One early morning in October of 2021, at the beginning of my sabbatical — before I broke my arm, before our sweet dog and then my beloved Mickey both died — I had a dream. Years before this dream, out of the blue one day, I had received in the mail a book from an old friend of mine, the book Inner Work by the psychoanalyst Robert Johnson. It is about interpreting and learning from dreams. When I first received the book I tried to read it and got nowhere. I tucked it away on a shelf. Then all these years later, in the wake of this dream, I found the book, and this time it was just the key I needed. The specifics of my dream are my own personal iconography. But what I discerned from applying Robert Johnson’s methodology to it was that it was a dream about God: God smiling at me with pure love and fondness, God delighting in my presence.

I stand before you tonight with a broken heart. A year ago when I chanted, “On Rosh Hashana it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed, who shall live and who shall die…” never in a million years did I imagine that at the next Rosh Hashana I would look out and Mickey Chalfin wouldn’t be in the front row — my sweet, beautiful, funny Mickey, who loved what and who he loved so much — whether it was Bob Dylan or a chocolate malt or Pulga or this beautiful community or al achat kamma v’chamma — as in the minor case so much more so in the major case — me. My heart is torn open. I am bereft.

So how are you doing? We’ve all asked and answered this question a million times, right? And lately very often the answer we hear, and maybe the one we give, is something like, “Well I’m doing okay, except for, you know, uh, the world...”