“God Inspired, Human Empowered” Rabbi Zecher’s Erev Rosh Hashanah 5786 Sermon
Rabbi Elaine Zecher
Erev Rosh Hashanah, September 22, 2025
Temple Israel of Boston
Many years ago, when my son, Jacob was two years old, he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. (He is grown and now happily married, so all is well.) But it was not when he was just a little toddler. It was the day after Halloween. His blood sugar number was so high it wasn’t even registering, and he was close to being in a dangerous medical situation. It was a harrowing and difficult time that changed our lives dramatically, especially since his younger brother was born 18 days later. As you can imagine that year was tough, but we soon found a new normal.
The next year, I worried about how we would manage, I dreaded Halloween, a major holiday in our neighborhood. In preparation, I had gone to the neighbors and given them parts of a toy he had really wanted so that we wouldn’t have to deal with the candy. We were navigating a new path every day. Our neighbors were happy to oblige, but something else happened that I did not expect. When my son arrived at their doors and in his cute little 3-year-old voice said, “Twickortweet,” every neighbor gave him an additional toy or sugar-free something. I will never forget those thoughtful and premeditated acts of kindness that helped to soothe us as we faced raising a child with diabetes.
Since then, with other diagnoses and losses, we, along with all of you, have learned that there is much in this world we cannot control.
In fact, when we look around at the world, our hearts and souls churn with the sadness and the challenges people are facing.
None of us seek these moments or experiences. We are thrust into a kind of journey not of our choosing. No one wishes for it. No one wants to suffer loss or watch others endure agony. Covid, poor leadership, war, gun violence in schools, diagnoses of illness. So many events happen that are out of our control. And when they occur our minds race with questions.
Levi Isaac of Berdichev, a rabbi of the 18th century, facing his own serious illness, asked:
Eternal Presence of the Universe, I am not asking You to show me the secret of Your ways, for it would be too much for me. But I am asking You to show me one thing; what is the meaning of the suffering I am presently enduring, what this suffering requires of me, and what You are communicating to me through it?
Could we ever figure out a way to justify moments of anguish and pain? I don’t think so. In the book of Job [i], after suffering endless tragedies, Job challenges God to explain God’s actions. Out of the whirlwind God responds by telling him no one, not even Job could ever comprehend the universe and all its array. This Biblical book teaches us that we cannot know the course that our lives will take since we are but a small, piece of a much larger picture.
We will never know the order or direction of our lives for sure. No matter how many wise relatives, friends, psychics, or fortune tellers we have at our disposal. No one knows. We move forward in the direction that we choose but sometimes circumstances that we can’t foresee or even be prepared for choose us.
It is a human response to wish away the challenges before us, but this doesn’t remove them from our lives. We can’t possibly prevent these events from occurring and recurring. It can feel lonely. But our responses, and the responses of others, can help ease us to move onto new paths because we are not alone. During these High Holy Days, we can and should pause and examine our journeys thus far.
One of the prayers, Unetaneh Tokef, that is part of what we say during Rosh Hashanah and again on Yom Kippur, poses questions about the volatile and unpredictable nature of existence. Who will live? Who will die? Who by fire? Who by water? Who will have money and who will have none? Who will be hungry? Who sated? Oiy!
These words do more than summarize our worst fears for they speak to realities of life. Our lives are fragile, tenuous, and finite. However, we are not passive recipients.
The ideas in this prayer, Unetaneh Tokef, move us to act. The prayer provides three transformative ways to face the challenges before us: Turning toward our better selves (Teshuvah), Turning toward God in Prayer (Tefilah), and turning toward others with Righteous acts (Tzedakah) transcend the harshness of what might happen.
They can’t reverse what happens. Doing Teshuvah, participating in Tefilah, and engaging in Tzedakah cannot in and of themselves guarantee such safety. Bad things happen to good people.
Yet, these three actions together lead to something else. They calm, perhaps even soothe, our responses by guiding us in a new direction to deal with life’s severities.
How is this possible?
The response comes from a traditional Jewish paradigm which teaches that the world is balanced by two of God’s characteristics: Midat hadin, God’s attribute of justice, and midat harahamim, God’s attribute of mercy.
The concept of Midat Hadin, God’s judgment, may recall some traditional view of God sitting on high, judging our actions and hopefully admitting us to the Book of Life. This is overly simplistic.
My friend and colleague, Rabbi Nancy Flam, has offered another way to view this idea.[ii]
Perhaps din, God’s judgment, is simply the basic, pure reality of the nature of life. That is, we are all born and we all die, some too soon. In between birth and death, we experience challenges and triumphs, sorrow and joy, illness and health. This is what Midat Hadin, the attribute of justice, means. We are human and our physical bodies are vulnerable. We cannot control every twist and bend in life’s path. We may participate fully in life’s joys, but our lives remain finite and someday, hopefully a long time from now, our bodies stop working. These are the limits of our world and of being human. It is not God’s doing but the finite quality of our humanness.
Midat Hadin acknowledges that as human beings, we sometimes endure suffering, suffering that we may never understand or be able to explain. Yet, there is a counterpart to the dreadful pain of suffering which shows us how to soothe the misery. God’s other attribute, that of rachamim, (or rachmanis, as we have heard in Yiddish), means mercy, unconditional kindness, and it teaches us that there is a way to face our suffering.
The Hebrew word, rachamim, forms the same word for womb, rehem, the most protected place of all. So when we refer to God’s mercy, we are appealing to God in the image of a loving parent who created us all, and has compassion for us all, who reaches out with a warm embrace, brings us in to comfort and to reassure us in our darkest moments. The same God who made limits, din, in the world, also teaches us and demands from us kindness and mercy, rahamim, which is limitless.
Divine rachamim manifests itself through humane interaction. In other people’s most difficult moments, even when we feel there is nothing we can do, we can discover kindness and mercy in ourselves. Such moments of crisis remind us that although we all bear life’s burdens, if we, like God, reach out to one another and because of our pain and despite our pain, we create rachamim, unconditional kindness, we bring God’s mercy to life, and in doing so, we bring life to each other.
What a difference small gestures of kindness offered without the expectation of recognition can make. Kindness given unconditionally has the power to transform unconditionally. It can make any path manageable.
I have often heard someone speak of someone else and why they like that person so much. Without exception they cite an instance when that person made them feel they mattered because of an act of kindness they offered. It was never elaborate or difficult to do, but its impact was gigantic. Appreciation for such acts has no limit.
For any ill person or for anyone in need, amid the suffering or despair come these acts of goodness. It is during these traumatic moments in life when small gestures of rahamim make a powerful impact. A note, a text message, a delivered or home cooked dinner, an invitation to walk together, a short visit or a hug can ease the Din, the painful limits and boundaries of our existence. Frances Peabody once said about doctors “the secret of the care of the patient is in caring for the patient.” How true it is in the medical field. How well it applies when we care for each other.
We cannot end the suffering that individuals endure. We cannot even understand why bad things happen, but our behavior toward one another can affect our outlook and understanding. It makes us feel less alone in the world.
Rachamim has the power to bring out more rachamim, compassion. Kindness makes kindness, for others’ actions lead us to be kinder, to demonstrate rachamim, as well. Despite the finite limits of nature, within each of us is an infinite well of rachamim, of compassion.
And so we continue a journey in life together, a precarious one, filled with the unexpected and the unintended, but it is how people show kindness to us, how they let us know that their hearts and their actions are reaching out to us that makes these bends in the roads manageable. We can do the same for others.
My husband and I can tell you that it was the compassion, kindness, and tenderness of those around us that enabled us and our sons and then also our daughter to navigate every challenging path.
As we move from Rosh Hashanah and then into Yom Kippur, let these days help us understand that Teshuvah, Tefilah and Tzedakah transcend life’s harshness by guiding us toward rachamim, God inspired and human empowered. Although we may not always be able to make sense out of life’s direction or prevent all of the suffering that we and our loved ones must endure, let it also teach us that rachamim, unconditional kindness, is a great compass.
As the prophet Isaiah [iii] proclaimed God’s word during the Jewish people’s suffering in exile:
בְּרֶ֥גַע קָטֹ֖ן עֲזַבְתִּ֑יךְ וּבְרַחֲמִ֥ים גְּדֹלִ֖ים אֲקַבְּצֵֽךְ
“For a little while, I forsook you, but with vast rachamim, with vast kindness and love, I will reach out and bring you in.”
There are moments when we too feel forsaken, but through God’s rachamim and the great rachamim within us all, we can reach out and bring one another in.
So may it be.
[i] Job 38-40
[ii] “The Angels Proclaim It”. CCAR Journal Rabbi Nancy Flam
[iii] Isaiah 54:7