My Hopes for the Future Good afternoon, L’shanah Tovah. Like all of us, I have many hopes for the future. For starters: I hope that our society has universally agreed-upon, consistent, knowable values, with a common understanding of what it means to treat another person with kindness & dignity. That those mores don’t change depending on a change in our circumstances at any given time.  Along those lines, I hope that one of the basic values that are agreed upon is that it is wrong to harm someone else, in words or actions, and that we each consciously undertake efforts every day to avoid inflicting any such damage on each other. I hope that people aren’t so self-absorbed & focused on what’s in it for them. That just living doesn’t feel like survival, or a zero-sum game, all the time. That, instead, people consider what is best for the common...

What memories are stirred by the call of the shofar? I remember being young attending Rosh Hashana services with my parents and sister and hearing the blowing the shofar. That was always one of the most exiting parts of the service. I remember watching and thinking the person blowing the shofar made it look so easy. I wondered: How can the person blowing the shofar be so good at something they only do once a year? I realized as I got older that blowing the shofar must not be as easy as it looks. That there must be more to it. While that skill may be visible only once a year, that it must require commitment and dedication and work. As I reflect on how I first viewed the blowing of the shofar – that it was something easy – I realize that my views about blowing the shofar had...

The sound of shofar brings up feelings about the past, the present, and the future. The past for me is filled with memories. It is the memory of meeting my wife Ellyn at Sinai in Hyde Park. We were introduced to each other 40 years ago on Yom Kippur day. My thoughts then turn to the four generations of Daniels and Kestenbaum’s who were and are Sinai members: Our grandparents Meyer, Gertrude, and Mary, our parents Bob, Kate, Jordan, and Barbara, and our children Emma, Benji and Benji’s wife Jenny. In short, I feel the presence and spirit of our family every time I walk into this beautiful Sanctuary – but I feel it most intensely when the shofar is sounded. In the present, the shofar sound reminds me that we are experiencing Yamim Noraim – the Days of Awe. This is a time for us as Jews to look...