Rabbi Bradley Levenberg’s Rosh Hashanah Message for 2026
Rabbi Bradley Levenberg shares his thoughts and inspiration for this year's High Holidays.
There’s something wonderfully audacious about Rosh Hashanah. Judaism asks us to begin a new year not by predicting what will happen, but by asking who we intend to be when it does.
That question feels especially important right now. To be Jewish in this moment is to carry an ancient tradition into a world moving at extraordinary speed. We live with technologies our grandparents couldn’t have imagined, confront questions they never had to ask, and absorb more information before breakfast than previous generations encountered in days. At the same time, some of the oldest challenges of Jewish life remain with us: antisemitism, the security of Israel, the responsibilities we bear toward one another, and the challenge of maintaining hope when the world gives us ample reason for worry.
Our tradition doesn’t promise that we’ll know how the story turns out; it teaches us what to do while we’re living in the middle of it.
We gather and we study and we argue and we remember. We give and we repair what we can. We show up for one another. And then, remarkably, we teach our children to do the same.
Perhaps that’s among the most important responsibilities of this Jewish moment. Our task isn’t simply to convince the next generation to preserve Judaism because previous generations preserved it for us. We need to help them discover why Judaism is worth carrying forward. They need to experience a Judaism that has something meaningful to say about their friendships and their choices, about justice and responsibility, about Israel and the Jewish people, about celebration and loss, and about what it means to build a life of purpose.
The shofar that we sound on the Holy Days calls us to wake up. This year, perhaps we can hear in its sound another invitation as well: to make sure that the Judaism we hand to those who come after us isn’t merely something they inherit but is something they will want to, and be excited to, claim as their own.
Shanah Tovah. May it be a good year for us all.
Rabbi Bradley Levenberg is the Rabbi at Temple Sinai and President of the Atlanta Rabbinical Association.