WELCOME 5784
SERMON September 16, 2023
I want to start tonight by inviting everyone to just close your eyes, take a breath, and put out your own wish for a good and sweet new year. What are you hoping for in the new year? For your family? For this community?
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Welcome to Temple Sinai as we celebrate the start of the year 5784, or taf shin peh dalet - Tashpad in Hebrew. In Hebrew, letters also carry numerical values, and so there is a rabbinic tradition of looking at each year in terms of gematria, or the way the numerical values connect this year to other words to see what might be shaping this year. It’s sort of like a Tarot reading, only with the AlefBet.
In gematria, 84 is also the numerical value of “ha-edah” or The Congregation. This is one of the most common words the Torah uses for community of Israel, close in meaning to ‘Am Yisrael” or the people of Israel, “HaEdah” is the assembled community, much as we are assembled here today.
You are “the Edah” and so may this year be a year of community, of coming together , both here, but also that we might come closer together with the half of the world’s Jews that are living in Israel, and that they might find a way through the current divisions that are threatening to tear the nation apart and find a way forward as HaEdah, Adat Yisrael.
Eighty-four is also the numerical value of yod-dalet-ayin or “to know.” This is both intellectual knowledge and intuitive knowledge. May this be a year where we grow in knowledge, for to be a Jew is to be a lifelong learner. I hope this year you will all commit to some Jewish learning by studying here with us, listening to a Jewish podcast, or reading books connected to Jewish history, thought, literature – it doesn’t matter. Let our Judaism become thicker, deeper, less peripheral and to do so we must grow in knowledge - May 5784 inspire us to that.
Of course, In the Bible yodea also means a different kind of knowledge, as in to know someone Biblically, so may 5784 be, for those of age, a year of blessing in consensual sensual Biblical knowledge.
Interestingly, the only numerical equivalent to 784 that I could find was Methuselah, and I’m not sure what to make of that, but let’s interpret it to mean we are only as old as we feel in this new year.
But the numerical meaning that sticks out to me is not from the Hebrew, but from the Arabic numerals. The first two numbers 5 and 7 , and the last two numbers 8 and 4 both equal 12, the number of tribes in Israel. This could mean a year of balance, of finding balance in our lives and balance in our communities and nations. But 12 – 12 could also mean a year of continuing and increasing tribalism, polarization, and division.
In the American community, in the Israeli community and in the Jewish community, “HaEdah” , we face unprecedented pressures that threaten to divide us and tear us into factions. We know that the rabbis teach us that the Temple was destroyed not because of the Romans but because of Jewish factionalism and fanaticism, from the inability of the Jewish people to come together in compromise and consensus.
What the High Holy Days remind us of is that it is up to us and the choices we make to determine whether it will be a year of increased division or balance. Each of us makes that choice, and we are accountable for the choices we make. Will our actions and our attitudes lead to more balance or will they lead to more division? Will we go to our corners and cling to our sense of self-righteous certainty or will we let our fierce and passionate hearts be open to the call of compromise and consensus? Be open to at least listening for the humanity of those we strongly disagree with?
Let’s pray that this year 5784 be a year of finding balance, of growing in knowledge and of coming together as a community. Let’s resist the powerful call of tribalism and moral certainty, and instead upon ourselves the spiritual risk of listening for what we share, that we might act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.