Rosh Hashanah Sermon: Creation in the Tension of Hope and Anxiety

It was Wednesday morning, January 8th, 10:30 am. Jen and I decided to take the kids to Sky Zone trampoline park, a massive indoor trampoline spot, to run around after being cooped up with katatonic parents trying to navigate literally any next steps after the insanity of the first 24 hours. They ran around a completely empty, vast space, all other kids absent because they were enjoying just another day at school. We sat there weeping together as the young man who works there walked up and asked us if our home had been in the palisades (I guess the sobbing was a give away). We said it was, and without missing a beat he said … “Can I give you a pizza?” 

This past year was formative. It has changed our community forever. Either your home was affected, your community centers were affected, or the person sitting next to you was affected. The atmosphere of Southern California itself, and I am not even referring to the particle debris in the air, the very aura of this place was affected. This year changed us.

I know you may be sitting here thinking, Yes Rabbi yes I know, there’s a stereotype that Jews are anxious. We make jokes about it, about worrying if there’s enough food on the table even when there’s clearly too much, about calling our families three times in one afternoon “just to check in,” about lying awake at night making contingency plans for things that may never happen. And it’s funny because it’s true. Anxiety has almost become a kind of Jewish punchline. But maybe, maybe, the punchline hides a deeper truth. Anxiety isn’t just a stereotype we laugh about, but a spiritual reflex that actually belongs at the heart of what it means to be Jewish. 

For many of us, we experienced the polarizing, hyper-dramatized versions of what I would call the two soul reflexes of survival: hope and anxiety. Not just as abstract ideas,  they are spiritual reflexes, shaping how we endured, how we rebuilt, how we carried one another. They are the simultaneous realities of being human after tragedy. 

The Torah begins not with calm, but with chaos. Tohu va’vohu. Darkness hovering over the deep. It is a scene of anxiety: nothing is stable, nothing is defined, nothing is certain. Tohu va’vohu is more than ancient poetry. It is a description of what anxiety feels like. A swirling inside the chest. The inability to see what comes next. The future is terrifyingly open, with no guarantee of shape or direction. The rabbis tell us this is where creation begins: not in clarity, but in confusion. Not in serenity, but in trembling. I must admit, I have read this story countless times, taught it year after year, and never could really visualize Tohu va’vohu. Now I see Tohu va’vohu. I see it in the image pierced in my mind of my home, when I went the first time just days after, and found the kiddush cup from my and Jen's wedding, the heirloom that my in-laws had also used at their wedding, broken in two pieces among nothing but ash. I see it in the shell of buildings partially lining sunset blvd, a reminder of what WE lost. 

And then, into that chaos, we hear a single word: “Yehi or”, “Let there be light.”. - We were STILL a community, we knew then we WOULD rebuild… and look at what we have done just this year. 

Notice what happens. The darkness is not erased, a mythical God does not make the void disappear. NOTHING can silence the anxiety. Instead, God introduces something new into the midst of it: light. A counterbalance. A spark. A possibility. Rosh Hashanah is our story of recreation, something this community knows too well. We will continue to be the pillar of the palisades and beyond. We will find the light that comes from our chaos, and we will SHINE on to this world. That is hope. Not certainty. Not perfection. Just the first fragile glimpse that something is possible. 

Creation, in this telling, is not the banishment of chaos but its juxtaposition with light. Day and night, darkness and brightness, anxiety and hope woven together. The Torah insists that the world is not made in spite of this disorder, but alongside them, through them.

And here is the key: these reflexes are not sequential. You do not finish anxiety and then arrive at hope. They are simultaneous realities. The darkness does not disappear when light appears. They coexist, and creation is born in their tension. Creation is the product of these two charges of polarity, the charge between hope and anxiety… and this is not just how the world began. It is how Jewish life has always been lived. That juxtaposition is what being Jewish is all about. 

We often are led to believe that to achieve balance, or overcome difficulties. we need to remove anxiety from our lives. We assume that healing means the disappearance of anxiety, that moving on means finally being free of fear. But that would rob us of a crucial truth. Our tradition shares with us in Proverbs - Happy is the anxious one… Anxiety is not proof of brokenness. It is proof of caring. It is the part of us that refuses to go numb, the part that remembers what matters most. To imagine that wholeness only comes when anxiety disappears is to imagine a life without concern, without vigilance, without love. Anxiety is not only key, it's celebrated. 

Our tradition insists on something different. Wholeness does not come from silencing anxiety. It comes from holding anxiety and hope together, as sacred simultaneous reflexes.

I was gifted this notion of Hope and Anxiety from a dear professor Rabbi Dr Michael Marmur. He led me to that wonderful proverb text, but I must admit there is a second sentence: “Happy is the one who is anxious always, but the one who hardens their heart falls into misfortune.” We often read that as a warning. But what if it is also an invitation?

Because what is misfortune in our tradition? It is not just hardship. It is the absence of a Godly world. To harden the heart is to cut yourself off from covenant, from compassion, from the divine pulse of life itself. And what is fortune in our tradition? It is not money or comfort. It is the experience of God’s nearness, of a life of blessing, of communal covenant. Fortune is jubilee, the release of debts, the return to freedom, the restoration of hope.

So this proverb could be reframed: “Happy is the one who is anxious, for the hardened heart does not know a Godly world.” And the Hebrew here makes it sharper. The word for “anxious” is pachad, the same word we often translate as “fear.” We usually imagine pachad as something to overcome, something to cast out. But here the text insists: pachad is part of blessing. 

Why? Because fear itself has a sacred role to play. Pachad is not only paralyzing. Pachad sharpens. Pachad guards. Pachad protects. 

Rabbi Nachman of Breslov deepened this truth when he taught: Kol ha’olam kulo gesher tzar me’od, v’ha’ikar lo l’hitpached klal - the whole world is a very narrow bridge, and the main thing is not to make yourself afraid.  Now, many of us know this line as a song, but most of us sing it wrong. We usually sing lo l’fached - “don’t be afraid.” But in its origin, it is reflexive: lo l’hitpached  “don’t make yourself afraid.”

He spoke of how we walk the journey of life across a very narrow bridge, not unaware of the dangers surrounding us on all sides. Anxiety is a reflex, and it is real. Your anxiety is the guardrail on that narrow bridge. It keeps you aware, careful, and alive. But, and this is Rabbi Nachman’s key, do not let pachad paralyze you. Do not turn it inward and make yourself more afraid than you already are. Let anxiety be your guide, not your shackle. Use it to navigate and progress.

Think about the moments that define a life: asking for a raise, proposing to a partner, leaving behind a steady job to start something new. Each one is anxiety-inducing. Your heart races, your voice shakes, you doubt yourself. And yet those are the very moments that open the door to the future.

The body knows this truth too. Have you ever felt your muscles trembling during or after a workout? That trembling is not weakness,  it is the signal of growth. Muscle fibers tear and rebuild stronger. Without that stress, there is no strength. Without it, only atrophy. Anxiety is something to harness, not shun. It is the very condition of growth.

So it is with our lives. A life without trembling may feel safe, but it does not grow. Growth requires walking into the anxious places, letting them shape us, and trusting that strength will emerge on the other side. 

But what about when the anxiety is too big for one person to hold? That’s where community comes in. Anxiety in an individual sharpens caution and resolve. But anxiety shared across a community is different; it becomes distributed, carried together, and made manageable. Community doesn’t erase the trembling, but it steadies it.

All these months later, many of us can live whole days filled with tasks and appointments, and still find ourselves ambushed by a memory. A random commercial on TV, a smell, a passing image,  suddenly trauma is back in our minds. We see one thing and remember that box in the garage we never got around to opening, and grief comes rushing in again. Or you feel a twinge of jealousy when you see someone cherishing keepsakes and heirlooms, because you no longer have yours. This loss isn't specific to the fires this past year, so many of us have this void: it's the loss of a loved one, or the absence of a voice at the table, or the weight of an illness. Grief takes many forms, but it always lingers. It always finds its way back into the room, its an immediate flood of sadness, that translates to anxiety about when we will feel healed. 

I am surprised by that anxiety when I stand with a couple under the chuppah and I talk to them about the importance of keepsakes from their wedding day:  the photographs, the kiddush cup, the ketubah, the glass they so jubilently shattered- as I quietly feel my heart shatter all over again.  I bless them with that future, even as I know what it feels like to lose the things you thought you would always hold. That tension never goes away. It just lingers with us. 

That is hope and anxiety. They are not passing emotions. They are enduring forces that stay with us in the background, even when we think we are fine, even when life looks normal again. They rise up in unexpected moments. And holding them, allowing them both to exist as simultaneous realities… this is the framework of resilience. 

Last week, I had the privilege to be on capital hill, lobbying on behalf of this community and others that have experienced disaster, making sure that meaningful support was something that we can and should rely on. When brainstorming how to tell our story, how to share our truth, I was reminded by a dear friend of the nuanced difference between the classic Mythological Hero’s Journey, and the lesser understood Journey of Trauma and survival. 

The hero begins reluctant: “It wasn’t supposed to be me.”
That reluctance is its own kind of anxiety, fear of failing, fear of stepping into a role too large to bear.

But then the turning point comes.
The hero says, “But here I am.”
And anxiety gives way to hope.
Hope that they can rise to the challenge. Hope that courage is stronger than fear.
The Hero’s arc bends toward hope, and the story ends with triumph.

But the Trauma Journey is different.
It doesn’t begin with choice. It begins with rupture.
With loss you never asked for, disruption you never wanted.

Here the anxiety is heavier. Not reluctance, but survival. Not “Can I do this?” but “How will I endure this?” Anxiety doesn’t vanish with one brave step. It stays. It lingers.

And yet, alongside it, hope refuses to be silenced.
Hope that tomorrow will come. Hope that community will hold you. 

Hope that even in the ruins, there can be rebuilding.

The Trauma Journey is not hope instead of anxiety, but hope with anxiety. Both at once. Both tugging at the heart in every step forward.

The hero’s arc is: anxiety yields, hope wins.
The survivor’s arc is: anxiety remains, and hope still rises.

And in many ways, that second story, the story of carrying both anxiety and hope as simultaneous realities, that is the more Jewish story.  Even here, anxiety is a tether. A way to stay connected to this world. It does not vanish, but it can be carried, and shared.

In the past few weeks of Torah, we have been reading portion after portion with something striking: blessings and curses are listed, and the curses always outnumber the blessings… like a LOT. Pages of threats and punishments, just a handful of promises. Why the imbalance? Because life itself rarely gives us blessings and hardships in equal measure.

The exhausting steps of surviving our traumas,  all of that weighs heavy. And then, out of nowhere, a moment of ease, a bright and carefree laugh with your kids, a meal with friends who get it, a chance to sit among the community, a glimpse of normalcy.

The math never works. The hardships always seem more numerous. But our tradition insists that blessings, though fewer, are not weaker. Even the smallest spark of hope can balance the scale, giving us footing again. That is our dual reflex: holding simultaneous realities and still choosing to create.

This past year has shown us how fragile life can feel. Just how that narrow bridge may suddenly make us realize just how high up we are. But it has also shown us what our tradition has known since the first verses of Torah: that creation is born out of chaos and light, trembling and courage, anxiety and hope. Creation is not despite our anxieties, but it is because of them.

Hope and anxiety. Sacred reflexes. The hero’s journey and the trauma journey. They are not opposites. They are Jewish. To be Jewish is to live in this very juxtaposition: to tremble and to hope, to carry anxiety and to nurture courage, to feel chaos and to speak light. That juxtaposition is not just part of our story. It is our story. It is what being Jewish is all about. 

Shana Tova my dear sweet Kehillah.