‘‘Avinu Malkeinu, please grant me a job with benefits; a pension fund that actually earns rather than loses this year; and health insurance that covers our medications this year…”

How ironic that on this year when so many of us find ourselves in need, the first day of Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbat, a day on which we traditionally forgo petitionary prayers like Avinu Malkeinu. I imagine that for many of my congregants, this is a relief. For the many who do not believe in an interventionist God, is there a place in our worship for prayers of petition? First, it is important to clarify that although our traditional tefillot include prayers of petition, according to the Mishnah (Brachot 9:3) prayers that ask God to intervene in matters that are already determined are uttered in vain. It is folly to ask God to change the gender of a fetus or to undo a disaster that has already occurred; instead we are to use prayer as a way to access the strength and power of the Divine to help us contend with our troubles. As Abraham Joshua Heschel writes, “Man in prayer does not seek to impose his will upon God; he seeks to impose God’s will and mercy upon himself.” (“On Prayer,” Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, p. 259)

The essence of petition in our tradition is not to ask for gifts but to access attributes of the Divine in dealing with issues that we face in life. The bakashot, or prayers of request, of the weekday Amidah, follow a formula. For example, the prayer for wisdom praises God for being wise, and then embraces the God of wisdom. The underlying concept of all petition is the understanding that we recognize Divine attributes, and the request is that we, as beings made in the Divine image, can access these attributes in our own lives.

Emmanuel Levinas, the 20th-century French Jewish philosopher, proposed that we each bear ultimate responsibility for the other. He suggested that Jewish prayer is not an individual, selfish act of seeking help for ourselves, but rather an act that focuses our attention on the troubles of our people and our world, “the edification of the worlds or the repairing of the ruins of creation. To pray signifies, for a ‘myself,’ seeing to the salvation of others instead of — or before — saving oneself.” (Levinas, “Judaism and Kenosis,” In the Time of Nations, p. 129)

As part of a minyan, we see the needs on the faces of our neighbors sitting to our right and to our left. What need cries out from the hearts of the people sitting in the rows in front of us this Rosh Hashanah?

A rabbi I know asks each of his congregants on Yom Kippur to confess their mistakes on small scraps of paper and anonymously place them in a small basket. During the viddui, the communal confession of sin, these papers are read aloud after the formula, “al cheyt shechatanu lifanecha…” and everyone beats their chests. We recognize that our individual sins affect our whole community and as a community we take on responsibility for our collective behavior.

Perhaps this is a way to address petitionary prayer as well. What if each of us wrote our petitions on a scrap of paper, and then heard them read aloud during Rosh Hashanah services?

“Avinu Malkeinu, grant me more affection from my family.”
“Avinu Malkeinu, bring healing to my beloved.”
“Avinu Malkeinu, I don’t want to be destitute in my retirement.”
“Avinu Malkeinu, grant me a second chance with my spouse.”
“Avinu Malkeinu, don’t let me be so lonely this year.”

If we hear these words pouring out from our own souls and the souls of those around us, can we ignore working toward the salvation of others? Can we ignore our own power to be God’s partners in visiting the sick, helping those in need, providing forgiveness and compassion? If we come to prayer open to the needs and petitions of those among whom we live, our prayer can be a conduit to the Divine as we work to see to the salvation of others.

This Rosh Hashanah, many of us will take a break from petitions on the first day and focus on prayers of gratitude and blessing. When the time comes for petition, may we find it within ourselves to hear the swirl of petitions emanating from our fellow community members, and ask ourselves: what can I place on the communal altar that might help God answer some of these prayers?

Many people return to the synagogue on the High Holidays, year after year, to replenish their sense of security. Here we all are in safe buildings, seeing familiar faces and hearing well-worn melodies; large numbers help render invisible the recently departed. While many people carry internal dread, much conspires to reinforce complacency. And yet, we, the rabbis, hope to motivate people toward change, even dramatic and transformational change.

In our secular world, the government has established a Department of Homeland Security to supplement the work of the Department of Defense, and people fly home for the holidays under the vigilant eye of the Transportation Safety Administration. Shoring us up in our vulnerable condition, doctors are asked to keep us healthy, police and firefighters to keep us safe, lawyers and politicians to guarantee our rights. Rabbis are expected to put the need for safety and security in a cosmic perspective that can overcome even the ravages of aging, the fear of death, and now, the anxieties that a weakened economy have imposed on many among us.

To support us in our efforts to shock our congregations into a different appraisal of and response to vulnerability is the liturgy. During the High Holidays, in particular, the prayer Unitaneh Tokef — with its famous paragraph describing the many ways people might die during the coming year — can be interpreted as insisting on our vulnerability and mortality. The way that I present its message here is an example of how I try to use the liturgy to move the congregation away from fear through acceptance of human limitations in order to lead us to humility, and from a place of humility, toward change.

In the center of the Rosh Hashanah musaf service, we declare the extraordinary sanctity of the day, asserting our knowledge that God is the judge, the prosecutor, and the witness to our lives; we acknowledge our trembling because we know that today is “Judgment Day.” Abruptly, the metaphor shifts and we picture God as a shepherd gathering the flock, reviewing each creature, one by one, and determining the destiny of each living being.

And then these familiar words: “On Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed. How many shall die and how many shall be born; who shall live and who shall die; who shall live to be old and who shall not; who shall perish by fire and who by water; who by earthquake and who by plague . . . who will be at peace and who shall be tormented; who will be poor and who rich, who humbled and who exalted.”

Whatever our theological doubts and whether or not an individual believes in a “Judgment Day,” the section of the U’nitaneh Tokef prayer that represents the mystery of human destiny as a catalogue of ways that people die, culminating in the alternative possibilities for life, that some people will become rich this year and others poor, some humbled and others wildly successful — and of course everything in between — about this part of the prayer we can harbor no doubts. It is simply true. We know that, of course, some people will die this coming year; some in old age, and some young; some of illness and others in accidents; some in war, and some in unpredictable natural disasters. We know that some of us will do well in the coming year, and some of us will not.

Most of us prefer to deny the unruliness of our fragility. But Rosh Hashanah makes the facts on this list inescapable: there will be deaths by hunger, accident, and illness, and in wars. The liturgy begs us to hear these plain facts. And we all know that if we haven’t yet suffered an unbearable loss, one year such a grief will permanently scar our hearts, or we will suffer yet another death that we cannot bear. Experience suggests that we will live to see another Rosh Hashanah but we know that without a doubt, certainly, definitely, and absolutely, a year will come that will break the pattern. For most of us that destiny is mysterious in its details, but that death is our destiny — the fate of every person we know and love — is irrefutable. Everyone dies; somehow and some time.

This year, rereading the liturgy, I was feeling the vulnerability of the world, of America and of Israel, of people I care about who are living under threat, of congregants who are in failing health, and of my many friends who rise to say kaddish for a parent. In this frame of mind, I approach the U’nitaneh Tokef differently. For the first time, I hear the prayer not as a humbling prayer. Our tradition is not asking us to feel insecure and vulnerable in the face of the mysteries of human fate. Rather, our tradition is reminding us, demanding in fact, that we accept our vulnerability. Face it, someday, I will die, people I love will die.

We may be exalted this coming year, but one year all the honors that we’ve earned will not preclude our return to the earth. Surrender to vulnerability. Mystery and death are conditions of life. We mustn’t live as if death were avoidable. And we should relax into the life we’re meant to live.

The chorus of the prayer is teshuvah, tefillah u’tzedakah, ma’avirin et roah hagezayrah. “Turning yourself around, prayer, and righteous generosity lessen the severity of the decree.” And in this chorus, I suddenly understand that we are not praying to be spared death or that death be postponed. Rather, after reminding ourselves relentlessly of the many ways that life might end, so that we sustain a consciousness of insecurity, we tell ourselves that the way to cope with ultimate vulnerability is through teshuvah, tefillah, and tzedakah. The goal is not security, but an effective strategy to deal with insecurity. That strategy includes teshuvah, which requires being open to self-criticism and change; tefillah, regular prayer, which cultivates the ability to express hope, to bring our needs to articulation, and to maintain a practice of speaking words of gratitude and appreciation. And finally, tzedakah, righteous giving, demands that we leave our narrow places, reach out, and maintain balance by sharing resources. The way to address vulnerability is not to build bigger defenses — whether walls of words or concrete — or even better weapons. We deal with our vulnerability with teshuvah, tefillah, and tzedakah.

There is a belief that religion is a safe harbor in times of troubles. Religion is the place where people might go to escape the hardship of their daily lives, the brokenness of their relationships, the frustrations of their workplaces, the skepticism and doubt of their intellectual pursuits.

There is a belief that religion is a radical change — a revolutionary overturning of all that came before. Religion is the anvil upon which verities will be smashed, traditions broken, and sureties questioned. Religion provides the adept with a place from which to struggle. Religion is not for the faint of heart or the immature of spirit and intellect.

Both of these are, of course, true. Religions claim a revolutionary beginning in their mythical past and then spend their days figuring out how to domesticate the very revolution they have idealized. We’re all still figuring it out.

According to the midrash, Genesis Rabba, a Palestinian midrash written sometime in the 5th or 6th century of the common era, Abraham’s father, Terach, was an idolator and an idol maker. One day he left Abraham in charge of his idol store. As each person came to buy an idol, Abraham would make fun of them. When an old person came to buy an idol, Abraham looked at him incredulously and said: “Why would you worship an idol that was made just yesterday?”

Later that day, a woman came to the store with an offering of grain to give to the idols. Abraham took a mallet and smashed all the idols save the largest one. When Terach returned he was understandably furious.

“What happened here?”

Abraham calmly explained that there was a fight over the offering that was brought to the idols and the largest idol smashed all the other idols. Terach was beside himself.

“These idols can’t move, let alone fight with each other!!”

“If that’s the case,” Abraham replied, “why would you worship something that cannot do anything?”

Terach dragged Abraham to the king, Nimrod. Nimrod and Abraham engaged in a type of religious disputation. Nimrod opened with: “I worship fire.” Abraham countered with: “Why don’t you worship the water which can douse the fire.” Nimrod acquiesced. “Okay, I’ll worship the water.” “So then,” Abraham went on, “you might as well worship the clouds, since they are obviously stronger than the water which they carry.” Nimrod agreed with this and said: “Okay, let us worship the clouds.” Abraham then suggested the wind which blows the clouds, and then, finally, a person who can withstand the wind.

Nimrod finally exploded at Abraham: “You are just playing with words. I worship the fire. When I throw you into the fire, we’ll see whether your god is greater than the fire, or whether you succumb to my god.”

Abraham was thrown into the fire and, like Shadrach, Mishach, and Abednego in the time of Daniel, Abraham emerged unscathed.

This midrash, significantly, is a commentary to the last verse before God issues those famous marching orders: lech lechah, go forth! Read in this light, the midrash seems to be arguing that before Abraham could move on to the “land that I will show you,” he had to smash his father’s idols.

Rabbi Yakov Yosef of Polnoi, one of the two main students of the founder of Hassidism, the Ba’al Shem Tov, would often start his weekly discourse with the following question: How is this part of the Torah relevant in every time and every place? In other words, how does my life hang in the balance over whether Abraham smashes the idols or not? Or, from another perspective, what are the idols that I have to smash in order to move on to the Promised Land? (and, perhaps, then, what is that promised land?)

This year Sh’ma will be asking this question of contributors from many walks of Jewish life. What are the idols that you had to/still have to/should have smash(ed) to get to Canaan? Did you get there? What idols of yours do you expect your “children” to smash?

Coming out of the gratuitously tragic Lebanon War of 1982, I began chipping away at many of the icons I had grown up with. Acknowledging my many dead friends, being discharged from the army, leaving yeshivah, starting university, all helped maximize the amount of thinking with minimal interference from official gatekeepers and other ideologues.

There were many small moments over several years that culminated in an aggregate crash. It took leaving Israel to envision a serious Jewish community that was not Orthodox. In Israel then, it was the rare few who were able to see viability between the flags of so-called “dati” (i.e., Orthodox) and socalled “chiloni” (i.e., secular). It then took an iconoclastic group of ardently consensual, egalitarian, hard-edged, and extremely welcoming and serious Jews in Somerville, Mass., for me to be able to finally take the mallet to the idol that proclaimed that Orthodoxy was Judaism. Period.

While we as a community are collectively swept up in worshiping the golden calf of continuity, perhaps we should dance over to the shtibl of rupture, and see what they’re serving for kiddush.

A person blinded in one eye is exempt from making the pilgrimage. (Hagiga 2a)

While this talmudic text is speaking only of the three-times-a-year obligation to appear in Jerusalem in ancient times — on Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot — the ancient rabbinic dictum holds great importance for modern Jews. Indeed, Abraham Joshua Heschel gave it a metaphysical spin, using it to explain why those who are unable to see out of both eyes — meaning those who do not live with an ability to appreciate the “parallax effect” — are unable to succeed in the religious quest.

For contemporary Jews who have just lived through a year of continual ethical scandal, whether in the kosher meat industry or investment world, our need to restore healthy balance to our Jewish lives is obvious. The Magen Tzedek seal for kosher-certified food products, developed by the Hekhsher Tzedek commission, intends to serve as a corrective for a community that has become comfortable elevating ritual commandments over our equally important ethical demands and norms. Paraphrasing Heschel, a community that sees “mitzvot bein adam l’Makom” (commandments between humanity and God) as more important than “mitzvot bein adam l’havero or l’olamo” (commandments incumbent upon humanity toward humanity or the world we live in) is incapable of truly fulfilling God’s dream for us as a people.

Several years ago, a minor scandal broke out in a butcher shop in Monsey, N.J. The butcher was selling treif chickens and labeling them kosher. It was a terrible act and the community responded with anger and with resolve. The small butcher was quickly put out of business and his product line disappeared from the town’s streets.

However, when a major kosher food producer was discovered to have regularly abused his workers, to have garnered excessive fines from the U.S.E.P.A. due to the violation of the city’s wastewater treatment permit, to have been accused of a Madoff-worthy money laundering scheme, not a single kashrut organization pulled their hashgacha.

On the contrary, one leading supporter of the kosher food industry played the antisemitism card, publicly proclaiming that the owners of this company were being persecuted simply because they were “observant Jews.”

The absence of moral outcry from some in the religious world in the wake of the multiple moral scandals of Agriprocessors in Postville, Iowa, was a stunning indication that we have become a people blinded in one eye, more concerned about the smoothness of a cow’s lung than the safety of the worker processing the meat on the line, or the wellbeing of the environment, or the honesty of the business itself.

As Jews, we need to correct this moral disability. Appearing this year (God-willing) on ritually certified kosher food products, the Magen Tzedek will mark the first time that a religious community can actively demonstrate that ethical and ritual commandments go hand-in-hand.

Working tirelessly over the past year, the Hekhsher Tzedek commission has developed halakhically based standards to certify that the production of kosher food takes into account wages and benefits; employee health, safety, and training; corporate integrity; product development (including animal welfare concerns); and environmental impact.

Creating such standards is a win-win for the kosher food industry. As a result of our work, more people will buy more kosher food products — some simply because the product is kosher, others because it has been produced in an ethically appropriate fashion, and many more because it is both ritually and ethically kosher.

In the Shulchan Arukh, the laws of kashrut are found in the section called Yore Deah. The laws detailing economic responsibility in the marketplace are found in Choshen Mishpat. For far too long these sections of the Code have lived in splendid isolation — one from the other — as if they were independent silos holding up our tradition.

Moral blindness is no less a problem than physical blindness. Imagine what the Jewish community will look like when we take the lead in demonstrating that good corporate citizenship can be rewarded. Imagine what it will mean to restore a “culture of kashrut” within our Jewish world, whereby eating becomes a sacred act of Jews — either as fulfillment of ritual or ethical demands or both. Imagine a Jewish world where sustainability becomes a byword of Jewish life.