In the latest edition of his Search for Meaning podcast, Stephen Wise Temple Senior Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback delivers his 2022 (5783) Yom Kippur sermon, entitled, “Letting Go - To Grow.” You can view the full video here.

The full transcript follows:
Last month, Jacqueline and I dropped our youngest daughter off at college.

This was our third time so we knew the drill: the first order of business after helping shlep their luggage to their dorm rooms is the journey to Bed, Bath, and Beyond.

This wasn’t a thing when I went to school more than thirty years ago. My parents took me to Eppley Airfield in Omaha, helped me check in my duffel bags, hugged me tight, wished me luck, and sent me on my way. A few hours later I arrived at my destination and found my way to the shuttle bus which took me to campus. I dragged my heavy bags to the housing office, got my key, and—schvitzing profusely in the August heat—met my roommates for the first time.

Whatever we had forgotten to bring with us, well, the University Store had many essential items and there was a department store in town that was about a fifteen-minute walk away. Over the first few weeks of college, somehow, we managed to procure everything we needed to get ourselves set up.

That’s not how it’s done today—at least not in my experience. By and large, parents accompany their kids to school, and today it seems like it’s the parents’ job to procure those necessary items. Enter into any one of these “domestic merchandise retail stores” situated within a thirty-minute drive of a university campus from mid-August to early September, and you’ll see the same thing: parents pushing shopping carts filled with bins, cleaning products, contraband microwave ovens and mini-fridges, and whatever else is on the list that’s mostly likely been texted to them by their matriculating student. You can witness in real-time panic setting in as you see one parent snatching the last twin size mattress pad in the store. 

A little more than a month ago, I made this pilgrimage for the last time.

We are now officially “empty nesters,” gradually getting used to our quieter, neater home.

Each of these college drop-offs has taught me something powerful and profound about letting go, lessons that can help us and those we love grow and mature, and especially on this Day of Atonement, lessons that can help us achieve healing and forgiveness. 

While some of this wisdom relates to parenting, I want to acknowledge that not everyone in this room is a parent, will be a parent, or wishes to be a parent. But we are all somebody’s child and we all have relationships at our places of work and communities we care about where these lessons are applicable.

The first lesson is that letting go, at the right time and in the right way, is good for others, for our loved ones, our colleagues, or those we mentor. They need us to let go of them.

When our girls were little, we held them so tightly, literally and figuratively. God forbid we’d drop them! We’d check on them in the middle of the night to make sure they were still breathing.

I remember holding their little hands in mine as I helped them take their first steps, releasing them at just the right moment as they’d lurch forward and fall. And then I’d gently help them up so they could try again.

I remember the first time they rode a bike without training wheels, standing there, both proud and heartsick, as the most precious thing on earth to us slowly rolled down the street.

Years later, it was teaching them to drive, me sitting in the passenger seat, gripping the door handle for dear life as they eased the car out of the driveway. 

Each of these moments came in its&