Shalom Temple Beth Shalom,

I am so looking forward to celebrating our High Holy Days together as we approach 5787! To prepare for our upcoming High Holy Days, I have been meditating on the traditional psalms we focus on during this preparatory month of Elul. During my reflections, I keep coming back to the instruction in Psalm 31: “So love God, all you faithful; God guards the loyal…Be strong and of good courage, all you who wait for God.” This psalm, and my colleague Rabbi Karyn Kedar’s collection of poetry, “Amen: Seeking Presence,” inspired this prayer for our TBS community as we enter this new year together.

L’Shanah tovah,

Rabbi Rose

A New Year's Prayer for Our TBS Community

God, hear our prayer.

We pray for the soul of our synagogue.

May the words we speak inspire.

May our outstretched arms embrace and understand.

May our hearts widen this community,

and may we kindle a joy that catches, that spreads, that will not stay quiet.

May our heimish little Vero Beach shul

walk toward the future with open hands:

for good, for life, for love.

We pray for those who lead us,

that they find the spiritual strength to move past discomfort and disagreement,

toward the growth our future asks of them.

We pray for our members,

that we feel held by our own togetherness,

we small-town Jews,

and that this ruach, this spirit of belonging,

gives us the confidence to open the door wider still.

We pray for our children and our families,

that they hold fast to learning and to connection,

especially when it grows hard,

because they will know we are holding them.

We pray that our hearts do not harden

against the ignorance, the arrogance, the hatred in our midst.

Let us not surrender to cynicism, to apathy.

Let us instead reach for each other as fellow children of Israel,

and let today's actions be the proof of tomorrow's hope.

May we find strength in our faith and in our community.

May we strengthen our resolve

to be messengers of peace and of healing,

bringing comfort to the disenchanted, the unaffiliated, the broken-hearted among us.

God, we pray for the ruach of this community,

that it grow, that it flourish, with creativity and vision.

Our little shul, growing stronger,

proof enough of goodness and of miracle.

May we be strong, and may our hearts have courage.

For us and for our children. 

As this new year opens before us:

For what we can mend in ourselves, there is t'shuvah, turning.

For what we can mend in our community, there is t'filah, our prayers united together.

For what we can mend in the world, there is tzedakah, our hands at work.

So let this be the year we turn, we pray, we give and let our little shul, page by page,

help write a beautiful Book of Life

for the Holy One to read.

I sit here wondering why God placed me here. What is my purpose?

As I prepare for the High Holy Days and look over my past year, I think about what I could do better. The same thing keeps popping up: I need to be better at speaking up for the Jewish people. Why has this been so hard? Why does it feel so scary? After all, I am a Jew and a cantor rabbi. Would it not be expected that I would stand up for my own people?

When I was called to Judaism, I was very young, Catholic and knew nothing about Judaism or the Jewish people. I have often told my conversion story, saying that most people looking in at my life would tell you I was a very devout Catholic, and that would be true to a certain extent. I loved being Catholic. There are many things about Catholicism and Christianity to love.

However, I feel Catholicism, much like Orthodox Judaism, is very black and white, and if you follow the rules, life can be simple. But life is not simple. When people ask me why I converted, I always go to the practical, easy answer: I had become disenchanted with Catholicism, began searching and eventually landed on Judaism. That is true. But what I do not talk about is the divine calling I had.

Judaism, especially in Reform Judaism, deals in the practical, or maybe a better word is the tangible or actionable. We deal in Torah (study and education), avodah (worship, prayer and service of God) and g’milut chasadim (acts of loving-kindness and charity). We very rarely deal in ruchaniyut (spirituality).

Like with most people, my conversations with God are very one-sided, but it has never stopped me from talking to God. Although God does not speak to me in the same way that you and I may have a conversation, God does speak to me in other ways.

There have been three times in my life when I feel God has spoken to me.

The first time was when I heard Kol Nidrei for the first time. I was at my in-laws’ Conservative congregation. I had just begun my “official” studies for conversion, although I had been studying on my own for some time. I knew zero Hebrew, so I did not know what the words meant. I had my eyes closed and was deeply focused on listening to the chazan chanting.

As the Kol Nidrei came to an end, I heard one word coming from both inside and outside of me. The word was “yes.” I grabbed my mother-in-law’s hand and looked at her. She smiled and said, “I understand.” My heart was racing, and yet there was this complete calm.

The second time was when I had finished all the studying for my conversion, and it was time to make it official. I went before a beit din, a Jewish court of at least three rabbis. This is generally a formality.

In Reform Judaism, the convert comes before the beit din once. Traditionally, this happens three times. I came before the beit din three times. The first two times I was rejected, as is tradition. Even though I knew it was a formality and I would be accepted at the third beit din, being rejected did not feel good, and I began questioning whether I was doing the right thing.

The whole process of conversion had really upset my parents. My mom, seeing how distressed I was, kept trying to convince me that if it was this difficult and upsetting, maybe it was not the right thing to do. My soon-to-be mother-in-law kept telling me that making a decision such as this should not be easy, and Harry, God love him, said he would support me and love me no matter my decision.

As I struggled, I realized that this was between God and me, so I knew we would need to have a conversation. I talked and talked and talked and got nothing back. I thought, okay, God must be telling me this is not the right decision.

I called the head rabbi of my beit din to set an appointment to talk. I planned to tell him that I was not going to convert. As I waited in his office, I had my eyes closed and was having yet another conversation with God.

I was saying, “Now that I am making this decision not to convert, please help guide me to what my purpose should be. Where do I go from here?”

Then, again like the first time, from both inside and outside of myself, I heard one word: “difference.”

My eyes popped open, and standing in front of me was my rabbi. He had a smile on his face and said, “Let us talk.” Needless to say, it was not the conversation I had planned, and the next day was my final beit din, and I was accepted into the fold.

The final time I heard from God was the very first time I sang on the bimah. I had been officially Jewish for almost two years. I was on the bimah as part of a class Harry and I had taken, and the class was leading the Erev Shabbat Service. My part was to sing the Kiddush.

In that moment, I asked God, “Who am I to have such an honor?”

This time there was no word, just a sort of whisper that fell over me and a sense of complete calm and knowing that this is what I am supposed to be doing.

When I think about these three instances, I reflect on what was happening at those moments.

The Kol Nidrei is about asking God for forgiveness for all the vows or promises we have made and not fulfilled. What does this mean? Throughout the rest of the year and especially in the ten days leading up to Yom Kippur, we are supposed to make amends to the people we have wronged. This is the practical or tangible side of Judaism. We must first do the work before God can forgive us.

But what of the vows we make in silence, to ourselves or to God? If we do not fulfill those vows, no other human knows. Only God knows. This is the essence of Kol Nidrei.

In that moment, without knowing the meaning of the words, somehow the essence had reached my soul. There was an understanding, and God affirmed it with “yes.”

In the moment when I was about to give up on being Jewish, I reached beyond words, beyond the practical, tangible process of becoming a Jew and asked for my purpose. The answer was “difference.”

As a Jew in the position of leading a congregation in sanctifying Shabbat, I once again reached out past the task and past the words and asked, “Who am I?” I got the answer in the calm: this is who you are.

As I ask myself how I can be a better person in the coming year, the answer I am getting is to stand up for the Jewish people. I am also receiving the answer to why God placed me here and what my purpose is.

I am here to take in the essence of prayer and “yes,” to understand it and pass it on. My purpose is to make a “difference.” As someone who was once Catholic and is now Jewish, I am in a unique position to not only make a difference in our Jewish community but in our community at large. I am a cantor, and I am a rabbi, another unique position for standing up for our people.

We like to use the phrase “God works in mysterious ways” as a way of explaining the unexplainable. But I think God is pretty direct if we listen. It is when we do not listen, which is most of the time, that God resorts to the extreme so we have no choice but to listen.

During these High Holy Days, my wish for all of you is to listen, not just with your ears. Push past the words, the melodies and the tangible. Find your ruach (spirit), reach out to God with it and then Sh’ma: listen.

TEMPLE BETH SHALOM | tbsvero.org