As we gather for Rosh Hashana this year, I find myself offering a sermon that I hoped that I would never have to consider, never mind write. In four days, our calendar will turn to October 7 and the one-year anniversary of an event that has shaken the world–a year that we could have never imagined as we gathered here last year on Rosh Hashana. Rosh Hashana acts as the bridge between two years, the year past and the year ahead, as we ask ourselves always (almost like our Passover question – Ma Nishtana) – how will these High Holidays this year be different than the one that came before?  Last year, our High Holidays had an “as usual” feel, simply offering us the space to figure out the rhythms of our lives, alone and together. But this year, how can October 7 not be part of that calculation? As Jews and for those who walk beside us, October 7 has changed who we are and our places in the world and it is a rapidly changing story that started with the horrific losses of that day and the beyond-imagining costs of the endless war in Israel’s south. And now, we move into an ever more uncertain future as it now spreads in a most terrifying way across the Middle East and within Israel itself, and even within our own Jewish communities. And I don’t think that anyone of us could have anticipated what followed: the intense anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric here and everywhere in ways that I won’t even begin to list.  Or as Noah Richler writes, “What the Netanyahu government’s calamitous execution of the war in Gaza has provided – beyond catastrophe, beyond a second Nakba – is permission, the old tropes evolving so adeptly that they are unrecognizable, and we cast them instead as news.”  How can we not be affected by all this, as Jew and those who walk beside us? So, of course, we will come here, to seek understandings and new paths forward over these High Holidays as we enter the gates of this sanctuary and sit safely beside each other today. This past spring, after October 7, my heart sank as I read a simple headline in the Globe and Mail, by that same Noah Richler, the son of the author Mordechai Richler and a great writer in his own regard, titled: “Is the North American Jewish Moment over?” I didn’t have to read the rest of the article to know where he was going, because I had already sensed where he was going. Perhaps with the ghosts of my family’s Holocaust experiences still so close to me, I was already wondering about how much our lives as Jews were shifting right here, right where we lived. Oddly enough, we had already set our high Holiday theme this year, the idea of Pitchu Lanu – about us opening up gates into the new year, inspired by the writings of Dov Baer, an early Chassidic master. He taught that there were 13 gates into Jerusalem, one for each of the 12 tribes of Israel, and the 13th for the individuals who did not know to which tribe they belonged.  And he offered up the idea of us all having 13 gates of prayer us to enter, all different from one another, and that we can each choose our own manners of entrance, depending on our unique needs. But as soon as I saw that headline – Is the North American Jewish Moment over?” I knew that I would be speaking today about a different Gate very much connected to our times, the Gate of Uncertainty.  I came to realize that as shocked as I was about October 7, it is a continuation a greater narrative – a terrible narrative — in our 2,000-year Jewish history in the Diaspora – how often and how viciously the outside world has hit us, simply because we are Jewish. And I learned the truth of that adage – that when a Jew is harmed in one place, our entire Jewish community is harmed no matter where we live. And so it is that October 7 and its aftermaths everywhere, ripple across our entire community and within each of us as well. And suddenly, we all find ourselves staring at the same gate of uncertainty at the exact same moment. So, I find that I too am looking at this new gate of uncertainty and trying to figure out what it means, to me personally and to me as a Jew, to me here as part of this community here in Temple Shalom, here in Winnipeg, and as part of Am Yisrael, the Jewish people.  I did read the whole article, about a month later, and discovered how Noah Richler described the North American Jewish moment, approaching it through a cultural lens, no surprise given how that was the world in which he grew up.  it was about how the 20th century was a heyday for many North American Jewish artists, with photos of Irving Berlin, Nora Ephron, Lenny Bruce, Mordecai Richler. And Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Neil Simon, and Mel Brooks, Leonard Bernstein, Helen Frankenthaler and Leonard Cohen, and others.  And then he talked about October 7. His analysis was sobering, as he writes: “No matter the outcome of the war in Gaza, this much is clear: The Jewish moment in North America – the Golden Age of acceptance, freedom, flourishing and cultural contribution of Jews on this continent – is done. It lasted more than a half-century, lagging the 90 years of good fortune under the Hapsburgs before Nazi Germany brought that era to a close but, still, if you’re a Jew, is nothing to be scoffed at.” But, he concludes, that our Jewish moment here in North America is probably over.  His observations about the beauty of this Jewish moment mirror my own experience. I think of how fortunate I have been to have been born in the 1950s, the Holocaust a decade behind me, the State of Israel established six years before I was born. My generation was most certainly influenced by the peace and love movements of the 1960s. Make love, not war, the Age of Aquarius. By the teachings of Marshall McLuhan about the global village, the rise of civil rights movements, of affirmative action, of political correctness and the language of inclusion.  And for us as Jews, how could we not be excited about the lure of emancipation and the attraction of the universal brotherhood of man that seemed to be the promise of our times — ideas that were so important to the founders of Reform Judaism and which is so much in concordance with our Jewish values — That we can live anywhere, be Jews anywhere, and be fully accepted as human beings because our Jewish values will shine through and we will be seen, loved, and appreciated for who we are, what we say, and how we live. And yes, I did have those all-night conversations in European hostels in the 1970s, and I am quite sure we drew up incredible plans to make the world a better place, a world of peace and harmony.  And then there was the exciting arrival of the Internet and its promise to spread information and truth to bring us together, to tear down barriers and find a common community. But, even before October 7, we had already sensed a downward turn – the Internet and social media went to the gutter with algorithms and alternative facts and conspiracies working more to divide than unite, the rise of leaders around the world who spew hate and selfishly seek power, and a world that has become increasingly divided over the last 25 years, the idea of a global village relegated to the past. October 7 was the most recent blow and brought to light the truth that the decline of our Jewish moment was already well on its way.  Richler’s assertion is dramatic and unsettling. So, here we stand, looking ahead at the Gate of Uncertainty or perhaps standing within its shadow, wondering – what do we do next, how do we navigate in uncertain times, what will we find on the other side of that gate?  I’d like to start with words of comfort and hope, and where my sermon will (eventually) end. My response is: “We’ve got this.” We have a 2,000-year playbook that we can dust off, that has dealt with this Gate of Uncertainty so many times. So, let’s go back and rediscover that playbook and make it our playbook for this coming year and into our Jewish moments ahead.  As I look back at our history, we can see familiar cycles. We have had incredible periods of beautiful Jewish moments in our history, sometimes extraordinary with their glow and light, but those moments are surrounded by much longer periods of darkness, sometimes chronic and endless and other times completely horrifying. And we have cycled back and forth, inevitably coming back somehow into new and beautiful moments of light, very different from the ones before. So, here we are today, shaped by both the brilliance of every one of those moments but also shaped by how we reacted to the dark moments.   But throughout all this, our goal as a Jewish people has never changed. We stay committed to the notions of the universal brotherhood of man both as an ideal and an idea, and to our own role of Tikkun Olam, the repair of our world. These are so deeply Jewish we can never stop believing in it, and never stop working towards it every day of our lives. Much as Rabbi Tarfon once suggested – even if we cannot complete a task by the end of the day, we are nevertheless obligated to start it in the morning. So, how do we respond to the uncertainty, as our great North American Jewish moment closes? As I look at our Jewish stories, our response always comes down to one thing – resilience. I am not talking about resilience as endurance (simply grinding along), or the resilience of the willow tree that bounces back after a windstorm. Beyond those ideas, I continue to see in our Jewish people a deeper resilience when we have reimagined our lives, and when we have shifted to find new sources of strength and different ways of being Jewish. Just look at how Judaism came out of the ashes of the Second Temple, and completely reinvented itself,  giving rise to a new rabbinic Judaism in the Diaspora that has helped us both survive and thrive for 2,000 years despite all odds.  There are books written about resilience, and they suggest that resilient people possess three characteristics. I will suggest that the Jewish people have all three and perhaps these are the keys to why we have both survived and thrived over the past 2,000 years, against all the odds.  The first characteristic or resiliency is a staunch acceptance of reality.  It is about facing, really facing reality, recognizing that rose-coloured glasses or sitting in denial can become self-inflicted enemies, rather than a strength. The second characteristic of resilience is about us having a deep belief, supported by strongly held values, that life is meaningful. This is what inspires us to do the hard work of change– to build bridges from present-day hardships to a fuller, better-constructed future. These bridges and doing this work make the present manageable and help us override that feeling that the present is overwhelming. And the third characteristic of resilience is having an uncanny ability to improvise. And this has absolutely been our way. The destruction of the Second Temple presented a hard reality that Judaism as we knew it was over. But our deep belief in our way of life was powerful and it led a small group of rabbis to communicate and innovate, to write the Mishna and then the Talmud, and to create a completely new brand of Judaism that was portable and adaptable.   And our resilience as a Jewish people has been tested ever since, again with playbooks that we can turn to.  The story in Fiddler on the Roof, of Tevye and Anatevka and the last scene as they depart their village into the unknown world reminds us of our never-ending universal Jewish story — of survival on the margins, of economic and religious repression, and too often, pogroms and finally disruption, our having to leave one place and to start all over again. Tevye wasn’t alone in his story. It is the story of the Jewish people in the Diaspora. His Russia had 5 million Jews in 1897 and has dropped down to 150,000 today, scattering our Russian ancestors all over the world, generation after generation. Anatevka may have been a fictional village but it is a symbol of every city and town and every country in the world where we have lived — expulsions and migrations, leaving one place for uncertain new worlds.  But how Tevye and Jews everywhere have responded comes directly out of the resiliency playbook. In those dark moments, they fully accepted their reality, they asserted that their way of life and their Judaism was hugely important to them, and most importantly, they had an uncanny ability to improvise. And we know what happened next, because it is straight out of our resilience playbook:  No matter where we have settled next, we somehow figure out how to create something beautiful out of nothing. This is our Winnipeg story. In 1882, 350 of those Russian Jews had enough of the pogroms and they found their way to a small prairie town in the middle of nowhere and on the other side of the world, and eventually created a thriving Jewish community of 19,000, where we were once known as the Jerusalem of the North. Even here, we had the uncanny ability to improvise and innovate. But our resiliency playbook doesn’t stop there. Because then and now, we were and continue to be strangers in strange lands. What our ancestors did, we can do as well. We can always find each other. We can always create a community forged on common values rather than our differences. We can turn to Torah and its teachings just like they did and embrace our synagogues as the centre of our community. And we too can welcome those that enter our doors, just as we were welcomed when we first walked in, no matter where they come from or how they identify.  And we can learn one more thing from our ancestors. They knew that as Jews, we take responsibility for our communities and everyone in it, for our experience has taught us that we can’t count on others to do that for us. This is what Jewish resiliency looks like in darker times. In an odd way, we are talking about the idea of a “shetl”  but in modern ways, for there is strength in numbers and in common experience that allow us to weather these storms together, rather than alone. For those of us well-planted in an age of individualism rather than collectivism and this great North American Jewish Moment, it is weird to say this, but “what is old is new again.” We actually had a taste of this during the pandemic. If COVID taught us one thing, it is that we cannot live alone, and that isolation is fun but only for a very short time. We were surprised to find out that we very much needed a community around us. And again, much to our surprise, we turned inward towards our Judaism and our community here at Temple Shalom. We found that being “Jew-ish” wasn’t enough, that we couldn’t fill our spiritual emptiness alone. We remembered that we needed to be “Jewish” and that meant reconnecting to Am Yisrael, to be a part of a community that shared our values.  Remember how close we were to Passover when everything shut down and how we all pivoted and learned about Zoom and online Haggadahs and created brilliant and reimagined Passover Seders that included families and friends from all round the world now sitting with us at our virtual tables. Or how we created virtual online High Holiday services as we linked all our home sanctuaries together into an amazing online virtual sanctuary. Again, we didn’t sigh and die. Instead, we followed our resiliency playbook: we accepted our new reality, we asserted that our Jewish traditions, our holidays and prayers and community are hugely important to us, and yet again, we discovered our uncanny ability to innovate. As we start to shift into the twilight of our Jewish moment, maybe this is exactly our plan. We don’t stand alone. Instead, we intentionally find community. We circle our wagons. We lean into those who feel and understand and connect with where we are at.  And out of our old playbook, maybe we find new ways to engage our Judaism. Perhaps we explore Jewish learning, as we think back to Rabbi Akiva, who in the direst times in the Roman era, found ways to meet with his students to study Torah, at risk of death. Or perhaps we recommit to our Temples, as our central places of gathering, learning and prayer, to buoy us spiritually and to find each other. In Curacao, the longest active synagogue in the Americas has a sand floor to this day, as a constant reminder of how Sephardic Jews in Spain and Portugal poured sand over their floors to hide the sounds of their footfalls when they gathered to pray in secret. In their direst hours, they chose to gather, for even as they faced death, to be alone as a Jew was to suffer an even greater spiritual death. They needed each other and they found each other, and we can make these same choices. And perhaps in the twilight of this Jewish moment, maybe that’s what we do as well. As we sit here in this sanctuary, we can look around us and recognize that this is our community — people with shared values, and shared concerns. This is the place where we belong, where we can talk about our fears, our hopes, and learn and pray and sing together. So, as we move forward, may this too become part of our personal resiliency playbooks – each of us committing to bring this Temple and this community again into the centre of our lives. And there is one more surprising page in our playbook for us to consider. It is about the power of Shabbat, and how it has always helped us find hints of light in our personal lives and to push back against the darkness around us. Kabbalat Shabbat, the arrival of Shabbat on Friday evening has always held a special place in how we managed uncertainty, because it turns us inward towards the ones closest to us. For our ancestors in generations past, Erev Shabbat was magical. They worked and lived in the darkness of their world for six days a week before coming home for Shabbat. They would change into their good clothes, they would gather as a family around the dinner table to light the Shabbat candles, all turned towards the middle of the room with their backs rejecting the dark world outside their windows. And in the warm glow of those Shabbat candles, they would have their one sumptuous meal of the week, sitting and acting like kings and queens, just for the moment, as they sang the blessings before and after their feasts and continue with Shabbat songs afterwards. They would become spiritually grounded again, as they affirmed the the quiet strength and resilience that they could draw from each other, and the power of their Judaism. Shabbat filled up their spiritual tanks and gave them the spiritual resilience to deal with the darkness for the six days that followed, until the next Shabbat arrived.  This we too can do once a week – choosing Shabbat customs and rituals at our own tables that create meaningful ways to embrace our Judaism just a little more, and keep the uncertainties at bay.  So, let us walk confidently together into and through the Gate of Resiliency. Let us face our reality with staunchness. Let us acknowledge the decline of the Jewish moment in North America together instead of crying out with despair alone. Let us remember – We’ve got this.”  Let us go back to our deeply held values of what it means to be Jewish individually and especially as a community. And let us improvise and build and create and innovate and support and nourish and learn together, as we build and rebuild our own versions of what it is to be part of Am Yisrael, the people of Israel. Am Yisrael Chai – may we truly live and thrive as the people of Israel.  Ken Yehi Ratzon, may it be God’s will.