KOL NIDRE NIGHT

            It is no secret that my favorite prayer in tonight’s service – the prayer that I find the most expressive and moving – is the poem that begins כי הנה כחומר – “Like clay in the hand of the potter.”  In seven stanzas and employing seven images, the poet describes the frailty of our existence.  The simile that touches me the most is the image of glass:  Like glass in the hand of the glazier who shapes it or dissolves it at will, so are we in Your hand, great Forgiver …

            For many years I have been fascinated by glass.  When I visit art museums, I delight in viewing their collections of art and decorative glass.  Maybe I am intrigued by glass because my first pulpit was in Elmira, NY, just 12 miles from Corning, one of the major centers of glass manufacturing in the United States.  In fact, I had many members who either lived in Corning or worked for the Corning Glass Works, and Nancy and I made frequent visits to the wonderful Corning Glass Museum.    Or maybe because, as a Jew, the Night of Broken Glass, Kristallnacht, has become one of the saddest days in history, when close to two hundred synagogues in Germany and Austria were destroyed, thousands of Jewish businesses looted, tens of thousands of Jews marched off to concentration camps, and scores of Jews murdered or lynched. Or maybe my interest in glass derives from my involvement in suggesting the overall theme and the specific events depicted in our magnificent stained glass windows (here) in the sanctuary.  Or perhaps my attraction to glass is enhanced by the many wedding ceremonies at which I officiate, all of which end with the groom’s breaking of the glass.

            Yes, glass fascinates me, and I maintain that glass ranks as one of the great technological achievements of mankind.  Not only is it such an excellent non-porous container, but, depending upon how you bend it, glass allows us to see far distant heavenly bodies as well as microscopic particles invisible to the naked eye. 

            My friends, tonight I want to talk to you about glass, because glass, to me, is symbolic of our lives as Jews and is emblematic of our condition as a congregation here at the East Meadow Jewish Center. 

            Let me ask you a question:  what is the raw material of glass?  Glass is made out of sand.  Please keep this in mind: glass is made out of sand.  Now if you take several pieces of glass, bend them a certain way, and place them in a tube, you create a telescope, and with that telescope you are able to see the stars.  Remember that: stars.  I find it interesting that the two primary similes that the Torah uses to describe God’s promise to the Israelites are sand and stars.  For example, God promises Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that their descendants will be as numerous as the sand of the seashore and the stars of the heavens.  Later in the Bible, God reiterates His promise to the Jewish people that they will grow numerous, again utilizing the imagery of sand and stars.  Why does God employ these two symbols: sand and stars?

            I believe that God compares us to stars because each star is a world unto itself.  And so are we.  What God is teaching us is that each of us is important, each of us is a star, each of us is an entire world.  Our actions are important; our deeds do have an impact; each of us can make a difference. 

            I realize that this is sometimes a difficult concept for us to accept; after all, we live in a world of some six billion people. “What impact can I possibly have on this world?” we frequently ask ourselves.  But God and Judaism tell us, “You are important.  You do have an impact, perhaps not on the entire world, but definitely on other people: your family, your friends, your colleagues and co-workers, your acquaintances, the people with whom you come into contact every day.  Your deeds and actions do have consequences.”  And what is true of our actions in general is magnified in the Jewish world.  When you consider that there are probably not more than fifteen million Jews in the entire world, those Jewish actions we do take or in which we fail to engage, do have a profound impact, really do make a difference in determining what the nature of Judaism and the condition of the Jewish people will be in the present and in the future.  I do not want any person here tonight, young or old, to leave this room doubting that you are important to the future of Judaism and the Jewish people.  We rely on you because you are important.  And those Jewish actions which you perform this coming year will profoundly impact not only your life, not only your family, but also the entire Jewish people.  You are a star.  You are a world to us.  You are crucially important to us.

            But on the other hand, the fact that we are critically important as individuals should not lead us to the sin of arrogance and hubris I spoke about on the first day of Rosh Hashanah.  That’s why God compares us also to sand by the shore.  What is the nature of sand?  If you look at sand under a microscope (also made of bent glass), each grain of sand is infinitesimally insignificant.  One grain of sand is of miniscule worth.  But put billions and billions of grains of sand together, and you have a beach, or you have a sandbox, or you have a pile of sand from which to make glass.

             We Jews are very much like sand, the basic ingredient in glass.  Our full identity is manifest only in a Jewish community.  It is just too difficult to live as a Jew all alone; we need the support of the Jewish community.  Can you imagine trying to observe Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur or Passover, for that matter, by yourself, without a synagogue, without other Jews?  Can you imagine a bris, a naming, a Bar or Bat Mitzvah, a wedding, a funeral, or shiva without the Jewish community in one form or another?

            This, too, should teach us a lesson:  yes, each one of us is important as an individual, but we realize our fullest potential when we are part of a community.  And we Jews are members of two societies: the general, secular community in which we live, and the Jewish community to which we automatically belong either by birth or, in the case of conversion, by choice.  We have obligations to both of our communities: to our general, secular community these responsibilities include obeying its laws and paying our taxes; to the Jewish community we owe our allegiance by obeying its laws, supporting its institutions like synagogues, working for the safety, rights, and welfare of all Jews, and creating a world based on justice, righteousness, and compassion.  We Jews have to realize that we must be active components of the Jewish community in which we live, otherwise neither we nor our community will survive as Jews.  We are like a grain of sand: when one grain of sand gets detached from its “community” – the beach, the seashore, the sandbox, the sand pile – it disappears, it gets eroded or washed away.  The same is true of us Jews: when a Jew detaches himself from the Jewish community, he, too, disappears and washes away.  

            For example, all of us know that the college years are dangerous ones for Jewish kids.  There are all kinds of distractions at school, and, let’s face it, that’s when many young people have an opportunity away from their parents to assert their independence and rebel one way or another, including Jewishly.  That’s when all too many of them separate from the Jewish community and try to assimilate or engage in other actions with other people that lead to their further distance from Judaism.  And when that happens, they become like that speck of sand which, when it gets dislodged from its “home,” loses its identity and existence.  We cannot afford to lose these young Jews.  That is why Hillel, Chabad, Koach (the Conservative Movement’s college organization), and Birthright Israel are so important for the work they do on college campuses.

            And just as when too many grains of sand get blown or washed away, the beach or the sand pile diminishes significantly over time or disappears entirely (as happens periodically here on Long Island), so, too, when many individual Jews detach themselves from the Jewish community, we lose not only those individual Jews, but also their Jewish community.  In many respects, that is what has happened and is happening to smaller Jewish communities right here in the United States.  During most of the twentieth century, at least through the eighties, Jews and synagogues could be found in almost any town in the United States, even in the deepest South.  But that is no longer true.  Many of these small-town Jewish communities had been quite vibrant.  People had an amazing devotion to their Jewish community, proudly built and supported their synagogues, frequently created small JCCs, married other Jewish families either in town or in other nearby Jewish communities.  But by the seventies the deathnell of small Jewish communities was starting to toll.  Due to demographic changes and mobility, especially of college educated young adults who were fleeing their hometowns, these small Jewish communities started to die.  I will give you two examples: when I was in rabbinical school 35 years ago, I was sent to be the student rabbi at some small synagogues in the South.  One year I served as the High Holiday student rabbi in Dillon, SC.  By the way, do you know which government figure, who is Jewish, comes from Dillon, SC?  -  It is Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. In fact, when I served in Dillon for the High Holidays in 1974, his parents were the family that housed and hosted me because they were the only kosher family in town.  Unfortunately, the synagogue disbanded in the early 1990s because it had only seven families left.  In 1976 I was sent to an equally small congregation, this one in Kingstree, SC, a town that probably none of you has ever heard of, let alone visited or passed through!  When Nancy and I visited Charleston, SC, two years ago and met a docent at the historic Kahal HaKodesh Beth Elohim synagogue who had had relatives in Kingstree (with whom we had eaten all of our holiday meals because THEY were the only kosher family in town), she informed us that the Kingstree synagogue had closed because of a dwindled Jewish population; most had either died, moved away, or intermarried and their children were not, or did not want to be, Jewish.

            But we do not have to travel to the South to witness this unfortunate phenomenon.  You know as well as I do that quite a few synagogues or temples here on Long island have either disbanded or merged over the past nine years, and the demise of small congregations, I predict, will continue.  Do you know that there are at least five former synagogue buildings for sale here in Nassau County alone?  Today synagogues have to wonder, in the words of the Unitaneh Tokef prayer:  Which synagogue will live and which will die?

            Which leads me to the next image and analogy of glass I want to employ.

            If I were to show you a drinking glass 50% of which contained liquid, some of you would say that that glass is half-full and others of you would call that glass half-empty.  To speak quite frankly, that’s how we can view our situation here at the East Meadow Jewish Center.  Our glass is half-empty: as all of us know and as all of us can witness in our own neighborhoods, the Jewish population of Long Island is falling, as young Jewish couples or families are moving to Long Island in far fewer numbers than when most of you settled here.  As a result, our membership has declined, despite the yeoman efforts of our Membership Committee and the hard work of its chairperson, Susan Bernstein.  The number of students in our Hebrew School and Nursery School has fallen as well.  It is no secret that we face serious financial challenges, as the level of our indebtedness is substantial, and, due to the current economic crisis and its impact on our members, this year’s budget looks to be strained.  

            I do not want to minimize the problems we face, but for us here at the East Meadow Jewish Center the glass is also half-full:  we have an incredibly active congregation; we still maintain morning and evening minyans, something which fewer and fewer Conservative synagogues can claim; the number of programs we offer is almost unparalleled, as anyone who attends Shabbat morning services and listens to the extensive announcements of upcoming events can attest.  Both our Men’s Club and Sisterhood are wonderfully vibrant, blessed with young leadership and attracting members of all age groups, and our USY and Kadima youth group chapters are strong in numbers and programming.    We are probably still the third largest Conservative synagogue on the South Shore, and we are a synagogue that is definitely admired by other congregations.   In part because of our vibrancy, we are the recipients of several grants this year, both from United Synagogue and UJA-Federation – grants that include Board of Trustees development, teacher education, programming for Nursery School parents and families, and the use of the social media.

            But how are we going to ensure that, despite the challenges we face, for us the glass will at the very least be half-full?  The answer is: by being stars and by being grains of sand.

            If we want the East Meadow Jewish Center to surmount the challenges that confront us, and remain the vital congregation that we are, then each one of us must undertake Jewish actions because, like stars, each of us is important.  Concurrently, we must be like grains of sand and realize that we must come together as a congregation because it is only within the Jewish community which is this synagogue that we achieve our full Jewish identity.

            Specifically, what do we need you to do so that we can remain the award-winning congregation we are? 

            First, we need you to be ambassadors of East Meadow and the East Meadow Jewish Center.  We need each of you to get the word out that East Meadow is very much a lovely community in which to live:

            1.  schools still quite fine;

            2.  neighborhood – friendly, respectful, tolerant;

            3.  close to public transportation and easily accessible to area highways;

            4.  nice, affordable housing.

            We need you to sell the East Meadow Jewish community:

            1.  five synagogues;

            2.  Jewish organizations like Hadassah and Brandeis Women;

            3.  great coordination and cooperation between the synagogues and Jewish organizations; Jewish community programs, under umbrella of the East Meadow Jewish Community Relations Council;

            4.  kosher butcher;

            5.  kosher shopping;

            6.  kosher bakery nearby;

            7.  Judaica store in next community.

            8. We need you to advertise the resources of the East Meadow Jewish community.

            (9.  We also need you to patronize these Jewish businesses because if we do not, they will move or close, and the Jewish fabric of our community will be diminished.)

            And we need you to be representatives of the East Meadow Jewish Center to your Jewish friends and neighbors, encouraging them to join our synagogue:

            1. warm, friendly, nurturing congregation;

            2.  myriad of programs;

            3.  excellence of our Ilene M. Rubin Nursery School and early childhood programs, our Hebrew School and Hebrew High School, and youth programs;

            4.  Sisterhood and Men’s Club;

            5.  etc., etc.

            We also need you to suggest to your friends and neighbors who may once have belong to the East Meadow Jewish Center, but did not continue their membership, to reaffiliate with us.  People’s situation in life changes and sometimes they want to reconnect with a source of spirituality and Jewish identity.  Encourage them to return to us.

            Second we need your involvement and participation because your actions have an impact on our shul, and, quite frankly, like grains of sand, there is strength in numbers.

            Let me address several areas of our synagogues endeavors:

            In terms of services, Shabbos morning services are quite well attended, but we always welcome additional members.  Here on Long Island, the number one indicator of a congregation’s vitality is Saturday morning services attendance.  When colleagues tell me that they get maybe twenty or twenty-five people at their Shabbos morning prayers, I know that that shul is in deep trouble.  Thank God, we are not in that position, yet, and I fervently pray that we will never be.  But for my prayer to come true, we need you here.  Try attending Saturday morning services; you may enjoy the experience and feel spiritually uplifted.

            Attendance at daily morning minyans is good, thanks to people from other shuls or elsewhere on Long island who come to our minyan.  But for the past several years, evening minyans have been tough.  Gentlemen, all I ask is for ten minutes of your time Monday to Thursday nights, or 50 minutes on Friday night, or 1¼ hours on Saturday evening (and we feed you, too)  or 20 minutes on Sunday night, our most difficult evening to garner a minyan.  Pick one evening a week and come down to help make a minyan. 

            During the summer, when several of our weeknight “regulars” were either on vacation or hospitalized, I made a special appeal for evening minyan assistance.  Do you know what happened? – People responded!  Guys showed up!  One Tuesday night we even had twenty-five people attend Maariv services!   I don’t want to keep on making special appeals because after a while I become like the boy who cried wolf.  So please, to quote Nike’s slogan, “Just do it!” and attend evening minyan.  You are important to us; without you there is no minyan.

            In all of my High Holy Day sermons I have touched on the topic of Jewish study.  I urge you: become adult Jewish learners.  We offer wonderful Adult Education classes here at the East Meadow Jewish Center:

            1.  Joe Lepelstat’s class on Tuesday nights on the History of the State of Israel;

            2.  My Bible class on Thursday nights;

            3.  My Talmud class on Saturday afternoons;

            4.  Honey Goldfein’s Israeli Dance classes on Tuesday evenings;

            5.  My rabbinic intern, Michael Wolk, will be teaching an adult education class on Monday nights (when Sisterhood does not meet) on how Jewish law develops; should be a fascinating class…

            6.  JLearn – Sunday mornings, here.

            7.  Lunch & Learn

            8.  I know that there are many of our congregants who do not read Hebrew, which, obviously, makes it very difficult to follow in the Siddur or Machzor.  Some have expressed an interest in a Hebrew literacy class, and we will be happy to offer one, provided there is a critical mass of interested members.  If you want to take such a class, please let us know. 

            And we need you to participate in the many other activities we offer here at the East Meadow Jewish Center.  Do us a favor and actually read your mail; you will see that we offer some activity for everyone.  We need you to attend so that we can maintain the high quantity and quality of our activities, whether they be holiday-related programs like our Tu B’Shvat Seder, or educational endeavors such as our Weekend of Learning.  Your presence is important to us.  It’s that stars and sand thing again.  And if you have suggestions for Jewish programming that you would like us to offer, by all means, please contact me or one of our officers.  We want to accommodate your religious and spiritual needs as best as we can.

            Finally, if our glass is not to become any more empty, we need your financial support.  I imagine that our president Ken Martin has /will address this issue with you tonight, and I don’t want to poach on his territory.  Now I know that some of our members are out of work or have seen their incomes fall.  I know all of us have seen whatever investments we may have – be they our houses, our savings, or our retirement funds – reduced during the current economic crisis.  But for those who can afford to do so, please, I appeal to your generosity.  We desperately need your support.  In order for us to accommodate members who are experiencing financial difficulties, we need those who have the funds to do so to be particularly generous this year.  I have often said that if we cannot help our members of long-standing who are undergoing financial challenges at their hours of need, then we should close our doors because we have no business calling ourselves a synagogue, and every administration has supported me on this 100%.  But in order for us to respond to the needs of our members, we need the financial support of those who can afford to be generous.  I ask you in advance: tomorrow, when I make the Yizkor appeal, please contribute as munificently as you can.  Given the size of our debt and the precariousness of this year’s budget, our ability to keep our doors open may very well depend on it.  And trust me, I am not crying wolf here.

            One last story about glass:  When I was a rabbinical student many years ago, I performed volunteer work on the Lower East Side through an organization that still exists called Project Ezra.  I was assigned clients, whom I visited every single week.  This was in the mid 1970s, when Jews had essentially fled the Lower East Side, and much of that neighborhood was rapidly turning into urban blight.  Foolishly, I would walk the streets of the Lower East Side, and as I did so I was astounded by the number of abandoned synagogues.  Do you know what one of the first things is that happens to synagogues once they are abandoned? --  I will tell you: all the windows, all the glass, is quickly broken by vandals.

            We must make sure that the glass of the East Meadow Jewish Center is always safe, is always solid, is always secure.  And the only way that will happen is if each and every one of us realizes that we are stars, that we are important, that our actions do make a difference;  and by realizing that we are grains of sand, essential parts of this Jewish community.  Each one of us must do his or her share by engaging in Jewish actions and by participating in the many programs and supporting our wonderful East Meadow Jewish Center, so that our synagogue always remains strong; always remains a source of spiritual, moral, and religious guidance for our members; and a beacon of light, knowledge, and Jewish inspiration for the entire Jewish community.

               Shana Tova!