Before we are born, we contain the knowledge of everything in the world,” says Rabbi Samantha Natov this Erev Rosh Hashanah. “Life, then, is a process of remembering. The best we can do is to strive to bring holiness into this dance of life as we heed the ancient call home. Let’s take these High Holy Days to remember who we once were and who we want to be.
On Yom Kippur, in the absence of an official response from the Reform movement to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon’s recent criticism of Judaism as “divisive” and Jewish intramarriage as “a ghetto of two,” Rabbi Hirsch summarizes where the movement should be, and explains that progressive Jewish thinking today tends to mistakenly deemphasize Jewish particularism in favor of universalism when both are important.
On Kol Nidre, Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch reflected on his 30 years as a rabbi and how we come to develop wisdom and faith: “The world is bigger than any one of us. This realization that so much of what I do cannot be brought under my full control is the beginning of wisdom. And only after we have failed over and over again can we cherish life’s successes. This is when we develop that thing called faith. Not a rote recitation of religious doctrine – but a deeper devotion that seeks to affirm life despite its hardships, unfairness, injustice and finality.”
“If what some people mean by ‘religion should stay out of politics’ is that we should never engage in the social challenges of our times – never speak about the here and now, but only the hereafter – then it is something that Judaism cannot accept. We have a moral obligation to speak about, and act within, the political process,” said Rabbi Hirsch, who, in his Rosh Hashanah sermon, discussed the moral role of religion in politics.
Rabbi Hirsch urges American Reform Jews to establish and fund a stronger progressive movement in Israel to counter the intensifying religious extremism of the country’s ultra-Orthodox monopoly.
Eternity came before us; eternity comes after us. Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch asks: “What is the significance of our brief sojourn on earth?”
