Rabbi Menachem Creditor
This year I again led prayers in a community I’ve come to know well. My voice, which I expected to weaken, grew stronger. And I know why: it was the strength of being in community. The resonance of not being alone.
And yet, alongside this renewal came heartbreak — the horrific attack at Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester, England where Adrian Daulby z”l and Melvin Kravitz z”l were murdered. The image that will not leave me is of Rabbi Daniel Walker, blood on his kittel, standing steadfast to protect his community. It is a vision of horror — and also, paradoxically, of sacred strength.
We must not allow terror to eclipse the power of Yom Kippur. For centuries, through Crusades and expulsions, we have carried into Yom Kippur the memory of those who fell in the Eleh Ezkerah section of Musaf. We emerge with prayers of hope. In the Avodah (another part of musf), when we join the High Priest entering the Holy of Holies, we are reminded of fragility — and of promise. The poem Mar’eh Kohen asks: What did his face look like upon emerging? It shone with light, with the assurance that the year ahead could be one of gladness, plenty, health, and safety. That was not a recitation. It was a promise.
Today, I bless us with the strength of Rabbi Walker, who like the Kohen Gadol, risked himself along with other members of the shul, to protect our people. He embodied what it means to carry community on your shoulders. And that is our calling too: to be a people whose strength is greater than anything the world can throw at us.
We live in a harsh time. Anti-Jewish hatred is not distant — it is on campuses, in streets, in sanctuaries, in Europe, in the United States, in our precious homeland. We do ourselves no favors by denying it. But friends, we are not defined by harshness. We are defined by resilience, by beauty, by song, by Torah. Survivors teach us to dance again. Rabbis remind us to love fiercely. Our ancestors whisper through us. And even in our own internal struggles, we hold ourselves accountable — because that is who we are.
Our story is not just Jewish; Torah begins not with Israel but with creation itself — a radical claim that God cares for every human being. To be Jewish is to hold our people close and also to hold the world tenderly.
And so I return to this truth: we are beautiful.
We sing, we dance, we grieve, we rise. We wear our people on our shoulders wherever we go.
This week’s Torah reading, Ha’azinu, reminds us that Moses, about to die, sang. He sang! He knew that life is fleeting, and song is eternal. That is part of his legacy to us all. Yom Kippur reminds us of the same truth: we do not have forever, so we must sing now.
Friends, breathe deeply. This very breath is a gift. Torah is a gift. Community is a gift. Shabbat is a gift. You are a gift. We are a gift.
So as we enter Shabbat, let us sing — not despite the brokenness of the world, but because of it. To sing is to defy despair. To sing is to remember who we are. To sing is to demand life and to be alive.
Together, let us keep singing until every captive is brought home, until every heart knows peace, until our people and the world are restored.
Shabbat Shalom.
