Rosh Hashana 5786 - Sermons

Rabbi Miriam's Rosh Hashana sermon - delivered Tuesday 23rd September 2025

Losing the 'we'

In Morocco, Gibraltar, Turkey, Israel, America, India, and here in the UK - I’ve eaten in the homes of Jews I’d never met. Families opening their doors to a fellow Jew, a traveller. Add Chabad into the mix and the list of countries doubles.

Sometimes there were differences. Particularly memorable was being slapped on the shin by an elderly woman in Turkey when sitting cross-legged, because exposing the sole of your shoe towards someone in Turkish culture is the height of rudeness.  In Israel, a kibbutz host declared that all Jews outside Israel were failures and all non-Jews antisemitic. I remember shouting in my pigeon Hebrew “patuach et ha rosh”, literally “open the head”, intending to ask him to open his mind... but which was probably interpreted as my wish for his execution.  And finally, in a home in Gibraltar, Harris and I rose to help clear starters from the table, at which point the host gestured for Harris to sit down again with the words “why are you doing woman’s work?”

Misunderstandings, prejudice, even casual misogyny  -  yet also achdut, brotherhood, and achayut, sisterhood. A sense of family that transcends differences.

But in this past year, I sense something has shifted. In the first year after October 7th, we lost our innocence about safety among non-Jews. But in the past year, I feel we’ve lost our innocence within our own Jewish world.

A new spectrum of views on Israel has opened, more complex than the old binary. Inside Israel itself, the scale of protests against the government and war mean it’s no longer a simple case of loving Israel meaning we support everything Israel does. Indeed, many people within Israel and beyond feel that it is fellow Jews who endanger us greatly at this moment. The nuance is difficult for the outside world to grasp, and deeply destabilising for Jews too. 

With Sunday’s announcement that the UK is recognising a Palestinian State, I fear we will be divided even further. Some will interpret this as antisemitism in the heart of our government. For some, no, this will make progress towards a two-state solution. For some, this will be helpful pressure on the Israeli government. Some will support the idea of a Palestinian State, but not the way it has come about.  The manifold nuances will all be strongly held. 

And those who’ve spoken publicly on issues - whether in unwavering support of Israel or in harsh critique - have been torn apart by other Jews. Online, the words are brutal: self-hating Jew, kapo, or colluder with genocide. Daggers thrown in all directions.

It feels like we’ve lost the “we.” Communities fractured. Organisations paralysed. Families split-siblings are unable to sit in the same room, I even heard of two brothers physically fighting. Suspicion everywhere: What has this person said about Israel? Who are they with? Can they be trusted?

What are we doing? What good can come from this? Ethical stances matter and we must not be uncritical. But what are our moral compasses if they tear apart our community from within?

So here, on Rosh Hashana 5786, how do we respond? How can we reclaim achdut and achayut?

Because one thing unites us all right now: pain. We are all grieving. We are all afraid. We are all worrying about what this moment means for the Jewish people.

And thankfully, the very structure of Rosh Hashana helps us.

In a few moments, we’ll hear the shofar. Rambam calls it a wake-up call to return. It sounded at Sinai. According to Isaiah and Zechariah, it will sound at the end of days. It was blown to announce festivals, to go to war, and - most beautifully - Moshe used it to gather the people. The shofar is the sound of gathering.

And we do gather, instinctively, at this time of year. Every synagogue is full. As Rabbi Alan Lew wrote:

“Our need for each other is immense. We heal one another by being together. We sense that we are part of a larger spiritual unit, one that has expressed meaning and continuity for three thousand years.”

The Mishnah says that on Rosh Hashana we come before God like a flock. The Gemara debates whether like sheep or like soldiers. Either way, while judged as individuals, our worth is bound up in the collective.

That’s why our prayers are in the plural:

• אָנוּ / אֲנַחְנוּ – we

• אָבִינוּ מַלְכֵּנוּ – our Father, our King

• זָכְרֵנוּ – remember us

• וְכָתְבֵנוּ – write us

• אָשַׁמְנוּ – we have sinned

• And daily we say שְׁמַע קוֹלֵנוּ – hear our voice, and בָּרְכֵנוּ אָבִינוּ כֻּלָּנוּ כְּאֶחָד – bless us all as one.

  
  

This season insists we approach God through the collective, through am Yisrael.

So my call this Rosh Hashana: hold onto your moral views, but treat every Jew as family. Invite them in. Break bread with them. Even if their views are objectionable.

At Pesach, educator Mishael Zion wrote of families breaking apart. Children refusing seders if Israel is mentioned. Relatives dreading conversations with family member who either support Bibi or reject Zionism.

He recalls the “rebellious child” in the Haggadah, accused of separating from the community - yet still invited to the table. The text says הַקְהֵה אֶת שִׁנָּיו – blunt his teeth, take out the bite.

How do we blunt the bite of offensive views? Mishael suggests looking for the shared value beneath.

“It sounds like peace is very important to you. Peace matters to me too - we differ on how to achieve it.”

Or: “I see your fear for the Jewish future. I share that fear, though in a different way.”

Finding the shared value makes space for each other at the table.

So when we leave shul today, let’s bring achdut and achayut into our Jewish conversations. A simple chag sameach to someone we don’t know - or don’t agree with. A handshake. A smile. A willingness to stretch, to sit with discomfort.

Those who know me know I often speak about compassion for the other - for non-Jews, for Palestinians. Today, I ask for compassion for each other. A simple, old-fashioned message: a Jew is family. Someone we welcome, even when we argue.

And like family love, this doesn’t mean uncritical love. But it does mean unconditional love.

This year, we may have lost the “we.” But Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur give us tools to regain it. The shofar gathers us once again as one people, struck by a sound that has always pierced Jewish hearts.

Moshe used it to gather us. Today we use it again. And with it we pray: שְׁמַע קוֹלֵנוּ – hear our voice. בָּרְכֵנוּ אָבִינוּ כֻּלָּנוּ כְּאֶחָד – bless us, Father, all of us as one.

Shana tova – may it be a sweet year, a year of life, a year of joy, and above all, a year of peace.

Rabbi Miriam's Rosh Hashana sermon - delivered Wednesday 24th September 2025

The Shofar and the Self

A friend of mine got married recently and, as is traditional, she offered to pray for other people on her wedding day. “You know”, she told me, “nobody asked me to pray for world peace. They asked for their deepest hopes. For health. For a baby. For shalom bayit - peace in their home. For a life partner. For financial security.” At this time of year, when we ask Hashem to inscribe us in the book of life, I imagine that everyone here will have their minds on deeply personal hopes and struggles, dreams and regrets. 

Yesterday I spoke about the Jewish community and how I feel we have lost the “we” in the past year, and how these Yamim Norayim, these awesome days, might help us reclaim it. Today I want to shift from the communal to the personal. 

Yesterday I spoke of the power of the shofar to gather the Jewish people together. But today I want to consider how it pierces the soul of each individual. 

The Rambam says that the shofar’s blast is as if to say:

"You that sleep, stir yourselves from your sleep, and your slumbering, emerge, examine your conduct, turn in repentance, and remember your Creator!” 

The shofar, the wordless sound, is here not just for us, but for you and me as individuals.

I’ve been thinking about the connection between two deeply personal aspects of this time of year: On the one hand, our dreams and desires for ourselves in the coming year. The health, shalom bayit, financial stability… And on the other hand, our personal journey of teshuva, of return to God, of improving unhealthy habits and becoming our best selves.  

At first, I thought these two aspects might even conflict - self-interested wants vs a self-effacing effort to change our ways for the better. 

Now I realise how wrong I was. These are two aspects of the personal on Rosh Hashana - they are certainly not in conflict. Nor are they disconnected aspects of Rosh Hashana just sitting there alongside one another. 

Instead, our deeply held desires and our teshuva process are deeply connected. 

There are three stages to this. 

In stage one, we accept that hopes and wants are a deep part of ourselves. Desires are not something to be ashamed of, but something which connect us to who we are. Ratzon, want or desire, even connects us with God. Over and over, our prayers say the words “yehi ratzon” - May it be God’s desire. Just as God desires, so do we. 

A stronger word than ratzon even, the word yetzer can be a positive thing. Even the yetzer hara, the so-called “evil inclination”. In the Talmud, and this is such a cool text (from someone with a very cool name): Rabbi Nahman bar Samuel bar Nachman said: [...]

"And behold it was very good" (Genesis 1:31)

This refers to… the yetzer hara! But is the yetzer hara really “very good”?!—[Yes!] Were it not for the yetzer hara, a person would not build a home, or marry, or have children, or engage in business.[23]  

The yetzer, which I’d translate as “human drive” more than evil inclination, is actually what makes the world turn.  Stage two is about a reframe of the word teshuva. Teshuva, we are often told, means repentance. Repentance is feeling remorseful and changing ways. But teshuva comes from the root shuv meaning to return. And many of our great thinkers have described it as a return to a true self. 

Rav Kook, the great 19th/20th century mystical thinker, wrote of the different levels of teshuva, finally reaching the following:

"The highest teshuvah is born from a sudden gleam of the universal good—the divine goodness that flows through all worlds, the living light that sustains existence...The goodness within us is nothing less than our harmony with the whole. How, then, could we live torn away from it—fragmented, distorted, scattered like dust without weight?

Teshuva, for Rav Kook, is seeing and rejoining the goodness of God, which unites all of creation. That is teshuva. Not remorse and beating our chests. That is only a means to an end - the end of returning to the good and true and Godly. We, buffeted by the stresses and pressures and rush of the modern world, are scattered like dust without weight, lost from the gravitational pull of what is good and true. 

The messages we receive daily really don’t help us. One of my pet hobbies is looking for how religious language is repurposed with secular messages. Once you start looking out for these, you’ll see them everywhere. So the word sin… is used to advertise desserts (complete with devils with horns). Revelation… is in fact the name of a hipster coffee chain in London. I once drove past a wall decorated with the word “truth” in huge, curly letters. “Wow” , I thought, “a church with really cool branding”. But alas, I turned the corner and “Truth” was in fact a barber shop.  And my favourite, discovered on a “Dr Bronner’s 4 in 1 peppermint soap (you maybe will be able to tell that this was in America) was the following claim:

“Absolute cleanliness is Godliness! Teach the Moral ABC that unites all mankind free - instantly 6 billion strong. Remember! The only difference between the brave man and the coward is the brave man has an ideal to fight for”.

Actually, that last phrase might be the only thing on an entirely bonkers label with some substance.  

But you get my point. In a world where “Absolute cleanliness is Godliness” and Revelation is coffee, we realise that the messages we are bombarded with daily, work hard to take us far from what really matters. 

Teshuva is the return to the things that really matter. This is what this time of year is asking of us. This is what the shofar is waking us up to. Remember what truth really is. What sin really is. What revelation and Godliness really are.

And so the connection between our deep inner yearning and teshuva, is this same process, but at the place where the external meets the internal. This time of year asks us to remember our true essence, to get in touch with our very core - who we really are at our very hearts. Maybe who we were as a small child. Or who we are with the identities that matter most to us. We are a parent, a child, a spouse, a Jew, a citizen of the world, a human created in the image of God. 

And so stage three is that when we connect with this essence, which is part of Hashem, which is part of the unity of creation, then what we will want, will align with the changes we want in our lives.

Prayer plays a big part in this. Tefillot connect our aspirations for ourselves to a higher source. We grow in our connection to God because we ask God for things in our lives. And the verb to pray, l’hitpalel, is a reflexive verb - because prayer is personal, and changes us too.

In a few moments, we will hear the shofar, the wordless sound which says so many words. Which speaks to each of us in a different way. I once heard a shofar blower in Jerusalem, Michael Kagen, who with his shofar could make the sound of the wailing of the sirens of Yom Hazikaron, the laughter and crying of children in kindergarten, the sigh of the old, the cry of the bereaved, the rise and fall of a missile siren, the wind blowing in the trees. 

It was amazing but the truth is we don’t need a shofar blower to be able to do this, and Jonny should feel no pressure! Because the shofar will naturally sound different to each of us, with each of the personal hopes and dreams we bring today, with each of the personal journeys of return we are each on.

Because yes, Rosh Hashana is communal, but it is also personal. 

May the shofar awaken us to return to our true selves, to come home, to come to the place where our deep personal desires are aligned with our personal goals.