Kol Nidre 2026/5787: Overcoming Brokenness

A story was told a few weeks ago about the late Michael Brooks, the famed University of Michigan Hillel director who inspired thousands of students during his time on campus. One of those students, Rabbi Micah Peltz, was reflecting on the many messages that he learned from Michael, and he shared the following story: “When Michigan Hillel moved from its small office to its current Hillel building, the first large center for Jewish life on campus of its kind I think, Michael loaded all of his files from his old office into his car to move it to the new building.  He had to make a stop on the way, and when he came back to his parked car it was gone.  The car had been stolen. Later it was found, but all of his files, his years and year of work and ideas, were gone.  I remember saying something like, “That’s awful, you must have been devastated.”  “No,” Michael said, “It was the best thing that ever happened to me.  Now I was liberated from all of those old ideas and forced to think of new ones.”  

That response stopped me in my tracks as I realized it is something that is so hard for us to do, rebound from pain and find a way to move forward. It doesn’t mean that we forget what happened, not at all, but instead of paralysis, we find ways to walk again.

But many people are not necessarily so positive as Michael and it takes a bit more to consider how to move from brokenness to wholeness, from pain to resolution, or at least, a new normal. 

What does it take to do that?

In the soundtrack of the Broadway musical, The Lost Boys, there is a song towards the end which says (and i won’t sing it)

[STAR]

If we make it through the night

If we get another day

If all is not yet lost

And there's something to be saved

…

If we make it through the night

If we get the chance to change

If we can forgive ourselves

And make up for our mistakes

…

All of the broken and beautiful pieces that we are made of

When struggle comes our way again

I will not leave your side

I'll stay by you always

For all of my days

If we make it through

The night!

These powerful words sat with me long after I left the theater because I think they are an honest response to pain. First, we might make it through the night but we are often a combination of the broken and the beautiful all at once, and that is a very human experience. We can’t forget the past but we can take it with us as we move forward into the future to learn and to grow. 

The Rabbis, shortly after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, understood this as they tried to respond to the greatest catastrophe imaginable. 

Mishnah Brachot 1:1

There is a debate in the MIshnah, from what time may one recite the Shema in the evening, and the answer that is given is from the hour when the priests would enter to eat their terumah until the end of the first watch. There is then a debate about what the correct answer is, but for our purposes this morning, the conversation, not the answer is much more important, because you need to understand the context.

This is after the destruction of the temple-where they understood that they had to rebuild…and so they went to Yavneh, in the North of Israel, and they built an academy for study, and they started establishing new systems of prayer but trying to tie it to old habits. To me, this was brilliant as it was a fusing of the past and the present….

This emerged for me as a central text when I was studying at Hartman this past summer with Ayala Dekel, as she taught an elective called Life After Brokenness

Ayala is a wife of a reservist who, fortunately is alive, however, since October 7, spent hundreds of days in reserve duty, and she spoke about the wholeness and brokenness that happened over and over again, each time he left, came home, and left again. 

She reflected on the moment where he had to sign his will before he left for the reserves, and how he told her, 

“Please promise me that if i don’t come back you will get married again-”- As she shared “All I wanted to say was don’t go, but all he could she could say was take care of yourself” …she didn’t see him for 70 days….that changed their lives.

And so, from the depths of the abyss….How do we emerge from the brokenness?

She pondered the painful question, ….when death enters your home temporarily….when we confront death but escape it….how do we change our lives….

So we began to share models that I think we can all learn from, of how we respond, to when we have been broken, and how we want to be put back together-not the same as before, but as a model of renewed strengthen in who we are to become. 

A first example is from 1917-From the Diary of Ḥiyuta Bussel, After the Expulsion from Petaḥ Tikva (1917)

“In the evening we went out in a joining dance the likes of which I had never known. To this day I remember the circle, and it is as if I still feel the hands gripping my shoulders with all their strength — we sang aloud and with feeling, “Am Yisrael Chai…” Even in dark, benighted life there is a grain of light and love that gives the strength to endure in this world.”

A second example is from those who survived the Shoah and went to Displaced Person camps:

Yossi Klein HaLevi spoke to us this summer and reflected on what he called, this current moment as the Post, Post Holocaust era, but to do that with integrity, he needed to examine the post Holocaust era, and he reflected on the DP camps for he believes that there are some lessons that we can learn from Jews who lived in the decade after the Holocaust who tried to answer the question, is the starting point of one’s life, the moment you start asking, how does one live as a Jew after what just happened. 

And as a corollary, That question-how did we go from the lowest point in our history, the Shoah, to the peak in our history, the establishment of Israel (ability to defend ourselves and the centrality on the world stage-for better or worse) and what we can learn from it-

And this is how he got to the DP camps, for as he said, 

-the society that emerged in the DP camps-teens/young people-were the first post apocalyptic jewish society which some refer to as “The Last Million.”

He shared how in the DP camps there was an embrace of Zionism-

• survivors married under a chuppah of a blue and white flag, they ended prayer services singing HaTikvah, this year in Jerusalem, and the names of newspapers written in the DP camps, including one called “Thiyat haMetim” which means revival of the dead and it was published either in Buchenwald or Bergen Belsen and it was handwritten - The ability to think like that is nothing short of miraculous to me.

As Yossi said, “Zionism was not only a strategy to answer an existential need, but a sense of a spiritual response to the Shoah-the Shoah was a mythic transhistorical event and the only fitting response would be if the Jews went for broke and actualized the greatest counter myth which was ACTUALIZING REDEMPTION

And it is the Israeli Declaration of Independence that shows this: 

It is called Megillat HaAtzmaut-the scroll, it looks like a torah scroll

And just like a Torah, it Begins with the letter BET! - it was supposed to start a different way but the founders wanted to hint to the torah.

Why? The show that this is a moment of Continuity, that with this actualization of redemption,  we are the next chapter of a very old story…..we have a new story and hold onto an ancient story….Not as a replacement-but built on the ashes of the former story-is it the next chapter or the new book. 

In fact, as Golda Meir’s wrote in her diary about the arguments between the founders, she shared “We were all deeply aware of the fact that the declaration not only signified the formal end of 2,000 years of Jewish statelessness, but that it would express the most fundamental principles of the State of Israel.” This was a yes/and moment.  

 Declaration-ERETZ-ISRAEL was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.

And so where does that bring us today? How do people find home in darkness, wholeness in brokenness?

How do we respond to this post-post-holocaust era that began on Oct 7.

Former Hostage, Naama Levy-

What gave me hope in captivity was the thought that maybe one day I would get out of there and come home. When it was hard for me and I had had enough of captivity, I told myself: yes, the Naama of now has had enough — but I have to think about the future Naama, and about the fact that if I do not give up, the future Naama will be so glad, and will thank the Naama of now who did not give up….I learned not to give up. I learned that things take time. I learned to get up and try again even when it seems there is no way in the world. I learned that even when it seems so, it is not the end of the world. I learned not to be afraid to feel, not to be afraid to try, not to be afraid to show who I am. I learned to give my hundred percent even when I am already exhausted. I learned to keep my optimism. I learned that every day is a new opportunity. I learned that I still have so very much to learn.

Ok, we are living after. And we feel a little broken.

Rachel Goldberg Polin-The title of her book-is When we see you again-she is under no allusion that that will happen in this lifetime, and yet, she keeps moving forward, one footstep at a time. In her book, she reflects on what gave her hope about hersh when he was in captivity, by speaking to another hostage that was part of the final deal last October-

“Or told us that Hersh went to each of the captives in the tunnel and said to them a line he had read in Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning — “He who has a why can bear almost any how.” It is a sentence Or tattooed on his arm. Or told us that Hersh repeated this line to himself and to each of the captives, encouraging them all to think of the motivation that would let them breathe and go on living inside the hell.”

And what about today? Alon Futterman, is an Israeli, and son of my rabbinic colleague, who is now on a slate for Knesset, wrote the following:

In the last three years, I have learned a lot about rehabilitation.

In Kfar Aza, I learned that it is possible to build a house in a place that was destroyed.

In Soroka, I learned that it is possible to heal even when it still hurts.

And from my children, I learned that the future, unlike the past, still waits for us to decide what to do with it.

Now it seems to me that the time for the state's Torah has come.

I have decided to join Gadi Eisenkot and the Yesh Atid party!

Not because I think politics can fix everything.

But because we must not leave the state alone.

There is a nation here that needs to be reconnected.

There are wounds that need to be healed.

There are systems that need to be built.

And there is a great job that needs to be started.

All my life, I have tried to take ideas and turn them into actions.

Now I ask to do it in the service of the state.

After three years in which we have learned so much about breaking, it is time to relearn how to build.

This is why Rabbi Dave and I are planning an Israel trip for families and the entire congregation for August of 2027. It is time to go there, not just to volunteer, not just to witness, but to learn about the miracle of the rebuilding and celebrate how Am Yisrael, Eretz Yisrael, and Medinat Yisrael are a part of all of our stories. I am hoping that many of you, especially those with kids in elementary school, middle school, and highschool will sign on for this trip. It is time we go back, as a shul, to see the grandeur of the land. 

These messages are so powerful on a communal and global level, but what do they do for us, for I imagine that there are times that each of us have felt broken and need to rebuild-

And this brings me back to another story from just after the destruction of the Temple:

Avot de-Rabbi Natan 4:5. 

The text recounts an exchange between Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai and his disciple, Rabbi Joshua, as they stood surveying the immediate aftermath of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE: [1, 2]

The midrash relates that Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai and Rabbi Joshua were once walking near the ruins of the Temple in Jerusalem, its rocks still smoldering. Rabbi Joshua said: “Woe to us, for this sacred place is destroyed — the place where all of Israel's sins are forgiven!” Rabbi Yochanan said to him: “My son, do not be distressed, for we have a form of atonement just like it. And what is it? Gemilut chasadim, acts of loving-kindness.” Incredible-at this moment of pain, the response is not more sacrifices to god, but in fact acts of lovingkindness between us. 

We just marked 25 years since the horrific attacks of 9/11 and we can remembering those smoldering ashes-they are not just of the temple in Jerusalem, they are from our city as well. It was acts of kindness between people that helped us survive, helped us dream, and helped us rebuild. 

Rabbi Alan Lew teaches that we heal one another by being together. We give each other hope. But being gathered together as a single indivisible entity, we sense that we do in fact have efficacy as a larger, transcendent spiritual unit, one that has been expressing meaning and continuity for three thousand years, one that includes everyone who is here, and everyone who is not here-all those who came before us, and all those who are yet to come, all those who are joined in the great stream of spiritual consciousness. 

We are all a bit broken, but we come together, on this Kol Nidre eve, broken, yet aiming to heal together.

So I conclude, I share this poem, by Rich Orloff, called Broken Threads, articulating what I believe we can hope from each other, and what God expects from us:

Broken Threads

by Rich Orloff

Do not bring your best self to me

Bring your torn self

And your irreparably stained self

The parts you don’t want to wear in public

Don’t promise me you’ll be a well-dressed person

Instead bring remnants of your struggles and woes

Your unanswered questions and unsolved problems

Bring all that you’ve given up on

But still carry with you

Together we will weave a tapestry of healing

With cloth made of broken threads

The garment we create may not be the one you’ve fantasized about

But it will keep you warm

And protect you from the elements

Until you outgrow it

And the weaving process begins again G’mar Chatima Tova.