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High Holiday Torah Joseph Meyerho Center for Jewish Experience HIGH HOLIDAY TORAH Jewish Learning from Hillel Professionals and Students 5774 High Holiday Torah 5774 Jewish Learning from Hillel Professionals and Students Dear friends, On behalf of Hillel’s Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Experience, please enjoy this compilation of High Holiday remarks by several students and Hillel Directors. The words contained in these sermons demonstrate the depth and breadth of thought shared with the thousands of students who celebrated holidays with Hillel this year. We thank Tilly Shames, Executive Director of University of Michigan Hillel, who initiated the sharing of sermons within the Hillel professional network. In her words, “I know that I gain so much from our time together and learning from all of you, and in that spirit I am sending along my sermon in the hopes that some of you will send yours as well and we can be inspired by one another during this time of year.” This is the power of Hillel — to inspire each other, to inspire our students. More words of wisdom from our students and Hillel professionals around the world will be shared online. We hope that this will become an annual compilation to inspire reflection and growth during this season. I hope you have had an opportunity to enjoy a meaningful holiday, filled with family, friends and loved ones. Sincerely, Abi Dauber Sterne Vice President for Global Jewish Experience Table of Contents Rosh Hashanah Sermons: “If Not Now – When?” Tilly Shames, Executive Director, University of Michigan Hillel 1 “Being Present” Rabbi Jeffrey A. Summit, Neubauer Executive Director, Tufts University Hillel 4 Yom Kippur Sermons: “The Power of Confession” Rabbi Julie Roth, Executive Director, Princeton University Hillel 9 “The Harmonious Community” Susie Klein, Student Leader, Hillel at The Claremont Colleges, California 12 “Awake and Rise Up to the Moment” Hal J. Ossman, Executive Director, Cornell University Hillel: The Yudowitz Center for Jewish Campus Life 14 “Beyond Fasting: Finding Joy and Community on Yom Kippur” Caroline Kahlenberg, Student Leader, Middlebury College Hillel 18 Rosh Hashanah 2013 If Not Now - When? Tilly Shames - Executive Director University of Michigan Hillel Believe it or not, every year, I appreciate that our High Holidays fall at the beginning of the school year. As much as it may be difficult, I appreciate that we are all challenged with how to navigate these holidays in a secular world with other pressures, distractions of football games, and excitement around us. We may not have power to change the new, build upon what we’ve learned in the past circumstances around us, but we do have the year. And yet, for the Jewish new year, there is ability to choose our actions and acknowledge one critical difference. For us, this is the time of how it makes us feel. We will make choices that year where we have to look back before we feel right for us, for this moment in time. How move forward. we are celebrating the holidays this year is likely different than how we celebrated last year, and During the month of Elul leading up to Rosh will likely be different than how we will celebrate Hashanah, I thought a lot about what I wanted a year from now. to share with you today. I want to assure you that any choice that you make This month of Elul offers us a gift – the is the right choice. My new year wish for you is for opportunity to begin that first step towards the time and space and energy and clarity to make the High Holidays by looking back before these your choices. Be where it feels right for you we can move forward. to be this year. There is a text about Elul that explains that we When the academic year and Jewish new year enter into the month achor el achor – back to back. coincide, they each give us the opportunity to This could be a good thing after the month of Av explore new journeys for a new year. The two are with such destruction and mourning. When we so similar – opportunities to move forward with rest back to back with someone, we lean on one excitement, challenge ourselves to try something another in support. We don’t need to say anything 1 or do anything. We can just lean on one another. So imagine you’ve given yourself the time, space We go about our lives in the same way as always, and permission to stop. What will you ask yourself? maybe even in our silos and worlds that we are What do you need to know about yourself in order most comfortable in. Seeing the world through to move forward this year? I can only offer a few our own lenses and focusing on what is in front suggestions. What brings you happiness? When of us. do you feel most yourself? When do you feel most vulnerable? What do you regret? Who did you Maybe we have turned our backs to avoid hurt? Who hurt you? What are you afraid of? What something that is behind us – ignoring it, not do you need to let go of? Even if you ask yourself acknowledging it, hoping if we don’t see it, it will just one of these questions this holiday season, just go away. When you stand with your back to and reflect on it, you will begin to know yourself. someone it is easy to convince yourself there is no point in turning around because you just assume Our famous quote from Hillel starts with “If I am that the other person isn’t turning around either, not for myself, who will be for me?” How can you and they are going about their own life in their be for yourself, if you do not know who you are? own comfortable way too. It is a very complacent, Only when we truly know ourselves, when we comfortable way of being, accepting the path have reflected on how we feel about the year you are on, and just continuing to look ahead. we’ve had and believe in what we want to change for the year to come, only then can we turn to one However, by the end of Elul, the goal is to turn another and focus on how we act in this world. from back to back to panim el panim – face to The act of knowing ourselves and the will to face. Turning may feel too risky. Maybe we’re too change give us the courage to overcome our comfortable leaning back-to-back. Maybe we’re fear and begin to turn around. too settled in how we see the world in front of us. And maybe we’re afraid to face whatever or And so now that we’ve faced ourselves, and know whoever we know we must turn towards. ourselves, take that first step. What does it look like to turn around? Who is the first person that And yet, this is the time of year where the shofar comes to mind who you wish to face? What do awakens us, shakes us out of our comfortable you wish to say? What do you need to fix? What ways, and inspires us to act. This awakening can you share that will lift you both up, and lift makes us face ourselves, face others, and face up your relationship? What in this world still God: the three steps of the High Holidays. unsettles you that you need to address before you move forward? So let us begin by facing ourselves. How do you even begin? What do you need to do to We may have had our backs to things we wanted face yourself? What kind of space and time do to avoid and ignore in this world. But we also you need? How will you focus on yourself for had our backs leaning on people we may take for a moment during this time of the new year? granted. This is your time to be face-to-face with Will it be by sitting here, in prayer, with your your friends, with your family, with the world. With community? Will it be turning your cell phone people you may have hurt. With people who have off and feeling liberated by the gift of time you’re hurt you. With people who have supported you. giving yourself? How will you make the time to Even with parts of the world that you wish to face yourself? 2 change. Be face-to-face with who and what you name - Israel – Why? “Because you wrestled with want to face in this world. God and with men”. And what does Jacob do? He names the place the “Face of God…because I saw The second line of our famous Hillel quote is “If I God face-to-face”. Only through his wrestling with am only for myself, what am I?” When we turn to himself, with other men, and with God does Jacob face another person in this world, it is no longer reach a point where he declares that he sees God about how we feel about ourselves. That we’ve panim el panim. already dealt with. It is about what we can offer for the other person to lift them up. It is about When we wrestle – when we face ourselves, face what we offer to lift up our world. one another, and face our actions and place in this world – only then can we move forward into our What is so incredible about this time of year is new year.
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