Turn us to you, O Lord, and we shall return, Renew our days as if it were in the beginning. 

This famous line is also a popular refrain in many prayers connected to the High Holidays.  On the High Holidays, we return.  Many Jews who do not attend prayer services during the year return for a couple of days to connect.  Jews who are away from their families for a year may return home for a holiday meal.  Together, families who are distant from each other during the year sit together.  They return to times of the past, remembering what it was like to sit with their family when they were children.  They return for Yizkor to remember their family members long gone.  Jews all of types return during these days, and this Shabbat, we hope to expand the circle of returning.  

Last Rosh Hashanah, I spoke about the voice of the voiceless, the voices we don't hear during the year but are present.  One of these voices, is the voice of the person struggling with addiction:

"We have relatives who struggle with addiction...and we have relatives who have died from addiction.  I know I have, and I'm sure, many people in this room have as well...

One of our congregants got in touch with a friend, Lisa Hillman, who was a well-known development professional in the Jewish community and was also a broadcast journalist.  Through her years, she held a secret from her community, and even her rabbi:  she had a son who struggled with addiction.  She wrote a book about her son Jacob's struggle with addiction called Secret No More: A True Story of Hope for Parents with an Addicted Child.  In the book, she speaks about the shame she felt, but the shame started to lift once she gave voice to her son's struggles and her own.  He wasn't weak, and she was not a bad mother; he was suffering from an illness, and so was she.  Both she and her son Jacob addressed the rabbis in our community, our local Jewish high schools, and an open speaking event.

CSK co-sponsored the event, and the biggest surprise was to see who came.  The room was filled with Jews who drove from all over South Florida, who had never stepped foot on our Federation campus, who probably haven't been in a Jewish setting since their bar or bat mitzvah.  In the Q & A portion of the evening, the audience thanked her profusely for giving them a voice, and many tears were shed.  There were also parents with their kids with them.  I will never forget one mother who stood up and said to Jacob, "Scare my kids straight!"  Lisa's son Jacob answered, "Here's the truth, my friends, the friends who gave me my first drink, my first hit off a joint, my first pill, they are fine now.  But I'm not, because I have a disease."  It's not a weakness, it's a disease.  There are voices out there that we have to listen to, that we have to acknowledge, that we have to care for, that's the role of a synagogue, that's what we do as a holy congregation."