Sermons

I lived in Israel from 2000-2001, during the second Intifada. One particular Friday night, I was attending a service at a near-by synagogue called Yakar. Yakar was founded in 1992, and strives to be a modern, pluralistic, and traditional. Men and women pray separately, though the mechitzah, the separation, is about shoulder high. Jews of all denominations and gender identities attend Yakar. Yakar, in its own traditional way, has become the place where young and hip Jerusalemites go to pray and do social justice work.

The late winter night I went to Yakar was warm. It was crowded. I couldn’t find a seat in the sanctuary, so I went out to the women’s overflow balcony. The air was calm and thin – and I could smell the spring flowers starting to bloom. The balcony was far enough away from the service leader that I had trouble hearing most of the service. I stood in the corner, praying where I thought the congregation was. When everything went silent, I knew that we had reached the Amidah.

I have a personal ritual I developed the first time I visited Israel. When I reach the end of a silent Amidah, I close my eyes, pray Oseh Shalom, add my own personal prayer for peace for Israel, add a personal prayer for my health, take three steps back, kiss my siddur, and sit down. That night at Yakar, as my lips silently finished Oseh Shalom and were beginning to recite my personal prayer for peace in Israel, I began to hear gunshots in the distance. I, sadly, had come to recognize the sounds of gunshots, and could even distinguish them from bombs, military planes breaking the sound barrier, and fireworks. These were clearly gunshots.

I froze. I didn’t know what to do – more specifically, I didn’t know what to pray. I didn’t know if I should even bother to pray, never mind what. Do I pray harder? If I do, could I make the gunshots stop? I knew how ridiculous that idea was the moment I thought it. I didn’t pray harder. I didn’t pray at all. I started to sob internally at the painful irony of praying for peace while listening to gunfire. I couldn’t even finish the service. I left. And I never went to another Shabbat evening service the remaining few months I lived in Jerusalem. It hurt too much.

Here we are, 25 years later. War and conflict pepper the globe. In 2024, an estimated one in eight people across the world were exposed to conflict. And in addition to outright wars, global political violence increased over 25 percent last year from the previous year. Between 2020 and 2025, conflict levels, measured by conflict events, nearly doubled to close to 200,000. The total number will grow in the three months left in the year.

I probably don’t need to tell you the most dangerous and violent places: Gaza, Ukraine, Syria, Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, the Central African Republic, Myanmar, and Haiti, to name some of them.

While I often tell people that Jewish prayer in aspirational – reflecting our highest goals – all the aspiration in the world does not sooth the soul when we utter the words to Oseh Shalom, Sim Shalom, or Shalom Rav in the midst of a world seemingly ready to implode at any moment. I know people in this community who have stopped attending services because reciting prayers for peace feels like hypocrisy. So, what do we do? What can we do?

Shalom, the Hebrew word for peace, contains the Hebrew three-letter root shin-lamed-mem. All other Hebrew words with that root connect to the word “peace.” One of those words, sh’leimut, means whole or complete, and we use a form of it when we wish for a r’fuah sh’leimah, a complete healing. We can’t end all wars and bring peace to the world, but we can end our internal strife and bring sh’leimut, wholeness, to ourselves.

At a Zoom meeting I was on not too long ago, the chair of the committee shared her difficult summer, and her diagnosis of and treatment for breast cancer. As we all offered her our prayers, she thanked us and then said, “We don’t get to control what we get. We can only control our response to it. I’m going to be fine. I get up each day and remember that I just have to breathe. I’m going to suggest that for all of you, no matter what you’re dealing with. Just breathe.”

Finding sh’leimut is a Jewish spiritual pursuit involving personal, relational, and divine connections. It is a lifelong process rather than a sole act or destination. The path to sh’leimut involves addressing all aspects of life, including what seems trivial and what seems oh so very important. 

To begin, sh’leimut requires aligning our inner selves with our outward actions. It starts with deep introspection and self-awareness. We must recognize we can be fulfilling our external duties while still struggling internally with a sense of brokenness. The idea is to make peace with our internal struggles so that inward and outward, we mesh. Learning from our mistakes is one step. The biblical figure Jacob, who wrestled with an angel, his conscience, or possibly God, was physically torn from the encounter, but eventually developed spiritual wholeness. 

Even as he bore the scars of past mistakes and misfortunes – stealing the birthright from his brother and tricking his uncle – as he grew, he experienced true t’shuvah, changing or turning, and moved to a place of wholeness and peace. 

By the time he reunited with his twin brother, whose final words when they parted as teens threatened death, this time his brother said, “to see your face is to the see the face of God.” Jacob was a changed person; those around him could sense it.

In Rupert Brooke’s poem entitled “Peace,” he writes:

Oh! we, who have known shame,
we have found release …,
Where there’s no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,
Naught broken save this body, lost but breath.
Nothing to shake the laughing heart’s long peace there.

The Maharal of Prague, a 16th-century Talmudic scholar, mystic, philosopher, and mathematician, explains that true sh’leimut has three aspects: 

The first is with God or the Divine. He suggests – and I will add, for those so inclined – that we build and maintain a relationship with the Divine. We must acknowledge, he says, the spiritual aspects of our struggles in order to find solace in a relationship with God. And let me say that when I use the word “God” here, think broadly. You may not believe in or feel the presence of “God,” but you may sense a Creator, or even Wonder or Goodness.

The second aspect, says the Maharal, is with others. He suggests that we develop and nurture relationships with trusted friends and family. A sense of belonging to and getting support from a community is crucial for finding wholeness. If you need someone to talk to, please be in touch. While I am not a therapeutic counselor, I will be happy to meet with you up to three times for pastoral counseling. And I keep a list of therapists who I believe are taking on new clients.

The third aspect is with oneself: He suggests that we listen to our own heart, body, mind, and spirit to understand our feelings and sources of upset, hurt, confusion, or whatever. Focusing on spiritual well-being, many observe, can build resilience and prevent burnout, especially for those working as activists or leaders. 

Maimonides, the 12th century rabbi, philosopher, scholar, and physician, viewed physical and spiritual health as deeply intertwined. A healthy body was not an end in itself but a necessary tool for the soul to achieve its purpose: to know and serve God. Again, even if your focus is not to know and serve God, Maimonides’s lessons on a healthy body helping to achieve a serene soul, and a serene soul helping to achieve a healthy body, has much to teach us.

He was a pioneer in what is now called psychosomatic medicine, recognizing that mental and physical health are mutually dependent. 

Maimonides claimed that strong emotions can weaken the body, especially in those whose health may already be compromised. Severe emotional strain can even cause physical symptoms. He also taught that the body has an influence on the soul.

Maimonides teachings have been widely accepted in today’s world of psychiatry, especially by doctors such as Bessel van der Kolk and Gabor Mate, who have studied trauma, and its profound and lasting effect on both the mind and the body.

Maimonides emphasized prevention over cure, teaching that people have a duty to maintain their health proactively. He codified a health regimen teaching moderation in eating, engaging regularly in physical activity, living in a clean environment, getting adequate sleep, and avoiding excess in all physical pleasures.

The poet known only as “OR” offers these words, also in a poem called “Peace:”

I once asked a Friend
What is Peace to you?
And He told me,
That peace is akin to being able to sleep
even in the midst of a storm.
It is a state of internal calmness
even when the external environment is
in a state of chaos and tumult.
Even when the world is aflame
or when it’s against you.

We will always face challenges and changes. That’s what it means to be human. How we get through them to move to or keep ourselves in a place of sh’leimut has much to do with how we cultivate spiritual resilience. 

One way is to embrace tikvah, or hope. I often utter the phrase, “The Jew lives with hope.” It reflects the central role of hope within Jewish tradition and history, signifying a belief in a better future, and a drive to action against despair and adversity, even in the face of historical persecution and current threats. This hope is a sacred, stubborn, and active conviction that the world can be improved, rooted in the understanding that freedom, rather than fate, defines human agency. Hope reminds us that despite centuries of exile, dispersion, and persecution, the Jewish people have survived by holding onto hope, which has kept us alive through cataclysmic events. Unlike the Greek concept of a predetermined fate, Jewish tradition emphasizes the freedom to avert evil decrees and shape the future, making hope an integral part of our worldview. 

The poet Christine Evangelou writes in a poem called “Out to Dance:”

And that’s the thing about hope,
She springs out of nowhere,
At the glimpse of possibility,
On the breeze of a belief,
The faint chatter of faith,
For beneath the murkiness of despair,
She’s laying there, just waiting,
Breathing it all out,
All these fears that devoured you,
Slicing your insides with swords of doubt,
Cause’ hope is far mightier 
Than a passing pause,
Far more resolute through life’s shady cause,
And when you are sunk
And think there is no chance,
She’ll hum to you a message,
As she ventures out to dance.

A third way to cultivate spiritual resilience is to find purpose. Judaism teaches that there are many different paths to this.
Recognize your divine destiny: We were all created in the image of God, making each one of us a unique with a special mission that no one else can fulfill. And, as beings created in the Divine image, none of us were created in error.

Serve the community: Purpose is found in serving with integrity and contributing to the well-being of others. Start small. Bring a meal to someone ill or recovering from surgery. Offer to run errands for them or to watch their kids for an evening. You can do this. It is amazing how it will make you feel.

Help repair a little piece of the world: We are called to act as agents to repair the world, or tikkun olam. Rabbi Tarfon taught 2000 years ago that “It is not up to you to finish the work of repairing the world, nor may you desist from starting.”

Live with awe and wonder: We must appreciate the mystery, beauty, and power of the universe, and live in ways that both reflect that appreciation and our Jewish values. If you’re a morning person, watch a sunrise. If evening is your better time, watch a sunset. Wait for the explosion of colors.

In “The Peace of Wild Things,” Wendell Berry writes:

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Appreciate everyday life: Elevate ordinary actions into spiritual significance by saying blessings over food, if that speaks to you, and/or by practicing gratitude. I urge you to state one thing, at the end of each day, that you appreciated about previous 24 hours. Ask your children to do the same. Not just once, but every night.

Pass on your Jewish values: Teach Jewish customs, stories, and morals to the next generation, ensuring the continuation of Judaism. Explore their importance for how we live today, not just for what they meant in days gone by.

As I stated at the beginning of my sermon, peace, meaning the absence of war, conflict, and violence, feels elusive. But that does not mean that we are fated to live lives of misery and despair. Healing our own souls is to key to maintaining our sanity in this world. And if we can move ourselves and each other to feeling whole and complete, then maybe, just maybe, we can help bring about the end to war, conflict, and violence.

I close with these words, written in 1915 by the Bengali poet, Rabindrinath Tagore, as part of his cycle, “The Gardener.”

Peace, my heart, let the time for the parting be sweet.
Let it not be a death but completeness.
Let love melt into memory and pain into songs.
Let the flight through the sky end in the folding of the wings over the nest.
Let the touch of your hands be gentle like the flower of the night.
Stand still, O Beautiful One, for a moment, and speak in silence.
I bow to you and hold up my lamp to light you on your way.

May we all soon know sh’leimut, inner peace. And like my friend with breast cancer reminds us, breathe, just breathe.