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Sermons 5785/2024

Selichot Sermon 5785
Rabbi Alexandra Wright

Before we begin our Selichot Service, I would like to thank you Judith for sharing your creative energy, your knowledge and beautiful interpretations of the music you played for all of us here this evening. Thank you as well for opening the canon of music by women composers, these beautiful pieces so long hidden from us.

I would like especially to welcome to our service members of Beit Klal Yisrael (BKY) and their guest Rabbi for these High Holy Days, Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell. It’s a huge honour to welcome you to the LJS this evening. Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell published The Jewish Women’s Studies Guide in 1987.  She founded the American Jewish Congress Feminist Center in Los Angeles, and served as the first rabbinic director of Ma’yan: the Jewish Women’s Project, where she helped edit their feminist Haggadah. She edited the Reform Movement’s haggadah, The Open Door. Among her other publications are The Torah: A Women's Commentary and Lesbian Rabbis: The First Generation.

This evening’s service begins with the Psalm recited at all weekday evening services, inviting us to praise God, and the Psalms that follow refer to the blessing of being a people called to praise God and affirm God’s might and graciousness. It is here, at the beginning of the service, that we remind ourselves of God’s presence, who is near as the very air we breathe. Yet we are aware of our own estrangement and distance from that presence.

This thought takes us back to last Atonement Day and the promises and vows we made to change our own lives. They were solemn and sincere, but in the course of the year, we have forgotten them. And so, we beg God to help us examine our ways, for we are like poor and needy people knocking on God’s door. We are bowed down by a sense of our own failures and weaknesses, but we are also contrite and want sincerely to return to a path of goodness and truth.

We know that we cannot ask God’s pardon without seeking out forgiveness from those we have wronged. With a new heart, we seek out new ways to do good, to seek justice and defend oppression – we begin with ourselves, but do not end with ourselves. Our liturgy allows us to confess privately, silently the evasions and deceits we practise upon others and upon ourselves.

The prayers bring us a hint of the relief and healing, the restoration that perhaps Yom Kippur will bring in two weeks’ time. We know there is goodness deep within us and that prayer, repentance and good deeds will help us to find renewed purpose and peace of mind.

Fri, 14 February 2025 16 Sh'vat 5785