(Delivered on September 20, 2026)

The liturgy for tonight’s service begins with not one but two disclaimers. In the first, we grant ourselves permission to pray in the company of עֲבַרְיָנִים—those who have transgressed. Shortly thereafter, our second disclaimer כָּל נִדְרֵי—literally, all my vows—states that we pre-annul all the failed promises we make to ourselves and to God, from this year to the next.

It’s an interesting place to start. We look at the task before us—of reckoning with our words and our deeds from the past year, of exposing ourselves to God’s judgment—and we know that it’s both necessary and untenable. So we hedge, in two different directions. We acknowledge that the people around us have transgressed and that we ourselves are likely to do so in the future. In my shallower moments, I see these disclaimers as almost absurdly cynical. Of course it’s everyone else who is an עֲבַרְיָן. Of course we have been perfect in every way, all year long. And if we happen to mess up in the coming year, it’s not real because we’re giving ourselves a loophole before we even get started.

But this year I am thinking about the vulnerability that these disclaimers are tap-dancing around. I am thinking about how it might feel to enter the sanctuary, each of us laden down with our own humanity, each of us thinking we’re the only one who feels guilty or doubtful or alienated. I’m thinking about how hard it is to admit to our own failings when the world around us appears to be made up of perfect, highly curated selves. I am thinking about the loneliness that our opening disclaimers mask. It is the Day of Atonement. It is the day of alone-ment.

In the past few years, the medical establishment has been sounding the alarm about what they call an Epidemic of Loneliness. Study after study has looked at social dynamics and trends in the US and abroad, trying to trace how we got here. A 2023 report by then-Surgeon General Vivek Murthy articulated some of the long-term health consequences stemming from loneliness, such as heart disease, stroke, and dementia. The report placed loneliness on a par with public health threats like smoking and drug addiction.

More than a quarter century ago, the Harvard sociology professor Robert Putnam articulated this issue in his landmark book, Bowling Alone. The book described how Americans had gradually shifted from being a nation of joiners to being a nation of loners. No longer affiliating with clubs, bowling leagues, faith communities, volunteer organizations and the like; we had become, in Putnam’s view, an ever more atomized population. Social capital, the engine that drives communities forward through shared values and initiatives, that unites people from different backgrounds in common cause, that holds civilizations together through relationship, was waning.  

And this was before smartphones had taken hold, before electoral politics had become so profoundly polarized that we couldn’t seem even to bear the company of anyone we disagreed with, before the culture wars had taken bitter root in our every decision, before we spent two years sequestered in our own homes during the covid pandemic, suspicious of even breathing too close to another person. To say that modern America—and to an extent, the modern world—has made a religion of loneliness, probably understates the case.

This loneliness manifests in the ways we relate to each other and in the ways we don’t. It manifests in the decline of movie theatres and in the constant presence of the small screens that take our attention at every waking moment. It manifests in the American confusion between resilience and voluntary isolation. It manifests in the ever more shrill and hateful media environment that reinforces the message that anyone who doesn’t think the way we do, or vote the way we do, or worship the way we do, or express their identity the way we do is not just wrong but stupid and unworthy of our trust. 

Putnam’s point goes deeper: the decline of social capital is not an end in itself but rather a symptom of fraying social fabric. It’s not only that a weak PTA means less fundraising for the drama club. It’s also that if people are not meeting over shared interests or mutual labor, the relationships that enable us to see one another’s humanity more fully are not allowed the chance to flourish. 

Over the summer, at a family visit to MassMOCA, the modern art museum in North Adams, I learned that even though Putnam had described this phenomenon 25 years ago, it has roots that go deeper still. An installation by the artist Alison Pebworth explored the 19th-century neurological disorder known as Americanitis. Pebworth’s gallery statement described a wide range of symptoms from abnormal fatigue to premature baldness, as well as the anxiety and ennui that plagued many Americans in the wake of industrialization. She went on to note that these feelings appear today as burnout, climate anxiety, polarization, and loneliness.

The language of loneliness, apparently, is one we are all too fluent in. Despite our blossoming congregation here at TAA, overall we are in a Dark Age for communal thriving. 

And yet, perhaps the Renaissance is right here in this room, and in our tradition. Our sources, from the Torah to Pirkei Avot to the Hasidic masters, urge us to guard against loneliness, to find solidarity with one another, to work through difference rather than ignoring or pathologizing it, to accompany one another in times of joy and sorrow and change.

From the narrative of Creation, the very beginning of the human story, we learn that we are each other’s most precious resource. It comes as early as the second chapter of Breishit (the Book of Genesis). God looks at Adam, the first—and, so far, the only—human, and says: 

לֹא־טוֹב הֱיוֹת הָאָדָם לְבַדּוֹ אֶעֱשֶׂה־לּוֹ עֵזֶר כְּנֶגְדּוֹ׃
It is not good for the person to be alone;
I will make a counterpart for him.

The word טוֹב in the Torah means much more than just good. A modern Hebrew speaker might use it to describe a movie or a sandwich, but in scripture, טוֹב carries a heavier valence. It is a signifier of integrity, of rightness—a term of wholeness. And so, when the Torah says something is NOT good, it’s not just a Yelp review of a mediocre restaurant but a moral and theological teaching. And other than this statement in the Creation story that it’s not good for a person to be alone, the only other time that the phrase לֹא־טוֹב appears in the whole Torah is in the Exodus, when Moses’s father-in-law Yitro urges him to share the load of leadership with trusted advisors, saying in chapter 18, verses 17 and 18:

לֹא־טוֹב הַדָּבָר אֲשֶׁר אַתָּה עֹשֶׂה׃
נָבֹל תִּבֹּל גַּם־אַתָּה גַּם־הָעָם הַזֶּה אֲשֶׁר עִמָּךְ 
כִּי־כָבֵד מִמְּךָ הַדָּבָר לֹא־תוּכַל עֲשֹׂהוּ לְבַדֶּךָ׃
This thing you are doing is not good.
Both you and the people around you will be exhausted,
for this thing is too heavy, you cannot do it alone.

In short: it’s not good for a person to be alone, and it’s not good for a person to do alone. 

Indeed, our tradition pushes us in the direction of relationship, even (or perhaps especially) when there is disagreement or friction. The Talmud, that sprawling intergenerational conversation that forms the backbone of Rabbinic Judaism, both articulates and illustrates the theme. The very fact that each page of Talmud preserves unpopular opinions alongside those that won the day is a powerful teaching. Yet this pull toward connection across difference is not just in the form, but also in the substance of the Talmud. So many of its stories teach about complicated relationships that enrich the soul when preserved and can become catastrophic when not.

A phrase that arises on Taanit 23a and is threaded throughout the literature says it all: אוֹ חַבְרוּתָא אוֹ מִיתוּתָא. Friendship or death. This is the point of the roundabout story of Honi the Circlemaker. (No extra charge for bad puns.) The main character, a sort of Jewish ancestor of Rip Van Winkle, falls asleep for 70 years and wakes up to find that his family and his community are unrecognizable, and worse, that he is unrecognizable to them. He goes to his Beit Midrash and says I am Honi. Nobody believes him. The shock of having nobody that knows him upsets Honi so much that he prays for mercy, and dies. The story concludes:

הַיְינוּ דְּאָמְרִי אִינָשֵׁי: אוֹ חַבְרוּתָא אוֹ מִיתוּתָא
This is why people say: friendship or death.

I said before that the antidote for loneliness is in this room, and I truly believe it is. Not just in the textual examples I’ve just cited and the many similar ones I didn’t include. It’s in the people gathered here, and in the very prayers we say throughout the High Holiday season.

When we come around to the Vidui, when we confess our wrongs, we do it communally. We stand together and beat our chests and recite an almost impossible list of sins. Impossible in the sense that no one person could have done all of these things. It’s the moment when we really dig into our commitment to each other. The Vidui is all about the collective, and the way that one person’s mistakes can affect everyone around them. It’s about the way that taking responsibility for ourselves helps us take responsibility for others. It’s about the way in which we can influence each other and support each other in good times and bad. 

עַל חֵטְא שֶׁחָטָאנוּ לְפָנֶיךָ: For the sin we have committed against you
אָשַֽׁמְנוּ. בָּגַֽדְנוּ. גָּזַֽלְנוּ: We are to blame, we have rebelled, we have stolen
הַיּוֹם תְּאַמְּצֵנוּ: Today, strengthen us

Reckoning with the essence of this holiday is something we do together, on purpose.

Notice, by contrast, that when we make those two disclaimers I mentioned before, we make them in the first person singular. I consent to pray with transgressors. I annul my vows, promises, and oaths. Alone, we can only skim the surface.

But when it comes to the actual moral and spiritual work we’re doing here, we do it in the first person plural. We do it as a “we.”

 אָבִינוּ מַלְכֵּנוּ: Our father, our king. 
חָטָאנוּ לְפָנֶיךָ: We have sinned before you
חַדֵּשׁ עָלֵינוּ שָׁנָה טוֹבָה: Renew us for a good year

שָׁנָה טוֹבָה —a year, remember, of goodness, of integrity, of rightness. A year of wholeness. 

כֵּן יְהִי רָצוֹן. May this be God’s will.

May each and every one of us—may we all together, as a holy and beloved community—be inscribed and sealed into the Book of Life for sweetness, for joy, and for the blessing of companionship.

Gmar chatimah tovah!