Rabbi Jacqueline Ninio OAM YK 2025 sermon

Rabbi Jacqueline Ninio OAM

Emanuel Synagogue

The rabbi, cantor and the president gather at the front of the synagogue on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year. They are dressed in white and stand before the open ark ready to begin the services. The rabbi starts to beat his chest, he says “oy I am nothing, I am nothing.”

The cantor nods, closes his eyes and for five minutes chants with a haunting melody, “God I am nothing, I am nothing.”
And then the president steps forward, he nods at the cantor and the rabbi, goes down on his knees and says “God, oh God, I am nothing, I am nothing.”

And with that the cantor looks at the rabbi, points to the president and says “Huh! Look who thinks he’s nothing!”

There is a very powerful moment in every Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur service, where the leader of the service, walks to the ark slowly, reciting a prayer which begins with the word hineini, “here I am.” It is a supplication to God to hear the prayers of their heart: “Hineini, here I am, impoverished in merit, trembling in the presence of the One who hears the prayers of Israel. Even though I am unfit and unworthy for the task, I come to represent your people and to plead on their behalf… let my prayer reach Your throne through the merit of honest, righteous, devout people…praised are You, merciful God, who hears prayer”[1] Although the prayer leader recites these words and they do so, unlike in the other places in our High Holyday services, in the singular, they humble themselves, recognising the enormity of the task before them: to guide and lead the community through the journey of Yom Kippur, to take their hands and together, traverse the emotional landscape of the service, from the depths of despair to hope, from chastisement to embrace, from resolve to release.

Hineini. The prayer leader begins with the word on the lips of our ancestors in the Torah. “Here I am,” they respond to the call. Each time, a moment of transition, trepidation, uncertainty, fear and unknowing. Without a clear path forward, without knowing why or where they are being called, they answer “hineini, here I am.”

This year, we are all being called, and together we say: “hineini, here I am, trembling in the presence of the Eternal One. Here I am, shattered and broken, bruised and beaten by a year of turmoil and heartache. Here I am, struggling to understand and know You God. Here I am, standing on earth which is no longer steady beneath my feet. The world has changed. I have changed. This year I have been challenged like never before. I have been silenced and silent, I have been shaken and the world does not feel safe. Here I am, broken hearted and oh so very tired. My bones and my heart are weary, my eyes have no more tears. Here I am, trying to put the pieces back together, trying to see what picture the puzzle will now reveal. Here I am, praying and crying to You, let my prayer reach You, we need You. We need each other. Hineini here I am, hineinu, here we are. God who hears prayers, shema, listen to us now.”

We stand today, shoulder to shoulder, heart to heart, soul to soul. Stripped of pretence, we come together in our vulnerability and our grief. The past year we have been called upon and we have answered: “hineini, here I am.” In the Torah the word hinini I am here, appears often, but hineini, here I am, only eight times. “Here I am.” It is a statement which requires our full self. It is not just speaking about physical space and location, “I am here,” but tells who we are, what we are prepared to do, when we are ready to be present, to stand up for what we believe, to show up, to be there in all of who we are. It is not about searching, seeking, it is being: here I am.

The first question asked in the Torah, is God to Adam and Eve. They are in the Garden of Eden having broken the one and only rule they were given, and they are hiding. God calls out “Ayeka? Where are you?”[2] God knows where they are. God is waiting for them to answer. God is waiting for “hineini, here I am.” But it does not come. Adam and Eve hide from the call, they are silent.

How many times this year have we longed to be like Adam and Eve? When we have heard the call: “Ayeka? Where are you?” And we wanted to disappear, to put our heads under the covers and stay safe and warm in our cocoon. In our Eden, where there are no angry mobs on the Opera House calling out: “Ayeka? Where are you? Where are the Jews?” Where we can walk our streets without fear. Where our children can attend school without police protection, where they can wear their Jewish school uniforms without fear of being attacked. Where we can walk our streets without being confronted with slogans, posters, banners, people calling for our destruction. An Eden where our friendships are strong and built on mutual understanding, where we can talk without fear or wondering what the other thinks about Israel, about Jews. Where we can get in an uber wearing a kipah or a Magen David and not be concerned about the reception, we can walk the streets without fear. An Eden where we lived just one year ago, before we were banished into a world which is harsh and hostile. Where our voices are not heard, drowned out in a sea of hate. Where we can go onto the internet without fear. Where the answer to: “ayekah? Where are the Jews?” was not “Hineini, here they are!” Here is their personal information, here is all you need to know about them to harass and hurt, to harm and intimidate, to bring fear to our homes. Ayekah? Where are you? Where are you in the universities? Where are you in your workplaces? Where are you?

This year, so many of us, despite the fear, have answered: “Hineini, here I am!” Like Abraham hearing the call from God to take his only son, his future, his everything, the one he loved more than anything in the world and sacrifice him on the mountain.[3] He answered: “hineini, here I am. I am afraid, I am scared but God I know You, I will do as you ask, I will understand myself and what is truly important, as I face this mountain and climb.” We have faced a mountain and we have found strength and solace in the arms of our community and our traditions. We have turned to our ancient texts when we could not find the words, and there we discovered wisdom and courage. We could not find the words to hold our pain, we could not contain our anguish and our grief, but there in our prayers, in our rituals, in our Jewish teachings we discovered yet again, the wisdom of our ancestors. We have read the words we say every week, and they have taken on new resonance, new meaning. We have prayed and found solace in the arms of our tradition.

And we have called to each other: “ayeka? Where are you?” And we have answered “hineini, here I am.” Hineini is in the singular but never alone. We have come together and wept, we have stood in silence, needing no words, just knowing that this journey is one we take together. We have searched for meaning, we have needed to belong, to be part of something greater than ourselves. We have worn our symbols and signs, our magen Davids, our kippot, our necklaces and badges, we have worn our Judaism. We have turned to rituals, foods, friends, anything to connect us to each other and to our people.

And together we grappled with our difference. We have asked the hard questions, the ones which have no answers. At times we have all felt misunderstood, we wondered if anyone was listening, we cried to one another: “ayeka, where are you?” And then we have stood in the dissonance and our difference, trying to hear one another’s hineini.

The second time hineini is uttered in the Torah is when Abraham and his son Isaac are walking to the mountain. Abraham knows what he has to do. He has answered “Hineini” to God and now he must answer his son: “Father?” Isaac says. “Hineini veni. Here I am my son,” “I can see the wood and the fire but where is the offering?”[4]

Isaac asks his father the most difficult question: “father, what are we doing? Where are we going? What is my fate?” Abraham answers: “God will see to the offering my son.” What Isaac understood about the offering in that moment, we will never know but Isaac, in a safe place, asked his father the challenging, difficult question, and Abraham heard his son, he listened and he answered. Then text tells us, they walked on together.[5] Until this moment, they were two individuals on a journey. After they spoke the unspoken, they revealed the truth, they listened and heard one another, even in the difficulty, even in the challenge, it was then, they could walk on together.

This year, we need to walk together, to ask the hard questions, to speak and challenge and debate. But just like Abraham and Isaac, it has been so hard to listen and to be heard. Outside the community we have felt misunderstood, silenced and unsafe to express our complicated, nuanced feelings. And at times we have felt that within the community too. So many conversations whispered for fear of the response, feeling there is no space for complexity and uncertainty, just the binary, the black or white, the for or against. But together we have been learning how to answer: “Hineini Here I am.” Here I am to listen to you, but you must make space for my voice to be heard alongside. Our hineini is safe arms where we see each other’s pain and struggle, where we open our hearts to listen and hold one another, even as we disagree. We wrestle together with the complexity, we struggle with the subtleties, we try to sit in the discomfort. I often read a beautiful poem from Starhawk during Shabbat Live called Community:

…Community.
Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion
without having the words catch in our throats.
Somewhere a circle of hands
will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter,
voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power.
Community means strength
that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done.
Arms to hold us when we falter.
A circle of healing.
A circle of friends.
Someplace where we can be free.

And that is what it means to be in our community. Unlike the algorithms which feed us more of what we are already listening to, affirming our beliefs and our opinions, in community, our beautiful community, we are challenged to listen and hear one another, to provide safe spaces where we will not be judged. Where we know and understand that together we are all struggling, we are all a jumbled mess of emotions and feelings and it is raw, so very raw and painful and we are grieving. But what do we Jews do in times of loss and grief? We cry “Hineini, here I am.” We gather, we make a minyan, we bring the community and we sit together; sometimes in silence just with our tears and heartache, and sometimes we talk and we listen and we mourn together and we begin to heal.

Rachel Goldberg Polin, the mother of Hersh, one of the six hostages murdered just before they were rescued, said in the eulogy at his funeral: “I want to say now the sincerest and most heartfelt thank you to the countless people in our extended community who have held us, cared for us, prayed for us, cooked for us, and carried us when we could not stand up. I’m so thankful to you, and I apologize deeply, but we will need continued help to get through this sickening new chapter too. I am so sorry to ask, because we have given you nothing, and you have already given so profoundly and completely. But I beg of you all, please don’t leave us now”[6] And we don’t leave one another. We respond: “Hineini here I am.”

And this year, we have been here. Hineini. This year we have understood the teaching: “kol Yisrael aravim ze be zeh,” “all of Israel is responsible for one another.”[7] The kabbalistic tradition teaches that the people of Israel are a body and when one part of the body is injured, we all bleed. This year we have spilled so much blood and the cry has gone out: “ayekah where are you?” And we have answered: “Hineini, we are here.” Just as Moses at the burning bush saw the bush aflame but not consumed, he noticed, he listened, he recognised the miracle and when God called to him, he answered “Hineini.”[8] This year we were all called, called to give, support and care. We gave generously, money, items, letters, music, prayers, love. We heard the call and we were there for each other and for our family, our brothers and sisters. We saw this principle in action in Israel as the country mobilised, opening homes and hearts to one another, volunteering, organising, giving. And we went, physically, to be there, to help and to witness. And we went to our synagogues, our gatherings, our memorials. We held one another, we cried and gave from the depths of our hearts. We wept, not only for ourselves but for all the innocents suffering the tragedy and horror of war. We opened our arms and we stood proudly at rallies and gatherings in solemnity and praying always for peace, for an end to war and violence and fear. A return of our precious souls snatched from their lives to the horrors of the dungeons beneath Gaza. We wrote new songs and poetry, we found meaning in ancient teachings. And we were angry

“Ayekah?” We cried out to the world. “Where were your words of comfort for us? Where was your outrage at the horrors perpetrated on young people who wanted to dance? On peaceniks who tried to create a better world? On babies, women, children, every life is a world, worlds were destroyed and shattered. Ayeka? Where were you, when antisemitism reared its ugly head, when students and teachers were afraid to go to the very places where they should have been most safe to be who they are? Where were you when we needed you? Ayeka?”

We were angry, we are angry, where is our hineini? Maoz Inon, an Israeli who buried the remains of his mother, unable to be identified until months after her murder at Netiv Ha’asara, the day before he joined Aziz Abu Sarah, a Palestinian whose 19 year old brother was shot and killed by Israeli forces four years ago in Gaza, sat down to have a conversation. They both said they are often asked how they are not angry after the losses they suffered. Aziz said “we are angry. I am very angry.” It is not something that goes away but he said he has come to view anger like nuclear power. He said it can lead to hate and vengeance or it can be harnessed for good. He has chosen to use the energy of his anger to make peace, to bring people together, to transform it into an energy for good.[9]

Maoz answered differently. He said that his parents taught him what to do with his anger. He said that he grew up on a kibbutz on the Gaza border. His father a farmer, even when he had a bad year, would go back and plant and try again. He never gave into despair and his mother made mandalas. The only one she ever gave him said: “we can achieve our dreams if we are brave enough to chase them.” From this, he said that he has dreams of peace, and tries to transform the anger into courage to find his way to that peace.[10] Moses at the burning bush answered hineini, here I am. He was given an impossible task, to set his people free after 400 years of slavery. He was terrified, felt the ask too great. But God would not let him turn and walk away: hineini, here I am, send me.
And that is the answer we are given to our cries, eicha? the same letters as ayekah, eicha? How? How do we move forward? How do we take our anger and rage our fear and deep mourning and channel it into something like hope?

The families of the lost and missing show us the way. They say to us: “hineini Here I am, I am shattered, but I will go on.” Every single eulogy for the six murdered hostages spoke about people who had dreams of a better world, who hoped and believed that they could make a difference. Each one reached out during their lives, brought light and inspired others and now their families are calling on us to take up the mantle. Vivian Silver, one of the founders of Women Wage Peace, an organisation of Palestinian and Israeli women committed to peace, who took children from Gaza for medical treatment in Israel, who dreamed of, believed in and worked for peace, who was murdered on October 7 her body burned beyond recognition when her home was set on fire with her trapped inside. Her son, who teased her about her naïve dreams and work for peace, has now taken up her mantle. He will not allow his mother’s dream to be burned to ashes as she was. He has become a passionate advocate for dialogue and hope.

Hope calls out to us: “ayekah, where are you?” We must respond: “hineini, here I am.” Aziz says that hope is not something we find and lose but something we make. We need to make hope. Even though we are angry and scared and frustrated, even though we are still in the midst of the war suffering, even though the hostages are still not home, we are called to try and make hope. To believe that there will be a better tomorrow. Just like our ancestors who were called and answered hineini did not know where the path would take them. Joseph could not have imagined the suffering when he answered his father’s call, “hineini here I am, I will go and see how my brothers are.” He was thrown in a pit, sold into slavery, forgotten in a dungeon prison. Joseph had times of great darkness and pain. We are still in our darkness and our pain. It is hard to believe that there is a way out, that we can create security and safety, that we can defend ourselves and continue to survive. But that is what we Jews do, we survive and more than that, these horrors shape who we are and who we will become.

When Isaac called his son Esau to his side to give him the blessing of the first born, Esau answered: “hineini, here I am father.”[11] But Isaac’s eyes were damaged and Isaac was deceived, giving the blessing instead to his younger son Jacob. A midrash teaches that Isaac’s eyes were scarred by the tears his father Abraham shed upon him as he bound his son ready to slaughter him. Isaac was forever changed by tears cried in despair and love, in fear and turmoil. One interpretation says that Isaac’s wound was not physical but rather Isaac’s sight was different; after that moment of deep trauma, he did not see the world the same again. We will not see the world the same again. Like Isaac, we have been changed and transformed and we do not yet know in what ways. We are still fighting for survival, fighting for our home, fighting to be who we are. This year we have all been Abraham and cried rivers of tears, we have all been Isaac, our vision changed, we have been Moses, feeling afraid and inadequate. We have been Adam and Eve, wanting to run away and hide, to have a moment of respite. We have been Joseph, enduring trials and we have been like Esau, answering the call to help, to be there, for our brothers and sisters in Israel and for ourselves, right here. Now we are called to be like our ancestors and make hope where there is despair, to turn to one another for comfort, support and solace, to recognise the beauty and wisdom of our tradition, the blessings of community and to answer the call: “ayeka, where are you?” With “hineini. Here I am.”

[1] Machzor Lev Shale pg 312
[2] Genesis 3:9
[3] Genesis 22:1
[4] Genesis 22:7-8
[5] Genesis 22: 8
[6] The Times of Israel October 10th 2024, full text of eulogy given by Rachel Goldberg Polin
[7] Shevuot 39a
[8] Exodus 3:3-4
[9] TED talk 17th April 2024, “A Palestinian and an Israeli Face to Face”
[10] ibid
[11] Genesis 27:1