Rabbi's Blog- October 2026:

Looking Back on the Holy Days

The High Holy Days have a way of flying by. The staff and volunteers at TKC spend months preparing, and then, almost before we know it, the final shofar blast sounds and we're breaking the fast. Before this season slips into memory, I want to say thank you and share a few moments from what we talked about together.

Thank You

Our High Holy Days are only possible because of so many people. Many of them have already been thanked elsewhere in this issue and my thanks are extended to everyone who helped to make our time special and uplifting. Here I want to give special thanks to the people whose work is easiest to overlook: our office staff.

Amy Deich, Lori Dreffin, Michelle Erste, Catherine Ficke, and Suesan Phillips all put in a tremendous amount of work. Our office staff start preparing for each year’s High Holy Days shortly after the previous year’s have ended. They do that by processing and debriefing everything that happened and making decisions for next year while everything is still fresh in mind. Then, each spring, the office staff puts together an entire calendar of activities for all ages, from the youngest to the oldest, on all of the days. We invite volunteers, leaders and participants to assist in making it all happen. As we get closer, our office staff produce the programs and the tickets (now electronic), arrange for security and supplemental staff (such as babysitters), answer the phone calls and e-mails, coordinate a lot of the moving parts, and so on. Some of their work is front and center: Lori Dreffin led our teen services, Michelle Erste and Caroline Figiel helped lead youth activities, and Suesan Phillips tracked down goats and brought them to and from our Yom Kippur afternoon services. But much of it happens where no one sees it. Amy Deich, our administrative director, coordinated many of the moving parts. Everyone tracked down a hundred small details so the rest of us never had to think about them. Much of what felt seamless in the sanctuary was only possible because of the unglamorous, hard work they did behind the scenes. They have my deep gratitude.

Sermons

It’s a great and humbling privilege to have the opportunity to speak from the pulpit. Below are excerpts from the sermons I delivered, with a link at the bottom to where you can find the full versions.

Erev Rosh Hashanah: "Not Born That Way"

This year, Rosh Hashanah began on the 25th anniversary of September 11th. I spoke about the huge range of human responses we saw that day and in the months afterward, and about Viktor Frankl's insistence that our choices, not our circumstances, give our lives meaning.

"I imagine he would say that the firefighters weren't born heroes. It was a choice, and that choice they made is part of what gave their life meaning... Who will we be in the year ahead? How will we meet whatever comes our way?"

Rosh Hashanah Morning: "Irreplaceable"

On the birthday of humanity, I spoke about our mixed feelings about AI: what it might make

easier, what we might lose, and what no machine can ever replace.

"When AI tells you it's listening, it's not really listening in any way we previously understood the term. It's a prompt from a computer program, not one soul ready to receive the outpouring of another."

Kol Nidrei: "Who Is Wise?"

Starting from a scam email and a bike ride in the Tennessee mountains, and with a little help

from Rashi, Hillel, and Ted Lasso, I talked about holding our convictions with humility and

curiosity. "All conviction and no capacity for humility leads to cruelty. All humility and no capacity to act turns into paralysis and perhaps even cowardice."

Yom Kippur Morning: "How Good Do We Have to Be?"

Borrowing the title of Rabbi Harold Kushner's book, I asked the question underneath the wholeDay of Atonement: how do we hold high standards and human fallibility at the same time? "Not perfect. Not just fine, either. As good as we're actually capable of being — which, it turns out, for most of us, most years, is quite a lot."

Links

You can watch a recording of all of the services, as well as separate recordings of the sermons and musical highlights here - https://www.youtube.com/@TempleKehillatChaim

If you’d like to see a written version of the sermons, as well as other materials, feel free to head over to my blog - https://www.kehillatchaim.org/blog/categories/rabbi-s-blog

We're Here All Year

The High Holy Days are a highlight of our year, but they're not the only time we gather. We're here every week of the year, and every holiday on the calendar too. Come join us for Shabbat on Fridays at 7:00pm or drop in on our Shabbat morning Torah study. Or come celebrate Simchat Torah or Chanukah or any other Jewish holiday with us. If something I said this season stayed with you, or you disagreed with it, I'd love to hear about it. Reach out anytime.

I hope to see you soon.