Hidden Face, Open Heart

This Shabbat finds us in a place of tender and complex memory. We are nestled between two solemn anniversaries of the 7th of October attacks: the secular date which has just passed, and the Jewish date which arrives on Simchat Torah, this coming Tuesday. For so many, the emotional landscape is still fragile. The trauma of that day remains close to the surface. Yet, two years later, as the slow and difficult work towards peace in Israel continues, the first hints of solace may finally be emerging.

It is into this very space of fragility and yearning that our Torah reading for Shabbat Chol haMoed Sukkot [1] speaks with uncanny power. The portion is set in the aftermath of another national trauma: the sin of the Golden Calf. The covenant is broken, the people are lost, and the relationship with God hangs by a thread. It is from this place of communal despair that Moshe cries out with a plea that echoes our own: “Oh, let me behold Your Presence!” It is a cry for reassurance, for a sign that healing is possible after the shattering.

What follows is a beautiful and complex choreography, a Divine dance at the cleft of a rock. God’s response is a lesson in how we might recover from trauma. A full, direct view of God's “face”, a reality in which the pain is erased, is not possible. Instead, God offers a protected encounter with goodness. “I will place you in a cleft of the rock,” God says, “and I will shield you with My hand... you shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen.” This is a model for finding solace. We cannot unsee the horrors of the past, but we can create safe spaces from which to witness glimpses of hope: the resilience of a community, the enduring strength of our people, and the courage to believe in peace even after such an immense trauma.

This brings us to the very meaning of the sukkah this year. As Rabbi Michal Shekel points out, this dialogue between Moshe and God occurs at a moment of supreme vulnerability [2]. The firmest walls are often the ones we build to protect our hearts. Sometimes, those walls isolate us. The sukkah proposes a different kind of shelter, thin yet held by presence, porous yet capable of hosting blessing.

Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin, cited by Shekel, puts it beautifully, “Sukkot reminds us that ultimate security is found not within the walls of our home but in the presence of God and one another… The walls of our sukkot may make us vulnerable, but they make us available, too.” These fragile walls “help us understand that sometimes the walls we build to protect us serve instead to divide us.”

This Shabbat, let us see the sukkah as our communal cleft in the rock. It is our safe space to sit with our fragility, to honour our memories, and to be shielded as we look for signs of goodness passing by. It is where we can hold our sorrow and still allow the possibility of peace to be a balm on our aching hearts.

Mo'adim le-simcha and Shabbat Shalom.

[1] Exodus 33:12–34:26

[2] http://bit.ly/4h2bj73

Dvar Torah: Holding Safety and Spirit in Our Sukkah

Tonight we will step out of sturdy rooms into a shelter that welcomes the wind and the stars. Sukkot tells us to live, for one tender week, with a roof that lets the rain in and walls that can sway.

The Talmud asks a deceptively simple question, what does the Torah mean by “sukkot”? On Sukkah 11b we find two voices. Rabbi Eliezer teaches that the sukkot were the Ananei HaKavod, the clouds of glory that wrapped our ancestors in Divine care in the wilderness. Rabbi Akiva answers that they were sukkot mamash, real huts of wood and brush, built with human hands.

These two teachings give us a map for Sukkot. Rabbi Eliezer calls us to trust, to cultivate a spiritual life thick with awareness that we are held. Rabbi Akiva calls us to responsibility, to build structures that keep people safe, fed, warm, and seen. Spiritual well-being and physical security are not rivals. They belong together in this fragile little house.

If we listen to Rabbi Eliezer alone, we might drift into a faith so airy that it forgets bodies. We could speak beautifully about God’s presence and ignore the person shivering in the night. If we listen only to Rabbi Akiva, we might build perfect huts and lose the reason we built them. We could win every battle for survival and forget what survival is for.

Sukkot teaches the choreography between the two. The roof must be porous enough to see the heavens, yet thick enough to cast shade. We do not sleep entirely exposed, and we do not close ourselves off completely. The mitzvah itself encodes the balance.

So what is this week asking of us, here and now? First, to say clearly that the mere physical survival of the Jewish people is not enough. Our tradition calls us to sanctify life with justice, compassion, humility, and joy. A people that survives without practising its values has missed its own destination. The clouds of glory are not nostalgia. They are a demand that our communities become canopies of care, places where the lonely are welcomed, the anxious are comforted, and the powerful are reminded that strength is for service.

Second, to say with equal clarity that values cannot be lived when existence is under threat. Rabbi Akiva’s huts are not optional. We need safe homes and neighbourhoods, initiatives that protect the vulnerable, and the courage to defend human dignity. We also need the communal infrastructure that allows Jewish life to thrive, practical systems of security and safeguarding, networks of hesed and mental-health support. There is no Judaism without Jewish life, and there is no Jewish life worthy of the name without Judaism.

The pactice of shaking the four species helps us practise the same truth. We bring together species that grow in different terrains and hold different textures. None is complete on its own. Together they become a blessing. Bring heart and spine, courage and tenderness, skill and prayer. Bring Rabbi Akiva’s practicality and Rabbi Eliezer’s faith. Shake them in all directions, because holiness is not confined to a single point on the compass.

When we welcome ushpizin, guests of spirit and flesh, we repeat the lesson again. Avraham enters with hospitality. Miriam enters with song. Ruth enters with loyalty. Invite them all. Then invite the neighbour you barely know, the person you have not called, the person whose story is unlike yours. Real huts become clouds of glory when their doors are open.

This week, as we sit under this woven sky, let us choose a path that holds both truths. We will work for physical safety, for all who dwell with us. We will also hold fast to a Judaism that heals, elevates, and critiques, a Judaism that remembers the stranger and refuses to trade conscience for comfort. We will build huts, and we will weave clouds.

May our sukkah steady our hands and widen our hearts. May God spread over us the sukkat shalom, the shelter of peace. And may the joy of this festival give us strength to protect life, and the wisdom to fill that life with meaning.

Chag sameach.

Dvar Torah: Between the Rock and the Sukkah

What a journey this has been! Over the past ten days, we have been through a marathon of spiritual experiences. From the sounding of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah to the deep introspection and fasting of Yom Kippur, we have journeyed to the very core of our souls and back again. It has been demanding, beautiful, and, let's be honest, exhausting. And so, tonight, my words will be shorter. But while we may welcome this brief respite, our spiritual marathon isn't over yet. This moment of transition still asks us to assess our own conduct with seriousness and sincerity.

In the article I sent out on AdKan this week, I wrote about the collision of joy and grief, and the challenge of living in the space between the wound and the healing. Tonight, I want to add another dimension to that search for balance, one that is presented to us with stark clarity in the contrast between this week’s parashah, Haazinu, and the festival of Sukkot, which begins on Monday night. It is the tension between the rock and the sukkah.

Parashat Haazinu is Moshe’s final, poetic address to the people of Israel. It is a song of memory and warning, of love and lament. And woven through this powerful poem is a single, dominant image for God: HaTzur. The Rock. Five times in this short parashah, God is called The Rock.[1] The rock is a symbol of everything we crave when we feel vulnerable. It is permanence in a world of fleeting moments. It is strength in the face of our own fragility. It is stability, security, and power. To lean on the rock is to seek safety from a position of unshakeable strength, to build walls that cannot be breached, to exercise the power necessary to ensure survival. It is to identify with the powerful, because we know all too well the cost of powerlessness.

And then, just as this image of the mighty, eternal Rock echoes in our ears, the Torah commands us to do something utterly counterintuitive. On Sukkot, we are told: בַּסֻּכֹּת תֵּשְׁבוּ שִׁבְעַת יָמִים – for seven days, you shall dwell in booths.[2] We are commanded to leave our sturdy, comfortable homes—our own little rocks—and move into a temporary, flimsy hut. A sukkah is, by definition, an unstable structure. Its roof, the s’chach, must be sparse enough that we can see the stars through it. It leaves us exposed to the elements: the wind, the rain, the chill of a spring night.

The sukkah is the mirror opposite of the rock. It is a symbol of impermanence, fragility, and radical vulnerability. For one week, we are asked to intentionally inhabit insecurity. We are asked to develop our empathy by trying to imagine, just for a moment, what it would be like to live in such conditions permanently. On the one side, the parashah gives us the Rock, inviting us to identify with the powerful. On the other, the chag gives us the sukkah, commanding us to identify with the vulnerable.

This is not just a theological paradox. For the Jewish people, and for all who care about the future of Israel and its neighbours, this tension is the central, agonising challenge of our time. The context of the last two years has pushed us, with terrifying force, towards the extremes.

On Monday night, we will sit down for the first meal in the sukkah. We are commanded for it to be z’man simchateinu, the season of our joy. But this year, as we do so, we will also be marking a solemn and painful anniversary. For on Tuesday, the first day of Sukkot, the world will mark two years since the 7th of October, 2023. We will be asked to hold our impulse toward simcha—toward joy—and make space for memory and grief. A week later, on Simchat Torah, as we prepare to dance with the Torah scrolls, we will be asked to do it again, as we mark the second anniversary of that terrible day according to the Jewish calendar. The calendar itself is forcing us into this impossible balance.

The trauma of that day, and the ongoing pain of the past two years, has sent many of us running for the shelter of the Rock. There are those among us, and in our global Jewish family, whose hearts are, rightly, focused on the victims of that horrific attack. They feel the immense, unending pain of the families of the captives, who have lived every single day of the last two years in a state of suspended agony. Their focus is on security, on strength, on ensuring that our people never have to endure such a horror again. This is the impulse of HaTzur, The Rock—a legitimate, deeply understood, and necessary response to existential threat.

At the same time, there are those among us who, looking out from the fragile walls of their sukkah, feel their hearts breaking for others. They see the tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians whose lives have also been shattered by this conflict. They see women, children, and men who reject Hamas and its cruelty with all of their being, but whose homes, families, and futures have been destroyed. This is the impulse of the sukkah—the call to empathy, to see the humanity of the other, to feel the pain of all who are vulnerable, no matter who they are.

Our world, and the algorithms that drive our discourse, tells us we must choose. You must be for the Rock or for the sukkah. You must stand with the powerful or with the vulnerable. You must wrap yourself in the flag of your own people’s pain, or you must dedicate yourself to the pain of the other.

But Jewish tradition says, no. You must do both. It is a breathtakingly difficult demand. As I wrote in my article this week, "compassion is not a scarce resource, and Jewish conscience does not permit dehumanisation. We can condemn cruelty and still pray for the protection of all innocents. We can pursue security and still yearn for a future where no child goes to sleep afraid."

We must find the moral courage to live in the space between the Rock and the sukkah. To demand security for our people and to see the humanity of our neighbours. To mourn our dead and to mourn the innocent dead on the other side. To hold our own trauma and to recognise the trauma we have, in turn, inflicted.

This is not a path of easy answers. It is a path of constant, soul-wrenching struggle. But it is our path. We are the people who are commanded to be strong as a rock and vulnerable as a sukkah, all in the same week. We are the people whose season of greatest joy is now forever intertwined with a memory of profound sorrow.

And so, as we prepare to enter the sukkah, let us not choose between these two sacred obligations. Let us choose to hold them both. Let us build our sukkah with strong foundations, but leave its roof open to the stars. Let us find the strength to protect ourselves and the compassion to feel for others. And in that spirit, let us pray for the peace that can only come when the security of the Rock and the empathy of the sukkah are extended to all. A prayer for peace for us, for the state of Israel, and for everyone.

Shabbat Shalom.

[1] Deut. 32:4, Deut. 32:15, Deut. 32:18, Deut. 32:30, Deut. 32:31
[2] Lev. 23:42

Dvar Torah: Their Story in Our Book of Life | Yom Kippur Yizkor 5786

(A previous version of this text was published on this blog in Portuguese under the title "Lendo nosso Livro da Vida a tempo de poder mudá-lo")

This morning, we explored a powerful and challenging idea: what if we could read the Book of our Own Life from beginning to end, seeing all its joys and sorrows at once? We asked ourselves if, knowing the inevitable pain that accompanies a full life, we would still choose to love, to connect, to embrace it all.

Now, as we gather for Yizkor, we shift our perspective. We are no longer looking at the book we are still writing, but at the completed, cherished stories of those we have lost. We hold in our hearts the books of their lives.

This morning, I spoke about a short story I read a while ago: Story of Your Life, by Ted Chiang. The story’s central idea is that a life's meaning is found not in its sequence of events, but in its totality. It contrasts the human perception of time as a chain of cause and effect with a simultaneous awareness, where past and future are known at once. From this perspective, a life is understood by its ultimate purpose. The story’s power comes from posing a profound question: if you knew the entire story of a loved one's life—knowing both the immense joy it would bring and the inevitable, heartbreaking pain of its end—would you still choose to live it? The narrator’s decision to embrace that beautiful, tragic story affirms that the joy and the sorrow are inseparable parts of a meaningful whole.

As I mentioned this morning, in the story, the protagonist learns that she will marry a man she hasn’t even kissed yet, and that they will later get divorced. Their daughter will suffer from a rare, incurable disease and die young. And even with this foreknowledge… she chooses to love him. She chooses to have that child. And she loves them as though she didn’t know how the story would end.

This, in its essence, is the bargain of love.

I once asked a dear friend, who grieved her grandfather deeply, whether she would still have been that close to him, knowing the pain she would eventually feel. “Absolutely,” she answered, and added, “Only those who live, grieve.” In her next message, she wrote: “Only those who experience happiness, suffer.”

Her words are the heart of Yizkor. Our grief is the measure of our love. We are here today because the people we remember chose to love, and because we chose to love them back. And we would make that choice again.

Yizkor is our chance to read their stories again. If we could read our own Book of Life, what role would they play in it? If we had known, while they were still alive, what we know now, how might we have changed our relationship with them?

This moment of memory invites us to focus not just on the loss and the ache of their absence, but on the light they brought into our lives, the good moments we shared, and the values they inspired in us.

And perhaps the most important—and most difficult—question to ask now is this: knowing how these people touched our lives, and acknowledging on Yom Kippur that our own lives will one day end, how can we live differently from this day forward in their honour—and for the sake of those who will still be here after we’re gone?

May the light of their souls continue to illuminate our paths, offering us inspiration and comfort. May their presence be felt in our happiest moments and in those when we need their support the most. And let us say, Amen.

Dvar Torah: Reading our book of life in time to change it | Yom Kippur Shacharit, 5786

(A previous version of this text was published on this blog in Portuguese under the title "Lendo nosso Livro da Vida a tempo de poder mudá-lo")

My late father spent virtually his entire professional life working for the same construction company. In an era without smartphones or high-resolution computers, he had a tool that helped clients imagine what a tile they liked would look like when repeated across a wall. It was a set of four foldable mirrors that enveloped the tile, creating the illusion of an infinite background in that same pattern.

Today, with virtual reality headsets, major architectural projects can allow us to “walk through” buildings that haven’t yet left the drawing board, giving us the feeling of physically being there.

Jewish tradition, with far less technology at its disposal, has for centuries developed strategies to help us experience scenarios far removed from our everyday lives. Shabbat, for example, is referred to as me’ein shel olam haba — a “taste of the world to come.” For 25 hours, we live as if the world were perfect. Yom Kippur, on the other hand, is described as a rehearsal for our own death: some people wear a kittel, reminiscent of the tachrichim, the shrouds in which we are buried; we abstain from many acts that belong to the realm of the living — we do not eat or drink, we do not have sex, and we avoid other pleasures; we recite vidui, the confession of our transgressions, just as we are commanded to do before we die.

Living for 25 hours as though the world were whole on Shabbat inspires us to bring some of that ideal into the week that follows. Experiencing Yom Kippur as a dress rehearsal for our death invites us, paradoxically, to reflect on what we value most in life. Rabbi Alan Lew expresses this concept in the following way:

This is what Yom Kippur asks us today. What is the core of our life? Are we living by it? Are we moving toward it?

We shouldn’t wait until the moment of our death to seek the answers. At the moment of death, there may be nothing we can do about it but feel regret. But if we seek the answers now, we can act in the coming year to bring ourselves closer to our core. This is the only life we have, and we all will lose it. No one gets out alive, but to lose nobly is a beautiful thing. To know the core of our being is to move beyond winning and losing. [1]

Being able to walk through a house before it has even been built may give us the courage to greenlight the project. Experiencing the world as if its brokenness had already been repaired can empower us to fix what we can. Imagining ourselves at the end of our lives enables us to focus on what truly matters, to see past the fog of the everyday that often clouds our vision. Paying the cell phone monthly bill, taking the clothes to the dry cleaner's, finishing the project you've worked on for two months, studying for the exam that will determine your final grade — all important tasks, but none of them define who we are or what our role in the world might be. Yet, all too often, we allow them to claim the best of our time and energy.

But what if we could see our lives from an even broader perspective? What if we could, for example, access the Book of Life we speak so much about on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur? What if God were to step out of the room for a moment and allow us to read everything written about us — how we were born, how we’ll die, our greatest loves and deepest disappointments? How might that change the way we live?

Some time ago, I encountered a story that resonated deeply with the metaphors of these High Holy Days — especially the metaphor of the Book of Life. It was a short story called Story of Your Life, by Ted Chiang. [2]

The story is about alien spaceships arriving at various locations across Earth. A linguist is recruited to communicate with them and gradually discovers that these beings experience time in a non-linear way — something we humans find difficult even to imagine.

Time, for us, has a set rhythm. Every second, the second hand of the clock ticks forward, and there’s nothing we can do to rewind it or speed it up. It’s as if our lives are a film in a cinema, where we can’t pause to go to the loo or skip through a violent scene. But what if life were like a short story collection — one we could open to any page and read freely? First the wedding, then adolescence, then the details of our birth… What if we could even see how we will die?

That is what the linguist learns from the aliens — she begins to read her own life as a book of interconnected, but also self-contained, stories. If you had that power, how would it change your choices?

In the story, she sees that she will marry a man she hasn’t even kissed yet, and that they will later separate. Their daughter will suffer from a rare, incurable disease and die young. And even with this foreknowledge… she chooses to love him. She chooses to have that child. And she loves them as though she didn’t know how the story would end.

This is the heart of the Yom Kippur challenge. If we could see the entire arc of our own story, what would we learn? We would see chapters of profound joy and connection, and others of pain and loss. We would see the people whose lives intertwine with ours — our partners, our children, our friends — and the complete story of our relationship with them, from its beautiful beginning to its inevitable end.

The question the linguist faces is the question we face today: knowing that love can lead to heartbreak, that commitment can lead to disappointment, and that life itself leads to loss, do we still choose to live fully? Do we still open our hearts? If you could read your Book of Life, and see a relationship that will bring you a decade of true happiness but end in sorrow, would you still begin it? If you could see a choice that will lead to great professional fulfilment but also your greatest failure, would you still take that risk?

We live in a time when our decisions are increasingly shaped by fear, particularly fear of pain. I know people who got up to all sorts of mischief as teenagers but who now won’t let their own children go out alone, or play contact sports — for fear of what might happen. If we could foresee that a relationship would be full of intense emotion and meaningful joy but would end tragically, I suspect many of us would opt out, thereby forfeiting all the good that could have been. In our fear of suffering, we end up choosing emotional mediocrity.

The story’s great revelation is not that the future is knowable, but that even with full knowledge of the pain that awaits, the protagonist chooses love. She chooses to live. She rejects emotional mediocrity born from fear.

This is the ultimate lesson of the Book of Life. It is not a divine ledger designed to frighten us into compliance. It is a mirror, like the one my father used, showing us the pattern of our lives. Yom Kippur gives us the chance to pause, to look into that mirror, and to decide if we like the pattern we see.

We cannot know the future. We cannot read the story of our life from beginning to end. But we can decide, here and now, what kind of story we want to write. Acknowledging that our time is finite, and that joy and sorrow are inextricably linked, how can we choose to live more bravely, more lovingly, more meaningfully from this day forward?

This Yom Kippur, may we have the courage not to fear the difficult chapters, but to write a story filled with connection, purpose, and love. May we be inspired to live so fully that when our book is finally closed, it will be one worth reading.

Gmar Tov!

[1] Alan Lew, This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared, p. 230.

[2] Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others. The film is available on Netflix here: https://www.netflix.com/br-en/title/80117799

Dvar Torah: Seven Annulments, Seven Affirmations | Kol Nidrei 5786

When we move to a new country, there are many elements to adjust to: from the most basic things, like finding out how to do the recycling, what the good brands are in the supermarket, and the unwritten rules of driving; to more subjective concepts, like how to show affection without crossing personal boundaries, or what issues can be openly talked about and what needs to be whispered only with people you really trust.

Among the most prosaic aspects of being a newcomer to South Africa is learning its calendar. Some might say it is the basic Gregorian calendar used in most of the world, and indeed, it is. But every country adds its own flavour to the way it relates to the calendar. In South Africa, I am learning about its holidays and their history, which are a reflection of South Africa’s past, as you know much better than I do. Brazil, with a very different history, doesn’t have a Day of Reconciliation, a Heritage Day or a Freedom Day. Other national holidays come from religious contexts, such as Good Friday and Christmas in South Africa, or Rosh haShanah, Yom Kippur, Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot in Israel. There are also dates that were created, or at least encouraged, by entrepreneurs interested in profiting from them. I don’t know the history behind South Africa’s Children’s Day, but in Brazil it is observed on the 12th of October and, while existing on the books since the 1920s, it only became a real phenomenon in the early 1960s, when toy manufacturers decided to invest heavily in marketing campaigns advocating for families to give presents to children on that day. When I was born, in 1971, it was already a huge success.

As a child, I always wanted a remote-control car, but I never got one. When I was, perhaps, six years old, I was walking with my mother and I saw a remote-controlled car in a shop window. I started screaming and crying that I wanted it… so my mother did what many parents would do in that situation: she deflected the issue. “I will give it to you on Children’s Day”, she told me, without any intention of keeping that promise once the day arrived and hoping that I would have forgotten the issue by then. Immediately, I stopped crying, happy that my tantrum had achieved something. Many months later, but still in the same year, I remember my mother getting home and I ran to greet her at the door. “Where is it?” I asked. “Where is what?” she asked, confused. “Where is my gift? The remote-control car you promised me for Children’s Day. TODAY is Children’s Day!” My mother had clearly forgotten her promise, but I hadn’t. In that instance, she dealt with the issue head-on: “If I promised, I ‘unpromise’ now!”

I think I have blamed this incident for never having got a remote-control car and, more importantly for our purpose tonight, it might have led me to radically oppose the possibility of “unpromising” something, which is, to some extent, the purpose of the ritual we just experienced.

For nearly twelve centuries, this ritual cancelation of vows has been a source of profound conflict. [1] At its core, Kol Nidrei—“all vows”—is an Aramaic legal formula designed to annul oaths and promises made rashly or under duress. In the pre-modern world, a vow carried a cosmic weight. [2] Words had the power to alter reality. The impulse behind this ritual, likely born not in the great academies but among the common folk, was a deeply human one: to seek release from the promises we couldn’t keep. [3]

Yet this practice immediately drew the ire of the great rabbinic authorities of Babylonia, the Geonim. They saw it as a dangerous legal shortcut that undermined the sanctity of one’s word. Rav Amram Gaon dismissed it as a minhag shtut, a “foolish custom”, and demanded it be stopped. [4]

But the people refused to let it go.

This prayer, this formula, became a rebel. It survived because it spoke to a deep, popular need that outweighed the objections of the legal scholars. To save it from being completely outlawed, the rabbis had to find a way to make it work. It was Rabbenu Tam, the grandson of Rashi, who performed a brilliant act of legal jujitsu. If annulling past vows was impossible, he argued, let’s change the tense. Let’s have Kol Nidrei annul the vows we might make in the coming year. This clever shift from the past to the future allowed the ritual to survive and flourish in the Ashkenazi world. [5]

But it was the melody that truly cemented its place in our hearts. That melody, rising and falling like a human sigh, became the soul of the service. It gave voice to a history of pain and longing that Yom Kippur otherwise lacked. It became so powerful that we no longer came for the Day of Atonement service; we came for the Kol Nidrei service. [6]

The conflict, however, was far from over. As our Progressive movement emerged in nineteenth-century Europe, Kol Nidrei became a source of intense embarrassment. For centuries, this text had been used as antisemitic ammunition. This led to the humiliating practice of the more judaico oath, forcing Jews in court to take an additional, often degrading, oath swearing that their testimony was not subject to the Kol Nidrei annulment. [7] For the early reformers, who were desperate to prove their loyalty and ethical standing, the prayer was a moral and public relations disaster. In 1844, an assembly of progressive rabbis in Braunschweig, Germany, voted to remove it from the prayerbook. [8]

Across the Atlantic, the American Reform movement followed suit. Its Union Prayer Book omitted the text entirely. And then, in the 1940s, as a result of the great waves of Eastern European Jewish immigration to the United States, a strange thing happened. Many congregations longed for the emotional resonance of the tradition they had left behind. They wanted Kol Nidrei back. The committee revising the prayerbook was deeply divided. And then, in what seems like a story straight out of a novel, the traditional Aramaic text was accidentally included in the first printing of the new edition in 1945, a mistake attributed to the chaos of wartime printing.

Rabbi Samuel Cohon, a passionate opponent of the traditional text, was horrified. He demanded they stop the presses. But the response came back, dictated not by theology, but by cold hard economics. Scrapping the 30,000 copies already printed would cost tens of thousands of dollars. And so, in a moment of sublime irony, the binding machine defeated the theologians. Kol Nidrei had once again stubbornly refused to die. [9]

For the next printing, Cohon did something revolutionary. Instead of simply removing the text, he wrote an English substitute that was a complete inversion of the original. Where the ancient formula sought to annul our vows, Cohon’s prayer asked God for the strength to fulfil them. [10] It transformed a ritual of release into a moment of profound commitment.

Tonight, we are the heirs to this entire, messy, beautiful history. We are not here to find a spiritual loophole or to press a cosmic reset button that wipes our slate clean. We are here to do the opposite. We are here, in the spirit of Samuel Cohon’s radical inversion, to declare what truly matters to us. We are here to make commitments, not annul them.

The traditional Kol Nidrei annulled seven kinds of vows made between a person and God. [11] Tonight, we replace those annulments with seven sacred Jewish commitments. Seven affirmations that define who we are, what we value, and what we resolve to build in the year ahead. [12]

First Commitment: To Aspire

We commit to aim high. Kol Nidrei invites us to take promises seriously, not to avoid them. We name the ideals that shape a life of holiness, patience, compassion, justice, and honesty, and we reach for them with courage. Torah commands, “קְדֹשִׁים תִּהְיוּ, be holy,” [13] and the prophets distil this into walking humbly and doing what is right. [14] We affirm that holiness is within human reach. We will set a high bar for ourselves, believe that growth is possible, and keep choosing the better path even when it is hard.

Second Commitment: To Forgive

We commit to forgive. Aspiration guarantees that we will sometimes fall short. Forgiveness is the practice that keeps a community whole and a soul supple. Our tradition teaches the attributes of divine mercy, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and rich in kindness. [15] We will hold bold expectations and meet failure with gentleness, towards others and towards ourselves. This is not the refusal to name harm. It is the choice to repair trust, to make space for return, and to carry one another forward.

Third Commitment: Pride in Progressive Judaism

We commit to walk our Progressive path with confidence. We belong fully to Am Yisrael. Our Judaism is rooted in Torah and the wisdom of generations, informed by history and science, and accountable to human dignity. “אֵלּוּ וָאֵלּוּ דִּבְרֵי אֱלֹהִים חַיִּים, these and those are God’s living words,” [16] reminds us that principled disagreement can be sacred. We affirm gender equality and LGBTQ+ dignity. We honour tradition by engaging it honestly and letting it speak to the moral questions of our time. This is authentic Judaism, thoughtful, joyous, and alive.

Fourth Commitment: Communal Co-Creation

Drawing from one of my recent Shabbat drashot, we commit to co-create this community. The theological basis for this is the radical idea that the Torah is not in heaven, but “in your mouth and in your heart”, [17] empowering each of us with the agency to shape our Jewish lives. We are not religious consumers; we are builders. At this stage we have few committees and programmes, which is an invitation rather than a deficit. This year we will give better form to our care for one another, shaping teams that welcome, visit, sing, teach, organise, and serve, so that our shared home reflects the gifts and responsibilities of all who gather here.

Fifth Commitment: Lifelong Learning

We commit to taking Jewish learning seriously, for ourselves and for future generations. As we discussed in another recent Shabbat drashah, we reject the phenomenon known as “paediatric Judaism”, where Jewish knowledge ends at bar or bat-mitzvah. [18] The goal of adult Jewish learning is to become as sophisticated in our Jewish lives as we are in all other realms. [19] It is to realise that Judaism has relevant insights for the most crucial moments of our lives, not only for what happens inside the sanctuary. In 5786 we will work on an adult learning programme that fits our community, with spaces to question, to encounter classic texts, and to explore contemporary issues through a Jewish lens. What we learn ourselves can kindle others, and what we teach one another can steady us for the work ahead.

Sixth Commitment: Tikkun Olam, Repairing the World

We commit to act on our values. Tikkun Olam is not a slogan, it is the natural outcome of internalised Jewish ethics. Living in South Africa, a reality of extreme inequalities, our responsibility is undeniable. I am inspired by the words of our sister congregation, Beit Emanuel, which affirms that, “in this land we have experienced the best and worst of the human spirit. We have plumbed the depths of racism, violence, and injustice, and we have soared the heights of grace, reconciliation, and renewal.” [20] We will turn compassion into concrete practice, joining neighbours, learning from those already doing the work, and showing up reliably. Service and justice belong together. Meeting immediate need and addressing root causes are both part of our Jewish responsibility, here in Johannesburg and beyond.

Our Seventh Commitment: Sustaining Our Community

Finally, we commit to sustaining our community, grounded in the ancient wisdom of Pirkei Avot: “אִם אֵין קֶמַח, אֵין תּוֹרָה, If there is no flour, there is no Torah.” Prayer, learning, care, and service require time, skill, and financial support to endure. Bet David is blessed with rental income, but it is not enough. In some communities abroad, members contribute between 1% and 2.5% of their income as dues. [21] We are not there yet, but this is a conversation we want to start among ourselves. Tonight, we ask each of you to consider: What can you give? Not as a fee for services, but as an investment in the Jewish future. Our ancestors built the infrastructure of this community in much harder times. We commit to honouring their legacy by keeping this sanctuary alive and thriving—for ourselves, and for those yet to come.

This is our Kol Nidrei. Not an escape clause, but a covenant. Not an annulment of vows, but an affirmation of commitments. We stand here tonight, witnesses to our own shortcomings, but also to our deep and powerful desire to be better. The haunting melody that filled this room was not a song of release, but a call to commitment. [22]

The tools we need to flourish—the wisdom to choose, the capacity to act justly, and the power to co-create our sacred future—are not distant. The capacity for an ethical and vital Jewish life is right here. It is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, for you to do. [23]

May we have the courage to make these commitments, and the strength to live them.

Ken Yehi Ratzon. May this be God’s will.

Shanah Tovah! Gmar Chatimah Tovah!

[*] Unless otherwise noted, all the articles mentioned in the footnotes are from All These Vows: Kol Nidre, ed. Lawrence A. Hoffman (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2011). 

[1] Lawrence A. Hoffman, "Kol Nidre: Anatomy of a Conflict".

[2] Jonathan Magonet, "What If Cleverness Is Foolishness and Righteousness an Illusion?". See also Lawrence A. Hoffman, "Morality, Meaning, and the Ritual Search for the Sacred".
[3] Tony Bayfield, "At Least Credit Me with Being Compassionate".

[4] Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, "The Kol Nidre Mirror to Our Soul". See also Eliezer Diamond, "Kol Nidre: A Halakhic History and Analysis".

[5] Eliezer Diamond, "Kol Nidre: A Halakhic History and Analysis". See also Lawrence A. Hoffman, "Kol Nidre from Union Prayer Book to Gates of Repentance".

[6] Ellen M. Umansky, "Ritualizing Kol Nidre: The Power of Three". See also Lawrence A. Hoffman, "Introduction".

[7] Andrew Goldstein, "Memories of the Past, Guidelines for the Future". See also Annette M. Boeckler, "The Magic of the Moment: Kol Nidre in Progressive Judaism”.

[8] Annette M. Boeckler, "The Magic of the Moment: Kol Nidre in Progressive Judaism”.

[9] Lawrence A. Hoffman, "Kol Nidre from Union Prayer Book to Gates of Repentance”.

[10] Lawrence A. Hoffman, "Kol Nidre from Union Prayer Book to Gates of Repentance". 

[11] Rachel Nussbaum, "Over-Promise, Under-Deliver … and Then Forgive".

[12] Lawrence A. Hoffman, "Kol Nidre from Union Prayer Book to Gates of Repentance."

[13] Lev. 19:2.

[14] Micah 6:8.

[15] Ex. 34:6.

[16] Talmud Bavli, Eruvin 13b.

[17] Deut 30:14

[18] Jonathan Magonet, "What If Cleverness Is Foolishness and Righteousness an Illusion?".

[19] Ruth Durchslag, "Words Mean Everything, Words Mean Nothing—Both Are True”.

[20] Beit Emanuel’s Prayer for South Africa.

[21] https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/can-synagogues-live-by-dues-alone

[22] Jonathan P. Slater, "Release beyond Words: Kol Nidre Even on a Violin".

[23] Aaron Panken, "Courting Inversion: Kol Nidre as Legal Drama”.

Between the Wound and the Healing: Reflections for Parashat Ha’azinu – Two Years After 7 October

Yehuda Amichai begins one of his most beloved poems with the line:

“A person doesn't have time in his life to have time for everything.” [1]

Many rabbis, myself included, have turned to this poem in moments of contradiction, when joy and grief collide in sacred space. Over the years, it has become a go-to text for wedding ceremonies held shortly after funerals, for baby blessings after miscarriages, for any moment when celebration and sorrow come too close to separate. But over the past two years, since that terrible day on 7 October 2023, Amichai’s words have taken on a deeper, more haunting resonance.

“A person needs to love and to hate at the same moment,

to laugh and cry with the same eyes…

to make love in war and war in love.”

The Jewish calendar doesn’t avoid contradiction, it crystallises it. On that day, Simchat Torah, as we were dancing with scrolls, singing with children, and kissing sacred words, our people were being attacked, in what would become the most brutal assault on Israeli civilians in a generation. Simchat Torah, the “Joy of Torah”, remained written on the calendar. But something inside many of us broke open. And now, two years later, we are still living in the echoes of that collision: between what should have been and what was; between joy and grief, presence and absence, comfort and terror.

This week’s parashah, Ha’azinu, comes to us in the form of poetry as well. It is Moshe’s final song, a deeply layered, often stark poem that summarises Israel’s journey with God. In last week’s column, I wrote about the emotional force of music and memory, and the Torah’s invitation to “write this song” and place it in our mouths and hearts. Ha’azinu takes up that invitation in full.

But the Torah’s poem is not just a farewell, it is a tapestry of warnings, lament, and hope. Near its close, God says:

“I deal death and give life; I wound and I will heal” (Devarim 32:39).

We have been living in that verse. We have buried and we have blessed. We have sat shivah and danced under chuppot. And we mourn, not only for Israelis murdered and soldiers fallen, not only for hostages still in captivity and families torn apart, but also for Palestinian civilians killed, for children bereaved, for communities shattered. Every human life is of infinite worth, created in the image of God. Our grief must not be reduced to a ledger, nor measured in competing sorrows.

To say this aloud is not to blur moral responsibility; it is to insist on another kind of moral clarity, that compassion is not a scarce resource, and Jewish conscience does not permit dehumanisation. We can condemn cruelty and still pray for the protection of all innocents. We can pursue security and still yearn for a future where no child goes to sleep afraid. This, too, is something the Torah’s poem models: poetry capable of holding covenantal joy and searing lament in the same breath.

And now, we return to Amichai’s poem, which ends with this image:

“He will die as figs die in autumn,

Shrivelled and full of himself and sweet,

the leaves growing dry on the ground,

the bare branches pointing to the place

where there’s time for everything.”

This week, may we give ourselves permission not to resolve the tension but to honour it. May we hold the wound and the hope together. May the songs of our lives carry the names of those we love and those we have never met. May our prayers reach toward healing: for the injured, the traumatised, the bereaved on all sides. And may we remember that our lives, like our Torah, contain both prose and poetry, and that sometimes the only way forward is through song.

Shabbat Shalom.

[1] https://shira-ovedet.kibbutz.org.il/cgi-webaxy/item?2478