The very nature of American culture makes so many demands on our time: work, family, school, friends, temple, exercise. Even finding time to take a vacation can be a challenge. To be honest, one of my primary challenges as a rabbi is to convince you to give Judaism a higher place on your personal priority list. The question that I ask myself is how do I do this.

The head, hand and heart metaphor that I offered on the High Holy days provides an organizing principle. Some of you can be enticed by the rich world of Jewish intellectual life. You will come to a study group, lecture or book discussion. You may come to Shabbat services hoping for a sermon that stimulates your thinking. At Micah, we keep this ball in the air constantly.

The cry of Jewish ethics to engage the world is for many of you a compelling call. Micah House, Sukkot in April, Share Your Hanukkah, Underwear Month and the Public Issues Forum are among the many and varied kinds of offerings that keep this ball in the air to attract your participation.

Prayer and the desire to understand the world through the emotional depths of the Jewish spirit persistently challenges us to examine and refine our worship life. The more satisfying the prayer experience that we can provide, the more drawn you will be to consider the power and potential of Jewish prayer as a regular part of your life. This ball is always in the air – but it also needs to be assessed continually to ensure a quality prayer experience. We must reach the worshiper and we must reach for holiness.

When I say, as I did in this column last month, that we lack a story, what I am suggesting is that we lack an overarching narrative to help us make sense of the entire enterprise. We may undertake Jewish study with rigor, respond to the call to engage the world and come to Shabbat services regularly but there is no framework that tells us why this is the most natural thing in the world to do. We are painfully aware of the choices we make and of the ever-present option to disengage entirely. A narrative would provide us a direction, a purpose, a rationale. A narrative would free me from the task of convincing you to move Judaism higher on your priority list. It would be self-evident.

The Passover Haggadah, quoting the great text from Deuteronomy 6:5, says: "My father was a wandering Aramean....” This gives us an insight into the power of having a story. This text was the narrative of our ancestors. The Israelite pilgrim farmer would bring the bounty of his harvest to the ancient temple because it was self-evident for him to do so. He would stand before the priest, harvest in hand, and say, "My father was a wandering Aramean who went down to Egypt... and was enslaved...but God saved us and brought us to this land... and now I bring the fruits of the soil that You...have given me." A story makes sense of everything.

So please consider this as you celebrate Passover this year. Ask yourselves why you do these things – eat matzah, send your children to religious school, contribute tzedakah, attend services, any Jewish action that you engage in--ask yourself what is important about it and what narrative can tie it all together. This is the mandate for the great Jewish conversation of our time.

As you read these words, I will be in Israel with the Micah group--returning April 9. As you sit around your Seder table well into the evening, ask yourselves how Israel, the Promised Land mentioned so prominently at the end of the Seder ritual ("Next Year in Jerusalem") fits into your own Jewish narrative. This, too, is a compelling question for our time. What does Israel mean to us? Why is it so important to our own identity? Think deeply and celebrate our freedom to do so!!!

Have a joyous holiday.