Many rabbis gather inspiration for High Holiday sermons from a folder of ideas they’ve collected throughout the year. They anticipate the tragedy in Israel and antisemitism here to be a recurring theme in their sermons delivered to packed sanctuaries from Oct. 2 to Oct. 12.
Rabbi Adam Raskin of Congregation Har Shalom, a Conservative synagogue in Potomac, said a senior rabbi in his first rabbinic position told him that he kept a folder year-round.
“Anytime he saw an article or content that he thought he might be able to use on the holidays, he would put them into one of those folders.”
“When it comes to my own preparation, some of the material I use, some I discard. But it really has been a helpful, meaningful practice.”
Rabbi Amy Schwartzman of the Reform Temple Rodef Shalom in Falls Church said she plays with “different ideas that might have good traction. I think about what’s happening currently in the landscape of the Jewish community. I think about personal experiences that might influence something I might want to talk about.”
Before you preach to others, you must preach to yourself, Schwartzman said. “You should always be doing a lot of inner work while preparing a sermon and thinking about a topic.”
Schwartzman belongs to a group of colleagues who discuss their sermons together. They meet after Shavuot on Zoom and in person.
“We give each other ideas and critique each other as well,” she said.
Raskin said his travels to Israel since the Oct. 7 massacre will figure into his High Holiday sermons. He visited the kibbutzim that were attacked and the site of the Nova music festival. “It’s given me an eyewitness perspective on this catastrophic attack,” he said.
Rabbi Yitzy Ceitlin of the Chabad East DC Jewish Center compiles topics, stories and more powerful insights. What he learned from a teacher was that anything that doesn’t inspire you has zero chance of inspiring anyone else. “So, it’s basically about coming up with and compiling all those great moments you had in the past year and seeing which messages still talk to you in a stronger way than it did before.”
On Sept. 4, the Washington Board of Rabbis convened, and several members shared materials and their themes, said Rabbi Gilah Langner, president of the organization and rabbi of Kol Ami, a Reconstructionist congregation in Northern Virginia.
“It was really a wonderful gathering and discussion. I hope it was helpful for people,” she added.
Ceitlin hopes congregants will take away from his sermons a stronger Jewish identity and pride in being Jewish. He deals with college students on a daily basis and many of them are afraid to express themselves and bring out that Jewish identity because of campus antisemitism.
“I hope that my messages give people reason to think,” said Raskin, “to be comforted, to find inspiration and hope.”
Langner hopes congregants take away from her sermons “some uplift, some healing for their hearts and a strong sense of being in a community which is really the way to go forward after this terrible year that’s continuing to be so distressing.”
Rabbi Fabián Werbin of Kol Shalom, a Conservative congregation in Rockville, said he hopes congregants come away with the experience of acceptance that this has been a difficult year and to honor the lives of those who died.
Schwartzman said, “I’m sure you’ll find that every rabbi, including myself, will be speaking on some dimension of the incredible challenge and pain that this year has presented with the war in Israel and Gaza and issues in our own country of antisemitism. It would be difficult not to address this very unusual and uncertain time.”
“I have the great good luck of having a lot of good people in my life to talk about sermon ideas,” Schwartzman said.
“There are so many things we’re trying to do when we preach,” she said. “We share sermon topics whether it’s on a Friday or in the bigger times like the High Holidays. On the one hand we are trying to bring a greater understanding of Judaism and Jewish issues. We’re looking to give them a map towards finding support and resolution in Judaism for challenges that they’re facing in their lives. We want to touch people emotionally and I want to have people leave the sermon feeling closer to their Judaism and their Jewish community.”
Ellen Braunstein is a freelance writer.
