This should have been a year to celebrate prosperity. This should have been a time when we could sit down in joy to sumptuous Rosh Hashanah dinners. This should have been a period for self-reflection in our synagogues, when we could turn our thoughts to personal repentance and healing.
Tragically, the events of Tuesday morning are brutal reminders that we are all wounded, living in a besieged world where none of us is safe.
First the World Trade Center Towers, then the Pentagon, then a plane crash in Pennsylvania.
Airports were shut. Embassies closed. Offices evacuated and thousands killed, victims of the worst act of terrorism ever committed within our borders — or anywhere else.
In a land that hasn’t witnessed an act of war on our soil since Pearl Harbor, we are suddenly under attack. But this time the attackers are terrorists, and their goals are destruction and death.
Evil — whether it’s propagated by Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad or Osama bin Laden — is rampant, nurtured by those who would rather wreak panic and havoc than forge peace. There are sociopaths who are so devoid of feeling for human life and so bent on self-destruction that they don’t care who they take along with them: youth at a Tel Aviv nightclub, families eating pizza in Jerusalem, or workers in lower Manhattan.
Against that backdrop of horror, we go to synagogue Monday night. We go with pain and anger. We want answers. We want retribution.
But we need to pray.
We need to join with our synagogue community to remember that even when we are imperiled, we can draw strength from one another and from God.
Let us not forget to grieve for the thousands of departed souls so brutally taken from us on Tuesday.
And let us join with others in praying that peace and security — in the Mideast and throughout the world — come to fruition in 5762.