OUR AMICHAI COMMUNITY
THANKSGIVING 2022
In America, this is usually such a joyous time when families and friends get together and give thanks. Often, people go around their Thanksgiving tables thinking and sharing what they are grateful for.
Gratitude is not merely a secular feeling. Many understand the expression of gratitude as a fundamentally religious rather than secular emotion. The Psalmists tell us it is good to thank God, but gratitude goes beyond simple appreciation; it is more than an obligation or a mindless cordiality. Rabbi Harold Kushner says that gratitude is where religion begins in the human heart. It is a way of looking at the world that doesn’t necessarily change anything in our lives; it just enhances our perspective and informs our lives, enabling us to live with a sense that all of life is a gift, whatever its vicissitudes. Nor is gratitude just about receiving. It is an emotion that also embodies reciprocity. Someone does something for us—do we merely say thanks or do we give thanks? Giving invests us, it draws us in, it requires something more of us than just receiving. The grateful heart understands that just as we accept and receive, so do we give back.
Twelve years ago, we created a sacred community we named AMICHAI, My People Live. We did this because at the time a majority of American Jews no longer belonged to synagogues for a variety of reasons but for whom their Jewishness remained an essential part of their identity. The same is true today. A majority of American Jews no longer belong to synagogues. The concept of Amichai was to provide meaningful High Holiday services which were readily accessible and affordable while maintaining the same high quality of conventional synagogue services. Our objective was always to help create greater meaning in our lives through prayer, community, music and perspective. We hope you feel we fulfilled those objectives.
Like other sacred communities, with the outbreak of Covid we adapted first with pre-recorded services and a year later with services conducted outdoors praying that inclement weather would not hinder our efforts.
Since the beginning days of Covid, our world has changed. Our technology is enhanced. The word “Zoom” is a commonplace and assumed innovative reality in our lives. No longer are virtual services stop-gap, emergency measures but have become high quality, normalized and expected. While some have ventured back into sanctuaries, others still prefer to “zoom” into virtual services and we can access those services practically anywhere in the world. Many of us have become worldwide members of synagogues located even thousands of miles away simply with the click of a few buttons while we remain physically at home.
The world moves forward and change is often a necessary response to the world around us. Our world of worship has changed and while we hope you agree that Amichai met the religious needs of its “members”, its model no longer works as well in a continuing and post Covid world.
While I continue to actively practice as a rabbi in our community, I want you to know I miss our community that we all worked so hard to develop and grow, I missed seeing all of you and missed conducting our High Holiday services this past year, but I understand our world has evolved and with that a change in the way religious services are offered, accessed and attended.
I want to give thanks for all that Amichai has entailed from our wonderful congregants, both adults and children, our world renowned and gifted musicians, our IT master and web designer, to our Administrator, to those who accepted Torah honors, to our incredible Torah lifters, our remarkable Baal Tokeah-Shofar blower, to my wonderful partner, our amazing Cantorial Soloist Warren Kaplan. I also give thanks to my devoted family members who helped in big ways and small to make Amichai services possible year after year. And mostly, I give thanks to each of you who believed in our mission and participated in significant ways helping to make Amichai what it has been for 12 years. It is an honor of a lifetime for me to have served as Amichai’s rabbi.
Gratitude is where religion begins in the human heart. It nurtures connection between people who gather and are moved by a common purpose. It creates a sense of community. We look around and we see we are all doing the same thing; we are praying, we are connected and we know at those moments we are never alone. We are simply and profoundly Jews and part of something divine and spiritual, something that is larger than ourselves. We place ourselves in the stream of Jewish history and normative Jewish life as Jews have done over the millenia and there is nothing, nothing at all that can ever in a real sense stop us. We are indeed people of God just trying to do better, to reflect the Divine image in our world as we attempt in large ways and small to make the world a better place because we are in it activating and sharing the divine sparks within us. We leave an imprint that we were here, together with others, and that sense of community moves us to stretch even further and for all this we are grateful and give thanks.
God’s blessings are indeed many and I hope you will agree that Amichai has been one such blessing. During this Thanksgiving but each and everyday we express our gratitude and give thanks to God for God is good, Hodu Ladonai Kee Tov, Kee L’Olam Chasdoe. May our Thanksgiving be filled with gratitude for the love and many blessings in our lives.
Gratitude is not merely a secular feeling. Many understand the expression of gratitude as a fundamentally religious rather than secular emotion. The Psalmists tell us it is good to thank God, but gratitude goes beyond simple appreciation; it is more than an obligation or a mindless cordiality. Rabbi Harold Kushner says that gratitude is where religion begins in the human heart. It is a way of looking at the world that doesn’t necessarily change anything in our lives; it just enhances our perspective and informs our lives, enabling us to live with a sense that all of life is a gift, whatever its vicissitudes. Nor is gratitude just about receiving. It is an emotion that also embodies reciprocity. Someone does something for us—do we merely say thanks or do we give thanks? Giving invests us, it draws us in, it requires something more of us than just receiving. The grateful heart understands that just as we accept and receive, so do we give back.
Twelve years ago, we created a sacred community we named AMICHAI, My People Live. We did this because at the time a majority of American Jews no longer belonged to synagogues for a variety of reasons but for whom their Jewishness remained an essential part of their identity. The same is true today. A majority of American Jews no longer belong to synagogues. The concept of Amichai was to provide meaningful High Holiday services which were readily accessible and affordable while maintaining the same high quality of conventional synagogue services. Our objective was always to help create greater meaning in our lives through prayer, community, music and perspective. We hope you feel we fulfilled those objectives.
Like other sacred communities, with the outbreak of Covid we adapted first with pre-recorded services and a year later with services conducted outdoors praying that inclement weather would not hinder our efforts.
Since the beginning days of Covid, our world has changed. Our technology is enhanced. The word “Zoom” is a commonplace and assumed innovative reality in our lives. No longer are virtual services stop-gap, emergency measures but have become high quality, normalized and expected. While some have ventured back into sanctuaries, others still prefer to “zoom” into virtual services and we can access those services practically anywhere in the world. Many of us have become worldwide members of synagogues located even thousands of miles away simply with the click of a few buttons while we remain physically at home.
The world moves forward and change is often a necessary response to the world around us. Our world of worship has changed and while we hope you agree that Amichai met the religious needs of its “members”, its model no longer works as well in a continuing and post Covid world.
While I continue to actively practice as a rabbi in our community, I want you to know I miss our community that we all worked so hard to develop and grow, I missed seeing all of you and missed conducting our High Holiday services this past year, but I understand our world has evolved and with that a change in the way religious services are offered, accessed and attended.
I want to give thanks for all that Amichai has entailed from our wonderful congregants, both adults and children, our world renowned and gifted musicians, our IT master and web designer, to our Administrator, to those who accepted Torah honors, to our incredible Torah lifters, our remarkable Baal Tokeah-Shofar blower, to my wonderful partner, our amazing Cantorial Soloist Warren Kaplan. I also give thanks to my devoted family members who helped in big ways and small to make Amichai services possible year after year. And mostly, I give thanks to each of you who believed in our mission and participated in significant ways helping to make Amichai what it has been for 12 years. It is an honor of a lifetime for me to have served as Amichai’s rabbi.
Gratitude is where religion begins in the human heart. It nurtures connection between people who gather and are moved by a common purpose. It creates a sense of community. We look around and we see we are all doing the same thing; we are praying, we are connected and we know at those moments we are never alone. We are simply and profoundly Jews and part of something divine and spiritual, something that is larger than ourselves. We place ourselves in the stream of Jewish history and normative Jewish life as Jews have done over the millenia and there is nothing, nothing at all that can ever in a real sense stop us. We are indeed people of God just trying to do better, to reflect the Divine image in our world as we attempt in large ways and small to make the world a better place because we are in it activating and sharing the divine sparks within us. We leave an imprint that we were here, together with others, and that sense of community moves us to stretch even further and for all this we are grateful and give thanks.
God’s blessings are indeed many and I hope you will agree that Amichai has been one such blessing. During this Thanksgiving but each and everyday we express our gratitude and give thanks to God for God is good, Hodu Ladonai Kee Tov, Kee L’Olam Chasdoe. May our Thanksgiving be filled with gratitude for the love and many blessings in our lives.