"Hugs, Handshakes, and Kisses" - A Sermon for a Rosh Hashanah apart

This sermon was for the Erev Rosh Hashanah service of 2020, which would be everyone's first experience of virtual, pandemic-era High Holy Days services. There was no in-person option, and it was important to me to acknowledge the strangeness and sadness of the moment, and also to offer a hopeful vision and an appreciation of why we would never miss gathering... even when we can't gather.

Hugs Handshakes and Kisses: What We Can Embrace When We Can’t Embrace

Rabbi Michael Danziger

Erev Rosh Hashanah 5781 – Isaac M. Wise Temple

Streaming from Plum Street Temple

Each year over the course of the days from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, this white robe I wear for the high holy days, accumulates a collection of smudges. Smudges of makeup as so many of us share hugs to greet each other. And threads. A collection of colorful threads from sweaters and blazers as we shake hands to wish each other a good and healthy year of life. Or when we kiss hello, as we celebrate not only our sacred holidays, but the chance to be together and see the faces that make these holy moments all the more meaningful.

46 years ago, Rabbi Harry Danziger, my father, gave a Rosh Hashanah sermon that was a response to a question from a non-Jewish teenager who visited for services one Friday night. After she asked about the usual things – symbols in the sanctuary, the meaning of the prayers – she asked, “why does everyone kiss?” When the service is over, and they wish each other a good Shabbat… why do they kiss? In one of his most memorable sermons, my dad explained what was behind the kisses. What it was that drew Jews so close that their faces touched.

He wrote, “Jews at worship are, first and foremost, a family at a family reunion.” Since the last-second staying of our forefather, Isaac’s execution, which we’ll read about in Torah tomorrow morning, “we became a family of survivors. We have never forgotten that, and we’ve seldom been allowed to forget.” Not by the Babylonians nor the Romans, not during the pogroms nor the 1940s. “We know every time we gather for a family reunion,” he said, “that we are only a fraction of those who might have been there… So why kiss?... In the warmth of touching one another, we know that am Yisrael chai - the family of Israel lives. We are encouraged, and we separate, looking forward again to another family reunion.

My father recalled the way that we were dispersed with the destruction of our Temple nearly 2000 years ago. He wrote, “By all logic, it should have been the end of our family. We had to run, and some went one way and some another. We who had lived together as family suddenly [were] scattered into other people’s neighborhoods, where, often, we were not welcome. In the rush to leave home, as it burned and as it was taken over by others, all we had time for was a kiss, and to say, ‘We’ll write, we’ll keep in touch.’ But of all the peoples on earth, we did.”

And he spoke of how wherever in the world we lived, we took care of each other the way a family would - community charities and burial societies for the dignity of the impoverished. Schools for every child, hospitals, homes for seniors, and more. And we turned that care for the family outward, as well, to the greater human family; all children of the same parent. We did for the larger society all the acts of love we had done for each other. We kiss knowing we can be blessings to the world, and still be there for our family.

Our family – with whom we share history, memory, and roots grown over thousands of years. With whom we share destiny, vision, and goals for the days and years and generations to come. With whom we share community, responsibility, and moments of our lives today. We are connected in a way that makes it natural for us to embrace when we come face to face.

And tonight is the night so many of us would be hugging. And kissing. And shaking hands, as we bring one year of life to a close and a greet a new one, for which we have high hopes and important prayers. We are together via livestream – and I’m grateful for that – but it’s different, and I will miss those beautiful smudges this year. There is a hole where our hugs would be…. And the chance to fill it.

But how? By filling the space now between us with an extra measure of what binds us together. By wrapping our arms around those things that make us want to hug each other in the first place; the things that make us family. Our shared past and path, our tradition and our mission.

We can embrace Judaism in new ways, with new energy – and that may mean a journey for some of us, as it did for Sarah Hurwitz, former presidential speechwriter, and author of (long title alert!) Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life - In Judaism (after finally choosing to look there). Hurwitz reconnected with Judaism when she took an intro class to fill some time after she went through a breakup. She had largely left her Judaism behind decades earlier, after a Jewish childhood that would sound pretty familiar to many of us who were raised Jewish - Hebrew school, services on the holidays, stories that became harder to believe as she got older. She writes, “I signed up [for the class] less to fulfill some existential longing and more to fill a couple of hours on a Wednesday night that would otherwise have been spent feeling lonely in my apartment. But what I discovered in that class utterly floored me.”

She writes, “I had always thought of myself as a good person, but the Jewish ethics we studied set a much higher bar for honesty, generosity, and basic human decency than I had ever thought to set for myself. Once I actually understood the purposes of the holidays and life cycle rituals, they struck me as beautiful and profound, honoring the lessons of the past, sanctifying moments in the present, and conveying deep moral wisdom. Seen through adult eyes,” she writes, “the whole sensibility of Judaism spoke to me - its intellectual rigor, its creativity and humanity, its emphasis on questioning and debate. This wasn’t the stale, rote Judaism of my childhood. It was something relevant, endlessly fascinating, and alive.”

Hurwitz found herself distanced from the social life she had known, and decided to reach out to Judaism. In that act, she found an embrace that makes the ones shared with people even sweeter. It’s an embrace that adds depth to life even where it doesn’t seem lacking. It’s an embrace that raises the bar for the way we interact with everything and everyone in our world. She says, rightly, that we don’t need Judaism to be good people. But through it, we can be great people.

As we enter a new year, distanced from one another, what might that kind of embrace of Judaism look like for us? The forms it could take are limitless. It could be engaging in some form of Jewish study - in classes learning opportunities through Wise, reading one or more books on Jewish topics, seeking out Jewish-themed tv shows, movies, or documentaries. Your rabbis would love to make recommendations! Or to hear them! And if, as we sometimes hear, you feel you don’t know enough to start participating at this point, don’t worry. It’s never too late, and no experience is required for participation. In fact, participation is the way to gain experience, and comfort. Perhaps this will be a year of more learning; of finding the beauty, profundity, and relevance that Hurwitz found. Of seeing our Judaism anew, through adult eyes.

For others of us, this could be a year of experimenting with religious observance - joining in for worship on Shabbat or holidays. It’s never been easier to get to services than it is right now! Everybody gets a good parking space! Perhaps this moment’s distance leaves room for you to embrace Shabbat in a new way - or some way if you haven’t before or haven’t in a while. To feel our family’s unique rhythm of time, and connect briefly, regularly, with things that are different from the usual; things that refresh our souls; That “sanctify moments and convey deep moral wisdom.”

Maybe some of us will hug Judaism tightly by making this a year of doing, rooted in that deep moral wisdom. We might explore new ways to live up to our calling to increase justice, mercy, and wholeness in our world. As our country and community struggle with the unjust effects of racial bias, maybe embracing our mission will help us find ways not simply not to hate, but to actively oppose people who do, and systems that operate unequally, and never to stand idly by while our neighbor bleeds. We can’t hug, but we can embrace our own groundbreaking, history-making teaching that we are all created in the image of the divine - all sacred - and we can help fashion a world that has come to know what our Talmud teaches - that no one’s blood is redder than anyone else's.

We can turn outward to the greater community, sharing our family’s greatest treasures - our moral teachings, ethical standards, demand for decency. We can share those things to help fellow citizens vote, as so many Wise Temple members are doing already; to protect our planet, to feed, to shelter, to heal. Here, too, the possibilities are limitless. But imagine all we might have to celebrate next time we’re together - how we’ll embrace - if we fill the space between us this way while we’re apart.

Can you be good without Judaism? Sure. Can you find fulfillment and wisdom elsewhere? Of course. But in her book, Hurwitz relates the case Rabbi Jonathan Sacks makes for us to embrace the thing that is uniquely ours. Imagine a library filled with books describing values you could embrace and lifestyles you could choose. You’re free to pull any book off the shelf. If you like it, you can read other books on that topic or by that author. If not you can put it back and pick another. But imagine if on those shelves, you came across a book with your family’s name printed on its spine.

Sacks continues: “Intrigued, you open it and see many pages written by different hands in many languages. You start reading it, and gradually you begin to understand what it is. It is the story each generation of your family has told for the sake of the next, so that everyone in this family can learn where they came from, what happened to them, what they lived for and why. As you turn the pages, you reach the last, which carries no entry but a heading. It bears your name.”

The hugs, kisses, and handshakes that we were accustomed to are missing tonight, but the precious bond that pulls us close is here with open arms - reminding us that am Yisrael chai - the family of Israel lives. It’s right here, inviting our embrace, awaiting the chapter we’ll write in our family’s story between now and the next family reunion. Shana tova! (blows kiss to camera)