5787 Berith Sholom Leadership's Yom Kippur Speech

Good morning, tzom kal, g’mar tov! Welcome to Congregation Berith Sholom, we’re so glad you came!

Voluntary communities like synagogues work best when they are pleasant to be around, and that means, when we all feel both that we’re being appreciated just for being here, and that our contributions are received with gratitude. Thank you just for being here - it’s wonderful to daven in a room that feels crowded with intensity and anticipation! And to the choir and to those helping enact our service and to our rabbi and greeters and teachers and babysitters and breakfast organizers, thank you for all your work! We see it and appreciate it!

Keeping this place humming takes a lot of work, and those that do the work need to be fed and clothed and housed. Thank you to everyone here who helps to feed and clothe and house our synagogue’s workers! As the people who use and enjoy this building and the spaces it holds for us, and the beautiful courtyard garden that adjoins it, we know that keeping those things functioning well takes work as well, and those who do that work also need food and clothing and shelter. Thank you for valuing the work that’s done for our enjoyment of Berith Sholom.

Part of valuing that work is certainly giving the fruit of our own work, money, to support Berith Sholom. I hope you all will think about the opportunity that financial support represents to make our community more welcoming, pleasant and sustainable. Support from our members (and from the whole State of New York, and the whole Country, and from workers around the world who developed and refined new industrial processes) allowed us to install solar panels out on the roof behind me that provide most of the electricity we use here. Imagine what new things could be achieved with a little more work and more money. An air conditioned sanctuary, that could by the same equipment be heated in the winter without burning anything, reducing our sinful combustion of fossil fuels. A sense of confidence that our elevator will continue to work into the future! An expanding Sunday school with creative lessons and pleasant classrooms! New songs for the choir! Speakers from near and far to share their wisdom and experience.

But not only this. Isaiah is about to tell us to shatter every kind of slavery, to bring the wandering beggars home, clothe the naked and distribute our bread to the hungry. We do a little of this here (and of course we all collectively do more of it through our tax dollars), but we have a long way to go to approach the level of a lot of our peer organizations in the Capital District. Berith Sholom does a great job providing warm, tasty and nutritious meals to 150 unhoused people once every year. Folks here do an amazing job supporting one of the families that arrived in Albany after our war in their country ended in failure. Members of our synagogue are founders of a farm that feeds hundreds. Imagine what could be next - how Berith Sholom can contribute to a community where everyone has access to meaningful work, safe housing and sustaining food.

Money is not all we need from each other. In the book of Jonah, a book that pays attention to laborers, one of the first things Jonah does is pay his fare on the ship by which he means to escape his obligations. It doesn’t work! Paying our dues isn’t an escape from obligation, it’s an ingredient in the bread we dedicate to the support of our community. Sometimes it’s the yeast, and sometimes it’s the flour, but it’s never the whole story, or even the most important part. What we need here is each other, in all our generosity and capacity, and our needs and dependence on each other.

With your support, Congregation Berith Sholom can be not only warm, inviting, quirky and progressive, but also confident, outward looking. A pillar of the community that helps transform our community

Thank you again for being here today. I look forward to a productive and collaborative 5787 with all of you.