer the sinner forgiveness (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Chovel u-Mazzik, 5:10). Take a minute and notice what he says. Forgiveness is an imperative but only after a person is truly contrite. They may have to pay back money, they may have to try multiple times, they must prove that they have changed, but at that point it cruel not to bring them back. We move from the victim to the victimizer when we deny a person a pathway to redemption. Today, it’s not always easy to know if a person has authentically changed. We live in an era of canned apologies. Often the news cycle moves so quickly that a person can wait it out, assuming that people will forget about their missteps. Others will employ PR teams to remedy their tarnished image rather than face the hard work of actually earning back their community's trust. But most of us need and want to be forgiven and we are willing to take the steps to do that.

[faggotry-enjoyer]

Starting a thread for mildly amusing quotes from my rabbi.

On other streams of Judaism:

"Reform has a lot of social justice elements, which I personally don't need to be part of my religion. Like I don't need a Black Lives Matter sermon on Rosh Hashanah. Then again, I've given a Black Lives Matter sermon on Rosh Hashanah."

"The orthodox are good at many things, but they're not very good at being right."

[mariacallous]

(JTA) — Rabbi Debbie Bravo once called the High Holiday sermon “the World Series for rabbis.” Not only does it fall in late autumn, but it’s a high-pressure opportunity for rabbis to show their best stuff to what is often the largest crowd — that is, congregation — of the year. 

The High Holiday sermon is also something of a “state of the union” address. Rabbis and other clergy often discuss the political and social moment, exploring the issues that preoccupied Jews in the year just past.

This week the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reviewed Rosh Hashanah sermons that rabbis delivered last week and posted online or shared directly with us. For rabbis who did discuss current events, often in the language of America’s largely liberal Jewish community, some themes were common, unsurprising and probably unavoidable: the crisis over Israel’s planned judicial overhaul, climate change, artificial intelligence, book bans and antisemitism. 

Other rabbis took on more personal topics, like death and dying and the loneliness epidemic, or focused tightly on the religious themes of the Days of Awe, including renewal, repentance or teshuvah, and forgiveness. 

What follows are excerpts from and links to sermons from across North America and the range of Jewish denominations. They form a group portrait of American Jewry at the start of 5784, the new Jewish year. 

[virtualplushy]

small joys saturday: it's rosh hashanah, and my rabbi gave a sermon that was exactly what i needed to hear, and then there was a lovely group discussion over lunch after services! i am feeling much better about going into the new year!

belated shana tova!!

[unopenablebox]

went to rosh hashanah services today at a temple in brookline. i’ve learned that my congregation in chicago made me very very spoiled via a vis things like “hearing a good sermon” or “rabbi and cantor are definitely on the same page about how the songs go” or “there isn’t a catholic chaplain there who assumes that i believe in god and talks to me about her interfaith initiatives for ages instead of letting me go outside at the break so i can go buy a snack before the torah portion”

[ephemeral-winter]

rabbi's sermon today included references to whatever the hebrew version of the oxford english dictionary is, star trek, the hays code, and the rousseau-hobbes debate about the nature of human existence. second best rosh hashanah sermon i've ever heard

[sins-of-the-sea]

Ruixiong Saves Christmas/My Brother’s Keeper

"Really, guys, I mean it! How good of a Santa Claus can I be if I'm keeping you from celebrating your Jewish Christm-"

"CHANAKUH IS NOT JEWISH CHRISTMAS!"

"AIYAA, I’M SORRY!!"

"...... sorry, Ruixiong. It's not at all a holiday to celebrate the birth of any deity or whatnot, it's not even any of our most important holidays throughout the year. We can’t even call it a ‘holiday’ like Christians would for Christmas or somesuch. That would go to that like Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot...”

"It's the commemoration of the recovery of Judea and the rededication of the Second Temple after which the Maccabees revolted against the Seleucid Empire. You see, the Maccabees rose against Antiochus IV Epiphanes, which at the time was imposing conversion into Hellenism, According to the Talmud, the Temple then had to be purified, which enta-."

".............."

"....It's a victory against the Greeks by the Jews, and our Temple was taken back and purified."

"OHH!! So a war victory and reaffirmation of your people!! Like if the Han would have succeeded against the Manchus and resisted forced cultural imposition!"

"....You know what, sure. We'll go with that."

"So what's with the importance of the candles?"

"Oh! That's due to the Miracle of the cruse of oil as the Temple of Jerusalem.

As the Maccabees searched for pure oil to light the menorah with, they found just one cruse of pure oil which still had the seal of the High Priest, the symbol of pure oil. This cruse contained just enough pure oil to keep the menorah lit for one day. In order to make pure oil however, individuals making the oil must be in a state of spiritual purity. Being soldiers returning from the battlefield, the Maccabees were deemed impure, and therefore could not make pure oil. Since the process of ritual purification after touching a corpse lasts seven days, the Maccabees could only produce additional pure oil after eight days: seven days of becoming pure including one day, once pure, to actually make the oil. Therefore, the Maccabees would have been unable to light the Menorah for seven days before the completion of new pure oil. Miraculously, the one cruse of oil had lasted for all eight days, and by that point new pure oil was ready.

"So there are some rituals to the lighting of the menorah, for certain, but eh. Guy and I and are terrible Jews for not even attending any sermons for Lord knows how long. We can look up what to do if we miss out on lighting any candle."

"So it still needs some kind of pri- I mean rabbi to provide any input?"

"Not necessarily. It can just be Phoebus and I."

"Well, let me join you! I am absolutely all about war victories and the resistance against conquerors! In fact, I think it'd be great if all of us join you! Especially the Captain, who HATES conquerors!"

The brothers briefly exchange glances before Guy speaks on their behalf. "...................No thank you, Ruixiong. We really would rather just have it be the two of us."

"Wh-..... are you afraid I might fuck something up? Is it one of those 'Jews Only' rules like with your Passover?"

"N-no. We just- .... Look. Hannakuh is much more personal for the two of us than just a celebration of the Temple of Jerusalem, or as a war victory. All the more if we are having to involve Josep or even Giovanni beyond cooking for us. If we are to invite everyone to our celebration, we'll have to include them and we really don't want that."

"Wh-... why not??? Was it something they did? Was this before Rashid and I joined your Crew? Did this happen in the Magellan Expedi-"

"Please stop asking anymore questions. It's nothing personal against them in particular. Even they understand. Please drop it, Ruixiong. Can we get moving so we can go home?"

"We still have to get that Caga Tio fixed..."

"I'm working on it! Just let me focus, please! Maybe I just need to unwind. What else do we have to do to help you prepare as Santa Claus?"

[theleafwarden]

Glad I took a Twitter break before the news about Gaza today. It's about to get even more worse. Bibi is gonna have the IDF completely eradicate Gaza now and I don't think I can handle reading anymore. Especially since we're a month out from Rosh Hashanah and October 7th 😮‍💨. Now I have to deal with the pro Israel sermon or whatever Rabbi is gonna say during Shabbat service 😓

[ramrodd]

Bible Prophecy # 22 Twenty-First Century Expectations--Putting it ALL ...

COMMENTARY:

Jimmy, for a guy with 43 years in the academics of the Bible, you really don't know shit about your subject.  As I say, you are pursuing an academic thread that justifies avoiding military service as an Air Force brat became you were scared shitless of going to Vietnam.  Bart Ehrman  has popularity issues going back to High School and being Born Again, but he has basically found that apostasy is more fun an profitable in the otherwise commercial dead end of textual analysis and John Dominic  Crossan , a charming Irish Marxist determine to cast the social conditions in Judea as identical as the conditions during the Irish, Potato famine, while the fact is that everybody in the region was living large within Pax Romana.

There is no such thing a a "pre-Christian" Revelation. It's like pre-White Rice: it is entirely a product of your agenda. "Cristian: was the slang the Roman soldiers employed to identify the coalition of Jesus Followers to distinguish them from the Herodians, Pharisees, Sadducees and other players  of Judea. They began to identify the followers of John the Baptist as Christians as early as Mars 3:8, the first conclave of  John the Baptists ministry of the first sermon from a boat. I mean, this passage is cleary a census of the Jesus movement by the Roman intelligence services as a routine element of their force protection.

We now from Tertullian that Tiberius received an intelligence report for Pilate regarding the Resurrection as fast as a communication with the Euangelion priority could move at the time from Judea to Rome that included the designation "Christian", which was 33 Ce, and it took another  9 years, at around 48 CE or Accts 11:26, when it migrated naturally by trade and tourism from Rome.

The important thing that everyone seems to miss is that the hostility to all things Christian began at the moment Tiberius proposed  to elevate Jesus to divine status. "Christiaan" were associated from that moment with Tiberius and inherited the general fear and hatred for Tiberius because of the execution of Sejanus and what ever purges Tiberius conducted to eradicate that threat.

Cornelius wrote the Gospel of Mark and, as the representative of the Italian Cohort, which was secret Christian fellowship within the Praetorian Guard, which was the administrative state of the Roman Republic and Empire,  it was dangerous to be a Christian. Which is to say, from the get-go. Paul's theology is based on the triangulation of Abraham, Moses and Jesus, which the theology of Hebrews, which is the Christian manifesto which conveyed to Constantine, is based on the triangulation of Melchizedek, Jesus and the Justification by faith of Cornelius in Matthew 8.:10, which is the analogue  of the justification of Abram in Genesis 15:6

Now, in terms of 600 years you refer to, Enoch's 7000 yearr Epoch (and Hegel),  The Epoch is a grid that is set out in ten 700 yers "Weeks'  that began with the Book of Job 5784 years ago, according to the Jewish calendar, which is to say BCE ended 3761 years abo and CE began 2023 years ago from r Rosh Hashanah.  The grid incudes the entire Mediterranean basin and the Step Pyramid of Egypt appear at about 195 BCE and Abraham and Homer emerged from the oral tradition at about the same time, 1950 BCE or so. The fact is that there are at least 5 national narratives that come together at the Cross at 3803,L the Book of Job to Jesus, Melchizedek to the Cross, the Etruscan literature subsumed in the Roman literature, Virgil and Homer by way of Socrates. The Book of Job is the only book in the Bible laterally was  written by The One as opposed to being dictated like the Koran and Revelation.

. Just for the record, the ride of Mohammad on Buraq to the 7th Heaven is an analogue to Jacob's Ladder in Genesis 28:12 It is what sparked the Muslim interest in Aristotle.  

As I say, Revelation 13 is a literary cubist portrait of the centurion in Mark 15:39. the Beast of the See is an allusion to Rome a sea power. The Beast of the Land are the Legions, which had all the authority of Rome and controlled Gaul by the Rhine and Danube rivers. The centurion was a warrant officer at the bottom of the trickle down from those authorities and he executed the death warrant of Jesus, prisoner MDLXVI. Now, according to Dan Wallace, the earliest manuscript we have  says that the Mark of the Beast was MCXVI, which I tend to believe was, in fact the earliest version of Revelation 13, going back to Genesis 41, but I like the decision to change it to MDLXVI, because, as you mention , the Gematria can be interpretated as Nero and it dates the composition as occurring at the moment the Jewish wars begin in 66. As I say, Revelation is a lurid portrait of the spiritual  realm that began to hovr over Jerusalem with the weather system described in Mark 15:33 that began to collect over Jesus's head as all the unclean spirits Jesus had contained became invested in the Spirit of God in the same manner as the two storms in Mark 4 and Mark 6 which Jesus would no longer dispatch. That's what falls on Jerusalem in Revelation after Revelation 4:2, and the narrative moves explicitly through the looking glass and into the realm of high literary concept that concludes the Apocalyptic trajectory of the Whore of Babylon, the 2nd Temple of Herod.

Here's the thing: there is a numerological connection between Revelation 13 and Mark 13. 13 is number of Yaweh, Queen of Battle and the Finger of God. In addition, the verse structure of Revelation 13 and Matthew 13 is identical, with basically the same words at verse 9 and the same sentiments at verse 18.

Numerologically, 4 is the base number of 13 and the first 16 lines of Mark 4 are identical to Matthew and Revelation and reveals the Messianic secret of the New Testament that the report of the Talking Cros in the Gospel of Peter went straight through the 2000 soldiers who had participated in the torment of Jesus like  Legion, the unclean spirit went into the 2000 swine and, by the time Tiberius received Pilate's euangelion, every soldier in all the 30 legions throughout the Empire had learned of the covenant cutting ceremony between GOD and the Italian Cohort, like covenant cutting ceremony in Genesis 15.

Now, the thing Islam brings to the table are the symbols 666. The original  number of MDXVI would translate as 616 and, as I say, that is a gestalt that occurs in Genesis 41 with the Pharaoh's dream.   The thing i Like about the Arabic symbols of 666 as ideograms, they are like the bent nails they used to crucify My Lord.

Just for the record, Jesus was going to Jerusalem for the same reason Jonah was sent to Nineveh: to prevent an Apocalypse. By the Bar Kokhba revolt, the rabbis had given up on Apocalyptic literature. Eschatology was always a theological dead end and the Christian covenant is for a world without end. and God the Father of the Prodigal Son.  

In terms of the current Israeli-Palestinian situation centered on Gaza and Biblical Prophets. King Adullah II of Jordan has been the voice of God warning of the price Israel would have to pay for the bad faith of Netanyahu in regards to the Oslo Accords. The singular question for Israel is, when are they going to de-radicalize the Likud, the party that killed Rabi?

[rabbimicahstreiffer]

Stop and See: A Sermon for Rosh Hashanah 5784

Derlivered on Rosh Hashanah Morning 2023 at Congregation Kol Ami, Thornhill, Ontario. Let me ask you a question: Have you looked at the sky today? The story is told that once the great Rebbe Nachman of Bratzlav was looking out his window and he noticed one of his disciples, Chaim, rushing down the street toward the market. The Rebbe called out, “Chaim, have you looked at the sky today?”“No,…

[hawkythemessengerhawk]

Yesterday at Rosh Hashanah services my rabbi gave a sermon about the Barbie movie

[urbanchristiannews]

PODCAST -- LISTEN: (2 Sermons In 1): Sermon #1: Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur Service (To skip music, begin at time marker 73:07, unedited); Sermon #2: The Standing Between the Living & the Dead Prayer, Devotional, Memorial, Family, Evangelistic Service (Begin at time marker 119:17, unedited) with Daniel Whyte III, President of Gospel Light Society International

  PODCAST — LISTEN: (2 Sermons In 1): Sermon #1: Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur Service (To skip music, begin at time marker 73:07, unedited); Sermon #2: The Standing Between the Living & the Dead Prayer, Devotional, Memorial, Family, Evangelistic Service (Begin at time marker 119:17, unedited) with Daniel Whyte III, President of Gospel Light Society International   If you have never asked Jesus…

[mariacallous]

Rabbi Angela Buchdahl of New York’s Reform Central Synagogue also urged solidarity with the hundreds of thousands of protesters in Israel who have taken to the streets in opposition to their government’s judicial reform plans:

If you care about democratic rights — help preserve the only functional democracy in the Middle East. If you care about the vulnerable — safeguard the sole sanctuary for Jewish refugees in need. If you value Jewish Peoplehood, hear the cries of the other half of our Jewish family and remember: the destiny of Am Yisrael is bound, one to the other. 

This young, messy, miraculous Jewish state is the most important, sovereign democratic project of the Jewish people of the last 2000 years.

We cannot walk away. While the task can feel at times, overwhelming, exhausting, Pirke Avot teaches:Iit is not our duty to complete it, only not to abandon it. 

In his Rosh Hashanah morning sermon, Rabbi Joshua Davidson of New York’s Reform Congregation Emanu-El reported on his visit to Israel with a group of local rabbis and their conversation with politician Simcha Rothman:

When my turn came to speak, I asked him how he intended to protect the rights of those who don’t align with his politics, Israelis who are not haredi or from the Religious Zionist camp.  He responded dismissively: “If you Reformim want to secure your rights, more of you should move to Israel.” Stunningly unaware he was addressing a delegation of Conservative and Orthodox rabbis, too, this chair of the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee made painfully clear that his view of law and justice was purely majoritarian. Minority rights be damned.

It was a shattering encounter. One that revealed this coalition cares nothing for me, my Judaism, or my Jewish community. Don’t they know my congregation’s tireless efforts to strengthen American Jewry’s commitment to Israel? Don’t they know we lovingly display Israel’s flag on our bimah? And here my colleagues and I had travelled across an ocean only to get stiff-armed! Oy. Even in Israel, shver tsu zayn a Yid, sometimes it’s hard to be a Jew!

Rabbi Jeffrey Saxe of the Reform Temple Rodeph Shalom in Falls Church, Virginia, addressed congregants who may be reluctant to criticize Israel despite disagreeing with its government’s plans to weaken the power of the country’s judiciary. He took a lesson from the Book of Jonah, read on Yom Kippur:

God teaches us the most important lesson of the Book of Jonah: that criticism must be given as a blessing and not a curse. Especially when a harsh word of warning is needed to bring one back from the edge, it must be offered as a lifeline and not a threat. …. This text challenges us both to recognize when this is needed, and to remember that the commandment in Leviticus to rebuke your neighbor comes just one verse before, paired inextricably, with the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. Criticism and disagreement must be conducted with love. By fostering and deepening our relationship with Israel, we take a place in the conversation that comes from caring. By acknowledging all sides and their humanity, we model the sensitivity that is needed to raise the level of the discussion. By being part of one of the countless efforts and organizations to help Palestinians, help Jews, build something, and be part of a positive vision, we earn the credibility to say our piece.