Words of a sermon can help us understand the concepts of compassion and understanding, but action shows us how compassionate we are (as if there’s a compassion scale, ha!). A better way to put it might be that action pushes us to be as compassionate as we can be.  Action, however, is not for our leaders alone.

If we are aware, we are challenged to do this by all our relations- friends, family, acquaintances and so on- but the fact of the matter is that the visibility of a Rabbi allows for the potential to challenge a large number of people at one time, and if the relationship between congregants and clergy is good, over a long time.

Through his actions Rabbi Rosen prompts us to ask difficult questions of ourselves: Am I capable of broadening my understanding? What do I stand for? He challenges us to look within ourselves at our own borders and how far we are willing to go to cross them. It may be one thing to travel to another country as he did during his trip to Nigeria, but are we ready to make room in our heart, to love others as ourselves and challenge the notion of who we think we are?

Because our leaders are visible we can learn from them and ask questions of ourselves, but until we make a step toward our own action we will have difficulty finding any answers (if there are any to find).

I'll do my best to remember to keep finding out for myself on this journey of a blog.