Rabbi Yair Robinson

Erev Rosh Hashanah 2025

Lying in Wait for Happiness

On the broad steps leading down to the Western Wall

A beautiful woman came up to me: You don’t remember me,

I’m Shoshana in Hebrew. Something else in other languages,

All is vanity.

Thus she spoke at the twilight standing between the destroyed

And the built, between the light and the dark.

Black birds and white birds changed places

With the great rhythm of breathing.

The flash of tourists’ cameras lit my memory too:

What are you doing here between the promised and the forgotten,

Between the hoped for and the imagined?

What are you doing here lying in wait for happiness

With your lovely face a tourist advertisement from God

And your soul rent and torn like mine?

She answered me: My soul is rent and torn like yours

But it is beautiful because of that

Like fine lace. –Yehuda Amichai

We are, at this moment, preparing to stand in between. Between this year and the next, between what was and what will be. We are here, at the beginning of Rosh Hashanah, entering our Yamim Noraim, and all the ritual and celebration that goes with it. We gather to hear the sound of the shofar and the words of our tradition, especially the words of teshuvah, of repentance, reminding us that this moment is the twilight moment, an in-between moment. A moment of possibility. What do we want to take with us from this past year, and what do we want to leave behind? What haunts us, and what invigorates us? And what do we hope for in this new year; what do we want to see realized for ourselves, our families and loved ones, for our community and country, our people? Even as we stand at the threshold between old and new, what was and what may be, Yehuda Amichai reminds us, we as Jews are used to being in this posture, we are used to standing in-between: light and dark, destroyed and built; promised and forgotten. And we are often torn between the two. We are caught between memory of what was—both wistful memories that bring us joy and painful memories of loss that cloud our vision—and our anticipation of what we might become, what we might achieve.

We may wish to be otherwise. Wouldn’t it be better not to always be in-between? To not have our soul rent and torn, caught in the thicket of history and memory and messianic hope much as the ram Abraham sacrifices in Isaac’s place? Wouldn’t it be lovely to be sure, to always be certain that history, or the future, is always on our side? Or to ignore them both and simply live in the moment, without the sense of what came before and what comes after?  Perhaps. And to be sure, the rabbis of the Talmud warn us that Torah begins with the letter Beit, in the word bereshit, instead of Aleph, the first letter in the aleph-beit, because it is a letter closed on three sides, and that we shouldn’t worry about what is above, or below, or behind us. It’s good advice, to be sure; after all, how can we really, truly know? Nevertheless, it is that reckoning with both  history and hoped-for and imagined future that has given our people its vitality and commitment to a better world. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, in his theology and activism, often spoke of the urgency of Now, of this moment calling us to action, informed always by our tradition and our hope for the future. And Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, in his book Halakhic Man, invited us to be aware of how each moment brings its mitzvah, its sacred obligation, but those mitzvot come to us not out of our own experience or the immediacy of the moment, but out of our engagement with Jewish practice and law and theology and experience, the varied strata of teaching upon which we stand. This ‘now’ is not divorced from the past or the future; rather, it is informed by our being in-between, in relationship with both, remembering both the merit and wisdom of our ancestors, as well as the suffering our people has experienced, and imagining the day the prophet Zachariah and the Great Aleinu invite us to imagine: bayom hahu yihiyeh Adonai Echad u’shemo echad: on that day, all shall be one and God’s name shall be one. That day will be a day of unity and peace, free from the cruelties and suffering we see too many people experience. Being in-between may tear at our souls, but it also is what makes them beautiful.

For 120 years, our congregation and our members have striven to stand in-between, and as we know, it is, needless to say, easier said than done. How do we honor the past in a way that leaves space for the next generation and its needs and innovations? How do we look with enthusiasm toward the future without neglecting our history and the inspiration of our previous leaders? Most importantly, we have always tried to meet the urgency of the moment, the urgency of now: in our calling out for justice, in our learning, our worship, our music, our caring for the needy in our midst, between remembered and hoped for, that threshold moment, that has been ours.

And that has been true for each of us who strive to be a part of this congregation. What do we want, fundamentally, each of us? To have our name known, our face remembered, our actions remembered, at least when we’re proud of them. We too stand in wait for happiness, for the celebration of learning and hoped for simcha or reconciliation. For the words of the Aleinu, Zachariah’s words, to be ours as well: this day God’s name shall be one, all shall be One. Each of us, as Ruth Brin reminds us, a single, whole, One.

So, as we stand in the twilight moment, the doorway, as it were, of 5786, as we think about what has been, and what will be, I invite you to reflect on how each will influence the urgency of your ‘now’. What will you do to honor the past? How will you work to make a better future?

The path seems perilous before us. Our country and our world have always given us plenty to be anxious about: as Al Vorspan (zichrono livracha), that lion of social action, entitled his memoirs: Start Worrying: Details To Follow. But we are living in a moment that is both terra incognita, undiscovered country, and at the same time all-too familiar. The hostility toward difference and nuance, the ways in which so many people—the immigrant, the refugee, the poor, the medically fragile, the old, the young, and too often, even our own people—have become that much more vulnerable. And that vulnerability, rather than moving our fellow toward kindness and support, instead somehow exposes them to more hostility, more danger, inspired by some idea of the past that never was, and an imagined future which betrays the best of us. This is a fragile moment—for our world, increasingly wracked with the pangs of global warming—as well as for each other.

So how do we honor the past and work to make a better future? I offer, if I may, a suggestion: Diminish Cruelty. We see so much of it around us: in all the obvious places, of course, but also in the way we speak with one another, the way we assume all too often that each of us is more worthy of our history and the future than the other. The philosopher Richard Rorty wrote that we have an overriding obligation to diminish cruelty. An overriding obligation to diminish cruelty, above all else. What kind of world would that look like? One story, if I may, to illustrate.

This past summer, it was reported by a woman named Ariel Pollack-Starr that Jon Polin, the father of slain hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, was on a flight to the United States. Perhaps you found this same story in your social media feed. The plane landed and while they were waiting for the jet bridge to open, several passengers decided to use the time for shacharit (morning prayer) and asked Jon if he would lead. He went up to the front of the cabin and started to pray in a low and quiet voice. Suddenly there was a loud and harsh “Sheket!!” “Quiet!!” A man was screaming in Jon’s face, and even attempted to slap him as he led morning prayers. Jon dodged, the man fumed and returned to his seat. When the minyan dispersed, Jon walked over to the man, bent down, and apologized for disturbing him.

We could argue that Jon Polin, a man who lost his son in the tunnels in Gaza, who has lost his whole world, is simply better than us: more loving, more patient, more compassionate. Fuller of chesed, of lovingkindness. That’s certainly possible, but it seems to me, that denies him his humanity, and us our in-between-ness. So I ask, reflecting on all the cruelties we may have witnessed this past year, as well as its joys, and all that we hope for ourselves, what do we hope for others? How will you diminish cruelty in the world? Let that be your ‘new year’s resolution’ as we stand in between the realized and the potential, the memory and what we long for.

As we prepare to hear the shofar and wish one another a sweet new year, may we be sure to truly hear its call to stand in this moment, informed by what was and what we hope for, so that our sweetness may be shared with others.