Yom Kippur

Finally, at 4 am this past Thursday morning, after weeks of soul search and reading the eloquent and poignant words of those who have stood here before me, (some of which I have included in my remarks) I sat down to write, believing that with some thought, a lot of chocolate and coffee, I could do this. I had an 8:10 class to teach that morning so Danny's advice of when all else fails, try scotch, wasn't an option. Although my fingers flew across the keyboard, I found myself on Nordstrom's website looking at shoes. This is the most expensive speech I have ever written and at least for me, the most meaningful.

Life decisions and life defining moments. We all have them and they are mixed with pleasure and pain. We may not experience them the same way, but there are some commonalities in our feelings and shared experiences. Your child is born, you meet your beshert (not necessarily in that order), you lose a loved one, you become a grandparent (god willing that will happen to Gale and to me and to anyone else who is a grandma wannabe). Like many of you, I can tell you with great clarity about the first time I laid eyes on each of my children, or on the person who became the love of my life.

There are less personal life defining moments, things that are inscribed in your head and your heart forever.For my parents generation it was listening to the radio when FDR died, for mine it was where were you when JFK was assassinated or when the Challenger exploded. And I remember coming into this very sanctuary one Shabbat morning to tell Rabbi Eligberg that Israel's first astronaut had been lost in the Columbia explosion. Vivid memories of those events have changed us forever and have changed how we see the world.

Since the High Holy Days are time of reflection on linking our past to our future, I'd like to share a few of the life defining moments that my parents made that have allowed me to stand before you today.

My mother, of blessed memory, was born to immigrant parents at the turn of the 20th century in Watertown SD. We used to tease that she and her twelve younger siblings and parents were the only Jews in town. She didn't grow up in a particularly observant home nor was she ritually knowledgeable. Yet when she moved to Washington DC to become a government secretary and work for the new deal, she moved into a boarding house for Jewish women. Truly a life defining decision.

My father, on the other hand, was born at the turn of the century in the tiny remote shtetle of shatsk. He and his five siblings and parents were not the only Jews in town, even when his father and two of the children left for America, believing that a short time later, they would send for my grandmother and the four remaining children. But the war and the revolution intervened and after 8 long years of separation, by the summer of 1920, when word arrived that they should leave immediately, they faced a dilemma. They had lost their mother to typhoid less than a year before and had not finished saying Kaddish. Although adults in Jewish years, they were still children who had barely survived starvation and the thought of going to America where there was food and their father, was enticing. So, they asked the Rabbi what to do and he told them to stay until they finished saying kaddish, she was their mother, and it was a life sustaining decision, and perhaps a lesson to listen to your Rabbi, for the closest train station had been overrun by a variety of armies and factions and everyone attempting to enter the station was killed. Word got back to the shtetl and they went to a distant train station and had safe passage to America.

I'd like to say the story continues with my father moving into a boarding house for Jewish women, something he would have loved, but the truth is he had a friend, Shlemchila Goldenberg, who was going with a friend of my mothers and a shiddich was made. Like many of your parents, mine made a life that was built on family, community and Judaism, believing that the three were so intimately and intricately intertwined that one could not exist without the other. Life defining terms, decisions about how you raise your family, what values you teach, and how you model those values. Family meant everyone lived within walking distance including six of my mother's sisters who followed her to DC and lived with us until they were married, often having the ceremony in our home. And Judaism meant we walked the four blocks to shul and all of us were involved in some way. Anything else was not an option.

When Paul and I moved to NJ 27 years ago, we wanted our young son to start Sunday school and so I shul shopped and decided that convenience had its benefits. I would join the closest shul that offered some of the things I valued. I have searched for the right word to explain that experience and still have not found it, but appalled is one of them, when, as some of you know, a local conservative synagogue told me that I and my son Joshua, Tzvi Hersch Yehoshua, named for my father, couldn't join because I had married out of our faith. That was truly a life defining, perhaps life altering moment, for it kept me away from my roots, from my passion for conservative Judaism, for many years, going from shul to shul to shul, until I came home to B'nai Tikvah just 9 short years ago. Today, I am almost thankful that they turned me away because it brought me here and although I am not a native of B'nai Tikvah, I, like you, have found sanctuary in this building and with you.

Think about what brings you to here because we each have our reasons, we each have made life defining decisions about our involvement and for many of us, it is a simple decision, we are Jews and this is what we do.

We have a mezuzah on our door, we have a bris or a naming, we crush a glass at a wedding, we toast 'l'chaim' and we focus, sometimes obsessively on food and always have more than is needed, because we are Jews. We may even look at names in newspapers identifying with pride those names that are Jewish and feel a sense of shame when a Jewish person has done something wrong. Today we come together to atone for our sins. Why? Simple. We are Jews.

There is a story about a man who liked to collect unusual signs - and one of his favorites was an ad that said Eddie's Tatoos, done while you wait. The irony of this is so interesting, there are clearly things you can't come back for and pick up when they are done. That's true about tattoos and that is true about Judaism. You can't drop off your commitment or have your Judaism delivered conveniently to your mailbox, or texted to your cell phone. We need you here spiritually and physically, and we need your enthusiastic personal participation and contribution to make this synagogue what we dream of becoming.

Just as you plan and provide for your home, we need your commitment to plan and provide for B'nai Tikvah. Many of you drove onto the beautiful new parking lot in the last week and as you will read in the next HaKol and heard from Jeff last night, it cost more than we anticipated and quite honestly, more than we can afford. Each year, we spend a lot of money fixing and repairing an aging building, just like you do in your own home and some of us do to our aging bodies. We do this because you have decided to commit to having a Jewish community to call home for you, for your children and their children.

I am always amazed when someone resigns their membership in CBT and gives as their reason that there is nothing here. Last year Danny told the story of a Jewish man who was the only survivor of a shipwreck and is marooned on a small deserted island. Years later when rescued there were three structures he had built on the island and when asked about them, he said that big one in the middle is the shul I'm a member of, the one over there is the shul I go to, and the one down on the end is the one I wouldn't be caught dead in.

I read about a synagogue in Detroit that has revised their membership structure with the promo of "Make us the shul you don't go to, for just $250 a year you can proudly boast that you don't step foot in our shul". Membership doesn't include a seat in the minyan or other services but does allow entrance into the Kiddush club provided that you complain loudly about the shul, the board and the clergy. Other benefits include the right to throw someone out of his or her seat during the High Holy Days but you can't sit in it yourself. Now clearly that is not the direction we want to go in as we search for new ways to attract members, and although I am somewhat entertained by their creativity and humor, there is a piece of me that sees this as so contrary to how we live to support a Jewish community. At B'nai Tikvah, we want to be the shul people join and come to.

I believe we are at a very exciting juncture for B'nai Tikvah and we have never been more alive than we are now. One only has to read the HaKol or the weekly announcements to catch a glimpse of all that is happening and all who are doing such wonderful work inside these walls. We have started a Shabbat lunch program where we get a chance to sit and share a light lunch together as a community after Shabbat morning services. The Rabbi recently suggested that we compile a list of all our fundraising efforts so everyone knows what is going on and some of the efforts can be coordinated - a simple idea that will help us make things work better. For example, I had no idea that you can order a challah through the nursery school and your order helps them raise money. And as you saw when you walked in the building, we have begun a new fund that will support programming that comes under the title of L'dor Vador.

There are so many choices to make and opportunities to take advantage of, all of them equally important but they cost something in time, in $ and in commitment. There is a story that about a President, a treasurer and the budget committee working late at the Synagogue trying to figure out all the money problems the shul was having. As they struggled with developing a fair and practical budget, suddenly a Genie appeared and said Madame President as a reward for being elected president I'll grant you one wish but everyone in the room has to agree on that wish. It can be anything. Well the President thought for a moment, everyone looked at the spread sheets, and then the president took out a map of the Middle East. She said, Genie do you see this land of Israel, our wish would be that Israel would have lasting peace. No more war, no more conflicts between Israel and the world, no more dictators saying that we should all live in peace but Israel has no right to exist, no more homicide bombers and no more rockets and no more fear. We need to do this for ourselves and for our children and their children.

The Genie took a step back and said "I don't know, the Middle East has been at war for 100's and 100's of years. Many great genies before me have tried to grant peace in the Middle East and could not. To be honest, I am not that great of a Genie. Give me your second choice. Again, they all looked at the spreadsheets, they shuffled through the papers and the President looked to the very wise treasurer to speak for the group, for she had been told, when in doubt, ask the treasurer. And the treasurer spoke and said Ok Genie our wish then is to have all the accounts in order so we can have a balanced budget without ever again raising dues or fees, and so we can pay our employees what they deserve, pay for the new parking lot and a new roof.

The genie looked down at all the files, saw all the problems and pondered for a moment then said "On second thought let me see that Middle East Map again".

We are a kind, generous, and loving congregation and we rise to the occasion when someone is in need. Just last week 25-30 people responded to the request to help the Wolkoffs prepare their home for shiva, people drove hours to Scranton to stand with our Rabbi as he buried his father. And, I have received a multitude of phone calls and emails from our congregants and from those in Savannah asking what they can do to help. We are a devoted and caring group of people. And we make life decisions so that we can provide that model for our children.

Keeping on that theme, let me end by sharing with you my wish for the coming year, based on a piece from the Women's League listserve written by Cantor Aliza Cotton. I wish:

• That all American Jewish children named David, Rebecca, Sara, Joshua, Isaac, Rachel, Benjamin and Daniel will know about the Biblical and historical characters whose names they carry.
• That all American Jewish children named Ilana, Adina, Ari, and Tamar will be able to converse in Hebrew when they meet Israeli children who share those names.
• That all American Jewish children will know and remember their full Hebrew names (ME, the child of my FATHER and my MOTHER).
• That all American Jewish children will see their synagogue as a place to celebrate their Jewishness with other Jews.
• That all American Jewish children will see their Jewishness as something to celebrate and will think of Jewish ritual as something comforting and reassuring, as opposed to restricting and burdensome.
• That all American Jewish children will come to shul so often that they never have to sit down and learn prayers.
• That all American Jewish children will know, as my parents taught me, that if you ever find yourself in a strange city, find the shul and you will no longer be a stranger.
• That all American Jewish children will grow up and share my dreams for the next generation.
• And, that you will help make these dreams come true...

Ruth Anne Koenick