A long time ago when America was being settled, a group of people headed west in a wagon train from the east coast. The wagon train leader was very inexperienced and soon the people realized they were hopelessly lost. After wandering for weeks and weeks, their food supplies were gone and winter was fast approaching.

As the group came over a hill they saw the first person they had seen for days; an old Jewish man sitting beneath a tree. The leader of the wagon train approached the man. "Can you help us? We're heading west but we're lost and all our food is gone. We're starving."

The old man replied, "Vell you know, I can see the future... Wait... I'm getting a vision now." He held one hand to his brow and closed his eyes in concentration. "It's coming. Oh yes, I see, I see."

"I know what you must do. Go up this hill and down the other side. Go through the forest and across the stream. Then go up the next hill and down to the valley below. There you will find a bacon tree."

"A bacon tree?" asked the wagon tree leader.

"A bacon tree. Trust me... for nuttin I vud lie. I can see the future."

The wagon train leader shrugged and headed off. The group followed the old man's directions exactly. They went up the hill, down the other side, through the forest, across the stream, up the next hill and down to the valley below. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Not a thing and especially not a bacon tree.

All of a sudden, out of nowhere, came Indians from all sides. It was a massacre. All but one man was killed and even he was seriously wounded. He crawled up the hill, crawled across the stream, crawled through the forest, crawled up the hill and crawled down into the valley. There, under the tree was that same old Jewish man, still there where they had left him.

The injured man crawled up to him and started shouting... "What were you thinking? You sent us all to our deaths! We followed your instructions to the letter! We went up the hill, down the other side, through the forest, across the stream, up the next hill and down the valley below. NO BACON TREE! Just Indians, thousands of them! And the rest of my group! They're all DEAD!"

The man held up his hand and said, "Oy wait for it... I'm getting another vision.... Oy. Ooooh. Oh, I get it... Oh my, I made a big mistake... 'It vuz not a bacon tree... 'It vuz a hambush!"

Yes, seeing the future is not all it’s cracked up to be. Think of this past year, the calamities, the heartaches, at times, almost too much to bear; if we had seen it all coming, could we have gone on? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

Yet, we approach the new year saying, L’Shanah Tovah, may it be a good year, hoping against hope that whatever hambushes lie ahead will be few and far between.

Perhaps that’s why that while the Holy Days are only days apart, they are a study in contrasts. Rosh HaShanah is upbeat, joyous; filled with the sweetness of apples and honey, round challah and honey cake.

Yom Kippur is different. On this day, we eat nothing. The tone is somber, subdued. It's an appropriate mood given the task we assign ourselves: cheshbon hanefesh, an accounting of the soul; the examination of the past and the struggle for honest self-assessment.

Our tradition tells us the difference in tone between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur corresponds the different historical events with which they are associated.

Rosh HaShanah is called "Yom Harat Olam." the birthday of the world, because by the rabbis' reckoning, the first day of Tishri was the day God created human beings. That same day, the Midrash tells us, Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge, were punished, and forgiven.

In contrast, Yom Kippur, the tenth of Tishri was, by the rabbis' calculation, the day Moses sought forgiveness for the sin of the Golden Calf.

But forgiveness for which Israelites? According to the Torah, those who made the idol had already paid for the transgression with their lives. Moses must have been seeking forgiveness for the survivors. What was their crime? They stood by silently while the calf was worshipped. Their transgression was not what they did, but what they failed to do. They failed to speak out, to protest; in the face of wrongdoing, they were silent.

Thus, by their historical associations, Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur point to two different aspects of repentance. Rosh HaShanah focuses us on our wrongdoings; on Yom Kippur, we are bidden to reflect on the things we didn't do: the occasions we should have acted, but did not; the times we should have spoken out, but instead held our tongues. On Yom Kippur, all that is physically absent – food, water, physical relations - calls to mind the moments we were morally absent.

Perhaps Yom Kippur's emphasis on the sins of omission is what leads us to read from the book of Jonah tomorrow afternoon. Jonah, the reluctant prophet, is a model of avoidance. When God asks Jonah to inveigh against the city of Nineveh for its wrongdoing, he turns and flees. He doesn't want to get involved.

Why doesn't Jonah accept his role? Why is he unwilling to speak out?

Maybe Jonah feels unworthy. "God must be mistaken in choosing me. Who am I to sit in judgment of my peers? I'm far from perfect myself. And Nineveh isn't even my country or culture. They have different values. They certainly don't need a foreigner like me telling them what to do."

Maybe Jonah feels powerless. Nineveh, we read in the Bible, was a huge city; it took three days to traverse. Perhaps Jonah fears that the situation is so complex, so out of control, his efforts would be in vain.

Perhaps Jonah doesn't go to Nineveh because he's overwhelmed by issues closer to home. Preoccupied with family and work, he might not have the time or the emotional energy to worry about others.

Or maybe Jonah is simply unmoved. "Nineveh is not my town and its inhabitants are not my people. Why should I care?"

Alas, the Bible does not reveal Jonah's innermost thoughts. But whatever his motive for flight. his three day sojourn in the belly of a whale has profound effect. He emerges a different person. When God calls him a second time. Jonah is willing to speak out.

What happened during those three days? I like to think Jonah had time for a crash course in Jewish ethics. Perhaps the curriculum included the following:

• Judaism's call for justice and compassion voiced by prophets like Amos. Micah and Isaiah: to do justice and love mercy; to let justice flow like water and righteousness as a mighty stream.

• The Mitzvah "Al ta'amod al dam re'echa: Do not stand by idly while your neighbor bleeds." This mitzvah asserts that we are our brothers' keeper, and further, that we are charged with the responsibility to assist all who are in need.

• The Torah's assertion that we should have empathy for, and are obligated to, the strangers in our midst, for "(we) were strangers in the land of Egypt."

While we'll never know what happened to Jonah, might not this day of reflection spur us to ponder our own moments of silence, the occasions we didn't speak out? And is it possible that we might be more ready to act on our beliefs as a result?

For we are not so unlike Jonah.

In the face of bigoted jokes or slurs that play on the skin color, gender or sexual orientation of others, we can feel reluctant or unwilling to speak out.

In the face of ethnic hatred in places like Darfur, Chechnya and the Middle East, we can feel powerless to affect change.

In the face of societal conflict closer to home, we can be overwhelmed by the demands of our own work and family.

Like Jonah, we know how easy it is to remain silent. And like Jonah, we too are heirs to a tradition of prophetic justice that demands we act.

Yet, even if no Hebrew prophet had ever spoken, our people's experience alone would compel a response. Name the atrocity, the unthinkable crime, or the unspeakable suffering. For us, the Children of Israel, it is familiar.

When soldiers speak of ethnic cleansing in Darfur we think of Germany and Poland, of Kishenev and Chelmenitsky, of crusade and pogrom. We who have been the object of ethnic and religious persecution, we have seen these soldiers before.

When skinheads put on armbands and uniforms, and speak of racial purity and viciously attack foreigners, we know these bullies; we have seen them before.

When media stars like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh whip their listeners into a frenzy of hatred, we think of Father Coughlin. We have heard these hateful voices before.

When state legislatures try to pass laws condemning the lifestyle of those whose sexual preferences they dislike, we think of the Nuremburg laws and the inquisition; we have endured such legislation before.

When terrorists plan to blow up subways and airplanes, in places like London, Spain and New York, and when their gruesome work is done and the Kaddish said for the innocent, the words mingle with other Kaddishes offered up by other Jews at other times, in the wake of Nebbachadnezzar, and Titus, and Hadrian and Hitler.

Our people's experience is etched in our souls. The day we are born, we Jews are 4000 years old. Generations of Jews, mothers and grandmothers, bubbes and zeydes, martyrs and heroes, all of them live on in some mysterious way in us.

We might think it is to them we owe a response, that for their memory and honor, we might raise our voices. But in fact, our obligation is based far less on the past than on the future; it is for our children and our children's children, that the world they inherit might be one of righteousness.

So it is that on Yom Kippur we recall our moments of silence, the occasions we failed to respond, in the hope that we might yet raise our voices for justice in the year to come.

"But come on, rabbi, be realistic. Speaking out doesn't change what's going on half way around the world. Raising our voices against injustice is only fooling ourselves into thinking we've made a difference."

Perhaps. But consider the story told by Eli Weisel of a man who stood in his town's square with a sign protesting injustice, day in day out, month after month, year after year. When someone asked why he continued, he replied, "When I began. I sought to change them. Now I carry this sign so that they won't change me."

In the face of injustice we feel powerless to change, we speak out to save our own souls. As Jews, history teaches us that silence equals complicity and worse, that silence induces a moral decay.

We begin close to home by recalling the everyday moments that challenged our sense of right and wrong. Perhaps we failed to speak out on behalf of those who by virtue of their color, gender, economic situation, or sexual preference, were made to be strangers in our midst. We consider the occasions we failed to speak up on another's behalf:

• in the face of a demeaning joke;

• or a judgmental comment;

• or a libelous rumor.

Such moments leave us queasy, unsure how to react. Yet, we know that all it takes for evil to prosper is for good people remain silent.

When we fail to speak out for justice or fail to treat those around us with compassion, we might well say: we are only human! We can't expect ourselves to be there for everyone and every important issue. And yet, as Paul Simon put it, "silence like a cancer grows." When we don't speak up, we experience an incremental hardening of the heart that makes it that much more difficult to respond in the future.

Beyond the day-to-day encounters there were moments when we failed to respond to issues in the wider community. For example, would that we could speak out more forcefully on issues surrounding immigration. As people who came to this country just a few generations ago, we know that America prospers when its doors are open. We know that families who came here from Mexico over the past decades are, despite the stereotypes, quite likely to prosper economically and assimilate culturally. Why can’t we speak up against those whose xenophobic rants have removed any pretense of humanitarian concern from the agenda?

Would that we could raise our voices against those who seek to undercut Israel’s right to exist. Who have rewritten history to exclude any historical Jewish connection to the land of Israel, who ignore or discount the archeological record, who most recently have adopted, in place of suicide bombs, a softer approach that utilizes the tools of democracy to insure that the Jewish state disappears. Would that we could raise our voices to say: “while the issue of peace with the Palestinians still needs resolution, we break ranks with those who seek to do so by dissolving the modern Jewish state of Israel.

And would that we could raise our voices in support of the Employment Non-discrimination act currently before congress. Would that we might be able to say, as Rabbi David Sapirstein said last week before the house education and labor committee: “We know all too well the impact of discrimination and second-class citizenship, of what it is like to be denied opportunities for jobs or other benefits because of who we are. Even after the Enlightenment began and the promise of equality existed without laws to enforce it, we often were forced to hide our identity, keeping our Judaism in our private lives while remaining ambiguous about who we were in our public lives if we wished to find employment or advancement in the educational, social, political, or business arenas of our societies. So we feel a keen empathy for those who can still be victimized because of who they are, deprived of opportunities, jobs, or advancement because of their identity.”

There are but three examples of issues that ought to compel our concern. And in truth, merely responding to injustice is not sufficient. Judaism teaches that our partnership with God includes a mandate to create a better world proactively by building a society that is fundamentally just, rather than reacting to problems once they occur. The Torah teaches, Tzedek, Tzedek Tirdof, - Justice, Justice, shall you pursue. To pursue justice means to proactively seek out solutions that will eradicate injustice systemically rather than having us simply minister to its victims. It means supporting educational bond measurers rather than building more prisons. It means strengthening job-training programs in community colleges. It means insuring adequate health care for all members of society.

Last night, at Kol Nidre, we prayed for repentance, that the hopes of the future might overcome the reality of the present. But this morning we reassert that even as our people has experienced injustice, we have continued to maintain our vision of a just world and a belief in our capacity to bring it into being.

And we have hope - not naive hope, but Jewish hope - 'bruised and scarred, and rooted in a realistic and unsentimental understanding of the world, its cruelties and injustices' (after Rabbi Sanford Ragins). Hope that understands, as one writer puts it, that "there are only two kinds of madness in the world one must guard against ... one is the belief that we can do everything. The other is the belief that we can do nothing ... "

• May this new year renew in us the conviction and the moral courage to break our silence and speak out for justice;
• May it arouse in us the sensitivity to reach out to others in compassion;
• And may we proactively use our voices and our hands to create a community, a society and a world of righteousness and peace.

If we do that, then surely in the new year 5770, will be a Shanah Tovah, a truly good year for all.

Ken Yehi Ratzon - May it be God's will. Ken Yehi R'tzonenu - May it be our will.