Rabbi Oren Hayon - Erev Rosh HaShanah 2010

Rosh HaShanah 5771L’Shana Tova Tikateivu!

“My Father’s House”By Bruce Springsteen

From Nebraska, 1982

Last night I dreamed that I was a childOut where the pines grow wild and tallI was trying to make it home through

the forestBefore the darkness falls

I heard the wind rustling through the trees

And ghostly voices rose from the fieldsI ran with my heart pounding down

that broken pathWith the devil snappin’ at my heels

I broke through the trees and there in the night

My father’s house stood shining hard and bright

The branches and brambles tore my clothes and scratched my arms

But I ran till I fell, shaking in his arms

I awoke and I imagined the hard things that pulled us apart

Will never again, sir, tear us from each other’s hearts

I got dressed, and to that house I did ride

From out on the road, I could see its windows shining in light

I walked up the steps and stood on the porch

A woman I didn’t recognize came and spoke to me through a chained door

I told her my story, and who I’d come forShe said “I’m sorry, son, but no one by that

name lives here anymore.”

My father’s house shines hard and brightIt stands like a beacon, calling me in the

nightCalling and calling, so cold and aloneShining ‘cross this dark highway where our

sins lie unatoned

“[Laughs] What am I mourning? Um, you know, the feeling that…I, um… [sighs] To not joke about it? That I have a – a very sincere, deep spiritual impulse that, um, can’t find any home. And won’t find any home. Because all the ways of…there’s no good verb. ‘Engaging’ is a bad verb, you know, uh, ‘living with’ is – there’s no way to feel spiritual in America without being, um, compromised.”

Joshua Cohen

For several decades, the Jewish establishment has asked American Jews to check their liberalism at Zionism’s door, and now, to their horror, they are finding that many young Jews have checked their Zionism instead.

Peter Beinart

Avigdor Lieberman

Effi Eitam

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef

“American Jewish institutions lost me in a million ways beyond their one-note approach to Zionism. And it’s not even that they’re doing anything wrong, specifically. They just don’t speak to me, and stopped speaking to me ages ago.”

It is the worst kind of narcissism to insist on talking endlessly about our feelings rather than the political realities that stare us in the face. … Either the Gaza blockade is just, or it is not, either the Lebanon war was wise; or it was not; either the U.S. should bomb Iran, or it should not; either the two-state solution remains viable, or it does not.

Daniel Luban

For Zion’s sakeI will not be silent;

for Jerusalem’s sakeI will not be still.

Isaiah 62:1

Rosh HaShanah 5771L’Shana Tova Tikateivu!