Erev Rosh Hashanah Sermon 2025
Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman
Erev Rosh Hashanah Sermon
Congregation Shaarei Shamayim
September 22, 2025
Wrestling With Ourselves: A Story
I’d like to tell a story tonight. It’s the strangest story I’ve ever told. And it’s much too long to tell word for word, so I’m going to condense it - which will not do it justice - so when you have time, I encourage you to read it in full. (“Wednesday Night Fiction: The Rabbi and the Shark” by Dan Grossman, May 3, 2017)
This story is written by Dan Grossman. For dramatic effect, I’m not going to share the title until the end.
Now, the story:
The rabbi was terrified. It was just minutes before Kol Nidrei, and he stood in his office chanting the prayers, worrying that his sermon was too high-minded. Not only was he the youngest rabbi in the history of Beth Shalom, an old congregation trying to breathe new life into its dwindling membership, but he was the first openly gay rabbi anywhere in Union County.
The truth was that he’d never led a full congregation through Yom Kippur. If he messed up the sermon, if he forgot the prayers, would the old guard succeed in ousting him? And what then? Back to his childhood home, a progressive rabbi living in his Orthodox parents’ basement?
Through the half-closed blinds he saw the families streaming through the side entrance. He looked at his pale reflection in the window and once again felt like a fugitive in disguise as a rabbi. If I can’t do this, he told himself, I might as well die.
A knock came on his door. “Please come in,” he said.
The man who entered was neither the cantor nor the assistant rabbi. There stood a man with a purple-knit kippah over his feathery blond hair.
“Anders?” Rabbi Lumen said in shock. “What are you doing here?”
Anders smiled. In a Danish accent he said, “I did not want to tell you, but for the past year I have been studying Judaism. When I found out you’d become a rabbi, I flew in from Copenhagen.”
The rabbi said, “I’m shocked, Anders. I haven’t seen you since…”
“That afternoon in the mountains of Rogaland. But Rabbi, there’s something you must…”
“Oh God, that’s right.” The rabbi winced. “Anders, I’ve never had a chance to apologize–”
Anders cut him off. “Rabbi, please listen. Something horrible is happening…In the sanctuary, something I cannot speak of but must show you.”
“Who sent you? Why are you here?” Rabbi Lumen demanded.
The rabbi looked outside. It had gotten dark. He panicked. Had Kol Nidrei already started?
“Rabbi, you are needed.”
Rabbi Lumen grabbed his tallit and followed Anders out of his office and down the corridor, through the silver revolving doors onto the bema.
The synagogue’s High Holy Day custom, based on an esoteric book of kabbalah, was to fill the sanctuary with water, at a depth of eighteen inches, fed from hoses that Beth Shalom borrowed at large expense from the fire department.
The custom was based on a text that read, “like candles fizzling their sins in the purity of liquid.” Usually the members would dip their toes in the water. But tonight everyone had their feet up on the chairs, holding their knees.
“What’s everyone so afraid of?” the rabbi asked.
Anders pointed, and after a few seconds the rabbi saw it: a dark gray fin and tail down the center aisle. The people in the front row yelped as it spun around and swam to the back of the sanctuary.
A shock spread through the rabbi’s body. It was horrible to find a shark in shul, and he wondered if it was an act of antisemitism by neo-Nazis – or maybe a prank by those loudmouths in Level Gimmel Hebrew school. Or was it a sabotage against him, the new rabbi, to see how he’d react?
Unwavering, the rabbi went over to the podium, cleared his throat and said with as much khutspe as he could muster: “It is truly an honor to stand before you all on Kol Nidre, the beginning of the holiest day in the Jewish year. Before I chant the Kol Nidre prayer the customary three times, I’d like to offer a few words about its history and interpretation…”
“Rabbi, won’t you help us!” a man’s voice rang out from the back of the sanctuary.
The rabbi paused for a moment and went on with what he felt was a very strong performance: “Because if you think about it, there is something strange about coming to synagogue every year and promising to do better. We anticipate failure.”
“For God’s sake, can’t you see we’re in danger!” cried an old woman near the front. “Do something!”
Rabbi Lumen stopped talking. He sat down, pulled off his shoes and socks and rolled his pants legs up to his knees. He waded down the aisle of red-cushioned chairs. Two hundred eyes followed him.
When the water level had reached his shins, he heard a splash at the top of the center aisle. A silver-tipped tail darted into view. The shark was two meters, with enough power to rip out huge chunks of his flesh. Was he supposed to take down this monster with his bare hands? He decided to run back and wait for animal patrol, but before turning he caught himself like someone second-guessing at the edge of a diving board. He joggled his knees, held back, and then belly-flopped forward.
The splash was big. His shoes, his pants, his suit jacket, and his tallit were soaked, and water leaked into his mouth, salty.
Just then a voice rang out on the microphone. The rabbi spun around.
“I have come to tell you my story,” Anders cried out. “Our story. I met the rabbi when he moved to Copenhagen after college. He was sad and lonely in a way I couldn’t resist. For so long I thought I was too cold and closed-off for love. He changed me. He moved into my apartment and we vowed to stay together. My heart was his, his mine.”
In mute agony Rabbi Lumen tried to squeeze the water out of his suit and his tallit. It didn’t work, so he took off his suit, shirt, tie, and dress pants. Only his pink boxers, kippah, and tallit covered his goosebumped body. He tried to tune out the crowd’s whispers. Why didn’t they do something? Why did they act like the shark was meant for him and him alone?
Anders’ voice broke out. “One weekend we took a trip to the mountains in Rogaland, Norway. We hiked up to a mountain river and went down on the rocks. I jumped in and swam around, but the currents picked up and I cried out for help. The man I loved stood on the bank screaming for others to help, though no one else was there. Save me, I called. My body was thrown against rocks, my skull cracked, limbs broken, thrust into the water and breathing it into my lungs. What was it like to die? Like a compressed minute of impossible, shattering goodbye. And meanwhile the man I loved hid his face, spoke to the police, and then flew back to America before my memorial, and a month later joined rabbinical school, trying to hide his troubles under that kippah. I have come here today to deliver a message: Rabbi, you cannot hide.”
Rabbi Lumen waded back to the center aisle.
Now Anders was quoting liturgy: “On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed. Who will live and who will die? Who by fire and who by water? Who by sword and who by beast? Who by suicide and who by shark?’”
The rabbi saw the silver fin near the top of the aisle. The torpedo-shaped shark raced toward him with its brutal snout riding above the surface. It was out for blood, his blood. That’s why it didn’t attack the others: It was his shark. He understood this now.
Instead of running away, he ran toward it, and a voice in his soul knew that it was life or death, rabbi or shark. The congregation gasped. The rabbi dove forward and clasped the shark’s neck, but the shark slipped free and circled the rabbi. The shark bit into his leg. The rabbi cried out in agony. But instead of pulling away he kept his leg planted and began to pummel the shark’s back with his fists. He swung at it as hard as possible. “Die,” he shouted. “DIE! DIE! DIE!”
After the twelfth beating, the shark floated lifeless. Its eyes were like two buttons glued on in a kid’s craft project, its teeth limply studded to the rabbi’s leg.
No one applauded. The kids covered their eyes and the elderly whispered words he couldn’t hear. The rabbi panted, wiped saltwater from his forehead and out of his eyes, and waded half-naked and trembling back to the bema.
Wet and cold, he ascended the bema, the shark dragging from his leg. Tears filled his eyes for the first time in years. Anders’ ghost stepped back from the podium.
Rabbi Lumen stared out at his congregants, whose feet were now dipped in water and whose faces were lifted up for repentance.
“I am now ready to chant Kol Nidre,” he announced.
*****
The name of this story is “The Rabbi and the Shark.” I thought it might be too weird to tell this evening, but I kept returning back to it, thinking about that shark.
Poor Rabbi Lumen. Who ever imagined that teshuvah – repentance – could be so brutal. Who ever thought the rabbi would have to wrestle with his sins so publicly, so painfully.
For us, here tonight, we too must do our own wrestling and deep introspection. Perhaps we are struggling with a difficult situation in our past. Or we are reflecting on a complicated relationship. Or we are questioning who we are and where we are going. We consider our words spoken and our words unspoken. Our actions taken and our actions untaken.
Each of us has a shark of our own, circling us, digging its teeth into our legs. That shark is the part of ourselves that we’ve kept submerged or hidden, that we do not like, that we wish was not there. It’s the truth about what we know is real. Often we ignore or avoid or defend this part of ourselves. But these High Holy Days call us to look at it and address it.
We gather here tonight because we want to do teshuvah. We want to look at ourselves for who we really are, and turn towards our best selves so we can choose a different path in the year to come. We want to address how we have failed others and make amends.
On this Rosh Hashanah, I invite you to wrestle with your own shark. To reflect deeply and do teshuvah with integrity. To take responsibility for your actions. To make commitments to yourself and to others. To be brave. To be strong.
L’shanah tovah - may it be a sweet new year.