G’mar Hatima Tova. It’s so wonderful to see every one of you on the holiest day of the year. Parents reunited with children, grandparents with grandchildren, uncles and aunts with nephews and nieces, cousins with one another. I look forward to getting to deepening our connection over the course of 5785. This is a special year for Mosaic Law Congregation, as we celebrate our 125^th Anniversary.

You are invited to our family’s Sukkot Open House on Sunday October 20 between 2 and 4 pm. Hope to see you there. Also, MLC goes Down Under in the Spring of 2026 to explore Jewish Australia. On Sunday November 10 at noon there is a kickoff event where you’ll hear all about it. To RSVP, please contact Linda Margolin-Lesser or myself.

The following poem is from my Grandmother, Lucille Frenkel. I’ve been thinking of it as I reflect on October 7^th.

A Little Do I Know of Life: Not Much-Lucille Frenkel

A Little Do I Know of Life: Not Much

I know enough to value living’s rush

Of seasons as they hurry through my days.

I know enough to greet my days with praise,

For days are granted one as Heaven’s presents.

I understand to clasp the slightest essence

Of all which makes life joyous and worthwhile.

I know the preciousness of each child’s smile.

I know to cherish close family and friends,

My love and help, to others I extend.

I know what sorrow hides in hearts and tears.

I realize one must constant grow through years

So that a life bloom wisdom gained through age.

I know the struggle which Mankind must wage

To keep the best from Past, add to the Present.

I know people work hard to make life pleasant.

I see how many live with firm resolve;

Sighting world’s problems as, also, theirs to solve.

Their efforts join their prayer Man’s sufferings cease,

As they tireless search ways to advance world peace.

A little do I know of life-not much.

I know that life responds to gentle touch

And happiness, that goal so many yearn,

Real happiness exists for each to earn.

Though little do I know, I do know this;

Through sacrifice and caring comes real bliss.

So little do I know, can I discern-

But I know that what I don’t know I can learn![1]

This poem teaches me that the longer I live, the more I realize how little I know. There are so many things this year for which we have no answer. Why do some live and others die? Why are good people taken before their time? How much of history is fated and how much do we make through our actions?

          Wherever one is in the world, this is a time of serious trauma. One need not look further than October 7^th when more Jews were murdered at once than any time since the Holocaust-as well as the resulting war in its second year and the fear that it will become a regional war. In the United States we have seen anti-Israel protestors take over college campuses with tent encampments-including in our back yard one at Sacramento State. One of the signs there said, “I’m the one that’s Semitic: You’re from ——- (expletive) Poland!” In New York we saw masked anti-Israel protestors boarding a subway train and saying “Raise your hand if you’re a Zionist. This is your chance to get out.” Complete silence, then the man said, “Okay, no Zionists, we’re good!”[2] By seeing the silence that followed-not only from Jews on the train but more importantly from non-Jews-and we see the precariousness of the situation in which we find ourselves.

          Earlier this year, Franklin Foer wrote a piece entitled The Golden Age of American Jews is Ending, asserting, “Anti-Semitism is a mental habit, deeply embedded in Christian and Muslim thinking, stretching back at least as far as the accusation that the Jews murdered the son of God. It’s a tendency to fixate on Jews, to place them at the center of the narrative, overstating their role in society and describing them as the root cause of any unwanted phenomena-a centrality that seems strange, given the Jews constitute about 0.2 percent of the global population.”[3] While there is truth in this, I disagree with Foer’s premise in the article. The golden age of American Jews is not ending and will not end as long as we fight for who we are and what we believe. As a teacher and an author who is invested in Jewish self-perception, Ben Freeman asserts, “We have not survived by accident. If we don’t fight back, if we don’t defend ourselves through Jewish pride against Jew-hate, against assimilation, then, simply, we cease to exist.”[4] 

          Today we are going to commemorate Yizkor for the deaths of our loved ones in the past year. We will be adding prayers for those murdered on October 7^th in both our Yizkor service and our Eileh Ezkerah (These I remember) martyrology service. Elie Wiesel teaches us, “Remembering is a noble and necessary act. The call of memory, the call to memory, reaches us from the very dawn of history. No commandment figures so frequently, so insistently, in the Bible. It is incumbent upon us to remember the good we have received, and the evil we have suffered.”[5]

Some of us recall bad experiences with loved ones, and that is understandable. I hope we will hold onto the good qualities of those who came before us, remembering them and striving to live in accordance with these qualities. We will ensure that they live on inside us and that we will tell their stories. We will not only keep our memories of them alive but also their visions, their hopes and their dreams. At the same time, we must attend to the living: our friends, family and loved ones who are alive, making sure their needs are provided for. This goes for our brothers and sisters in Israel as well. We mourn the dead while concurrently not losing sight of the 101 remaining hostages in captivity. All steps must be taken towards their rescue. The ultimate value of Judaism is פקוח נפש, the saving of a life. These hostages (or in my preferred language “heroes”)[6], including the two, Omer Wenkert and Keith Siegel, for whom we have chairs in this Sanctuary, may be beyond our reach halfway around the world but they are deeply embedded within our hearts.[RH1] [RH2] 

          The way we show this is through responding to both October 7^th and to the increased antisemitism in the world by strengthening ourselves.  Dara Horn, in a webinar to rabbis, implored us to “rise to this moment; be bolder than you have ever been.” She argued that we cannot be “those who erase ourselves in order to make others feel comfortable.” [7] At a session in KOH on Jewish Pride and Unity I shared an observation from Roz Rothstein, “There are two types of Jews: those who are taking down their mezuzot and those who are putting up larger mezuzot.”[8] It can be hard to be the Jew affixing the larger mezuzah, proudly wearing his/her magen david or kippah when we know that much of the world hates us. As Elie Wiesel writes, it takes courage to live and lead as Jews, no matter our circumstance.[9] We have learned from our past that hiding from the world does not make us safe. We must know who we are and for what we stand. As Ben Freeman asserts, “We must be proud every day. We must celebrate our Jewishness, in whatever ways we see fit, every day. And we must honor our specificity, and we should know that we deserve better than how we are treated by the wider world every single day.”[RH3] [10]

Let us also not forget, especially when it feels that everyone is out to get us, that we have more allies than we think. Look at April 13, when the Islamic Republic of Iran launched over 300 missiles and a combined effort of the United States, Britain and Jordan helped Israel intercept them, or on October 1 when Iran launched 180 missiles, most of which were intercepted. I feel God’s presence watching over the nation of Israel at times like these, protecting us. Seeing those incredible acts brings to mind the famous quotation from David Ben-Gurion: “A Jew who doesn’t believe in miracles isn’t a realist.” Look also at Goldie Ghamari, an Iranian Canadian MP in Ottawa who pointed out how many Iranians wave the pre-revolution lion, sword and sun flag to show solidarity with Israel and the need to topple the current Iranian regime. She pointed out the 2600-year shared history between Jews and Persians and asserted, “Despite the regime’s attempts to brainwash Iranians, they are resisting, knowing their historical culture of understanding.”[11]

We must hold onto the statement at the end of V’hi Sheamda, rooted in our Passover haggadot: that in every generation, God saved us from our enemies.  This requires having faith in our future rather than constantly living in a state of fear and anxiety. We cannot afford to despair and to give up; as and to give up; as Elie Wiesel taught us “we have three choices when faced with despair: resignation, delusion, or the most difficult and beautiful facing it head on as Jews.”[12] Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav said, “The main point is not to fear at all.” That of course is impossible-fear and anxiety are natural parts of life. Yet we cannot let them control us.

How do we find hope in the world and how do we become a source of help for others? For this I turn to Rabbi Naomi Levy, my spiritual guru, who wrote, “Hope comes in the form of helping hands. It comes when someone offers the words you need to hear just at the moment when you need to hear them most. Hope arrives in all sorts of disguises. When hope comes, offer it a chair.”[13]

 We are here today on Yom Kippur, right before Yizkor, to both remember those of our past and hope for a better future. Yet hope requires work, effort and striving. It is not merely a concept of something we “wish to have” but rather something we need to actively work towards creating. Sir Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has a poignant lesson as to how hope works: “One of the most important distinctions I have learned in the course of reflection on Jewish history is the difference between optimism and hope. Optimism is the belief that things will get better. Hope is the belief that, together, we can make things better. Optimism is a passive virtue, hope an active one. It takes no courage to be an optimist, but it takes a great deal of courage to have hope. Knowing what we do of our past, no Jew can be an optimist. But Jews have never – despite a history of sometimes awesome suffering – given up hope”[14]

Rabbi Sacks is detailing the lesson imbued in Israel’s anthem, HaTikvah, which translates as “the hope.”Despite our differences, our vulnerabilities, our conflicts, we are united in our peoplehood. We must hold onto that hope, that we never lose sight of it despite the fact that at times things look so bleak and hopeless. We know little about life, especially when it comes to our future, yet we can have hope that through working together הסיפור שלנו יהיה סוף טוב, our story will have a good ending.[15] We began the High Holy Days by declaring our unity as a family with Aheinu: let’s end them with the eternal message of hope.

          Please join Cantor Rachels in HaTikvah.

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[1] Lucille Frenkel, “A Little Do I Know of Life: Not Much.”

[2] Anti-Israel man on NYC subway tells Zionists to get off train: video (nypost.com)

[3] Franklin Safran Foer, “The Golden Age of American Jews is Ending,” In The Atlantic, April 2024.

[4] Ben Freeman, Reclaiming Our History, pgs. 71-72.

[5] Elie Wiesel “Hope, Despair and Memory,” Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1986

[6] Thank you, MLC President Randy Pollack,

[7] Dara Horn September 16, 2024

[8] Roz Rothstein, StandWithUs Rabbis United Conference, February 26, 2024

[9] Elie Wiesel 1973 Talk “Against Despair,” in Rabbi Menachem Creditor We are bigger than this moment: Jewish holidays are Jewish defiance | Menachem Creditor | The Blogs (timesofisrael.com)

[10] Ben Freeman, Reclaiming Our History, page 241.

[11] Israel’s unlikely allies | National Post

[12] In We are bigger than this moment: Jewish holidays are Jewish defiance | Menachem Creditor | The Blogs (timesofisrael.com)

[13] Rabbi Naomi Levy Hope Will Find You

[14] Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, The Dignity of Difference, Page 206.

[15] Thank you to Yossi Klein Halevi in Dan Senor’s podcast Call Me Back, September 22, 2024.

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