It was the first time in over seven years at OJC that I found myself embroiled in a serious religious controversy within our congregation.

Please, try and understand how I feel. I don’t like controversy and disagreement. I’m not a confrontational by nature. And I would just as soon find common ground than confront people with things that make them uneasy.

But when the ritual committee asked me for a religious decision on the question of whether or not a woman should be required to wear a tallit when she’s called to the Torah, I had to make a decision. This wasn’t a matter of opinion but a decision based on the Jewish sources. We studied the issue at length, explored the sources, talked about it, but in the end as the Mara D’atra of the congregation, as the arbiter of Halacha for our congregation, I had to make a decision. The buck stopped with me, plain and simple.

It didn’t seem so controversial at the time. After all, for over two decades our congregation has taken pride in being an “egalitarian” synagogue. We count women in the minyan and allow them to lead services. Girls participate fully when they become B’not Mitzvah just like our boys do. Women have served as president of our congregation and this year we’re proud to have Rabbi Melissa Crespy conducting our parallel service. There is nothing that we don’t allow women to do at OJC. So why should wearing a tallit be different?

From a religious perspective, Judaism is not just about rights but responsibilities. For a Conservative Jew, Mitzvah means commandment. It’s not just an option or a choice but a responsibility – a challenge. There are responsibilities that go along with being called to the Torah and counted in the minyan. We walk a thin line between preserving tradition and interpreting it for our age. We talk about tradition and change. As Conservative Jews we believe that the rabbis of each generation must interpret how the mitzvot are applied to our lives and how observed for our time.

We started counting women in the Minyan in order to combine tradition and change. For our congregation, the role of women in Judaism is an evolving and changing area of Jewish life. We believed that there was room within our tradition to reconsider the role of women in Jewish life. We’ve come a long way but we still have much to learn and much to accomplish. The question of women and tallit is but one more question on the continuum of Jewish communal and spiritual growth for our congregation and our congregants. So we made a decision after much discussion and thought - much to the chagrin of some congregants.

But that’s not what I want to talk about today. It seems to me that the bigger issue in this recent discussion is not whether women should or should not wear a tallit when they are called to the Torah, or whether this is an obligation or a choice, but how we deal with change in our lives in the first place.

The truth is change makes us uncomfortable. Maybe the most honest person in our congregation is the one who said after I explained all the reasons for the change, “Rabbi, my opposition to seeing women wear a tallit is not about logic. It’s just how I feel.”

“It’s just how I feel.” We can all identify with this statement. Changes, even small changes, make us queasy. They upset the comfortable balance and the predictable patterns in our lives. They force us into uncharted territory that makes us self-conscious. Change makes us defensive; it suggests that what we have been doing up until now may have been wrong, or at least it could be different.

Change is even more difficult when it comes to something as ingrained within our consciousness as religion! Religion is so heavily based on tradition that even small changes may feel like heresy. When the cantor sings a new melody to Adon Olam, I can count on certain people coming up to me and complaining. We associate religious practices with childhood memories and nostalgia. It is no wonder that we are uneasy when these practices change. We feel like we’re loosing part of our past. But our past may not be the same thing as the classical tradition and our nostalgic memories may not address the needs that we have as a community today.

But change happens whether we like it or not. A woman proudly hung a needle point over the mantelpiece in her living room that read, “Prayer changes things.” A few days later the plaque was gone. The woman asked her husband if he had seen it. He replied, “I took it down; I didn’t like it.” “But why?” she asked, “Don’t you believe that prayer changes things?” “Yes, I honestly do,” said the husband, “But it just so happens that I don’t like change so I threw it away!”

It never occurred to me that I was opposing one of the most powerful forces in the universe – inertia. Most people are just fine where they are, thank you. They don’t want to be told that there is another way to do things. The possibility of change creates chaos in our lives. It shakes us out of our complacency and makes us uncomfortable until we find a new pattern of living, a new way of doing things. And this bothers most of us.

“Why fix it if it’s not broken,” we ask. And even if it is broken, who cares? An old pair of shoes may be worn out but they’re so more comfortable. Why bother buying new shoes that need to be broken in and will probably give you blisters when you begin wear them?

So here we are at the beginning of 5766 just as we were last year. We’re sitting in synagogue (most likely in the same seat we sat in last year), participating in the same service we recite every year and reading the same prayers we read year in and year out. Nothing seems more habitual than religion. Traditions are religious habits that we repeat daily, weekly, monthly or yearly. We seem to celebrate the status quo as a community.

And yet that is not what Judaism is all about or what the high holidays teach us. This is a season for change. It is a time when we are challenged to question our old ways and consider new ways of doing things. Just as we say “Hayom harat olam,” “Today the world is (not was) is being created,” so we have the potential to recreate ourselves, and to transform ourselves through self reflection, through the choices we make, and repentance. We are more than just a product of the past – we have the potential to recreate the future as well.

Sometimes we have no choice in these matters. The people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast have no choice but to rebuild their lives. They have no past to go back to. Cataclysmic events, both personal and societal, have a way of shaking us out of our lethargy and forcing us to consider new life patterns. Of course the people in New Orleans could build the same old past that they had before, but it would be fool-hearty to do so – they would be leaving themselves open to the same type of tragedy which they just experienced. Faced with a crisis we often become self-reflective out of necessity. “What should I do now,” we wonder, “What do I want to do with my life?”

Jewish history is filled with tragic opportunities that inspired creative change. Virtually every tragedy in Jewish history led to our growth and evolution as a community. The exile of the Jewish people in 586 BCE inspired the creation of the synagogue. The destruction of the second temple in 70 CE inspired the development of Rabbinic Judaism and Jewish law. The expulsion of the Jewish people from Spain in 1492 led to a renaissance of Jewish mysticism in the land of Israel. And the Dreyfus Affair at the end of the nineteenth century led to the birth of political Zionism. Each crisis was an opportunity because it forced our people to explore ways to change and adapt to the world around them. The world is no longer the same and we are not the same either.

But no one wants crisis or tragedy to motivate change in their lives. We need to find other ways to be open to change in our lives. Change can be a product of our own personal will and not just an after-thought or a product of crisis. We don’t have to be reactive – we can also be proactive. Rosh Hashanah ushers in the Ten Days of Repentance, and teshuvah, repentance, I would suggest, is another word for change.

Teshuvah offers us an agenda, a process, through which we can entertain the possibility of personal change and transformation. This process begins with honest self-reflection. We have to be willing to look at ourselves and acknowledge our weaknesses, faults and frailties if we are going to change. We have to be convinced that change is necessary. It continues with a frank and open acknowledgement of these problems and then it culminates with the development a new plan for our selves as well as the rejection of those behaviors that are self-destructive or destructive to others.

But not all change is about self destructive behaviors. Sometimes it’s about pushing the envelope – asking ourselves how we can deepen our commitment to Judaism. Jewish living is a ladder – there is always another step up along the way. There are new things that we can do. There are practices that have grown stale and others which we have ignored. There are opportunities to try out practices that we never tried before. This is a time of year for us to ask ourselves – what Jewish practices can I add to my life?

One of the great things at our daily minyan at OJC is how many people are putting on Tefillin who never did so before or who hadn’t done so since their Bar Mitzvah. They began coming to minyan – some of them to say Kaddish, and with a little encouragement, Cantor Barr and I were able to get them to try out a practice that they were unfamiliar with and frankly which made them a little uncomfortable. With time and experience however they found just how spiritually fulfilling putting on Tefillin can be. If they hadn’t tried it, if they hadn’t made a commitment to keep on doing it for a while, they never would have found out for themselves.

That’s why we have the Ten Days of Repentance. Actually there are seven days of repentance. The first two days are Rosh Hashanah and the final day is Yom Kippur. But the seven days in between represent a grand opportunity – an entire week when we can grow and develop new patterns of behavior and new habits. Change is built around the most basic structure of time – one week, seven days, when we can experiment with new behaviors for the coming year. Only then can we observe Yom Kippur. Once we have been willing to consider change and have made an effort to initiate it, only then can we seek atonement and reconciliation with God.

Change begins with prayer. The Hebrew word for prayer is lehitpallel, literally means to inspect or judge oneself. In prayer we honestly confront ourselves, our strengths and our weaknesses, and we reconsider our lives. Prayer challenges us to take nothing for granted in our lives. If “Prayer changes things” it does because prayer changes us and we change how we see ourselves and our lives. That is why the ten days of change begin right here in synagogue – by reminding us that unless we listen to our own prayers, God will not hear them either. Prayer allows us to open the door and reassess our lives. It leads to action which leads to atonement – being at one with God.

So was I right or wrong to suggest that a woman should wear a tallit when she comes up on the bimah? I wouldn’t dare to be so arrogant as to suggest that there is only one possible right answer to this question. There is room for disagreement and dissent. But as a community we have to create a standard of practice and that we have done. We are now trying to give people time to get use to this change, to learn more about it and to think about it.

What I’d like you to think about this morning is whether there is room for change in your life, or whether you are so attached to the status quo that you can’t even consider small changes. Of course, change for its own sake is not necessarily a good thing either. And there is no reason why everyone has to agree with each change that we make as a community. But are we so bound to the status quo, to the way things are that we cannot even consider new possibilities in our lives? And if that is so, what is the point of going to a synagogue at all? It is our job as a congregation to push the envelope, to challenge you to deepen your commitment to Jewish life. Every time a rabbi gives a sermon, he or she suggests that there’s another way, a different alternative, a new opportunity. Growth, improvement, and maturity are built on change.

Just as we continue to grow and change throughout our lives, a community must also be open to change and growth. When we stop changing, we die. OJC has undergone some significant changes over the last year. We have a new religious school program and we continue to explore other ways to serve our congregation and to create a congregation of learners and daveners. I know it’s not easy. For some people change may be inconvenient or uncomfortable. We have tried to read the pulse of the community. Even then, change is sometimes messy. And in the end there is a learning curve involved in all change – there are many adjustments along the way. With your help and involvement we will continue to learn. We are now beginning a new initiative in which we will come to all of you to find out what works, what doesn’t and what we can do to be a more responsive and dynamic community.

President John F. Kennedy once said, “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” At OJC we are looking for the future!

So I won’t tell you to wear a tallit or not (unless you happen to be coming up for an aliyah,) but I am going to ask you to consider the possibility of change in your life. There is so much that Judaism has to offer. And when we’re closed to these possibilities, we may miss some of the most meaningful experiences that life has to offer.

The word Shanah not only means year; it also means change. When we wish one another a “Shanah Tova” we’re really saying “May this be a year of good change in your life.”

This is my prayer for all of you. I pray that the Shanah before us will be a year filled with exciting opportunities for change and growth for each of us. May there be changes that expand our horizons, open us up to new worlds, and deepen our relationship to one another, to our tradition and to God.

Amen and Shanah Tova!