The sermon of the year
FOR many of us, Rosh Hashanah represents a time of renewal, when we can reflect on the year that was and re-energise for the year ahead.
FOR many of us, Rosh Hashanah represents a time of renewal, when we can reflect on the year that was and re-energise for the year ahead.
For rabbis, it is also a time when their synagogues are full, giving them the best opportunity to inspire, uplift and challenge as many of their congregants as possible with the words of their sermons.
Rabbi Shmuel Cohen from Cremorne Synagogue said speaking to many more people presented a challenge.
“You can look in the eyes of every person [when there’s] 60 or 70, while with 400 you have to be much more inspiring,” he said.
His topic this year will be the role and priority of humankind in creation. “On Rosh Hashanah, humankind was created … so if humankind is worthy, he is slightly less than God [according to] the psalms, the Book of David,” he said.
“But if he is not keeping to his duties — that is to upkeep the land and to make life better — in this case he was the last to be created [so] he is the least of importance.”
Rabbi Dovid Gutnick from East Melbourne Hebrew Congregation said that preparation time and sermon length are inversely linked.
“The less you prepare, the longer you keep speaking. So for Rosh Hashanah I’m actually going to be fairly short because I’m preparing a few days in advance,” he said. “In a sense there is more pressure, but it probably ends up being a better sermon because you actually sit down to think things through.”
He plans to take a fresh and positive look at the concept of rebellion.
“Jews throughout history have often had a rebellious streak — the first Jew, Abraham, was a massive rebel; he rebelled against his parents, and he rebelled against society,” he said. “I have a few ‘rebellious’ people in my congregation, I want them to understand that, in a sense, to be Jewish is to rebel against a lot of the norms of society, which can be negative or constricting.”
Meanwhile, Rabbi Gersh Lazarow of Bentleigh Progressive Synagogue will be talking about the place of God in our lives and the modern world.
“What I’m trying to do is really explore the idea of what God is,” he said. “So much of what we believe and what we do as modern Jews recognises that there are forces greater than ourselves acting on us. One of our challenges in life is to connect, and then reconnect to those forces or that singular force, although we might identify in a multitude of different ways.”
GARETH NARUNSKY
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