“If we just sat here, all of us, and cried together today, that might be the most eloquent response to the year we’ve just lived through.” These are the words that Rabbi Rachel Timoner opened with on Rosh Hashanah morning five years ago.
I don’t know about you, but the anticipation leading up to these High Holy Days have felt different than ever before. This year was filled with so much communal grief for the lives of all of the victims of the horrific pogrom of October 7. So much grief for the thousands of innocent victims of the war that began on October 8. This year has been filled with so much fear as Antisemitism continued to rise and then rise again to the surface and explode in our faces, here in America. This year, I prayed and prayed, as did so many of us – that all of the hostages would have been alive and home by now. This year, I read countless poems and new prayers and listened to new songs written in the aftermath of October 7th. And this year, just in the last week, really, I refreshed and refreshed and refreshed my news in anticipation for “what if…” the worst case scenario.
And now here we are — all sitting here in this holy place, just as our ancestors have always done. Through the heights and depths, coming together, to usher in our holiest days as we enter into this New Year.
No one can deny that this Rosh Hashanah feels unlike any other. We are days from the anniversary of the horrific pogrom that was October 7, 2023. And we are, too, on the edge of what might be a full fledged war in Israel and the Middle East.
If we just sat here, all of us, and cried together today…
We cry for the Israel of October 6 that we lost on October 7 and in its aftermath. For all of the lives lost that day and every day since.
We cry for the fragile thread of American democracy we hold tightly.
We cry for immigrants locked in cages.
We cry for children murdered at schools.
We cry for the polarization that divides us.
We cry for attacks on women’s bodily autonomy.
We cry for the persistent shadows of racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and antisemitism.
We cry for the personal too, for job loss and financial insecurity.
We cry for broken relationships and broken homes.
We cry for illnesses and the deaths of loved ones.
If we just sat here, all of us, and cried together today .
Already this Rosh Hashanah morning we have heard the broken cries of the shofar echoing the same call that has reverberated throughout every generation of our Jewish history. In doing so, we affirm that the stories of our ancestors and our stories are one and the same.
We are a teary-eyed people.
As we sit in this sacred space, enveloped by our collective sorrow, we can envision a photo album of tears—an intimate collection that chronicles the weeping of our ancestors. Picture it – each page, worn and frayed, holding the weight of their stories.
Today we are especially awakened to our matriarch Sarah’s tears. As we read this morning the story of the Akedah, did you notice who was missing? The ancient rabbis did. They note that when Sarah learned Abraham had taken their son Isaac up to Mount Moriah to offer him as a burnt offering she began to weep. And she wailed. And she cried three heartbreaking, guttural, isolating cries. Three cries. We don’t have to open the photo album to see Sarah’s cries this morning. We heard the three cries as we called out Sh’varim and heard the sound of the shofar.
The pages of the album of tears show the tears from our ancestors following the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem on the 9th of Av some two millennia ago. Sent into exile, the psalmist teaches by the waters of Babylon, we sat down and wept.” Their homes were conquered, they were displaced, they lost their holy Temple. And so they wept.
We know there are even darker chapters with dampened pages. Picture the images on the tear filled pages where the poet Hayyim Nachman Bialik wrote his famous poem, “City of Slaughter” in response to the 1903 Kishinev pogrom. And the pages from the years of the Shoah, the mass murder of our Jewish people between 1941-45 , filled with both ashes and tears.
And, we too, have our own tears that fall on each page of this sacred recounting, as we add our stories of this past year and our current reality to the photo album of our people.
As we reflect on this legacy, I am reminded of a profound teaching from the Talmud: “From the day that the Temple was destroyed, the gates of prayer have been closed… but even though the gates of prayer are closed, the gates of tears are open.”
In times of profound loss, we can relate to the crisis that followed the destruction of the Second Temple. Lives changed dramatically and rapidly. Reflecting on this upheaval, the ancient rabbis taught that the gates of prayer were closed. Our ancient rabbis knew though, that there is something more powerful than prayers. For sometimes, when we pray, we simply recite the words from our tradition, without fully understanding what we are saying. But the same is not true about tears. Tears come from our souls. Tears, oddly enough, give us strength. Crying, throughout our ancient tradition, is not seen as weak, but rather as a pathway that can propel us forward.
Perhaps there are some of us who find ourselves this year, after so much destruction, loss, devastation and pain – not so unlike our ancestors, struggling with the words of our prayers.
Through their many hardships and trials, our ancestors didn’t give up; they discovered a new passageway, a new gate as it were—the gate of tears
In those terrible moments of destruction, Judaism did not perish; it transformed. Tears, then, were not an end to their devastation and destruction, but instead a passageway. Just as our ancient ancestors walked through the gates of tears, to confront the depths of their grief, we might do the same. Our ancestors’ tears were part of their story and allowed them to move forward. Their journey through sorrow was essential; it is how they kept going. It is how we will keep going. Our own tears carve a path through pain, leading us to a deeper understanding of our collective experience. They remind us that even in our most profound sorrow, we are connected—not just to our past, but to one another. As we honor this sacred continuum, we step forward, not to forget our tears, but to embrace them as part of our journey.
For us, our tears do not come to represent a door closing forever – rather they reveal different passageway. Time and again, when our ancestors found themselves at the gates, they didn’t simply stand there. They allowed themselves to cry. To wail. They didn’t just arrive at the gates; they walked through them. How do we do that today?
In the face of all these layers of loss it is easy to feel hopeless. The word hope feels almost insensitive given our current reality. And yet, hope is precisely what we need now more than ever. Maybe that is because we have yet to understand what Jewish hope is all about.
Jewish hope is a profound force, rooted in resilience and the belief that, despite adversity, we can actively shape our future. It is not a naive optimism that things will somehow work out or simply get better. Instead, hope embodies the conviction that, regardless of the challenges we face, we possess the agency to effect change. We don’t deny our current reality; we defy it. This understanding of hope calls us to engage with our reality, to cry for the injustices we witness and the real pain and heartbreak we feel, but also to rise with the determination to create a better world.
In a time filled with anxiety and uncertainty, hope becomes the light that guides us through the darkness. Vaclav Havel, the Czech playwright and president, wrote, “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”
How many times have we recounted Miriam dancing with her timbrel after crossing the sea? Have we ever paused to recognize how remarkable it is that Miriam and the women carried timbrels with them through years of slavery? A true embodiment of hope that transcended their suffering. And when they crossed the sea, they too walked through the gates of tears – holding onto faith that there would be reasons to celebrate again.
We can journey back to the prophet Jeremiah who found himself in a trouble filled world. Living in the 7th century BCE, Jeremiah cried out, “my joy is gone, grief is upon me…” But it was precisely in this very dark moment, on the verge of massive destruction from the Babylonian army, that Jeremiah purchased a property in Judea. Any realtor today would see this as a horrible investment – and yet, Jeremiah used this moment of deep and dark pain, to walk through the gates of his tears with hope in a future that would emerge from the darkness.
And if you are still not certain as to what Jewish hope is, consider the powerful story of Emanuel Ringelblum and the Oyneg Shabbos collective in the Warsaw Ghetto. Amidst the unimaginable suffering and mass death inflicted by the Nazis, Ringelblum and his team made a remarkable choice: they gathered in secret on the Sabbath to document their reality. They collected artifacts and wrote observations, determined to preserve the truth of their existence, despite the overwhelming despair surrounding them.
This effort, which they called “the Joy of the Sabbath,” was a testament to their resilience. Even as the ghetto was being destroyed and all hope seemed lost, they believed in the importance of memory and bearing witness. After the war, their hidden archives were unearthed from milk jugs, revealing a world of dreams, struggles, and undying hope. Though many of them perished, their voices and stories lived on, demonstrating that even in the darkest times, hope can be a powerful act of resistance.
Even in the bleakest moments, hope has the power to endure and inspire. This complex, resilient nature of hope encourages us to keep moving forward, to act with intention, and to commit ourselves to the work of healing our world. In Jewish tradition, hope is both a spiritual anchor and a call to action. It invites us to confront our pain, to mourn our losses, and simultaneously to cultivate a steadfast belief in our collective strength.
On the 7th of October our people were attacked by Hamas. Nearly 1200 innocent civilians were brutally murdered. Over 250 were kidnapped and held hostage. Today nearly 100 remain held in Gaza. Each and every day, we read of continued destruction. In Hebrew, that destructive day is not called October 7th, but Shiva b’October. Shiva. 7. Our people are still sitting Shiva. It is difficult to get up.
And yet…that is precisely what Israelis did on October 8th. For 330 days, Rachel Goldberg, the mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin rallied not only for her son Hersh, but for all of those held in captivity by Hamas. For 330 agonizing days, amidst unimaginable pain, Rachel Goldberg carried the hopes of countless people who believed, despite the odds, light would prevail. And so, too, did Jon Polin as he eulogized their beloved son Hersh with these words: “For 330 days, mom and I sought the proverbial stone that we could turn over to save you. Maybe, just maybe, your death is the stone, the fuel that would bring all the remaining 101 hostages. Od lo avdah tikvatenu”– our hope has not yet been lost.
At his own son’s funeral, in the deepest pain and most profound grief, Jon Polin invited us all not to lose sight of our hope.
On Tuesday morning, a friend of mine who lives in the North of Israel posted the following:
Almost 1 year since war broke out, since we started to be scared for our lives. Since we left home with clothes for maybe 3 days…spent 9.5 months in a hotel, kids switched schools 3 times, I had almost 1 full year of sleepless nights…It’s been almost exactly one year… and all I keep telling myself is…ONE STEP AT A TIME.
To be a Jew is to nurture hope amidst all that lies ahead. We are a people who have endured more than any other, and guess what? We will endure again.
Each and every year the liturgy of our High Holy Days forces us to confront profound uncertainty. We ponder heavy questions: Who will live and who will die? Who will thrive and who will struggle? Who will be satisfied and who will go hungry? These questions are real and urgent as we face a new year. How can we regroup and reground ourselves to move forward with courage? How will we adapt with resilience in the face of life’s challenges?
We will because that is what our story has told us for thousands of years. We are a resilient people. Or as Rabbi Sheila Weinberg puts it, “we are a fall down, get up people.” We are a hopeful people.
We are living on new pages of our teary-eyed photo album spanning generations who believed that the way the world is is not that way that it must be forever. And so amidst our pain, suffering, and all the uncertainty that lies ahead we enter a new year, standing at the threshold of the gates of tears. We may not be able to walk through just yet, but we can stand at the threshold, holding on to the hope for what we believe is possible because that is what we have always done – and we must never give that up. Od lo avda tikvateinu. Our hope is not yet lost.
Shanah Yoteir Tova. May it be a better year.