may only be August, but for a select group of Jews, the High Holidays are already here! While many of us are soaking up the rays, our rabbis are busy crafting the sermons they hope will inspire us, challenge us, and maybe even make us smile on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
How do they do it? Here’s a peek.
It’s not easy says Rabbi Josh Berkenwald. “For me, writing High Holiday sermons is a gut-wrenching experience. The truth is, there is nothing special about me that makes what I have to say any more relevant or valid than what anyone else has to say. I may have the title ‘Rabbi’ in front of my name, but it does not give me any special wisdom. I try to always remember this by asking myself: ‘Who the heck are you? How do you get off doing this?’”
And then he realized that the congregant he had to convince first was the one staring at him in the mirror.
“When I stand up here to speak, I am really just talking to myself. That is the only thing I can do and remain true to my neshamah, my soul. As I wrestle with topics for these sermons, I eventually wind up, whether consciously or unconsciously, choosing something that I am wrestling with in my own life.”
As a pulpit rabbi, Gideon Sylvester would agonize “over how to construct speeches that might inspire a contemporary congregation. Late into the night, I would whittle away at my words, editing out any trace of archaic biblical language, searching for the most modern analogies and paraphrasing every rabbinic quote into a contemporary idiom. It was ancient wisdom with a modern facelift, and, at times, it felt a little forced.” And then he found a surprising inspiration.
“Listening to Martin Luther King’s message and hearing him declaim the words of the Hebrew prophets, I realized that, sometimes, we rabbis lose our nerve… Our prophets offered us compelling messages in glorious poetry and our Halachists (writers or compilers of Jewish law) set these before us as a challenge. They wrote with confidence that we can mend the world and they challenged us to make the necessary sacrifices to do so. This is the Jewish vision which we must confidently proclaim and live out in Israel and abroad.”
If it’s hard for a veteran rabbi to pen an epic sermon, then consider the pressure that rabbinical students must feel the first time they are thrust into the High Holiday pulpit. That’s why it’s not surprising that the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) offers what almost sounds like a preaching boot camp. Some of their guidance for the greenhorns:
• Be careful about the length of the sermon (15 minutes is the average suggested time).
• Try not to fall prey to the handicap or naïveté of youth and inexperience.
• Avoid racy or outwardly political topics.
Dvora Weisberg, director of rabbinical studies, adds one more essential piece of advice. “Inhale, exhale. Seriously. The last thing I need is a hyperventilating rabbinical student.”
Shalom Auslander may not be a rabbi. But the American author and essayist does seem to have an idea what thoughts surface in rabbis’ minds as they try to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). Here’s an excerpt from an imagined conversation between frustrated rabbi and spouse:
“I don’t know, this just isn’t working.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself, dear.”
“What am I going to do?”
“Did you mention the Holocaust?
“Everyone mentions the Holocaust.”
“The Inquisition?”
“Old news.”
“Pogroms?”
“You see? You see what I mean? There’s nothing new, nothing fresh.”
“What about Iran? It’s very timely. You could do your whole “Iran/ I ran” thing, about running from God, running from punishment. I really liked that one the last time you did it.”
“That wasn’t me.”
And then there is what might seem like the easy way out. (But really isn’t.) Have your congregation write your sermon for you. Rabbi Paul Kipnes knew that many members of his community were struggling with illnesses and deaths of friends and family. So he turned to Facebook and Twitter with the question, “What did you learn from going through hardship or challenge?” From the many responses, he decided to focus on three themes: financial ruin, turmoil from dealing with children with special needs, and horrible medical diagnoses.
He then invited three congregants to reflect on what they learned through their personal challenges and to deliver them on Yom Kippur in a TED Talk-style. It was an overwhelming success.
What lessons did he learn? Social sermons work. As does sharing the pulpit. “As clergy ‘pull back’ from their up-front role as sermonizer to work in partnership with congregants to craft a Jewish teaching, the message becomes that much more influential. In an increasingly do-it-yourself Jewish world, involving other Jews in the teaching/ preaching/ liturgy leading roles cements their relationships to the community, the synagogue and the rabbi.”