How the ancestors tamed their shadows

September 16, 2026 levtaylor

Some stories only make sense in the light of day. When the morning lights shine on your tent and the campfire no longer illuminates the storyteller in orange, the ghost stories from the night before lose their shimmer. When the puppets have been put away and no longer parade before backlights, the characters that once seemed so real disappear to wherever fictions go when they are finished.

Such is the story of how our ancestors tamed their shadows.

If you can trust your shadow to do as you do and move as you move, you can thank your ancestors for taming it. Today, you know that when you turn out the light, your shadow will disappear, but that was not always the case.

Once, a shadow was a feral thing that strutted and fretted after every human step until it walked no more, then stapled itself to some other form.

If you tried to write by candlelight, the shadows flew across the pages and distorted every word. If you wanted to read the time from a sundial, the shadows danced in circles to disrupt what you could see. So, when the shadows were unruly, there was no recorded time.

Since the first rays of light beamed down millions of miles and crashed into the first mountains, the shadows had lived on earth. They were older than life – and just as frightening.

When a tree stood perfectly still on a summer’s day, its shadow performed the forest’s rotting, decaying destruction. If a bush sat contentedly in a field, its shadow depicted it expanding outwards and throttling every other plant.

Shadows followed people. They lurked behind every being, showing human beings their dark side.

A woman could happily walk through an orchard without touching a thing, but her shadow snatched the apple shadows from every branch, gobbled them up, snapped the branches, chopped down the trunks, and threw salt on the soil.

When you looked back at the solid world, nothing had really changed. The shadows were just animations of people’s worst fears about themselves.

When human beings created the earliest civilisations, the shadows mocked up their own. The shadows of towns were burnt out ruins turned into snake pits with buzzards circling overhead. From atop a hill overlooking a community like this one, you would see the shadows of smoke and ash rising from a destroyed city.

If you were bold enough to listen, you could even hear the screams.

Yes, the shadows had voices.

When Cain committed the first murder, his shadow crouched, waiting for him in the doorway, like a bailiff to collect debts. The shadow walked behind his every step, reminding him of who he was and what he had done.

When two friends reached out to hug each other, the shadows made a puppet show of them attacking one another with fists and weapons. They hissed insults, dredging up every past slight, and insisted on each other’s worst traits.

The darkness was a terrifying thing and the shadows were a menace. So our ancestors worshipped the light. They praised the sun and hated the moon. They saw goodness in all that shone, and feared anything that cast a shadow.

They called the god of light Adonai: the Commander; the Sovereign. They prayed:

ברוך אתה יהוה עשה את האור

Blessed is the Sovereign, creator of light.

They called the god of darkness El: the Spirit; the Power. They prayed:

ארור את אל בורא את החושך

Cursed is the Spirit, maker of darkness.

A black silhouette sculpture depicting an angel with large, feathery wings embracing a man in a hat, showcasing intricate patterns and a dynamic pose. — *The Wrestle in Steel, Grisha Bruskin*

After Jacob betrayed his brother, Esau, and stole everything from him, Jacob’s shadow trailed behind him. Everywhere he went, Jacob’s shadow re-enacted his deception. It whispered to him that he was cruel, callous, untrustworthy; and, because of this, that he was unworthy, unlovable, unsalvageable.

One night, exhausted by his shadow’s relentless attacks on his character, Jacob leapt at his own dark form and tried to strangle it.

But the shadow fought back. The man and his shadow wrestled until morning came, when the shadow dislocated his hip from its socket. As the sun rose, the shadow gave Jacob a new name: Yisra-El; the spirit-wrestler; the one who fights with dark powers.

From then on, the ancestors knew that they could fight with the shadows. They also knew that they could not win. They called themselves the people of Yisrael: the nation that struggles with shadow-spirits.

The shadow is the closest thing to a human being at every moment. It dogs you, even when you think there is scarcely a source of light. So, what can you do when your shadow chases you, accuses you, and torments you? What can you do with something that attacks you when you cannot hope to gain victory over it?

You ignore it.

Our ancestors pretended their shadows were not there. However grotesquely violent they made their shapes or malevolently cruel they made their whispers, they took no notice.

In the time of the untamed shadows, people were polite and kind and spoke with quiet voices and rarely displayed anything that looked like anger, pain, or fear. Meanwhile, their shadows acted out the most tumultuous scenes and displayed every possible hostility. This was how our ancestors lived for generations.

Until they could no longer.

One morning, the children poured out into the central square of their town to play, in the way that children so often do, while their parents made breakfast.

Already there in the plaza was a quiet girl who rarely joined the others’ games and often wasn’t invited. She was doing something with her shadow that nobody had seen before.

She was playing.

She hopscotched along the cat’s cradle court, then her shadow did the dance on after her.

And the shadow was doing something they’d never seen before either.

The shadow was laughing.

No, giggling.

The girl and the shadow acted out the game like friends.

For a while, the children stopped and stared at the strange unfolding game.

Had a grown-up entertained such a risky activity, their peers would have quickly put a stop to the behaviour. But children are less aware of social rules, so don’t always enforce them. Nobody dragged her from the danger of her game. The kids just gawked.

And, after a while, they realised something. The shadows were gawking, too.

Eventually, a couple of kids ventured over and asked if they could join in playing. The little girl cheerfully assented. As did her shadow.

The children’s shadows whispered: “Let us play too.”

So the young and their shadows played together.

This is not to say it was all smiles. The shadows pushed each other, cheated, cut queues, and grabbed each other’s hair. But they kept playing. The children blurred the lines between body and shadow; between fun and fight; between propriety and play.

By the time that grown-ups came out to call the children in for breakfast, it was already too late. Everyone under a certain age was engaged in hopscotch or jump-rope or chase, and their shadows were playing too.

Upon the sight, the adults’ shadows flew into murderous rages. The dark forms of parents grew into monsters with gnashing teeth and scythe-like claws and hissed at the infants.

In their solid forms, the parents crouched gently beside their young ones, doing all they could to keep their eyes from the violent puppetry being played out on the ground. They whispered: “what are you doing? Why are you playing with these monsters?”

The children’s shadows recoiled into small balls like startled hedgehogs and cowered from their raging carers.

But in the visible world, the children stood firm. They placed their hands on their hips and spoke with indignation. They described to their parents exactly what had happened.

And the girl who had initiated this entire transgression asked: “why have you never played with your shadows before?”

A table with various objects illuminated by lights casting playful shadows on a wall, showcasing a whimsical scene. — *Hans-Peter Feldman, Shadowplay*

“You can’t ignore your shadow,” she insisted. “You have to ask it questions. When she’s angry, you need to ask her what she’s feeling. When she’s frightened, you need to ask her what she needs.”

When they came to tell of this day many years later, it was a final and outright undoing of years of suspicion, after which everything fell into order. In reality, everything took more time, and included many setbacks. After all, they were undoing conventions that went back to the dawn of civilisation.

But let us tell the story in its truncated folklore form. On that day, every ancestor turned to every shadow and started a conversation. From that moment on, they stopped ignoring the dark alter-egos that haunted them.

They saw that when these apparitions enacted violence, they were acting out their anger. They came to understand that when their shadows cowered, they were showing they were afraid. And that, when they snatched and grabbed from others, they were just exhibiting jealousy.

They learned that shadows could offer them shelter, protection, and shade. They learned that anger, fear, and envy could help them live better lives. They learned that they could not run from their shadows.

They were their partners. They were their playmates.

The shadows could not be separated from their bodies. The ancestors themselves were their shadows, and their shadows were them.

How wrong the ancestors had been about their God! There were not two powers in Heaven. The Sovereign and the Spirit were not separate deities: they were the same divinity in different guises.

Just as the shadow was an answer to the body and the moon was a mirror of the sun, the god of daytime and the god of night were one.

They ceased to talk about יהוה the Sovereign and אל the Spirit. Now they called their God by one name: יהוה אלהינו – our Spirit the Sovereign.

How wrong the ancestors had been to shun shade and revile darkness! Now they recited a new prayer:

ברוך אתה יהוה אלוהינו מלך העולם עשה האור ובורא את החושך

Blessed is the Sovereign, our Spirit, who rules the world, creator of light, and maker of darkness.

Yes, Blessed is God, who brings on all.

You would imagine that it was the shadows who changed and became the static fixtures we recognise today. But, no, it was our ancestors who changed first.

They became more curious about their own needs. They became more open about their desires.

And, as it turns out, they didn’t kill each other or rob each other or hurt each other when they engaged with their shadows. In fact, all those things happened far less often.

They were, however, more coarse and more abrupt. They were far more honest and far less polite. They had more conflict. They cried more, blushed more, and told each other they were angry more.

And they got on better with each other, and with themselves.

And then… well, the shadows did not need to come up with their aggressive dramatisations any more. And they started to look just like the bodies they were following. The shadows and the bodies merged to share the same borders, side-by-side.

Never again would they be deceived into dismissing any part of themselves. Never again would they imagine that anything did not come from the same single God.

So they taught themselves a new mantra, which they passed on to their children, and they to theirs, until many generations had passed. They told their descendants to say it three times every day and recite it whenever we prayed. They were to repeat it on waking and lying down; at home and on the way; at every moment of the day.

This was what we had to say:

שמע ישראל יהוה אלהינו יהוה אחד

Remember, O nation who struggles with shadow-spirits, the Sovereign is the Spirit. All aspects of God are One.

Such is the story of how the ancestors tamed their shadows.

Now, hear this, all you who have come to synagogue on Kol Nidrei. You are the spirit-wrestlers. You are the descendants of those ancient people who used to fight with shadows.

Know that you still have a shadow. We all still have dark parts of ourselves: those silhouettes shaped just like us that follow us around feeling angry and scared; greedy and sinful; violent and cruel. There are, perhaps, still high-pitched whispers dogging us, that tell us the worst versions of ourselves and everyone else are true.

You cannot ignore your shadow all the time. And Yom Kippur is a pretty good time to face it.

Your shadow is not a foreign enemy to be destroyed. It is a part of you. It generates the feelings you would rather ignore, like jealousy, rage, lust, and fear. But all those feelings are part of you. You can’t fight them away.

Nor can you let your shadow conquer you. You can’t let your anger or envy control you. You must engage with the parts of yourself you most despise in order that the version of you you like best can thrive.

Instead, when you meet your shadow, as you are likely to do during today’s solemn fast, be gentle with it, and kind. Ask it questions, and see what it can teach you. Play with it, and see if it can bring something to your life. Tame it, like a friendly pet.

In Judaism, there is only one Source. God has no opposite, no partner, and no comparative. All that exists comes from the same God, and all is balanced towards the good. Everything that exists in you – your greatest virtues and your darkest impulses – come from God. All of it needs to be seen for what it truly is.

If this story has offended, remember that you can shake off these shadows as soon as you leave here, and it will disappear to wherever fictions go when they are finished.

But if this parable is useful to you, tomorrow morning, when we return to our prayers, let us try to make friends with our shadows.

After all, some stories only make sense in the light of day.

The power of naming

September 14, 2026September 14, 2026 levtaylor

Each of us has a name
given by God
and given by our parents

Each of us has a name
given by our stature and our smile
and given by what we wear

Each of us has a name
given by the mountains
and given by our walls

Each of us has a name
given by the stars
and given by our neighbours

Each of us has a name
given by our sins
and given by our longing

Each of us has a name
given by our enemies
and given by our love

Each of us has a name
given by our celebrations
and given by our work

Each of us has a name
given by the seasons
and given by our blindness

Each of us has a name
given by the sea
and given by
our death.

This poem was written by Zelda, an Israeli poet, born in Ukraine, and translated into English by her friend, the American Marcia Falk. Although written as recently as the 20th Century, these words have achieved iconic status. “Each of us has a name” has become part of the Jewish liturgy for funerals, stonesettings, and Holocaust Memorial Day.

It speaks to something we know: the power of names.

When Adam, the first human being, named the animals, he gave life to their souls.

Knowing somebody’s name tells you about them. We hear a name and, in it, hear language, history, culture, connection.

You know, when you hear your own name, the power it holds. Your full name. Your government name. Your nickname. A secret name only someone you love deeply ever calls you. In hearing your name, you know your relationship to the one who says it.

Speaking someone’s name can summon them, invite their presence; or can scold them, cast them away. When we speak a name, we exert our own power.

We give names at birth through baby blessings. We call up somebody by their Hebrew name when they come to Torah. We change names with marriages, after life-changing experiences, and as a way of affirming gender. We etch names on tombstones and recite names during El Malei Rachamim.

When we understand the power of names, we can understand the significance of the rituals of Yom Kippur.

Long before there was a synagogue in Kingston, or Jews in Europe, or an academy in Babylon, or a Temple in Jerusalem, there was a Tabernacle in Shiloh.

It was a great tented structure on a great hill north of Bethel, whose songs could be heard deep in the Jordan valley and whose burning incense could be smelt as far away as Jericho.

This fabric sanctuary had many layers. Everyone could stand around the edges. Then, past the first gate, only the true believers could enter. Then, into the inner sanctum, only the priests from the ancient tribal hierarchy would go. And then, right at the centre of the mishkan, behind many curtains, hidden away from all view, was the Holy of Holies.

Only one man could enter there: the High Priest. And he could only enter once a year: on Yom Kippur. And he could only say one word, a secret word: the name of God.

We do not know what that name was or how it was pronounced.

Even Moses did not know it. While tending Jethro’s flocks in Midian, a great burning bush appeared before Moses and demanded he return to Egypt and free the people.

Then Moses asked for God’s name. God roared in reply “ehyeh asher ehyeh”: I will be what I will be. “Tell the people that ‘I will be’ is the one who sent you.”

God did not share the name with Moses in that moment. Maybe Moses never heard it at all. Indeed, maybe Moses could not have known it, because to know someone’s name is to know their inner essence, and God’s is beyond our comprehension.

But, we are told, God did let someone in on the secret of the Name: an initiate; one in every generation: the High Priest. He is a semi-mythic figure in our Torah, who, in legend, was beholden to the secrets of the Universe. But, insofar as God’s Name was ever knowable, the High Priest knew it.

We do not know how he said the name. Perhaps he shut his eyes and whispered it into the empty space behind all the drapery. Or maybe he cocked his head back and cried it aloud up to the Heavens. We know he said it ten times.

And, by saying God’s ineffable name, some great magic happened. In this pre-rational time of mystics and miracles, God’s holy presence descended on the Israelites, and granted them all forgiveness.

Yes, a name grants connection across the veils of reality. In ancient times, to say God’s unspeakable name breached God’s innermost essence. Saying the name summoned God from behind the veil of reality. The name ruptured through the boundaries of real and spiritual; finite and eternal.

You have seen this name written down. Above our ark here are the words in Hebrew ‘ivdu et Hashem besimchah- “serve God with joy” but the word is not written as it sounds.

Scholars call it the Tetragrammaton, meaning “four letter word” because it is inscribed with four Hebrew characters. Yod-heh-vav-heh.

But these letters are unpronounceable themselves. Even with vowels added, the letters struggle to make a discernible word. Protestant Christians in Germany tried to render it as Jehovah, which we know is impossible in Hebrew.

According to the Talmud, the name the High Priest may actually have said in the Holy of Holies was forty-two letters long. The High Priest intoned it quietly under the sweet melodies of the priests so that nobody could hear it.

Legend says that perhaps this name was passed on through generations but only to those who lived a life of absolute discretion, never once got angry, never tasted alcohol, and never insisted on anything. If such people exist, they are too modest to reveal their knowledge. If they ever existed, they probably no longer do.

So we read it as “Adonai,” literally meaning “my ruler,” even though we know that is not really God’s name.

In common speech, we just call God “HaShem”: literally, the name. Baruch HaShem: thank God; b’ezrat HaShem, please God. God is the Name; the Name of all Names; the Name beyond Names.

We come to the Yizkor ceremony. In the space-time of Yom Kippur, this service of remembrance is our holy of holies. Now, we say names.

In the build-up to this ritual, members send in the names of all those they remember, so that they can be read aloud. Some names, too, remain unspoken, but rest silently on lips, or stay gently placed on grieving hearts. Here, the names of our dead are called out.

Just as when the High Priest entered the Tabernacle at Shiloh so many centuries ago, something intangible happens with the naming.

Just as Adam once named the animals and animated their spirits, we name our loved ones and breathe new life into their memories.

We breach past death and touch an essence of the person that cannot be reduced or destroyed. We rupture the boundaries of real and spiritual, and see that something of our loved one has never left us.

Through saying the names of our loved ones, we bring their presence into our lives. They bring us comfort, and the pain of their loss. They bring us forgiveness, and the opportunity to forgive. They bring us the past, and point us to the future.

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at the University of Stanford. He wrote a small book called Sum, which imagines forty different possible afterlives. In the eighth possible ending to our time on earth, Eagleman writes:

There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.

This popular imagining of the afterlife is, in some ways, anticipated by our rituals of remembering.

Today, we say the names of our loved ones, and, if only for a moment, we give them life with us here once more. In a way we cannot explain, that is beyond reason, their names stand in for their whole being.

We know that, in our naming, and in our remembering, we keep something important of the dead with us. Just as they were once called in from playing in the street, or called up to read from Torah, or called out to in a crowded room, we call them again to come and pray with us.

May their names be remembered for a blessing.

Yizkor 5787, Kingston Liberal Synagogue

high holy days · sermon

The world is governed by compassion

September 29, 2025September 30, 2025 levtaylor

“Hineni he’ani mi-ma’as – behold, I am poor in deeds and lacking in merit. Nevertheless, I come trembling in the presence of You, O God, to plead on behalf of Your people Israel who sent me, although I am neither fit nor worthy of the task. You who examine hearts, be my guide, and accept my prayer. Treat these words as if they were spoken by one more righteous than me. For you listen to prayers and delight in repentance. Blessed are You, O God, who hears our prayers.”

In the synagogues of medieval Europe, the service leader used to begin with this public prayer of atonement, openly acknowledging their own inadequacy.

In the Liberal world, we have been shaped by the Victorian attitude that eschewed public vulnerability. So, instead, this prayer is given out to rabbis to read privately to themselves.

The days when we had to pretend to be perfectly put-together are over. In our age, we recognise that openly sharing our insecurities builds a more emotionally authentic culture, where people are better at handling their feelings.

So, this year, I not only quietly recite this prayer in my office, but share it with you openly.

This year, these words feel more profound than usual.

This is a sensitive time, and I know how fragile so many hearts are.

In the build-up to these Days of Repentance, an American Masorti rabbi, Joshua Gruenberg, wrote:

“Rabbis stand before their congregations with trembling hearts. We know that every word matters. We know that words can wound and words can heal. And we know that in a climate like this one, the margin for error feels impossibly thin. […] The only way we will find wholeness is if we grant each other the space to be imperfect, the courage to be vulnerable, and the grace to be human.”

As this year came to an end, I thought back on the conversations I’d had with you over my time here. I thought back over some of the pain and worry you had felt, and realised just how much stress some members of the community were feeling.

Words can, indeed, hurt and heal. They matter. I want to honour that, by reflecting on the pain some of you have expressed.

We come here because we want to be together, in our fullness, with all our wounds and trauma, so that we can move towards healing.

To that end, let’s consider how we can approach anxious and hurting people with compassion. That is, after all, what we all need from each other.

The world has changed greatly in the last few years. So much feels more precarious.

Ten thousand people rallied at Tommy Robinson’s far right march in London to a speech by Elon Musk telling the crowds to get ready for violence against immigrants. The news from Israel and Gaza, and Russia and Ukraine, and Sudan and Ethiopia, keeps rolling in, feeling ever worse.

For me – and I know for some of you – the horrors of October 7th and the ensuing assault on Gaza marked a major turning point. In many of us, these events have brought up trauma responses we didn’t even know we had.

Since then, so much has unfolded that is out of our hands. This can feel painful when your instinct is to find solutions and assume control.

We have to accept our own limitations. I sometimes recite to myself the Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Those of us within this room do not have the power to bring about peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. We cannot get the hostages back or stop the starvation of Gaza.

That feels hard. If it were up to the members of this synagogue I have no doubt that the whole world could live in peace.

I am certain that we could indeed solve the country’s problems and fix our hurting planet. But nobody seems to be letting us do that, outside of setting the world to rights over kiddush.

But that does not mean we have no power at all.

The one area where we have real power is in our own homes and our own community.

And, there, we have the power to decide how much compassion we feel.

Even in the face of our own trauma and fear, we can choose to feel compassion for others.

Perhaps you can relate: in the immediate aftermath of October 7th, I felt intensely isolated. I felt a void where compassion ought to be.

I felt, among Jews, my own people, that I struggled to find many people who felt compassion for the people in Gaza.

On the left, as much my natural home as the synagogue, I struggled to find many people who felt compassion for Israelis.

Initially, I narrowed my circle to a small niche of Progressive Jews with left-wing opinions. It was comfortable and reassuring, when what I needed was to feel safe.

But if I was looking for compassion in the world, I needed to bring it into the world. I needed to model it.

Not just with the people who I knew felt like I did, but also with those whom I assumed were miles away from me.

It is easy to love humanity in general, and fine to pity people on TV. It is much harder to love the people nearest you when you feel so distant, or to understand them when it feels like they are living in a different world.

How could I look for compassion elsewhere if it wasn’t in my own heart?

How can we look for compassion if we do not feel it?

You can’t expect others to extend compassion to strangers when you can’t even have conversations with the people you already know.

I felt then – I still feel – that, perhaps, if we can feel compassion in our synagogues, and extend it out towards the world, and that others could extend their compassion too, then it might cause something to shift.

And, ultimately, that shift might make this world, which is harsh and unkind, a little better than it has been.

The message of compassion is already explicit in the liturgy of our Yom Kippur service.

God’s name is Compassion.

We read the refrain that repeats throughout the High Holy Days: “Adonai, adonai, el rachum vechanun… a God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in compassion and faithfulness…”

It is a beautiful invocation of God’s qualities to help us through Yom Kippur.

The verses come from Moses’s second acsent of Mount Sinai, when he takes the new set of the Ten Commandments in his hand. As Moses walks down the mountain, God comes with him.

As Moses chants out these declarations of God’s mercy, it is as if Moses has truly understood what kind of God he is dealing with.

He learns how the world really works. He sees that it is governed by compassion.

Just before coming to get the new tablets of the law, Moses had seen the Israelites worshipping a golden calf, and smashed up the first set of the Ten Commandments.

These are great sins: idol worship and wanton destruction are strictly prohibited. The Israelites have been wayward. Moses has been angry.

Still, God, abounding in compassion and faithfulness, says: “Try it again. Have another go.”

In the Talmud, Rabbi Yohanan teaches that whenever the Jewish people sin, they should think back to this verse.

In the repetition of “Adonai, Adonai,” the Jews should understand that God is their Loving Creator before a person sins, and God is their Loving Creator after a person sins and performs repentance.

God is always willing to give people another chance.

In the same section of Talmud, we learn that, in the moment when Moses recited those words, God made a covenant based on thirteen attributes of mercy. It was a promise that God would always hear our prayers.

Later, in the Middle Ages, the French commentator Rashi elucidated what these thirteen attributes were.

In each word, says Rashi, is a reflection of the type of compassion God feels.

God is slow to anger to give you a chance to repent.

God is abundant in mercy, even with those who don’t deserve it.

God remembers good deeds even for a thousand years.

Even when we hear that God holds grudges for three and four generations, Rashi says that this only refers to people who maintain the evil ways of their ancestors. If they repent, all can be forgiven of them too.

This is how one truly maximises compassion.

So, let us be compassionate.

Let us maximise how much compassion we feel.

Our own community and our own homes are small places where we can truly practise compassion in a world where it seems so sorely lacking.

Last week, in her Rosh Hashanah address, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, of the American Reform movement’s flagship synagogue in New York, reflected on how the division in the world was creating strife even within her synagogue.

She urged her congregation to practise compassion, saying:

“It now seems that any expression of compassion for “the other side” is regarded with suspicion – as disloyal, or even threatening. Is our capacity for empathy so finite? Are our hearts so small, that if we increase our empathy for certain people, that we need to reduce it for others — until one day, we conclude: that ‘other side’ is not deserving of any compassion?”

Here, the “other side” could be so many different groups in this increasingly polarised and hostile world.

We all want to feel like people understand our own side, but struggle to extend our understanding the other way.

You don’t have to agree with people to love them. You just have to be curious, and try to understand them.

Some days, we may be capable of less compassion than others. On those days, let’s give ourselves grace, take time out, and remember how flawed we all are.

Even on our worst days, we can always try to understand each other. We can hold our own hearts while making them permeable enough to feel others’ pain too.

When people challenge us, let’s look for the best in them. Imagine their best intentions, and try to consider what problems they might be facing.

We are, all of us, flawed and temperamental. We all ask good grace of others, and we can all give it in return.

This year, let’s try to feel compassion for the people in our own families and homes.

Let’s try to find compassion for the people in our neighbourhoods. Perhaps we will shift something in them.

Let’s find compassion for the people in our community, so that we can hold each other, in our diversity, through these trying times.

And, as much as we can, let’s try to find compassion for everyone.

It won’t change the news cycle, but it might change you. And you might change others.

It is a small contribution to this world, but it is a mighty one.

It is the best that we can do.

Behold, I am poor in deeds and lacking in merit. Nevertheless, I come trembling in the presence of the One who hears the prayers of Israel. O God, You listen to prayers and delight in repentance. Blessed are You, O God, who hears our prayers.

Amen.

Kol Nidrei 5786, Kingston Liberal Synagogue