Drash – Vayeilech – Shabbat Shuva

Rabbi Adi Cohen

Temple Shalom - Gold Coast

The Power of the Remnant

Rabbi Adi Cohen, Temple Shalom, Gold Coast

Words, countless words are uttered as we join in prayer during this time of year. Sometimes it is just one simple word, that frames the whole prayer with a unique theme. For me, this year the word is She’erit.

This Shabbat, located between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, Shabbat Shuvah, the prophet Micah offers words of comfort: “Who is a God like You, forgiving iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant (She’erit) of Your people?” (Micah 7:18).

That word She’erit, (remnant) describes Israel as a peoplehood often small in number, fragile in history, yet driven by a significant purpose.

For Jews in our region, this is relevant as ever.

In Israel, Progressive Jews are the minority of the majority.

In America Progressive Jews are the majority of the minority,

and in Australia, Asia and NZ we are the minority of the minority.

We are not a vast community here. We live in a countries where multiculturalism thrives, but where Jewish life can sometimes feel like an outpost, distant from the great centres of Jerusalem, New York, or even Melbourne and Sydney if we live beyond them. We are a remnant. And yet, Micah’s vision reframes smallness not as weakness, but as a source of spiritual power.

The remnant carries the memory of our people, the stubborn faith that survived exile, persecution, and wandering. The remnant is not just what is left, I would suggest, it is what endures. In Micah’s words, God chooses compassion over anger, hope over despair, precisely through the presence of that small, faithful community.

As we stand in the Days of Awe, we might hear Micah calling us to embrace our role as a remnant in this land. Our task is not to lament being few, but to live fully and proudly as Jews. Rooted in Torah, generous in spirit, engaged with the world around us. Here in our region, that means creating vibrant synagogues even if they are modest in size, teaching Hebrew and Torah even when our classrooms are small, raising our voices in interfaith friendship and public life even when we are only a fraction of one percent of the population.

Shabbat Shuvah is about return, T’shuvah, for the individual soul, as well as for the community. We return to the realisation that every act matters, every mitzvah counts, every community gathering strengthens our Jewish life. The power of the remnant lies in its refusal to give up and in its insistence on living with dignity and purpose.

“You do not need numbers to enlarge the spiritual and moral horizons of humankind. You need other things altogether…This small people has outlived all the world’s great empires to deliver to humanity a message of hope: you need not be large to be great.”

(Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Covenant & Conversation, A Tiny, Treasured People, Va’Etchanan)

May this year remind us that even as a remnant, we are whole, strong, and capable of carrying forward the sacred covenant entrusted to us.