Editor’s note: the following is the Rosh Hashanah sermon Rabbi Jarrod Grover delivered at Beth Tikvah Synagogue in Toronto on September 23, 2025. It has been lightly edited for print format.

As the sun sets on another year, and as we stand on the precipice of a new one, we are called here by a sound that is both ancient and utterly new. The shofar is the cry of our ancestors and the whisper of our own souls. It is a sound that breaks through the noise of our daily lives—the constant buzz of our phones, the endless stream of news, the clamor of our anxieties—and forces us to pause, to listen, and to truly hear.

Rosh Hashanah is not just apples and honey. It is Yom HaDin, the Day of Judgment. Judgment is an unsettling concept, but it’s meant to inspire reverence, awe, and radical honesty. We stand before God and are asked: Where were you this year? Where was your heart? Your voice? Your hand? Our actions and our inactions. The opportunities for goodness that we missed. The silences we maintained when we should have spoken.

In that spirit of radical honesty, I have a heavy responsibility to speak today at a time of tremendous challenge for the Jewish people, particularly for the Jewish people in Canada. And I thought to frame my remarks less as a pronouncement, but rather as a deeply personal, heartfelt plea. Just last week, senior leaders of the Canadian Jewish community met privately with Prime Minister Mark Carney. Because the meeting was behind closed doors, we do not know what was said, what concerns were raised, or what impressions each side carried away. But that silence should not be the final word. Today, I want to offer the conversation I wish I could have had in that room—my own honest exchange with the Prime Minister about what it feels like to be a Jew in Canada today.

So I’m going to speak these words as if he were here listening, because perhaps, through the power of our collective voice on this holy day, they might reach him, or maybe other civic and community leaders, who truly care about all the people they serve. At the very least, I pray that these words will resonate with all of us who feel the weight of these times.

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Prime Minister Carney—Mark, if I may—I want to speak to you with the kind of honesty that only a shared, sacred moment can allow. I know you’re a busy man, with the weight of a nation on your shoulders, steering Canada through economic storms, climate crises, and global challenges. Your reputation as a thoughtful leader, a champion of sustainability, financial stability, and global interconnectedness is well-earned. Your background at the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England speaks to a man of intellect and foresight.

This is your first Rosh Hashanah as our new Prime Minister, and I truly believe, deep down, that you care about our Jewish community. I’ve seen glimpses of it—in your general statements on diversity and in your condemnations of hate crimes when they make headlines. You speak of Canada as a mosaic, where every piece contributes to the whole. But Mark, that care, while I believe it to be genuine, is being diluted by policies and postures that feel complacent, performative, and, at times, outright hostile.

Let me explain, not in accusation, but in the spirit of Rosh Hashanah’s call for honest reflection. Your government’s approach seems rooted in a policy of waiting for anti-Semitism to escalate into a front-page crisis before acting, rather than preventing it through robust education, enforcement, and visible leadership. We’ve seen the virtue signaling: the social media posts on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the vague tweets about “standing against hate.” These are easy performative gestures. But even members of your own caucus have publicly called them inadequate – the equivalent of a band-aid on a gaping wound.

Mark, we are a community that has a target on its back, and while your words offer a momentary flicker of solidarity, they are not doing nearly enough to extinguish the fires of hate that burn on our streets and in our digital spaces. We need proactive measures that reflect the gravity of the threat we face—concrete legislative changes, not just empty rhetoric. A tweet cannot stop a bullet. A press release cannot erase a swastika from our walls.

Mark, the Jewish story is a great Canadian story. From the earliest days, Jewish immigrants arrived on these shores........

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