Year: 2026

“Oh My Aching Back!”

Growing older may bring its share of aches and pains, but it also invites us to discover deeper meaning, embrace new possibilities, and appreciate the blessings of each day.

My cousins from Connecticut are visiting me in Chattanooga this week, and we are spending a few days together in Nashville as well. My cousin and I have always been exceptionally close, more like sisters, and having them here has been an extraordinary gift. There is something irreplaceable about spending time with family, sharing stories, laughing together, and enjoying one another’s company.

All three of us lead active lives. We exercise, try to eat well, and care for our health. My cousins are retired, and I am approaching that chapter myself. We still have plenty of energy, enthusiasm, and curiosity, though our bodies occasionally have other ideas!

Nearly every day, one of us remarks something along the lines of: “Oh, my aching back!” or suggests, “Perhaps we should rest before dinner.” Activities that once seemed effortless may now require more time, patience, and perhaps an afternoon nap.

We laugh about it, but beneath the laughter is a recognition that growing older brings both blessings and challenges. Our bodies carry the experiences of decades of living, working, raising a family, traveling, celebrating, and enduring difficulties. They remind us that time has passed, even when our spirits feel youthful.

Rabbi Richard Address, founder of Jewish Sacred Aging, explores the spiritual dimensions of growing older. In his essay The Courage to Flourish (February 25, 2026), he writes, “Judaism teaches us that as long as we live, we seek meaning and our place in this world.”

This week’s Torah portion, Noach, offers a compelling illustration of this enduring search for meaning and purpose. Noah is 600 years old when the Flood begins (Genesis 7:6). Whatever we make of the extraordinary ages recorded in the Torah, the message is striking: Noah’s age does not diminish his responsibility or capacity to act. At an advanced age, he becomes central to the possibility of a new beginning.

Our opportunities to contribute, discover, learn, and begin anew do not disappear as we grow older. Our roles may evolve, our priorities may shift, and our bodies may require greater care, but our capacity to live meaningful and purposeful lives remains. Perhaps this is why Jewish tradition invites us to begin each morning with gratitude, recognizing that every new day brings possibilities, regardless of our age.

Two of our morning blessings, for example, take on deeper meaning as we grow older. In Modeh Ani, we thank God for restoring our souls and granting us another day. Asher Yatzar, allows us to express gratitude for the remarkable functioning of our very human body. As we age, we become more conscious of abilities we once took for granted and more appreciative of the extraordinary gift of another day in which to live, love, and contribute.

Yet, the Jewish understanding of aging extends beyond our individual experiences. It also speaks to how we honor and care for one another. The Torah teaches, “You shall rise before the aged and show deference to the old; you shall fear your God: I am the Eternal” (Leviticus 19:32). For younger generations, this means recognizing the wisdom and experience of those who preceded them. For those caring for aging loved ones, it means offering compassion and assistance while honoring their dignity and independence.

We also recognize that not everyone experiences aging with good health, financial security, or the comfort of close family relationships. Illness, loneliness, and loss can make later years particularly difficult. As a sacred community, we have a responsibility to ensure that every person, regardless of age or circumstance, continues to feel valued, connected, and supported.

Spending these precious days with my cousins has reminded me that growing older is not simply about acknowledging our limitations. It is about recognizing what truly matters. We may navigate stairs more cautiously than we once did, become more discerning about how much we fit into each day, and recognize the importance of rest. Yet, we are so fortunate and blessed to have another day to explore, another meal to share, another story to tell, and people we love with whom to share the journey.

Perhaps that is one of the gifts of growing older: learning to measure the richness of our lives not by how much we accomplish in a day, but by the meaning we find in the moments we are given.

When we awaken tomorrow morning, may we greet the day with the gratitude of Modeh Ani, mindful not only of the gift of another day, but of the opportunity to make that day a blessing.

Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Sharon L. Sobel

The Courage to Create Light in the Darkness

We cannot always dispel the darkness around us. Yet even in the face of unimaginable horror, we can summon the courage and resilience to create light, affirm hope, and choose life. A reflection on October 7.

This past Wednesday, we marked the third anniversary of October 7, 2023, one of the darkest days in Israel’s history. It has been three years since Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel, murdering approximately 1,200 people, taking 251 hostage, and shattering countless lives.

Three years later, the wounds remain profound. Families continue to mourn. Survivors carry memories that will never disappear. Entire communities are struggling to rebuild. Beyond Israel, Jewish communities face an alarming resurgence of antisemitism, fueled by rhetoric that distorts history, minimizes Jewish suffering, and increasingly normalizes hostility, intimidation, and violence against Jews.

Yet amid this grief and uncertainty, something extraordinary endures: the determination of Israelis and Jews throughout the world not to allow tragedy and hatred to define our future.

We see that resilience in Israelis returning to devastated communities, in survivors finding the courage to embrace life despite unimaginable loss, and in Jewish communities that continue to gather, celebrate, educate their children, and affirm their identities, even when doing so requires greater vigilance and courage.

Resilience does not mean that suffering has ended or that wounds have healed. It means refusing to surrender the possibility of a future to the devastation of the past.

This week, as we begin reading the Torah anew with Parashat B’reishit, we encounter a remarkable insight into the nature of hope. The Torah opens not with a world of beauty and perfection, but with darkness and chaos:

“The earth was unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water.” (Genesis 1:2).

Then God speaks:

יְהִי אוֹר. וַיְהִי אוֹר. Y’hi or. Vay’hi or. “Let there be light. And there was light.” (Genesis 1:3).

Creation begins in darkness. God does not eliminate the darkness, but separates the light from it, allowing both to become part of the created world. Perhaps there is a profound lesson here: the presence of darkness does not negate the possibility of light. Grief and hope can coexist. We need not wait for suffering to end before finding the courage to create something meaningful in its midst.

This is one of the most important lessons of B’reishit. Hope is not the naïve expectation that suffering will somehow be undone or that tomorrow will necessarily be better than today. Hope requires something far more demanding. It asks us to acknowledge the world as it is, with all its brokenness, and still believe that we have a responsibility to shape what it might become.

Our Jewish history bears witness to that conviction. Across centuries of persecution, displacement, and destruction, our ancestors did more than survive. They created communities, built institutions, preserved learning, nurtured families, lived life fully and completely while passing their traditions and values from one generation to the next. Their hope was expressed not simply in what they believed, but in what they continued to build.

Today, that same spirit is evident throughout Israel and the Jewish world. Survivors of October 7 are finding the courage to move forward, families are rebuilding their communities, and Jews throughout the world continue to embrace their identities openly and proudly, even in the face of growing hostility. They refuse to allow fear and hatred to determine how they live their lives.

They are creating light while darkness still exists.

We cannot undo October 7 or restore the lives that were stolen. Nor should we allow the suffering of others to diminish our own grief, or our grief to diminish our concern for the humanity of others.

What we can do is refuse to become indifferent. We can confront hatred, challenge falsehoods, strengthen our communities, and ensure that our words and actions reflect the values we seek to preserve.

The message of B’reishit is that creation is not simply an event in the distant past. It is a sacred responsibility entrusted to each of us. Three years after October 7, the future of the Jewish people will be shaped not only by what we have endured, but by what we choose to create in its aftermath.

The courage of the Jewish people has never rested on the certainty that darkness will disappear, but on our determination to create light even when darkness remains.

Y’hi or. Let there be light.

May we have the courage to follow God’s example, becoming creators of light even in the midst of darkness.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Sharon L. Sobel

Pardon, Your Bias is Showing

The words we choose reveal what we see, what we overlook, and sometimes, the biases we would rather keep hidden.

This past Wednesday, I met with a reporter from a local newspaper who wanted to get to know me better since I am new to Chattanooga. This was not intended to be an interview. The paper had recently changed ownership, staffing responsibilities had been realigned, and the reporter was getting a feel for a new assignment. The reporter also attended one of our High Holy Day worship services.

We spoke about my background. I shared my deep love for Israel, the two years I lived there, my time as Executive Director of ARZA Canada, and my many visits over the years.

Then, warmly and conversationally, the reporter responded with something to the effect of, “Oh yes, I can see you care deeply about Palestine.”

The choice of the word “Palestine” did not strike me as incidental. I had been speaking specifically about Israel, about my relationship with Israel and about my years of involvement with Israel. Substituting a different word seemed to communicate a perspective without actually inviting a conversation about it.

I chose not to engage.

Not because I was unwilling to defend my convictions. There are moments when speaking forcefully is necessary. There are also moments when the more effective choice is to listen, to observe and to understand the person sitting across from us. If my goal is ultimately to build relationships that make honest conversation possible, I do not have to respond to every provocation in the moment it occurs.

Still, I noticed.

Bias is not always announced loudly. Sometimes it reveals itself quietly, through a word chosen, a word omitted, a fact emphasized or a fact pushed to the margins. Journalism aspires to fairness, accuracy and context, yet journalists, like all of us, bring perspectives and assumptions to the stories they tell. That is precisely why words, context and editorial choices matter so much.

Later that same day, a terrifying event unfolded aboard Flydubai Flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv. The co-pilot attacked and stabbed the captain, and the aircraft plunged nearly 14,000 feet in less than thirty seconds. Despite his injuries, Captain Smit Machchhar managed to open the cockpit door, allowing passengers and crew to intervene and overpower the attacker. Other pilots traveling aboard the flight then took control of the aircraft and landed it safely in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. The flight was carrying 174 people, many of them Israelis.

The motive remains under investigation. What does not require speculation is the extraordinary courage displayed aboard that aircraft. A gravely injured captain, crew members, passengers and fellow pilots who acted with remarkable presence of mind and bravery and prevented what might otherwise have been a catastrophe.

How did The New York Times initially describe what had happened?

Its headline read: “Flight to Israel Is Diverted After Pilots Clash in Cockpit.”

My friend and colleague Rabbi Asher Gottesfeld Knight, Senior Rabbi of Temple Beth El in Charlotte, North Carolina, expressed the problem powerfully:

There is a peculiar magic trick that certain news outlets use when talking about attacks against Israelis. A co-pilot allegedly stabs the captain of an airplane. The plane begins to fall out of the sky. Passengers force their way into the cockpit and subdue him. Most of the passengers are Israeli. And at The New York Times, all of this emerges as: “Pilots clash in cockpit.”

A clash.

A remarkable little word. There is no attacker in a clash. No wounded captain. No knife. Two forces simply meet somewhere in the cockpit of a plane, each with roughly equal claim upon the verb. Perhaps the knife clashed with the captain. Perhaps the airplane clashed with gravity.

Sure, one could argue: “We do not yet know the motive. We should be careful about what we do not know.”

Consider what we do know. The co-pilot stabbed the captain and tried to crash a plane of Israelis. The aircraft plunged nearly 14,000 feet. The Israeli passengers broke into the cockpit and restrained him and thankfully the plane landed safely.

More than 170 Israelis were aboard the flight. Does that matter?

This has become painfully familiar in The New York Times and other outlets too. Violence becomes an incident. An attacker becomes a participant. Eventually nobody has done anything but “clashed.” Beneath that lovely, bloodless word, a wounded pilot and more than 170 terrified people wondering whether they are about to die.

Let’s be real.

Words teach people what to notice. They also encourage people to overlook important facts. Not much news in a “clash.”

So yes, let’s talk about motive and learn more about what happened. But treating the identity of more than 170 Israeli passengers as incidental requires its own kind of blindness and is an abdication of basic editorial responsibility. It certainly looks like and feels like a form of complicity in the erasure of the facts.

Earlier that day, a reporter’s choice of the word “Palestine” caught my attention. Hours later, I found myself thinking about the words chosen to describe what happened aboard this flight.

The two situations are not remotely equivalent in gravity. 

One was an uncomfortable conversation; the other was an act of violence that endangered the lives of everyone aboard an aircraft. I place them alongside one another only because encountering them on the same day caused me to reflect on a common thread: words are never merely words.

The words we choose reveal something about what we see. The words we omit can determine what others fail to see. A single word can frame an entire story before the story has even been told.

That lesson feels especially resonant as we prepare to celebrate Sh’mini Atzeret and Simchat Torah this weekend.

On Simchat Torah, we reach the final words of Deuteronomy and immediately return to the opening words of Genesis:

“B’reishit bara Elohim – In the beginning, God created…”

What happens next is remarkable. God creates the world through language: “God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.” (Genesis 1:3)

Again and again, creation unfolds through speech: “And God said…” God speaks and a whole universe unfolds. Extraordinary!

Our tradition begins by teaching us that words have the power to create. Words can illuminate. Words can obscure. Words can reveal truth, and words can distort it. Words can build relationships, and words can destroy them. Words can make visible those whom others would rather render invisible.

The Jewish people calls ourselves Am HaSefer, the People of the Book. That identity carries with it a particular responsibility to take words seriously.

On Simchat Torah, we do something else that I find profoundly meaningful. We reach the end of Torah and immediately begin again. We do not assume that because we have read these words before, we already understand everything they have to teach us. We return to the beginning and read them again, hopefully with different eyes, different life experiences, deeper understanding and a willingness to notice what we may have missed the first time.

That may be an important lesson for all of us.

None of us is free of bias. Not reporters. Not rabbis. Not editors. Not readers. The challenge is not to pretend that we approach the world without assumptions. The challenge is to recognize our assumptions, interrogate them, and refuse to allow them to obscure what is actually before us.

As we roll the Torah back to B’reishit and begin once again, may we listen more carefully to the words we hear. May we choose more carefully the words we speak. May we have the courage to notice when language illuminates truth and when it conceals it.

Because B’reishit reminds us that words do more than describe the world.

Words help create the world in which we live.

May we choose ours wisely.

Chag Sameach and Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Sharon L. Sobel

Sukkot: A Time of Radical Hospitality

Sukkot challenges us to practice radical hospitality: to widen our circles, welcome the stranger, and create communities where everyone has a place.

Autumn has always been my favorite season. Even after an unusually hot summer, the temperatures have begun to drop, and I noticed the first leaves beginning to turn. Chattanooga is finally being blessed with crisp mornings and warm afternoons. Soon, I hope, we will witness the breathtaking beauty of our mountains and trees transformed into brilliant shades of orange, yellow, and red. There is a freshness in the air that signals the arrival of a new season. The autumn light seems to set the colors aglow with an extra measure of radiance. The abundance of nature and the fall harvest naturally draw my heart and mind to Sukkot.

There is a beautiful custom associated with Sukkot called Ushpizin, an Aramaic word meaning “guests.” According to this tradition, during the festival we symbolically welcome seven biblical ancestors into our sukkah: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, and David. Each knew something of displacement and uncertainty. Each, at some point in his life, was a wanderer, a stranger, a refugee of sorts, or someone far from home.

Traditionally, the ushpizin were all men. In more recent years, many have expanded the custom to welcome ushpizot, seven biblical women whose lives embody courage, faith, wisdom, and resilience, such as Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Abigail, Huldah, and Esther. We might expand the circle even further, inviting into our sukkah people from more recent generations whose lives and values continue to inspire us. Whom would you invite as an honored guest into your sukkah? Whose presence, wisdom, courage, or example would you want beside you beneath its fragile roof?

The custom of Ushpizin reminds us that hospitality is about far more than inviting people we already know to share a meal. Jewish hospitality asks something more of us. It calls us to notice the person standing at the edge of the circle and invite them in. It asks us to extend welcome in real and tangible ways to newcomers in our city, to those who may feel like strangers, to neighbors in need, and to anyone seeking connection and belonging.

Here in Chattanooga, that call feels especially relevant. Our city continues to grow as people arrive from across the country and around the world. Some come for opportunities in health care, education, manufacturing, and technology. Others are drawn by the extraordinary quality of life Chattanooga offers: the beauty of our mountains and rivers, miles of hiking and biking trails, and countless opportunities to enjoy the outdoors. Some arrive as refugees, seeking safety and the possibility of a new beginning. Others come to be closer to children and grandchildren as they enter a new stage of life. Whatever brings someone here, arriving in a new place means searching not only for a house, a job, or the familiar rhythms of daily life. It also means searching for community.

Sukkot challenges us to ask: How can we open our doors, our hearts, and our congregation more fully? How do we make certain that those who enter our community do not simply feel that they have been admitted, but that they are genuinely welcomed, seen, and valued?

Perhaps that is one reason the sukkah is such a powerful symbol. We construct it with intentional vulnerability. Its walls are temporary. Its roof allows rain, wind, sunlight, and starlight to enter. It cannot completely shelter us from the outside world.

That openness reminds us of two essential truths. First, life is fragile and fleeting. Second, what ultimately sustains us is not the strength of the structures surrounding us, but rather the relationships we create within them. Sharing meals, laughter, stories, and friendship inside the sukkah creates a warmth no weather can diminish. Companionship and community sustain us in ways that even the sturdiest walls and most secure roofs cannot.

The sukkah we build at Mizpah Congregation carries this same spirit. It is more than a temporary shelter. It is a symbol of the communal home we seek to create together. Open to the sky above and open to all who enter, it reminds us that our congregation, too, must remain open in every direction. There should always be room for one more person at our table, one more chair in our circle, one more individual searching for a place to belong.

Perhaps this is the radical hospitality of Sukkot: not simply opening the door, but creating a community in which people know that their presence matters. A community in which they know that others will celebrate their joys, share their sorrows, and care about what happens in their lives.

Sukkot begins this evening, September 25. You are warmly invited to join us for our Erev Shabbat/Erev Sukkot service in the sukkah in our garden, followed immediately by our “Pizza in the Hut” dinner. Please see the flyer below for details. You are also invited to visit our beautiful sukkah throughout the week.

Chag Sameach. May this Sukkot season inspire us to open wide our sukkot, our homes, our hearts, and our lives, and to ensure that all who enter know the embrace of community.

Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Sharon L. Sobel

Spilling Coffee From the Cup

When life overwhelms us, we may be surprised by what “spills out,” and what it reveals about ourselves.

This Shabbat, the Shabbat between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, is known as Shabbat Shuva, the Shabbat of Return. It falls during the Aseret Y’mei T’shuvah, the Ten Days of Repentance, a sacred period devoted to introspection, reflection, prayer and study.

During these days, we are invited to look inward, to examine our lives with honesty, and to consider not only who we have been, but who we aspire to become in the year ahead.

In that spirit, I offer this parable:

Spilling Coffee from the Cup
(Adapted by Rabbi Paul Kipnes and Rabbi Julia Atlas Weisz. Who adapted it from Why Did You Spill the Coffee? A Great Analogy
Contributed by Ashish Bhavnani, Shared by Chandru Gidwani)

A young woman was holding a cup of coffee
At the synagogue
when someone came along
and accidentally hit her arm,
making her spill the coffee everywhere.

The rabbi saw what happened,
Rushed over to make sure she was okay,
And then
Sensing an opportunity for a life lesson
asked:
“Why do you think you spilled the coffee?”

The woman answered,
“Well, of course,
Because someone bumped into me!”
The rabbi shook her head
And said,
“Not precisely.
You spilled the coffee
because the coffee was in the cup.

If tea had been in it,
you would have spilled tea.
Whatever is inside the cup
is what will come out.
Therefore,
when life comes along
and shakes you,
which will happen,
whatever is inside of you
will come out.
It’s easy to fake it
until you get rattled.

The Rabbi said:
So we have to ask ourselves….
What’s inside our cups?
When life gets tough,
What spills over?
Anger, bitterness,
harsh words and actions?
Or
Joy, gratefulness,
peace and humility?

With what will we fill ourselves,
When it sometimes feels like
our cups are being drained?
The choice is yours!

In these Yamim Noraim,
These High Holy Days,
May we work diligently and intentionally
Toward filling our cups
with gratitude and forgiveness,
With joy and gentleness,
With words of affirmation for ourselves and others
So that this year may truly be
A Shana Tova, a good year, a sweet year, a year filled with all the worthy blessings of our hearts.

Shana Tova, G’mar Chatima Tova, and Shabbat Shalom! May the year ahead bring goodness and blessing, may we be sealed for a life of meaning and purpose, and may the peace of Shabbat renew our spirits.

Rabbi Sharon L. Sobel

Shana Tova – A New Year Bright With Promise

As the 25th anniversary of 9/11 meets the promise of a New Year, how might memory help us create a year of greater hope, compassion, and peace?

As we stand at the threshold of 5787, I find myself thinking about the extraordinary gift of new beginnings.

Rosh Hashanah invites us to meet whatever the year ahead may bring with courage, hope, and the opportunity to begin again. To imagine what might yet be possible. To choose hope. To cherish the blessings already present in our lives and to help bring new blessings into being.

This year, Rosh Hashanah and Shabbat arrive together as we also mark the 25th anniversary of 9/11. Nearly 3000 lives were lost on that fateful day, among them my friend and colleague Rabbi David B. Cohen’s brother-in-law, Andy Alameno, who was killed at the top of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Reflecting on this 25th anniversary, David wrote:

“Twenty five years later, I find myself returning not only to what we lost that day, but to what we believed the tragedy asked of us: to confront evil without surrendering to vengeance, to examine ourselves even when we have been wronged, and to rebuild the bonds that enable us to recognize strangers as neighbors.” (Rabbi David B. Cohen, “September 11: 25 Years On, and the Staircase That No Longer Existed,” Substack, September 9, 2026, In memory of Andy Alameno, of blessed memory.)

David’s poignant words resonated so deeply with me on this 25th anniversary that I am including them as part of my New Year’s prayer this year:

May we have the courage to confront what is wrong without allowing hatred to diminish our own humanity.

May we have the humility to examine ourselves, even when it would be easier to look only at the failings of others.

May we rebuild the bonds that connect us to one another, so that strangers might once again become neighbors.

May this New Year be bright with promise and filled with hope. May it bring us the blessings of health and strength, joy and contentment, love and laughter, compassion and courage.

Above all, may 5787 be a year of peace: peace in our hearts and in our homes, peace in our communities, peace for Israel and throughout our world.

May we enter this New Year ready to receive its blessings and determined to help bring those blessings into being for all humankind.

Shana Tova u’Metukah – שנה טובה ומתוקה.

Wishing you a good and sweet 5787!

Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Sharon L. Sobel

The Courage to Pick Up the Phone

What happens when a conversation you’ve already forgotten keeps someone else awake at night, and they find the courage to pick up the phone?

Last night, just as I was finishing dinner, my phone rang.

Earlier this week, I shared something personal with a friend. Their response was immediate, instinctive, open and honest, delivered in that wonderfully indomitable manner that is so characteristic of them. I loved their response both for its honesty and for the spirit in which it was offered. When our conversation ended, I did not dwell on it.

Apparently, however, my friend did.

For them, the conversation kept replaying, like a movie caught on an endless loop, going around and around in their mind. The more they thought about it, the more unsettled they became by their own response.

So they picked up the phone and called.

“I want you to know that I am so sorry for my immediate, visceral response to our conversation the other day. I should have separated my own personal feelings about the situation from what I think would be right for you.”

I was deeply touched and moved by the call.

Not because I had been perseverating about our discussion, or waited for some sort of apology. I hadn’t given our words another thought. Rather, my friend had done something both difficult and profoundly beautiful. They had revisited their own words, examined them honestly, and recognized a distinction that is not always easy to make: the difference between ‘what I feel and what another person may need from me’.

Then, rather than allowing that realization to remain an internal conversation, they picked up the phone.

That is teshuvah.

We often translate teshuvah as “repentance,” but the Hebrew word comes from the root lashuv, “to turn.” Teshuvah is a turning. It is the willingness to look again at something we have said or done, to see it differently than we did in the moment, and, when necessary, to turn toward another human being and try to make it right. 

Sometimes, as I experienced last night, the person toward whom we turn may not even know that anything needs repairing.

As the Yamim Nora’im, the High Holy Days, draw near, our tradition asks each of us to engage in precisely this kind of honest reflection.

Where have my words caused hurt?

Where have I allowed my own feelings, assumptions or judgments to prevent me from truly seeing another person?

Where do I need to say, “I am sorry. I was wrong. I mis-stepped. I was not thinking?”

There is the other side to saying “I am sorry” as well: where might I need to hear those words from someone else? How do I open my heart and spirit to allow room for this to take place?

What am I carrying that I might be ready, perhaps only tentatively, to begin releasing?

Our tradition does not pretend that forgiveness is simple. Some wounds are profound. Some relationships cannot, and should not, be restored to what they once were. Forgiveness does not require us to deny pain, excuse harmful behavior or abandon necessary boundaries.

These sacred days do, however, invite us to ask ourselves difficult questions:

What burden will I continue to bear if I do not forgive?

Could forgiveness be a gateway to a life of greater peace?

Forgiveness, like teshuvah, rarely happens all at once. Sometimes it begins with nothing more than a willingness to turn: to see ourselves more honestly and to see another person with different eyes.

This Saturday evening at 6:30 pm, we will begin this sacred work together as a Mizpah community when we gather for Selichot. Our program, “Seeing Ourselves, Seeing Others,” will use two short, evocative animated films by Hanan Harchol to open a conversation about judgment, forgiveness and the work of teshuvah. We will share dessert and Havdalah before entering into the beautiful, reflective prayers of Selichot together. 

Selichot reminds us that we need not wait until Rosh Hashanah to begin.

Perhaps there is someone we need to call.

Perhaps there are words we need to say.

Perhaps there is something within ourselves we are finally ready to release.

Perhaps these days before Rosh Hashanah ask us, above all, to see: to see ourselves with greater honesty, to see others with greater compassion, to recognize where we have fallen short, to recognize where we have been hurt and, when we are able, to turn.

As Rabbi Angela Warnick Buchdahl so beautifully teaches:

“Forgiveness is a hope and aspiration.
Forgiveness is a prayer – even for God;
maybe for all of us.” (Rabbi Angela Warnick Buchdahl, “Forgiveness Is a Prayer,” Yom Kippur 2018, Central Synagogue, New York)

Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Sharon L. Sobel

A Little Card, A Powerful Reminder

A small card becomes an invitation to notice our blessings, embrace gratitude, and share what we have with others.

I was unpacking a box the other day and found a small, laminated, tri-fold T’filat Todah, “Prayer of Thanks,” card. 

“Thank you, God, for all the things that I do have, and thank you, God, for the things that I don’t have. Thank you for my periodic difficulties, my occasional setbacks, and for the times when I don’t feel happy…”

I placed it on my desk at home as a reminder to stop kvetching (complaining) about insignificant matters. I have so much for which to be grateful.

I see gratitude reflected in so many ways through the lives of those around me: family, friends, community members, and people I encounter each day.

A few of the many expressions of gratitude I’ve witnessed recently:

  • My sister-in-law Marilyn’s recent celebration of becoming Bat Mitzvah at the age of 70;
  • My friends’ celebration of achieving a 1,000+ mile walking goal with their non-verbal 36-year old autistic son. They began walking together during COVID, when his work-study program shut down. His newfound love of walking continues to this day;
  • A wonderful recent visit here in Chattanooga with dear, longtime friends-who-are-like-family from Toronto whom I had not seen in almost four years;
  • Warm and meaningful gatherings at congregants’ homes for Shabbat dinner, “meet and greets,” and more. I continue to be touched by the gracious hospitality and welcome extended to me and by the many ways people have opened their homes and their hearts;
  • A mother’s beaming, loving smile as she introduces me to her daughter, who was born with many challenges and has worked hard to overcome them;
  • Our school-age students who greet one another, and often me, with huge bear hugs, so grateful for the gifts of friendship and community;
  • The beautiful smiles and joy-filled hearts of those who face health or other challenges and are simply thrilled to be present and to embrace each new day.
  • Our Jewish tradition teaches that there is a difference between thankfulness and gratitude.

Rabbi Norman Lamm, the late prominent Modern Orthodox rabbi, author, and longtime president and chancellor of Yeshiva University, once described the distinction this way:

“Thankfulness can be understood as courtesy or social gesture in which I give thanks only for goods received. It is a kind of verbal receipt: you give me something, I thank you. It is the polite, socially expected way to behave, a social construct.

“Gratitude, on the other hand, can be viewed as a higher level, not based on construct but on consecration, the consecration of one’s whole character. It is a state of mind in which a person is so devoted to the Almighty, so dedicated to transcendent values, so elevated beyond petty, selfish concerns, that he feels himself grasped by a pervasive gratefulness even when he has not received some special favor in advance…. [Gratitude] is a reaction of the total personality; [it is] deeply personal, profoundly human.” (Paraphrased from Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, “Gratitude Is Good for the Soul,” sermon delivered in the 1970s and republished in 2013.)

In this week’s Torah portion from Deuteronomy, Ki Tavo, we discover that gratitude is not merely something we feel. It is something we practice. In Deuteronomy 26, the Israelites are instructed that when they finally enter the Promised Land and reap its harvest, they are to bring the first fruits of the land as an offering to God. As they do so, they recount their story: where they came from, the suffering of slavery, their redemption from Egypt, and their arrival in a land of abundance.

In other words, before they can fully appreciate what they have, they are asked to remember how this all came to be theirs: how they came to achieve this milestone of an abundant harvest in their own land after hundreds of years in exile.

The Torah, however, does not allow gratitude to end there. Just a few verses later in the same chapter, the Israelites are commanded to set aside a portion of their produce for those who might otherwise go without: the Levite, the stranger, the orphan, and the widow.

This is what I find so powerful about the Torah’s understanding of gratitude. Gratitude cannot simply remain a feeling within us. It must move us beyond ourselves.

When we recognize the blessings in our own lives, we become more conscious of those who may not share those same blessings. When we understand that what we have is not ours alone, gratitude becomes generosity. Gratitude becomes responsibility. Gratitude becomes an act of k’dushah, holiness.

As we approach the upcoming Yamim Nora’im, the Days of Awe, perhaps this can become part of our own cheshbon hanefesh, our spiritual accounting.

What are the blessings we have stopped noticing because they have become so familiar?

Who are the people whose presence in our lives we may have begun to take for granted?

How might the challenges and setbacks in our lives help us recognize blessings we might otherwise overlook?

How might our gratitude for what we have received inspire us to give something of ourselves to someone else or do something to make a difference in our world?

Perhaps that little T’filat Todah card is a reminder to look at our lives more carefully and more fully: to notice what we too often take for granted, to cherish the people who sustain us, and to recognize the many blessings that fill our days.

As we enter this sacred season, may the gratitude within our hearts find expression in the way we live, the way we give, and the way we care for one another. May our lives reflect our gratitude by becoming a source of blessing to others.

Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Sharon L. Sobel

The Courage to Choose Love Over Hate

Choosing love over hate is an act of courage that can free us from the past, transform the present, and help us build a better future.

As I prepared for Shabbat this week, I was drawn to the wisdom of the late Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, z”l. He highlighted two verses from this week’s Torah portion, Ki Teitzei: “Do not despise an Edomite, because he is your brother. Do not despise an Egyptian, because you were a stranger in his land” (Deuteronomy 23:8). Despite all the suffering the people of Israel endured, the Torah calls us not to remain trapped in hate.

Rabbi Sacks reminded us: “To be free, you have to let go of hate. To answer hate with hate is to be dragged down to the level of your opponent… Hate the sin but not the sinner. Do not forget the past but do not be held captive by it. Learn to love and forgive.” (Rabbi Sacks, Covenant & Conversation, Ki Teitzei, 2014).

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. expressed the same truth when he said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

These words feel particularly relevant and urgent as antisemitism continues to rise in so many corners of the world. Last Friday evening, shortly after Erev Shabbat services began at Central Synagogue in Manhattan, a man entered the synagogue in an act of antisemitic hate: he violently disrupted the service, damaged the Shabbat candlesticks, assaulted a congregant, and attacked a member of the synagogue’s security team.

What happened next was deeply moving. The clergy, security team, and leadership responded immediately with calm, courage, and a restorative sense of sacred purpose. The rabbis created space to acknowledge what had happened, helped the congregation breathe, reignited the Shabbat candles and found the words to respond to the moment. Then the community returned to the spirit of Shabbat. The cantor and musicians continued the music. Rather than allowing an act of hate to define their community or their worship, they reclaimed the sacredness of the moment. They transformed disruption into resilience, fear into courage, and despair into hope. Hatred and violence would not, could not, prevent them from remaining a community who gathers together to welcome Shabbat in joy, prayer, and song. 

As word of what had taken place quickly spread around the globe, so too did expressions of support, outreach, and blessing. This is our Jewish way. 

Again and again, our tradition calls us not to shrink back in fear, but to stand tall with courage. Judaism urges us to be proud of our Jewish identity, to live openly as Jews, to strengthen community, to reach out in friendship to others beyond ourselves, and to keep choosing life, hope, and love.

This is how we demonstrate courage in difficult times. Courage leads to resilience. Resilience is not simply endurance: it is the ability to transform hardship into strength and to draw from our past in order to keep building our future.

Every Shabbat we celebrate is an act of resilience. Every act of chesed (kindness), every word of Torah, every meal delivered to a neighbor is an act of defiance against hate and a powerful affirmation of life. Every time we speak out for justice, ring a bell for freedom, or raise a hand to volunteer, we turn faith into action and courage into light.

Each of us carries within us the capacity for courage. Sometimes it is bold and visible: standing up for what is right, challenging injustice, protecting the vulnerable. At other times it is quieter: offering compassion, showing up again and again, refusing to give in to despair. Each act, large or small, affirms our commitment to ourselves, to our community, and to the world.

We are Am Yisrael, the People of Israel. For thousands of years we have wrestled with adversity, endured, and thrived. We are proud of who we are, and we will continue to live with strength, resilience, faith, and courage. We will confront hatred, but we will not allow hatred to define us.

As Rabbi Sacks taught, “Acknowledge the evil men do, but stay focused on the good that is in our power to do.” This is our sacred task in this season of reflection and renewal: to rise above hate with love, to transform curses into blessings, and to help redeem the world we share.

May we always have the courage to choose hope over despair, light over darkness, and love over hate.

Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Sharon L. Sobel

Whew! My Web Site is Fixed – Apologies for Spamming All of You

Dear Friends –

I know that beginning yesterday morning all of you received many blog posts from me in foreign languages. I was hacked. I profusely apologize for spamming your inbox (I received those posts as well).

It took until this afternoon to work with my web developer to rectify the situation. It should be fine now. Thank you for your patience.

Warmly,

Rabbi Sharon Sobel