As we approach a Rosh Hashanah unlike any we have experienced in our lifetimes, we ask ourselves: How can we possibly engage in self-reflection while facing the most harrowing collective challenge in recent Jewish history? When the dramatic words of the Unetanah Tokef — “who will live and who will die” — are no longer an abstraction given the multi-front war in Israel, but a stark reality.
Yet, our tradition is built exactly for these times.
Throughout the High Holiday liturgy, we’re repeatedly reminded of the fragility of existence. We are likened to “a broken shard, withering grass, a fading flower, a passing shade, a dissipating cloud, a blowing wind, flying dust, and a fleeting dream.” A cavalcade of poetic images that lay bare the truth of our mortality.
At the same time, we're repeatedly reminded "HaYom Harat Olam" — today the world was created. These words refer not only to the first moment of creation, but to a world reborn again every year, offering all of us endless possibilities and new beginnings.
Holding both concepts together — human mortality and possibility — the message becomes clear: Do not take your life for granted, use this gift, make your days meaningful, bring goodness to the world.
The haftorah we recite on the second day of Rosh Hashanah offers a poignant and timely example of how we might hold grief and hope together in this moment. Although authored thousands of years ago by the prophet Jeremiah, the haftorah — about devastation in the land of Israel — reads as if it could have been written this past year:
A cry is heard...
Wailing, bitter weeping–
Rachel is weeping for her children.
She refuses to be comforted
For her children, who are gone.
The passage refers to Rachel, biblical matriarch — wife of Jacob, mother of Joseph and Benjamin — who is crying for the decimated tribes of Israel. Throughout Jewish liturgy, Rachel’s weeping has represented the ultimate expression of inconsolable grief.
But then, immediately after these words of grief, comes hope:
Hold back your voice from weeping,
Your eyes from shedding tears;
For there is a reward for your labor
declares the LORD:
They shall return from the enemy’s land.
There is hope for your future;
Your children shall return to their own borders.
As my colleague, Rabbi Menachem Creditor, UJA’s scholar-in-residence, observed, one cannot read the haftorah this year without thinking of the modern-day Rachel — Rachel Goldberg, the mother of murdered hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who has come to represent for many the anguish of all parents grieving for children lost or being held captive in Gaza.
But modern-day Rachel, like her biblical namesake, does more than grieve. She acts with fierce determination. Every day. Everywhere. Bringing a constant spotlight to the plight of all the remaining hostages in Gaza.
The Jewish people have endured tremendous grief this year. But we have also been privileged this year to witness and support extraordinary acts of courage, heroism, and humanity.
Hostage families who will not allow the world to forget their loved ones. Bereaved families who find strength in one another. Soldiers who defend their land on multiple tours, and the families they leave behind, carrying on in their absence. Injured soldiers undergoing extensive rehabilitation. Farmers from devastated communities in the south, returning to ensure the harvest. Volunteers across the country who continue to put their lives on pause to help the displaced. And more.
Here in New York, even in the face of escalating antisemitism, we have not wavered in expressing our Jewish identity or our solidarity with Israel. We’ve shown up in greater multitudes, with greater Jewish pride and a greater sense of connection and community than ever before.
I have no doubt that our synagogues this Rosh Hashanah will be overflowing. Our prayers will be recited with more conviction. The sound of the shofar will pierce our heart more deeply — its call to action more resounding.
As we prepare to welcome the new year, understanding that we must always strive to live purposefully, I’m inspired by the words of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, z”l, who wrote:
“We defeat death, not by living forever but by living by values that live forever; by doing deeds and creating blessings that will live on after us; and by attaching ourselves in the midst of time to God who lives beyond time.”
May we live by values, do deeds, and create blessings that will soothe Rachel’s tears and bring our children back to our borders. May we be inscribed this year for a life of meaning and peace.
Shanah Tovah