Shabbat Shalom ~ Vayelech 2025

Talk for Erev Rosh HaShanah – 2025 – The Emotional Map of these Holidays

Once a few years ago, I was visiting one of my minister friend’s churches in Norfolk. He was giving me a tour of the place and as we came to their social hall, he said, “Oh, we can’t go in there just now. We are hosting an AA meeting.” My reaction was amazement – people who attend this church will come here to go to an AA meeting. I can’t imagine that members of a synagogue would attend an AA meeting at the shul.

Several weeks later I ran into the minister and told him how wonderful I thought it was that his parishioners came to AA at their church and how I didn’t think Jews would share that kind of vulnerability with the community. The minister chuckled and said, “Jeff, those weren’t our people attending that meeting! Of course not! I mean the second A in AA is anonymous – you are not really supposed to know the people there in any other context and certainly going shouldn’t force you to admit your problem to the community. Hopefully, that comes in due time, but, no. My people tend to go to meetings at John’s church and John’s people tend to go to meetings at Jack’s church, and for whatever reason everyone seems to love the meetings at Christ and St. Lukes – I think they have really good coffee or something.”

This all made a lot more sense to me, but it also made me a little sad. I had this ideal of a religious community as one where folks could be vulnerable together. Vulnerability is, I believe, a religious ideal. One goal of religion is true connection, so how can we have that if we are too guarded, if we are unable to show up as our true selves. 

Being vulnerable is difficult. Especially in a culture that equates vulnerability with weakness. But, as the master of emotional research Brene Brown, explains, “Vulnerability is not weakness. I define vulnerability as emotional risk, exposure, uncertainty. I’ve come to the belief that vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage – to be vulnerable, to let ourselves be seen, to be honest…. Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.” “Vulnerability is not weakness; it is our greatest measure of courage.”

The question of showing up for these services and an acceptance of vulnerability has been on my mind lately. Several people have come to me over these last few weeks and said, “I don’t feel up to coming to High Holiday services this year.” This remark was inevitably followed by a remark about Israel not living up to the person’s expectations or fear about the way Jews are being perceived in this country, or the Jewish community not living up to expectations in defense of other Jews or in defense of other people, or just plain anger over the state of the world. 

And I know that the people who came to speak to me aren’t the only ones feeling these feels. These are intensely emotional times and there is an instinct to avoid feelings that are so intense. But avoidance? That may be the most harmful thing of all. In her book, “The Dance of Fear” Dr. Harriet Lerner writes, “It is not fear that stops you from doing the brave and true thing in your daily life. Rather, the problem is avoidance. You want to feel comfortable, so you avoid doing or saying the thing that will evoke fear and other difficult emotions. Avoidance will make you feel less vulnerable in the short run, but it will never make you feel less afraid.”

The only way to really manage our fear and anger and sadness and anxiety, whatever is causing them, and find a way forward, is to face it. And that is what these High Holidays are truly about – facing our most difficult emotions.

I have come to understand over the years since that conversation about where people go for their AA meetings, that while synagogues may host fewer of those, we may understand more about vulnerability than anyone. These High Holidays are, in fact, this brilliant model the rabbis created for helping us face the most challenging things in life and the difficult emotions they evoke. That’s why so many of the themes are so heavy.

Just think about the liturgy we will confront over the next few weeks. 

• “Who shall live and who shall die…” 
• “We have sinned, we have betrayed…” 
• “Remember, oh God, the souls of our loved ones…”
• “Abraham took some bread and a skin of water, and gave them to Hagar. He placed them over her shoulder, together with the child, and sent her away. And she wandered about in the wilderness…”
• “And Abraham picked up the knife to slay his son…”

These prayers, these readings are designed to bring us face to face with some of the most difficult aspects of life – our mortality, why bad things happen to good people, our inability to live up to our best selves, our sense of isolation from God and perhaps from others with whom we should be close. The mahzor is a veritable compendium of the difficulties of being human, paraded before us, drawing us into vulnerability, encouraging to face our most difficult emotions, even the ones that make us want to slam the book shut and go home, even the ones that make us want to avoid showing up in the first place.

But the High Holidays don’t leave us adrift there. They don’t simply force us into confrontation with our most difficult emotions. They also help us process them, remind us by bringing us into a community that all of us are facing every one of these things. Even if the details may be different, that we are vulnerable is the same. The prayers remind us that though we are mortal, our lives do have meaning, and that part of us, in relation to our loved ones, is immortal. They remind us that though we may be vulnerable, we are not powerless to make a change – there is strength in our soul, in our togetherness, and in our connection to God and God’s guidance. The High Holiday prayers encourage us to shake off the malaise of our human condition and see ourselves as little less than angels, garbed in white, no longer in need of physical nourishment, we can, at least for a day or two, exist on a purely spiritual and righteous plane.

And where does that leave us in the end? If we follow the emotional ride of the holidays, they leave us with…joy. Not happiness, which is just sort of a cheap delight – but joy. Joy is earned. Joy is a virtue. Anne Robertson explains in her book, “The Gifts of Imperfection,” that joy comes from the ancient Greek concept of chairo. “Chairo is something, the ancient Greeks tell us, that is found only in God and comes with virtue and wisdom. It isn’t a beginner’s virtue; it comes as the culmination. They say its opposite is not sadness, but fear.”

When we get these holidays right, when we allow them to help us overcome avoidance and lead us on this journey of facing our fears and hurts, our shame and hopes, we give ourselves the ability to once again feel joy. Yes, even at times like this, even when it is hard to know if we are even allowed to feel joy, allowed to celebrate, allowed to be proud of who we are, by facing all those things holding us back, trying to understand them a little better, and hopefully accepting them, we unlock the ability to feel joy. 

It is why we complete each High Holiday musaf service with the joyful hymn, “Hayom.” “Today! Strengthen us. Today! Bless us. Today! Empower us. Today! Arrange goodness for us,” and so on. And why we sing the prayers of Neilah in a joyful major key at the end of Yom Kippur. Not because our fears no longer exist, not that our emotions are no longer difficult, but we now know that we need not bear them alone. We know that we can move forward without shame.

Dear friends, it is a privilege to embark on the journey of the High Holidays with all of you here tonight and with the many more who we will see over these next ten days. Together may we find the strength to face the things we have been avoiding. May the world be redeemed from darkness, and may we stand here in this room ten nights from now before the open ark feeling a joy well earned and the togetherness of a vulnerable community. And let us say amen.