Rabbi Jeffrey B Kamins OAM YK 2025 sermon

Rabbi Jeffrey B Kamins OAM

Emanuel Synagogue

A heritage of light and love

Yom Kippur has arrived at a particularly meaningful time this year, following the secular anniversary of October 7th, but still before the yahrzeit for those murdered on Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah.  It has been a hard, hard year for each and all, and that scaly hardness has inevitably permeated our inner being.  These days of the Yamim Noraim, this day of Yom Kippur, is an ancestral plea to maintain our faith – over the millennia there have been highs and lows, triumphs and tragedies, but our heritage is so beautiful and we have so much light and love still to give.

Let us consider our beautiful heritage.  Ours is an extraordinary story first told through the exquisite literature of the Bible, with its stories of pain and pathos, of love and faith, of conflict and war, of the sacredness of all life and the deep connection of our people with the living land. Despite being exiled from our land and being scattered to the “four corners of the earth”, our scripture and stories impacted on world consciousness, especially through the religions we spawned, Christianity and Islam; the visions of our prophets still spurring on humanity. We have risen to great heights among the nations. We have had leading roles as philosophers, scientists, doctors, linguists, artists, musicians, diplomats and more.  Jews at just .2% of the world’s population have been awarded 20% of all Nobel prizes. Despite trial and travail, we have maintained our faith that a better world would come, that we could “repair the world under the sovereignty of God.”  God’s sovereignty, of which we speak throughout these Yamim Noraim, is rabbinic code that we are part of a much larger existence, one as I mentioned on Rosh Hashanah, where all are empowered and none wield power over another. This is just a small glimpse of our beautiful heritage.

We have a unique heritage. Over 2,000 years of exile we maintained our connection to the land, our language, our culture and our story, binding us together over the centuries across our otherwise disparate communities scattered around the world.  We have come back to our land after the greatest catastrophe our people have suffered (there are still three million fewer Jews on the planet than there were in 1940).  Israel leads the world in all forms of technology and innovation, known as the Start Up Nation.  To go to Jerusalem now is to experience our ancient city magnificently rebuilt, a fulfilment of thousands of years of prayers.  But, from the Torah throughout those thousands of years of rabbinic tradition, we have been cautioned that with power and success comes the risk of hubris and arrogance.  And today, when paradoxically our power and success is matched by our fear and vulnerability, we must beware not to become tortoise-like and retreat within a defensive shell.  There are two disparate descriptions of our people within the scriptures – “we are a nation that dwells apart”, it’s us versus them, and “we shall be a light unto the nations”, it’s us inspiring them. In this era, the eternal interconnectedness our faith teaches is what God is all about is mirrored by the interconnectedness we have with expanding technology. There is no dwelling apart anymore. So, we must reject the former description and embrace the latter.  We shall not be a nation that dwells apart for we can be a light unto the nations.

Yom Kippur is an invitation to peel away that hard shell that has enveloped us and allowed us at times even to become callous. It is an invitation expressed in our prayers throughout this day to reclaim our light, to regain our compassion.  Our beautiful liturgy will hold us and guide us.   First, while it may feel like we are alone, we are part of a greater humanity, living on this life-sustaining earth.  These days of awe are for all creatures, not just Jews, as we recite in our kedusha: “Adonai our God, instil Your awe in all You have made …so that all be bound together.”  In a time of war, and a time of rising antisemitism, it becomes harder to remember and actualise this teaching. Still, most human beings feel bound together with common hopes and dreams.  We must not go down the rabbit hole of social media, where algorithms make sure that noise makes the news, that hate will beget more hate.  Rather, we must engage in deep conversation with each other, for in the end each of us is nothing but “a vanishing dream”. We can realise our dreams when we share them with each other and transmit them to our children. That is more important than ever.  That is why at least five times over the 25 hours of Yom Kippur we will repeat the words of the Amidah in which we invoke these values: that the sacredness of life is primary, that life should be filled with compassion, that life should be good, and that life should be filled with blessing, sustenance and peace.  Five times. This is what we want.  This is what humanity wants. These are our hopes, aspirations and dreams. Especially, in a time of conflict and conflagration, a time of vulnerability, it is so hard to hold on to our dreams. We cannot succomb to the hardness that leads to nightmares.

And thus, in the heart of our prayers, as part of the oft-repeated Amidah, are the sections of Selichot, forgiveness prayers, and Vidui, confessionals, with all their moving and memorable melodies.  Selichot prayers focus us on forgiveness, compassion and lovingkindness so that those qualities will permeate our minds, our hearts, our souls. These prayers should help us extend our compassion, share our love, and bring the light to humanity. We teach through the story of the first human that no one can say “my blood is redder than yours”.  This mythological story teaches us that “the person who saves one life is as if they have saved the entire world.”   All faiths share that belief in individual human dignity.

The practice of Buddhism also reminds us that, at our core, we are all the same. There is a beautiful Buddhist teaching, which has entered Judaism and which Rabbi Ninio often shares on Shabbat, encouraging us to expand our circles of compassion.  May you be happy; may you be safe; may you be healthy; may you live with ease.  We could similarly use the words of these days of awe: may you have goodness, may you have blessing, may you have sustenance, may you have peace.  The essential thing is to extend this compassion like a ripple effect, beyond ourselves, beyond our families, to a stranger, to someone with whom we are in conflict, and eventually to all sentient beings. With all with whom we are bound together. It is hard, and even harder when we’re feeling hard done by.  All the more important to practice – and to know the practice of opening to forgiveness while highlighted at Yom Kippur is also part of the daily practice of our beautiful heritage.  May we all have goodness, may we all have blessing, may we all have sustenance, may we all have peace.

But most of us fail this practice of compassion, most of us fail to extend our circle of compassion beyond our family and friends.  We’re even struggling to hold the compassion in our community right now, let alone for others not us. Even though our tradition teaches us that the greatest principle of Judaism is to love your neighbour, we find it challenging to live up to that. It’s hard to hold the love. So, following our Selichot comes our Vidui, our confessional prayers, in which we acknowledge with humility our failures and imperfections.  We recall a litany of sins and transgressions repeatedly throughout the day, and each time we do, we gently tap our heart.  “Ashamnu, bagadnu, gazalnu, dibarnu dofi” – literally we have trespassed; we have dealt treacherously; we have robbed; we have spoken slander. Or we abuse, we betray, we are cruel, we destroy.  And the following confessional “Al Chet”, for the sins which we have sinned, is a longer litany of our shortcomings. But it is so hard to acknowledge that we are not always right. We are not all right.

I was speaking with my learned and beautiful-souled grandson just hours before Yom Kippur and he spoke of how that gentle tapping on our heart each time we say those confessionals, “Ashamnu, bagadnu”, “Al chet sh’chatanu l’faneicha” – tap, tap, tap – can slowly make a crack in our hardened hearts, just like water dripping on a stone.  As the great Jew Leonard Cohen wrote, “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” And once the light is in, the light can shine throughout.

Our heritage is so beautiful and we have so much light and love still to give.

And one day, one tap at a time, we will get to that place envisioned by Isaiah in our haftarah of Yom Kippur where our “light shall burst through like the dawn and our healing spring up quickly.” And the day will come that King David envisioned in the Psalm we read these days from the month before Rosh Hashanah right through to just before Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah: “surely we will see God’s goodness in the land of the living.”