Tkia….

Shevarim….

Do you hear that ? Listen again. 

Truah…..

Do you hear it?

That, my friends, is the sound of something missing. It’s the sound of the absence of the shofar, the absence of the unique sound we associate so strongly with Rosh Hashanah and the start of the year, but which we will not hear today, because it is also Shabbat. 

For those of us who have heard a shofar being blown before, we KNOW that ram’s horn sound. There is nothing like it. We carry the memory of that sound within us. We know what it’s like to stand in a room like this one, or in the hundreds, thousands of other rooms around the world where shofarot will be blown these High Holidays, to stand together and to brace ourselves, and then to have our eardrums, and our bones, and our very kishkas shaken with the ancient power of that almost-otherworldly sound. And so today, when I say, tkia…………………

Our brains, and our hearts, know what should be there.

It’s an important life skill for us humans, to be able to identify what is missing. Anthropologically, this helps us keep our young safe, helps us keep track of our families and our belongings, and helps us recognize patterns that can tell us if something is safe or edible or not.

But the ability to ask ourselves “what’s missing?”-- and then to find meaning in that absence– is also a specifically Jewish skill.       

Let me explain.

This skill goes back as far as Gan Eden, as the Garden of Eden, when Adam HaRishon, the first human, realizes that he does not have an ezer k’negdo, a partner, the way God’s other creations do. Our tradition teaches that the first human relationship, and the first human family, came from noticing, and addressing, that absence. 

Generations later, in a world missing centralized religious authority, the Torah teaches that God called to Abraham to address that absence, and ethical monotheism emerged.

When the Temple was destroyed 2,000 years ago and our ancestors were expelled from Eretz Yisrael, their easy access to our holiest sites was suddenly gone, missing. But inventive rabbis addressed that absence too, pivoting and establishing instead the localized, synagogue and home-based Jewish rituals that are the major building blocks of the rabbinic Judaism we know and love today. 

And, then, for thousands of years, our people lived in galut, in exile. For generation after generation, what was missing for Jews was our access to the Land of Israel itself– but in our liturgy and at our seders each year, throughout the Diaspora, our ancestors reaffirmed their sacred connection to the Holy Land, making meaning from the absence of physical connection to Eretz Yisrael.

Honoring absences in a Jewish way can also be very personal. Each year, we stand up to say kaddish on a loved one’s yahrzeit, the anniversary of their death, to mark another year of missing them. On Yom Kippur, the absence of food and drink will make the spiritual and physical experience of the holiday personally palpable for all those who are fasting– and for those of us who medically cannot abstain from food and drink, the absence of that fast, of that shared physiological and psychological experience, will be our fast. 

The list could go on, but you get the point: recognizing when something is missing and then making meaning from it is, in fact, a valuable Jewish practice, and has been for millennia. 

We even have a long-established practice, as Jews, of reading our texts, identifying what’s missing, and then filling in the blanks ourselves– a practice called Midrash, which I often refer to as rabbinic fan-fiction. 

And so, now that we have established that searching for what is missing is an important Jewish skill, I’d like us to all put it to use, together. 

I’m going to share two stories with you– one biblical, one modern– and as you listen to the words, I’d like you to ask yourself, first– what’s missing from this story? And then–together we will ask ourselves, how can we make meaning out of the absences in these stories?

The first story is from Genesis, which we just read today:

“GOD remembered Sarah just as promised, and GOD did for Sarah what had been announced.

Sarah conceived and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken.

Abraham gave his newborn son, whom Sarah had borne him, the name of Isaac…. The child grew up and was weaned, and Abraham held a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. Sarah saw the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham playing. She said to Abraham, “Cast out that slave-woman and her son, for the son of that slave shall not share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.”

The matter distressed Abraham greatly, for it concerned a son of his. But God said to Abraham, “Do not be distressed over the boy or your slave; whatever Sarah tells you, do as she says, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be continued for you. As for the son of the slave-woman, I will make a nation of him, too, for he is your seed.”

Early next morning Abraham took some bread and a skin of water, and gave them to Hagar. He placed them over her shoulder, together with the child, and sent her away. And she wandered about in the wilderness of Beer-sheba. When the water was gone from the skin, she left the child under one of the bushes, and went and sat down at a distance, a bowshot away; for she thought, “Let me not look on as the child dies.” And sitting thus afar, she burst into tears.

That’s the first story. 

Now.              What’s MISSING from that story?

Think about it for a second. God remembers Sarah, Abraham and Sarah have a son, Sarah says to cast out Hagar and her son, Abraham prays to God and then casts out Hagar and her son, who enter the wilderness and believe they are about to die.

What is MISSING from the story we just read is the voice of one of our ancestors being brave enough to speak up and say: this is not right.

What is missing from the story is the voice of one of our ancestors being brave enough to say: Hagar and her child are also made in God’s image, should we not love them as ourselves?

What is missing from the story is the voice of one of our ancestors being brave enough to say: We are all in this together. 

But instead of these voices, we see our ancestors saying: cast her out! Cast out her child! And then, we see Abraham and Sarah invoking God as a justification for their dangerous and harmful behavior.

That’s the first story, and that is what is missing from it. 

The second story is a bit different, but our task is the same– to listen for what is missing. Here’s the story:   

When I lived in Israel, I studied at the CY, the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem, alongside rabbinical students from Hebrew College and JTS in New York. During our year, many of us were involved in various volunteer efforts, both in Jerusalem and farther afield. When the time came for the Palestinian olive harvest, local Jewish organizations put out a call for volunteers to cross the Green Line into the Occupied West Bank and assist the Palestinians who were harvesting. These weren’t large harvesting operations— they were mainly groups of one or two Palestinian families, gathering olives for their own personal use in the coming year. 

And so, a bunch of us rabbinical students from the CY signed up to help. That meant that for several days, a small group including myself and several others from my rabbinical school, gathered with other volunteers in the pre-dawn hours in Jerusalem, piled into a bus, and headed East. We passed soldiers and civilians, guns and cars, and eventually were let out each time pretty much on the side of the road somewhere in the West Bank, near an olive grove where the Palestinian families waited. 

The work itself was, honestly, pretty fun. It was hard work, but we got to climb and shake trees, chat, and sing. There was a huge language barrier, but “salaam” and “shalom” can go a long way when you’re working towards a common goal. There was so much laughter. The little Palestinian kids played tag among the trees. For lunch we sat on the ground and ate pita and hummus and fresh olive oil (and it was the best olive oil I have ever eaten in my life!) The young Palestinian men showed us how to wrap scarves around our heads to help us keep cool in the hot sun.   

But after lunch, it was my turn to be on guard duty. I left the group and walked to the edge of the grove and stood on a large rock looking uphill, scanning the tree line. 

Because the real reason we were there wasn’t to pick olives, though we were happy to do so. The real reason we were there was to be what organizers call a “protective presence”-- to be there and be visibly Jewish, because these Palestinians’ olive groves directly abutted Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and the settlers, each season, like clockwork, attack the Palestinians as they harvested, burning their olives and sometimes the trees themselves, throwing rocks at the people, forcing the families to flee. 

Having Americans and Israelis standing guard made such an attack less likely to happen– but not unheard of. In fact, literally the day after my first trip into the West Bank, another student from the CY was part of an olive picking group who was attacked and stoned by settlers, and he came back to the yeshiva with his face bloodied. That was real, and it was scary. 

But the moment that stayed with me from my first day out in the olive groves wasn’t bloody at all. It was just me, alone, standing on that rock at the edge of the olive grove, scanning the hill next to us, looking, looking, looking– and then, seeing, at the top of the hill, first one, and then two young men, wearing white shirts and khakis, with kippot on their heads and peyas down the sides of their faces, appear, and then disappear, and then appear again, moving closer to us. Menacing us.   

And it was my job, when I saw the threat, to call back to my friends and the families we were helping, to warn them, to see them hurry to load the olives into their cart, to watch the Palestinian mother grab her child, knowing we were in danger– from Jews.

That’s the second story.

But the longer I sit with that second story, the longer it feels to me like almost the same story as the tale of Abraham, Sarah, Ishmael, and Hagar.

Because Sarah and Abraham decided to cast out Hagar and Ishmael, to remove the individuals who made their lives, and their choices, complicated and painful. And there on the hills outside Nablus, in the West Bank, the Israeli settlers wanted to cast out the Palestinians who were harvesting olives. And frankly, they also wanted to cast out me and my fellow rabbinical students, because our version of Judaism was different from theirs, and they thought ours was illegitimate. Those settlers also wanted to remove the individuals who made their lives, and their choices, complicated and painful.     

In the story from Genesis, there is a heart-wrenching moment, halfway through, after Abraham speaks to God, where we see Abraham pivot in how he treats Hagar and Ishmael. He stops treating Hagar and Ishmael as one of his camp, as one of “us”, and instead start treating Hagar and Ishmael as outsiders, as “them”, and makes plans to expel them. That same shift happened as I stood guard on the rock in the West Bank. 

Of course, the settlers clearly saw the Palestinians as “them”, as outsiders-- that’s why the settlers wanted to cast them out of the land. But the settlers also saw me, and the other Jewish volunteers as not being “on the same team”-– as being opponents– and to be honest, we saw them in the same bifurcated, combatant light. Though we had ostensibly all started the day praying to the same God, and saying the same Shema, as the sun rose higher in the sky over the olive grove, we ceased to be “us”, to each other, and instead became, firmly, “them”.   

This is all to say that what was missing from both stories was not only the voice of empathy and compassion, but also the commitment to seeing past the categories of “us” and “them” that we humans fall into so naturally when we come into conflict with each other. What was missing from both stories was a wholehearted attempt to find a solution, a real solution, that supported the dignity and safety of all involved. 

That absence of a solution that supports the dignity and safety of all involved is one we unfortunately recognize in abundance from our own world today, as we look around us and see that same absence play out on a local and national and global scale– both abroad, in our spiritual homeland, but also closer to home, as Americans and as American Jews, navigating our many differences and often failing to strike the balance between standing up for our own rights and dignity and standing up for the rights and dignity of those with whom we disagree. 

I am reminded of the famous teaching of Hillel the Elder–

אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי. וּכְשֶׁאֲנִי לְעַצְמִי, מָה אֲנִי

If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I?

This tension described by Hillel is ancient, echoing through the story of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, and Ishmael, and echoing through that moment I experienced in the West Bank.  But it is also just as pertinent today, for us, as it was thousands of years ago, as we look around us and see the deep divisions in our world, and realize that we are struggling with the exact same human shortcomings our ancestors had.

Because that’s the truth, isn’t it? The messy truth. The truth is that we don’t only get to call Abraham and Sarah our ancestors when they are embodying the characteristics we admire, like deep faith and warmth and hospitality. We also have to own up to the fact that their warmth and hospitality had limits– it certainly did for Hagar and Ishmael– and that their less desirable qualities are also part of our spiritual inheritance. We read about them every year.

Just like Abraham and Sarah on that fateful day, we, today, are also torn between the categories of “us” and “them”. This is especially painful to experience when the labels of “us” and “them” when we apply them to other Jews. 

On the one hand, it is completely natural to want to identify with our fellow Jews, and be proud of them. And we want to identify with the only Jewish country in the world, and feel proud of it, and of the many wonderful things Israel and Israelis have contributed to humanity. 

But just like how we don’t get to only identify with Abraham and Sarah when they behave in ways we admire, the same is true when it comes to Israel, our spiritual homeland. 

We must acknowledge, as much as we want to be proud of Israel, that there is also horror and deep disappointment that we feel when we see our fellow Jews acting in ways that do not affirm the inherent dignity of all humanity– be they the settlers attacking Palestinians with increasing viciousness in the West Bank today; be they the Rabbanut, working to undermine non-Orthodox Jewish presence and rights in Israel; or be they the Knesset itself, which recently passed a shamefully racist law bringing back the death penalty— but only for Palestinians.   

The Israeli High Court itself ruled just days ago that the escalating abuse of Palestinians “stands in contrast to the basic values and moral principles of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, and in contrast to the principles of liberty, fairness, and justice of Jewish heritage and the prophets of Israel”-- That’s the Israeli High Courat! and yet the highest ministers of the current Israeli government, such as the Minister of National Security himself, are actively supporting the settlers and declining to prosecute their violence, instead egging them on. 

And this is a schande.

לֹ֥א תַעֲמֹ֖ד עַל־דַּ֣ם רֵעֶ֑ךָ

The Torah teaches us– do not stand by the blood of your neighbor!

תּוֹרָ֣ה אַחַ֔ת יִהְיֶ֖ה לָֽאֶזְרָ֑ח וְלַגֵּ֖ר הַגָּ֥ר בְּתוֹכְכֶֽם׃

The Torah teaches us – there shall be ONE law, the same law, for you and for the stranger who dwells among you!

The Israeli High Court is correct: The prioritization of fear and revenge over compassion and real, brave problem-solving among the most powerful Jews in the world is heartbreaking, and it does NOT line up with the teachings of our tradition, or our prophets, or the ideals upon which the State of Israel was founded.   

And I really want to name today that there is real grief for us fellow Jews in admitting how painful it is in the moments when we are not able to be proud of actions taken by the Jewish state. 

There is real grief in acknowledging that Jews, our people, are sometimes the bad guys in what happens in this world. We are human, too. 

We are a people that has been mistreated so many times, in so many ways- a people still being mistreated in so many ways. We are a people that is, to this day, being mistreated, and scapegoated, as we will talk about on Yom Kippur, in so many ways. We carry within us generational trauma that is real and that informs our choices. 

And. We now live in a time where Jews have military and political power, which shifts the conversation. It means we have to talk about whether that military and political power is supporting our Jewish values, or undercutting them. 

For us, here, in Maine, there may also be resistance in our hearts to even engaging with these crises happening on the other side of the globe, because it is so painful and can seem so far away. We may want to say that when our brothers are so far away, we are no longer their keepers.   

And I want to really affirm that it is true that our Jewish lives here in Maine are beautiful, and valid, and in some ways very different from the lives of Israelis and Palestinians. 

But we are not separate, not in the big picture. The High Holidays offer us a sacred opportunity, a constructed island in time to remember that we are all part of the same story, the same history, the same messy and sacred and beautiful and imperfect inheritance, and we know all too well that the desire to dig in our heels and divide into “us” and “them” is just as true right here in Portland, and right here in this room, as it is in the Middle East, or anywhere else that humans dwell. 

We know this is true, because again and again, in our own lives, we hear our neighbors– and perhaps ourselves– saying, I will not be in community with someone who does not identify as I do, whether that is as a Democrat or a Republican, a Zionist or an anti-Zionist, whether I use the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s reaction to October 7th or whether I do not use the word “genocide”, or any other number of words and litmus tests. 

We confuse discussion, curiosity, and respectful engagement with endorsement, and we shame each other when we don’t take sides. We establish boundaries around our relationships that at first glance look like protection, but on closer examination betray themselves to be impermeable barriers to growth, compromise, learning, and teshuvah. How can we do teshuvah if we can’t even sit down and be in conversation with one another, and hear one another?

We feel the pain as these ultimatums end friendships and fracture families.   

And the more we push each other into little separate labeled boxes, and the more we make widespread assumptions about others, the easier it becomes for us to see each other as being on separate paths, instead of walking the same path. The easier it becomes for us to feel like we are all in our own little rowboats in the flood, frantically paddling, instead of in one big ark, with each other for support. 

This is to say that all of us here today, sitting in this sanctuary in Maine or listening online, are part of the same struggle our ancestors faced in the words of our Torah, and the same struggle being faced by Palestinians and settlers in the West Bank: the struggle of how to co-exist as richly diverse humans and neighbors in a way that does not require casting out our neighbors in order for there to be honest, sustainable, real peace between us.

Abraham and Sarah did not learn the lesson. They cast out Hagar and Ishmael. They took what felt like the faster, easier route, instead of doing the hard work to establish real, sustainable, relationships.

The Rabbanut and current administration in Israel still have not learned the lesson, either; They are actively working to cast out Palestinians from the West Bank as well as block power and access for Jews like us who are not Orthodox or Ultra-Orthodox. They are also going the easier route, just trying to remove those who make their lives more complicated, instead of doing the hard work to establish honest, sustainable, real relationships between different types of Jews and our neighbors. 

And then there’s us, Jews here in the United States. We are still struggling to learn this lesson between each other, in our own communities. We are each in our information silos, in our bubbles, and when we disagree with each other, we close ranks instead of leaning into the disagreements, and allowing them to inspire growth.

If we are being honest with each other– and the high holidays are a good time for honesty– We can see that we, too, often choose the easier option of absence and space and avoidance– of separating ourselves from one another– instead of committing to the hard, vulnerable work of being in diverse, vulnerable community. 

We, too, have cast each other out, far too frequently. 

Midrash Tanchuma teaches that when Rav Assi lay dying, his nephew entered his room and found him crying. The nephew tried to reassure Rav Assi that his life had been full of deeds of chesed, of lovingkindness, and that the rabbi had done a good job of embodying chesed, and staying above earthly disputes and not getting caught up in arguments.

To which Rav Assi tearfully replied, “But what if God asks me to account for the fact that I had the opportunity to arbitrate disputes in my community, but I did not? That is why I cry.” 

So. This Rosh Hashanah, we have our work cut out for us. 

Because we have the exact same opportunity Rav Assi had, right here at TBE: the opportunity to address our disputes, and to put in the work as individuals and as a community to find an honest, compassionate, pluralistic way forward, together.

Here’s how we’re going to do that each year:

First, as individuals, it is up to each of us, from inside each of our bubbles, to ask ourselves– what is missing, in my bubble? Which voices are missing, in my silo? Which viewpoints are missing, on my newsfeed? Which facts are missing from the news I am consuming? Which human and Jewish values are missing? Which groups do I identify with, and which groups do I think of as “them”?

And perhaps most importantly–where, in my life, have I sacrificed relationships, and sacrificed community, in the name of being right, and being comfortable?

The individual work also means making the commitment, right now, to showing up this year and being an active part of your Jewish community, again and again and again, especially when it isn’t easy. 

I will be blunt: sitting in this room today, and listening online, we in the TBE community have no shortage of differences and potential trigger points for conflict. I’m married to a mathematician, I’m not a mathematician myself, but if we say, two Jews, three opinions, or two Jews, five opinions– if we have 400 or 500 people in this room, how many opinions is that?

We have TBE community members who are Democrats, Republicans, independents, and non-voters; we have members who identify very strongly with the current Israeli government and members who are dismayed by it; we have members who are on the same or similar pages about some issues while being diametrically opposed on others; and that is not going to change. In fact, I believe that that diversity is a strength of this community. 

But the public messaging and use of resources of this synagogue, and the type of programming we bring in, and the variety of opinions we include in our discussions, is and will continue to be a direct reflection of what is supported by YOU, by the members who actually show up, who actually speak up, give feedback, give your time, energy, resources, outreach, volunteering…

That means that if you have a vision for what you want this synagogue to look like in the future, you get to be part of making that happen, and we welcome it. This is YOUR synagogue, and it would not exist without you. The Social Kashrut framework developed by TBE affirming that there are multiple legitimate ways to be Jewish was developed by TBE community members who put in the effort and cared and showed up and made it happen. I am here as your rabbi because a bunch of TBE community members got together, had hard discussions, did a lot of work and made it happen. Our Shabbat services and Torah and Haftarah readings each week, our Shalom Community Park, our religious school, our adult learning opportunities, our community outreach programs – all of this is only possible because of all of YOU: because of your generosity with your time, your finances, and your input and because you speak up, and you SHOW up, and you say and show, again and again, that this is important to you.       

This isn’t about dollar amounts or number of hours spent. Come to one discussion, come to all of the discussions, help plan the discussions, watch online, send an email– it’s all good. We need every one of you, in whichever way feels right for you to connect to this beautiful community. 

What matters is that we each do what we can, that we stay in relationship with one another, and that we don’t give up on this community that holds and nurtures us all, even when and especially when it’s difficult.

The difficult moments are the moments that show us how strong our relationships really are. The difficult moments are the moments that show us who we really are. 

What really matters, this year, is that we don’t cast each other out; and that we don’t cast ourselves out, and opt out of this community because of our differences. 

It is a timeless truth, though it is one that we have resisted for generations: The only way forward is together. 

We have an opportunity, this year, to choose what Abraham and Sarah were not ready to choose– to choose to stay in relationship when it is messy; to do the hard work of giving one another the benefit of the doubt when tensions are high; to promise each other that our visions for the future can be wide enough, deep enough, brave enough, and compassionate enough for all of us to take part in them.   

And we can also, as we resolve to do this important work, remember to show our ancestors grace for the times they fell short, and for the mistakes they made. It is the High Holidays, after all. It can be cathartic to realize that our ancestors were just as fallible and imperfect as each and every of us, and that God loved them anyway, just as they were. Because that reminds us, in all our messy human imperfection, that God loves us anyway, too. We can learn from their mistakes, and we can learn from our own, and we can resolve to do better, this year.

This year,

We can cast out our sins;

we can cast out our mistakes;

we can cast out birdseed into the water, tomorrow, at Jewell Falls, at tashlich.

But we must not, and we will not, cast out each other. 

Tkia………………..

Shabbat shalom, and shana tova.