00:26:14.130 Marc Baker: Okay Erev Tov
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173 00:26:07.980 --> 00:26:14.130 Marc Baker: Okay Erev Tov. Good evening, everyone. And thank you so much for joining us tonight, this is awesome already. 174 00:26:14.610 --> 00:26:23.160 Marc Baker: My name is Marc Baker. I'm the President and CEO of Combined Jewish Philanthropies and while I wish we could be together in person. 175 00:26:23.550 --> 00:26:31.650 Marc Baker: This is just another example of the new ways that we are creating community and connection during this strange and challenging time. 176 00:26:32.580 --> 00:26:37.410 Marc Baker: For so many of us, the High Holidays are one of the most meaningful times of the year. 177 00:26:38.190 --> 00:26:49.680 Marc Baker: To come together in person with our whole community, with our families, for many of us. These are the days of the year when we attend synagogue, sometimes the only days of the year, kind of like a pilgrimage. 178 00:26:50.370 --> 00:26:59.610 Marc Baker: And for many of us, these are the days when we look forward to meals and time with family and friends and this year, for most of us, things are going to be different. 179 00:27:00.510 --> 00:27:14.670 Marc Baker: How we celebrate the High Holidays will be yet another disruption to our personal lives, our ritual lives, our community, to the rhythm of the Jewish year that forms are Jewish memory and shapes our identities. 180 00:27:16.110 --> 00:27:28.980 Marc Baker: At the same time, there's unprecedented opportunities to access Jewish content learning and prayer, to connect with community and to one another in new ways. And tonight is just one of those examples. 181 00:27:29.670 --> 00:27:35.460 Marc Baker: I'm not sure we could have pulled this off in person. Actually, especially during the days leading up to Rosh HaShanah. 182 00:27:36.300 --> 00:27:45.240 Marc Baker: So first I want to thank my colleagues, especially Arielle Williams, Carissa Woolf and Rabbi Elyse Winick who made this happen on the CJP end, 183 00:27:45.690 --> 00:27:54.270 Marc Baker: And thank you to the amazing and diverse group of rabbis, leaders and teachers who are with us tonight in one of the busiest and most intense weeks of their year. 184 00:27:54.690 --> 00:27:59.280 Marc Baker: They've come into our homes to share their Torah and words of inspiration with us. 185 00:28:00.240 --> 00:28:12.300 Marc Baker: These teachers reflect the diversity of our Jewish community and the breadth of ways that anyone who wants to find meaning and connection in Judaism and Jewish life can do it here in Greater Boston 186 00:28:13.020 --> 00:28:27.030 Marc Baker: And the fact that we're all together tonight reflects the power of a welcoming, inclusive, caring and creative Greater Boston Jewish community that is stronger because of its diversity and not in spite of it. 187 00:28:27.900 --> 00:28:47.100 Marc Baker: Thank you, all of you for holding our community of communities on your shoulders over these past six months and for your vision, passion and leadership as we celebrate this new year and look toward the future. And thanks to all of you for showing up and choosing to be part of this. 188 00:28:48.180 --> 00:29:00.630 Marc Baker: And by this I mean tonight's Rosh HaShanah Seder, but I also mean our community, the Jewish people, the thousands year old Jewish conversation that is still unfolding today. 189 00:29:01.500 --> 00:29:14.370 Marc Baker: When you choose to participate, when you choose to show up, step up, to give in all of the incredible ways that each of you does. You are contributing your unique voice to this. 190 00:29:15.150 --> 00:29:22.860 Marc Baker: You're helping to build a Jewish community in which every neshamah, every soul, every voice, every human being matters. 191 00:29:23.460 --> 00:29:32.370 Marc Baker: A community in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. You're helping to create a Judaism that is dynamic, creative and inclusive. 192 00:29:33.150 --> 00:29:39.840 Marc Baker: That honors thousands of years of wisdom, practice and tradition, while living out the innovative spirit 193 00:29:40.380 --> 00:29:48.390 Marc Baker: that has not only kept us alive, but kept us thriving, adapting and relevant to our changing lives in our changing world. 194 00:29:48.990 --> 00:29:56.730 Marc Baker: Together, we are ensuring that our Torah is timeless and that we contribute our unique voices, 195 00:29:57.150 --> 00:30:14.370 Marc Baker: our Jewish voices, to a human conversation into the most pressing issues facing our 21st century world. That's what you do every time you choose to be part of Jewish community and Jewish life. Thank you. Which brings me to tonight. 196 00:30:15.720 --> 00:30:28.140 Marc Baker: So, while my family does have the tradition of blessing new fruits as simanim, signs and symbols on Rosh HaShanah, I confess that I hadn't heard of the concept of a Rosh HaShanah Seder, 197 00:30:29.160 --> 00:30:38.850 Marc Baker: which it seems comes to us through the Sefardi and Mizrahi traditions. That tells you something about Ashkenazi American Judaism. 198 00:30:39.450 --> 00:30:47.280 Marc Baker: What I love about the formalization of these blessings into a seder, though, is that just like with a Passover Seder 199 00:30:47.940 --> 00:31:00.420 Marc Baker: we're reminded and one of the greatest aspects of Rabbinic Judaism, the shift from a priest-centered and Temple-centered Jewish life to a family-centered and home-centered Jewish life. 200 00:31:01.290 --> 00:31:10.260 Marc Baker: When we celebrate Rosh HaShanah in our own homes, just like when we light Shabbat candles, study Torah, even read Jewish books with our kids, 201 00:31:10.740 --> 00:31:25.290 Marc Baker: We are living the Torah's vision of Mamlekhet Kohanim, of a nation of priests. Each of us are the spiritual leaders and the transmitters of meaning and connection to one another and to our next generation. 202 00:31:26.040 --> 00:31:37.980 Marc Baker: Of course, we acknowledge and mourn the loss of the Temple in Jerusalem. And this year, many of us are mourning the loss of being able to get together in our local synagogues and temples, the way we are used to. 203 00:31:38.820 --> 00:31:52.830 Marc Baker: Yet as it said in last week's Torah portion, we don't need to go anywhere to find our connection to God or to Torah or even to one another, not to the heavens and not across the sea. 204 00:31:53.340 --> 00:31:54.930 Marc Baker: And not even down the street. 205 00:31:55.560 --> 00:32:08.070 Marc Baker: Ki karov eyleikha hadavar, b'fikha u'bilvavkha la'asoto. Because the word, the practice, the teaching, the meaning and the connection are close to you. 206 00:32:08.640 --> 00:32:13.830 Marc Baker: There in your mouths and they're in your hearts to do them to observe them and to live them out. 207 00:32:14.760 --> 00:32:30.780 Marc Baker: Tonight we prepare for the High Holiday season in which we're going to need to bring a little extra intention, a little extra sanctity to the mikdashim, to the sanctuaries that are our homes, our families, our tables and yes, our food. 208 00:32:31.800 --> 00:32:42.450 Marc Baker: The ritualizing of food is a way to turn even a date, an apple, a fish into a means of connection, a powerful symbol of our past and our future, 209 00:32:42.810 --> 00:32:52.560 Marc Baker: our hopes and our intentions for ourselves, our families and for the world that we aspire and commit to co-creating together. 210 00:32:53.220 --> 00:33:10.140 Marc Baker: So I'd like to bless us as we start this seder y'hi ratzon, may we be together, learn together and celebrate together with gratitude and appreciation for our Creator and for the world that renews itself every year and every day. 211 00:33:10.800 --> 00:33:23.850 Marc Baker: And may we affirm our shared ethical and spiritual responsibility to keep playing our parts as creators and repairers. Our community and our world need us right now. 212 00:33:24.600 --> 00:33:33.240 Marc Baker: I'm looking forward to a meaningful seder tonight and wishing all of you a Shanah Tovah u'Metukah, a sweet, happy and healthy New Year. 213 00:33:39.930 --> 00:33:56.280 Hollis Schachner: Hello everybody.