A short content warning before we begin. Tonight I am going to speak, in part, about gun violence. If that is traumatizing or triggering for you, you are welcome to step out for a little while and please know that you are loved. And if you or someone in your family needs resources or someone to talk to or an outlet for grief or frustration or fear, we hope you know that you can rely on your synagogue community.

So. Tonight. I want to talk to you about outrage. Specifically, moral outrage. Not the outrage that is monetized and churned out by the outrage machines of social media and the 24/7 opinion news cycle. The outrage that is the result of gross measures of injustice and bearing witness to cruelty, inaction, callousness, and crisis here and across the world. Sacred outrage that echoes the cries of our prophets. Cries which fell on ears that couldn’t or wouldn’t hear. Outrage that burns hot and requires constant fuel and eventually burns down and gutters.

On Erev Rosh Hashanah I spoke about joy. I tried to paint our calendar as full of opportunities for joy, in part, because I think all of us could use a hefty dose of joy after a heavy year. I think we sometimes need permission to experience joy. And part of the reason I needed a sermon this year about joy is because this has been an exhausting year as a human family, as an American citizen, and as part of the Northshore community. I’ve been bouncing between anger, sadness, and fear, emotions that rush together from the shared and compounding traumas from the past year.

If you had asked me in February…I would have told you that the entire High Holy Days would be focused on Ukraine. On February 24th, the Russian army invaded from three sides, launching rockets and sending thousands fleeing from their homes. If you asked me in February, I would have told you that we would talk about the Jewish roots and history in Kyiv and Lviv and Odessa. We would have shared our family, my family’s history and immigration and refugee stories. We would have talked about the implications of cruelty, violence, ego, and despotic leadership. Do you remember that feeling? That early mix of dismay and anger? Sadness and horror?

And then, on May 24th. Three months to the day after the Russian invasion began…a horrific shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas which stole the lives of 19 students and two teachers. How could this happen again, we wondered? The failures of gun legislation and failures of local, state, and federal leadership. We burned with righteous fury. Surely, we would have to have laser-focused attention these High Holy Days on gun violence.

One month later? June 24th. The Supreme Court issued a decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health. And by a vote of 6-3, the Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, with multiple justices who had said in hearings that Roe vs. Wade was “settled law” voting to overturn. After years of the erosion of federal protections for reproductive rights, this judicial safety net was gone. Surely, there were those who celebrated this decision. And many were left distraught, frightened, lost, resigned, angry…The holidays would require or full attention on reproductive justice.

February 24th, May 24th, June 24th. These days that felt like paradigm shifters, completely changing the landscape. Remember how broadly and wholly felt each one was? How sure we were that this would finally mark a moment of change or action or would hold our undivided attention until the matter was resolved? And then, somehow, they managed to fade from view. For sure, not for everyone. But eventually they left the headlines and front page and the water cooler.

What I also remember was the recurring feeling of righteous, moral outrage. It poured us into the streets (or to our twitter feeds). It led to a rash of phone calls and emails and action alerts. I felt like I was channeling Isaiah, shouting truth to power. Isaiah, who calls to us on Yom Kippur. Who condemns empty words. Who detests thoughts and prayers that are not accompanied by action, justice, and change. And who rails against a machine that remains silent, a world in motion indifferent to his plea.

Maybe this is something male-conditioned in me, but sometimes that anger made me feel powerful. I was RIGHT and I KNEW it.

That anger…it exhausted me. Our prophets are inspiring in their resolve, and their stories are littered with frustration, exasperation, exhaustion. It is exhausting to constantly feed that fire, to keep the outrage burning. It left me feeling burned out. I never had time to pause and reflect as each new crisis emerged and compounded. Yes, outrage can rattle us, awaken us, compel us, but…it’s not lasting.

And it’s the strategy of those who resist change to wait out and out last our outrage. “No no no,” they say. “Let’s not make any rash decisions. Let’s wait until we have all the facts.” Hoping that our focus will wane and the next news cycle will arrive and nothing will change. They know the power of inertia and know that if they can recreate the status quo, they can win. I share this not to call us out, but, rather, to call us in. To invite us to be curious about our reactions and experiences so that through that awareness we might come to a deeper understanding of ourselves and our work.

There are two more dates and two more feelings I want to talk with you about.

The first came 10 days before the shooting in Uvalde. On May 14th a white man in Buffalo, NY went to the black part of town to find and kill black people. And he did. And that day 10 people were murdered at Tops Supermarket in Buffalo, NY. We were shocked and disgusted. Horrified. Truly outraged.

And once the outrage dissipated, I felt something else. I grew up in Rochester, an hour east of Buffalo. I didn’t spend much time in Buffalo, but that part of New York feels like mine. But what I also knew is that even if I did live in Buffalo, that was not a supermarket I ever would have shopped at. Not a part of town I would ever have known or wandered or explored. That realization left me deeply uncomfortable. This tragedy felt both like it was mine, like it happened in my backyard…and so far away from my lived experience. My privilege guarded me from that hate and that violence. And…I…felt dismay. I was sad. How often do we use anger to hide our sadness?

And then, of course, we come to July 4th. A moment that defies explanation. For years we’ve said it could happen here. After Parkland and Pittsburgh and Pomona and Colleyville…it could happen in a suburb, it could happen in a Jewish community, it could happen to a Jewish community. We said it could happen here and we knew that was true…but then it did. This wasn’t something that could have happened to us. It did happen to us.

And observing our community, we reacted in myriad ways. In grief and mourning. In deep sadness. In fear. In defiance. In outrage. But all seeking to be present, to show up for one another. Not to fix it, because we couldn’t just fix it. But to show up for each other.

There’s a word for this moment in our tradition. It’s not one of prophetic anger or righteous indignation. And that word arrives explicitly not a day for joy on our calendar. A day that doesn’t offer or provide comfort. A day that is just…uncomfortable.

It’s lament. It’s the Hebrew word Eicha. How? Why? An exclamation that recognizes brokenness and destruction. A why that we know has no answer. We read the Book of Eicha, Lamentations, on Tisha B’Av. The Ninth of Av, the day that commemorates the destructions of the first and second temples. It’s a day of fasting. A day where we sit on the floor in sackcloth and ashes and give voice to the ruins around us.

There is tremendous wisdom in this day. On day 305 of 5783 we won’t offer solutions. We won’t fix the problems. We will take time to sit and name them. We make space to dwell for a moment in that discomfort, sadness, and pain. But, critically, Tisha B’Av lasts for just a day. Our calendar does not allow us to dwell too long in the darkness. After our day of lament, we rise, and in the days and weeks that follow, we begin to look for comfort. We imagine the world anew and dream of what we might create in the wake of our sadness. We see our discomfort and our sorrow, we see the nature of our lament and start to build something else.

A lament is also catharsis. There is, in fact healing power to proper lament. Akin to that release after a good, deep, emotional cry. Our calendar tells us that we are allowed to feel the full range of human emotion. Sometimes it takes work, and the lead up to the moment is hard and uncomfortable and maybe even traumatic. But we get to feel. And, at times, the permission to feel is the end in and of itself.

This day of Yom Kippur gives us another opportunity. Tisha B’Av is a day for lament. And today we wonder how we will change because of what we have felt and what we have experienced and how the world will change because of what we can do together.

And don’t we have plenty to lament? Not to cast doom in the world. Not to deny our sacred tendency toward hope and optimism. But to see and name the reality of brokenness, sadness, loss, and fear that we experience as a human family.

Our lament can be a gift if we use it. It is an awful gift. One I wish we didn’t have. And let me be clear, the trauma, is, certainly, not a gift. But the sacred time to sit, reflect, and articulate a lament, to give voice to sorrow, that can be a gift. Sitting in that lament and choosing to rise from it, can help us do…something. Our lament is sacred and invites us, as Rabbi Sherman spoke about on Rosh Hashanah, to show up. Not just once, but for the long road ahead. Maybe we make donations or act in direct service or lobby or organize. Rising from the depths asks us the question…what will our lament do for the world? How will we use the experience of lament to create something new?

Lament is personal, and it is also communal. The book of Eicha begins, ישבה בדד, she sits alone. In lament we often feel alone. But in lament we can be heard and we can hear the stories of others. We learn that we are not alone. And we can find strength in each other’s stories.

Some of us aren’t ready yet. Some are still in the lament. And Tisha B’Av gives us that permission. It gives us time to sit in the brokenness. It doesn’t fix it or deny it. Tisha B’Av doesn’t tell us: don’t worry. Don’t be sad. Don’t be upset. It just allows us to…be.

What is your lament? What needs to cry out from your soul? During our congregational observance of Tisha B’Av each year, we leave quiet time to reflect upon and write a lament. This is part of what I wrote this past year:

“I fear that I am losing faith in people and in goodness. I want my optimism back. The world feels perpetually on fire, we’ve lost trust in each other, and lost the ability to see ourselves as connected. I want to rebuild.”

How do we ensure that we do not resign to outrage that burns hot and fizzles? How do we build something lasting? Share our stories and build power together to overcome the force of inertia and the status quo? Build strategy that doesn’t rage into the void, but gives us an opportunity to take the long, hard road toward change?

And then Yom Kippur asks us a question. Who are you? What will you do in the face of a broken world? How will we look squarely at our discomfort, pain, and grief, and allow it to affect us. Not with a quickfire rage that will soon turn to ashes and embers. We have time today. We have time to reflect on our lament to sit in it and see what it stirs within us. To rise from grief and lament, not toward anger (we've been there and know it can't sustain us) but toward return -- to community, to being heard, to the power of shared sacred story, to the sustained work toward the Good. Today, on the most sacred day of the year, out of anger, sadness, grief, and fear, we rise.