Anyone who has been to Quebec City can attest that it is an enchanting place. As close as you can get to Europe while staying in North America. French language and culture permeates the medieval-style walled town. This past summer, Brian and I enjoyed our first visit to Quebec City.

On the second day of our visit, we marched up the hill just outside the walled city to the Citadel. There you will find a strange and charming confluence of the city’s French and British patrimonies.
Guards who protect the governor’s residence speak French, like the other residents of the town. But they wear red wool jackets and high black hats, just like at Buckingham Palace. We hoped to see the changing of the guard.
On this day, there was no changing of the guard. We had arrived on Quebec City Day, an annual celebration, marked by a ceremony for the Citadel’s guards. The entire regiment marches into town to city hall and the mayor grants them right to carry arms for another year.

As we stood watching the formalities, I wondered to myself at this arcane ritual. Was it truly still necessary? Whom were they protecting really? What purpose did all this formality serve?

And then, something unexpected happened. One of the hundreds of soldiers standing in the rows fell down. His gun slid across the pavement. Immediately, two other guards scurried to his side, picked him up and led him away. With his hat off, we could see that his head was shaved. Heat, heavy clothing, passed out. We felt for him in his illness, and for his embarrassment in front of the others.

In that moment, that sad and frightening moment, we could see the human being behind the uniform. Standing in rows, faces diminished by hats covering brows, heavy jackets hiding physical distinctions. Couldn’t tell men from women (yes there were women in the regiment). The ceremony went on without skipping a beat. Ranks closed over space where he had stood.

As they turned and marched away to the pomp of the brass band, I understood that what we had witnessed was Rosh Hashanah for the troops.
Annual ritual, everyone seeks to be at their top form.

The annual ritual is not empty, because it carries them through the rest of the year. Knowing that they are free to go about their business, the soldiers can concentrate on their daily tasks.

To us, the soldiers appear identical. They seem to be on display just for us. But to them, this ceremony culminates a year of working together, of depending on one another, of sharing times of strength and weakness. When that young man fell, we saw that this was no simple ceremony. In that moment, each soldier appeared as a human being. It is no easy feat to stand at attention, and to tolerate the tourists’ taunts, trying to get them to move or smile. It was no small task to stand in the sun, in perfect rows, preened and polished. But behind the costumes, it became clear to me that the relationships these young people had formed during the year, enabled them to rise to the occasion and respond to any contingency. They were there for each other.

The analogy to our own lives should be clear by now. This annual ritual, with the ancient words, the bowing and standing, the rituals of tallit and shofar and honoring the Torah, may seem empty or irrelevant on the surface. Or it may carry great meaning, we just aren’t sure what it is. We may feel a bit lost or confused by the service. And without our knowing it, maybe we are missing something important.

For those who spend the year working together, praying together, studying together, the holy days are the culmination of a year of creating relationships. The elaborate rituals of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur draw power from the experiences we have shared in the past year, and they linger in our minds as we step into the year to come.

And so, we too deepen our relationships to this day, to each other and to God, the Source of all meaning, by the work we invest in the rest of the year. I learned this truth most keenly from spending a year studying with our adult b’nai mitzvah. This past year, nine women and one man met every other week as they learned to read and to chant from the Torah, studied the Shabbat service, discussed the depths of one challenging Torah portion, and planned their own coming-of-age celebration—more an affirmation of who they have become as Jews than a literal coming of age. In the hours that we spent together, particularly in the final rehearsals in June, I came to an understanding of the power of adult study to transform our lives.
Many of you who were present on June 19 can testify to the extraordinary results of these ten people’s study. But the family and friends who accompanied these members on their journey of learning and self-discovery were privileged to witness something even deeper and more extraordinary. The adult b’nai mitzvah went through a veritable transformation. At least 3 years of learning together (7 of them took Me’ah, and three had spent years studying prior to conversion to Judaism as members of HBT). Sharing the challenges of learning new skills this past year, this minyan of adult Jews became a close-knit learning community. As one person put it, she never understood before when people spoke of having a “spiritual community.” The deep and personal connections that they made, sharing joys and sorrows, struggling together and supporting one another, they have become more than just a group of friends or ten people with common interests. They took a great leap from their comfortable lives and have landed in a resilient net, connecting them to one another, that’s for certain, but also drawing them into the vast web of Jewish thought and Jewish life.

As nearly every person expressed it, the essence of the transformation came from a sense of “ownership” of his or her Judaism. They described it in terms like “an authentic experience of participation in ritual and in our community.” One Jew by choice expressed a sense of “confidence in my new life as a Jew.” While another spoke of “a journey of claiming this tradition for my own” and a third felt “permission to be myself, and express my spirituality.” These ten individuals came from many different backgrounds, with varied talents. Though their stories are inspiring, they each began in a place not so different from any one of you sitting here.

I’d like to give you a peek into some of their experiences, in hopes that you yourselves will be moved and inspired to try this “Jewish outward bound” experience.

One person confessed:
“ I used to say: I didn’t belong to a synagogue, I wasn’t bat mitzvah.
Now, I can feel comfortable, feel part of the Jewish experience. I am so proud to say I had a bat mitzvah, that I can read Torah and haftarah and lead part of the service.”

Having the skills to participate more actively in the service has made the experience that much richer. Whether gaining mastery over the Hebrew, or finding beauty in the chanting, each found new meaning in a language that had once seemed foreign and beyond reach.

Others commented that the experience has given them confidence, not only in their Jewish practice, but also in themselves. Every one in this group worked hard at something that at one point seemed impossible—whether learning to carry a tune or stand up in front of the congregation or even learning to ask for help. Miraculously, they each discovered that they could reach their goals, and then set their minds to conquering the next challenge.

A few of the students described a specific Jewish teaching that has helped them.

One of our students described to me a “strange and wonderful” experience that arose from a new practice of saying the Shema at home. Though she is not particularly confident in her own singing voice, she chants the shema in the morning while doing back stretches. No one is around to hear except for her dog, and Hashem. But on this day, her singing took a new direction, as if someone were singing along with her. She told me, “I felt this connection between me and God and ‘humanity’ I just didn’t want to stop.”

Our discussions of Jewish theology, exploring the various and authentic ways that Jews have fashioned their belief in God, made a deep impression on several students. Before that class, many of these adults felt outside the mainstream of Jewish thought. They were not ready to accept the idea of God they found in the Bible or the prayerbook, or they had fashioned some belief, but did not expect that it could ever be accepted as a Jewish belief.

For one student, this sense of alienation made it very difficult to pray. But after spending some time reading and learning about Maimonides, she has found a way to conceive of a God she can engage in prayer. For that, she now wants to go to Israel so that she can visit his grave and say “thank you.”

What I love about that story is that for so many of us, Maimonides is a name we may or may not know, and most of us who have heard of him, couldn’t tell you anything he said. But now this one individual can have a conversation with one of the greatest thinkers of Jewish history. In the year we mark the 800th anniversary of his death, Maimonides has become her teacher, her mentor.

Another person described a similar experience of feeling he didn’t have “permission” to believe or to think what he believed was authentic. But through study, he was able to find a conception of God that not only made him comfortable, but helped him contend with serious illness. Taking that a step further, through analyzing the Torah portion for the service, he came to an understanding of God and of suffering that helps him cope with very real life and death issues.

There is a standard joke about the town that couldn’t get rid of its rats. They tried poison. They tried cats. They tried every method known but with no success. Then a wise rabbi came to town and told the townspeople, I have a foolproof method. Just give me a chance. And sure enough, he succeeded in getting rid of the rats and they never came back. The people asked, “Rabbi, you must be a miracle-worker. What did you do?” And he answered, “I put a little tallit on each one, gave them a bar mitzvah, and the next day they disappeared, never to return!”

On the Shabbat after the big day, more than half the class was back in shul. And now many of them have become regulars, one of the core groups of our temple’s Shabbat community. They come to be together and they come because the service means something to them. They want to continue to learn, and they are preparing to lead parts of the service and to chant haftarah again. They have found something that was missing in their lives, something they were looking for, and even things they never expected to find. This might mean giving up something that once seemed important, like meeting Curt Schilling on a Saturday morning at Fenway Park. It sounds incredible, even miraculous, but it happened to a very ordinary group of people, from very different backgrounds, with different talents and levels of knowledge. What then is the secret to their transformation?

First, I’ll tell you what it’s not. It’s not a once in a lifetime event. Transformation did not come in a single lightning bolt, or in a crash of the heavens. In fact, it was probably a lot closer to the prophetic “still small voice.”

This past year, we have heard various reports of celebrities who had “found kabbalah.” The most famous example is Madonna, who recently changed her name to Esther. Britney Spears had a secret name of God in Hebrew letters tattooed on her neck. Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher are considering a “kabbalah wedding.” The source of these celebrity epiphanies is the Kabbalah Centre—which you can find just ten minutes away in Newton Center. At a considerable profit, they teach courses in their version of the ancient wisdom of kabbalah—a version which makes no mention of kabbalah’s Jewish origin. They sell good luck in the form bottled Kabbalah water and red “bendls” at $25 a pop for an item you can buy on the streets of Jerusalem for 50 cents. They charge $400 for a set of the Hebrew book of the Zohar to place prominently in homes because of its ostensible power to bring light to the world. In essence, they claim to sell “transformation.”

In their own words, kabbalah is “a miraculous source of power so profound, so powerful, it could totally heal and transform your life and change our world for the good—forever.”

But while the teachings of this attractive new-age cult resonate with both ancient wisdom and contemporary self-help books, I’m sorry to inform everyone that “transformation” cannot happen because you wear an expensive red string around your wrist, or because you own a set of expensive but indecipherable books. The Kabbalah Centre, with all its celebrity endorsements is more like a fad diet than a way of life. After you get over the initial excitement over something new, it soon loses its appeal AND its magic.

What our students discovered, they found through learning, they found through patience and self-sacrifice. And I have confidence that their transformations will last—at least until the next challenge presents itself, as it inevitably will. Only this time, they will be better prepared, emotionally and intellectually, and also supported by a spiritual community that offers them authentic and honest friendship and empathy.

One of my favorite aphorisms comes from the great biologist Louis Pasteur, who said, “Chance favors the prepared mind.” When we have learned what to look for, we are more likely to find it. Through study, dialogue and reflection, each of these individuals became open to receive something. What they received was both a long sought-after goal and a total surprise.

A number of the adults in the class chose to visit the mikveh prior to the big day. Some had already been to a mikveh on the day of their conversion. Others had never been. But for each, the experience of immersing in the warm enveloping waters of the mikveh, wearing only what they were born in, affirmed everything they had discovered. Mikveh is not magic—it requires a prepared mind, a kavanah, an intention. The mikveh does not cleanse the body; it purifies the soul. The mikveh visit affirmed the fact of the transformation that had taken place over a long period of time.

Once you are open to it, you can find inspiration just about anywhere. I want to pass on an inspiring message that I heard recently on a tv show:

You have a front row seat at your own transformation.

We live in a Jewish community that houses some of the greatest resources in the world. Boston has been called the Athens of the West. It is also the Jerusalem of the West. Teachers, courses, in history and ethics, in philosophy and literature, in mysticism and basic Jewish practice—you can find them all here in greater Boston. In our own temple, we provide avenues for people to learn and to grow, to experiment with new ways of being Jewish. A year from now, a new Me’ah class will begin, and I will once again teach an adult bar and bat mitzvah class. And if we do not offer something you are seeking, please don’t be shy, let us know where you want to grow. As I say to each new person I meet who wants to be a part of the Hillel B’nai Torah community—it doesn’t matter what your background is, as long as you’re willing to grow.

The essence of transformation is the process itself. Judaism is challenging. It cannot be obtained by magic, by wearing red strings around the wrist or by attending one retreat, no matter how meaningful. It takes rehearsals, practicing the arts of Jewish prayer and mitzvot. It takes study, exploring the depths of the Hebrew texts, listening to the voice of the past. It takes openness and vigilance.

Many of us are spectators, watching everyone else, not always understanding, sometimes feeling like outsiders. That is a shame. Because Judaism is a gift. It is a gift that each person here has the right and the opportunity to claim for yourself, to own.

To own Judaism is to live more deeply, to see the layers beneath the surface.
It is to own our own history—to remember the Roman Empire, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Renaissance, and the Emancipation from our point of view. To ask, “What would it have been like to live then—as a Jew?”
It is to own our own literature—even in translation
To own Judaism is ultimately, to own a set of principles for living

We are called Yisrael—Israel, the people descended from Jacob, one who wrestled with God. We are called Yisrael, because, like Jacob, we wrestle in the darkness, trying to pin down our purpose in life, trying to put a name and a face on our beliefs. Jacob was transformed in that night and we too seek to be transformed. To be a Jew is to enter into a life-long process of growth as we find our place among our people, and our purpose in this vast universe. Don’t miss out on that miraculous opportunity. You have a front row seat at your own transformation

Rabbi Barbara Penzner
Yom Kippur 5765