Rosh Hashanah Morning Sermon, October 3, 2024
By Rabbi Mark Glickman

In case you didn’t know, Temple B’nai Tikvah is a very diverse community. And while we often have a tendency to connect most readily with people who are similar to ourselves, chances are that even right now, within a few feet of you sit people who are really different from you – different ages, genders, careers, sexual orientations, tastes in clothing and music, countries of birth, family situations…and, yes, a few of them might even have different political views than yours. Some of these people you know, some of them you don’t, and many of them you think you know, but really don’t.

To the extent that we don’t know one another as well as we could, today I’d like to take one small step in remedying this. I’d like to introduce you to two members of our congregation whom I think you all should get to know as well as you can. Getting to know one another, as you know, is one of the most important things we can do to strengthen our Temple community.

First, meet Robert. Robert is 65-years-old and grew up in Montreal. Coming of age in the 60s and 70s, Robert is very much a Boomer – even though he was born a decade-and-a-half after World War II ended, the reality of that war and its aftermath defined the contours of his young life in a host of different ways. Growing up, he heard stories about what happened during the war. He remembers his grandparents’ eyes welling up as they told stories of friends and family members who didn’t make it out. And he remembers that some of the grownups around him – Abe the barber, Mrs. Rosenthal who ran the corner grocery store, and some of his parents’ friends – had these strange numbers tattooed on their arms. It wasn’t until he grew older that he understood why. Throughout it all, Robert became aware of this huge world that had come to an end just before he came onto the scene. He enjoyed some vestiges of that lost world – the food, the music, the humour, and some stories – but still, he saw that sitting on the timeline of history just before he was born was a huge black hole of loss and suffering.

Robert’s parents – and indeed the Jewish world as a whole – instilled in Robert with good reason an awareness that the world is not a safe place for Jews. And it wasn’t just the Holocaust that proved it. Contemporary reality bore that out, too. When Robert was in school, he learned that Jews in the Soviet Union weren’t free like he was and that what caused their oppression was the fact that they were Jewish. Also, there were country clubs his family couldn’t join even if they could have afforded it, simply because his family was Jewish. Robert remembers watching the 1972 Munich Olympics when he was 13, and following with horror the story of the murdered Israeli athletes, yet another testimony to the fact that the world was an unsafe place for the Jewish people.

And yet, throughout it all, there was something that brought hope to the Jews in Robert’s world – the existence of the State of Israel. If the Holocaust was the big black hole just behind Robert on the timeline of Jewish history, Israel represented the light ahead. To Robert and his contemporaries, Israel was a country built in many ways out of the ashes of European Jewry. To them, Israel was a country that, for once, wouldn’t allow its Jews to be subjected to the whims of history; instead, it would have an army. It would defend itself, defend the Jewish people, and be a safe haven for any Jewish community in peril. Yes, the world was a dangerous place for Jews, but Israel represented the promise of safety and security not only for its own citizens but for Jews everywhere.

There was a little blue box on the kitchen counter where Robert’s family put coins to support rebuilding and reforesting the land. He learned about Israel at his temple’s religious school. Every year on Yom Haatzmaut – Israeli Independence Day – the congregation had a huge celebration. They played Israeli music, ate felafel, and danced Israeli folk dances – it was great.

As a kid, Robert learned that he had some cousins who lived in Jerusalem, and one summer, they came for a visit. He was amazed – his cousins went to school on Sundays in Israel, but on Yom Kippur, everything closed down. His cousins spoke fluent Hebrew, and called their parents Imma and Abba – Robert loved it.

In high school, Robert was able to spend a summer in Israel – he saw the historic sites of this magical ancient land, and he met the people who lived there. He knew that his new Israeli friends would all go into the army to defend it within a few years, and that scared him. But Israel was a sunny place, with green, growing fields, and a robust, modern Jewish society. He didn’t live there, but he loved it.

Robert wasn’t naïve enough to think that it was all simple, of course. He knew that Israel was also a country riven with strife and danger of all kinds – both internal and external. But for Robert, the existence of the state of Israel represented Jewish safety, the Jewish future, and the unique possibility for a Jewish life that was strong and vibrant. Jewish victimhood and modern antisemitism were problems – Israel was a huge part of the solution.

When Robert became an adult, he continued to feel that close connection with Israel. He travelled there with his family; he donated to Israel-related charities; he followed news stories about Israel with keen interest whenever they appeared.

Whenever there was a war in Israel, or whenever there was a terrorist attack, Robert’s heart broke. Israel wasn’t just any country, it was his country, even if he didn’t live there. To Robert, an attack on Israel was an attack on him – his own future, his own people, his own family.

And last year, in the wake of the October 7 attacks, Robert’s first response was clear – kill the bastards! He didn’t want innocent Gazans to suffer, of course, but he had no such compunction about the Hamas terrorists. Hamas had brutally murdered more than 1200 innocent Israelis, its thugs had raped Israeli women, and killed Israeli children, and triumphantly posted videos of these atrocities online. They needed to be destroyed at any cost, and the hostages needed to be freed. And if innocent Gazans needed to die in the process, well, that blood was in the hands of Hamas, not in the hands of Israel, for Israel needed to defend itself.

Robert has calmed down a little bit since then. He’s become uneasy about the extent of the killing in Gaza, and deeply concerned about the escalating violence in the north. Still, when he sees his fellow Canadians – especially his fellow Canadian Jews – opposing the very right of Israel to go to war at this time of peril, it cuts him to the quick. To Robert, questioning Israel’s right to defend itself is an attack not only on his people but also on his own safety in this dangerous world. How could anyone say such things? And how, especially, could any Jews?

***

Not everyone in our congregation shares Robert’s worldview, of course – some of us see things differently. That’s why, this morning, I’d also like you to meet Jessica.

Jessica is thirty years old, she grew up in Toronto, and she moved here to Calgary as a university student in 2012. When she was coming of age in the 90s and early-aughts, Judaism was something very different for her than it had been for Robert when he was growing up. Jessica grew up during a time when Nazi atrocities and Soviet oppression were the stuff not of direct Jewish experience, but of history books. Yes, like Robert, Jessica learned about the Holocaust, but it had become more of a distant memory for her and her contemporaries than it had been for Robert. Jessica learned a lot about Israel, too. She attended a Reform Jewish summer camp, and every year some of her counselors were young Israelis who came over as sh’lichim – emissaries – to run Israel programming. Like Robert, Jessica also went to Israel, but by the time she came along, she didn’t have to pay for the trip – she went on a Birthright Israel program for free. When she got there, the country that she saw was not a scrappy, imperilled young country on the rise, it was an established, prosperous democracy – sometimes attacked, often conflicted, but on the whole, doing pretty well.

In fact, there was a great deal about Jessica’s Jewish upbringing that differed from Robert’s. You see, many of Robert’s teachers had presented Robert and his classmates with a Jewish “diet” of topics such as the Holocaust, Israel, and Soviet Jewry. Robert studied Torah and holidays and other Jewish topics, too, but the overwhelming emphasis of Judaism as Robert learned it was on particularistic Jewish concerns – the challenge of Jewish survival, the obligations we have to our people, and the things that make us different.

Those are all important lessons, of course, but as time went on, they failed to keep many of Robert’s peers engaged. This Judaism was too particularistic for them, and its lack of universal values didn’t provide them the transcendent meaning they needed.

So, the Jews of Robert’s generation who stayed fed their children – Jessica and her contemporaries – a very different Jewish diet. When Jessica was growing up, the main focus of her Jewish learning was its universal values. She learned that Judaism teaches that each human being is created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God. She learned about pikuach nefesh – the Jewish mandate to save a human at almost any cost. She learned that, as Jews, we are called to perform tikkun olam – repair our broken world however we can. To the Reform Jews of Jessica’s generation, in other words, Judaism was first and foremost about creating a kinder world, about respecting the ultimate sanctity of every human life, and about appreciating people as people regardless of race, creed, or ethnicity. For Jessica, the central challenge of being Jewish in Canada wasn’t about the need to guarantee Jewish survival. It was about these powerful universalistic Jewish values, instead.

Jessica, too, was horrified, too, by what she saw on October 7, but what happened on October 8 and afterwards was equally horrifying, if not more so. In the aftermath of the Hamas attacks, she saw Israel bombing Gazan cities into oblivion, and killing thousands of civilians in the process. Jessica knew that the perpetrators of the October 7 atrocities were the terrorists of Hamas, but she also knew that Israel’s past treatment of the Palestinian people played a role in setting the violent, conflicted context in which those attacks played out.

And yes, Israel needs to defend itself, however much she tried to see things otherwise, Jessica couldn’t reconcile the images of destroyed hospitals and schools and mosques with everything she had been taught to treasure about being Jewish. Self-defence might be one thing. But this? But how could a people who teach of the sanctity of every human life do this? How could a people who value the shared humanity of all people do this? This is Tikkun Olam?

Jessica couldn’t make it all fit. So, she criticized Israel. She called for a ceasefire. And she spoke out on behalf of Palestinian national aspirations. And even though she didn’t dare say so out loud – certainly not in Jewish circles – she quietly questioned whether she could even call herself a Zionist.

***

Robert and Jessica are both prototypes, of course, and real people usually don’t fit into such neat cubbyholes. There are Roberts who are female, and Jessicas who are male. Some Roberts and Jessicas feel a little differently or not as strongly as the ones I’ve described here. And while there is certainly a generational dimension to these divisions, there are also Roberts who are younger and Jessicas who are older.

But Robert and Jessica are real, and their Jewish identities are different, and they are both members of our congregation. And their views about Judaism and Israel in this post October 7 world of ours differ so greatly from one another that sometimes they can’t even speak with one another about it.

I have spoken with both Robert and Jessica at great length in recent months, and I want you to know that they are both in pain. Robert sees Jessica criticizing a wounded and imperiled Israel, and can’t fathom how she could do such a thing – especially now. And Jessica sees Robert standing by as Jews, in the name of being Jewish, kill thousands of innocent civilians, and wonders what ever happened to the great, universal Jewish values that she holds so dear.

And what’s worse, Robert sees so many Jessicas, and Jessica sees so many Roberts, that both of them feel alone and isolated, wondering how it is that their Jewish community has betrayed its core values and left them behind.

And I want to tell you something else. The Judaism of both Robert and Jessica are expression of authentic and time-honoured Jewish values. Robert’s concern for the unique destiny of his people, for the safety and security of our brothers and sisters in our ancient homeland, and for the strength and stability of the Jewish state is rooted in the very foundational texts of our people, and we’ve defended those concerns for millennia. Jewish survival is a Jewish value, and a really important one.

Similarly, the struggle for human rights that is such a concern for Jessica is also an important Jewish value. And of course, we need both sets of values – both the particular and the universal – to be fully Jewish. If we don’t survive as a people, we can’t bring our message of human dignity to the world, whereas if we are only concerned about survival, then we forget why it is that our existence matters in in the first place.

We’ve known this from antiquity. In the Talmud, Hillel taught, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me, but if I am only for myself, what am I.” Jessica, please remember that Robert represents a crucial dimension of Jewish life. And Robert, please remember that Jessica does, too. And both of you, please remember that, to be complete, Judaism needs your counterpart’s values just as urgently as it needs your own.

Of course, we’re not all Roberts and Jessicas. There’s Florence, for example, who thinks that Israel should flatten Gaza – let all the Palestinians flee or be killed. And then there’s Matt, he’s all for Hamas. He hopes they grow stronger so they can wipe the evil Zionist interlopers and their state off the map. But I haven’t mentioned Florence or Matt to you until now because they don’t belong to our congregation, or if they do, they’ve been too ashamed to come forward. In our congregation, all of us, as far as I know, were traumatized by the horrific events of October 7, and all of us are heartbroken at the deaths of Palestinian children. We’re not Florence and Matt. We’re all trying to do what’s right, and despite our many disagreements, we all want the best for Israel and the Middle East. All of us.

So, Robert, Jessica, you do belong here. You are not alone. There are lots of us who agree with you. It’s just hard sometimes, because the community you’ve chosen to join is a diverse one, so there are going to be people here who disagree with you, and neither of you always does the best job of conveying the full reality of where we’re coming from. So, speak with those other people. Listen to them. Share your views – passionately, if you must. Always remember that the people with whom you disagree have something to learn from you, and maybe you just might be able to learn a thing or two from them, as well.

And if that hasn’t persuaded you to stick around, Robert, remember that if you and your camp leave, the next president of our congregation…is going to be Jessica. And Jessica, if you leave, then that leaves Robert.

And let’s be honest about how this is playing out. Most of the large organizations representing the Canadian Jewish community are driven by people who agree with Robert – and that’s even more so the case here than it is in the United States. And when Jessica speaks up, these organizations often try to sideline her. But Robert, you need to hear something: Jessica and the people who agree with her aren’t going anywhere. I’ve been watching this closely; I’ve been listening to young Jews; I’ve been listening to younger rabbinic colleagues of mine – and I can tell you that Jessica and her allies are growing in number, they are coalescing, they are organizing. In the decades to come, the progressive left on issues regarding Israel and Zionism – devoted to human rights, committed to Palestinian national aspirations, and sometimes critical of Israel’s policies and actions – will increasingly become a force to be dealt with.

In response to this, Robert, you have two choices. You can try to cancel Jessica, or you can try to engage her. You can try closing the doors of our Jewish institutions to her and not make any room for her at synagogues and Federations and other Jewish organizations, or you can talk with her, debate with her, and create a meaningful Jewish dialogue.

The choice is yours, but if she wants to talk and you don’t, then you can’t accuse her of being the only divisive one.

There’s one more thing I want to say about this. I’ve been arguing here that both Jessica and Robert’s views are authentically Jewish. But what’s not Jewish as these debates unfold is the effort to quash dissent. To the contrary, we Jews have always treasured arguments. We have always debated, and the vigorous debates have strengthened us! You see, communities that debate a lot – when they really listen to one another and remain engaged with dissenting views – tend to discourage extremism, and that’s good for everyone. Making room for objectionable views, in other words, doesn’t make us weak, it strengthens us.

I’ll give you one concrete example from recent days. The Calgary Jewish Federation is currently planning an important, community-wide observance of the first anniversary of the October 7 attacks. As the emails about the event started to flow, Jessica somehow started whispering into my ear. “It’s just going to be Israeli flag-waving,” she said, “and they’re not going to mention the reality of suffering on the other side.” Immediately, Robert shouted into my other ear. “It’s an October 7 memorial!” he cried. “We need to stand with Israel.”

In response to both of these voices – my inner Jessica and my inner Robert – I sent an email to the Federation asking whether there might be a way, even as we stand in full solidarity with Israel, to also acknowledge the reality of recent Palestinian suffering, too.”

I sent that email off, but a few days later, that inner Robert started bending my ear again. “You know,” he said, “October 7 was a day of Israeli loss and suffering, not Palestinian. The bombs only started falling on Gaza after October 7. Maybe we should keep October 7 about Israeli suffering, and find other opportunities to acknowledge the Palestinian deaths.” So, I sent another email amending my earlier request.

As you can see, I’m still working through this, and still trying to get it right. But the point is that, to the extent that there’s any value whatsoever in my pleas to the Federation, it’s because I’ve got both Jessica and Robert whispering into my ears. When both of them are present and both of them are vocal then I become a better rabbi, and even more important, a better Jew. When both are present and both are vocal, we all become better Jews and we all become better people.

Jessica, Robert, we need you and we need what you bring to the table. Because when you’re both here, our community grows stronger

My friends, this past year has represented the hardest time to be a Jew in living memory for most of us. It’s a time of conflict, and conflict is so hard and so exhausting. But let’s stay at it together. Let’s speak our truths and be humble enough to learn from those with whom we disagree. Let’s listen to Robert, listen to Jessica, listen to each and every one of us in this sacred community. Doing so only makes us stronger as we strive to answer our sacred call as a community.

Shanah Tovah.

Erev Rosh Hashanah Sermon, October 2, 2024
By Rabbi Mark Glickman

Over the years, I, like many of us, have been blessed to have learned from many great teachers– scholars, professors, rabbinic mentors, family role models, and many more. But a couple of months ago, there was a moment when a man who I never would have expected to have become a teacher of mine became one, and he did so in a way I will never forget.

He was a young man – maybe in his late twenties – and I met him through my stepmother. As many of you know, my stepmother, Sharon, died about two months ago, having spent a few years suffering through the ravages of dementia. (At the time of her death, she had been our stepmother for almost 40 years). The challenges Sharon would face became evident shortly after my father’s death in 2020, and her story, or at least some parts of it, will be familiar to many of you who have watched your own loved ones endure this horrible disease: The difficulties she started to have paying the bills and completing her errands; the questions she would repeat over and over again during our telephone conversations; her denial that there was any cause for concern; her continued denial even after receiving her diagnosis; her reluctance to accept help from hired caretakers; her falls; her refusal to move into a facility where she would be safe and properly attended to.

Finally, after it became evident that Sharon really couldn’t remain in her home any longer, we succeeded in finding her a room in a wonderful memory care facility near where she lived in Southern California. We got her there in the nick of time – within a month of her move, she had almost totally lost her ability to speak, and grew increasingly dependent on the staff for her daily care.

And the staff was magnificent. Not only did they competently take care of Sharon’s daily needs, but they did so with unflagging cheer and compassion. They were also good to us, always keeping us in the family aware of any changes or concerns we needed to know about.

My brothers, my sister-in-law, Caron, and I began calling ourselves “Team Sharon.” After she entered the facility, we would call Sharon as often as we could. At first, we called on her cell phone, but soon she could no longer operate her cell, and, to talk to her, we had to call the memory care unit and ask the staff to hold the phone to her ear for what quickly became increasingly one-sided conversations.

Often, the person who picked up the phone in the unit was a caretaker named Eduardo. He was always cheerful and helpful, and even though I hadn’t met him in person, I found myself growing increasingly grateful to him for the vibrant, positive energy that he always seemed to exude as he went about caring for Sharon. “Sharon,” I would hear him say in the background, “it’s Mark on the phone. He’s called to say hello to you….Go ahead, Mark, you can talk now.” At that point, I would proceed to conduct my monologue for a few moments, tell Sharon I loved her, and eventually hang up the phone.

Then, on a Thursday or Friday in late July, we got the call. Sharon had stopped eating and drinking; the legal orders she had put into place during healthier times allowed for no heroic measures to keep her going; they were doing all they could to keep her comfortable. By Sunday, my brother Larry and sister-in-law Lynn had travelled from Chicago to be at her side. They sat with her all week, and Sharon held on, desperately clinging to life as the rest of the family awaited the next phone call. By the following Saturday, Caron and I were at her side, too. Sharon was non-responsive, her breathing was laboured, we sat with her and offered her the only gift we could – the simple gift of our presence beside her.

Through it all, Eduardo continued to be a ray of light, giving Sharon her medication, adjusting her position in bed, and seeing what he could do to make our bedside vigil more comfortable as we sat with Sharon through those difficult days.

We were with her for hours when we first arrived that Saturday, and also for most of the day on Sunday, too. Then, at one point late Sunday afternoon, my brother Larry and I were sitting just outside the room, while Caron and my sister-in-law Lynn sat at Sharon’s bedside. Caron suddenly came out and said, “Guys, you’d better come in.”

Sharon had stopped breathing. We stood beside her in silence for a moment, then we held her hands and said the Shema on her behalf. Then, our silence continued.

Within moments, Eduardo was in the room, calmly and efficiently doing what he needed to do. He noted the time; he adjusted Sharon’s position in bed; he detached some equipment from Sharon’s lifeless body.

And then, suddenly, Eduardo stopped, turned toward the wall, and broke into tears. “I’m sorry,” he said after a few moments, turning back to us and wiping his face dry, “I try to be professional, but I grow so attached to these people sometimes.” It was only then that the rest of us broke into tears, too.

This wonderful man, this paragon of care and compassion, did so much more than his job description demanded of him. He built a connection – a real connection, a personal connection – with my stepmother even as her own connections with the world slowly unravelled. And then, after her long struggle, when her life came to an end, he wept.

How sad it is that he felt the need to apologize to us for his tears; his tears and all that they represented were yet one more invaluable gift that he gave to our family. His tears unlocked our own tears; his tears were a reminder at that moment of the awesome, indescribable value of a human life; his tears, at the moment of my stepmother’s death, reminded us of her invaluable worth as an individual.

We’ve grieved Sharon’s death since then – it was so very sad. And now that we’re several weeks out, in addition to my sadness over Sharon’s death, I’m also left with the unshakable conviction that the world needs more Eduardos. The world needs more people who are willing to weep. In fact, the more closely I look at our world, the more I realize that that world needs more tears.

This is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and in contrast to the revelry of the secular New Year, it is a time for reflection. And so, I invite you tonight to look back on the year that just was. If you’re like most of us, then I’m sure there were plenty of joys – times when you laughed, celebrations, and moments of achievement and deep, deep satisfaction.

But this has been a hard year for many of us in so many ways, and I hope you take this Rosh Hashanah to reflect upon the moments of difficulty, too. Some of you, like me, may have lost dear family members this year or continued to grieve losses of the past. You may have faced strained or broken relationships, suffered professional difficulties and illness, and sometimes just felt a sense of despair or sadness for no apparent reason whatsoever.

For us Jews, this has been one of the most difficult years in living memory. There was that horrible day last fall that saw the brutal murder of so many of our brothers and sisters in Israel, and the horrible if unavoidable war that came in its wake. Even here in Calgary, we have faced broken and strained relationships, blatant antisemitism, anger at our fellow Jews who disagree with us, and feelings of solitude when it feels like so few of our fellow Jews see things the way we do. We feel abandoned; we feel betrayed; we wish things would get better, and we despair when we see that they aren’t.

Suffering is an unavoidable element of the human condition, I suppose, but the knowledge of that fact is of little comfort as we experience it. And experience it we have this year, and we’ve seen people we love to experience it, too.

Through it all, we try to keep a stiff upper lip. We try to persuade those around us that we’re OK, even when we’re not. We try to hold back the tears.

But sometimes we can’t hold them back, because sometimes our feelings won’t let us. Tears are so very human. From the moment we are born and feel that first pang of hunger we shed them. We shed them as children when we skin our knees or grow angry or frustrated. Teenagers shed them at moments of lost love, or rejection, or despair in sorting out the difficult complexities of life. Whatever our age, our tears come when we feel intense emotions of any kind. The depth of love, and the loss of those we cherish; the birth of a child, and watching our children suffer.

Tears are always honest, always genuine expressions of the intensity of our feelings. Good actors can cry on cue, of course, but the way they do it is usually by conjuring up an experience they’ve had that brought out their tears in the first place. Even actors don’t fake tears – they relive powerful offstage experiences and make real tears flow as they act.

We human beings have feelings, and to experience them fully, we need to let ourselves cry more than we do. So often, we try to convey strength to the people around us. We try to convey that we’ve got it all together, that we’re bearing up against life’s challenges, and that we’re fine…just fine. To cry would show us to be vulnerable, to be imperfect…to be human. We don’t owe it to the world to always be sharing our emotions, of course, but I find it sad that we’re so often frightened to be honest about our humanity. I wonder what the world would be like if, either in private or with other people, we became more comfortable shedding tears

Our Jewish tradition has been aware of the importance of crying for many centuries. In fact, the Torah is full of tears – you can almost see them dripping off the scroll as we go through it. Lot and his wife, fleeing their home in the barren, desert city of Sodom, were told not to look back. Lot’s wife turned back anyway, and the text tells us that God turned her into a pillar of salt. Perhaps, suggests poet Merle Feld, she simply became a dried-out tear, forever frozen in place, an eternal expression of sadness and grief.

The Torah tells us that our ancestors were enslaved for many years before God freed them, and what eventually got God’s attention wasn’t anything particular about the bondage itself, but rather that the Israelites finally cried out in their suffering. Only when they cried, did redemption come.

And later, our rabbis taught that after the destruction of the Temple, the gates of prayer were locked. If you wanted to pray to God after that calamity, the Rabbi Elazar teaches in the Talmud, your prayers wouldn’t necessarily reach God. However, even then, Rabbi Elazar teaches, the gates of tears remained open.

If you cry before God, then God hears your prayers.

In fact, over and over again, our classical literature repeats this theme. The gates of tears are always open before God. We try to hold it together; we try to suppress our tears because their intensity and honestness can frighten us. But if we really want to connect with the divine, we need to let them flow. When we cry, a heavenly gate opens, and God welcomes us into the divine embrace.

It was Eduardo who got me thinking about all this, but the more think about it, the more I realize how sad it is that there are so many people who put so much energy into not letting ourselves do what Eduardo did. In fact, sadly, even Eduardo himself felt the need to apologize for his tears that day.

My friends, you don’t need to cry in public, but as we’ve seen this year among others, life inevitably brings pain at times, and holding back your tears can deny the reality of that pain, and ultimately serves no one. Cry alone; share your tears with a friend if you want – if you’d like, you can share them with me; come here, sit in services, and let your tears flow if that will help. I see some of you do that, and when you cry, I think I see it bring you comfort and release. I’m glad that this is a place where you can weep.

The psalmist, I think, said it best in the 126^th Psalm – Shir Hama’alot, a Song of Ascents: “Those who sow in tears,” the psalmist wrote, “will reap in joy.” There are moments of pain that we all encounter. We could hold our tears back, the psalm seems to be telling us. But when we let them flow, they water the ground at our feet, and one day, our tears themselves will allow us to reap the fruit that grows before us. “Those who sow in tears…will reap in joy.” Joy itself, sometimes demands tears in order to sprout forth.

Eduardo gave us such a gift that day. In his tears, we saw his compassion. In his tears, we saw his love for our stepmother. In his tears, we found the ability to shed tears ourselves. May each of us in the year ahead, have joy and satisfaction, and may we each find a way to shed the tears we need to shed to enable us to achieve those great goals.

Shanah Tovah