L’shanah tovah! In meeting many of you this year, I have met artists, writers, cooks, bakers, activists, organizers, theater makers, musicians, teachers, big thinkers, and problem solvers. I am repeatedly inspired, every time I get to connect and learn with you and about you.
Rosh Hashanah is the “Jewish New Year,” but actually that name fits better with Passover, which celebrates our becoming a people, while on RH we celebrate the creation of the whole world. With this in mind, I want to turn to our story of the creation of the first human beings.
Adam’s name literally means “earthling,” adamah meaning earth. The first human being is shaped from earth, and the Creator then breathes into the body the nishmat chayim, the breath of life. (Gen 2:7). In Genesis, “God creates humankind in the divine likeness,” (Gen 1:27). This is an amazing piece of our theology – the fantastic, not-to-be-taken-for-granted, Jewish idea that we are created “in the likeness of,” the Source of All Life. Most often, this teaching is cited to underline the equal value and sacredness of every person.
But some Rabbis in our history followed this idea of our likeness with the Creator so far that they imagined our creativity might go as far as God’s. In other words, they thought we too might be able to create new living beings – and not only through biological reproduction. Since God had made Adam from unformed earth, the Rabbis took a word from the Psalms that means unformed and used it to refer to Adam’s unsculpted state during the process of being created (BT Sanhedrin 38b). Later, the Talmud tells of one rabbi actually creating a person (BT Sanhedrin 65b). Perhaps you have heard or read stories of the golem.
The most well-known golem story is the story of Rabbi Judah Loew, also known as the Maharal, the leading rabbi of Prague during part of the 16th century. The Jewish community of Prague was enduring repeated attacks, some of them by armed soldiers. The Jews could not defeat the attackers, so Rabbi Loew knew he had to do something powerful and new.
On a moonless night, he went to the bank of the Vltava River, where he shaped a giant man made of mud. He whispered secret words that had never before been pronounced, and he carved three Hebrew letters into the forehead of the creature: aleph, mem, tav, spelling out emet — truth. As he finished the final letter, the creature opened its eyes. “Rise,” he said to the creature, and it stood. The rabbi spoke to his creation. “You are called a Golem because I shaped you from the unformed mud of the earth. Your job is to protect the Jewish people. You must obey my orders in everything.” The golem could see and hear but was mute. He nodded his head in agreement and followed the rabbi home.
The next night the community was attacked again. But in the dark a sword was knocked away! An axe was broken in two! All of the soldiers ran away. The next night twice as many soldiers came. Again, their weapons were shattered. They came back in the daytime, but now they saw the giant creature silently defeating every attacker, defending the community yet seemingly unharmed by any weapon.
The soldiers complained to the emperor about the creature, so Rabbi Loew was called to appear at the palace. The emperor said, “I have heard that the Jews have some sort of secret weapon that they will use to attack the palace.” Rabbi Loew said quietly, “Whatever might or might not be helping the Jews is only to defend the people from attacks. If the soldiers would stop attacking, there would be no need for whatever help the Jews might have.” The emperor immediately ordered the soldiers to stop the attacks. The Golem was not a monster, but rather a gentle being who lacked independent thought and did exactly what he was told by the Rabbi. When asked to bring water to the kitchen, he brought water until the kitchen flooded and he was then told to stop. When he was told to catch fish, he fished all day, and when told that there were too many fish, he dumped the entire basket of them back into the water. Eventually, the golem’s inflexibility combined with his enormous strength became a danger to the very people he was created to protect, and the Rabbi had to put the golem to sleep.[1]
The golem became a powerful part of Jewish folklore that has inspired many versions and continues to show up in contemporary literature. Elie Wiesel lauded the golem story as a creative response to persecution. And Jewish Studies Professor Mia Spiro points out the story of Rabbi Leyb and the golem as a rejection of the patience of waiting for a messiah.[2]
I’m not suggesting that we go down to the bay to dig for mud. And I am not talking about the many similarities between the golem and present-day artificial intelligence – that is for another sermon. But the ancient Rabbis’ idea that we can shape a person connects powerfully with the whole purpose of the Days of Awe. Teshuvah is all about returning to our divine Spark of creativity, the same part that enables us to make adjustments to our very selves. In other words, what if we are the golems who we get to shape? As songwriter Eve Decker teaches, “I am the garden, but I’m also the gardener.” [3]
We gather at the beginning of the year to look back on the past, but also forward. We seek to address not only the specific times we hurt someone or failed to fulfill a responsibility, but also the ways that we might show up in our lives even more fully than we have. Teshuvah is not a return to the past but to our path. It is a process of centering ourselves in our deepest knowledge of who we are and can be, and resetting our direction in alignment with that knowledge.
If teshuvah begins with our taking a cheshbon nefesh, an accounting of the soul, it must also include a collective accounting of where we stand as a society and a country. We live in times of incredible innovation, and we are also living amidst multiple crises, which threaten our magnificent planet and the democratic institutions that our country, and Jewish communities in particular, have built to protect hard-won human and civil rights and to provide shelter from danger.
Teshuvah calls us to be courageously honest, facing painful realities. This does not mean that we should spend all day consuming news. Rather, facing the reality of what is happening and coming together to do what we can is safer, more powerful, and more interesting than either avoiding or fixating on bad news.
The times we’re living in might make us wish for a superhero or golem to vanquish our opponents and set things right, but this kind of wishing often happens when we feel powerless. And that feeling comes not only from being in hard circumstances but from believing that what is needed is something beyond what we can do. Huge challenges are occurring in our world, and we question what we can do to respond or influence the course of things. We know that the sphere we can most influence begins with ourselves. The essence of our divine, Spirit-given spark is our creativity – the ability to approach any situation with a fresh eye – whether we are writing a story, figuring out how to remodel our temple kitchen for communal use or strategizing how to turn around the warming of our planet.
In this time of change, there is a lot of talk about the need for resilience. We gain resilience by growing our skills and bolstering our communal fabric – making it both closer-knit and more flexible. We invest in our community – this community right here, of our congregation, and our wider community as well. Practicing showing up for each other and allowing others to show up for us is “practice” in both senses of the word – we are actually doing it, as with a spiritual practice, and we are practicing in order to get better at it, as in going to a choir or basketball practice.
In recent years, public policy leaders have developed the idea of Community Resilience Centers, local places that can serve many people during times of collective need. Creating such places means thinking ahead, not waiting for emergencies, building trusting relationships, and using our imaginations. What if we take the perspective that our congregation is a “community resilience center” in formation?
We are not at square one in accomplishing this goal! Temple Beth Hillel’s original name is also the Richmond Jewish Community Center, and at a recent board meeting, our Co-President Anna Stein proposed that we lean into that part of our congregation’s identity. I’d like to share some of the many ways we are doing that.
This summer, a group of families of our religious school organized our first ever camping trip. It was so windy when we arrived that we gripped our tents as we assembled and staked them down, but we managed to get set up in time for Shabbat dinner and to spend Saturday playing in the water of the Sacramento delta. Parents watched out for each other’s children and found time for real conversations. There was a moment in the middle of the trip when I glimpsed two girls creating a secret handshake, and another moment at the water when one boy said to another, “I hope we do this camping trip every year.” That evening, we bunched up in a close circle to shelter our candle from the wind for long enough to do the short ceremony of havdalah to end Shabbat. Then, some parents mentioned bedtime, but the young people were ready to tell and hear stories. Sleep wasn’t in the cards until we had heard riddles and tales from all ages in our group.
Just a couple of weeks ago, temple members got together for the first of a new series of “Crafts, Games and Community Time.” Even this name is crafted in the special way that our community works to make a place for people with different interests and desires.
A year ago, the now renowned 🙂 TBH band started putting ourselves together, with Matt Siegel shepherding us. We débuted for Simchas Torah, and what a night of dancing it was! The band practices not just to get ready to perform, but monthly, for the joy of creating music and “groupiness.” Be sure to come join us at the Shabbat Dinner and Simchas Torah Dance Party on October 2 and the Temple’s Anniversary Celebration on the 24th!
Margie Marks has started connecting our community with the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism’s campaign to protect voting rights. Last month we had our first robust gathering to write postcards to potential voters in states where voting access is being curtailed under the guise of protecting democracy. Our cards share key information to support people to register and exercise their right to vote.
TBH volunteers continue to organize and participate in Food for Thought, working with our wider community to provide food for hundreds of families during winter break from school.
There is more we are doing, and more we can do. This season gives us the opportunity to imagine what’s possible, how we might do it joyfully, and who might invite to join us. We can do what the golem could not – adjust to new circumstances, reflect on our behavior and make changes. And the divine spark that is our creativity is the very thing that makes our growth possible.
“The Torah was given in a desolate, dangerous wasteland; yet there, the men and women who took part in the exodus from Egypt were forged into a people.”[4] Now, we, our planet and the flawed but powerful democracy that we rely on are in real danger. How shall we forge ourselves into a people that can respond joyfully, powerfully and creatively? That is the question of these days we spend together, and it will remain our question for the months and years to come. We may be afraid. But even so, may we be encouraged, happy and even awed at the opportunity to face these questions together. May all of our days be Days of Awe.
[1] (Adapted from Rabbi Mark Kaiserman @ https://reformjudaism.org/podcasts/stories-we-tell/stories-we-tell-golem and Allen H. Lipis @ https://www.atlantajewishtimes.com/the-golem-of-prague/#:~:text=When%20he%20was%20told%20to,them%20back%20into%20the%20lake.)
[2] Wiesel and Spiro, as cited in “The Golem as Theology: The Mutable Myth Confronting the Problem of Evil,” Rabbi Stanley M. Davids, z”l, alongside Rabbi Tamara Cohn Eskenazi, PhD, and Joshua Glucksman, in CCAR Journal, Winter 2026, p 7 and 10, respectively.
[3] Eve Decker, Gardener album and song by the same name, 2000.
[4] Torah of the Mothers, III; Contemporary Jewish Women Read Classical Jewish Texts 3:9, ed. Ora Wiskind Elper & Susan Handelman, 2006.
As Creative as God? Erev Rosh Hashanah, 5787/2026
September 14, 2026 by Rabbi Julie Saxe-Taller • D'var Torah, Julie Saxe-Taller
L’shanah tovah! In meeting many of you this year, I have met artists, writers, cooks, bakers, activists, organizers, theater makers, musicians, teachers, big thinkers, and problem solvers. I am repeatedly inspired, every time I get to connect and learn with you and about you.
Rosh Hashanah is the “Jewish New Year,” but actually that name fits better with Passover, which celebrates our becoming a people, while on RH we celebrate the creation of the whole world. With this in mind, I want to turn to our story of the creation of the first human beings.
Adam’s name literally means “earthling,” adamah meaning earth. The first human being is shaped from earth, and the Creator then breathes into the body the nishmat chayim, the breath of life. (Gen 2:7). In Genesis, “God creates humankind in the divine likeness,” (Gen 1:27). This is an amazing piece of our theology – the fantastic, not-to-be-taken-for-granted, Jewish idea that we are created “in the likeness of,” the Source of All Life. Most often, this teaching is cited to underline the equal value and sacredness of every person.
But some Rabbis in our history followed this idea of our likeness with the Creator so far that they imagined our creativity might go as far as God’s. In other words, they thought we too might be able to create new living beings – and not only through biological reproduction. Since God had made Adam from unformed earth, the Rabbis took a word from the Psalms that means unformed and used it to refer to Adam’s unsculpted state during the process of being created (BT Sanhedrin 38b). Later, the Talmud tells of one rabbi actually creating a person (BT Sanhedrin 65b). Perhaps you have heard or read stories of the golem.
The most well-known golem story is the story of Rabbi Judah Loew, also known as the Maharal, the leading rabbi of Prague during part of the 16th century. The Jewish community of Prague was enduring repeated attacks, some of them by armed soldiers. The Jews could not defeat the attackers, so Rabbi Loew knew he had to do something powerful and new.
On a moonless night, he went to the bank of the Vltava River, where he shaped a giant man made of mud. He whispered secret words that had never before been pronounced, and he carved three Hebrew letters into the forehead of the creature: aleph, mem, tav, spelling out emet — truth. As he finished the final letter, the creature opened its eyes. “Rise,” he said to the creature, and it stood. The rabbi spoke to his creation. “You are called a Golem because I shaped you from the unformed mud of the earth. Your job is to protect the Jewish people. You must obey my orders in everything.” The golem could see and hear but was mute. He nodded his head in agreement and followed the rabbi home.
The next night the community was attacked again. But in the dark a sword was knocked away! An axe was broken in two! All of the soldiers ran away. The next night twice as many soldiers came. Again, their weapons were shattered. They came back in the daytime, but now they saw the giant creature silently defeating every attacker, defending the community yet seemingly unharmed by any weapon.
The soldiers complained to the emperor about the creature, so Rabbi Loew was called to appear at the palace. The emperor said, “I have heard that the Jews have some sort of secret weapon that they will use to attack the palace.” Rabbi Loew said quietly, “Whatever might or might not be helping the Jews is only to defend the people from attacks. If the soldiers would stop attacking, there would be no need for whatever help the Jews might have.” The emperor immediately ordered the soldiers to stop the attacks. The Golem was not a monster, but rather a gentle being who lacked independent thought and did exactly what he was told by the Rabbi. When asked to bring water to the kitchen, he brought water until the kitchen flooded and he was then told to stop. When he was told to catch fish, he fished all day, and when told that there were too many fish, he dumped the entire basket of them back into the water. Eventually, the golem’s inflexibility combined with his enormous strength became a danger to the very people he was created to protect, and the Rabbi had to put the golem to sleep.[1]
The golem became a powerful part of Jewish folklore that has inspired many versions and continues to show up in contemporary literature. Elie Wiesel lauded the golem story as a creative response to persecution. And Jewish Studies Professor Mia Spiro points out the story of Rabbi Leyb and the golem as a rejection of the patience of waiting for a messiah.[2]
I’m not suggesting that we go down to the bay to dig for mud. And I am not talking about the many similarities between the golem and present-day artificial intelligence – that is for another sermon. But the ancient Rabbis’ idea that we can shape a person connects powerfully with the whole purpose of the Days of Awe. Teshuvah is all about returning to our divine Spark of creativity, the same part that enables us to make adjustments to our very selves. In other words, what if we are the golems who we get to shape? As songwriter Eve Decker teaches, “I am the garden, but I’m also the gardener.” [3]
We gather at the beginning of the year to look back on the past, but also forward. We seek to address not only the specific times we hurt someone or failed to fulfill a responsibility, but also the ways that we might show up in our lives even more fully than we have. Teshuvah is not a return to the past but to our path. It is a process of centering ourselves in our deepest knowledge of who we are and can be, and resetting our direction in alignment with that knowledge.
If teshuvah begins with our taking a cheshbon nefesh, an accounting of the soul, it must also include a collective accounting of where we stand as a society and a country. We live in times of incredible innovation, and we are also living amidst multiple crises, which threaten our magnificent planet and the democratic institutions that our country, and Jewish communities in particular, have built to protect hard-won human and civil rights and to provide shelter from danger.
Teshuvah calls us to be courageously honest, facing painful realities. This does not mean that we should spend all day consuming news. Rather, facing the reality of what is happening and coming together to do what we can is safer, more powerful, and more interesting than either avoiding or fixating on bad news.
The times we’re living in might make us wish for a superhero or golem to vanquish our opponents and set things right, but this kind of wishing often happens when we feel powerless. And that feeling comes not only from being in hard circumstances but from believing that what is needed is something beyond what we can do. Huge challenges are occurring in our world, and we question what we can do to respond or influence the course of things. We know that the sphere we can most influence begins with ourselves. The essence of our divine, Spirit-given spark is our creativity – the ability to approach any situation with a fresh eye – whether we are writing a story, figuring out how to remodel our temple kitchen for communal use or strategizing how to turn around the warming of our planet.
In this time of change, there is a lot of talk about the need for resilience. We gain resilience by growing our skills and bolstering our communal fabric – making it both closer-knit and more flexible. We invest in our community – this community right here, of our congregation, and our wider community as well. Practicing showing up for each other and allowing others to show up for us is “practice” in both senses of the word – we are actually doing it, as with a spiritual practice, and we are practicing in order to get better at it, as in going to a choir or basketball practice.
In recent years, public policy leaders have developed the idea of Community Resilience Centers, local places that can serve many people during times of collective need. Creating such places means thinking ahead, not waiting for emergencies, building trusting relationships, and using our imaginations. What if we take the perspective that our congregation is a “community resilience center” in formation?
We are not at square one in accomplishing this goal! Temple Beth Hillel’s original name is also the Richmond Jewish Community Center, and at a recent board meeting, our Co-President Anna Stein proposed that we lean into that part of our congregation’s identity. I’d like to share some of the many ways we are doing that.
This summer, a group of families of our religious school organized our first ever camping trip. It was so windy when we arrived that we gripped our tents as we assembled and staked them down, but we managed to get set up in time for Shabbat dinner and to spend Saturday playing in the water of the Sacramento delta. Parents watched out for each other’s children and found time for real conversations. There was a moment in the middle of the trip when I glimpsed two girls creating a secret handshake, and another moment at the water when one boy said to another, “I hope we do this camping trip every year.” That evening, we bunched up in a close circle to shelter our candle from the wind for long enough to do the short ceremony of havdalah to end Shabbat. Then, some parents mentioned bedtime, but the young people were ready to tell and hear stories. Sleep wasn’t in the cards until we had heard riddles and tales from all ages in our group.
Just a couple of weeks ago, temple members got together for the first of a new series of “Crafts, Games and Community Time.” Even this name is crafted in the special way that our community works to make a place for people with different interests and desires.
A year ago, the now renowned 🙂 TBH band started putting ourselves together, with Matt Siegel shepherding us. We débuted for Simchas Torah, and what a night of dancing it was! The band practices not just to get ready to perform, but monthly, for the joy of creating music and “groupiness.” Be sure to come join us at the Shabbat Dinner and Simchas Torah Dance Party on October 2 and the Temple’s Anniversary Celebration on the 24th!
Margie Marks has started connecting our community with the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism’s campaign to protect voting rights. Last month we had our first robust gathering to write postcards to potential voters in states where voting access is being curtailed under the guise of protecting democracy. Our cards share key information to support people to register and exercise their right to vote.
TBH volunteers continue to organize and participate in Food for Thought, working with our wider community to provide food for hundreds of families during winter break from school.
There is more we are doing, and more we can do. This season gives us the opportunity to imagine what’s possible, how we might do it joyfully, and who might invite to join us. We can do what the golem could not – adjust to new circumstances, reflect on our behavior and make changes. And the divine spark that is our creativity is the very thing that makes our growth possible.
“The Torah was given in a desolate, dangerous wasteland; yet there, the men and women who took part in the exodus from Egypt were forged into a people.”[4] Now, we, our planet and the flawed but powerful democracy that we rely on are in real danger. How shall we forge ourselves into a people that can respond joyfully, powerfully and creatively? That is the question of these days we spend together, and it will remain our question for the months and years to come. We may be afraid. But even so, may we be encouraged, happy and even awed at the opportunity to face these questions together. May all of our days be Days of Awe.
[1] (Adapted from Rabbi Mark Kaiserman @ https://reformjudaism.org/podcasts/stories-we-tell/stories-we-tell-golem and Allen H. Lipis @ https://www.atlantajewishtimes.com/the-golem-of-prague/#:~:text=When%20he%20was%20told%20to,them%20back%20into%20the%20lake.)
[2] Wiesel and Spiro, as cited in “The Golem as Theology: The Mutable Myth Confronting the Problem of Evil,” Rabbi Stanley M. Davids, z”l, alongside Rabbi Tamara Cohn Eskenazi, PhD, and Joshua Glucksman, in CCAR Journal, Winter 2026, p 7 and 10, respectively.
[3] Eve Decker, Gardener album and song by the same name, 2000.
[4] Torah of the Mothers, III; Contemporary Jewish Women Read Classical Jewish Texts 3:9, ed. Ora Wiskind Elper & Susan Handelman, 2006.