Through All the Noise, the Greatest Power is in Listening

The High Holidays are again upon us. We will gather with our families, friends, and communities to reflect on the past year and look towards what the next one will bring. My favorite part of Rosh HaShanah is the blowing of the shofar. It is the one time when everyone is quiet and still, as we listen to the caller chant, as the shofar blower makes a beautiful cry with the ram’s horn. There is no tune, there are no words to the melody, there isn’t even any melody- just the openness of the notes and breaks.  

Whenever I hear the shofar, I remember what my Grandpa Stanley once told me - “While the note is the same, every time it is blown, there is a different meaning, and overtime you will hear a symphony.” I said he was silly and didn’t understand how he could hear a symphony. They were playing one note and blowing from a horn! But then my first Rosh HaShanah in college, I heard a new note.  

Coming from a tight knit community on Long Island, I always heard people talk about important issues in the same way, acknowledging their opinions and experiences as the only ones that exist. It wasn’t until I went to school in Austin, Texas that I heard a different perspective. I couldn’t wrap my head around it at first because I thought everyone went through life as I had with similar problems and outlooks.  

But, for the first time I heard something different, and I listened. A girl from California and how her family took her door knocking for environmental petitions on water conservation since she was eight years old. A boy from the Rio Grande Valley who drove along the border when he delivered pizzas in high school. A girl from Houston whose parents escaped Iran in the 70’s and advocated for a revamping of the amnesty process while speaking fluent Farsi. Each of them came with a different outlook on the world and expanded the way I understood my core values.  

The RAC is currently running a movement-wide Listening Campaign - giving us the chance to hear the other notes. Small-group conversations are happening around the country with trained facilitators guiding how we better listen and hear each other. We have the opportunity to be there for one another and to understand how others are experiencing the world through their stories. 

We are hoping this campaign will allow us to build a shared narrative about our values and priorities as a movement. We want to hear how people are experiencing the changes and brokenness of our world, to learn what issues impact them and what actions they want to take together as a Jewish community. Instead of launching into a heated debate or argument, we invite you this New Year to just listen and see how and why your community members came to be with you in this moment.  

We will take your stories, your experiences, your concerns, and your aspirations for our world, and use them to inform us on how we can best serve democracy and show up for our community and our country in the 2026 election through Every Voice, Every Vote. We want to hear all of the notes and write our own symphony of action for the Reform movement.  

The world we live in today encourages us to stay in our bubbles, and sometimes the perspectives of others make us uncomfortable. We shouldn’t shut others out because their journey to now is different - we should listen to each other and try to understand how and why they came. The uniqueness of our experiences is what makes the world an amazing place and make the same one-note experience turn into a symphony.  

Having conversations like these are hard, but not having them makes things even harder. We need to sit and talk with each other about what concerns us about the state of the world, what pushes us to action, what gives us hope.  

My grandpa passed five years ago, and I miss him every day, especially during Rosh HaShanah. But I know he would be happy that I can appreciate and hear the symphony of the Shofar that he heard for so many years before me and the symphony of perspectives that make our community whole.