Rabbi Dan Slipakoff's Rosh Hashanah 5787 Sermon, 9/12/26

In my work as your rabbi, I spend many hours with colleagues and lay leaders wrestling with a stubborn question.

How do we inspire people to connect? How do we help each other show up for a cause, for justice, or for how our community is needed when the world demands so much of our energy? Too often, our default motivations in the world are fear, guilt, or forced obligation.

But fear paralyzes us, guilt breeds resentment, and obligation can lead to burnout.

Lately, I've been wondering if the answer lies somewhere else, in gratitude.

I've been asking myself what it might mean to actually become a more grateful person, not as an exercise in politeness or remembering to say thank you, but as a critical spiritual resource, a sustainable and renewable fuel for the caring fire within us.

Plus, I learned it makes us happier and healthier.

That is not unsubstantiated.

I encourage you to read the plethora of research on the positive effects of cultivating gratitude.

Back in April, my wife Allie gifted me a small book, The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer.

She grabbed it in part because she knew that I had a soft spot for the cedar waxwing, the handsome bird which is perched on the cover.

You know that great feeling when someone hands you a book and it touches your soul before you even open it? Talk about feeling completely seen.

Thanks, Allie.

Kimmerer is an author, botanist, and a member of the Potawatomi Nation, a people forcibly relocated to the prairies from their ancestral homelands in the Great Lakes.

She gave me the language for what I was beginning to experience in her opus, Braiding Sweetgrass, She writes about this exact kind of radical attention, weaving together indigenous wisdom, plant science, and her own experience to help heal our relationship with the world.

Her insights have been my gratitude guide for the past two seasons.

Kimmerer reminded me that before I could cultivate that deep action-driven gratitude, I needed to learn how to recognize what was already being given.

I needed to learn or remember how to notice, how to pay attention to the good, abundant gifts right in front of me.

I didn't yet realize how much that simple act of paying attention would change the way I moved through the world.

In my work as your rabbi, I spend many hours with colleagues and lay leaders wrestling with a stubborn question.

How do we inspire people to connect? How do we help each other show up for a cause, for justice, or for how our community is needed when the world demands so much of our energy? Too often, our default motivations in the world are fear, guilt, or forced obligation.

But fear paralyzes us, guilt breeds resentment, and obligation can lead to burnout.

Lately, I've been wondering if the answer lies somewhere else, in gratitude.

I've been asking myself what it might mean to actually become a more grateful person, not as an exercise in politeness or remembering to say thank you, but as a critical spiritual resource, a sustainable and renewable fuel for the caring fire within us.

Plus, I learned it makes us happier and healthier.

That is not unsubstantiated.

I encourage you to read the plethora of research on the positive effects of cultivating gratitude.

Back in April, my wife Allie gifted me a small book, The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer.

She grabbed it in part because she knew that I had a soft spot for the cedar waxwing, the handsome bird which is perched on the cover.

You know that great feeling when someone hands you a book and it touches your soul before you even open it? Talk about feeling completely seen.

Thanks, Allie.

Kimmerer is an author, botanist, and a member of the Potawatomi Nation, a people forcibly relocated to the prairies from their ancestral homelands in the Great Lakes.

She gave me the language for what I was beginning to experience in her opus, Braiding Sweetgrass, She writes about this exact kind of radical attention, weaving together indigenous wisdom, plant science, and her own experience to help heal our relationship with the world.

Her insights have been my gratitude guide for the past two seasons.

Kimmerer reminded me that before I could cultivate that deep action-driven gratitude, I needed to learn how to recognize what was already being given.

I needed to learn or remember how to notice, how to pay attention to the good, abundant gifts right in front of me.

I didn't yet realize how much that simple act of paying attention would change the way I moved through the world.