What's new? Even people who have something new to talk about may hesitate to say that it is new, just in case the one who asked doesn't really care. For example, if you asked Sarah what's new-that is, our ancestor Sarah about whom we read in the Torah reading tonight-she might answer you, "Oh, nothing. I just had a baby at the age of 90."

What's new? If you ask someone who has just suffered a loss, "What's new?," they will have something horrible, sad, or bitter to say. Which is why Jewish tradition discourages us from greeting mourners with small talk. Which is why mourners, who are greeted with small talk anyway, are not required to answer it. Which is why it is better to take a mourner's hand, or hug them if we have that relationship, and just say nothing.

Still, we are impelled to ask each other what's new. We can't help it. It's a reflex, a custom, a ritual we use to break the ice and get started.

But tonight, the beginning of the new year, is the most appropriate time to ask this question. So what's new? Well, the room in which we are praying is the same one as we were in last year. There are the same old prayer books, and the same old rabbi and the same, um, cantor. It looks just the same. We even have the same chair of the High Holy Day committee. Sue Weber has done another great job, and cannot wait to teach someone else how to do it. That would be new.

So I guess if I ask the same old question, "What's new?" I may get the same old answer, "Eh, nothing. What's new with you?"

Well, there are a few things that are new. There are some new faces in the congregation, and it is up to us all to get to meet them and make them feel at home here with us. And there are some old friends who are no longer with us this year, having moved away, leaving new voids. There will be a few innovations in the service, though we are sticking pretty much with what has worked. And I, personally, am new.

No, I have not had a major operation or a lobotomy. And I haven't changed my name again. It's just that I have come through the last year, and have learned a lot of things. Some I want to do again. Some I never want to repeat. There are times when I wonder how much of the consciousness I call "me", which inhabits this body I call "me", is made up of parts of the person I was even twenty years ago, if not longer. How much of me is actually the traditional "me", and how much of me is a new creation, totally?

There is not enough science in the box to know the answer to that. How many cells are still around some fifty years after I was born? How much of my personality is the same, and how much is different? How much has life changed me each year, and how much have I remained the same person.

At times I wonder how much of Judaism has remained the same since Sarah had her baby at the age of 90, and how much is a brand new creation? Certainly those of us who call ourselves "descendants" of Sarah and Abraham today have a widely different genetic make-up than those two people had. And what it is that we do today is radically different from what the patriarchs, prophets, kings, and even early rabbis did. Sometimes I wonder why we even bother to call it Judah-ism. Certainly the Orthodox Rabbinate of Israel would be happier if Jews like us acknowledged that what we do is a different religion, and no longer Judaism.

But I do not think that it is only modern Jews who differ from our ancestral ways. All of Jewish practice is different, no matter who is doing it- liberalists or traditionalists. Somehow the meshugass of a pair of desert shepherds has been adapted to the lifestyles of American Astronauts and Soviet computer scientists. Read the history of Jewish beliefs and customs, and you will see an evolution over three thousand years of such proportion as to make the endstate almost unrecognizable to the founders.

There is, actually, a midrash in the Talmud (Menachot 29b) about how different things can become. Let me read it to you:

There is more to this story, but I will stop at this point, for the next part goes off in another direction. Let's look at it for a minute. Traditionally this story functions as a way for the rabbis of the Talmudic period, probably a couple hundred years after Rabbi Akiva set the order and table of contents of the Talmud, to look at what they were doing and say that, even though it obviously differed from the form it took during Moses' life, it nonetheless was based on the Torah, and therefore remains legitimate.

It was always striking to me how aware those rabbis were of how much Judaism had changed in the 1500 years since Moses. And think-neither the science nor the technology had changed much from Biblical times to their time.

Now imagine how much more Jewish belief and custom have changed in the nearly 1500 years thereafter, to our time. Imagine Rabbi Akiva listening to us here today, or even in Palo Alto's Orthodox Congregation. How familiar would our services and conversations be to him?

Nonetheless, traditionalists still see the story of Moses in Rabbi Akiva's classroom as proof that their form of Judaism is as freshly true to the Torah as it was in Moses's day. That is why the Talmudic story shows Moses being reassured by hearing words attributed to him which are the answer to a question he never heard of and doesn't even understand!

This is the part of the story I never understood. I always thought that Moses would be outraged to hear his name taken in vain, so to speak. He might even turn to G0d and say, "Now I understand how You feel when Your name in taken in vain." But no. Instead, in what even might be a subtle put-down of Akiva, Moses says, "This guy, Akiva, is terrific. The stuff he comes up with! G0d, why didn't you let him write the Torah, since he is obviously such a creative writer! He seems to be making Torah up as he goes anyway!"

But G0d just shushes Moses, and says, "I like it the way I did it. You gotta problem with that?"

Well, I told you I was new this year. I now understand, or think I do, why Moses was pleased to hear himself misquoted by Akiva. As a writer myself, I can appreciate that it would not really matter much if someone misquoted me fifteen hundred years in the future. It would just be a tribute to quoted at all after all that time, no matter what they thought I had said!

Still, let me return to the fact that Judaism has changed. It has changed so much that even the authors of the Talmud had to admit that it wasn't their matriarch's and patriarch's Judaism anymore. If it had been, they would not have needed to write the darn Talmud to explain all the new stuff. So what is it?

What it is is a continuing work of renovation. It, by which I mean whatever we, the people of Israel today, are doing, is the continued experiment in right living that was started over three thousand years ago by people who would not recognize most of it today.

I like to use the word renovation instead of creation because we are not creating out of nothing. Each generation has a Judaism handed to it. A Judaism in flux, to be sure, but an ongoing organization with real people, who have received training from parents, grandparents, teachers and peers, and who have inherited tons of manuals on how to do things. Each generation then sifts those traditions and experiences they receive, and go to work making their own anthologies of the things they like best. Then, for those things they feel are still lacking, they either make or commission others to fill in the gaps.

Let's look not at how to commission new stuff, which this congregation and this rabbi are very good at doing. Instead, let's look at how to live with the old stuff in new ways. That is called renovation.

Now, "renovation" has a particular ring for many of you who live or work in Palo Alto, or who just like to follow bizarre civic doings, are aware of the ongoing acrimony over the Historic Preservation Law. Even though the City Council has finally agreed on a set of guidelines for what is and what is not an historic building, and what should be the process for deciding what and how things can be done to change them, there is still a group of people trying to overturn the City Council. According to a decidedly unscientific survey reviewed in an article in the August 10th Palo Alto Daily News, 57% of owners of those homes that would be designated as "historical" under the ordinance are opposed to the ordinance, 32% support it, and 11% are clueless. I am not going to comment on these guidelines. That be fruitless and just get me in trouble.

Rather, I would like to introduce you to the issue of renovation through the lives of one family of our congregation, a family whom I have known for about six years, since my Hillel days.

Jon and Lois Baer are living in what, arguably, is the oldest house occupied by any member of our congregation. Their house, in Los Altos, was built in 1906, right after the earthquake. It was bought in 1976 by a developer who was going to tear it down and build new houses. There was such an uproar about this that the Los Altos City Council instituted a Historical Commission, which then designated the house as a City Landmark. Los Altos is still working on a Historic Preservation Law. In the meantime the Commission decides what is an acceptable change or not.

When I met the Baer's at the B'rit of their first child, Ellie, they were living in an apartment in San Francisco. Jon has been an avid antique collector since his teens, and Lois has been able to appreciate that side of him, and to learn to get into antiques herself. Their apartment was full of antiques. It was a small affair, so the antiques were very noticeable.

Finally they were able to find this antique house in Los Altos in which they could put all their antiques. But the house needed renovation. There had been a fire once upon a time, and the roof needed fixing. Parts of the flooring needed to be evened. The walls were in disrepair, and displayed a variety of wallpapers and paint jobs. The bathroom fixtures were, well, antique, and did not work very well. The kitchen was a wreck. Etc. etc, etc. Or, should I say, yada yada yada?

And, to top it off, there were a variety of renovations that had been attempted over the previous ninety years, not all of them successful. When I went to their home two years ago, even before they had actually moved in, for the B'rit of their second child, Alexander, they showed me their work in progress. What I saw was the opportunity for a sermon. And now I have written it.

So I will tell you about people living in and working on historic houses, but I will mean Judaism. Maybe on some level I will also be talking about what we can do to renovate the aging bodies we are living in. But I will only stress the Judaism analogy.

When Jon and Lois finally decided what they wanted to do to their house, they were required to go to the Historical Commission to get approval on the structural changes visible from the outside. Most of the internal changes that were not covered by building codes were none of the Commission's concern.

Before I talk about what they did, think about what you would do. First, would you even bother to live in such a house? A house that had an extra set of regulations concerning who gets to decide what you do with your own property?

Some people have those kinds of rules anyway, without the benefit of actually having something historical to preserve. They live in condominium complexes with regulations on the kinds of lawns and mailboxes and paint jobs and guests staying with them that they can and cannot have. And they get to pay extra for the privilege. Every month.

Similarly, some people think that Judaism requires too much of them, and has too many people looking over their shoulder telling them what to do with their lives. Of course they have a valid point. Judaism is a communal enterprise, and there will always be others saying that what they are doing is Judaism, and that they have the right to set the rules for you. Not that they have the power to enforce those rules, except, some times, in Israel.

So some would rather say no thanks, and keep their freedom and their anonymity, and live in a house that has no one looking over their shoulder. These folks may also say the same to being a part of a Jewish community.

However, others treasure that sense of community involvement, even if it does get in your face sometimes. One of the things my wife and I like about Israel is that people do stand up for each other in ways that happen less frequently here. There everyone is watching your kids, but not as predators; as guardians. If someone falls somebody else is there to pick them up. If someone has trouble getting to the exit on the bus, everyone in the back of the bus starts yelling Rega! Rega! Just a Minute! to the driver so he will wait for the person to get off before driving away.

We have friends who are settlers in the West Bank who do not have a fence around their settlement, who leave their house and car doors unlocked, and who do not worry about their small children when they are away from home all day playing. They know they have a community around them watching out for them.

Of course, as the cities grow huge, and newer towers are erected in which people do not know their neighbors, things are changing. But the smaller places in Israel are still that way.

Back to houses. Would you move to a historic house? You already live in one if you proudly wear your Judaism on your sleeve, or participate actively in a Jewish community. And whenever you want to change the outside of your Judaism, you will be involved in a discussion with the Historical Commission.

But we are always free to live on the inside of our houses any way we want. As long as we stay up to code. But that is a health issue, and transcends Jewish concerns for the moment.

So, let's leave discussing the outside of the house and move indoors, shall we? What do we see? Imagine yourself inside an antique home. How would you decorate it?

I once met a family in Providence, Rhode Island, who owned a real colonial home-one built in the late 1600's. This is what they did with it. They kept it immaculately colonial on the outside. They had to. It is on the National Historic Register, and it is the law.

But even inside they kept it immaculately colonial. Everywhere you looked, every item was colonial. The big copper pot in the brick oven. No electricity. But wait, there were electric lights hiding in the chandeliers. And open any cabinet, and you might find a modern appliance. There was a fake wall behind the brick oven that opened onto a modern kitchen, and several fake walls in the house that hid modern bathrooms behind them. The outhouse outside was only for show. It did not even have a hole in the ground!

They had come to their compromise between living in a museum, and not living in the house. They were people of the late 20th century America, and wanted their creature comforts. Nonetheless, they reveled in their coloniality, and this was how they put the best of both worlds together.

The fact is, we cannot live in a museum. The museum guards will throw us out if we try. Judaism is not a museum. It is a house in which we live. And as such, it has to offer us the kitchens and bathrooms and electric lights and computers and televisions and telephones we want and need.

There is a story about this that I have told many times, so if you have heard it, now is the time for a nap. It goes like this.

It seems to be a matter of expectation. If we expect Judaism's antiquity to only be appropriate for a museum, then we will act hushed when in a synagogue. If we consider it to be our own house, we will feel freer about making it livable.

The Baers did not decide to renovate their house the way the Rhode Islanders did. Instead, they restored what they could to the way the house was originally, added other things from other periods where they couldn't, and made a modern kitchen, but used colors and styles of the early 1900's, adding period knick-knacks and gewgaws as an accent.

I have always wanted to use the word "gewgaw" in a sermon. Look it up.

So what they have is, in effect, not an Orthodox, antique house, but a Reform antique house. It does not hide the twentieth century, it acknowledges it, and has lots of antiques in an idiosyncratic melange born of opportunity and personal taste, but also born of a love for the best of the past.

An Orthodox antique purist might call it a disorganized jumble, a travesty. But that's OK. Let the purist live in her own house, and decorate and renovate it the way she wants. As long as the outside fits the historical rules and the inside fits the health and safety code, why quibble?

What is important to us as active Jews is that we can appreciate the genius in those beliefs and customs that were handed down to us. What is important to us as Jews-Orthodox as well as Reform-is also that we can see the ones that need repair and renovation. What distinguishes the Orthodox from the Reform is not our connection to our antiques, for we all appreciate them. It is that some of us might declare something in need of renovation before another one might. And even when we both agree on the need to renovate, some of us might mix and match more openly as we renovate. But none of us-as the story from the Talmud about Moses in Akiva's classroom demonstrates-none of us lives in an unchanging museum. We all live in a house. And houses need to be repaired from time to time. When they do need repair, sometimes, as the Baers found out, the exact piece we need to repair them is no longer available, especially in older houses. Sometimes when those ancient appliances and fixtures and materials are available they may not be the best option, for new materials may be stronger, lighter, and safer. And new gewgaws may make our appliances deliver even more convenience and comfort. After all, we still have to live in the home, and even the Rhode Islanders hid a computer somewhere.

Jon and Lois Baer have not finished their renovations yet. Why? Well, some of it has to do with the availability of resources at any one time. Other things have to do with the fact that they have evolving tastes, surprising opportunities and challenges, and because they live in the house as well as work on it. So they work on what they can and leave some things for later. It's a never-ending thing, as any home-owner can tell you.

So, let me return to the question with which I began. If I ask again, "What's new?"

You might answer, "Oh, nothing. I'm just in the middle of a renovation."

Shanah tovah!