Renewing Our Days as of Old (Rosh HaShanah Evening 5787)

In July, my daughter Galit and I took a mother-daughter road trip from Northern California to Southern California. To maintain peace on the highway, we had a strict rule: we took turns choosing the music. My turn, Galit’s turn. My turn, Galit’s turn.

Galit announced early on that because her bat mitzvah is coming up, we needed to put her study playlist—a recording of the traditional Shabbat morning Shacharit service—into the car rotation.

Picture driving down Highway 1, sun shining, ocean on our right, and out of the speakers comes blaring: “Barechu et Adonai Hamvorach.” Galit sang along with absolute confidence. Every time she knew Hebrew better than I did, she gave me a triumphant grin.

Wanting to hold my own as her mom and a rabbi, I chimed in: “You know, Galit, I might not have every word memorized, but the basic structure of this Shacharit service was laid down in the Mishnah almost two thousand years ago!”

Galit reached over and cranked up the volume to drown me out.

When Shacharit finished, Galit made a surprising choice: Coolio’s 90s classic Gangsta’s Paradise.

“I like the ‘oldies,'” Galit explained with a grin.

“Galit, did you know this song samples Stevie Wonder’s 1970 hit Pastime Paradise?” I offered to switch to the original Stevie Wonder track, but Galit shook her head: “Mom, wait for your turn.”

Listening to Coolio borrow from Stevie Wonder while driving with my 21st-century daughter—who had just been practicing prayers sampled from material thousands of years old—it hit me: Judaism is the ultimate art of sampling.

Most of the prayers in our siddur are direct samples from the Tanakh. The Shema is sampled from Deuteronomy. The Mi Chamocha is sampled straight out of Exodus.

Consider how we end our Torah service. These words, which resonate so deeply during this season of Teshuvah, are a direct sample from the final lines of the Book of Lamentations (5:21):

Hashiveinu Adonai eilecha v’nashuvah, chadesh yamenu k’kedem.
“Turn us back to You, O God, and we will return; renew our days as of old.”

I brought this verse to our General Membership meeting this past Spring because it is so timely to our Beth Or community: How do you make something brand new—chadesh—while remaining deeply true to the ancient past—k’kedem? How do you honor the soul of an original melody while allowing it to become a fresh anthem for a new generation?

As a Reform Jewish community, this paradox is our superpower. But change is rarely easy. When we introduce a new melody or alter a familiar ritual, our knee-jerk reaction is often resistance. We ask: Is this still authentic? Are we losing who we are?

Yet what we now consider timeless traditions were once radical innovations.

Think back to the 1960s and 70s. For generations, worship in many Western synagogues was formal and passive—the cantor sang from the bimah, and the congregation listened in quiet reverence. Most folks simply didn’t sing along in shul! But inspired by the folk music movement, Debbie Friedman brought a guitar into sacred spaces and wrote melodies meant for every voice to sing together.

When Debbie Friedman wrote her Mi Shebeirach during the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis, weaving in the Matriarchs and setting them to an English lyric, imagine the initial reactions! Some surely gasped at hearing English on the bimah or feeling a folk guitar in a sanctuary. Yet today, that prayer is an indispensable pillar of our communal healing.

We see this same holy evolution in how we mark Jewish adulthood. A century ago, when Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan organized the very first bat mitzvah for his daughter Judith in 1922, many wondered if it threatened the integrity of Jewish life. But today, embracing young women and gender-diverse youth at the Torah has breathed fresh life into our ancient covenant.

When we pair different samples together, we create new meaning called midrash. Liturgy pairs that line from Lamentations—Chadesh yamenu k’kedem—with a familiar verse from Proverbs (3:18):

Eitz chayim hi la-machazikim bah, v’tomcheha m’ushar.
“She is a tree of life to those who hold fast to her,
and happy are those who support her.”

In Midrash Bemidbar Rabbah, our sages teach: “Just as a tree grows and produces new branches, leaves, and fruit, so too do the words of Torah produce new insights continuously” (14:4).

A tree that stops producing new leaves dies. But a tree without deep roots topples over in the very first storm. Our history and core values are the root system holding us fast; the fresh ideas, new melodies, and creative sampling we bring today are the leaves and branches reaching toward the sun.

While working on this sermon, a colleague pointed me toward a remarkable example of how a living tradition stays alive. In Custodians of Wonder, BBC journalist Eliot Stein profiles the Q’eswachaka grass bridge in Peru. Every single year, this 500-year-old Inca rope bridge decays, sags, and rots. And every single year, the community cuts the old bridge down into the gorge below. For three days, hundreds of villagers gather to hand-weave miles of fresh, living grass into massive cables, stretching a brand-new bridge across the canyon.

The ancient bridge doesn’t survive because it is static stone. Like a tree, it survives precisely because it is organic—because it sags, wears out, and must be completely remade by hand by every single generation using the woven strands of the past.

Innovation isn’t replacing the tradition—this continuous act of creative sampling and re-weaving is the tradition.

The Jerusalem Talmud offers a radical claim (Peah 2:4):

Kol mah she-talmid vatik atid lechadesh lefinei rabo, kevar ne’emar le-Moshe mi-Sinai.
“Whatever a veteran student is destined to innovate in front of their teacher was already spoken to Moses at Sinai.”

When Debbie Friedman picked up her guitar, when Judith Kaplan stepped up to read Torah, or when Coolio sampled Stevie Wonder, they were pulling on strands of tradition already waiting to be re-woven into something new.

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Israel, summarized this sacred dialogue in a famous mandate:

Ha-yashan yitkadesh ve-ha-chadash yitchadesh.
“The old shall be made holy, and the new shall be renewed.”

We don’t throw away our ancient tradition—we infuse it with fresh energy. And we don’t reject the modern world—we elevate it and make it holy.

As we look around our expanded physical space tonight, we are witnessing this exact holy balance in action. We didn’t build to replace our past, but to give it a future. Every upgrade is designed to give the founding vision of Temple Beth Or room to breathe for decades to come. The footprint has grown, but the heart beating inside it remains unchanged: our warmth, our commitment to radical inclusivity, our spirited prayer, and our vibrant, diverse soul.

Look around this sacred room tonight. To those who first gathered here four decades ago—who picked up hammers, painted walls, and poured their sweat equity into making this historic 1913 sanctuary our home: your lived experience is the root system that keeps us standing upright. And to those who have joined our family more recently, along with the young people filling these pews with their energy, questions, and music: your presence is the new growth reaching toward the sun. We need both the roots and the branches to thrive.

Together, in this reimagined space, on this holy night of new beginnings, may we continue to weave our grass bridge across the generations—proudly rooted in our history, boldly stepping into our future, and always renewing our days as of old.

Shanah Tovah U’Metukah—May it be a good, sweet, and beautifully renewed New Year.