Mt. Arbel, Israel Light and Shadow: photo by Shai GluskinBelow is an excerpt from a sermon I gave Rosh Hashanah morning. Download a pdf to read the sermon in its entirety.

We are praying here today in the language and telling the stories of the ancestors we share with our Israeli sisters and brothers, with the sancta and canon passed down ledor vador/from generation to generation, beginning with our peoples’ experiences in that land.

Along with a rising generation of newly-engaged Israelis studying Torah and praying together, we are doing it not as strictly interpreted by halakha but engaged with and informed by it. We must be no less engaged with and informed by Zionism and the Jewish state.