Over the past month, I have had the pleasure of teaching four different learning sessions within our congregation as we began to prepare for the High Holydays, and one of the questions that I asked is what is exciting and different about starting something new? And the answers I received were just wonderful. But one of the answers that stood out, what is most exciting and different about starting something new is that one experiences that which has never been experienced before. When we encounter moments in life, which are a first for us, we feel different. And why is it that we feel different? Because the experiences that we have encountered and lived through, have changed who we are and have added even more to our lives.

But the question remains, "Are these moments really enjoyable?" "Is it so easy to change?" And for that matter, "Why is it so difficult for us to reject other people when they choose to change certain things about them, even though we love them, care about them and want what is best for them?"

One of the reasons making a change in our life is so difficult, is because it is we that have to make the change. We are the ones that have to initiate a different route if we are not happy with the way we are living our lives, we are the ones that have to initiate a different relationship if current relationships in our lives are not working and ultimately, cannot be worked out. We are the ones that have to tell an employer that it is time to move on because either we have grown out of our current position, or because our current place of employment is no longer satisfying, no longer gratifying and no longer rewarding.

One of the heavy burdens of being a human being is the need to make choices- because we have to and because God has now withdrawn from decision making in the world and left that difficult way of life up to us. And the choices that we have to make are often as desperately difficult as they are decisive. Edwin Markham, the twentieth century American Poet, wrote of these agonizing dilemmas:

"I will leave man to make the fateful guess. Will leave him torn between yes and no. Leave him in the tragic loneliness to choose, will all in life to win or to lose."

Rabbi Sidney Greenberg once said: "The most fateful choices in life are made in tragic loneliness. In the valley of decision, we stand alone, accompanied only by our haunting fears or our stubborn hopes, by dread despair or gritty faith. Yet, though we appear to stand solitary, in truth we are accompanied by the tall and brave spirits who have stood where we stand and who, when torn between "NO" and "YES" have said YES to life and its infinite possibilities; by those who have had the wisdom to focus not on what they had lost but on what they had left; by those who understood that fate is what life gives to us and that destiny is what we do with what is given; and by those who, therefore, grasped the liberating truth that while we have no control over our fate, we do have an astonishing amount of control over our destiny and over the choices we choose to make.

There is a great short little story about a blind man who was once asked by a sympathetic woman: "Doesn't being blind rather color your life?" He answered by saying: "Yes, but thank God, I can choose the color."

But not only is change that, which is crucial to our maturation in life but change also provides opportunity for us to experience that which we have never experienced before.

But there is also another aspect to change and that is the pressures we feel about how will others react to the changes we decide to make with our lives, what will others say to the world and to those whom we know, did you hear what so and so has decided to do? Right before change, we always feel the social pressure from others looming over our souls, our minds and our bodies. Will those around me be companions, lovers, friends, and supporters or will they be backstabbers, enemies and ill willed people trying to me affect my decision causing an inability to change. These stresses and challenges are always forcing us to think over and over about whether or not change is really worth being a value and a priority that should be a central part of our lives.

And it is how we react to other and the changes that they have made in their lives that affect change even greater.

I will never forget a very powerful conversation I had with a mentor and teacher of mine that caused me to realize how crucial the need is for all of us to hear and listen to others during their time of change and for them to hear and listen to us when we decide to change something within our own life.

It was my year of study in Jerusalem during my third year of Rabbinical School. Students from The University of Judaism in Los Angeles, The Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York, Then Seminario Rabinico in Buenos Aires, Argentina and students from the Rabbinic Seminary in Budapest, Hungary spent a year together studying Torah, living a life in Israel, while at the same time learning how to become Rabbis in just a few years time.

Each of us during our Practical Rabbinics of the year had several check in sessions, with the dean of the Rabbinical School, Rabbi Harvey Meirovich. It was a chance to see how we were doing personally living in Israel, if we had families, how they were doing, and based on our year of study so far, what was it about Israel that we would bring back to our Rabbinate after such an amazing and holy year.

During my second session with Rabbi Meirovich, he asked me, so Micah, what area of the Rabbinate do you desire to head into? And of course, with my youthful naiveté, I responded, "The Congregational Rabbinate. The Pulpit of course. Because I believe there is no greater Rabbinic position other than within a congregation. His response at first was: "Are you sure about that?" To which I proudly proclaimed and reaffirmed: "Yes, I am sure about that." He then responded, after you are ordained, 40 years from now, my Godly prayer today is that you will have the same response as you have illustrated on this beautiful afternoon during your third year of Rabbinical School career.

And then after Rabbi Meirovich acknowledged that it was the Congregational Rabbinate I would be heading into, he said to me, Micah, do you know the difference between between being tolerant and being accepting of someone? I thought I knew, but with again that youthful naiveté, I responded with the answer no.

Rabbi Meirovich explained to me that there is a huge difference between the two. He said that Tolerance has the following definition, "I suffer your rite to be wrong", "I Suffer your rite to be wrong." And do you know what my definition of Acceptance is? After barely being able to swallow after hearing his definition of tolerance I said, No. He said Acceptance means, "I celebrate your rite to be different." "I celebrate your rite to be different."

As a congregational Rabbi, you have the obligation to be accepting of others, and you must to teach your congregants that they to have the obligation of being accepting and not tolerant because that is what God expects from each of us. We each have the task, the role of celebrating each other's rite to be different, and if we do not, we are not dictating God's will in the world, and our world will continue to plot its graph along a pathway of evil and chaos.

So today, I share with you that transforming dialogue I once had with Rabbi Harvey Meirovich. Yes, we have the obligation to figure out if our lives need to change and to make those changes without worrying what others will say to us or about us behind our backs. But at the same time, we have the obligation to accept changes from others who are parts of our lives. If we have the ability to look at their differences in a loving, accepting and supportive manner, we will most likely look at life from a whole new perspective, a perspective that is new and one that we have yet to experience.

There is a great short story about a very aggressive atheist who was in the mood to advertise his point of view on billboards all across his hometown. So he spent thousands of dollars on these billboards, which proudly read: "God is nowhere." A seven-year-old girl riding in the family car passed one of the billboards one day. She was thrilled and excited. She had a smile on her face that seemed like it would last for years. Her parents looked back at her and asked why was she smiling so radiantly. She told her parents to stop the car, and she said look up there, look at that sign, it says: "God is Now Here."

The new changes that we make and the new perspectives and views that we take on allow for us to grow and allow for our souls and our bodies to have a refreshing feeling that we need in order to make sense of our lives and to make sense of the world as well.

Abba Hillel Silver, one of our greatest Modern Rabbinic Leaders once said: "Not only are human beings free and able to renew themselves and to make a fresh start, but in this enterprise toward newness and regeneration of change lies the meaning and significance of one's life."

On this Rosh Hashanah, as we look for new ways to find meaning in our own lives, as we look to make even more holy our relationships that we have with God and with others, we must move forward in allowing ourselves to change the way we feel is right for us, and we must be accepting, loving and supporting of the changes that others around us choose to make with their own lives.

May we do with strength, with courage, not being afraid of what others will think of us, because it is our responsibility and obligation to bring about the birth of change into the world and nobody else's.

Ken Nihiyeh Ratzon, May It be our will to take on this holy and daunting challenge in the years ahead, knowing that our courageous acts will truly lead to a better world. And together we say, Amen.