“We made it: A Shehechianau Moment” 

Sondheim, of blessed memory wrote lyrics in Follies:
Good times and bum times,
I’ve seen them all and, my dear,
I’m still here.
Plush velvet sometimes,
Sometimes just pretzels and beer,
But I’m here.  

Barry Manilow sang, “Looks like we made it.” And looking around the room and the Zoom room, we did. We made it. We are here. Like Moses answered G-d, Hineini, I am here, Present. Ready. We are ready to greet the new year. It is, indeed, a shehechianu moment. 

What is the shehechianu? It is a prayer that we say on doing something for the first time—or the first time in a year. We’ve already said it once here this evening after we announced that this is now 5783. Perhaps you said it at home before dinner and after you lit the Yom Tov Holiday candles. We will say it when we hear the sound of the shofar tomorrow. Some people save a new fruit or new clothes so they have something they can say shehechianu on the Second Day of Rosh Hashanah.  

Here at CKI, we say it often. Any time someone does something for the first time during a Shabbat morning service. Open the ark for the first time, shehechianu. Say the Torah blessing for the first time. Shehechianu. Done it before but not at CKI? Shehechianu. Read it from the transliteration? Chant it for the first time from the Hebrew itself? Shehechianu. Sometimes it surprises people. They may have been taught that you only say it in certain prescribed ways or times. Yet, people seem to like doing it. And now congregants are even helping me to remember to say it. It is a way of celebrating. It is a blessing that brings us hope. It makes people smile.  

Let’s say it together again—really learn it. 

It starts like all blessings– 

Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech Ha’olam 

Blessed are You, Lord Our G-d, Ruler of the Universe 

Shehechianu, v’kiyimanu v’higiyanu Lazman Hazeh 

Who has kept us alive and sustained us and enabled us to reach this moment. 

Sing here. Everyone together. 

Like many of our prayers, this prayer is said in the plural. This use of the plural is part of that community connectedness that makes prayer with a group so powerful.  

Sometimes, however, we may want to mark something individually. After a serious car accident on the Upper West Side during rabbinical school, I went to the mikveh in Boston, the one that Anita Diamant founded, and emerging from deep in the pool, I changed the Hebrew. Shechiani, v’kiyimani, v’higiyani lazman hazeh. Who kept me alive, sustained me and enabled me to reach that very moment. When I could finally return to hiking, my daughter and one of her friends thought I could say shehechianu and open a bottle of champagne every day. I survived.  

One of the first thoughts upon awaking for Jews is Modeh Ani, I thank you G-d for restoring my soul to me. The kids in Torah School sing this every Sunday morning. We sing it on Shabbat morning here. It too is about survival.  

So is Birkat HaGomel, an individual prayer typically said during a Torah service, that acknowledges survival by an individual for surviving a serious illness, traveling over an ocean, even surviving childbirth. After the individual says: Blessed are You, Lord our G-d, Ruler of the Universe, who bestows the undeserving with goodness and who has rewarded me with goodness. there is a communal response. 

May G-d who has rewarded you with all goodness reward you with all goodness for ever. 

I delight in helping people to mark those moments.  

Personally, I haven’t always been comfortable with Birkat HaGomel. Why did some people survive the Holocaust and others did not? Why did some make it out of the towers on 9/11 and others did not? Does this prayer imply that some deserve G-d’s goodness and others do not? Why did I survive the car accident, but others do not? When is the right moment to say it? How do we know when we have survived enough to warrant it? Some people say that you are a cancer survivor the day you are diagnosed. Others say when you reach the 5 year mark or being cancer free—which blessedly Simon did this year.  

I wrestle with some of tomorrow morning’s liturgy for the same reason. Our High Holy Day liturgy begs a similar question. Who shall live and who shall die? Yet, teshuvah, tefilah and tzedah can avert the decree. Really?  

Now let’s look at our shehechianu prayer in depth: 

 What does it mean that G-d has kept us alive? A more accurate translation would be “Who causes us to be alive.” Causing us to be alive, causing us to survive. I feel this more acutely this year. Baruch shehecheyanu – blessed is the One who has allowed us to survive. Yes, us, all of us gathered here, to see 5783. It is a prayer of deep gratitude. 

What sustains us? What holds us up? What keeps us afloat? When I asked this at Java and Jews, and on Facebook, I got lovely answers: our family, our friends, snuggling with our pets, the community, a walk in nature, music, art, poetry, books, gardening, being creative, children’s delight at something new. There are probably as many answers as there are people here tonight. Yet the common theme was people. You each hold someone up. You are the connecting thread. The sustainer.  

The Talmud gives us a glimmer too:  Rabbi Yochanan sees that one of his students is suffering. He goes to his student and says: “Hav li yadakh, Give me your hand,” so the student gave him his hand, and he raised him up, literally, he sustained him. 

Later, Rabbi Yochanan – the same one who raised his student up in the previous story- is now himself suffering. Rabbi Chanina comes to him, and the scene repeats itself, only with Rabbi Yochanan in the reverse position. Rabbi Chanina says to Rabbi Yochanan, “Give me your hand.” Rabbi Yochanan gave him his hand, and Rabbi Chanina raised him up. 

We are sustained by others. We are sustained by community. In this past year, where I have struggled with an unanticipated health challenge, I have been sustained by you. Each of you. Asking about me. Sending cards. Jokes. Books. Singing Mi Sheberach, the prayer for healing of mind, body and spirit. Each of those acts have been sustaining. Each of you has played a role in the ongoing healing.  

How does G-d enable us to reach this moment? Often I add the word, “joyous”. Most of the times we say shehechianu, it is about reaching a joyous moment. The birth of a child, a Bat Mitzvah, a wedding, hearing the shofar, lighting Chanukah candles, hearing the megilah, yes, even tasting matzah. It is also about arrival. We’re here. Just where we are supposed to be. Like our GPS tells us. “You’ve arrived.” I am hearing echos again of “Looks like we made it.” 

But there is an implied next question becomes–where do we go from here? 

Earlier this summer I cried at the start of the ListenUp concert. It was their first live in person concert since the start of the pandemic. They started the concert with Shehechianu (Sing here). And sitting all the way in the back, unsure that we or even I were really going to get here, the tears flowed. 

The tears flowed again when I heard the Michigan marching band in person play Hail to the Victors, the Michigan fight song.  As I said to the person next to me in line—I wasn’t sure I would ever be back there. 

As part of the Conversations with Anita Diamant, she reminded us to recite Shehechianu, it being her first outing to a congregation since the pandemic. It was also our first full Oneg Shabbat in a long time. Another reason for Shehechianu.  

There is a sense of gratitude and relief.  This simple prayer is not just a blessing thanking G-d for reaching special occasions. It is a blessing that expresses profound gratitude for our continued existence, even when that existence may be in doubt—and even in the midst of profound loss. 

We cannot ignore the challenges we have had to overcome or the losses we have endured. On the contrary, shehechianu is a recognition of the fragility of life itself, a profound expression of confronting loss and grief and all that it took to survive. Rosh Hashanah begs us to confront our own mortality and from the gratitude that we feel today thank G-d for our continued existence. If we look around this room, sadly, some of us will not be here next year.  

This congregation has made it…130 years. We have survived. That is worthy of a shehechianu too. This year we will be talking about surviving and thriving. Our liturgy says, page 402 if you are checking, that “merely to survive is not an index of excellence, nor given the way things go, even of low cunning.” This quote was the basis for the theme for this High Holy Days. It begs another question, what does thriving look like? That is the topic we will explore for the next 10 days. 

I’ve used this quote before; but it bears repeating. Frederick Buechner, of blessed memory, said that “Vocation is the place where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.” He’s talking about finding meaning, finding our purpose. Often when people have been through a traumatic event—a car crash, an earthquake, wildfire, hurricane, tornado, a pandemic or the Holocaust, people try to find meaning in their lives.  Victor Frankl who survived Auschwitz, addresses this directly in his book Man’s Search for Meaning. Finding our own personal meaning is key to our survival as individuals. But the trick is each of us must uncover that meaning for ourselves.  

The rabbis teach that each person has a commandment that is their own personal mitzvah. For Ken Jacoby for example, it may be his excellent shofar blowing that we have enjoyed in years past. Unfortunately, he has COVID, may he have a complete healing, a refua shlema, but through the magic of technology we will still hear him tomorrow.  For Gale Jacoby it may be how she tells the story of her parents and Ken’s parents survival of the Holocaust. Keeping their story and their memory alive brings meaning to her—and to all of us.  

One of the challenges for each of us, is to find that sense of meaning and purpose. One of the challenges today, and every day, is to find ways to make this world a better place, to find ways to make our days count so that we acquire a heart of wisdom.  

There is a story that is told frequently in educational settings about a girl is walking on the beach with her grandfather. The girl bends down and throws starfish after starfish back into the sea. The grandfather asks her what she is doing after all, she can’t possibly save them all. The girl picks up another one, throws it into the sea and answers saying, “It makes a difference to this one.”   

That next generation brings me hope. But hope may be too big a word. Listen to the words of the Israeli poet, Yehudah Amichai.  

“hopeful is too big a word. I have cut it down to little hopes: one peaceful day with a breeze. … a dish in a restaurant, buying vegetables from a woman in the Old City. My hopes are not like big stones, but little stones ground up and made of cement that will support a whole house.” 

Those little stones are you. The cement that sustains this whole community and keeps us together, sustains us.  

Each of you is here. Each of you has made it—with all the ups and downs, with all the pain and losses. But Each of you has made a difference too, in the life of this congregation and in the world. Each of you sustains us, supports us, brings us hope.  

For each of you, there is a starfish, to remind you that YOU did make a difference.  

One of the challenges for this day, and every day, is to find reasons to say Shehechianu.  

Repeat Shehechianu