Sermons

Sukkot 5772
Interfaith Sukkot Celebration
Rabbi Michael Adam Latz

We celebrate the harvest of justice, and we celebrate the families that we worked alongside who were able to stay in their homes...

This past weekend, we dedicated the memorial to Dr. King in DC. The artist proclaims the memorial is unfinished because our work is unfinished.

We have work to do my friends. Holy work, divine work, prophetic Work. Work that calls to the better angels inside all of us: to get up, shake off the dust, join with our brothers and sisters to do this work of harvesting justice and building communities where all God’s children rise up in neighborhoods of genuine opportunities and homes of affectionate possibility; not mere dwelling places like the Sukkah, but homes—real homes—that are tended, cared for, and entrusted by financial lenders who understand that in these dwelling places, in these homes, we are raising God’s children.

Today, our sacred work in the struggle for holiness, justice, and human dignity continues. There are some of you, I know, who feel broken and downtrodden, and as though your spiritual home has been knocked over and you wonder, “God, I need some strength to keep going.”

As the prophet Nehemiah proclaimed, “Nakum u’vaninu”: We will rise up and we will rebuild.

When the task masters whipped us under the harsh Egyptian sun and we bled while building pyramids to their Pharaoh, we cried in hopeful defiance, “Nakum u’vaninu,” we will rise up and we will rebuild!”

When they oppressed our ancestors in the Middle Ages, out of the ruins of the crusades, we proclaimed, “Nakum u’vaninu,” we will rise up and we will rebuild!”

When they enslaved us on plantations and had us pick cotton till our fingers bled and they separated our families and they brutalized our children, we sang with a righteous wind at our backs, “Nakum u’vaninu,” we will rise up and we will rebuild!”

And when our families came to the shores of this nation in boats, some as slaves some as refugees, all seeking the promise of America, all seeking to build a new world with nothing but a kopeck in their hands, these huddled masses cried out, “Nakum u’vaninu,” we will rise up and we will rebuild!”

Today, in the aftermath of mighty winds that blew down our houses and ripped through our neighborhoods as fast as the predatory lenders could proffer faulty mortgages and unconscionable loans, we are here, once again, at a crossroads of history. And I know that with the strength and humility of this diverse people of faith, standing tall like God’s majestic rainbow, we will once again rise up and proclaim to the peddlers of cynicism and profiteers of despair, “Nakum u’vaninu” We will rise up and we will rebuild!”