The first is the lesson of presence. Protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, in Manama’s Pearl Square, in the streets of Sidi Bouzid, began by simply coming together. And where one person’s presence might not have made an appreciable difference, the presence of thousands and tens of thousands is what began to open the doors to change. These were not riots. These were nonviolent protests, where what mattered was simply that people showed up.

And they weren’t just physically present; they were spiritually present, too. I know this because people took care of one another. Grown-ups watched after children. Christians took care of Muslims. Those who could afford to cook food for a crowd did so. Those who could open their homes to offer a meal or a shower, did so. Sometimes difficult or scary situations bring out the worst in people; sometimes they bring out what’s best in us. People who are caring for one another are present not only in body, but also in heart and soul.

This simple presence matters for us as well. On this Rosh Hashanah, may we be blessed with an appreciation of how important it is that we be present. We’re here. We’ve come together to place our bodies, our hearts, our minds, and our souls in service of the common goal of connecting with God and with community. And when we come together, something ineffable arises, something that’s more than the sum of its parts.

The second lesson I take away from the Arab Spring is that hope is a powerful force. Injustice tends to be self-sustaining: when a system becomes unjust, it can calcify and harden. In Torah we read about our people’s history in Mitzrayim, “The Narrow Place”—a place of constriction and constrainment, hard labor and grievous punishment—and that’s often what the name Egypt represents in the Jewish imagination. Torah tells us that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart against the plight of the Hebrews. How can it be, the rabbis ask, that God would harden Pharaoh’s heart? And the answer comes: first Pharaoh hardened his own heart, and once his heart was hardened, it was easy for God to let it stay that way. Like the Pharaoh of the Passover story, we too can harden our own hearts against those who are different from us… and when we do, it becomes easier for us to accept injustice as the status quo.

But injustice can be overcome. Tzedek, tzedek tirdof, says Torah: justice, justice shall you pursue! And once one person has the strength to stand up, whether in protest or in despair, to take action to create change—then more people follow suit.

The people of Tunisia and Egypt had given up all hope of change. If they could imagine a better life, they imagined it coming after their leaders’ deaths. No one believed that these men, who had clung to power for so long, could be overthrown.

Mohamed Bouazizi’s mode of seeking change is horrific to imagine. This act of desperation is not a way I could ever imagine seeking to further an agenda of transformation. But I think we must feel compassion for a man whose life was so awful that he clutched at self-immolation as a way of sparking hope and change. And I pray that we here today, engaged in our spiritual task of seeking righteousness, may be inspired by his courage, even as we mourn the need for his flames. His sacrifice led an entire region to begin to believe that the change they had thought was impossible could actually happen, not in some distant future but in their own day.

And that’s the third lesson I want to lift up from the Arab Spring: change is possible. Political change, social change, personal change, spiritual change.

Those who have taken part in nonviolent protests across the Arab world this year have put their bodies in service of their hopes for political change. They seek changes in government, changes in how their police and army treat them, changes in the economy and the job market, changes in their rights to assemble and to speak for themselves.

We in this country are justifiably proud of our democracy and of the rights which we know to be inalienable—and yet even we can be prone to slipping in to the familiar comfort of skepticism and despair. It’s easy to knock the other guys—Republicans or Democrats, whoever we think is to blame for whatever’s not right. But the enemy is not those who see the world differently than we do: it’s the insidious voice of despair which whispers in our ears that nothing will ever change.

Some who seek marriage equality in this nation may despair of ever being able to wed the person they love. And yet, earlier this summer, the New York State senate ruled that denying gays and lesbians the right of marriage was unjust, and the first legal gay weddings there took place. Some who believe that global warming is real and dangerous may despair of ever convincing those who don’t. And yet, earlier this year, the windmills at Berkshire Wind in Lanesboro began to turn, generating power safely and sustainably from the winds which whip along the ridge. Change is possible.

People can change, too. That may be the most central teaching of these Days of Awe. This is the time of year when our tradition invites us to do the spiritual work of cheshbon ha-nefesh, taking an accounting of the soul; to strive to discern where our lives and relationships are working, and where we could be doing a better job of living up to our highest ideals. This is the season for teshuvah, repetance or return, re-aligning ourselves so that we are pointed in the right direction again: toward God, toward our highest selves, toward our hopes and dreams of a world perfected and renewed. The Days of Awe come each year to remind us that we, too—with our habits, our customary ways of being, our perennial challenges and stuck places—we, too, can change.

It’s easy to feel distant from what we see on the news, what we read about in the paper. Tunisia, Cairo, Yemen, Bahrain: these places are far away. The people who live there don’t look like us, don’t dress like us. Most of them don’t worship like us. But like us, they are made in the image and the likeness of God; each protester contains a nefesh elohut, a spark of divinity, within them. (And so does each policeman aiming a water cannon…though it may be more difficult for us to see the divinity in those who persecute than in those who are perscuted.)

In more recent months, hundreds of thousands have gathered in Israel to protest an untenable cost of living, lack of housing and jobs, the deteriorating educational system, and issues of social justice. They too have been galvanized by the Arab Spring.

Of course, as the Arab Spring gives way to the Arab Autumn, the stories are not always joyous and inspiring. Even as the Israeli tent city protests offer reason for hope, the recent attack on the Israeli embassy in Cairo offers reason for concern. It began as violence against the Egyptian police force, which continues to mistreat and abuse activists with relative impunity—but it quickly became an attack on the Israeli Embassy, and that's alarming.

Mubarak maintained a cordial relationship with Israel while allowing his thuggish police force to brutalize Egyptians. It makes sense that some Egyptians now resent that relationship with Israel as a relic of the Mubarak years. There is clearly some anti-Israel sentiment in Egypt, which was surely both strengthened by Mubarak’s policies, and silenced by his regime. Now that he is gone, that anti-Israel sentiment is newly visible, which in turn awakens our fears.

I believe that a free and democratic Egypt will ultimately be a better partner for Israel than was Mubarak’s brutal dictatorship...though the road to that partnership may not be easy. Meanwhile, I'm heartened when I read voices from the Middle East—like the recent column in the Jerusalem Post by Gershom Baskin—arguing that what is needed are more bridges between people, even (or maybe especially) those among whom there is mistrust.

(He also notes that many Egyptians believe that the leaders of the mob which torched the Israeli embassy were members of Mubarak's hated internal security force, actively working to undermine the revolution. If that is true, it also gives me hope.)

Many of us who feel an identification with Israel have the long habit of relating to the Arab world with fear and anxiety. But this season of teshuvah is a time for examining our patterns and discerning which ones no longer serve us. If we can relate to the Arab Spring with empathy, compassion, and hope instead of with fear, what might change in us—and in the world we share?

In Jewish tradition, the fact of humanity’s many diversities and differences is seen as a sign of God’s greatness. We read in the Mishnah, the compilation of rabbinic wisdom which dates from the second century of the Common Era, that “Humanity was produced from one man, Adam, to show God's greatness. When a man mints a coin in a press, each coin is identical. But when the Holy Blessed One creates people in the form of Adam not one is similar to any other.” (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5)

We who are here in this sanctuary, and we who are in every sanctuary in the world this morning, and we who are not in any sanctuary at all—all of us are made in the image and the likeness; all of us deserve to have hope and to know freedom; and all of us are capable of the holiness of change.

Shanah tovah tikatevu v’techatemu: may you be inscribed and sealed for a good year.