Since this past Sunday, I’ve had the real joy of being together with two different groups of Schusterman Rabbinical Fellows. Each group has four distinguished students from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and four from The Jewish Theological Seminary, learning together about leadership, outreach and inclusion. In one session, the students heard from an outstanding facilitator who worked with them on speaking authentically, that is, not being pontificators but genuine communicators.

One part of that session triggered three questions that seemed so appropriate to think about as we ready for Rosh ha-Shanah:

1. When were you recently at your best?
2. When do you think that the Jewish people acted at its best?
3. When do you think a significant part of the world behaved at its best?

I hope that you will find these questions pointing to issues of ultimate importance, and I hope that some of you will want to respond to them on this blog. And for anyone who is speaking before a congregation on the holidays about some related topics, please send me your sermons or summarize the key ideas below.

Thank you,

Rabbi Hayim Herring

image from Flickr, Horia Varlan