ROSH HASHANAH
Preparing for the Days of Awe Local rabbis share how they get ready for the High Holidays. KAREN SCHWARTZ CONTRIBUTING WRITER
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ongregation Shaarey Zedek’s Rabbi Yonatan Dahlen does a lot of reading this time of year. He speaks to lots of people, bounces ideas off his wife, Meredith, and spends more time in silence. It’s all part of his preparation for the High Rabbi Holidays. Yonatan Rabbis throughDahlen out Metro Detroit and beyond are getting ready to again inspire their largest audiences as they approach the pulpit with messages of hope, reconciliation and self-refection. Getting those messages ready to deliver to sanctuaries full of congregants — and again
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this year, also those joining on Zoom — is a creative endeavor each rabbi enters into in a different way. For Dahlen, sitting in silence gives him the chance to think and digest what he’s read and heard, and to let his mind wander freely. He usually also reads lots of mindfulness books (Chassidut), to prepare, but this year he’s been reading more poetry. “It’s been really good for my thinking process, just to give myself a little bit more freedom and a lack of judgement, to be able to let my mind go wherever it goes,” he says. He’s exploring sermon ideas around how Judaism wants us to be active, as well as how we are commanded to care and
look out for each other, and what that means for the responsibilities we have to ourselves, our families and our communities at large. “One of the sermon ideas is that Judaism isn’t supposed to be passive,” he says. “I think the heartbeat of Judaism is ritual. Judaism wants us to be active, to get our hands on our ritual, our tradition, our text and really make them our own.” MEANINGFUL TO ALL The challenge in writing High Holiday sermons comes from trying to speak to as many generations as possible, says Rabbi Jennifer Kaluzny of Temple Israel. It’s a larger congregation than on a regular Shabbat, and
she says she wants to make sure her message comes through and is meaningful — that there’s something Rabbi in her message Jennifer Kaluzny everyone can identify with and that matters to them. She does her best thinking when she’s moving and in nature, and so during this season walks miles on the trails and on the sidewalks in her neighborhood. “I love being in nature, I love being in the sunshine, watching the birds — it gives me the opportunity to focus,” she says. Sometimes Kaluzny listens to music, and she frequently talks continued on page 46
SEPTEMBER 2 • 2021
