Some of you are regulars. Some of you are periodicals. Some of you are annuals – and a few of you are brand new. Whatever your frequency, we welcome you joyously. You make these services meaningful.

A special thank you Pastor Aramis Hinds and his teammates to the Bethel Community Transformation Center not just for making our celebrating the High Holidays possible in this historic site, but for doing so many wonderful acts, some in partnership with IADS, to improve lives, especially in Detroit. Thank you to Rabbi Rachel Shere for leading these services, to our Cantorial team, Torah readers, and especially to the staff of the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue, for their respective Herculean efforts in making these services a reality. And once again I thank you, part of the sprawling family affectionately known as Jews, for being here to worship together.

Here in Detroit, we are developing something unique: a synagogue rooted in tradition and the new Samantha Woll Center for Jewish Detroit—a home for programming, learning, and gathering that extends our reach and deepens our impact. Together, the Downtown Synagogue and the Woll Center form a true hub of Jewish life in the city: a place where the doors are not locked by dues, where High Holiday tickets are not priced like Taylor Swift concerts, where you can show up and belong—no questions asked.

This is both radical and deeply Jewish.

I was asked to welcome everyone here today on behalf of the Downtown Synagogue’s Board. 

I have to say that one of the things that continues to impress me about the Downtown Synagogue is that it draws people from all corners of our Jewish community. Our principal mission is to serve as a beacon for the entire Jewish community. Our high holidays are open to everyone free of charge and obligation as the late Marty Herman would say, and, generally speaking, we have an inclusive ethos.

So there are a lot of different types of people with us today that we’d like to welcome. Originally I had planned to organize my list of welcomes in alphabetical order like the Avinu Malkeinu prayers... but I ran out of time. Still, I did come up with 18 categories.

One of my favorite poems at times like these is by Lea Goldberg, 

a 20th century Israeli Hebrew poet. She begins:

הַיָּרֹק הַיּוֹם יָרֹק מְאֹד.

וְהָאָפֹר הַיּוֹם אָפֹר מְאֹד

“The Day After” by Lea Goldberg

The green is very green today.

The gray is very gray today

There’s a little black, but no white in the city,

What is stormy is very stormy today

And the past, today, is very past.

And there’s a little future, but there’s no present in the air.

5784 was a year filled with joy. We celebrated b’nei mitzvah, including three in our renovated building. We welcomed new babies. We danced at weddings. We marked anniversaries and birthdays and long-awaited retirements. We sang on rooftops–or at least I did–and laughed at  jokes. We hugged old friends and smiled at new ones.

Jews have a long-standing love affair with anthologies. It started with Tanach, an amazing anthology of narrative, history, poetry, prophecy, and much more. And then it continued across the centuries.