Kabbalat Shabbat Kavannah | Rabbi Felicia Sol | August 28, 2026

Last night, my kids and I went to see the Israeli

Sephardic Orthodox singer songwriter Isa Rebo.

Is anyone there at Radio City?

Oh, okay.

It wasn't generally the VG community, I would say.

It was at Radio City Music Hall, and Meebo

has become one of the major artists in Israel, reaching across

the spectrum of Israeli society from secular to Hasidic.

His music is deeply rooted in Jewish liturgy and religious themes.

And we sing, actually here at PJ, a powerful version of his Seder of Order

of the service of the High Priest on Yom Kippur, along with a number of other team

that he has brought into the mainstream of Israeli society.

And there was something both exquisite

and strange about hearing

a 37 year old Israeli superstar

sing ancient liturgical poetry

about our flaws and our brokenness and our longing to return to God.

Accompanied by the Israeli Philharmonic in Radio City Music Hall

last year, actually, we heard back

and I heard him at, at MSG, so I don't know.

But it wasn't with the Philharmonic last year.

It was profoundly prayerful.

And also in some way oxymoronic.

The humility and religious longing of the words

often pushed up against the enormous ness of the stage,

the fame, the spectacle,

and at moments, the religious nationalism that enter

the space in ways that I found deeply uncomfortable, to say the least.

But I think I was in the minority in a big way.

And yet somehow the music remains

powerful and prayerful and moving.

This week was also dominated by the death

of another beloved musical icon.

Dolly Parton,

a woman whose extraordinary talents carried her from a one room house

in Tennessee where she grew up with 11 siblings, to global stardom.

She became, someone claimed proudly

by the southern religious conservatives,

feminists and the LGBTQ community alike.

A 2019 New York Times article famously

asked, is there anything we can all agree on?

The answer was yes.

Dolly Parton.

Beyond her

extraordinary business and philanthropic accomplishments.

I don't know if people know that she actually was one of the earlier

investors in the Covid vaccine.

Dolly was also an epic songwriter and storyteller,

often invested with religious themes as well.

One of those songs is called The Coat of Many Colors,

which of course is a reference to Joseph's

elaborate coat of many colors

that he receives from his father, Yakov.

But for Dolly, I'm just going to call her Dolly.

It became her personal story of growing up poor,

with her mother sewing together rags of many colors.

Mama sewed the rags together, sewing every piece with love.

She made my coat of many colors that I was proud of.

And then Dolly arrives at school in the song.

Wearing her coat with pride.

Only to me be made fun of by the other school children.

But as the song

progresses, Adele, endowed with the love of her mother

and with a sense that the coat would somehow bring her goodness, perhaps even

God's blessing, she refuses to see herself through the eyes of the other children.

She concludes, now I know

we had no money, but I was rich as I could be

in my coat of many colors my mama made for me.

It is that

image of the rags stitched together, and the love

that Dolly felt from her mother, and I suspect, from God to

that allows her to stand tall

amidst the harshness of the outside world.

And it is this very image, I believe, that much of the liturgical

poetry and prayer of this season is meant to awaken in us.

On the one hand, we come to

this season aware of how tattered we are.

We are poor,

poor in spirit.

We are dispersed

and torn and broken hearted.

We are empty and afraid.

And we need to be woken up

in the pit.

It's been Adam, which is so easy.

We both sings and we also sing here.

We ask a human being, why are you sleeping?

Rise up and sing. Mercy, mercy.

Or in another pew.

The heartily we ask my knee or my high.

What am I?

And what is my life?

And in sadder I will die.

If a person could truly remember all the flaws, all the shortcomings,

all the transgressions, all the wrongdoings.

A person might simply give up.

But it is not only that,

because this month is also a luau.

Of course it is a long, which is an acrostic.

According to the rabbis Arnoldo Davido.

Dele.

I am my beloved and my beloved is mine.

In this season of soul searching, we are also taught

that God wants us to return.

God wants us to return.

God sees our potential.

God wants us back just as a beloved.

We are beloved.

And maybe that is the deeper message of the rags.

We don't have to wait and see until

we are whole to be worthy of love.

We don't have to wait till we are whole

to be worthy of love.

We don't have to hide the torn places.

We don't have to pretend that we are something we are not.

Which is basically what social media is asking us to do.

We can bring all of it,

the beautiful pieces of who we are and the frayed edges,

and begin stitching ourselves back together

in two weeks.

Exactly two weeks, which makes me feel

a little bit in shock.

We will arrive at Shabbat of our session.

Not at Radio City Music Hall,

but here in our very own sanctuary, or those joining us

from the live stream at home or wherever you may

be on this new Year.

Not to watch a magnificent performance.

Although there are parts of the service that are extraordinary and beautiful,

but to do the work,

the work of prayer, the work to confront

what has been broken, to acknowledge where we have fallen short,

and to imagine what might yet be possible.

And I love imagining that this is not only each of us

doing that work with our coat of many colors,

but it is also the calm in person and online, across

generations and across the Jewish people at large.

We are stitched together a ratty coats,

and these years particularly ratty and torn.

Different stories, different experiences,

different wounds and different hopes.

None of us is whole on our own.

None of us is perfect.

And yet somehow we belong to one another.

Stitched together.

Maybe that is what part of a label is asking of us,

not only to do the work of repairing ourselves,

but to think about how we repair

the fabric that holds us together.

Because we live in a time when it is very easy to pull apart,

to decide that someone else's story doesn't belong next

to ours, to decide that our differences are too great

for us to be really in community with one another.

But then we have this beautiful teaching.

By Sunday.

The King is in the field.

God is here.

God is in the field close to us, waiting for us.

All of us.

And not waiting until we're ready.

Not waiting until we have everything figured out.

Not waiting until we have fixed ourselves.

Or fixed the Jewish people or fixed the world.

God simply is waiting for us to turn toward

God in the field and turn towards one another.

On the walk.

In a few moments, at the end of the day,

we're going to physically enact that actual idea.

We're going to stand up as we do always, to go greet the bride.

We're going to turn toward the door and welcome Shabbat.

And as a bride and as a queen,

both either Shalom are available.

E-Collar Shabbat to Malka.

Come in. Please come, beloved.

And I love that we don't wait until we're ready to welcome Shabbat.

We stand first.

We stand with our mistakes and our questions.

With what is broken and what is beautiful.

With everything.

This past week has brought us.

We stand as individuals and we stand as a community.

And we will be doing that in two weeks.

On Rosh Hashanah, we stand together with the hope that something

can be different, that we can change, that our communities can change, that.

The Jewish people and the Jewish state, if I might add, can change that.

Humanity can change not because we're already there,

we're already home, but because we are beloved,

not because everything

is already prepared, but because we're willing to pick up

the pieces and begin stitching them together again.

So let us enter the field.

Let us sing.

Let us pray.

Let us rejoice in the gift of being here together.

And when the time comes, let us stand and welcome Shabbat.

And in two weeks a new year.

Let us not wait.

Let us greet this moment and say we are here.

We are ready.

Let us walk in the fields together.