Building Community in This Treacherous Time
Shanah tovah. Today is Yom Teruah, the day of sounding the shofar. The piercing cry wakes us up and calls us to examine our lives and the world with honesty and courage. This year, there is much to examine in our world no doubt, and aren’t we each a work in progress? On Rosh Hashanah, we don’t just mark a new year; we’re offered the sacred opportunity to begin anew.
I feel overjoyed to be together in the new, emergent constellation that we are calling Makom Shalom - a Place for Peace - a Divine Home for Wholeness. Thank you again Jamie and Joe Green for so generously hosting and supporting this new beginning. Thank you to the Board of Directors – Joe, Yael, Lauren, Zeb, and Simcha – for launching this Forest Synagogue. Thank you to Christina, our Founding Director, for your immense work getting Makom Shalom off the ground. Thank you Rachel, my beloved, for encouraging me to say yes to this and for being an immense advisor and supporter. There is so much unseen labor that you do for everything that I do like this - and I look forward to your overt leadership in this synagogue. I want to thank my mentor, Rabbi Dan Goldblatt, and Zoe his beloved - for joining Makom Shalom, schlepping all the way up here, and for over 13 years of ongoing mentorship to help me be the rabbi, and in many ways the man, that I am today. Finally, thank you to everyone here today - community is a collective project - we’re at the beginning of this version - and I look forward to understanding what this community truly wants, needs, and will provide for each other.
This feels like a unique opportunity to embrace Rosh Hashanah’s sacred teaching to begin anew, and yet it feels hard to know how because on so many fronts we face unprecedented challenges, unprecedented at least in my lifetime.
86 years ago today, it was 1939 on Rosh Hashanah in the Warsaw Ghetto, Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira—the Piaseczner Rebbe—taught amidst unimaginable darkness and loss. Even then, he called his community to awaken to the holiness present in their lives. He taught:
“אַף כִּי הַשֵּׁם מִסְתַּתֵּר — הַקְּדוּשָּׁה מְמַלֵּא אֶת הָעוֹלָם, וְעָלֵינוּ לְפַתֵּחַ עֵינַיִם לִרְאוֹתָהּ.”
“Even when G-d seems hidden, holiness still fills the world. We must cultivate our eyes to see it.”
Today, it can be hard to see that holiness.
ICE raids threaten immigrant families in our own county
Free speech is under wholesale attack
Hostages still remain in Gaza; the war in Israel and Gaza is heartbreaking and divisive
Antisemitism is rising
The war in Ukraine, global tensions with Russia, China, Iran—it all feels volatile
And in the background, the climate crisis continues
Like many of you, I wonder: Where is our world headed? I fear for our future, especially that of my children. And, in truth we don’t know, we can’t know what the future holds.
Are we spiraling into a new dark age? Are these the birth pains of a global transformation? We live in uncertainty. So the deeper question becomes: How do we live well with this uncertainty? How do we respond when so much feels out of our control?
Here, Piaseczner's teaching guides me. If his community could find holiness in the darkness of World War II, then surely we can find holiness in our own time and place.
From conversations with many of you, as we explored whether and what to create in what is now forming as Makom Shalom, we heard a collective voice to find holiness…
…In the land—this watershed, these redwood groves and the oak trees that drop acorns in autumn, these wild herbs that offer food and medicine
… In one another—our gifts, our differences, our shared need to belong
… In presence, putting down devices, and being in the moment
… In our traditions—Jewish and beyond—that root, orient, and guide us to live well
… In our service of life and of lives well lived.
And especially: we are called to find holiness in community.
In a fragmented world, building a local community to me feels more essential than ever. We cannot raise children alone. Our children need us all, our elders, mentors, aunts and uncles - to provide all kinds of support, especially rites of passage. And we—adults—need each other. We cannot thrive alone. You are needed, you really are. A living, breathing and active community will find a place for each soul, each individual to step up, be needed and also receive. And, who knows, we may need each other for the most fundamental needs of life at some point.
The Dream of Makom Shalom
This is the dream of Makom Shalom—a place of peace and belonging. A community that…
gathers in rhythm with Jewish time and nature’s cycles
supports one another in our healing and in living well
builds bridges with other communities and engages in community service
That is resourced and prepared for uncertain times
And, at its heart, a healthy community in this time must also embody collaboration and shared leadership. As my elder teacher Reb Zalman shared in his final address before the rabbis of ALEPH, seven months before he passed - “the time of the Rebbe is ending - now is the time of building circles of leaders.” I cannot agree more. It’s not just that shared leadership feels better, it’s essential medicine for our time. Those of us gathering here around the incipient fire of Makom Shalom are gardeners and artists, hide tanners and healers, cooks and lawyers, builders and teachers, spiritual leaders and businesspeople, organizers, and so much more . . .
So I ask: How do you feel called to bring your gifts to the community?
One thing we aspire to do is to map our collective resources - our talents and skills that we have honed in our lives, alongside the physical resources we collectively have for sharing and leveraging in changing times - groves of fruit, tools, water … pirate ships, you name it. We also aim to create spaces for mutual learning, skill-sharing, and real relationship building. Our hope is that you will be inspired to lead at times, give of your gifts, teach and lead - a hiking group, book club, sharing circle, skill building, ritual leadership . . . who knows what you will bring.
Now is a time of emergence for us in this community - a time for discovery.
A New Light for a New Year
The Sefat Emet, Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib of Ger, taught:
“בְּכָל רֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה נִתְחַדֵּשׁ אוֹר חָדָשׁ לְיִשְׂרָאֵל, שֶׁלֹּא הָיָה מֵעוֹלָם.”
“On each Rosh Hashanah, a new light is renewed for Israel, a light that has never before existed in the world.”
As we gather for our first Rosh Hashanah as Makom Shalom, I sense this new light. In a world so full of division, building this kind of community may be one of the most radical acts we can offer: coming together, rooting in tradition, embracing our differences, committing to mutual care.
Hayom Harat Olam – Today is the Birth of the World
Our tradition teaches that Rosh Hashanah is Hayom Harat Olam, the birthday of the world. We are invited to remember not just our individual lives, but the whole of creation—the rivers, the trees, the soil, and all beings—as one sacred web of life.
So what does it mean to build community in service of life?
To me, it means learning about our watershed and foodshed. Knowing the medicines of this land. Practicing reverence for local ecology. Building relationships with our indigenous neighbors and other local faith communities. Shaping a Judaism that protects and is protected by the land. Teaching our youth through rooted pathways into adulthood—becoming connected to and responsible for this place.
Reb Zalman’s Call to Paradigm Shift
Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, of blessed memory, taught that we are called to be “paradigm shifters.” He said: “The Torah requires renewal—according to the generation and the place.”
We are not here to replicate the past.
We are here to reweave Judaism for now—for Sonoma County in the 21st century, for a rapidly changing planet and people hungry for meaning and belonging.
The Shofar’s Cry
This year, I hear the shofar’s cry as a particularly potent call to return:
To myself and my medicine
To local community
To the earth that sustains us
To vibrant Jewish life
To the fullness of life
A Call to Begin
Let us build Makom Shalom together.
Let us be bold enough to create a community that is inclusive, grounded, and alive.
Let us meet the loneliness of our time with belonging.
Let us lead together
Lets weave a web that is a strong, resilient tapestry.
This is our beginning..