Seder for Rosh Hashanah 2024
October 2, 2024. Rosh HaShanah 5785
Everyone knows about the Passover seder, at which Jews around the world tell the story of the Exodus and weave our storytelling together with the display and eating of symbolic foods. Matzah, maror, charoset, a roasted egg, a shankbone and karpas. But you might not be aware of the Sephardic and Mizrachi custom of celebrating a seder for Rosh Hashanah, in which hopes for the New Year are linked to a different set of symbolic foods. Dates. Beets. A pomegranate. A leek. A gourd. The head of a fish, or a sheep (for the really serious).
Seder means “order.” Tonight I would like to take us through a new version of the old Rosh HaShanah seder, weaving together symbolic foods and questions, to tell the story of the turbulent year that has just ended, and to express our hopes and prayers for the new year being born right now. With this Rosh Hashanah seder, perhaps we may create a tiny bit of order amid the chaos of events swirling all around us.
Most of the seven symbolic foods I will mention are elements of the traditional Rosh Hashanah seder, but I have made a few adaptations. We’re Reform here, right? The elements of tonight’s Rosh Hashanah seder will be humus, a gourd, a leek, a pomegranate, a beet, goat cheese and a round challah. I’m sorry I did not bring enough for everyone; it was impractical. But I will show you the items as we proceed.
Tonight is the new moon of the sacred seventh month, and so this Rosh Hashanah seder has seven stages. Seven symbolic foods. I have added seven questions, which seemed appropriate for a seder. And seven prayers for our new year.
Our Rosh Hashanah seder begins in cruelty, and the suffering, that came at 6:35 in the morning over the southern border of Israel, last October 7th. Families burned alive in their homes. Children tortured in front of their parents and parents tortured in front of their children. Hundreds of young women at the Nova music festival hunted down, raped, tortured and murdered. One thousand two hundred Israelis slaughtered and two hundred and fifty kidnapped and taken hostage in Gaza. For the 100 hostages still in Gaza, the suffering of October 7 has not ended. Months ago a deal for their release seemed possible, even likely. But on August 31, the bodies of six hostages were found, executed by Hamas as the soldiers of the IDF came close to rescuing them. We do not know how many are still alive. The first question of our seder tonight is this: Who will come home? How and when? Symbolically, we dip in humus, which sounds a little bit like “home.” Humus. Home. Expressing our desperate hope that our hostages be brought home, alive. And we pray: Yehi ratzon milfanecha, Adonai eloheinu v’elohei avoteinu….may it be Your will our God, and God of our ancestors, to return our hostages to their families. Bring them home.
The second stage of our seder is failure. The failure of Israel’s military intelligence to detect and to prevent the October 7th invasion. We now know that Israel had actually obtained the exact plans for the invasion. The plan was called Wall of Jericho and it was known by Israeli military intelligence in every detail. But they did not believe it was possible. Mid- level intelligence officers had given warnings of the preparations for the attack, which were ignored. Hamas understood the Israelis perfectly. They knew everything about Israel’s high-tech defenses and they knew Israel’s weakness. Hamas was sophisticated, and patient, and disciplined, and they achieved 100% success. They shattered the trust between the people of Israel and their government, and with great skill ignited a war which would turn the world against Israel. The second question of our seder is: how did this catastrophe happen and who will be held accountable? Let the second symbolic food of our Rosh Hashanah seder be a gourd, which in Aramaic is k’ra. It sounds like the Hebrew word kra, which means “call out!” Yehi ratzon milfanecha, Adonai eloheinu v’elohei avoteinu….may it be Your will our God, and God of our ancestors, that there will soon be a kriyah, a calling out, an investigation and calling to account of those who failed to protect the citizens of Israel.
The third stage of our seder looks toward the people of Gaza, whose suffering knows no limits. In March of last year, I heard a talk by a young Palestinian journalist, who said this: “the people of Gaza hate everyone. They hate Israel. They hate Hamas. They hate Egypt. They hate the United States. They hate the Palestinian Authority. They hate Iran.” Who can blame them? The war which was so expertly designed by Hamas, and so devastatingly executed by Israel, has brought nothing but death and suffering to the people living in Gaza. Our third question on this Rosh Hashanah night is “When the war ends, which some day it must, what will become of the people of Gaza; who will govern that broken place?” Let the symbolic food for our third stage be leeks, which in Aramaic are called karti, which sounds like the Hebrew word karet, meaning “cut off.” Karti. Cut off. Yehi ratzon milfanecha, Adonai eloheinu v’elohei avoteinu….may it be Your will our God, and God of our ancestors, that the people of Palestine will cut themselves off completely, karet, from the terror organization Hamas, and may they live side by side with Israel in dignity, in security and in peace.
With our fourth ritual element, our Rosh Hashanah seder turns to the world’s response. The university professors and their students who celebrated that evil day, proclaiming Israel entirely responsible for the violence of October 7. The months and months of silence at the United Nations about the sexual violence on October 7. The bizarre spectacle of South Africa bringing charges of genocide against Israel. We understand very well that criticism of Israel is not always antisemitism. We have our own criticisms! Many!! But in the chanting and the shouting about genocide and apartheid, and the terrifying incantation “from the river to the sea,” it is difficult to perceive and to distinguish the voices of love from the voices of hate.
David Ben Gurion, Israel’s magnificent first Prime Minister put it bluntly: “I don’t care what the goyim say; I care what the Jews do.” Well, I do care what my thoughtful non-Jewish friends think about Israel and this conflict. But my primary concern is the same as Ben Gurion’s: What are the Jews doing? Let the fifth question of our Rosh Hashanah seder be “Are we Jews living up to our mission, to be a light unto the nations, to be a moral people?” Let the symbolic food we eat tonight be the pomegranate, whose seeds represent the 613 mitzvot, the actions by which we bring holiness into the world. Yehi ratzon milfanecha, Adonai eloheinu v’elohei avoteinu….may it be Your will our God, and God of our ancestors, that we live by the great mitzvot of Your Torah, as summarized by the great prophet Micah: To do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
The fifth stage of our seder is the Islamic Republic and its proxies. In recent days, the focus of our attention has shifted away from Gaza to Lebanon and Hezbollah, and at last to Iran. With exploding pagers and walkie-talkies, and the assassination of Hezbollah’s leader Nasrallah and of Hamas’ political head Ismail Haniyeh, Israel has regained a measure of its confidence in its military intelligence. This week, Iran fired 181 ballistic missiles at Israel, and Israel with help from the United States, successfully defended itself. But like many of you, I have heard from friends in Israel, who lived through that shower of exploding missiles and it was terrifying. Tonight’s fifth question is: “Must Israel go to war against Iran?” Let our symbolic food at this stage be a beet, which in Hebrew is selek, which sounds very close to silek, meaning “to depart.” Silek/depart. Yehi ratzon milfanecha, Adonai eloheinu v’elohei avoteinu….may it be Your will our God, and God of our ancestors, that the oppressive regime of the Islamic Republic depart from the land of Iran, so that the two proud and ancient peoples of Israel and Iran might once again be friends and partners in bringing peace and prosperity to the region of the Middle East.
Two stages remain in our Rosh Hashanah seder tonight. Stage six and stage seven.
Stage six is our family in Israel, the people of Kibbutz Kfar Aza. In the entire year that is ending, the single most profound experience for us as a community was the visit in early February of eight inspiring women from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, whose home near the border of Gaza was overrun by three hundred terrorists on October 7, leaving that peaceful community shattered and deeply traumatized. Elinor, Yifat, Sigal, Michal, Osnat, Madlen, Etty and Ruth spent an entire week here, a week of breathing together, a week of deep conversation, of enjoying the beauty of our region, of singing and praying, and weeping together. With our eight sisters from Kfar Aza we rediscovered, and so did they, what it means to be family for each other across such a vast distance. That relationship is continuing and deepening.
The members of the kibbutz are getting ready to move soon, having spent the last eleven months in hotel rooms at Kibbutz Shfayim. They will move soon to another kibbutz, Ruchama, where they will live in small caravans for the next two or three years until they can return to their home at Kfar Aza. We have asked how we can help, and they told us about an extraordinary woman named Livnat Kutz. Livnat was a beautiful, creative and charismatic woman, married to Aviv and mother of three beautiful children. Rotem, Yonaton and Yiftach. Ten years ago, during another time of war, the entire kibbutz was forced to relocate to the north for a month, and Livnat noticed that the children were managing their emotional distress by playing with art. When they returned to the south, Livnat created an art workshop at the regional school, in which children and adults could pour their sadness, their fears and their distress into pottery, wood working, embroidery. Ancient art forms. The work of their hands.
After the morning of October 7, none of Livnat and Aviv’s family or friends could reach them. Finally on the third day friends from the kibbutz managed to get to their home, where they found the whole family Livnat, Aviv, Rotem, Yonaton and Yiftach murdered, all embracing each other on the bed in their safe room. They were five of the 64 members of the kibbutz murdered that day. The grief of that community has been overwhelming and consuming and they have felt more than ever before their need for Livnat and her healing touch and vision. They have asked us to help them build a workshop at their temporary home at Kibbutz Ruchama, in which they can work with their hands to slowly, gradually, heal their hearts. We have said yes, we will. The flyers describing our project, including a QR code that allows you to make a donation straight to the project, are outside tonight, and will be throughout these Days.
The sixth question of our seder tonight is: How do you heal a broken heart? And our sixth symbolic food is the cheese of goats, ‘izim, which sounds like ‘Aza, binding us to our family, the members of Kibbutz Kfar Aza. Yehi ratzon milfanecha, Adonai eloheinu v’elohei avoteinu….may it be Your will our God, and God of our ancestors, that for our family in Israel, the people of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, this coming year be a year of art, of quiet creation, of a return to life and a year of healing.
The seventh and last stage of our Rosh HaShanah seder tonight is the wheel of the year, on which we travel together around the sun, year after year after year. The wheel never stops turning. Young Israelis are still getting married. A friend who lives in Jerusalem wrote to me this morning that he was driving on the road on Monday night, when the sirens went off and the missiles began to fall. They were on their way home from the baby-naming of their brand-new grand-daughter, whose parents named her Neri Layil. My candle in the night. From what I know of her parents, that little girl will grow to be a candle in the night for her family, for the Jewish people, and for the world. The wheel is turning.
Here in Santa Barbara, we have lost friends and family during the past year who we fully expected to be with us again tonight. And so many new babies have been born. My little grand-daughter, not yet two years old, is already getting sounds out of the shofar. The wheel is turning.
We are here tonight in yet another church that has opened their doors to us. Our place of worship changes from week to week, and from year to year, but our journey around the sun continues, year after year. Wherever we find ourselves on Rosh HaShanah, the voice of the shofar calls us home. Under the new moon of Tishrei, we reflect upon where we have been, and we pray to be written again in the Book of Life.
The symbolic food of this seventh stage is the round challah of Rosh HaShanah, representing the ever-turning wheel of the year. The cycle of life, of birth and death and rebirth. Our Festival cycle of Pesach, Shavuot, the Days of Awe, and Sukkot. Our never-ending journey around the sun. Our seventh question tonight is the same question that God called out to Adam and Eve in the Garden at the dawn of time: Ayeka? Where are you?
Every year and at all times, but especially in this hour of growing darkness, God is searching for us. Ayeka? Where are you? May this loving community and our ancient, living tradition give us strength, wisdom and courage to come out of hiding, and to respond, “Hineni. Here I am.”
Yehi ratzon milfanecha, Adonai eloheinu v’elohei avoteinu….may it be Your will our God, and God of our ancestors, that we be inscribed on this Rosh Hashanah in the Book of Life, for a year of blessing, a year of courage, a year of healing and a year of peace.