(Pre-Tour Bus) Reflections from Kol Nidre with Romemu

By Bowie Snodgrass

Faith House and Romemu have collaborated in many ways over the last three years and we are excited to be working with them again this year on the Faith House Tour Bus and the fourth annual Interfaith Seder on April 1, 2012.

“It’s About Time” was Romemu’s theme for the High Holidays this year (5772 – 2011).  Rabbi David Ingber spoke about the multiple resonances of this phrase as he welcomed a packed congregation to the Kol Nidre service on Friday night.  This is the high point of the year, he said, and we made it.  Every time I attend a service at Romemu, my heart beats harder and my fingers tingle.  Yes, I was glad I made it, even if for just a couple hours out of a 24-hour cycle of Yom Kippur services.

I first met Rabbi David and his wife Ariel in the summer of 2008, when they were newly married and Romemu had just begun.  Now David and Ariel have two children and the sanctuary where Romemu meets was at capacity. People were standing in the back and sitting in the aisles of the main floor and the balcony. Multi-generational families attended together and the community was, as Rabbi David said, full of “diversity, contradictions, and richness.”

“What’s going on here?” Rabbi David asked.  This may not be like other Kol Nidre services you have attended before, he commented. There was dancing, clapping, and joyful jumping during many of the songs, which were sung in Hebrew, English, and as a niggun… ay, yay, yay, yay.

I was only there for a couple of hours before it was time for me bring my one-year-old home to bed.  When I went down to the child-care area to get Jacob, he did not want to leave the toys, other kids, and kind caretakers.  What a great sign of a safe, loving community when a baby doesn’t want to leave!

Below are a few bits that jumped out at me from the “High Holiday Reader” that Romemu included in their welcome booklet and from the service itself.

The old shall be renewed and the new shall be made holy.

– Rav Kook

What does a person expect to attend when entering the synagogue? In the pursuit of learning, one goes to the library; for esthetic enrichment, one goes to the art museum; for pure music, to the concert hall.  What then is the purpose of the synagogue?

Many are the facilities which help us to acquire the important worldly virtues, skills, and techniques.  But where should one learn about the insights of the spirit? Many are the opportunities for public speech; where are the occasions for inner silence? It is easy to find people who will teach us to be eloquent; but who will teach us how to be still? It is surely important to have a sense of reverence. 

Ritual, like precedent, is a footprint left by the encounter of just and holy people with God, who is holiness and justice.  Footprints like these deserve to be followed, as they may lead again to the source of holiness and justice.

– Shalom Speigel

Listening is important.  Don’t just read your siddur (prayerbook).  Listen to it.  For the prayers were written by religious geniuses.  And when you pray, you are really listening to a magnificent religious symphony.  The Holy One, Blessed be God, wants the heart. 

– Talmud, Sanhedrin 106b

The sins we commit, these are not the worst thing.  After all, temptation is powerful and man is weak.  The great crime of man is that he could turn at any time and he doesn’t. 

– Rabbi Simhah Bunam

We are loved by an unending love.
We are embraced by arms that find us even when we are hidden from ourselves.
We are touched by fingers that soothe us even when we are too proud for soothing.
We are counseled by voices that guide us even when we are too embittered to hear.
We are loved by an unending love.
We are supported by hands that uplift us even in the midst of a fall.
We are urged on by eyes that meet us even when we are too weak for meeting.
We are loved by an unending love.
Embraced, touched, soothed, and counseled,
Ours are the arms, the fingers, the voices;
Ours are the hands, the eyes, the smiles;
We are loved by an unending love.

– Rabbi Rami Shapiro