From Erev Rosh haShanah 5782:
“Whether you are a longtime member or visiting for the first time, we’re so glad you are here.
My name is Jodi Kushins and I’m the current chair of this small but mighty kehilah. Our community prides itself on joyfully connecting our contemporary lives with the ancient teachings we have inherited. Through communal events and worship experiences like those we’ll be sharing over the next ten days, educational programming, taking action on issues we care about, and sharing personal celebrations and struggles, we strengthen each other in our individual and collective Jewish journeys.
5781 was a year. A full cycle through the Jewish calendar in Covidian times. My first year as the chair of our small but mighty kehilah. We learned a lot. We witnessed a lot. We let go of a lot.
As we stand in the space between the year gone by and the head of a new year, I’m feeling truly blessed. Blessed to have a safe home and loving family. Blessed to turn on the faucet and have water pour out. Blessed to be learning more and more about our wisdom tradition which offers us radical lessons for living through hard times and remind us that we can do hard things. I feel blessed to have a job doing something I feel passionate about, for our farm, pets, friends, and this community.
Blessed isn’t a word I used much until recently. I don’t think I really understood it when I was younger. I didn’t experience gratitude in the ways I do now that I am older. And just when I started to feel it, to start living into the word, catching myself saying it without sarcasm, it seemed like the wrong thing to say. Afraid of being taken for some religious fanatic, I tended to keep my thoughts to myself.
In a recent meeting of my Salaam Shalom Sisterhood, we discussed terms, objects, figures which we felt had been taken from us. For example, Could Muslim sisters say “Praise Allah” in public without being taken for a terrorist? Could Jewish sisters wear a Star of David on their necks in non-Jewish spaces? We talked about our desires to reclaim these things and our fears about doing so. As I reflected on that conversation and prepared for the Days of Awe, I contemplated the idea of reclaiming blessings.
As I think about our Kehilah, how we are evolving, all we’ve done, and what that has provided us this past year – despite so many challenges – the term comes up again and again. We are blessed to be growing when other communities are shrinking. We are blessed to have a young Rabbinic student with us to share the holidays and help focus our attention and direct our teshuvah in new ways.
This process of t’shuvah, of turning in, invites us to count our blessings but also to ask how we have missed the mark. It takes time and courage. It also takes compassion. Over the next ten days as you search your soul for places in need of improvement, remember to massage the dark spaces, and imagine ways to break them open to uncover the shards of light, the blessings, that lie within them. How can we work, even in the smallest ways in our daily lives, to heal the broken world we’re living in? And what are the larger projects we want to commit ourselves to?
Being here tonight is a first step. We need each other, perhaps now more than ever. So often over the past 18 months we have prayed alone. Tonight we come together to welcome the new year collectively. So take a moment to look around and silently thank one another, with your most smiley eyes, for your company.”
