Rabbi Lauren Henderson’s Rosh Hashanah Message for 2025

I had the opportunity a few weeks ago to hear one of my heroes, Krista Tippett, speak to a group of rabbis at the Shalom Hartman Institute. She reflected that we are living with a distressed nervous system at a species level right now. And for us in the Jewish community, layered on top of that is this terrible war. October 7th blasted through and surfaced geologic layers of trauma, she shared, and we continue to sit in the heartbreak and the wreckage.

We are expected to process in an instant what will take a lifetime, or more likely multiple generations, to heal. And I have been reflecting so much this past year on all the ways that we have been shaped by all the realities beyond our control, and how we might become reacquainted with our fundamental humanity during these high holidays.

I know because of the instantaneous way that we receive news and communicate with one another that we expect ourselves to have instantaneous responses. The moral clarity we might feel in a flare of anger feels so righteous and good – to know exactly who is to blame for all the horror. But when and where can we tend to the pain and vulnerability that are underneath?

Setting down all the light speed technologies and the immediate responses from AI, I’m feeling the need to pick up the more ancient technologies that Jewish wisdom offers us in this season: finding a body of water to toss our birdseed and hopes and regrets into and letting them be carried away in the current. Singing ancient words of compassion, el rachum v chanun, G-d of mercy and grace, next to other human beings – friends, family, and strangers. Being called to wakefulness by a ram’s horn, and asking ourselves: what pieces of my own aliveness and humanity do I want to reawaken in this year to come?

This year, I pray that we can find a home for ourselves – in our bodies, our families, our communities, and our world. I pray that our hostages finally return home. I pray that all who have been wrenched from their homes in Israel and Gaza find their way home, and that all our people, all of humanity, can finally live in safety and security. L’shanah tovah – to a better year ahead for all of us.

Lauren Henderson is the rabbi at Congregation Or Hadash in Sandy Springs.