This sermon was delivered at Temple Beth El in Charlotte for Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat of Return 2025/5786

Shabbat Shuvah — the Shabbat of Return, is when we are called to pause and to consider our lives, our choices, and most importantly, our relationships.

I want to share a story about a good friend of mine. She has a beautifully decorated home. For her, being surrounded by beauty — in the form of art, color, and design — nourishes her soul. When she moved into the house where she would raise her children, she spared no detail in making it a reflection of who she is.

She chose to renovate her kitchen with the finest materials, including a stunning slab of Carrara marble imported from Tuscany. This marble was elegant, pristine — a centerpiece of her kitchen. Yet there was a challenge, Carrara marble is porous. She was petrified of stains. And as fate would have it, just days after it was installed, she set down a glass of red wine and a red ring formed, staining the flawless marble.

Devastated, she called the artisan who had installed the countertop. The man who came to assess and attempt to repair the damage was an older Italian craftsman. He examined the marble, saw the red ring, and said, “Ah yes. I can fix it. But you should know — in Italy, we have a saying: ‘No stains, no friends.’”

Let that sink in.

No stains, no friends.

He fixed the marble, yes — but he also offered a life lesson that went far beyond the surface.

We are like that marble.

Our relationships, like marble, are beautiful. They are what gives our life meaning and beauty. But they are also vulnerable. Over time, we gather stains and marks. We carry with us the imprints of conversations that hurt – words we said that we wish we hadn’t, or words said by others. We carry traces of the actions we wished we wouldn’t have done. We metaphorically hold on to the blemishes created by our moments of silence when we should have spoken.

Our most sacred and meaningful relationships — with spouses, siblings, children, parents, friends, even colleagues — are not immune to flaws. In fact, they are the places where imperfection most deeply reveals itself.

Just as our kitchens are the central location of our homes where the sustenance happens, our relationships are the sacred center of our lives.

We are human. We say the wrong thing. We act from impatience, exhaustion, and ego. We hurt. And we are hurt.

If we expect our relationships to be flawless, like that untouched slab of marble, we will end up with no one around us.

A Sufi story captures this perfectly:

One afternoon, Nasruddin and his friend sat in a café drinking tea.

His friend asked, “Nasruddin, how come you never got married?”

Nasruddin sighed and replied: “Ah, my friend. In my youth, I was looking for the perfect woman. In Cairo, I met a beautiful, intelligent woman — but she was unkind. In Baghdad, I met someone generous and warm — but we had no interests in common. One after another, there was always something missing. Then, one day, I met her — she was perfect. Beautiful. Kind. Brilliant. We shared everything.”

“So what happened?” his friend asked. “Why didn’t you marry her?”

Nasruddin answered, “Seems she was looking for the perfect man.”

We laugh, but how often do we do the same by holding people to impossible expectations.

Shabbat Shuvah urges us to reverse the flow.

The traditional liturgy of this day teaches that God doesn’t require perfection from us, God simply wants us to return.  So too in our relationships — we shouldn’t wait for perfection. We simply should return.

There is a powerful phrase from the Talmud, commenting on the story of Honi the Circle Maker, the wonderworker who was called by the community in times of drought to pray for rain and was granted it.

When rain would not come, Honi drew a circle, stood in it, and said, “God, I will not leave this circle until You make it rain.” And it rained.

Honi was the character, you may have heard of, who once saw an old man planting a carob tree and asked him, “How long until it bears fruit?”

“Seventy years,” the man replied.

Honi asked, “Do you think you’ll live seventy more years to eat from it?”

The man said, “I found a world full of carob trees. My ancestors planted for me. So I plant for those who come after me.”

And then, like American short story of Rip Van Winkle, Honi falls asleep for seventy years. When he awakens, he sees the grandson of the man he met, eating from that very tree.

Yet most people do not know the conclusion of the Talmudic legend. After those 70 years of sleep and subsequent awakening, Honi returns to his community, but no one recognizes him. He enters the House of Study where he used to study with his friends — but he is unknown. No one believes that Honi is the scholar they have quoted for so long. No one honors him.

Honi becomes isolated and lonely that the Talmud tells us, Honi prayed for death — and he died. From this narrative, the sages taught: “O chevruta, o mituta” — “Either friendship, or death.”

That’s how essential our relationships are. They are not optional, not simply nice-to-have — they are necessary. God said to Adam, the first earthling made from the earth, through whom God breathed the breath of life, “It is not good to be alone.”

We were not created to go through life alone.

Teshuvah — return — is not just about repairing our relationship with and a return to God. More importantly, it is about our return to others in our lives.

It begins with two steps:

1. Forgive yourself. Accept your own imperfections. You are not the perfect friend, sibling, spouse, or child. You’ve made mistakes. That’s okay. That’s being human.
2. Forgive others. Accept their imperfections too. Don’t demand flawlessness. Relationships are made from stains — the hard conversations, the misunderstandings, the tearful reconciliations. These become the veneer of real life and real love.

Shabbat Shuvah is the Sabbath of return. So here is an invitation for this sacred day:

Sometime today or tomorrow, make a list of three to five people you care about.

Over the days leading to Yom Kippur, call them. Text them. Reach out.

Not necessarily to apologize. Just to reconnect.

Let the red wine stain on the marble be a reminder — not of a mistake, but of the life lived around that kitchen countertop. The meals shared. The laughter. The spilled drinks. The people who mattered. Let our lives, like Carrara marble, be beautiful not because they are perfect — but because they are used, worn, and filled with stories – that inevitably even include mistakes.

Every Biblical character was flawed – Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Moses, King David, and on and on and on.

No stains, no friends.

May this be a year of mending what is torn, cherishing what is good, forgiving what is flawed, and returning — again and again — to one another.