Rabbi Orenstein will be on sabbatical for the first six months of 2025, and as they say, “when the cat’s away the mice will play!” We’ll play NICE (maybe)!! I’m looking for some fresh ideas for our casual Erev Shabbat services. Aside from our annual Freedom Shabbat, which will take place on Friday, January 17th, let’s think up three or four more ideas. Here are two suggestions (and I look forward to hearing any “cool” suggestions you have to enhance our Erev Shabbat services): ‘Jews in Sports Shabbat’, and ‘Rock Through The Decades Shabbat’ (using the music of 8 decades—but you’re going to have to help me past 1980!).
I’ve asked Peter Yarrow (Peter, Paul and Mary) if he can make it on an Erev Shabbat sometime this spring as I’ve written a new PP&M Shabbat service. I hope to end these services in June with a ‘Shabbat Under The Stars. Please give me some other ideas, and I will do my best to put them to use.
As for me, I lived to take another trip around the sun when October the 7th 2025, my birthday, came and went. Many of the hostages are still in captivity, and we have little or no idea how many of them are still alive. Actually, we have all been taken hostage by the anti-Semitic events that have taken place, and are still taking place, all over the world, and even more-so by the reactions by the governments of so many countries that embrace these events. The emotions that filled my life last year have abated, but only slightly, and my anger at the demonstrations on college campuses and in the streets of New York still rages. But even with all the death that surrounds Israel and its neighbors, I chose to write about living life. It’s easy to dance, laugh, sing and rejoice when things are great, but we have to make sure that we are there for each other in the worst of times; times when we think that we can never move forward.
The lyrics from Sting’s “Fragile” echo in my mind. Rabbi Kiel and I first sang these 20 years ago when we used them on Rosh Hashanah, and Rabbi Orenstein and I spoke the lyrics again on Rosh Hashanah 10 years ago:
“If blood will flow when flesh and steel are one Drying in the color of the evening sun Tomorrow’s rain will wash the stains away But something in our mind will always stay Perhaps this final act was meant to clinch a lifetime’s argument That nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could For all those born beneath an angry star Lest we forget how fragile we are” On and on the rain will fall - Like tears from a star On and on the rain will say - How fragile we are…”
At any moment, and without notice, we are gone; that’s how fragile each of us are. U’Netaneh Tokef, the prayer that Cantors chant on all three days of the High Holidays-spells out our fragility fairly graphically: “… Who shall perish by water and who by fire, Who by sword and who by wild beast, Who by famine and who by thirst, Who by earthquake and who by plague, Who by strangulation and who by stoning…” That having been said, take these to heart: Life is too short to wait. Don’t put anything off for tomorrow. NOW is your time. You change the world by holding someone who is grieving, by hugging someone who is at their lowest moment. Life is all about great memories, because in the end it’s all the intangibles that remain. Steel rusts, wood rots, and our bodies turn to dust, but beautiful experiences live forever.
Always try to appreciate the beauty around you and give what you can so that you leave the world a little better than you found it. Harken to the words of The Beatles at the end of their album, “Abbey Road:” “And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make!” One afternoon, almost 30 years ago, our son Wayne was driving back to college, I hugged him and said: “I love you, Wayne.” “Uh huh,” was his reply. “Why don’t you ever say I love you?” I asked. “It’s understood,” he replied. “I don’t wanna understand it,” I said. “I wanna hear it.” So tell the people around you how much you love them and how important they are, all the time. Live, laugh and love as hard as you can, because in one tenth of a second, in a blink of an eye, your whole world can change, and you’ll never see it coming. I pray, EVERY DAY, that Hashem guides our world leaders on the path of justice, the path of truth, and the path of love.
And to my CBI family and all of your loved ones: HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
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