Objects define us. Well, let me qualify that a little. Objects are one of the many things in life that help define us. They are us, and they are also not us. When you pick up an object, maybe something in your home, maybe an article of clothing you have had for a long time, sometimes it will trigger a memory. Maybe you wore that sweater you’re holding in a picture from a family gathering that’s in your photo album, surrounded by loved ones. Maybe you remember when and where you bought it, and maybe who was with you. Maybe the sweater has a little stain on the sleeve from that dinner you had with your kids where it nudged up against the ketchup from the fries, and three dry cleaners have tried and failed to remove it.
We are not the sweater, but the sweater is part of who we are.
Now, the tension for me in discussing the importance of objects is that it runs against one of the major tenants of Hassidic thought that I love to study so dearly. In Hassidut, there is a big idea, derived from Kabbalah, that the universe is split into two forms - ruchaniut and gashmiut - spirituality and physicality, or in fancy language, corporeality, from the root word corpus or body. The best way to explain it would be to quote a more familiar philosophical voice to some of you, the British rocker Sting, who once sang ‘We are spirits, in the material world.’ The grand idea here is that there is a tension between the soul of a person, which is gifted by God and transcends the physical nature of the universe, and the reality we were indeed placed in a physical world, with delicious hamburgers and ketchup stains on sweaters and pictures of your grandmother on the mantle that conjure up wonderful memories of Rosh Hashanahs past with chicken soup bubbling on the stove.
I say this specifically because objects have been on my mind for the past several months here at Brith Sholom, and on the minds of your leadership as we wind things down. A number of our members have been hard at work cataloging items and donating, distributing, or assigning items, and I can not thank them enough for their time. Thank you to everyone that has put in the time to make sure our books, both sacred and less sacred, from a handwritten Megillot Esther on parchment to Huck Finn in Yiddish, goes to a new home or a place of eternal rest after a long life in service to the Jews of Erie.
We also, of course, have had to find places for so many other physical things - yahrtzeit plaques and confirmation photos and sifrei torah. So that you know, the remaining four Torahs are all going to good homes - the beautiful Sefardic one in a wood case with silver breastwork will go to Anshe Chesed to be on display and for use. I think maybe Evie Hodgeson might be in line to read from it in a few years, as her big sister read it before her. And another Torah will go to Rabbi Morais and Albion Correctional. A third Torah will be in use with me down in Pittsburgh, and in fact has already done duty of the summer at two benei mitzvahs - so thank you all for that precious gift. The final of our four Torahs is going to the northern Rocky Mountains, to the Jewish community of Grand County, who meet monthly for Friday night services, but whose nearest Torah is 100 miles away in Routt County, where I used to serve as rabbi to Steamboat Springs.
In this process of material dissolution, I was gifted three items last month by our president, Doris Pinski. The focal point of my dvar torah today is these three items, because I think there is a way of reflecting on some aspect of those items and the meaning of those items in a way that illuminates our own predicaments as we go into a new year by closing one community, by concluding one chapter of Erie’s Jewish history, and opening another.
Most rabbis will drash the story of Hagar at Rosh Hashanah, or the story of Isaac and the ram. Most rabbis will parse the meaning of repentance, or tzedakah, or the sound of the rams horn. Some rabbis will delve into the political hot potatoes of Israel and antisemitism; or they will attempt to recenter our community around tikkun olam or our moral obligations. This year, I want to tell the story of three objects, found at the bottom of a closet or in the unused gift shop at 3207 State St, Erie, PA 16508. Those three objects are: a typewriter, a cookbook, and a guitar.
We start with the typewriter. First of all, typewriters by themselves are a fascinating artifact of a bygone era, and they long have given me philosophical pause about the nature of advancement, and humanity, and work, and the meaning of life. In the internet era, and now with talk of A.I., we are once again discussing the notion of human obsolescence - about whole swaths of people becoming redundant with technology that can replace them. Chat GPT can draft a pretty decent version of a letter to donors or congregants or clients if I tell it what I need - so maybe we don’t need secretaries. Claude AI can now code in any of the most popular coding languages, and we have reached a point where Computer Science grads might still be learning C++ or Python, but we’re not entirely sure why. Lawyers aren’t sure they’ll need paralegals. And although art will never be replaced by computers nor theater by digital AI actors, basic graphic design could be replaced by A.I.
All of this reminds me of an expression I heard long ago about the obsolescence of workers - which is that you don’t want to be the last person working in the typewriter ribbon industry. Typewriters are a bit like Judaism in a worst case scenario - they’re a device of historic and ancient significance, but something neat to admire, but not actually use. But of course, typewriters evolved over time, first into a little computer-like device called a word processor in the 70s and 80s, and then into the modern personal computers we know today. Judaism, too, is a balance between a thing that constantly evolves and a beautiful object from the past to be admired.
Now this particular typewriter is a thing of beauty - a green Olympia SM3 De Luxe, from the late 50s or early 60s. They aren’t especially rare on ebay, or that expensive. However, this Olympia SM3 is very rare and very special. Because it is a typewriter that types in Hebrew.
That makes it somewhat rare. There are probably plenty of Hebrew typewriters in Israel. But a quick search of ebay reveals not one is available in the US. Hebrew typewriters are also uniquely complex - you might think - whats the big deal, a typewriter manufacturer just needs to swap out all the little keystroke bar arms with Hebrew letters and they’re done, right? But then you remember that Hebrew goes from right to left. The carriage of the typewriter needs to be specially manufactured to go backwards from how the normal latin letter carriage goes. The other thing about a Hebrew typewriter is that using it is a funny and special skill. Many of you read Hebrew. Some of you can chant in Hebrew for Haftarah or Torah. Some of you maybe learned to write in cursive Hebrew. But probably none of you learned to type in Hebrew. I taught myself to type in Hebrew back in rabbinic school, and it’s a useful skill on occasion.
All those elements are symbolic of Brith Sholom. Uniqueness, specialness, the need for additional effort in order to remain meaningful. To be a Jew in Erie is very special, and to belong to Brith Sholom, the Conservative synagogue, has always been very very special. It takes literacy and effort and love to do what you all have been doing - to take this ancient faith and keep using it, because it is beautiful, like the green Olympia SM3 typewriter. And like a typewriter, you also produce something beautiful with it - for us, we produce spiritual centeredness and a rootedness in our faith and traditions, as well as lovely tunes and warm community. For the typewriter, it produces poetry, or prose, or probably in Brith Sholom’s example, a list of yahrzeits with correctly typed Hebrew names. The other thing that makes our typewriter like Erie - it’s durable. Just yesterday, I put a piece of paper in and hammered the keys, and even after sitting in a box for 40 plus years, it still types perfectly. Just like you all - a congregation that still gets the job done after 129 years of faithful service.
The second object is one that all of you were given - it is Brith Sholom’s sisterhood cookbook, titled ‘Apples and Honey, Recipes for a Sweet New Year’, printed in 1998. It is functional and useful, as all cookbooks should be. I like cooking, and I will definitely use a bunch of these recipes, specifically the Arlene Sandelstein’s Ricotta Latkes on page 29 and Shirley Brown’s Better than Sex German chocolate cake on page 64 - that one both for the name and because folks testified at our final Shabbat service that it truly is incredible, although I’m not so sure about the name.
Mostly, though, I will treasure this cookbook for the names contained in it. There are congregants we all know and love in there and that will stay friends, like Paula Schwartz and Faith Lifshen and Doris Pinski and Laurel Rider and Felice Oppenheim and Shelly Benjamin. And then there are the folks who have passed who I had the pleasure of knowing, like Arlene Sandelstein and Judy Shapiro and Beth Lester and Carl Cohen. But then theres more folks - folks I never had the pleasure to meet, but only dutifully have read their yahrtzeit names out for the past eight years, like Shirely Brown and Lil Steinberg and Betty Radov. All sacred communities are built on the deeds of people like these, folks who came and prayed and supported the institution, who had anniversaries and bar mitzvahs here, and who served on committees and cleaned up after kiddushes. Women than played mahjong or bingo and men that played in the church basketball league in our social hall. Folks who long ago departed from this world, but their names are still read out and remembered half a century later, or more. Even though this high holidays will be the last time we read some of those names from the bimah, and even though the yahrtzeit plaques will come down from the wall, the cookbook, and the living past members of Brith Sholom Jewish Center will carry on the memory of those that came before us for the rest of our lives.
The final item gifted to me by Doris and Brith Sholom was an old guitar. Doris pointed to it in the closet of the office back a few years ago, a dusty, smallish little thing with only five strings and a flimsy steel bridge, and I glanced at it and thought ‘that’s probably a worthless piece of junk’, and I didn’t take it. Call it sentiment, or curiosity, but last month Doris offered it up again and I took it home. It helps that I’ve been playing guitar three or four times a week for the past year solid in an effort to get better. So I googled around a little, and it’s a Stella brand harmony guitar, size zero, which is the smallest size. It’s a parlor guitar, sometimes called a student guitar, and was made in the early 1970s. It has a sunburst paint job and a distinctive batwing pickguard, and comes with a metal lower brace. It’s not particularly valuable or rare, and they made a lot of em for beginners back in the day. But the parlor size guitar was the size preferred by the late great Dolly Parton, so it is beloved by some.
Like I said, it only had five strings, and when I picked it up it sounded really chunky and metallic and it buzzed a bit. So I cut the old strings off and put on new ones and tuned it, and I’ve been playing it non stop for about four weeks, and I really like the sound. It’s a little buzzy in spots and it’s not as thick as my Yamaha Dreadnought style guitar, but I like it and I’m gonna keep it. It’ll always remind me of this place and this congregation.
Besides being a metaphor for this community, which I’ll get to in a sec, this forlorn and forgotten guitar speaks to me personally, too. I have always had a bit of a chip on my shoulder, maybe for good reason, maybe not. Sometimes I’ve felt in my life like I was counted out - an afterthought, or someone not expected to contribute much. I had ADD in high school, and my teachers mostly chalked it up as laziness or poor discipline. In sports I was undersized, underspeed, understrength. When I applied to rabbinic school in the Conservative movement, folks doubted whether I had the right background, or the academic credentials, or the Hebrew grammatical acumen to survive the rigorous five year graduate education. And yet here I stand before you - having received a double varsity letter in high school sports, a graduate of Conservative rabbinic school with an honorary doctorate, a published author of an advanced work of translated hassidic texts, and most importantly, your rabbi.
My favorite biblical verse has always been one from psalm 118 - Even ma’asu habonim, hayita le’rosh pinah - the stone that the builder refused shall always be the head cornerstone. What that means is - stone bridges and archways for the past 3000 years have been constructed with a keystone resting at the center to anchor and lock the entire structure together. Without it, the whole thing collapses. The verse tells us that that which humans reject and pass over might ultimately serve as the most critical element in the build. Never count anyone or anything out - not a rabbi with ADD, or a beat up old guitar in a closet, or a congregation from what some might regard as a forgotten corner of the state - the once great manufacturing town of Erie PA - a city that for those who know her, never stopped being great. The stone that the builder refused shall always be the head cornerstone
Back to this guitar and this congregation - what I want to say is this - it sat in a guitar for probably 20 years and nobody touched it, but all it needed was some new strings and it was all ready to go on to a second life of bringing joy and music. And that’s the message of Rosh Hashanah, isn’t it?
Renewal is constant, and nothing ever ends.
We take something when it seems like it’s done, and we love it a little, and we breathe new life into it, and we give it a second chance. That’s a metaphor for us, for certain. We make mistakes and we fall down and we get back up and keep going, from 5786 into 5787. And also, we are never beyond repair or without value. Though we may be counted out, we rise again to play a song another day.
But also, that new life can happen wherever. Brith Sholom’s closing is the end of a chapter, both in the life of Erie’s Jewish history, and in your life. Each of us goes on to a new Jewish life elsewhere, probably here at Anshe Chesed down on Old Zuck Road. But maybe in Maine. Or in New York. Or maybe in Cleveland or Buffalo, and you know you’ll always be welcome at my Jewish community in Pittsburgh, the coffee shop and Jewish learning space we call Shoresh, the Hebrew word for source. The strings change, but the guitar still plays.
With that, I want to end with a song. It’s a special song. If you like movies, this one was in the Coen Brothers film ‘O Brother Where Art Thou’. It’s an old timey American classic called ‘I’ll fly away’, about the end of life. In the song, there is a recognition that the end of one thing leads to something else. In Pirkei Avot 4:16 our rabbis teach
רַבִּי יַעֲקֹב אוֹמֵר, הָעוֹלָם הַזֶּה דּוֹמֶה לִפְרוֹזְדוֹר בִּפְנֵי הָעוֹלָם הַבָּא. הַתְקֵן עַצְמְךָ בַפְּרוֹזְדוֹר, כְּדֵי שֶׁתִּכָּנֵס לַטְּרַקְלִין:
Rabbi Jacob said: this world is like a vestibule before the world to come; prepare yourself in the vestibule, so that you may enter the banqueting-hall.
There is a famous aphorism ‘there are no second acts in American life.’ I don’t believe that. I think we live many lives. I think all of you have had many lives. And maybe in this life, counter to the aphorism, you will all go on to a second act of Jewish life, and you will take all the memories and the friends, the songs and the prayers, the people and the feelings of this place with you as you continue your Jewish journey wherever God may lead you. With that, enjoy this song from this old guitar that Doris dug out of the closet.
And forgive any errors or wrong notes I may strike. This is after all, the season of forgiveness.
Misc Traditional -- Ill Fly Away TabNO CAPO, OR CAPO 3
VERSE 1:
G C G
Some glad morning when this life is o'er, I'll fly away
G D7 G
To a home on God's celestial shore, I'll fly away
CHORUS:
G G7 C G
I'll fly away, O glory, I'll fly away
G D7 G
When I die, hallelujah, by and by I'll fly away
VERSE 2:
G C G
When the shadows of this life have grown, I'll fly away
G D7 G
Like a bird from prison bars has flown, I'll fly away
CHORUS:
G G7 C G
I'll fly away, O glory, I'll fly away
G D7 G
When I die, hallelujah, by and by I'll fly away
VERSE 3:
G G7
O how glad and happy when we meet,
C G
I'll fly a-way. No more cold iron
Em G D7 G
Shackles on my feet, I'll fly a-way.
CHORUS:
G G7 C G
I'll fly away, O glory, I'll fly away
G D7 G
When I die, hallelujah, by and by I'll fly away
VERSE 4:
G C G
Just a few more weary days, and then, I'll fly away
G D7 G
To a land where joys shall never end, I'll fly away
CHORUS:
G G7 C G
I'll fly away, O glory, I'll fly away
G C G D7 G
When I die, hallelujah, by and by I'll fly away
Guitartabs.cc © 2026
Misc Traditional -- Ill Fly Away TabVERSE 3:
G G7
O how glad and happy when we meet,
C G
I'll fly a-way. No more cold iron
Em G D7 G
Shackles on my feet, I'll fly a-way.
CHORUS:
G G7 C G
I'll fly away, O glory, I'll fly away
G D7 G
When I die, hallelujah, by and by I'll fly away
VERSE 4:
G C G
Just a few more weary days, and then, I'll fly away
G D7 G
To a land where joys shall never end, I'll fly away
CHORUS:
G G7 C G
I'll fly away, O glory, I'll fly away
G C G D7 G
When I die, hallelujah, by and by I'll fly away
NO CAPO, OR CAPO 3
VERSE 1:
G C G
Some glad morning when this life is o'er, I'll fly away
G D7 G
To a home on God's celestial shore, I'll fly away
CHORUS:
G G7 C G
I'll fly away, O glory, I'll fly away
G D7 G
When I die, hallelujah, by and by I'll fly away
VERSE 2:
G C G
When the shadows of this life have grown, I'll fly away
G D7 G
Like a bird from prison bars has flown, I'll fly away
CHORUS:
G G7 C G
I'll fly away, O glory, I'll fly away
G D7 G
When I die, hallelujah, by and by I'll fly away
We are not the sweater, but the sweater is part of who we are.
Now, the tension for me in discussing the importance of objects is that it runs against one of the major tenants of Hassidic thought that I love to study so dearly. In Hassidut, there is a big idea, derived from Kabbalah, that the universe is split into two forms - ruchaniut and gashmiut - spirituality and physicality, or in fancy language, corporeality, from the root word corpus or body. The best way to explain it would be to quote a more familiar philosophical voice to some of you, the British rocker Sting, who once sang ‘We are spirits, in the material world.’ The grand idea here is that there is a tension between the soul of a person, which is gifted by God and transcends the physical nature of the universe, and the reality we were indeed placed in a physical world, with delicious hamburgers and ketchup stains on sweaters and pictures of your grandmother on the mantle that conjure up wonderful memories of Rosh Hashanahs past with chicken soup bubbling on the stove.
I say this specifically because objects have been on my mind for the past several months here at Brith Sholom, and on the minds of your leadership as we wind things down. A number of our members have been hard at work cataloging items and donating, distributing, or assigning items, and I can not thank them enough for their time. Thank you to everyone that has put in the time to make sure our books, both sacred and less sacred, from a handwritten Megillot Esther on parchment to Huck Finn in Yiddish, goes to a new home or a place of eternal rest after a long life in service to the Jews of Erie.
We also, of course, have had to find places for so many other physical things - yahrtzeit plaques and confirmation photos and sifrei torah. So that you know, the remaining four Torahs are all going to good homes - the beautiful Sefardic one in a wood case with silver breastwork will go to Anshe Chesed to be on display and for use. I think maybe Evie Hodgeson might be in line to read from it in a few years, as her big sister read it before her. And another Torah will go to Rabbi Morais and Albion Correctional. A third Torah will be in use with me down in Pittsburgh, and in fact has already done duty of the summer at two benei mitzvahs - so thank you all for that precious gift. The final of our four Torahs is going to the northern Rocky Mountains, to the Jewish community of Grand County, who meet monthly for Friday night services, but whose nearest Torah is 100 miles away in Routt County, where I used to serve as rabbi to Steamboat Springs.
In this process of material dissolution, I was gifted three items last month by our president, Doris Pinski. The focal point of my dvar torah today is these three items, because I think there is a way of reflecting on some aspect of those items and the meaning of those items in a way that illuminates our own predicaments as we go into a new year by closing one community, by concluding one chapter of Erie’s Jewish history, and opening another.
Most rabbis will drash the story of Hagar at Rosh Hashanah, or the story of Isaac and the ram. Most rabbis will parse the meaning of repentance, or tzedakah, or the sound of the rams horn. Some rabbis will delve into the political hot potatoes of Israel and antisemitism; or they will attempt to recenter our community around tikkun olam or our moral obligations. This year, I want to tell the story of three objects, found at the bottom of a closet or in the unused gift shop at 3207 State St, Erie, PA 16508. Those three objects are: a typewriter, a cookbook, and a guitar.
We start with the typewriter. First of all, typewriters by themselves are a fascinating artifact of a bygone era, and they long have given me philosophical pause about the nature of advancement, and humanity, and work, and the meaning of life. In the internet era, and now with talk of A.I., we are once again discussing the notion of human obsolescence - about whole swaths of people becoming redundant with technology that can replace them. Chat GPT can draft a pretty decent version of a letter to donors or congregants or clients if I tell it what I need - so maybe we don’t need secretaries. Claude AI can now code in any of the most popular coding languages, and we have reached a point where Computer Science grads might still be learning C++ or Python, but we’re not entirely sure why. Lawyers aren’t sure they’ll need paralegals. And although art will never be replaced by computers nor theater by digital AI actors, basic graphic design could be replaced by A.I.
All of this reminds me of an expression I heard long ago about the obsolescence of workers - which is that you don’t want to be the last person working in the typewriter ribbon industry. Typewriters are a bit like Judaism in a worst case scenario - they’re a device of historic and ancient significance, but something neat to admire, but not actually use. But of course, typewriters evolved over time, first into a little computer-like device called a word processor in the 70s and 80s, and then into the modern personal computers we know today. Judaism, too, is a balance between a thing that constantly evolves and a beautiful object from the past to be admired.
Now this particular typewriter is a thing of beauty - a green Olympia SM3 De Luxe, from the late 50s or early 60s. They aren’t especially rare on ebay, or that expensive. However, this Olympia SM3 is very rare and very special. Because it is a typewriter that types in Hebrew.
That makes it somewhat rare. There are probably plenty of Hebrew typewriters in Israel. But a quick search of ebay reveals not one is available in the US. Hebrew typewriters are also uniquely complex - you might think - whats the big deal, a typewriter manufacturer just needs to swap out all the little keystroke bar arms with Hebrew letters and they’re done, right? But then you remember that Hebrew goes from right to left. The carriage of the typewriter needs to be specially manufactured to go backwards from how the normal latin letter carriage goes. The other thing about a Hebrew typewriter is that using it is a funny and special skill. Many of you read Hebrew. Some of you can chant in Hebrew for Haftarah or Torah. Some of you maybe learned to write in cursive Hebrew. But probably none of you learned to type in Hebrew. I taught myself to type in Hebrew back in rabbinic school, and it’s a useful skill on occasion.
All those elements are symbolic of Brith Sholom. Uniqueness, specialness, the need for additional effort in order to remain meaningful. To be a Jew in Erie is very special, and to belong to Brith Sholom, the Conservative synagogue, has always been very very special. It takes literacy and effort and love to do what you all have been doing - to take this ancient faith and keep using it, because it is beautiful, like the green Olympia SM3 typewriter. And like a typewriter, you also produce something beautiful with it - for us, we produce spiritual centeredness and a rootedness in our faith and traditions, as well as lovely tunes and warm community. For the typewriter, it produces poetry, or prose, or probably in Brith Sholom’s example, a list of yahrzeits with correctly typed Hebrew names. The other thing that makes our typewriter like Erie - it’s durable. Just yesterday, I put a piece of paper in and hammered the keys, and even after sitting in a box for 40 plus years, it still types perfectly. Just like you all - a congregation that still gets the job done after 129 years of faithful service.
The second object is one that all of you were given - it is Brith Sholom’s sisterhood cookbook, titled ‘Apples and Honey, Recipes for a Sweet New Year’, printed in 1998. It is functional and useful, as all cookbooks should be. I like cooking, and I will definitely use a bunch of these recipes, specifically the Arlene Sandelstein’s Ricotta Latkes on page 29 and Shirley Brown’s Better than Sex German chocolate cake on page 64 - that one both for the name and because folks testified at our final Shabbat service that it truly is incredible, although I’m not so sure about the name.
Mostly, though, I will treasure this cookbook for the names contained in it. There are congregants we all know and love in there and that will stay friends, like Paula Schwartz and Faith Lifshen and Doris Pinski and Laurel Rider and Felice Oppenheim and Shelly Benjamin. And then there are the folks who have passed who I had the pleasure of knowing, like Arlene Sandelstein and Judy Shapiro and Beth Lester and Carl Cohen. But then theres more folks - folks I never had the pleasure to meet, but only dutifully have read their yahrtzeit names out for the past eight years, like Shirely Brown and Lil Steinberg and Betty Radov. All sacred communities are built on the deeds of people like these, folks who came and prayed and supported the institution, who had anniversaries and bar mitzvahs here, and who served on committees and cleaned up after kiddushes. Women than played mahjong or bingo and men that played in the church basketball league in our social hall. Folks who long ago departed from this world, but their names are still read out and remembered half a century later, or more. Even though this high holidays will be the last time we read some of those names from the bimah, and even though the yahrtzeit plaques will come down from the wall, the cookbook, and the living past members of Brith Sholom Jewish Center will carry on the memory of those that came before us for the rest of our lives.
The final item gifted to me by Doris and Brith Sholom was an old guitar. Doris pointed to it in the closet of the office back a few years ago, a dusty, smallish little thing with only five strings and a flimsy steel bridge, and I glanced at it and thought ‘that’s probably a worthless piece of junk’, and I didn’t take it. Call it sentiment, or curiosity, but last month Doris offered it up again and I took it home. It helps that I’ve been playing guitar three or four times a week for the past year solid in an effort to get better. So I googled around a little, and it’s a Stella brand harmony guitar, size zero, which is the smallest size. It’s a parlor guitar, sometimes called a student guitar, and was made in the early 1970s. It has a sunburst paint job and a distinctive batwing pickguard, and comes with a metal lower brace. It’s not particularly valuable or rare, and they made a lot of em for beginners back in the day. But the parlor size guitar was the size preferred by the late great Dolly Parton, so it is beloved by some.
Like I said, it only had five strings, and when I picked it up it sounded really chunky and metallic and it buzzed a bit. So I cut the old strings off and put on new ones and tuned it, and I’ve been playing it non stop for about four weeks, and I really like the sound. It’s a little buzzy in spots and it’s not as thick as my Yamaha Dreadnought style guitar, but I like it and I’m gonna keep it. It’ll always remind me of this place and this congregation.
Besides being a metaphor for this community, which I’ll get to in a sec, this forlorn and forgotten guitar speaks to me personally, too. I have always had a bit of a chip on my shoulder, maybe for good reason, maybe not. Sometimes I’ve felt in my life like I was counted out - an afterthought, or someone not expected to contribute much. I had ADD in high school, and my teachers mostly chalked it up as laziness or poor discipline. In sports I was undersized, underspeed, understrength. When I applied to rabbinic school in the Conservative movement, folks doubted whether I had the right background, or the academic credentials, or the Hebrew grammatical acumen to survive the rigorous five year graduate education. And yet here I stand before you - having received a double varsity letter in high school sports, a graduate of Conservative rabbinic school with an honorary doctorate, a published author of an advanced work of translated hassidic texts, and most importantly, your rabbi.
My favorite biblical verse has always been one from psalm 118 - Even ma’asu habonim, hayita le’rosh pinah - the stone that the builder refused shall always be the head cornerstone. What that means is - stone bridges and archways for the past 3000 years have been constructed with a keystone resting at the center to anchor and lock the entire structure together. Without it, the whole thing collapses. The verse tells us that that which humans reject and pass over might ultimately serve as the most critical element in the build. Never count anyone or anything out - not a rabbi with ADD, or a beat up old guitar in a closet, or a congregation from what some might regard as a forgotten corner of the state - the once great manufacturing town of Erie PA - a city that for those who know her, never stopped being great. The stone that the builder refused shall always be the head cornerstone
Back to this guitar and this congregation - what I want to say is this - it sat in a guitar for probably 20 years and nobody touched it, but all it needed was some new strings and it was all ready to go on to a second life of bringing joy and music. And that’s the message of Rosh Hashanah, isn’t it?
Renewal is constant, and nothing ever ends.
We take something when it seems like it’s done, and we love it a little, and we breathe new life into it, and we give it a second chance. That’s a metaphor for us, for certain. We make mistakes and we fall down and we get back up and keep going, from 5786 into 5787. And also, we are never beyond repair or without value. Though we may be counted out, we rise again to play a song another day.
But also, that new life can happen wherever. Brith Sholom’s closing is the end of a chapter, both in the life of Erie’s Jewish history, and in your life. Each of us goes on to a new Jewish life elsewhere, probably here at Anshe Chesed down on Old Zuck Road. But maybe in Maine. Or in New York. Or maybe in Cleveland or Buffalo, and you know you’ll always be welcome at my Jewish community in Pittsburgh, the coffee shop and Jewish learning space we call Shoresh, the Hebrew word for source. The strings change, but the guitar still plays.
With that, I want to end with a song. It’s a special song. If you like movies, this one was in the Coen Brothers film ‘O Brother Where Art Thou’. It’s an old timey American classic called ‘I’ll fly away’, about the end of life. In the song, there is a recognition that the end of one thing leads to something else. In Pirkei Avot 4:16 our rabbis teach
רַבִּי יַעֲקֹב אוֹמֵר, הָעוֹלָם הַזֶּה דּוֹמֶה לִפְרוֹזְדוֹר בִּפְנֵי הָעוֹלָם הַבָּא. הַתְקֵן עַצְמְךָ בַפְּרוֹזְדוֹר, כְּדֵי שֶׁתִּכָּנֵס לַטְּרַקְלִין:
Rabbi Jacob said: this world is like a vestibule before the world to come; prepare yourself in the vestibule, so that you may enter the banqueting-hall.
There is a famous aphorism ‘there are no second acts in American life.’ I don’t believe that. I think we live many lives. I think all of you have had many lives. And maybe in this life, counter to the aphorism, you will all go on to a second act of Jewish life, and you will take all the memories and the friends, the songs and the prayers, the people and the feelings of this place with you as you continue your Jewish journey wherever God may lead you. With that, enjoy this song from this old guitar that Doris dug out of the closet.
And forgive any errors or wrong notes I may strike. This is after all, the season of forgiveness.
Misc Traditional -- Ill Fly Away TabNO CAPO, OR CAPO 3
VERSE 1:
G C G
Some glad morning when this life is o'er, I'll fly away
G D7 G
To a home on God's celestial shore, I'll fly away
CHORUS:
G G7 C G
I'll fly away, O glory, I'll fly away
G D7 G
When I die, hallelujah, by and by I'll fly away
VERSE 2:
G C G
When the shadows of this life have grown, I'll fly away
G D7 G
Like a bird from prison bars has flown, I'll fly away
CHORUS:
G G7 C G
I'll fly away, O glory, I'll fly away
G D7 G
When I die, hallelujah, by and by I'll fly away
VERSE 3:
G G7
O how glad and happy when we meet,
C G
I'll fly a-way. No more cold iron
Em G D7 G
Shackles on my feet, I'll fly a-way.
CHORUS:
G G7 C G
I'll fly away, O glory, I'll fly away
G D7 G
When I die, hallelujah, by and by I'll fly away
VERSE 4:
G C G
Just a few more weary days, and then, I'll fly away
G D7 G
To a land where joys shall never end, I'll fly away
CHORUS:
G G7 C G
I'll fly away, O glory, I'll fly away
G C G D7 G
When I die, hallelujah, by and by I'll fly away
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Misc Traditional -- Ill Fly Away TabVERSE 3:
G G7
O how glad and happy when we meet,
C G
I'll fly a-way. No more cold iron
Em G D7 G
Shackles on my feet, I'll fly a-way.
CHORUS:
G G7 C G
I'll fly away, O glory, I'll fly away
G D7 G
When I die, hallelujah, by and by I'll fly away
VERSE 4:
G C G
Just a few more weary days, and then, I'll fly away
G D7 G
To a land where joys shall never end, I'll fly away
CHORUS:
G G7 C G
I'll fly away, O glory, I'll fly away
G C G D7 G
When I die, hallelujah, by and by I'll fly away
NO CAPO, OR CAPO 3
VERSE 1:
G C G
Some glad morning when this life is o'er, I'll fly away
G D7 G
To a home on God's celestial shore, I'll fly away
CHORUS:
G G7 C G
I'll fly away, O glory, I'll fly away
G D7 G
When I die, hallelujah, by and by I'll fly away
VERSE 2:
G C G
When the shadows of this life have grown, I'll fly away
G D7 G
Like a bird from prison bars has flown, I'll fly away
CHORUS:
G G7 C G
I'll fly away, O glory, I'll fly away
G D7 G
When I die, hallelujah, by and by I'll fly away
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