Rabbi Debbie Young-Somers is Rabbi at Edgware and Hendon Reform Synagogue (EHRS). This sermon was delivered at EHRS on Rosh Hashanah morning.
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I could be wrong (it does happen!) but I suspect that those of us who are old enough to remember, all know where we were on 11 September 2001 when we heard about the horrific attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. We heard cantor Tamara movingly recount her experiences of 9/11 last night, on the 25th anniversary of a day that feels like it changed the world for all of us.
I was at the former Carmel College in the Oxfordshire countryside at a Union of Jewish Students training event where I was helping to teach, and where the site had one television inside the caretaker’s home, which 60 of us squeezed into at 6pm to watch. Earlier that day, my brother, at home watching TV, started to send me panicked text messages. World War Three was beginning as far as he was concerned. It turned out not to be World War Three, but it was certainly a key turning point in what feels like one conflict or war after another over the last 25 years.
I will also never forget standing on this bimah and having to inform our Simchat Torah congregation that Israel was under attack, not realising until much later the unbearable horrors unfolding during those hours. And I will never forget standing on this bimah on Yom Kippur last year, talking to you all in my sermon about the fear we were living with, and knowing some of what had been happening in Manchester that morning, but being asked by our amazing security team to not yet share the devastating news, or what we knew of it at that point, in order to keep everyone in the service as safe as possible, and to not spread misinformation.
I would like to live in less interesting times. Less worrying times. So I was particularly struck a few weeks ago when I stumbled across an editorial by Jeremy O’Grady in a news magazine[1]. He opened by asking ‘Are you worried?’ He went on to confess that he is – almost all the time. And these worries, he admits, are largely fed by the news industry he is a part of. He wrote:
As a case in point, take the articles listed recently on the homepage of that excellent online news magazine, The Conversation. The lead item was an expert telling me that my money worries may drive inflammation and accelerate brain ageing. So now I’m worrying about the nature of my money worries. How severe are they? Severe enough to damage my grey cells? As severe as my new worry induced by the next item on The Conversation’s list, telling me that the present drought may be imperilling the future security of food crops? We hear a lot from the pundits these days about the psychological dangers resulting from screen addiction, yet the pundits themselves, albeit inadvertently, are feeding an addiction of a different and more long-standing sort: our addiction to worry. Worry sells. We know it’s bad for us, but we crave it.
It’s hard not to worry. As humans, as Jews. Worries this year have ranged widely, from our own safety during a spate of synagogue fire bombings that felt very close to home, through to climate change and could we afford financially and environmentally to get some kind of air conditioning at home during this endlessly hot summer, as everything seemed to turn brown around us.
I know that many of you are worried, especially in a week when Israel is back in the news again. When I hear the word worry I’m often reminded of the lyrics from Baz Luhrman’s track ‘Sunscreen’, based on the words of a 1997 Chicago Tribune column by Mary Schmich. The song instructs:
Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum.
The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind.
The kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.
But what wisdom does our Judaism have to offer our worried minds? In the Talmud[2], the Rabbis advise that ‘One should tell others his concerns, which will lower his anxiety’. It’s a remarkably modern approach, encouraging us to find someone we can open up to, to share the load together, and hopefully ease our worries rather than spreading them to others.
Another account from the Gemara[3] continues to help us think about how and why we share our worries: Rabbi Yoḥanan’s student, Rabbi Ḥiyya bar Abba, fell ill. Rabbi Yoḥanan came to visit him, and asked him: Is your suffering dear to you? Do you desire to be ill and afflicted? Rabbi Ḥiyya did not welcome it or the idea that he might be rewarded for his suffering. Rabbi Yoḥanan then said to him: Give me your hand. Having done so, Rabbi Yoḥanan stood him up and restored his colleague to health. But then Rabbi Yoḥanan himself fell ill. Rabbi Ḥanina repeated the hand holding exercise, and Yohanan was restored to health. The Gemara wonders with us: Why did Rabbi Yoḥanan wait for Rabbi Ḥanina to restore him to health? If he was able to heal his student, why couldn’t he heal himself. The Gemara answers: A prisoner cannot generally free himself from prison, but depends on others to release him from his shackles. We need one another when things are hard and bleak, even if we are someone who often helps others, sometimes we too will need that same help.
And our Judaism has an ancient ritual that demonstrates how we show up for one another in times of stress and worry and sadness. Rabbi Sharon Brous calls it ‘The Amen Effect’, after the model of the mourners Kaddish, where the community respond with amens and short phrases that let the mourners know they are there and they are with them in their sadness.
Rabbi Brous describes a ritual found in the Mishnah, when people would descend en masse to the Temple in Jerusalem during periods of pilgrimage. The huge crowd, on arriving at the Temple, would turn to the right together to walk around the enormous complex. But the text says there are exceptions. Some people were instructed to turn to the left, and walk against the crowds of people. They were the grieving, the lonely, the sick, someone to whom something terrible had happened. Those coming towards them would know these are the people who need us right now, who need us to see their pain and difficulty. If we don’t know, we cannot respond, the Amen effect whereby we show up for one another only works when we know who is in the stream wading against the tide of everyone else coming towards them.
Brous goes on to explain:
Two thousand years ago, the Rabbis constructed a system of ritual engagement built on profound psychological insight: when you’re suffering, when your loved one hovers between life and death, when you feel hemmed in by the darkness, when all you want is to self-isolate – because who would understand anyway? – you show up. You root your suffering in a context of care. But even as you step into community, you don’t pretend that you’re okay.[4]
We don’t have to leave behind all we carry when we come into synagogue, whether it be realised grief or worries that may never come to fruition. When we share those struggles with one another, when our pain is seen by someone else, as the ancient Rabbis knew (well before the ascent of modern-day counselling and therapy) we may be able to leave the encounter feeling a little unburdened. Of course we have our limits and there are professional sources we can signpost to, but community should be a safe space for you to bring all of who you are into. I like to think of EHRS as a home with many rooms. It can take a bit of effort to find which of those many rooms you want to sit in. But our hope is that there is a room in which every one of you will find the meaning, comfort and joy your Judaism, and connecting with others, can bring. We won’t all be in the same room at the same time, but there are so many to choose from. And if you haven’t yet found the room that works for you, let’s construct and furnish it together.
Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, who was never formally diagnosed in his lifetime, but today is often presumed to have lived with Bipolar disorder, or manic depressive illness as it is also known, wrote in the 18th Century[5]:
Get into the habit of singing a tune. It will give you new life and fill you with joy. Get into the habit of dancing. It will displace depression and dispel hardship.
I wonder if he was inspired by our Haftarah today from Jeremiah (31:4) who prophesied Israel’s destruction, but said that after this dark time – “again you will take up your timbrels; and go out in the dance of those who rejoice’. The phrase ‘we will dance again’ has become a bit of a mantra for the survivors of the Nova Dance Festival massacre, and our worries have certainly increased since that dark day. During my sabbatical it was incredibly moving to join our EHRS group trip to the Nova exhibition in London where we heard testimony from the brother of one of those murdered there. He had written his own song in remembrance of his brother, and we were the first audience to hear it. It cannot take the pain away, but it has helped him find a way to continue living and honouring all that was lost, and being able to share that with others clearly made a huge difference both to him and to us.
We cannot stop the voices of worry. But we can share them with one another, and carry them together. Whether we are singing together in joy or in sorrow, music can crack open parts of us nowhere else can touch, and in 3 weeks’ time, we will, please God, come together to dance once again on Simchat Torah, bringing all we are with us, and sharing it in our community home of many rooms, all together in this beautiful safe space we create anew with one another each year.
May the coming year be one in which our worries are outnumbered by our joys, and we can share all of them with our community, finding strength, happiness and growth together. Shanah tovah!
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[1] The Week 22 August 2026
[2] Yoma 75a
[3] Berachot 5b
[4] Sharon Brous, The Amen Effect p.4
[5] In a commentary on Ekev