High Holy Days

by Rabbi Julie Saxe-Taller

Tomorrow morning, we will read from Deuteronomy, as Moses speaks to our people at the end of their long years in the wilderness: אַתֶּ֨ם נִצָּבִ֤ים הַיּוֹם֙ כֻּלְּכֶ֔ם לִפְנֵ֖י יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֵיכֶ֑ם “You stand this day, all of you, before your God—to enter into the covenant…” The meaning of the word nitzavim or “stand” is not about whether we are standing up on two feet. It means to position or post ourselves with purpose. Moses has taken upon himself to renew the covenant that we entered at Sinai, where we began the transition from serving Pharoah to answering to God.” And he spells out the inclusive nature of the covenant – it explicitly includes men, women, children, strangers who are in the camp of the Israelites, people of both high and low status and of all ages. (The radically inclusive nature of this passage makes me sure that if it were written today, it would include all of the genders.) But there’s even more. Moses continues: “Not with you alone do I make this covenant… rather both with those who are standing here with us this day before our God and with those who are not with us here this day.

The Talmudic Rabbi Abahu interprets the inclusion of “those who are not here” to mean that all the souls of our people were there, even those not yet born. WE were there, and so were the generations still to come after us. Our covenant – our sacred pledge to build a society that answers to the deepest Voice of Conscience – is shared from one generation to the next.

This generational transmission is beautiful, but not easy. When I was 16, my parents, my brother and I and our grandmother, whom we called Omi, stood outside of a locked car, somewhere in Switzerland. The sky was a gorgeous blue and the sun glinted brightly off the white car. I had manually locked the door – do you remember when that was a thing? – innocently, no even responsibly – having no idea that my dad had left the key in the ignition in case I needed it, while I waited in the back seat for the others to return from an errand. But when I decided to stop waiting and go find them, I locked the car, and we didn’t have an extra key. So, there we were, and I had never seen my Omi so angry – actually, I had hardly ever seen her angry at all. 

She was one of my favorite people, fun, flexible, interesting and interested. And she had taken us on this trip to see her childhood home in Frankfurt. It was a trip planned around her and my mother’sambivalence 

about going to Germany. Omi wanted us to see where she had spent her first 19 years, but she didn’t want to stay long. So, as planned, we spent just two days in Frankfurt and then moved on to Switzerland. We were having a wonderful time, but I wasn’t fully aware of how much fear was stirred up and simmering under the surface for Omi by being back in Europe. There we stood, three generations outside of our rental car, as she berated me for my mistake, a look on her face that was unfamiliar to me. Though I figured we would quickly find a solution, I was bewildered by her response, frightened, and becoming angry myself. It took many years until I could put together how stressful and full of mixed emotions the entire trip must have been for her, and how vulnerable she felt, tolerating my parents’ choice to find places to stay day by day, when we knew she would have liked to have firm plans booked ahead of time. 

I was not there in 1936 when she fled Germany at the age of 19, the first in her family to realize that it was time to leave. So, while we shared abundant love as well as memories from our times together, I could not see the world from my Omi’s viewpoint, and sometimes she did and felt things that I did not understand, at least not without working hard at it. 

These gaps in perspective between generations, and also among people divided in other ways, are common and painful. Last week, when the shofar was blown so beautifully, among the many cries I felt I was hearing was that of someone who kept calling out but was not answered or understood. How many of us have had this feeling of not being understood even while talking with another person who is ostensibly listening to us? Maybe my grandmother felt just this way as she spoke in anguish and I thought she was just making a big deal about having to wait for help to get into our car. 

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This issue of understanding is vital, not only among the people of the covenant, but in our whole country 

where we also must communicate to prosper together. Increasingly, we sometimes do not even share a basic ground of facts or what we consider to be reality. This creates profound obstacles to implementing a covenantal system of justice, since so much of what we think is fair is based on which versions of truth or history we have learned. 

Last fall, during the Presidential election, I had the chance to speak with people whose lives and perspectives are more different from mine than most people I talk with regularly. I canvassed door-to-door in Phoenix and Philadelphia,and in Reno on the campus of University of Nevada. Unlike in California, in all of these cities, there were still many people who had not yet decided who to vote for, 

or whether to vote at all. 

We did not start our conversations by asking people who they were voting for, but by asking what were their main concerns. My team of canvassers worked hard, persisted when conversations were awkward, 

put aside our feelings of shyness or frustration, and approached new people over and over. We had to bring our warmest, most relaxed self to each conversation and to be truly curious about people. It was hard work, and it was also a huge pleasure. There was something uniquely fulfilling about connecting with people across class, racial, religious and political divides. As I listened to people’s stories and concerns, I felt my heart and mind stretching. 

In Philadelphia, I met a woman whose religious perspective on reproductive rights was her bottom line, 

and it was in direct conflict with mine. This was the one thing preventing her from voting for the candidate she said she would otherwise support. As she described her pastor’s teachings on this topic 

through his daily streamed talks, I had to remind myself several times that, despite my sense that she was misinformed and led by her pastor to an illogical conclusion, her convictions were sincere and caring. Mostly I had to listen, ask questions, and share small parts of my perspective that I thought might matter to her. I felt triumphant for both of us that we accomplished the connection we made – two women committed to our faiths, of different racial and class backgrounds, both caring about women, children and fairness. Just when I thought the conversation was about to end in a warm agreement to disagree, she asked for the campaign materials I was carrying and said she was ready to think about the issue differently. I almost fell off her brick stairway in shock. 

But it was not only she who learned to think differently that day. I confess that I began my experience of canvassing with a lot of judgment and plenty of assumptions about people who had not yet decided on their votes. But I now carry with me the memory of this woman, the caution with which she first answered my knock from her window, the effort it took for her to move her chair so she could sit and speak with me, and the care she took to think things through.

On campus at the University of Nevada in Reno, my canvassing partner and I learned by trial and error – 

it was mostly error on our first day. Most students were friendly and would stop when we asked if they had a moment to talk, but when we asked how they were thinking about the election, they closed their mouths or shook their heads, especially if they were with friends. Over and over, they glanced at each other and told us, “I don’t want to talk about that right now.” We learned from some students that they were afraid of losing their friends if they talked about politics, and many did not know what their friends thought about the election. The political environment was so tense that we learned we had to start by talking about that. 

By day two, my opening spiel was something like, “Hi! We’re here to ask students how it’s going, since the election is so tense, and it seems hard to get your questions answered when there is so much judgment and yelling.” This completely changed the responses we got, and we spent the whole day hearing about how hard it was for many students to sift through the flood of opposing messages they were receiving on their social media, as well as in the mail and from their families. These students wanted help, and once they knew we would not attack or criticize them, they shared their personal stories, concerns and questions. One student was weighing the decision to vote differently from her family and wondering if that would be disloyal to her immigrant parents, who she respects, even though she thought her candidate would be better for immigrants. 

It took a combination of hubris and humility to do this work – we had to imagine we could make a difference both in our country and in a single person’s thinking, one at a time. And we had to be ready to change our assumptions, to listen and learn, to encounter moments when we felt offended and when we did not know what to say. I would like to invoke these abilities in myself all the time, 

but canvassing required them. 

Posted at the mountain, surely the Israelites found themselves next to people they did not understand and who did not understand them, just as we do now. Even if we don’t travel to canvass in swing states, that same chutzpah and openness required for canvassing is also needed to nurture relationships in our families, in our Jewish community, and beyond. To foster a culture where people are committed to solutions that work for everyone, we need to practice talking with people.  I mean this in both senses of the word “practice” – to improve our skills in listening to and talking with people who hold a wide variety of perspectives; and also “practice” as a discipline or spiritual practice that promotes our overall growth. Becoming good at warmly showing others that we care about them, even if we disagree with them, is one of the very things our namesake, the great Rabbi Hillel, is known for. I met a number of people while canvassing who were particularly warm to me though we knew early on in our conversations that we were in disagreement. I could feel their powerful decisions to connect and treat me with kindness. 

We can talk with people we disagree with and still take stands. And we had better do both. We see the division, isolation and anger that have been sown in the gap where care and connection should have grown. Where the covenant of our values must grow – the dignity of all people, care for the planet, care for ourselves and the entire Jewish people, remembering our history and standing with all who are targeted by those who seek to profit rather than sharing the bounty of our world, and those who would blame others to deflect responsibility for their actions. These are our basic values, and in 2025, we are called to stand for them, because in our country, our covenant is under a calculated and unabashed attack beyond any level we have known in the lifetimes of most of us here.As Rabbi Jonathan Roos said in a similar message to his congregation in Washington DC just 10 days ago, “Judaism is not just about apples and honey… Our history is filled with resistance to authoritarian rulers. These are the heroes we celebrate. This is what our holidays are really about.”

To be nitzavim when we renewed the covenant was not merely to be standing. It was to be purposefully stationed, positioned to stand for something. Yom Kippur has just begun. We will talk tomorrow about taking stands as a Jewish community, welcoming and celebrating diversity of thought, addressing antisemitism, and opportunities for us to engage with our neighbors. May you be sealed in the Book of Life for a year of health and happiness, ready both to listen and to speak, standing strong in both humility and confidence.  G’mar chatimah tovah.

by Rabbi Julie Saxe-Taller

I don’t know about you, but when I was growing up and learning about the High Holy Days, I learned that Rosh Hashanah was a celebration – the Birthday of the World, with apples and honey, good food and a family gathering at the home of cousins I didn’t see often enough. And Yom Kippur was solemn, a bit scary with its messages about Judgment, accountability and mortality. I loved being part of the whole season, but these two holy days were definitely holding down different jobs. 

Later, I came to look at the two days in almost the opposite way. When I learned about the 10 days of Awe, or Repentance, Rosh Hashanah, while still exciting because of the chance to be with family and friends, was the doorway to a period of facing uncomfortable facts and feelings, and mustering courage to be honest with myself and others. And Yom Kippur, as the culmination but also the finish line of the that difficult period, became almost exultant. On years when I had found a way to repair a significant mistake or heal a ruptured relationship, there was a lightness and relief om Yom Kippur, a true spiritual high. The fast was hard at times but it also felt freeing, like a physical parallel to the emotional cleansing of grief and regret. The long shofar blast at the end of Yom Kippur left me clear and connected with the people around me through the shared experience of each of us facing our challenges. 

I share this perspective tonight as an invitation to all of us to spend this holiday using it as the gift that it is – taking time to imagine where you want to be in your relationships with others, with yourself, with God, by the time Yom Kippur arrives, and to think about what you can do during these Days of Atonement to get there. 

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And now, for a second change from the ways we often talk about these Days of Awe. Let’s consider the common image of teshuvah being about achieving a “clean slate” – as if we could rewind, take an eraser to the blackboard of our lives, undo mistakes and rewrite what actually happened. If we did that, we would also lose our experience and wisdom, our learning, memories and the relationships we have built – this fantasy is neither real nor the intent of teshuvah. I hate to break it you, but so far, we can only go forward, from where we are. And the purpose of teshuvah is to heal ourselves and our relationships in order to turn toward our best selves, with all we have learned and experienced, including the repairs we make, and go forward on that basis. Not to become a blank slate. 

In discussing teshuvah, which literally means turn or return, the poet and liturgist Marcia Falk writes “’Repentance,’ the English translation of teshuvah that is often found in prayer books, is misleading, for … [repentance] fails to convey the hopefulness embedded in [the word shuv or teshuvah,] with its promise of new beginnings and second chances.”

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935), the first Ashkenazi chief Rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine (in the period just before Israeli statehood) was a scholar, mystic, poet and politician. Rav Kook wrote extensively about teshuvah in his great work, Orot Hat’shuvah, The Lights of Teshuvah. 

“The foundation of Teshuvah always rests upon the mending of the future. In beginning, a person should not get bogged down by what is past, for if a person begins by trying to fix the past, they will quickly encounter many obstacles, and … one’s nearness to God, will be challenged. But if a person is truly engaged in mending their deeds,” – meaning mending our deeds from here on “then …, Heaven will come to that person’s aid, even regarding the past. (13:9).” 

It’s worth remembering that the people we have hurt have also gone forward in time – they are not located in the past where our missteps occurred. And so teshuvah requires that we meet ourselves and others in the present. An apology accompanied by an intention, and even better an actual plan to do something differently – these are both reparative and future-oriented actions. 

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As with an individual, so too with a community. We are at a turning point as a congregation. Having started in July, I am your new Rabbi, which naturally creates a time of reflection and even self-definition, for you, the congregation, for me, and for us together. It sparks our creativity and new ways of thinking. We also enter into this stage at a time of immense social and political crisis, a time when creativity and engagement with questions of what we need and what is needed from us are urgent. With the understanding that teshuvah includes not only looking back but also charting our course for the next stage, this season is a fitting time for us to think about what is the essence of who we are, and who we can be, as a congregation. 

But having come this far into my sermon, it seems unfair not to tell you a story. 

Many years ago, a young man from a small, quiet town set sail to see something of the world. On his way home, he stopped at an island. The people there were very friendly and welcomed the young guest so warmly that he felt he had made friends that he would always remember. He stayed for many days, and they decided to make a banquet in his honor on the night before he would leave. 

The young man was so delighted with his new friends and their hospitality, he wanted to give them a gift as well. They seemed to have everything they needed, except for one thing. He had noticed during his stay that they did not have onions. In fact, they had never heard of onions. And so, the young man went to his ship and returned with a huge bag full of onions. He showed the people how to plant them and how to cook with them. And that night they ate a delicious meal cooked with onions. In thanks for his gift and their time together, his new friends insisted on giving him a bagful of beautiful silver coins. And the young man returned home wealthy in both friendship and silver. 

Soon after he arrived home, the young man visited a neighbor and told him his adventures, including his wonderful time on the island. This neighbor was a scheming man, and he decided to find out what else those islanders lacked. He questioned the young traveler carefully, until he deduced that just as they had lacked onions, it sounded like they also did not have garlic. He gathered sacks of garlic bulbs onto his boat and set sail for the island. And yes, he too was warmly welcomed and invited to a delicious and festive meal. 

When he brought out his gift of sacks of garlic, the people happily received the special, pungent bulbs and told him they would like to give him a special parting gift as well.  The neighbor grinned, hardly able to contain himself in anticipation but he politely received the heavy bag that they placed onto his boat. When he returned home, he went straight to his young neighbor’s home to thank him and to show off his wealth, and he invited the young man to be the one to open the bag. When he did, they were both amazed to find that it was filled with onions!

Maybe I like this story because I like onions and garlic. But I have to admit that I also like how the punch line really socks it to the scheming neighbor. I revel in the way the story juxtaposes two ways of being in the world – one based on connection and care, and one based on selfishness and exploitation.  Of course, outside of storyland, we can all sometimes be like the scheming neighbor, viewing and treating other people as a vehicle for our own gain. But we don’t act this way for no reason. If we dig just the slightest bit under the surface, we can usually find that when we are acting without regard for other people, we are motivated by fear for our safety in some way. This both grows out of and contributes to a cultural and economic context where people are largely left to fend for ourselves. If we look around and see that no one is really looking out for us, how can we be expected not to be frightened and sometimes focused on ourselves? 

How then can we demand of ourselves to be more like the island people and the young traveler? I don’t mean this as a rhetorical question – I am asking myself and all of us: HOW can we call ourselves into ways of relating that build confidence, generosity and commitment to everyone’s welfare?

This question and goal are central to why I became a rabbi. Or maybe I should say instead, it was because of Nancy’s hamburger soup, Mary’s beef stroganoff and the delicious tuna, onion and cheese-stuffed baked potatoes my mom called “potunas.”  While I was growing up, my family was part of a group that was working to address social and environmental issues. Four moms in my neighborhood took turns making dinner on Wednesdays to save time and energy – but for the kids it was about getting to go to Nancy or Ellen or Mary’s house with a big pot or pan to carry dinner home, and the feeling of connection among our families that both led to and deepened through these shared dinners. Those family friends still remember my mom’s potunas. We also went camping together and shared in each other’s holidays. It was great, but not idyllic. It didn’t prevent us from having all kinds of challenges and hardships. But it showed me that it was possible to have much more connection to people beyond my immediate family than most people seemed to have – at least in my Bay Area experience.

The year before I entered rabbinical school, I first applied to study for a masters in Community Development. It was holding the acceptance letter to that program and feeling there was a missing piece that pointed me instead back to my dream of being a rabbi and building community explicitly based on Jewish values and culture. The central core of Judaism is the commitment to the idea of one God or Life Source, which leads to the fundamental Jewish understanding that all life is of value and all people spring equally from a Divine Spark. From there, we get the path of mitzvot, the sacred rituals and ethics that guide us to create strong, caring communities, social inclusion and economic fairness, a sustainable relationship with the earth, and festivals and spiritual practices that help us to live in appreciation of each moment. In such a society, people can flourish and it is much easier to conduct oneself more like the island people than their garlic-trading visitor. In other words, Judaism is a master’s course in Community Development!

With this in mind, let’s return to the topic of our teshuvah as a community, and this time of change, self-definition and openness to creativity. I want to ask each of us to dedicate part of the next ten days to open our minds and hearts on the subject of the future of our community as Temple Beth Hillel. Don’t be limited by the voice of “reason” that can censor the best ideas or stop us from imagining things that might sound fanciful. I’m not saying we can instantly become the wish-fulfiller of all of our dreams, but, as Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum has taught, “People tend to overestimate what can be accomplished in one year, and to underestimate what can be accomplished in 10.” 

Here are a few questions to guide our reflections: 

• How would you personally like to grow in your Jewish understanding and practice, and what could we do to support you? 
• What about our congregation are you most proud of or happy about that you want to grow?
• What are your deepest concerns, and how might our community take steps together to address them? 
• How might we celebrate our contributions to our larger community and also deepen the ways we show up?
• What are your highest hopes for what this congregation can do and be? 

I have some glimmers, some hopes and ideas for us, but they are not for me alone to decide or accomplish. So I hope you will engage actively in this envisioning of possibilities during this season. And I hope that over the coming year, we will gather to continue on the path of community teshuvah together, finding and refining our essence, mending our future with our actions, our celebrations, our caring and even our cooking together – with onions and garlic, of course.  

Writing drashot is hard, particularly for the High Holy Days. I’ve been doing this for a while now, 17 years I think more or less. Times four, that’s a fair number of High Holy Day drashot over the years. Plus, remember I write shorter ones, twice a month during the year. At some point I get tired of hearing myself think out loud. So I thought, why not let ChatGPT do the heavy lifting this year? After all, students are doing it now and academics have probably been using it for years, since most of their writing is unintelligible anyway. But it’s Rosh Hashanah and I shouldn’t be mean so I’m going to have that last laugh line stricken from the record.

So I created a ChatGPT account, the free one of course, and wrote a prompt, “Write a sermon about Abraham binding his son Isaac. How it was sublime proof of his deep faith.” And I got this for the opening paragraph, “Dear brothers and sisters, today we gather to reflect upon one of the most profound and challenging stories of faith found in the pages of our sacred scriptures – the story of Abraham binding his son Isaac. This tale from the Book of Genesis not only reveals Abraham’s unwavering devotion to God but also offers us valuable lessons about faith, sacrifice, and the divine plan that shapes our lives.”

I thought, this is a little to Christian sounding so I wrote another prompt, “Write the same sermon but within a Jewish context,” This time I got, “Shalom, dear members of our community. Today, we gather to delve into a poignant narrative from our sacred Torah, a story that resonates with the essence of Jewish faith – the Akeidah, the binding of Isaac. This story found in the Book of Genesis not only highlights Abraham’s unwavering devotion to Hashem but also offers profound insights into the power of emunah, faith, that forms the bedrock of our tradition.”

That sounded a little better. I appreciated the sprinkling of Hebrew… you know, shalom, Torah, HaShem and so on. But in my opinion it should have written Sefer Bereshit, not the Book of Genesis, but perhaps Chat GPT is not as Jewishly literate as I had hoped. Also, something else was missing. You all know that I frequently like to begin my sermons with a joke or a personal anecdote to draw you all in, so I wrote, “Keep the Jewish sermon but open with a joke.” I got, “Shalom, wonderful members of our community! Before we delve into our sacred teachings, allow me to share a lighthearted Jewish joke that beautifully sets the stage for our discussion today.

Joke: Why did Isaac bring a calculator to Mount Moriah? Answer: Because he knew it was time for some serious “counting” on God’s promises!

Now, with a smile on our faces, let us turn to a profound narrative from our Torah, the Akeidah, or the binding of Isaac. This story not only tickles our sense of humor but also profoundly touches on the core of our faith – the enduring power of emunah, our unwavering belief in Hashem.” So first of all, what makes this lame joke Jewish? Sounds more like an accounting joke. Plus, this story “tickles our sense of humor?” You can say many things about the Akeida and believe me I have over many Rosh Hashanah mornings. But, tickling our sense of humor is not a phrase I would ever apply to this story. Horrifying, yes. Difficult, yes. Incomprehensible, ok. But humorous, I don’t think so. That transition sentence was seriously lame… exquisitely bad. So, at least for the moment I am not worried about ChatGPT taking my job. 

Then I decided to go for broke, because I would really like it if I could get a computer to write my drashot. So I wrote, “Write a Rosh Hashanah sermon, approximately 1,000 words, about what makes us human and whether AI can have faith and feelings. Tie it into Abraham binding Isaac. Make it sound like a rabbi wrote it.”

Here is the newest opening, “Shalom and blessings to all of you, my beloved congregants, as we gather on this sacred day of Rosh Hashanah to reflect upon the mysteries of existence and the profound questions that define our humanity. As we blow the shofar, its reverberations call us to awaken not only to the new year but also to the depths of our souls, where we seek to uncover the essence of what it truly means to be human.

In our Torah portion for this Rosh Hashanah, we encounter the story of Abraham’s binding of Isaac. A tale that has echoed through generations, this story prompts us to explore the nature of faith, sacrifice, and the unique qualities that distinguish us as human beings.”

Pretty journeyman like, but much better don’t you think? Here, in my opinion, is the essential paragraph, “This foundational tale teaches us that our humanity is rooted in our capacity for moral discernment, empathy, and choice. These are qualities that set us apart from all other forms of life. As we stand on the precipice of a new era marked by advancements in artificial intelligence, we are confronted with a profound question: Can machines possess the qualities that make us uniquely human?”

So at least the computer got the fundamental question: what makes us human and can we create a machine that emulates us? Of course, that wasn’t hard. It was what I asked it to do. But I think the computer, the AI, or the large language model, call it what you will, provided the wrong answer: both in the Jewish sense and in the truest sense.

First, in the traditional, Jewish view what makes us human is that we are created by God in the Divine image. Each of us is unique, creative, free to make choices, and endowed with inherent dignity as creations of God. Machines, of course, are creations of human beings. They are not even created in the human image, let alone the Divine one. They are mass produced, not unique, and have no inherent dignity beyond their utility, just like any tool such as a hammer or a saw. They are neither creative nor make choices. At least today. Will that change in the future? Perhaps, but who knows.

Our tradition is well aware of non-human beings. In the Mishnah, Masechet Kilayim (dealing with mixtures) Chapter 8, Mishna 5, it says, וְאַדְנֵי הַשָּׂדֶה, חַיָּה. רַבִּי יוֹסֵי אוֹמֵר, מְטַמְּאוֹת בָּאֹהֶל כָּאָדָם. Wild man-like creatures are [in the category of] hayyah. Rabbi Yose says: they cause impurity in a tent like a human being.” The Adnei Ha Sadeh, is some kind of wild human-like creature. The Tifferet Yisrael, a commentary on the Mishnah, says Adnei Ha Sadeh is an orangutan. Maimonides says that Adnei Ha Sadeh looks like a man, talks constantly, but is unintelligible. In the Ohr Zarua, he is described as appearing like a man in all ways, face, hands, and feet, but being of large size with an umbilical cord attached to the ground from which he draws his nourishment. If you want to kill it, sever the umbilical cord with an arrow (you don’t want to get too close). Further, it is written that there were soothsayers who could insert a bone in the mouth of Adnei Ha Sadeh and they could talk, while Rashi says that the Adnei Ha Sadeh could prophesy if the bone was put in their mouth. All very weird stuff, for sure. But, the important point is that our tradition believes that there can be something like a human being, who is not fully human. A missing link between humans and animals. Resembling a human being, but wild, and seemingly without volition.

Of course, most of us know about the Golem. The most popular story is of the Golem of Rabbi Yehuda Lieb of Prague, who creates a creature from clay, to protect the Jews from a pogrom and brings it to life by writing the word אמת (truth) on its forehead. But the Golem ultimately cannot be controlled and begins to run amok, so Rabbi LIeb erases the א from the Golems forehead creating the word מת (dead) and the Golem turns to dust. Jewish tradition suggests that we are all Golems in a way, for Adam, the first human is formed from clay, from soil (אדמה) and only comes to life when God breathes life, an animating soul, into him. Then Adam and Eve eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and they develop self-awareness, of themselves as separate creatures, of their bodies, of their desires, of their mortality. Until that moment they are more like animals than humans. 

This seems to me to be the fundamental difference between human beings and all other forms of life, as well as machines: we alone are self-aware and the most important awareness may be of our mortality. All of us know that our time is limited and, sooner or later, we will die. As far as we know animals do not have this perception, they live in the moment (like Adam and Eve before they ate the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil) and theoretically speaking, machines don’t die. It is our self-awareness of the fleeting nature of our lives, the limited time we have on earth, that makes us human. 

There is something else in the Golem story, and there are multiple Golem’s from Talmudic times through today, In every case where a human being tries to emulate God by creating artificial life, and that is what the Golem is, the creature ultimately goes beserk, beyond its creators control, and must be destroyed. This is a cautionary tale for us, about our technological reach going beyond our grasp. One that we consistently ignore. Since the Enlightenment, at least in the West, we have believed that technology improves the human condition, despite the Holocaust, where all the tools of Western technology, industrial production, engineering, efficiency, were employed for mass murder. Or the undeniable evidence of our destructive impact on the Earth’s climate balance. What of AI? The Golem story reminds us to ask: what are we creating, what are the implications, and should we continue? Just because we can, doesn’t mean we must.

The Golem also hints at a confusion we have about AI. The Golem emulates a human being, but it is not human. It has no moral core, no understanding of right and wrong. It has not eaten the fruit of the tree. Many of us are intrigued by AI’s intelligence, or its potential intelligence. How a computer can beat a chess master. How a computer can process information so much faster than we can. But in this infatuation with intelligence (or maybe just processing speed) we confuse two different concepts: intelligence and goodness. There are lots of very smart people who do very bad things. Among Hitler’s earliest and most enthusiastic supporters were academics, university students, and professionals. The SS was filled with Phds, Well educated people, who we think should have known better. Clearly education and intelligence is no guarantee against evil. The smart thing to do is not necessarily the right thing to do. I don’t know if it is smart to help the poor, or care for the weak and the disabled, or to show no special favor to the rich and powerful, but according to Jewish law it is the right thing to do. That is how we, and our society, are ultimately judged, not by how smart we are. Kindness and empathy may not be efficient, but they are what makes us good. Can a machine be good? Who cares how smart it is, if it has no moral grounding? Especially, if those controlling it have no moral grounding.

Our conversations about AI seem to be centered around how it will impact the labor market. Will it make lawyers and doctors more efficient, or unnecessary. Will students use it to write papers? What we’re not talking about, what we never talk about with emergent technology, is the moral implications, how it will impact us, how we treat each other. We have already seen the negative effects of social media on our political life, on our children’s mental health. Did we not see this coming or did we choose not to think about it?

At this point you may be wondering why I’ve been talking about AI and not the Torah portion, or maybe not, but I do feel some obligation to do so, not the least because this is the assignment I gave ChatGPT, and because we’re in the Torah service and the traditional purpose of a drash is to provide some insight into the Torah portion.

So here is what ChatGPT got wrong about the Akeida. What makes it so powerful, no matter how often we hear it, is that we understand, viscerally, that God is demanding  Abraham perform an impossible task. A demand that God should not be making. No God should demand a parent murder their child. Who is capable of such an act? This is the demand of a tyrant, not a God that is the manifestation of ultimate morality. And Abraham agrees: immediately, without hesitation. This is why the story is so unsettling. For millennia, apologists, Jewish and non-Jewish, have argued that this is a demonstration of Abraham’s faith, his complete trust in God; just as ChatGPT put it. Our sages also argued that this story proves that God does not want children to be sacrificed to him, as was supposedly common practice in the ancient near east and that it took such a soul shattering story to bring this change about. 

I don’t buy it. Rather, I think this is where our awareness of our mortality comes in. Sarah and Abraham have been waiting their entire lives to have a child. Isaac is the child of their old-age. He is the one through whom all their hopes and dreams will come true. Then God asks them to destroy their future and with it all their hopes and dreams. We all know, in the deepest recesses of our hearts and souls, this is an unreasonable demand, because we know about hopes and dreams and the fleeting nature of life. God may be able to see all eternity, but we cannot. We just see our little slice of it: our lives, our children’s lives, maybe our grandchildren’s lives. That is how we view the world. This is where our humanity is forged and where our morality is formed.This is also the source of our empathy: from this place we can imagine Abraham’s internal suffering, Isaac’s fear, and (unspoken but real) Sarah’s shock.

What is the outcome in the end? Isaac is spared. The angel speaks. The ram is seen caught in the thicket. And… God never speaks to Abraham again, although he lives another 75 years. Sarah dies at the beginning of the next chapter. Isaac’s perception is forever altered. He never sees clearly again, for the rest of his life. What an absolute disaster. By the way, ChatGPT mentions none of this. It is a poor scholar of Biblical interpretation, but I digress.

As I share these pieces of the story with you, some are present in the text, some are present by their absence from the text, I hope you can feel every emotion of this story. One moment, one act, leads to such utter devastation in our founding family and echoes across time until today. This is not a function of intelligence or knowledge, or processing speed, but a function of emotions, heart, and our ability to relate to the suffering of another.

Perhaps this is why we read this passage on Rosh Hashanah morning, to remind us that life puts us in difficult places. That we sometimes have to make difficult decisions and the place to make them is from the heart; from the place where we can empathize with another. Not in certainty…, but in doubt. Not in absolute faith… but in questioning, in listening to our heart and conscience. It’s the best we can do, from the limited perspective that we have. It is what makes us human.

And even Abraham made mistakes, profoundly wrong judgements, as do we. Each year Rosh Hashanah comes around again with the chance to acknowledge our mistakes and change… if we want to. It is not about intelligence, it is about our shared humanity, our empathy, and our understanding that our lives are short and we can try to make the best use of them.

Shanah tovah,  Happy New Year, and bruchim habaim, welcome. As always, as we stand together on the edge of this new year, I want to welcome everyone and remind you that whether you have been coming to High Holy Day Services your whole life, or have never come before, or are returning after time away from a synagogue, you are welcome here. You have found your place. You are in your right seat. Before we begin I want to make a couple of logistical announcements. First, if you brought your cell phone with you, please take a moment now and turn it off… unless you are a doctor or a first responder where your response is a matter of life and death. Otherwise, enjoy a couple of hours unplugged. Second, if you are joining us on Zoom please remember to be muted at all times, unless I ask you to unmute. Third, the golden book in your hands is called a mahzor in Hebrew. It contains all the prayers and Torah readings we will be engaging with together tonight and tomorrow. It is your guide. Use it as much, or as little as you wish. Also, please remember if you don’t know what’s going on (which is quite possible) feel free to turn to the person next to you and ask them. Also, this is not a performance. It is communal and personal prayer. In the Jewish world we sing most of our prayers. Please, please join in. If you can’t sing, don’t worry, you’re in good company here. Just belt it out. Finally, if you see kids running around and making noise, do not be annoyed, they are not a distraction, they are our collective Jewish future. Enjoy.

As always, on Erev Rosh Hashanah I like to set a tone for these Days of Awe. And each year I begin by wondering, why do we come here, why do we continue to participate in these ancient rituals and prayers? And this year I thought further, why do we continue to bother to be Jewish at all? Do we have a reason, beyond familiarity, or family loyalty, or historical identification with our people? All of which are good reasons by the way. And let’s not forget another essential one, because some of us believe in God or some Jewish sense of a God to whom we owe something for this inimitable and precious gift of being alive. I say this knowing that many who sit here tonight do not believe in God and also know that that is ok too, belief is not a prerequisite for being a Jew. 

I ask these questions, why are we here and why be Jewish, because I think they are essential questions. And the Days of Awe are the time for essential questions. It is a time for self-examination, and rebuilding self-awareness.

If you have a highly developed sense of Jewish identity and live it out in an authentic manner daily, please come see me after services, I want to get some of what you have. But, if you are like most of the rest of us then I’m guessing, you know you are Jewish, but you’re not sure why, or what that really means in your life, or you have doubts, or don’t think about it much except this time of year and maybe Pesach or maybe when you lie awake, alone in the dark hours of the night. If that sounds like you, then you are like most of us, groping your way, trying to find meaning. 

Maybe that is one of the reasons you are here. If that is so, I want to suggest you read a series of four essays that have been published periodically in the New York Times over the last couple of years by Sarah Wildman, about coping with her daughter Orli’s cancer and, recently, her death, this past May, at age 14. 

I can’t think of anything worse than the death of your child. There may be, but I can’t think of it. Ms. Wildman’s essays, each one breathtakingly beautiful and heartbreaking, are her attempts to find some kind of meaning in the midst of life’s chaos, or learning to be present for what life is, not we wish it had been or what it might be, but for what it is at this moment.

In one essay she wrote, “Of the many, many hours of prayers offered during the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur liturgy (the Jewish New Year and Day of Atonement) perhaps the most resonant text of all is the Unetaneh Tokef. In it Jews ask how each of us will receive God’s judgment this year, who will be allowed to see another year at all, and what we can do to alter our fate… I was drawn to the sentences that enjoy less notoriety than the others: “Who shall be at rest and who shall wander,” the poem asks… It goes on: “Who shall be at peace and who shall be pursued? Who will be calm and who will be tormented?” To be forced to wander another week, another month, another year is physical and also spiritual, literal and also emotional. In almost three years of cancer and pandemic, I have wondered how my family can find rest as we wander. It has been, and continues to be, I think, in these small in-between moments, in the noticing.”

In another essay, written a year later, about continuing complications from her daughter’s cancer, she wrote this: “It is not the first time we have been in what rabbis call the meitzar, the biblical narrow place — a place of compression. The meitzar is an expression of all the things that can make life impossibly hard. It appears in Psalm 118: From the narrow place I called to God, the psalm says; I was answered, it continues, from expansiveness. We are constantly seeking moments of that expansiveness, to take a deeper breath.”

And this, in August: “In Jewish tradition, a child who loses a parent is required to say Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer, every day for 11 months, and the community recognizes you as an avel, a mourner, all that year… But as a parent who has lost a child, as I did this spring, when my 14-year-old daughter, Orli, died, you are on your own.

She concludes that essay with these words, “The pain is always there for us. It will be waiting at the apartment when we return tonight, it will be lying next to us in bed or come to us when we wake; we always have it. But we have to let this beauty in, too. That will be the work of all the rest of our days: to hold this pain and this beauty side by side, without letting the one crush or crowd out the other. We have to let this beauty in, too.”

I know this is a heavy subject. But this is Rosh Hashanah after all, when we are supposed to consider our lives, how we have lived in the past year, what we are pleased with and what we regret, how we might live better, knowing that we and everyone we love is mortal and must die. The death of a child is an extreme tragedy, but all of us have been in the narrow place, the meitzar, as she puts it, “all the things that can make life impossibly hard,” at some point in our lives. Some of us are in it now. We are sick, or someone we love is sick, or in distress. Or someone we love has died. If we are not there now, we have been before and know we will be in it again and we must find a way to get through it, to the place of expansiveness, to the place where we can breathe again.

Last year we spent the year studying the Jewish view and response to suffering and evil. I can tell you with great confidence after a year of study, the answers are unsatisfactory. Childhood cancer, or a tsunami, or an earthquake that kills tens-of-thousands? The Jewish answer is that this is just the way God made the world. It is beyond our comprehension. We just have to cope with it as best we can. 

Human caused suffering is easier to explain, even if we don’t like the answer. God gives us freewill, that is one of the things that makes us human, the ability to make moral choices. If God interferes in human affairs then we have no freewill. Why didn’t God stop the Holocaust? Why doesn’t God stop a baby from dying in a locked car on a hot day? We all want the sea to part, like it did in Egypt, but it won’t anymore, if it ever did. Those days are over. Making the world a better place is up to us now. Pretty thin soup, if you think the way things are isn’t fair. But, this is the way things are. 

Our Torah begins with God creating the world out of chaos. Then God destroys the world because of unrestrained human evil. God is not so sure about this freewill thing at first, because unrestrained evil is what happens when people are left to their own devices. God swears to never destroy the world again, perhaps because God tires at the thought of having to destroy and repopulate the world, over and over again for all eternity. So, recognizing the human capacity to do harm, and our seeming inability to make better choices, God gave us Torah (revelation), a way to live, a way to control our impulses and be decent human beings.

Decency, in short, is compassion and empathy. In our tradition this is not theoretical but comes down to very practical behaviors. Like not harvesting all your crops, so the poor and landless can eat and live. Like paying an employee on the day they worked, so they can feed themselves and their children. Like not taking a poor person’s coat as collateral for a loan, so they won’t be cold. Like not cutting down fruit bearing trees when besieging an enemy city, because long after the war is over, people, enemy and friend alike, will need to eat and, in any case, the trees are innocent; they did not cause the war. Like requiring each of us to give at least 5 percent, but no more than 10 percent, of our income each year to the needy. Not if we want to, but because we must, because the poor must be able to eat and live. Like understanding that whatever success in life we achieve is not the result of our own individual merit and effort, but comes from the help of others, our parents, our community, and God (or nature, or the universe, if that suits you better) so we are obligated to demonstrate gratitude and humility in how we live. The entire Jewish religious system is designed to turn us away from selfishness and egotism, from doing harm, toward decency and community, and doing good. 

That is why we are obligated to visit the sick, to comfort the mourner, to provide the poor family with an interest free loan, or give them the money they need to bury their loved ones and marry off their children. That is why we are commanded not to shame others but to comfort and help them. To return to Sarah Wildman for a moment, I think what she is getting at is that we cope with life through the simple but difficult acts of being present: for the beauty of life as well as the pain, for each other, in this way and through our daily behaviors we build community. Our Jewish tradition gives us a framework through which we can live it out, because it is not a religion of individual fulfillment or salvation, but a collective effort to build communities that help us sanctify our lives. I can’t think of a better practical explanation of why living within the Jewish tradition has value and can help us cope with life. It can, maybe, make the space for us to hold the pain and the beauty side-by-side.

I must confess that I am not very good at holding the pain and the beauty side-by-side. I focus more on the bad than the good, the painful, more than the joyous. Probably because my parents are Holocaust survivors. Probably because my father died when I was young. It doesn’t really matter. I created a strong emotional suit of self-protection. That self-protection is familiar, it feels safe, but it is not joy. In my desire to keep out the pain, I also keep out the joy. In doing this I short change my own life and I hurt others who love me. I want to take it off, but I haven’t yet, I haven’t done enough, yet. And I know I don’t have unlimited time. I share this because some of you might be in the same situation, or one that is different but also hard

Being present for others and for life is difficult. That is why we fall short, consistently. It is in the nature of being human. We fail. But Jewish religion teaches us that we have to keep trying. We are not perfect, but we can keep trying. That is why we have these Days of Atonement each year. If we wish to use them, to help us reorient ourselves and get back on the right path. To find balance. That is what Sarah Wildman has been writing about, from the depths of her pain, finding life’s balance.

So as these High Holy Days begin, perhaps this can be a focus of our hesbon ha nefesh, our accounting of our souls. I know it will be mine. To be decent. To do the simple and hard things that make life good, for us and for others. To support our friends and fellow congregants in their times of need. To visit them if they are lonely. To comfort them when they are mourning. To make sure those who live in our broader community, who we don’t know, have enough to eat and a safe place to sleep. To extend kindness and grace to others, especially those who we feel have wronged us, because we really don’t know what they are going through or their suffering. To see each other and be present for each other. 

Maybe if we do that, starting tonight, our lives will be richer, our community will be stronger, and we will find a way to get through life together, from the meitzar, the place of compression, to the merchav, the place of expansion. To be able to hold both the pain and the joy of life in balance.

G’mar Chatima tovah.

Watch our Yom Kippur Afternoon services.

Watch our Yom Kippur morning services.

Watch the Kol Nidre service.

For over a decade, Temple Beth Hillel and our partners have provided food in December for elementary school children and their families who are eligible for free school lunches, but do not get them when schools are closed over winter break. We work with the schools to provide a box of fresh produce, a box of non-perishables, a large turkey, and usually a science game for each family.
This year has presented us with additional challenges. The number of people experiencing food insecurity has ballooned. One of our major partners has ceased operation due to the difficulty of obtaining donated food and volunteers. Many of those who might donate are experiencing economic difficulties themselves. Potential volunteers are at risk and sheltering-in-place. Nevertheless, the need is so great that we are determined to make the program work and deliver food to 400 families as we did last year.
All this to say that Temple Beth Hillel has chosen Food for Thought for our annual High Holy Day Appeal.
If you can, please help with a donation. Here’s how:

• By credit card – https://bit.ly/3j4KtfQ
• By check – Write your check to Temple Beth Hillel with Food for Thought in the memo line, and mail your check to:

Temple Beth Hillel
801 Park Central Blvd.
Richmond, CA 94803

We are also looking for volunteers to help pack and distribute boxes safely December 12th -16th. Many of our volunteers won’t be able to help this year, so we are particularly hoping for less vulnerable, younger and/or stronger people.