Cantor's Corner

Return again...return again.

We return: from summer to fall, from vacation days to school days, from long sunny days to those shorter, cooler ones.

We also return again to celebrate the Jewish New Year and to contemplate how we have gone astray and what we need to do as we move forward.

But we cannot return to where we were. Yes, we’ll return to in‐person, as well as online services, but we will never return again to what once was. Because of COVID, we mourn the loss of those days, but at the same time, we must rejoice at the gift of days that have been shaped through our loss.

We won’t yet return to indoor services, but we will return to a sanctuary that encompasses all of the outdoors. We won’t have our grand piano, but Debbie Jaap will return to accompany on our
electric piano. We won’t return to our two to two‐and‐a‐half hour services, but we will return to those texts and melodies that resonate for us during the High Holidays. We won’t return to normal, but we might return to a better normal, one that we create day by day and choice by choice.

How will you return this year? We are an adaptive people. From wandering in the desert to wandering from country to country, learning new languages and new cultures. We adapted to surviving in the concentration camps by praying in the shadows, and by helping one another survive, day by day.

This year, may we return as a community that must first mourn our losses, but also rejoice in one of God’s most precious gifts: an awareness of what it means to truly adapt and to create our own fluid norms.

A Happy and New, New Year.