Rosh Hashanah 2026 Day 2: We can come home again, and how

Over the past few years, many of you have shared with me, the challenges in your homes. How do you have conversations, when you don’t all agree? Let me be clear-most of the time, it has nothing to do with politics which I know is often the first thing that comes to mind-

• It can be about where to spend the holidays, or how.

• It can be about parenting or grandparenting.

• It can be about money.

• It can be about the past.
  

What we know is that the best and yet sometimes hardest place to be, is at home. 

What I want to explore today is, can we, in our individual lives and as part of the Jewish people, consider what it means to return home, together. 

Can we reconcile when there was pain and discord?

We can only do this if we begin to think about the role of home, in our lives.

Rabbi Marcelo Gindlin, the rabbi and cantor at the Malibu Jewish Center & Synagogue, wrote to his congregation the weekend of this summer’s world cup final-

Ever since the matchup was announced, people have been asking me the same question.

"Rabbi...who are you rooting for?"

I wish the answer were simple.

For most people, it's just a soccer match.

For me, it feels like a question about home.

I was born in Argentina. 

I learned to speak there. I learned to laugh there. I learned to love soccer there. I learned what it meant to belong to a Jewish community there. My parents built their lives there. My grandparents are buried there. Argentina is the country that shaped my childhood.And I love Argentina.

But love has become a more complicated word than I once imagined.

I loved my country.

But I wasn't sure I could flourish there.

America tells another story.

America gave me room to breathe.

Here I became a rabbi.

Here I discovered that my calling and my gay identity did not have to compete with one another and I didn’t need to remember that my father was bullied for being Jewish.

Here I became a father.

Here I discovered that God's dreams for me were larger than my fears.

And I love America.

But loving America does not require pretending that everything is as it should be.

Then there is Israel.

Israel is different.

Israel is not only a country.

It is the landscape of our people's memory.

It is the place toward which Jews have prayed for thousands of years.

Every time I land at Ben Gurion Airport, something inside me whispers, "You're home."

And because I love Israel, I wrestle with Israel.

The prophets never believed that loving Israel meant remaining silent.

Isaiah wasn't less faithful because he criticized his nation.

Neither was Jeremiah. 

Nor Amos.

Nor Micah.

Quite the opposite.

They spoke difficult truths because covenant has never required silence.

Home is not merely where we were born.

Home is where our humanity is honored.

Home is where our children do not have to hide.

And I would add, Home is where we can talk together, even if we disagree.

BUT-real questions are raised from his story-

What do we do when we don’t love everything about our homes? 

What do we do when we don’t love everything about our families?

Can we in fact, sit together?

I thought about this a number of times this year that i want to share-

I first want to recount a moment this past March-

I was invited this past spring to get together with many of my highschool classmates, many of whom I hadn’t seen since 1995. To be honest, I was very nervous, and as you know, I don’t get nervous easily. I can sit and talk to anyone!

But knowing that I was going to be with a group of people that hadn’t been together in over 3 decades, spooked me. What if we didn’t have anything to say to each other? What if old issues-jealous, envy, grudges, broken hearts, came rushing back around the table that would make for a very uncomfortable evening. 

The fact is, it was so much better than I thought it could ever be. We found what united us and didn’t focus on anything that might have torn us apart. We celebrated the education we had been given at a Jewish Day School while sharing all of the different paths we had taken in over three decades. 

It doesn’t mean we are in the same place, but it means, we can find those ties that bind us.

A second example that I had this year was watching the off-broadway play, Birthright. I don’t want to give away the ending though it was deeply moving, but the premise of the show is that there are 6 people who went on Birthright together in 2006. The show progresses and accentuates moments in 2006, 2016, and 2024 the year, which were each colored by the political climate these young people were living in but also impacted by their own personal lives-marriage and divorce, birth and death. Those things that are normal in one’s lifetimes. How the friends navigated these very challenges moments was painful and beautiful all at once, but each scene was consciously in someone’s home, raising the questions, despite how different we might become, can we return home? And what does it take?

These questions came to mind when I read about Kate Gilgan’s painful memoir about losing custody of her son when he was 6 because of her alcohol addiction, and the eventual reconciliation between them as he became an adult-she wrote 

“The custody ruling deemed me unfit. But that look on my son’s face — it showed something far worse — the moment a child begins to understand that his mother isn’t protecting him. Not from the system. Not from herself. That is the moment I wish I could forget but never will.

I didn’t fight for him then. I couldn’t. I wasn’t even standing on solid ground. But I would later. For years…..

The real unraveling came quietly, in slow motion.

He grew more distant. His smile faded quickly. Every affectionate moment seemed to cost him something when we parted. And eventually, the cost got too high.

He stopped answering my calls. Stopped smiling. Stopped looking back. And I couldn’t steer him away from his own self-protective impulses.

I had placed all my hope in the courts. Like so many parents, I believed that if I told the truth and followed the rules, the system would help make it right.

But family court isn’t built for repair. It names winners and losers. And when one parent wins, the child always loses something….

The legal system can draw boundaries, but it cannot rebuild trust. It cannot parent. It cannot undo estrangement. It cannot hold a child’s heartbreak the way a mother must eventually learn to — patiently, silently, over time.

That work is ours.

And what I learned is this: You don’t win a child back by proving you’re right. You earn your way back by becoming someone safe and steady who they might want to return to when the noise finally quiets.

He didn’t come back because I won. He came back because I made room, and kept it warm, until he was ready.”

So, HOW DO WE GET HOME? I think it starts with communication and trying to be on the same path. In the powerful torah reading that was read today about the binding of Isaac, we read:

וַיִּקַּ֨ח אַבְרָהָ֜ם אֶת־עֲצֵ֣י הָעֹלָ֗ה וַיָּ֙שֶׂם֙ עַל־יִצְחָ֣ק בְּנ֔וֹ וַיִּקַּ֣ח בְּיָד֔וֹ אֶת־הָאֵ֖שׁ וְאֶת־הַֽמַּאֲכֶ֑לֶת וַיֵּלְכ֥וּ שְׁנֵיהֶ֖ם יַחְדָּֽו׃

Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and put it on his son Isaac. He himself took the firestone and the knife; and the two walked off together. What does the commentaries say about this?

Rashi-

וילכו שניהם יחדיו AND THEY WENT BOTH OF THEM TOGETHER — Abraham who was aware that he was going to slay his son walked along with the same willingness and joy as Isaac who had no idea of the matter.

YIKES. This is terrifying…

Rav Hirsch on Torah, Genesis 22:6:1

V. 6 וילכו שניהם יחדיו. This refrain occurs twice again. Abraham and Isaac, the father and the son, the one to bring the offering, the other to be the offering wending the hard way upward together in complete, unswerving, harmonious unity, such is the picture of the example that is to point the way for all fathers and sons, for every old and young generation of the House of Abraham, the path they are to tread together.

What does this mean? That unfortunately, inevitable, from the first family until today, there might be strife. Not the kind of strife where we want a father sacrificing his son physically, but how often do we think about that as a metaphor….

SO-CAN THEY RECONCILE? Not all families can…And not all families should…but there is something powerful about what happens after the binding…

We read:

וַיָּ֤שׇׁב אַבְרָהָם֙ אֶל־נְעָרָ֔יו וַיָּקֻ֛מוּ וַיֵּלְכ֥וּ יַחְדָּ֖ו אֶל־בְּאֵ֣ר שָׁ֑בַע וַיֵּ֥שֶׁב אַבְרָהָ֖ם בִּבְאֵ֥ר שָֽׁבַע׃ {פ}

Abraham then returned to his servants, and they departed together for Beer-sheba; and Abraham stayed in Beer-sheba.

-SO ABRAHAM RETURNED and THEY DEPARTED TOGETHER.

Several medieval and more modern commentators try to fill in the gap and say, that of course Isaac was there, it didn’t need to be spelled out. This is what our people hope for-a way to walk together as a family, as a people, even when there are issues between us. 

So, How do we sit together in our homes

Can we still have a reunion?

And, how do we decorate our homes? The flags on this bimah are something that i have referenced before, and for me, they are so powerful. They represent the aspirations of many, who are always trying to do their best, and when we put them on this bimah, it is a reminder that all of us answer to a higher power, that we are a part of a greater collective, and that a rising tide lifts all ships. 

And when I think about the flags, I think about a story that I heard earlier this year from ELISHA WEISEL, son of Elie Weisel as he was remembering a Memorial Day here in the US that he spent with this father-

“It was freshman year. I was home for a holiday weekend, and the nation was awaiting the outcome of a Supreme Court case that was the talk of campus. Over dinner I shared my views. “The right to burn the flag,” I told my parents with 18-year-old certainty, “is a far more beautiful thing than the flag itself. We should be inspired when we see the flag being burned, because it means we are free!”

I can count on one hand the number of times I saw my father, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, angry. This is the only time I can remember him being angry at me. 

My father’s face darkened as he pushed back his chair and stood up from the table. “If you had been there,” he said in a voice I had never heard him use before. “If you had been there when Buchenwald was liberated, if you had seen that flag being carried that day.”

“Dad, I ...”

“If you knew what that flag meant to the soldiers who had seen their brothers killed trying to reach us," my father, a Holocaust survivor, said to me. "If you knew what that flag meant to me then, and means to me now, you would never utter such foolishness at my table.”

I was ashamed. My obsession with one truth − that civil liberties were a treasure to be protected − had prevented me from seeing a truth that stood just as strongly beside it. Not everything that is legal is right. Not everything that can be said, should. 

My parents had endured unspeakable horrors to arrive at this promised, if imperfect, land, to make common cause with her most deeply held values. I had been not only ungrateful, but blind. 

I tell you this story to share how he taught. What he didn’t do mattered as much as what he did. My father didn’t threaten to cut off my tuition. He didn’t love me any less the next day. But symbols have meaning. Words have meaning. There was history I needed to hear to inform the ideological viewpoint I was developing, and he made sure I heard it.

We won’t always agree with what we hear but we need to keep the doors open, even if we feel they need renovation and they have cracks. 

A Hasidic story is told in the Netivot Shalom -

It's a story about a king who sent his son to a far off kingdom.  Years went by, and the king realized how much he missed his son.  So he sent his son a letter. “Come home,” said the letter, “I miss you.”

And his son wrote back.  “I miss you, too,” said the son.  “I would love to come home.  But I am so far away, and I don't remember the way home.”

“It's okay,” said the king, “Just go as far as you can – even if it's just one small step.   And wherever you are, I will find you, and I will help you come home.”

Let’s zoom out and realize what these questions can mean for our communities-can we find ways of sharing what we care about, together.

This past June, the Knicks won the NBA Championship and many kept using the phrase, one city, one moment. While this isn’t as sacred as the flags on our bimah, the pain in our homes, and the division we have faced, it gives us a model for what we sometimes need. Sometimes, we need to be able to come together for something incredible, even if we don’t agree on all of the details until that point. I am sure that not all Knicks fans voted the same in the mayoral election, or have the same views on how to fix this city or country, but I do believe that the electric energy that permeated the city this spring and early summer is a model for what can be. What do we have in common, rather than what drives us apart? Can we identify that? 

Last year, the night before Shmini Atzeret, when the remaining living hostages were brought home to Israel. Knowing that people were awake, across time zones, watching, with baited breath, as they walked together, after almost being sacrificed, was truly miraculous and I hope that there wasn’t a Jewish person out there who couldn’t appreciate the depth and power of that moment. We stick together. This is what it means to belong to the Jewish family. This is what it means to be welcomed home. 

So as we enter this new year, especially during the days of Teshuva, the days we are told to return, 

Don’t give up…Write the letter. Make the phone call. Find a way for people to sit together in your home. We owe it to ourselves as members of a family. We owe it to ourselves as a people. We need to find ways to sit together, even if it is hard. Feeling at home is the hardest and most basic need that we all have….but we can only create those moments, when we walk through the doors.

Shana Tova.