Many of you have been attending the High Holy Day services I have conducted since the days I was at Stanford Hillel. These are my seventh High Holy Days now at Etz Chayim, and that is amazing. Since 1982, with only one year's exception, Karen Kennan and I have been singing the High Holy Days together. This year there are two changes. Karen, whom I got to know when she was the Hillel Program Director, is now the co-president of this congregation. So, instead of her working for me, I now work for her!

    The second change, and the one you may have noticed, is that I am not singing this year at all. I have been replaced by Jonathan Salzedo's able leadership. In fact, I have not been able to sing at or lead a service since last February. Those who have attended our Shabbat services since February have seen a progression of over 30 of our members leading the singing and the reading, and at times even the sermons. If you were reading the emails last year you saw that this or that lecture and class had to be canceled because of my loss of voice. Here is my story, and here is what it means for Etz Chayim.

    On Thursday, January 31, I was visited by a an old friend from out of town. That is why I remember that date. I had a dry cough all day. The next day I had what I thought was either a bad cold or the flu. But I had the worst cough I had ever had. By Saturday I was so sick—my was cough so severe and my throat was so raw that I could barely swallow—that I had to go see a doctor, even though it was Shabbat. Then began a long regimen of inhalers, antibiotics, cough suppressants, and other gross measures I won't go into.

    It turns out I had whooping cough, which lasted for two months. Yes, I was vaccinated as a child, and yes, the vaccination sometimes wears off. How did I get it? From someone else who had it, of course. I have these answers well practiced, now. I also learned along the way that there was a mini-epidemic of whooping cough last year, as numerous studies by the Centers For Disease Control, as well as Dutch and Israeli researchers turned up.

    Ironically, the week I got sick I was scheduled to speak in more places than in any other week in my quarter century of being a rabbi. I had to cancel most of them. But I could not cancel all of them, and I tried, every time I got a little better, to go back to doing all the things I do. It was just that I could barely speak, and I could not sing at all.

    Though the disease ended by April, its after-effects continue to plague me. My larynx swelled up so much that after just a little speaking my throat feels tight and sore, and sometimes I get so totally choked up that speaking is hard.

    I found out this year how much I depend on my voice to do my job, just like my friend and former student, the storyteller, Joel ben-Izzy, whom I thank for reading over this sermon, and who lost his voice to cancer for a year. I also found out how important singing is to me. Most of what I personally get from worship comes from singing, and singing harmonies. I found how many times I used to sing, from all the times I try to, and then catch myself. Not singing is a total pain in the neck, no pun intended.

    I also found out that sometimes you have to give something a total rest in order to get it back. I kept trying to function somewhat normally, but every time I tried, I ended up getting worse. My doctor compares it to an athlete who tries to do his activities with a torn tendon. The more I use it, the slower it will heal. The parallels to Shabbat are obvious, but it took me seven months to figure out that I have to really cut back my speaking until my swollen larynx returns to normal. The doctors say that it could take until January, and that is when my daughter, Ilana's, bat mitzvah is. I will sing at her bat mitzvah, come hell or high water.

    So much for the history. What does this mean for me, and for Etz Chayim? First, in terms of what I do day to day, and because of my disability, the Etz Chayim board has, thankfully and lovingly, put me on reduced duty in order to mute me more fully and get me back full strength as soon as possible. During this time I will have to ask your indulgence to understand that I may answer you by email, or not appear at all for a while. For all those bar/t mitzvah families, yes, I will still tutor the students in Torah. But I will not be teaching any other classes until January.

    And I will not be leading any singing, or any services until then, either. Until then, if you come to Shabbat services, you may hear me whistling the tunes or see me lip-synching along with the people singing them. I lip-synch so it does not look like I am not paying attention.

    But here, I believe, something good will come out of all this, for Etz and for me. Here's how my curse may turn into a blessing for our congregation, how the misery of 5762 might help us in doing tikkun olam, making the world a bit better, in 5763.

    How? Let me start with an old joke that goes like this: "Why does the Talmudic tractate Gittin, which deals with how to write a divorce document come just before tractate Kiddushin, which deals with how to contract a marriage?" The smart-aleck answer is—

G0d always gives us the cure before the disease.

Actually, that is as true and cruelly untrue as these two old saws: that whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and that when one door closes another opens. I am still waiting for these last two to come true.

    Still it has been true that G0d gave me cures for my muteness before I got the disease. A year ago the board of Etz Chayim had come out in favor of holding Friday night services every week. In planning ahead for that, we realized that we would need lay leaders to lead many of those services. So I and Eileen Soffer put together a Service Leaders' Institute, to train people in how to lead services, from Shabbat evening services, to Shiva minyanim, the services we hold in the homes of those in mourning. We had scheduled this class to take place in the spring, so as quickly as I became incapacitated, leaders arose—one out of every ten households in the congregation, in fact.

    Additionally, we finished our congregational Shabbat Evening Music CD just before I got sick, so that I had the training tool for songleaders already. Between the CD and the Service Leaders' Institute, G0d gave me the cure before the disease, and I have been grateful every day for that.

    In two decades at Hillel, and in six years at Etz Chayim, I have tried to lead by creating an example of how things could be, and then by stepping back to create the vacuum into which potential leaders could step forward to be trained. My illness has become the ultimate vacuum. Our congregants had to step forward. Now we have a capable core of people who are leading services during my illness, to their great amazement and satisfaction. You may have read some of their stories in the current issue of our congregational bulletin, the Connections.

    Here are two comments of amazement and satisfaction that you did not read in Connections, from Rob Shelton and Ben Miller who co-led a service during my vacation this summer. When I called them to thank them, each of them independently told me to take another vacation so that they could lead another service. I just want to say that if you ask either Rob or Ben when they joined Etz Chayim if they ever thought they would be able to lead services, they would have roundly denied the possibility. Yet there they are, able and willing, and appreciated.

    I have always thought the most important thing a rabbi could do would be to inspire and teach people to step forward as "enabled Jews." One example of this in the past few years has been our adult bar/t mitzvah program, many of whose graduates will be reading Torah during these High Holy Days, and at other Shabbat services. Another place we have developed "enabled Jews" is in the yearly Seder Leading Seminar I teach. Both of these programs train our members to take on the leadership role that is open to all of us. And to a great extent, both have succeeded. But last year's curse of my voice has necessitated a greater stepping forward than I could ever have recruited. Now, instead of just doing a good deed, people have the additional motivation of doing a mitzvah, a command emanating from the universe, to bring them to take on this challenge.

    So how is this an example of tikkun olam? How is this good not only for the congregation, but also for the world? It is good because it is imbuing more and more of our people with the self confidence to take Judaism into their own hands. And, I believe, the more Jews who take their Judaism seriously, the better off we are, and the better off the world is. Judaism stands for ethical monotheism, and the stronger we are as Jews, the more effectively we can stand for the justice and mercy that has been the hallmark of being a Jew ever since Abraham stood up for the few righteous people of Sodom.

    Judaism is not a religion dependent upon a sacred priesthood anymore. It depends upon Jews. As the Book of Exodus says, we are "a Kingdom of Priests, and a holy people. (19:6)" It is our role as Jews to serve, each one of us, as a holy person. That is what the blessing we say before we do a mitzvah means— when we say asher kid'shanu b'mitzvotav, we are praising G0d Wh0 made us holy, as holy as a Kohein, a priest, by means of the mitzvot, the doing of G0d's work in the world, that we carry out. That is, today's Jewish priesthood is a priesthood of all of us, based on what we are able to do. In this sense, bar/t mitzvah is supposed to mean someone who is not only old enough to be an adult, but educated and trained enough to be capable of functioning as a Jewish adult.

    And functioning as a Jewish adult means, in part, leading each other in Jewish ceremony, ritual, and blessing. That is why, for over a quarter of a century, I have been handing out reading on the High Holy Days and Shabbat services. It is why I turn to our membership to lead Kiddush and motzi and candlelighting whenever I can. I do not want to set the bad example that only rabbis lead Jews in ceremony and blessing. Jews lead each other, when we can. In fact, in the more traditional congregations, rabbis seldom lead services, except as would any other member of the congregation, as part of a rotation. They teach people how, and they set examples. This is what I have tried to do for 27 years. And it has been paying me dividends this year, as the many members of the congregation whom I taught and encouraged to lead stepped forward and led.

    So my illness has reinforced the very core of what I have so longed for as a rabbi. To paraphrase Exodus, I do not seek a paid professional leadership of priests and rabbis, but a congregation of rabbis, and an enabled people. Because I have become mute, the vacuum of leadership that I used to create when I had the time has become something I have to do all the time. The net effect of a year of my muteness will be an Etz Chayim populated by confident, capable, Jewish leaders—a congregation of rabbis, an enabled people.

    I know that Etz Chayim's founding members decided that they wanted professional service leading and sermonizing, so they pooled their funds together to hire a rabbi. One of their concerns was quality control. I understand that. When you have lay leaders, everyone leads things a little differently, and those who are learning take time to develop the skills, the intuition, and the confidence that are needed. Additionally, everyone has a different voice. Well, I have a confession to make. Even when I am in my best voice I'm no Britney Spears—though Britney and I have something in common: I hear she also lip-syncs some performances!

    More important to me is that our congregation sings along. What you will see at Etz is participation. When I do, G0d willing, get better, you will see that I seldom lead singing by leading the melody. Most of the time I sing the harmonies and counterpoints, and rely on the congregation to sing the melody. Harmony is my spirituality, and the liberating thing about Etz is that I don't have to perform for you. I can also close my eyes and pray when I lead, because I can rely on so many of you to lead along with me from your seats.

    I encourage Service Leaders that even when they are not leading from the bimah, they should lead from their seats, helping the leaders lead, keeping the room on key and on tempo. They have now experienced what that means. All the lay leaders have been helped along by the other leaders, and other congregants, leading from their seats. Maybe you notice people near you singing loudly, helping to strengthen the melody, provide a harmony, or keep the beat. You don't have to be a certified Etz Chayim service leader to help lead from your seat.

    When attending our congregation for the first time, people comment how participatory we are. And if they come more often, they see how easily they begin to learn the tunes and the movements because of all the people leading from their seats. In fact, I tell bar/t mitzvah students all the time that they should not be afraid to lead the service because as soon as they say "Ba," the congregation jumps in with "Ruch." Anyone who has led a service knows that to be true.

    If you are new to our congregation, it may take a little time to get used to our melodies to the point where you feel comfortable responding so promptly, but don't worry. It will come. Especially if you do, and we have a CD of our music for you to listen to, even on the way to services, to help you learn.

    It may also take a while to get used to when we stand and sit. We don't announce when to stand and sit much, because it is written on the page, and we can all read. Many liberal congregants get to the point where they cannot think of standing or sitting unless they are told to do so. We all know that in order to learn to make decisions on our own, we have to have the need to learn. So we provide that need with a vacuum of instructions.

    Etz Chayim is a congregation for grown-ups, and we are a congregation who teaches our children and each other how to be grown-ups.

    So, are you inspired to learn to lead, or are you intimidated because you are positive you could never learn enough? You should know that a third of those who have learned to lead services do not read Hebrew letters yet, but since our prayerbooks are transliterated, they can lead. The rest they learned by coming, by watching, by listening to our CD, and by preparing the first time, with me and with other lay leaders. There is step-by-step process of learning: first we learn in order to be able to participate, and only then do we learn in order to lead. Once you have learned the service to lead it, you will see it so differently.

    In the end, I have to look upon this experience in a positive way, as a way of enabling me to achieve that which I always wanted to achieve, to create a congregation of rabbis, an enabled people. I even found a new way to express this goal. One of our congregants is a Feldenkrais maven. Feldenkrais is a movement therapy designed to improve flexibility, posture and mental serenity. It was developed over 50 years ago by Dr Moshe Feldenkrais (1904–1984) who created this practice as a way of teaching himself to walk again after suffering crippling knee injuries. One of the mottoes of the Feldenkrais practitioners is

To make the impossible, possible;

the possible, easy,

and the easy, graceful.

    That is my goal as a rabbi, too. I do not teach bodily action. I teach Jewish action. I teach people to do and enjoy Jewish activities they never thought possible or easy, much less graceful. But that is the whole point:

To make the impossible, possible;

the possible, easy,

and the easy, graceful.

So I have lost my voice. G0d willing it will return. This morning I met with my ENT doctor who peered at my larynx and gave me the good news since the last time he saw me at the end of June, the red rawness of my larynx is all gone, the nodules have disappeared, and the swelling is down by 75%. I start vocal rehabilitation and training next week. But until my larynx heals there will be less of me in classes, meetings, and services

    I want to assure you, though, that I will still be there for every emergency, every need for counseling and advice and a shoulder and a hug. In person.

With a whisper.