Blog

Here we are on the dawn of the New Year. There have been many messages over the last few weeks reflecting on our isolation from one another as it pertains to the holidays. As I stood and sang in our empty sanctuary for Selichot, I imagined you in your homes occupying rooms where you watch TV, cook or sleep, or sit outside to sip wine and entertain. You have turned your homes into sanctuaries.

So many of you have stories about how our beloved sanctuary was an important space for a milestone in your lives. One space, a thousand stories. Now our community shares one story, but it is taking place in a thousand spaces. The home-sanctuaries we’ve created this year and that we will dwell in for our Days of Awe will hold our experiences and stories of this time within their walls forever. We will never look at them the same way again. It’s not just the room where we watch football, it’s the room where we watched our rabbis. It’s not just the room where we schmooze and have drinks, it’s the room where we confessed our sins and asked for forgiveness. It’s not just the room where we held seder, it’s now the room where we said Kaddish. The collections of memories that are accumulating in our homes are both ubiquitous and unique, mundane and holy. Between the walls captured in photos of family dinners and birthday parties will now reside the memories of prayer, repentance and remembrance.

I hope and pray that whatever space you sanctify for the upcoming Holy Days is filled with hope, awe, reflection, gratitude and most of all love. With all of the liturgy we will transmit to your screens in the coming days, we hope you know and feel the love that comes with it. Thank you for inviting us into your homes and sharing in our communal story.

Let us all be able to retell the story of these days in good health, in joy and under one roof in 5781.

Shabbat shalom v’Shanah tovah,

Beth