Shana Tova and Good Evening.
I stand here this evening addressing the congregation for the second year in a row and I’m both humble and grateful. I’m grateful that we have Rabbi Priesand here with us to make these High Holy Day services truly special and memorable. Thank you Rabbi. As our spiritual leader, Cantor Sussman has provided beautiful song, wise words, and steady, caring leadership for our congregation. Cantor, thank you for everything you have done for us.
As I prepared for this evening’s speech I ruminated on what my message should be this year. I thought back on Dave Goldner’s important words about showing up, Don Belmont’s personal journey and his insight that even with all the great trappings of a great synagogue one can feel so alone and out of place, and the story Rabbi Preisand told us Erev Rosh Hashanah about how the sneaking away of the rabbinical students left the Great Rabbi to fall from the ladder as he reached for God – striking me as perhaps the most poignant example of what togetherness means. With all of this floating about my head, what I’d like to talk about this evening is family.
Of the many definitions of “family” the one that I find most appropriate is “all those persons considered as descendents of a common progenitor.” As Jews, where ever we may be – from Allentown to Israel and all points in between, however different our origins and backgrounds may be, we are foremost Jews and that connects us like family.
When we all show up at Friday night services, or at a wedding, or Bar or Bat Mitzvah, or we make a visit to a house of mourning, we come together like family. When we visited the Jewish American museum, the Fourth Street Deli, and the Franklin Institute to see the Dead Sea Scrolls we went as a family. When we join together at Let’s Eat events, to play bingo, and to talk about the wines we drink, we do so like a family.
In crafting what we want Temple Shirat Shalom to be, the second sentence of our Mission Statement reads: “We strive to be a warm, caring congregation focused on our families, our friends and our community.” You’ll note that family comes first. I look out at all of you and some of you I know very well and some I would like to know better. Like our temple, Shari and I have always put people first and we consider many to be part of our family – and some of our children’s friends have taken us up on that offer, particularly those with a keen interest in what’s in our refrigerator!
Please do me a favor for a couple of seconds and look around the room and find four or five people that you know…it won’t be hard to do. Now, think about why you came here this evening. How many of you came not only because it’s Kol Nidre but because you were hoping to see someone you hadn’t seen in a while? How many of you came here so you could worship with those you hold dear?
Sounds like family, right?
As we begin our second year as a congregation, I’d like to suggest that this is also the beginning of our second year as one family. A family that supports one another by showing up, by working together in planning social events and activities, by discussing topics of great importance together, and by learning and praying together.
For those members here this evening, thank you for being part of my family…you’ve made my life richer. For those of you here that haven’t yet made the decision to join us, I simply ask you to please do so. Become part of our family here at Temple Shirat Shalom. Let the smiles of friends you see at Shabbat services lift you up. Let the smiles of the children in our religious school give you reason to smile. Listen to the Barchu and Sh’ma and let the sounds of song give you a moment of clarity – of what really matters.
I’d like to finish with a quote from Erma Bombeck which sums up for me what family and Temple Shirat Shalom is all about.
“The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another’s desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.”
Let Temple Shirat Shalom BE that common thread. Join us, and become part of our family.
Shana Tova.
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