“Everyone is Included,” Rabbi Elaine Zecher’s Shabbat Awakenings

September 4, 2026 | 22 Elul 5786

Welcome to Shabbat Awakenings, a weekly reflection as we make our way toward Shabbat. You can also listen to it as a podcast.

This week and then again on Yom Kippur, we read the same passage from the Torah. Why would we repeat these words so soon? To understand we need to get into the minds of the early Reform rabbis in the late 19th century who put together the Reform Machzor.

Every prayerbook, whether for Shabbat, the holidays, or Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is what I would describe as a spiritual tel. Archaeologists find a mound which has layers of civilizations piled one on top of another. If they were to slice it from the top to the bottom, the excavated strata reveal specific aspects about the people who lived then. Traditional prayerbooks reflect something similar. Each generation makes additions to the liturgy that most often remained. They allow us to experience the multiple layers, but when Reform Judaism started, they took away some of those additions and made other changes.

One significant alteration had to do with the Torah portion for Yom Kippur Day. Traditionally, the section from Leviticus and Numbers about sacrifices and the High Priest’s entrance into the holy of holies in the Temple was recited. The early Reformers had no intention of rebuilding the Temple let alone offering sacrifices again as in ancient times. So they set their attention on another moment of the Jewish story as a replacement to Leviticus: the time right before the Israelites would cross over the Jordan into the land as a message to the generations after them.

Deuteronomy 29:9 and what follows includes the present and the future; all are named in a way that recognizes status and social economic opportunity. In addition, all paths lead to the Divine in relationship and obligation:

You stand this day, all of you, before the ETERNAL your God: your tribal heads, your elders, and your officials — the entire body of Israel —
your children, your wives, even the stranger within your camp, from woodchopper to waterdrawer,
to enter into the covenant of the ETERNAL your God, which the ETERNAL your God is concluding with you this day, with its sanctions;

in order to establish you this day as God’s people and in order to be your God, as promised you and as sworn to your fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
I make this covenant, with its sanctions, not with you alone,
but both with those who are standing here with us this day before the ETERNAL our God and with those who are not with us here this day. (Deut 29:9-14)

Hearing these powerful words on Yom Kippur morning, we hearken to a period in Jewish history when the people were perched prepared for a new life. A new generation held the responsibility after the 40 years of travel in the wilderness. It was a moment of inflection when much was possible yet more was unknown.

We, too, are perched as we prepare to enter into the space of T’shuvah and the hard work it demands of us. The ancients had a perspective of the outside looking in from the land of Moab. We will cross over into many possibilities but also unknown territory that will demand from us that we hold the guidance and principles of Torah to help us find the way toward our own strength and resilience. May we aspire toward moral clarity and the celebration of the rich rituals around these holidays from our tradition.

Shanah Tovah and Shabbat Shalom! שנה טובה ושבת שלום

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Rabbi Elaine Zecher