Yom Kippur

Irena Sendler, a Catholic Polish woman in her 30's organized an underground network of dozens of women, a network that communicated by secret hand signals, safe houses and a conspiracy of silence that saved 2,500 Jewish children from a sure Nazi death. As women, they were able to carry children and swaddled infants with a sense of normalcy in a world that was anything but normal. Out of the Warsaw ghetto, mothers handed over their children, choosing who they thought could safely be transported to a new home. Sendler often returned to a home where the parents had disagreed about giving up their child, or a grandmother had refused to let a baby go, only to find the apartment empty as the entire family had been deported. Irena said that before her father died from typhus, he told her that if she saw someone drowning, don't stop to ask questions, you just jump in and jump in Irena did. As an elderly unsung hero, Sendler balked at being portrayed as something special. Instead she said that the first acts of courage in saving a child were when the Jewish mothers and fathers kissed their babies one last time to give them a chance to live.

Half a world away and two decades later, Mildred Loving, wife of Richard Loving, sat down in 1963 to write a letter to the ACLU. With pen and a piece of lined loose leaf paper, she told a story starting with my husband is white and I am part Negro and part Indian. Growing up in rural Virginia, Mildred was courted by Richard beginning when she was 11 and in spite of their segregated community, they fell in love and in 1958, married in Washington, DC. Upon returning to a state that prohibited mixed marriages, three police invaded their bedroom and arrested them, keeping her in a rat infested cell for 5 nights and holding him only overnight for after all, he was white. Back in DC, they knew they could never return home or even visit their families for a holiday or family celebration, so Mildred wrote the ACLU asking if there was some way they could just visit relatives. In 1967, Chief Justice Earl Warren handed down an opinion striking down the Virginia law saying that the freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights. In the years after, Richard and Mildred turned down all requests for interviews, believing that it wasn't their doing, it was God's work.

Something about these two stories, stood out to me as a clear connection to each other and to us as Jews. Their quiet demeanor in helping to repair the world, their strong belief in God, ordinary people, extraordinary acts. Their stories are our stories for one doesn't need a paid ad in the Harvard Crimson to know that people question the legitimacy of the Holocaust, one doesn't need to read that well respected organizations want to add the name of Israel to the list of terrorist countries, nor do we need to listen to the ranting of the Iranian president to know that our history is intertwined with the history of those who are discriminated against by the color of their skin, by who they love and the religion they practice.

I struggled for a while on how this connects to BT until a friend called and joined the annual chorus of "have you written your speech yet". Two cars behind on me on Route 18 she suggested the concept of "it takes a village" and so it is that theme connected to the kindness and strength of others that binds our stories together for when one group is discriminated against, all of us are. For many of us, BT is the essence of "it takes a village" for it takes more than us alone to live our lives, to raise our children, to care for each other when someone is sick, to join together to celebrate a simcha, and to come together when someone dies. We are a communal group and we are a caring community.

This concept was reinforced for me this past year as I share with you two more recent stories. As some of you know, in late January, my daughter in law Lisa, the woman who last year made me a grandmother, who gave birth to the lovely Mackenzie Barbara Herman, experienced a serious medical problem. Although she is fine now, during the first few months after it happened and as recent as last night, members of this congregation ask about her recovery, not always from people I have a close intimate relationship with, not necessarily people who I talk with on the phone or get together with for a cup of coffee, not even just those that I have friended on facebook, but the diverse group of people who make up the village that you and I are part of. In fact, when I could barely get the words out of my mouth for a mishebarach, my friends, the women who populate my personal village, volunteered to say her name so she would be on the list. Each of us in this sanctuary today, has similar stories where the members of this congregation have stood by you, stood for you, and stood with you.

One Shabbat in March, when I returned home from shul, my husband Paul met me at the door to tell me that my long time close friend had died overnight from ALS better known as Lou Gehrig's disease. A young women with two young sons, her death left a hole in my heart and the hearts of her friends and family. Nine years before her death, her husband converted to Judaism. Riki and I had often talked about marrying outside of our faith, as both of us had weathered the emotional and substantive challenges that decision brought to us. When I asked Riki's husband why after so many years of marriage and of life he made this decision, he said: "we have a child and it takes more than us to raise him."

Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon professor who is well known for The Last Lecture said that we cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand and Riki's husband made a life changing decision on how to play his hand. A few weeks ago, I was at my doctor's office for my annual physical. As we talked, she came up with a list of things I should change in my life during the coming year. I told her that her list is far too hard, that I'll never be able to do all of those things in just one short year. She looked at me, this nice Jewish doctor and said: "Ruth Anne, you are president of a synagogue, it will be the longest year of your life." Since I clearly have a little extra time this year, I ask myself how do I want to play this hand I've been dealt. There is a story about Yeshiva University deciding to field a rowing team. As some expected, they lost every race even though they practiced for hours every day. Finally, they sent the captain Morris Fishbein to spy on Harvard, the perennial champions. Morris schlepps off to Cambridge and hides in the bushes next to the Charles River, carefully watching the Harvard team practice. After a week, Morris returns to Yeshiva and announces that he has figured out their secret. His teammates shout "Tell us! Tell us!" and Morris replies "We should have only one guy yelling. The other eight should row." It is interesting how elusive some answers are even when it is right in front of your eyes. And how simple it seems when we all work together with no one being more important than anyone else.

I started thinking about how to play my hand long before I met with my doctor, starting when my mother died in 1995. My father had passed away almost 20 years before and almost all of my family lives in Maryland so I no longer had a place to go for holidays. I needed a place to call home and I found that place here because even though I am not a long time member, I have found sanctuary at BT. I often think about how bleak my life would be if I didn't have this community, this village to be part of, and some of what motivates me to volunteer is a commitment to make sure that this community is always here for you, for me and for generations to come.

This past year the Federation conducted a demographic study of Middlesex County. The voluminous report is rich with information and we learned for example, that there are about 56,000 Jews living in Middlesex County and there are 10,000 children under the age of 18, but only 8,400 are being raised Jewish. I am not suggesting that everyone in this room who can have more children do so in order to assure that more are raised as Jews, although it is certainly an option, but I am suggesting that we work together to enhance our religious school, bring more Jewish children and families in through the nursery school, and that we, as a village, commit to keeping BT the community it is and can be.

At some point our parents, grandparents and those before them, in their own way acted on the commitment to assure the continuity of Judaism- they picked something or things that they wanted to carry into the future. It didn't matter if they were religious or not, conscious of it or not - they handed down something that made Jewish tradition survive in your family and in mine. I know this is true because you and I are here today.

Think for a minute about what it was that your parents and their parents did to get you here today. For me it is filled with things that make me smile and make me cry.