Rabbi Mark Zimmerman’s Rosh Hashanah Message for 2022

Without a doubt, the most important theme of the High Holidays is teshuvah, or return. Our souls have strayed under the weight and pressure of the world around us. And so, these 10 days of teshuvah call out to us with the opportunity to reflect, to re-engage with our neshama, and to spiritually come back home.

After 2 1/2 years of Covid many of us have indeed strayed from another and lost touch in so many ways. As the pandemic restrictions have eased, this Rosh Hashanah I look forward to a year of actual, physical teshuvah, when we are all back together in person.

During the depths of the pandemic, what I missed most was not hearing the voices of our fellow congregants joined together in song. The beautiful melodies and the joy being part of a kehillah.

I am reminded of a recent cookout we had with our kids and grandkids. A load of laundry was in the washing machine when it started sounding the familiar Samsung tune letting us know that the cycle had completed. Our daughter Miryam announced: “Hey Abba, your washing machine is singing the song of its people again”. I giggled. But I also loved the notion that this machine was “singing the song of its people”.

I wondered that if our people also have their own song, what exactly would that song be? Or to put it another way, what are the melodies from the Jewish ‘songbook’ that penetrate down to our very kishkas?

Maybe “Hatikvah.” I think of the many Yom Ha’Atzmaut celebrations, the somber Yom Ha’Zikaron ceremonies where I felt the power of that melody sung in a room filled with our people. And if you’ve been to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, you saw the video of a group of recently liberated survivors singing Hatikvah at a DP camp anxiously hoping, praying to make it to Israel. That video touches the soul and tears at your kishkas, especially as you contemplate the many Jews who didn’t get the chance to make that journey.

With the High Holidays approaching, I think of the many melodies that we will soon sing together in shul; melodies that also touch our souls like Avinu Malkeinu, B’Rosh Hashanah and Kol Nidre.

When Rosh Hashanah arrives, and we again get to sing these beautiful, holy melodies TOGETHER – that’s when the spiritual power of the holidays will begin to take hold.

The Holidays are here. It is time to come home.

Mark Zimmerman is the senior rabbi at Congregation Beth Shalom in Dunwoody where he has served for 34 years.