Rabbi Julie’s sermon, “Only at Night Do You See the Stars” for Kol Nidre, 5787/2026

At the base of the stairs in their home in Tzur Haddasah, outside Jerusalem, there’s a large photograph printed on canvas.   Four children, in their bathing suits, are suspended in midair, about to jump into the blue water.  The siblings are smiling and laughing, and I can’t help but wonder which one of them was killed in battle on October 7th.  The forty rabbis, from all over the world, settle into the folding chairs that fill Elana and Eyal’s living room.

With remarkable composure, Elana insists that we will focus not on how her son Yannai died, but rather on how he lived.   Though hundreds of people are alive today because of Yannai’s bravery, Elana makes it clear that she does not want him to be remembered as a hero.  With conviction, she tells us, Yannai’s story will not be used to reinforce the slogan, tov lamut b’ad artzeinu, it is good to die for our country.  “Judaism”, she reminds us, “is a religion that sanctifies life.  It would have been better for Yannai to live for his country.”

* * *

In her Book, The Power of Meaning, psychotherapist Emily Esfahani Smith identifies four pillars of a meaningful life.  The first three pillars are more expected – belonging, purpose, and transcendence.  The last pillar often surprises people; the fourth pillar of meaning is storytelling.  In her words, “our storytelling impulse emerges from a deep-seated need all humans share: the need to make sense of the world… and our place in it.”^[1]

Each of us is a collection of stories.  There are the stories we love to tell or remember over and over again, and there are the stories that we would sooner forget.  There are the stories we cling to even though they no longer serve us, and there are the stories that others tell about us – some of which are precious, some pernicious.   Our lives are situated in concentric circles of stories, with our personal experiences and memories at the center.

Tonight, as Jews around the world gather for Kol Nidre services, I want to focus on how our own personal stories find themselves within the larger narrative of the Jewish people. While we might not know the stories of everyone sitting in this room, after all, we don’t even know everyone’s names, we are all part of the same sweeping narrative of the Jewish People.  Even if we have never met, we are not strangers.   We are one interconnected family, a people that extends across the globe and across millenia, connected by the expansive, breathtaking story of the Jewish People.

* * *

This past spring, I had the honor of converting nine people to Judaism – six adults and three babies, including one in utero.   Before immersing in the mikveh, the three rabbis forming the Beit Din sit with the conversion candidate to hear their story– what led them to Judaism, what they love most about our tradition and practices, and of course, because we’re Jewish, where they still struggle.   Their responses often move me to tears because they possess a clarity and a passion that is at once both profound and simple.   Most often, the conversion candidates say that what drew them to Judaism was the permission to question, the warmth of the community, and Shabbat dinner.    And then, towards the end of the conversation, one of the rabbis always asks a variation of this one last required question.  ‘Even with the rise of antisemitism in the world, and here in America, are you absolutely, positively sure you want to join the Jewish people?’   In all my years of being a rabbi, the conversion candidates have always responded, YES, without hesitation.  And in recent years, they sometimes even say that the rise in antisemitism is what made them realize that they already see themselves as Jewish.

* * *

When we use stories to define who we are deep down, we are making narrative choices, deciding which stories we want to emphasize – good or bad – as we make sense of our lives.  For over thirty years, Dan McAdams, a psychologist at Northwestern University, has been studying ‘narrative identity’, the phenomenon of internalizing the stories that shape how we understand ourselves.  And when we make these narrative choices, McAdams discovered, we can either focus on ‘redemption stories’ defined by transformation and growth, love and belonging, or in terms of ‘contamination stories’ characterized by loneliness and isolation, stagnation and regression.   When our narrative arc moves from bad to good, we inspire agency; when our overarching story is headed in the opposite direction, we are overwhelmed by helplessness.^[2]

We are living in a moment in history as Jews in America where the undeniable rise of antisemitism from all directions has shaken the narrative of American exceptionalism to its core.   We no longer feel safe gathering in our synagogues to pray without the protection of armed security guards.   We are hardened and frightened, angry and overwhelmed, bewildered and exhausted.  We can’t help but wonder how the story of Jewish life in America will unfold;  we don’t yet know for sure if ours is a redemption story with a temporary downturn or a contamination story with the best years of Jewish life in America behind us.   That’s why it feels so urgent to me this year to talk about the power of storytelling and the agency we have over how we tell the story of the Jewish people.  There are painful truths that we have to face, both external and internal,  and there are outright lies that we have to learn to recognize and disarm.   But there is also a powerful and breathtaking redemption story that we need to tell now more than ever.

* * *

I recognize that I probably would have never encountered Yannai Kaminka’s story if he was still alive.  And I probably wouldn’t be giving this sermon tonight on the power of storytelling if not for the way in which his mother intentionally shared his story with us.  On the morning of October 7th, 2023, Yannai was serving as a training officer on the Zikim army base located a half mile from the Gaza border.  When the bombs started flying overhead, at 6:29 a.m. everyone ran to the bomb shelters in their pajamas except for a few rookies serving on overnight guard duty.

When Yannai went through his officer training, he had to write down the values that were most important to him.  His primary goal was to love his soldiers, and to make sure they felt loved. Yannai believed, “Love is like a muscle, and if you exercise it enough, you build the capacity to love.”   During the day, there wasn’t much time for individualized attention, so Yannai would use overnight guard duty to get to know his trainees.  He would visit them in the middle of the night, at 2 or 3 a.m., and ask them to share their personal stories and their goals for the coming year.  “Share your goals with me”, he promised, “and I’ll try to help you achieve them”.  Yanni had these conversations in the middle of the night 2 or 3 times every week!

On the morning of October 7th, Yannai and four other commanding officers ran to take over the guard posts from their trainees, thinking at first that there were only 2 or 3 terrorists shooting at them.  First, Yannai saved a group of 30 civilians camped out on the beach of the Mediteranean Sea, and then he dragged a wounded soldier to safety.  For thirty minutes, Yannai along with six others, held their ground through intense fighting, saving all but one of the new recruits on the base.   And that extra 30 minutes allowed the people living on nearby kibbutzim to lock the gates and to prepare to defend themselves, saving hundreds of additional lives.

Elana told us that Yannai was someone who loved to hear people’s stories, often over a cup of Turkish coffee.  He was reticent to share about himself, but he had a gift for getting other people to open up.  He knew that our deepest, most vulnerable stories could only be shared with a listener you trusted.  Someone who brought you a cup of Turkish coffee in the middle of the night or called you a liar when you said you were ok, but he knew you weren’t.  His mother wanted us to know that Yannai’s true legacy was making someone feel loved because you took the time to uncover their innermost story.   And she asked us to honor his memory by honoring the power of the pain and the light in each person’s story.

* * *

Our Kol Nidre services will end with the recitation of Avinu Malkeynu.  Captured in this prayer are two of the most remarkable aspects of the story of the Jewish people.  We are a tiny extended family that has maintained and transformed our religion and culture over the course of three thousand, five hundred years with ingenuity, perseverance, and countercultural choices in the midst of overwhelming dominant forces.  When the Temple was destroyed more than 2,000 years ago, and we could no longer perform the ancient rituals of Yom Kippur outlined in tomorrow’s Torah reading, we smuggled Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai out of Jerusalem in a coffin so he could reinvent how we worship God and how ask for forgiveness.   Where once there were sacrifices and a goat sent into the wilderness, we now have prayers like Avinu Malkeynu.

And we will sing this prayer in Hebrew – a language our people kept alive by making literacy accessible to everyone, from laborers to scholars, in schools for children and adults from the Galilee to Babylonia, from Lublin to Cape Town, from Buenos Aires to Montclair because we, and our ancestors, made the enormous counter-cultural sacrifice to keep our sacred heritage alive by enrolling our children in Hebrew school.   And when we ask Avinu Malkeynu, to grant us a Shanah Tovah, a good year, we pray to a Sovereign who is a loving Parent, sitting on the throne of justice and mercy, asking us to live not as tyrants but as caretakers for the widow, the orphan, and the immigrant.

We are still here, we the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, praying for lives that matter and a better future, not because of something magical.  In the words of author Dara Horn, we are still here because of “a series of conscious, specific, and difficult human choices made against all reason and even when it was almost impossible to do so… And our story is worth telling “because of everything it demonstrates about human flourishing in a diverse and contentious world.”^[3]

* * *

Ultimately, I believe, the arc of Yom Kippur, like the arc of the story of the Jewish people, is a redemptive one, but only if we make it so.  We are both the authors of this story and its storytellers.  Yes, it’s a daunting task to sort through a tale that is 3,500 years old.  There are dark chapters we cannot ignore, whether we need to learn from the pattern of antisemitism or from our own moral failings.  But if these dark chapters are the only ones we cling to and highlight for the next generation, why will they want to write themselves into this story?  I urge us – all of us – to lift up and share the chapters that are full of light – there are so many of them and they are magnificent – both in our personal and collective stories.

One of my teachers in Jerusalem, Tal Becker, says we start reclaiming the story of the Jewish people by teaching our children to answer the question, ‘how old are you?’, by saying ‘I am 3,500 years old.’  Recently, I met with a Bat Mitzvah student who tolf me that she was struggling to connect to the ancestors in the Torah. “It feels like I’m studying social studies rather than learning about people that are a part of me.”  I asked her if she knew how long ago Abraham and Sarah had lived.  She guessed, ‘maybe 500 years’?  And I told her that 3,500 years was at least 150 generations.  Abraham and Sarah were your ‘great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great… grandparents (if you kept counting 150 times.’  Her eyes went wide.

And then I asked her if she knew any of the Jewish stories of her grandparents and great-grandparents.  Her mom said, one of your great-grandfathers was a kosher butcher, and one of your grandmothers converted to Judaism.    ‘Really?’, she said.  Just by learning a little bit more about the stories of people in her own family, this Bat Mitzvah student began to imagine how she connected to the larger story of the Jewish people.  I said to her, when people ask you how old you are, you should say 3,500 years old.  And she replied, you mean, “You mean, I’m 3,500 and twelve years old?”

* * *

My prayer for us this year is that whatever fears we carry, we never lose sight of who we really are.   We are the descendants of Abraham and Sarah and all of the people in between who believed that the Jewish people have something unique and holy to contribute to this world.   And let us remember that the story of the Jewish people has always been a story of joy and light, even in the darkness.  In the words of Yannai Kaminka, “only at night do you see the stars.”

G’mar Chatimah Tovah.  May we be sealed for a redemption story in the Book of Life.

^[1] Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning, p.104

^[2]  Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning, p.107-110.

^[3] Dara Horn, The Final Solution to the Jewish Question: A Love Story for the Living, p. 26, 18, 281.

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