In her first High Holiday sermon this year, Rabbi Rachel Saphire “definitely” plans to address the fact that she’s brand new at her congregation.

“This moment is the opportunity to truly get to know one another,” said Saphire, who began as Beth El Hebrew Congregation’s rabbi in July. “I feel like my sermons should absolutely give the community an introduction of me and a way to get to know me. I’m definitely leaning into that for Erev Rosh Hashanah.”

Saphire hit the ground running and had her High Holiday sermons planned out more than a month in advance.

“In the spirit and with the goal of truly getting to know one another, I’m preaching on the topic of vulnerability because I believe that being able to access and connect to our true, authentic self is the first step, and in order to be open to [one] another and know who we are as well, we need to be vulnerable,” Saphire said.

On the first day of Rosh Hashanah, the rabbi will continue that theme, addressing how to find genuine connection to one another.

“Expanding on this idea of vulnerability asking us to open ourselves to others, connection becomes possible when we do,” Saphire said, referencing the shul’s vision of “One Beth El.” “I want to talk about oneness and feeling united and feeling a part of community.”

Rabbi Doug Heifetz of Kol Ami: Northern Virginia Reconstructionist Community plans to similarly discuss vulnerability, connecting the idea to the obligation to protect immigrants.

At a traditional Kol Nidre service marking the beginning of Yom Kippur, the service leader is flanked by people holding the Torah — a biblical allusion to the battle leaders who flanked Moses in the desert, Heifetz explained.

“The idea [being] that when, in battle formation, the biggest danger is that we let some among us stray, to be a sort of weak link instead of protecting them … and it was that vulnerability that allowed us more serious attacks from outside,” he said. “We failed to protect the vulnerable, and that was our biggest failing as a group, which led to our biggest physical danger.”

More broadly, Heifetz will talk about Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of a new Jewish year.

“We say that is a holiday that is pregnant with possibility,” he said. “There’s a prayer, ‘Hayom Harat Olam,’ [which] people often translate as, ‘Today, the world was born,’ but actually means, ‘Today, the world was conceived,’ or even, ‘Today is a day of eternal conception.’ So it’s about drawing on the possibility of conceiving and then later birthing something new.”

Rabbi Salomon Gruenwald, who began as Kol Shalom’s rabbi in July, wants his first High Holiday sermon to be an introduction of himself to the congregation and an invitation for congregants to connect with him and with one another.

“My first Rosh Hashanah sermon is going to be about how we can combat the epidemic of loneliness and isolation in a world in which we are increasingly interacting with machines by connecting deeply with one another as a community, as individuals,” Gruenwald said.

Over the last few decades, Americans have lived through a “dramatic change of pace,” moving more, changing jobs more often and spending less time with each other in person, then-Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told NPR in 2023.

“I think we’re still living in the shadow of the pandemic, and for many of my congregants, they’re still cautious about venturing out,” Gruenwald said. “I also think that recent developments in technology and [artificial intelligence] have actually made the problem of isolation worse.”

While the Rockville rabbi cannot singlehandedly reverse the loneliness epidemic, Gruenwald is doing his part in the Kol Shalom community. He’s already met about 30 members over one-on-one coffee chats since he arrived in July.

“Just connecting over a cup of coffee is countercultural these days,” said Gruenwald, who tries to patronize locally owned small businesses rather than chains. “I’m really making it a cornerstone of my first year at Kol Shalom.”

Through this sermon, Gruenwald wants congregants to know that he came to Kol Shalom to be “of service to individuals and families.”

“I deliberately sought to be at an intentionally intimate congregation where I could do that,” he said. “I’m also in a new stage of life. Just last week, my wife and I dropped off our kids who are twins at their respective colleges … So we’re also in a new stage of life, and I’m looking forward to building that life here with my wife and finding a new circle of friends and community.”

Similarly, Rabbi Yossi Kagan of Chabad of Clarksburg and Germantown, which opened in the spring, will address the importance of Jewish community in his sermons.

“I will be speaking about the need to show up stronger and prouder as Jews in the face of antisemitism rather than cower away or run, as expressed in the sound of the shofar: a proud, strong, confident blast,” Kagan said.

zbell@midatlanticmedia.com