In Search of Home

It is admittedly overly dramatic to say that as with the story of the Jews cast out by Pharoah and left to wander the desert, I, too, feel as though I have been wandering a spiritual desert in search of a comfortable place, existentially speaking, for my Jewish religious identity. Too often I have found myself standing amidst strangers chanting prayers which have no connection to my life and leaving each such attendance completely unfulfilled and caught between still wanting to find something with some relevance to my life and my ethical being and gradually coming to the conclusion that I would never find such a connection. This year we chose...finally...not to succumb to the numbing traditions of years past by attending yet another meaningless service conducted by a rabbi who does not speak to anything relevant to my life. Instead, we joined tens of thousands of Jews around the country and the world, attending both Rosh Hashanna and Yom Kippur services streamed online from Temple Beth Adam in Loveland, Ohio through ourjewishcommunity.org. For the first time in my life I have found a view of Judaism that finally and for once speaks to my view of religion and history, of an ethical foundation and of a relation to the world around me that in my nearly sixty years I've never once experienced. Thank you for bringing me home.