During this season of the celebration of the Jewish New Year, we Jews are called to attention by the sounds of the Shofar blasts and compelled to recalibrate our values, commitments and visions. This year, I believe it is more important than ever that we do so.

The beloved Rabbi Jack Stern Jr., with whom I interned, said to his congregants at Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale in 1994:

“Through the years, we have said that the God of life keeps calling to us all the time, not only in the risk-filled time of the Holocaust, but in all those other times when God’s other children are lonely or sick or hungry or embattled. And again, ours is the choice: to be silent and stand by, or to claim our right not to be silent and to respond the way the prophet did: ‘Here am I, Send me.’ (Is. 6:8).

We, today, are at a pivotal time in our nation’s history. Whatever your views of our leadership, the character of our nation and this republic abides within and depends upon its citizens.

Even as the sorrow of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death lays heavily upon our hearts, I urge that, in her memory and honor, we keep her lesson of hope and courage alive. Thus, as we enter these autumn months leading to a presidential election, may the ever-glowing radiance of RBG’s memory shine upon us and urge us forward for the sake of our nation and this world.

In her last interview at 92Y, just about a year ago, Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that the greatest threat to our democracy is people who don’t care. She called our attention to Judge Learned Hand’s 1944 speech, “The Spirit of Liberty.” In his answer to his own question, “What is the spirit of liberty?” he admitted, “I cannot [exactly] define it … the spirit of liberty is … in the spirit of America which lies hidden in some form in the aspirations of us all.”

I believe that is the spirit for which we must now rise up. That is the spirit that built this country. That is the spirit which should impel us all to be stalwarts in defense of the weak and the homeless and the disenfranchised. These aspirations should also drive us to be guardians of the natural world upon the health of which we depend. 

This is a time for our vigilance and for the voices of both the empowered and the enervated. This is the time to reach hands across aisles and across dinner tables and to heal our wounded society and spirits. 

Silence is seductive. It puts us on the sidelines and makes us complicit whenever we choose the sidelines over action. But the sidelines are not the place for us, certainly not as Americans.

It is up to each one of us to breathe new energy into the spirit of liberty and justice, decency and morality, integrity and love in this country. Especially now, it is time to listen to the sounds of the Shofar that call us to awaken, reset, renew and repair ourselves, our nation and this creation.
Let us get on with it … and keep at it, for the sake of our country and all its citizens.