Over the High Holidays, I will attend at least five services at three synagogues. This means I will hear at least five different High Holiday sermons, when both the Jews who show up every week and the Jews who show up twice a year task our rabbis with the unenviable job of creating a whole year’s worth of Jewish meaning in about 20 minutes.

Some congregants will leave these sermons feeling fulfilled, and others will be ready to critique every aspect of the words they just heard. The sermon was too long! The sermon was too short(?) The sermon was too academic or too basic. The sermon was too political or not political enough.

It seems a cruel twist of fate for our rabbis that our ancient Hebrew calendar and our modern electoral calendar overlap such that every other year these holiest of days fall in the midst of this most anxiety-producing time, when we are inundated with ads and calls and texts and mailers and emails telling us that candidates are both our saviors and the end of civilization, all at the same time.

This is a time of year we reckon with our mistakes, so let me share. Twenty years ago, I was so angered by a particular sermon at my synagogue, which demanded that every Jew support a particular American-Israel interest group, that I sent an email voicing my displeasure to the rabbi on Rosh Hashanah immediately after services. He even wrote back that same afternoon — so we were both spending the holiday fighting over American politics rather than attending to any spiritual or religious (or family dinner) obligations.

I am saved from quoting my embarrassing words from that message only because I have since switched email accounts, meaning the specifics of my incivility are lost to me. I can only pray they are lost to his memory and inbox.

Political anxiety in our community has risen to a fever pitch unlike any I have seen in my lifetime. I can’t help but wonder what this means for the rabbinic words we will receive over the next few weeks.

Clearly, our rabbis have been given an impossible task, littered with pitfalls, while speaking to hundreds or thousands of congregants, many of whom are primed for disagreement, fighting, and anger. But mostly, many of whom are filled with fear.

The news makes us fearful. Our Facebook feeds make us fearful. The influencers we follow make us fearful. And the fact that we will walk through multiple security checks, past police cars, perhaps through metal detectors, and by the security guards — that fear will be staring us in the face each holiday.

So what do we need from our rabbis?

For me, there are two specific things I do not need on the High Holidays — or in any sermon.

First, since the legalities of explicit political endorsement from either the bimah or our nonprofits seem a little fuzzy lately, I do not need you to tell me who to vote for.

While you each rightly have your opinions on American (and Israeli) politics, each day of my life is filled with a constant barrage of messages about whom to support and whom to oppose. Whether you agree with me or not on your ultimate choices, our community will likely split 70/30, 60/40, or 50/50 on nearly every item on the ballot.

Despite what you may be told by influencers, there is not — and has virtually never been — unanimity on political issues or candidates within the Jewish community. Your endorsement may change a few minds, but more likely it will remind many of those sitting in the pews of how distant, if not estranged, they feel from members of their own community — including their own rabbi.

Second, I do not need you to recite the news.

Sure, a news item here or there can provide context within a sermon and connect the past to the present and even to our dreams for the future. But I am can get my news elsewhere and more often have to work to shut it out, rather than seek it out.

On a podcast I listened to about politics from the pulpit, the speaker pointed out the futility of faith leaders discussing the number of centrifuges in Iran because they didn’t have any more expertise on the subject than what their congregants could gather from the news.

You, as my rabbis, are experts in many things. But I don’t need you to spend your precious minutes explaining concepts on which you are no more expert than I am (unless one of you secretly has a background in nuclear physics).

In these sermons — as well as the beautiful d’var torah you give every week on Shabbat — we seek not a recitation and repetition of the noise of the world. We need you to provide the guidance and wisdom in which you are uniquely trained: Torah, Talmud, thousands of years of Jewish history and peoplehood.

I know this is a difficult task even in the best of times, but I also know that we are blessed in this community with rabbis who are great scholars, teachers and storytellers.

Even as a bit of a synagogue junkie, I find I often know the first part of the wisdom but find myself at a loss as to the rest:

I know that Hillel taught us, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”

But what I do not know is how to balance the particular and the universal. How do I both be for myself and for others in moments when I feel fear swirling all around? And even if Hillel exempts difficult times from this admonition (does he?), what would constitute such a difficult time? Because for all the troubles of 21st-century America, on the scale of difficult times for our people, I suspect we are still in the bottom quartile.

I also know that arguments are acceptable if they are for the sake of Heaven — but I have no idea whether the arguments dividing our community today are actually for the sake of Heaven.

And even if these arguments are for the sake of Heaven, what is our responsibility as Jews to those with whom we are arguing?

Hillel said, “Whatever is hateful and distasteful to you, do not do to your fellow man. This is the entire Torah; the rest is commentary. Go learn.”

Well, there is a lot going on that is distasteful to me. There is a lot being said in our community that is distasteful. What are my obligations in these moments? Do I protect myself and stand up for myself? Do I walk away, even from those in my own community?

Lastly, I know that the Second Temple was destroyed because of sinat chinam - baseless hatred.

Is hatred always baseless, or are we sometimes justified in our hatred? Moreover, when we see sinat chinam in our community, how does Judaism teach us to destroy it before it destroys us?

Going into these Yamim Noraim, these Days of Awe, I do not need anyone to tell me the world is broken. I can see that. I do not need anyone to tell me about the divisions in our community. I can feel them.

But what I am desperate to know is what our Jewish wisdom says to do next.

In thousands of years containing more than our share of bad times, how did we stay in community with one another? In thousands of years of two-Jews-three-opinions, how did we not fracture into a million pieces? In thousands of years of fearing that every leader might be the next Pharaoh, how did we keep from being overwhelmed by fear?

That is what I pray our rabbis will teach us.

Not what to think about the latest headline, but how Jews are supposed to think when the headlines frighten us. Not whom to hate, fear, support, or oppose, but what obligations remain when we profoundly disagree. Not how to win an argument, but how to remain a people after the argument is over.

Most importantly, this burden cannot be placed entirely on our rabbis. The rest of us have some obligation as well: to arrive at synagogue willing not merely to hear words that affirm what we already believe, but to wrestle with words that might make us wiser, kinder, braver, or more responsible to one another.

I don't need my rabbis to tell me how to vote. I need them to remind me how to be a Jew. I need them to help me understand what I owe to myself, to my people, and to those beyond my people, especially when those obligations seem to conflict.

And perhaps, most difficult of all, I need them to help me tend the spark of God within me — and to recognize that spark in others — so that fear and anger do not extinguish either one.