Rosh Hashanah 5787 Day 2 Sermon

Click HERE to watch Rabbi Treu’s full sermon on Rosh Hashanah Day 2.

I … did something… really bad this summer.

I didn’t mean to. It was something that had been brewing, I guess, for many years, and someone finally said the thing that brought it to a head, and I made a judgment call and I thought I was doing the right thing but it turned out that it really wasn’t. It turned out that I really hurt someone. Not just “someone” – I hurt a friend that I cared about and wasn’t trying to hurt, not consciously anyway. I lost a friend, which feels terribly sad, but also good, in some weird way, because I hurt this person and so I guess I should suffer too, the way they are suffering, and maybe that’s my punishment, losing my friend.

Except that I don’t believe in that, really. I don’t believe in losing friends nor do I believe in punishments in any karmic sense. But I do believe in making mistakes, and having things turn out not the way you intended.