Category: High Holy Days

Categories
High Holy Days

Deeds, Not Fasting

In Talmudic times of trouble, tractate Taanit tells how the Jewish community needs to move forward:

The elder among them says words of admonition, “People! It does not say of the citizens of Nineveh that God say their sackcloth and their fasting, but rather: God saw their deeds, that they turned from their evil ways.”

Our High Holy Days are a time for turning.  And we know that it is neither our fasting nor our penitence that matters, but how we change our daily behavior, our deeds.  What is true for individuals is true for nations: the entire citizenry of Nineveh needed to turn from the improper path they walked together.  We know the ways in which our own nation walks are sometimes stepped in sin; our High Holy Days come to admonish us to find better pathways to the future.

This past August, we marked two sad national commemorations.  2019 marked a century since America plunged into its Red Summer, a season of violence in which white supremacists in over 36 cities (and many rural areas) unleased their fury on  black communities, killing hundreds of human beings, injuring countless others, burning many black neighborhoods to the ground.  August 18 of this year also marked the 400th anniversary of the first slave ship arriving on America’s shores.  Our summer has forced us to confront the evil ways of racial injustice that have been a part of our country since its inception.

This past August also witnessed fifty Reform Rabbis stepping forward, learning what we could do to help repair this historic and painful breach.

We travelled together to Montgomery, Alabama.   The destination was the new Legacy Museum and Memorial, build by the Equal Justice Institute to teach our nation about the direct racist trajectory from slavery through Jim Crow to Mass Incarceration.  Bryan Stevenson, the heroic founder of EJI, delivered a powerful keynote at our Cincinnati convention that called us to get proximate to this narrative, to the history, and to the lived experience of others.  Of course, Stevenson called us to learn the lessons so we might take action.  Over 50 CCAR colleagues answer Stevenson’s call for three powerful days this summer.

What did we learn? To begin with, we saw how deeply structures of injustice are built into our American way.  For many of us who had grown up proudly counting important pieces of civil rights legislation passed in the heyday of the Movement, we realized that those laws guaranteeing equal protection and equal opportunity never took their full effect.  Inequalities along racial lines are still starkly visible whether looking at the poverty line or at the distribution of prison sentences.  We learned that while individuals might consider themselves “colorblind,” our system still not only accounts for the color of one’s skin, but—according to overwhelming data and research—also disproportionally disserves people the darker their pigmentation. We learned that in an America that has always baked racism into the system, it is not enough to say, “Well, I’m not a racist.”  In a system as consistently oppressive as ours, we must actively become anti-racist.

Being anti-racist racist means many things.  First and foremost, being  anti-racist means we cannot be passive.  Being anti-racist it means actively learning about the depths of American racism, and then actively working to end our racially unjust system.  Being anti-racist means travelling outside our comfort zones to get proximate to difficult truths.  Being anti-racist means looking at the benefits we have unjustly won from the American system, and then being willing to sacrifice those most ill-gotten gains.  Being anti-racist means we have a whole lot of work to do, not just in our words, but in our deeds.

On the very day that marked the 400th anniversary of the first slave ship arriving on America’s shores, Rabbi Rachel Mikvah taught us about the difficult of dismantling racism.  The Talmud questions the extent to which we need to return objects that were stolen.  The example is brought of a stolen log that has been used—for decades—as the structural support for a grand palace.  Our Rabbis of blessed memory remind us that that stolen beam needs to be returned, even if it mean taking apart the palace, brick by brick. 

We learned this lesson in the cradle of the Confederacy, just hundreds of feet from the Confederate White House.  Yet we know that the other White House, the one that stands as symbol to many of America’s greatness, was built by enslaved individuals.  The labor that built the White House in Washington, D.C., was stolen.  The White House, therefore, symbolizes America in a different way: a structure rooted in injustice whose foundations must be rebuilt, and that which was stolen, returned.  That return, in Hebrew so appropriate for this Holy season called teshuvah, goes by many names we should not be afraid to say in English: repayment, restoration, reparations.

It is not enough that we learn about, that we talk about, that we write about these injustices of old that continue through to today.  Fasting and lament have their place, but they will move the Divine no more than they will change society.  We need a national time not just of truth and reconciliation, but of restoration and reparations.  Our High Holy Days call us to turn from our evil ways.  It is time for all of us to act.  It is time for all of us to help turn our nation from its inarguably racist path towards a future of true liberty and justice for all.

—
Rabbi Seth M. Limmer serves as Senior Rabbi of Chicago Sinai Congregation, and also as a Member of the CCAR Board of Trustees.  Together with Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, he is editor of Moral Resistance and Spiritual Authority: Our Jewish Obligation to Justice, available from CCAR Press.

Categories
High Holy Days

Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die

Who shall live and who shall die…
Who shall perish by water and who by fire…

The Unetaneh Tokef – Rosh Hashanah’s central prayer – is truly terrifying and disturbing.  It tells us that next year at this time, some of us will be gone via a series of dreadful possibilities: floods, fires, illnesses and the like. God issues this decree from high above, sitting on a throne of judgement. Our behavior determines our fate according to the biblical and rabbinic system of reward and punishment. Not only does the prayer arouse people’s fear of dying, it adds a layer of blame and shame, suggesting that our illnesses and losses are deserved and self-inflicted. For this reason, I used to much prefer the interpretive versions by Jack Riemer and Stanley Rabinowitz. They transform the prayer into a psychological reckoning. For example, rather than “Who shall live and who shall die,” Rabinowitz’s version offers “Who shall be truly alive, and who shall merely exist.”[1]

These interpretive efforts are much more in line with my theology. I do not believe in the kind of God who metes out our fate according to strict rules of justice. Indeed, I am not even certain the Bible believes in that kind of God. For example, the book of Job is a powerful challenge to that theology. As the story goes, Job is righteous and good, he loves and praises God even when everything is taken from him. However, Job suffers unfairly, not because he deserves it, but because God has made a bet with Ha-Satan, the Prosecuting Angel. Presumably, the rabbis included Job in the Bible because they realized that the world does not work like clockwork — and neither does God.

So it is no doubt surprising that I have come to value the prayer in its original. I appreciate it because it lends itself to multiple interpretations. If you believe in reward and punishment, you can read the prayer that way. If you prefer a psychological understanding of how our attitude affects our lives, that is an option. And the prayer gives expression to a reality we are forced to face, often regardless of our intentions and our behavior: the fact that some of us won’t be here next year or will be struck by heartache. Some will die of old age; some will become ill; some will lose homes to fires; some will lose loved ones to floods. These are life events over which we have limited control. And God is not necessarily responsible for them.

The question we must really ask is: How will we respond? The concluding verse of the Unetaneh Tokef suggests: U’t’shuvah, u’filah, u’tzedakah, ma-avirin et roa ha-gezera, “Repentance (return), prayer, and righteousness will mitigate the harshness of the decree.” A beautiful way to understand how this works is offered by Rabbi Helen Plotkin:

Teshuvah—repentence (sic), response, return—is the ability to move, to change course, to come back to center, to reconcile.

Tefillah—prayer—is the ability to let the world take your breath away, to hold onto and to articulate gratitude, hope, and awe.

Tzedakah—righteousness—is the ability to pursue justice and to act from a fountain of generosity.[2]

If we follow these practices, our lives will be richer and more rewarding, despite tragedies and setbacks. Wishing you all a shanah tovah u’metukah – a happy and sweet New Year.

—
Rabbi Suzanne Singer serves Temple Beth El in Riverside, CA. She is also a member of the Reform movement of Judaism’s Commission on Social Action as well as on the Leadership Team of California’s Religious Action Center.

[1] Adapted, in David Teutsch, ed., Kol Haneshamah: Prayerbook for the Days of Awe, Elkins Park, PA: The Reconstructionist Press, 1999, p. 345,
[2] https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/142538/unetanah-tokef

Categories
High Holy Days

What We Do Matters and it is Good for the Soul

“The High Holy Days are upon us.  The High Holy Days are upon us!”  Shouts Paul Revere –stein.   Behold the miracle of the Almighty!  They are either early or late… but somehow never on time!  A miracle of Jewish time.  Or how we count Jewish time.   

We who live in two worlds.  Much of our life is spent in our secular universes. We earn a living. We raise a family. We tend to the every day challenges of life-health, bills, a hobby or two. And yet, there is another world.  A world which you to be as integrated into our life as the ubiquitous cell phones are today. As we peer addicted-ly at our phones and onto the world wide web for the answers to our everyday questions. Answers to riddles that come up? Who won the super bowl in 1986? (Answer: Chicago Bears). Who stared in the original Star Is Born? (Answer: Janet Gaynor and Frederic March.) The internet has become our new Torah.

But we know in our heart of hearts, it is soul less. 

We may be addicted to our selfies. But we are Jews, gosh darn it. And we must try, with all of our might and all of our soul to capture “Soul-fies.”  

What is it that captures our hearts and our souls? What is important. We can name a lot of things. But the proof in part of the response is that we are here are we not because we wish to take a “soul-fie.”  Because we know deep down that the answers to life’s questions can not all be found on the world wide web, they are found in the endless learning of Torah, and the eternal values of our people.

Our torah portion, Ki Tavo is a harsh one. Full of warnings of terrible things…illness, famine, poverty…evils that will befall the Israelites if they abandon God’s commandments.

Like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football, our desire to do good things, seemed to be snatched from us and we fall on our “tuchus.”   Like a bad diet we quit way too early at the first temptation of celestial chocolate.   

No one said reaching the promised land would be easy.   

No one said running a Temple would be easy.    

It is not.  It is easy to take short cuts.  It is easy to take a short view.   It is much harder to take the long view.  To understand the importance of laying the foundation for a strong board; a vibrant Temple; nurturing a culture of giving;   It is all too easy to take for granted that which others would be amazed at programmatically.  To live in fear of the unknown– money, membership, keeping the “Israelites” happy.

Moses endured it for 40 years.  Most of you have a two year term or four.   And the burden is sometimes heavy.  Because we aim to please.  And we know deep down it is important.  For our community.  And yes, dare I say it, for our souls.   

We are here not just because we care.  We do.  Not just because we have a fiduciary responsibility to secure the integrity of the Temple.  We do.  We are here because we want to be part of a process that truly matters.  It matters what we decide.  It matters to us, to our community, and to the future of our faith. 

OMG.  When you put it that way rabbi, I am not sure that’s really what I wanted to sign up for!  

And yet. We all did. Because unlike a business which produces a specific product.  We are a sacred community and everyone here are levites in service to God. And our product is not a widget.  Or a better mouse trap.  Or a car.  Or a cell phone.  Our product, pardon the term, is producing Jews.   

And we understand that this matters. It matters to us.  It matters to the world.  It matters to all that we stand for deep down. And when we come here to take our “soulfies” we hope to capture now and always the sacred, special and awesomeness of this task.  

And yes, Dear God, that is what we have signed up for.   And it ain’t easy.   But this task is all of ours.   And it does both drain, and fill our souls.  

Both can be true. May this be our blessing.  Indeed, may this be our blessing.  Amen.

—
Rabbi Sanford Akselrad serves Congregation Ner Tamid in Henderson, Nevada. Rabbi Akselrad wishes to thank Rabbi Naomi Levy for her inspiration on the concept of “soul-fies.” 

Categories
Books High Holy Days

“And who shall I say is calling?”: Leonard Cohen in a Conversation with the Divine

Leonard Cohen z”l, was a quintessentially Jewish artist. His themes and motifs tugged on the heartstrings of Jewish Thought, both contemporary and millennia-old. To those who would argue that his obvious references to other faith systems, both within his work and his personal life, discount his work’s designation as Jewish, I would point out Marc Chagall’s heavy utilization of the crucifix motif — should Chagall’s work be discounted for this as well? But there is a difference. Chagall’s corpus mainly focused on contemporary Jewish life, particularly in the shtetl; Cohen drew his influences from biblical, exegetical, and liturgical tradition. “The Binding of Isaac” is a pseudo-midrashic retelling of the Akeidah narrative; “Who By Fire” is a modern tongue-in-cheek take on Unetaneh Tokef; most famously, “Hallelujah” not only utilizes that familiar refrain found across Psalms, but calls upon several poignant moments throughout our Prophetic narratives.

Mishkan HaNefesh excerpt.

In this way, I posit that Cohen was something of a modern-day (non-liturgical) Paytan. The classical Paytan was not only a poet, but a scholar. The piyutim were filled with both overt and obscure textual and exegetical references in an effort to elevate the fixed liturgical practice both through their aural and cerebral qualities. In Cohen’s contemporary take, he shifted this framework, often subverting the very liturgy or scripture he referenced. It should be noted that for the classical Paytan, it did not necessarily matter if the kahal understood the subtle textual references; the poetry, with all its hints to moments across Jewish text, was for God’s benefit. It is interesting to wonder, for whom did Cohen write his music?

Needless to say, I am a big fan. His music occupies a permanent place in my Spotify “Heavy Rotation” playlist. I find his melodies beautiful and his words profound. His lyrics and poetry are evocative and provocative, calling to mind the lowest depths of the human condition as well as the highest ethereal forms of divinity.

All of that said, my stomach turns to knots when his music is used in a liturgical context. I cringe whenever a shaliach tzibur sets Psalm 150 to Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” I have ranted to friends and classmates: “There is a time and a place for a cold and broken hallelujah; P’sukei D’zimra is never that time.” The whole point of Cohen’s song is to subvert the idea of the Psalm. The Psalm calls to mind the celebratory joy of worship — “Praise God for God’s exceeding greatness. Praise God with blasts of the horn; praise God with harp and lyre. Praise God with timbrel and dance; praise God with lute and pipe…” Meanwhile, Cohen’s text recalls King David’s voyeuristic lust for Bathsheba and Delilah’s betrayal of Samson the Nazirite. The Psalmist’s alacrity and jubilance are replaced by Cohen’s resigned, resentful, “broken” hallelujah. He does this not to belittle Jewish worship, but to complicate our understanding — blind, wholehearted, unquestioning praise simply does not represent our relationship with the Divine.

So, too, does Cohen’s “Who By Fire” function as a countertext of the Unetaneh Tokef liturgy; whereas the somber traditional text places us as submissive and subject to God’s judgement, Cohen introduces a sarcastic response to God’s call: “And who shall I say is calling?” Cohen challenges us to think beyond what God’s judgement is to focus on who is handing down the decrees. While I would argue that, like “Hallelujah,” the song is inappropriate in a liturgical context, it can serve as an excellent study question and prompt for personal thought (in fact, the text can be found as a “Study Text” before Unetaneh Tokef on page 207 of the Yom Kippur volume of Mishkan HaNefesh).

Throughout his work, Cohen does not place himself beneath God, in a submissive, prayerful manner, but instead, sitting across the table, in conversation with the Divine. At no place is this relationship more evident than in Cohen’s titular song of his final album, “You Want It Darker.” He speaks directly to God, “If You are the dealer, I’m out of the game. If You are the healer, that means I’m broken and lame. If Thine is the glory, then mine must be the shame. You want it darker, we kill the flame.” In case there was any doubt as to the identity of Cohen’s conversation partner, Cohen utilizes the opening line of Kaddish, “Magnified, sanctified, be Thy holy name.” He goes on to challenge God’s apparent inaction in the face of our prayers: “A million candles burning for the help that never came.” Cohen is simultaneously exalting and challenging God, all while repeating the familiar biblical response to God’s call: Hineini — “Here I am.”

Clearly, Cohen struggled with God — as our people, Am Yisrael, tend to do. But despite his struggle, his irreverence, his sardonic rhetoric, and his subversion of the liturgy, he still says hineini. To put it in his own words, “Even though it all went wrong, I will stand before the Lord of song, with nothing on my tongue but hallelujah.” This is, in my opinion, his most Jewish line. In the face of adversity and doubt, Jews across time and space have found a way to reaffirm our faith. Whether by the waters of Babylon in the face of exile, in the establishment of the Mourner’s Kaddish following the Crusades, or, recently, in the uptick in synagogue attendance in the wake of mass-shootings in American synagogues, we reaffirm our faith. This is what it means to be called Yisrael, to not only struggle with God, but to follow that struggle with affirmation. In this way, Leonard Cohen’s work essentially represents the embodiment of the Jewish experience.

—
Gabriel Snyder is a rising second-year cantorial student at the DFSSM, HUC-JIR. Growing up at Temple Beth Elohim of Wellesley, he earned his BA in Religious Studies from Skidmore College in 2018. He has spent this summer as a Press Intern at the CCAR, where he has worked on a variety of projects for several upcoming publications. He will spend the next year as the student cantor at Hevreh of Southern Berkshire in Great Barrington, MA.

Categories
High Holy Days Holiday

Going Beyond the Shanah Tovah Email

I miss Rosh Hashanah cards.  They used to begin arriving in my mail box about three weeks before Rosh Hashanah.  Sometimes I knew I was one name on a list of thousands.  Other cards were a message from a great aunt or a member of my community who wanted to tell me something personal.  I always felt a bit ashamed of this enjoyment because I have never sent cards at the New Year.  To have one more thing to do, one more list to compile, seemed way beyond my practical and emotional capacity at this time of year.   But I looked forward to receiving them, and then hanging them as the major form of decoration in the Sukkah.

Now I receive New Year’s greetings in the form of emails.  I deeply appreciate that emails are significantly better for the very world whose creation we celebrate on Rosh Hashanah.  Still, receiving a greeting in an email has a different flavor.   It lacks the distinctive signature, the feel and texture of the paper, the option to place it where it can be seen as a small connection to the broader circle of Jews ushering in a New Year. An email is transient and ephemeral, gone when the delete button is pushed.  In an in-box that is too often overflowing, somehow the greeting becomes just one more thing to click on, one more item to get through.

I know that my feeling is not about cards vs. email.  It’s about connection.  While there is shared commiseration on Facebook about sermons not yet written and the challenge of finding just the right story, for those who are leading services there is an element of loneliness in the work we do this time of year.  The decision about what our particular community needs to hear from the pulpit rests with each individual rabbi.  Are there consequences in my particular location and community if I say something that may be controversial or unpopular?   Sitting in front of a blinking cursor, an open machzor is a solitary task.

We hold personal burdens as well, burdens that are not so easy to talk about with each other.  Is my rabbinic leadership being evaluated based on my Kol Nidrei sermon or the perceived ‘quality’ of the worship?  Is my authenticity lessened when I preach about spiritual preparation and can’t seem to make the time for my own Elul introspection?   What do I do with the guilt I carry about the impact this time of year has on my family?

We may face many of the same questions, but we do so in our own silos, by ourselves.  This need not be the case.  We know from you that you want to reach out to each other, to help and support, in a way that goes beyond the superficial email.  As a rabbinic community, we can live up to that intention.  Amidst the stress of the season, it’s a blessing to hear the voice of another rabbi – the rabbi you talked with at convention but haven’t spoken to since, the new colleague who came to town who you don’t really know yet, the classmate you haven’t seen in a year, a friend.  The nourishment that occurs of those moments of relationship is a way to prepare for the sacred days that lie ahead.  You can’t hang a phone call in a sukkah, but the connection will stay with you long after the sukkah has come down.

—

Rabbi Betsy Torop is the Director of Rabbinic Engagement and Growth for the Central Conference of American Rabbis. 

Categories
High Holy Days News

Creation: Fed up with Tohu

I am honored and excited to be the new editor at the CCAR Press. Under the leadership of Rabbi Hara Person, I will be listening to your ideas, reading what your write, and working with you to create books, apps, and online learning opportunities!

Think about me as your editor, liturgist, and teacher.

As I did for the last six years, I will spend the upcoming High Holidays at a JCC in Chevy Chase-Bethesda, Maryland, where I work as a cantorial soloist. Each year, I deliver the sermon on Erev Rosh haShanah. This is a snippet of the (oh, too many words) I am going to share on that Bimah:

 

I, personally, try to laugh that laughter more often these days. It’s a laughter that is forgiving towards myself, towards the human beings around me, and towards this entire mess of our chaotic world. I try to internalize that all we have is a little Torah (a book written after all,  on the skin of a dead cow) in order to help us figure out together the nature of this mystical creation, and write together the Torah of our lives, Torat Hayim, the Torah of Life, a living Torah.

In other moments, I, like so many others, grow impatient, and then I write poems (S. Pilz (2018): Creation. Unpublished.) like this one:

Creation: Fed up with Tohu

What if in the beginning
Something did get consumed?
With black coal a universe got written
Dancing, twisting, whimpering, crawling,
What if in the beginning,
Something was broken.

You and I, we shine together.

What if we were to learn
How to calmly tame our fire?
Will we then crush gently,
And rise,
With a kiss?

 

Most of our time on earth, it seems to me, gets spent trying to figure out how to live this life right here and now. We are getting used to ourselves and to others. We build relationships, co-creating our own entire little universes. This way, all of us re-create and change the world in every single second. This, now, is a moment when the world gets re-created by us. And now. At every single moment of our lives.

And in these moments, as all of us are sitting here together, creating a universe of prayer, Torah, singing, learning, the order of prayer, reflection, and beauty, I want to share yet another poem with you, a second poem by the American writer Mary Oliver (M. Oliver (1992): New and Selected Poems, from “The Summer Day”, p. 94.) who wrote the poem with which I opened my sermon:

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

—

Rabbi Sonja K. Pilz earned a doctorate from the department of Rabbinic Literature at Potsdam University, Germany; she holds Rabbinic Ordination from Abraham Geiger College, Germany. Prior to joining the CCAR Press as editor, Sonja taught Jewish liturgy, worship, and ritual at HUC-JIR, NY; the School of Jewish Theology at Potsdam University; and in many congregational settings. She served as a visiting rabbi and cantorial soloist in congregations in Germany, Switzerland, Israel, and the US.

Categories
High Holy Days Prayer

“Gates” as an Enduring Metaphor

At Neilah, the closing service at the end of Yom Kippur, we imagine ourselves standing at the gates of heaven, urgently pleading for forgiveness until the final second of the day expires and the gates close.

The moment is one of great solemnity. We cry out: “Open a gate for us when the gates are being closed, for the day is about to fade” (Mishkan HaNefesh, Yom Kippur, p640). This is it. A last chance to plead our case.

Each year, surrounded by hundreds of congregants, in the urgency of prayer, I imagine myself standing alone at an ancient stone wall. There are two large wooden gates with iron adornments. One of the gates is already closed, the other slowly closing by an unseen force. They look more like the outer gates of a city than the gates of a castle. My prayer enters through these gates. The day fades. The shofar blows. I haven’t passed through the gates, but I haven’t walked away, either.

In this visualization of the metaphor, there’s a gate for each of us. Each gate is different. It’s the gate created by our own triumphs and our own challenges, our own misdeeds and our own acts of tikkun olam. In this version of the metaphor, each year the gate is different, shaped by our lives over the past 12 months.

We are, in truth, always standing at the gates of heaven. In each moment, we have the chance to build or destroy, to love or to withhold love, to bless or to curse, to be brave or to live in fear. Each moment is both a barrier and a portal.

This is what makes “gates” an enduring metaphor. The metaphor is potent with possibility. It’s a reminder of the challenges ahead.

As the sun fades, as darkness sets in, we pray one final viduii, one last confessional before that closing blast of the shofar. Then it is time to go back into the world, renewed and refreshed with the blessing of forgiveness.

Repentance Inside
This I confess:
I have taken my transgressions with me,
Carrying them year by year into my hours and days,
My lapses of conscience
And indiscretion with words,
My petty judgments
And my vanity,
Clinging to grief and fear, anger and shame,
Clinging to excuses and to old habits.
I’ve felt the light of heaven,
Signs and wonders in my own life,
And still will not surrender to holiness and light.

God of redemption,
With Your loving and guiding hand
Repentance in prayer is easy.
Repentance inside,
Leaving my faults and offenses behind,
Is a struggle.
In Your wisdom You have given me this choice:
To live today as I lived yesterday,
Or to set my life free to love You,
To love Your people,
And to love myself.

God of forgiveness, help me to leave my transgressions behind,
To hear Your voice,
To accept Your guidance,
And to see the miracles in each new day.

Blessed are You,
God of justice and mercy,
You who sets Your people on the road to t’shuvah.

—

Alden Solovy is a liturgist, author, journalist, and teacher.  His work has appeared in Mishkan R’Fuah: Where Healing Resides (CCAR Press, 2012), L’chol Z’man v’Eit: For Sacred Moments (CCAR Press, 2015), Mishkan HaNefesh: Machzor for the Days of Awe (CCAR Press, 2015), and Gates of Shabbat, Revised Edition (CCAR Press, 2016). He is the author of This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day  (CCAR Press, 2017) and This Joyous Soul: A New Voice for Ancient Yearnings, now available for pre-order from CCAR Press.

Repentance Inside is reprinted with permission from This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day © 2017 CCAR Press

Categories
Healing High Holy Days

A Less Lonely Path to Repentance

The High Holy Day days can be a lonely experience. Though many of us gather in overflowing sanctuaries, together with family and friends who constitute a community, each of us must confess our individual sins, seek forgiveness from those we have hurt, change our ways, offer tzedakah, and pray for our own individual absolution. We seem not to receive, or to give, any assistance in the process of repentance.

Our lonely journey to forgiveness was not always the Jewish way. When our ancestors required expiation, they would bring a sacrifice to the Temple. The blood of the animal, slain in the sacred ritual, would atone for their sins. Yes, the penitent Jew had to recite the appropriate words, and was required to provide the animal for the sacrifice, so the individual did have some role in that process, but the Priest did most of the work and the poor animal paid the ultimate price. The ancient Israelite was the beneficiary of what might be called “vicarious atonement,” forgiveness through the sacrifice from the flocks or the herds.

Christianity adopted this idea of vicarious atonement, with the faith that Jesus’ blood, shed on the cross, atones for the sins of others. Perhaps because Jews tend to disassociate ourselves so forcefully from that specific Christian claim, we have shied away from any notion that anyone or anything other than ourselves can help return us to the good graces of our God. Perhaps we protest too much. After all, we confess in the first person plural, “the sins we have committed.” Why not seek forgiveness communally?

Our Rosh Hashanah prayers do declare that we may find forgiveness in the righteousness of others. One portion of our shofar service is called zichronot, or remembrances. We ask God to hear the blasts and remember the righteousness of our ancestors, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob, Leah and Rachel. If we do not deserve atonement on these High Holy Days, we beg God to forgive us on account of their merit.

More personally, each of us recalls loved ones, now gone from this world, who had laudable traits that we wish we possessed. We may pray, in words of Reform prayer books past: “May the nobility in their lives and the high ideals they cherished endure in our thoughts and live on in our deeds.” Our beloved dead can truly live, if we will carry the goodness of their lives into our own. Perhaps, too, when we fall short, God will recall our loved ones’ goodness, and forgive us on their account.

Blessedly, our partners in repentance may include the people who continue to share our lives every day. Judaism teaches us the value of the tocheha, the loving rebuke, delivered in the right spirit, in the right time, in the right place. Nothing makes me a better person than a caring critique from a person who cares deeply about me. Even if we recoil from the rebuke upon first hearing it, we can learn, and become better people, in the process. Living in covenant calls upon us to help each other to abandon our unholy paths.

Let us find forgiveness for ourselves and offer atonement to others in the embrace of community on these High Holy Days.

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Rabbi Barry H. Block serves Congregation B’nai Israel in Little Rock, Arkansas, and is a member of the CCAR Board of Trustees.

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High Holy Days News

It’s Not the Apocalypse

Many people are speaking like it’s the end of days.

We know these people.  Sometimes, we are these people.  The way our world is talking has escalated our existence from the already wearisome struggles of everyday life to the exasperating level of world-ending scenarios.  But sometimes what seems like an apocalypse is just everyday life.

Jewish history is filled with people predicting the apocalypse.  Amongst the first of those was the last of our Prophets, Malachi.  His final prophecy warned of the approaching day of Divine judgment that like a “smelter’s fire” would purge Israel: Who can endure the day of this arrival, Malachi wonders.  Doom and gloom, destruction and suffering, are the imagery of the prophet’s visions.  Like many prophetic peers, Malachi saw his own time period as the literal “end of days”.

But Malachi’s 4th Century was hardly the end of days… in fact, it was the beginning of a wonderful period of expansion of Jewish thought, literature, and even political power!  The prophet’s perceived apocalypse in fact was the dawn of a far better day than he ever imagined.

Our Rabbis actually lived through a far more violent time than did Malachi: they were eyewitness to multiple failed insurrections in Judea, massacres in the Jewish diaspora, and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.  Despite all this, our Rabbis couldn’t have cared less about any apocalypse.  They needed simply to get through the day, to find a viable way for Jewish values and Jewish life to continue.

Our Rabbis read Malachi, especially the prophet’s final vision.  In fact, they maintained Malachi’s message, but steered it away from a prophecy of doom towards an oracle of hope.  They shifted our communal focus from a violence-ridden apocalyptic end-of-days to a messianic age of hope and glory.  How did they do so?  They aggrandized Malachi’s image of Elijah returning as the herald of an edenic age.  As a result of this Rabbinic revolution, Elijah has since stood as the paradigm of possibility for a world not only repaired, but perfected.  Thus do we make room for the hopeful optimism of Elijah every Passover, and intone only the positive part of the picture painted by Malachi: Behold, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before the coming of the great and awesome day of God.  Elijah shall turn the hearts of parents to children and the hearts of children to parents.

Our Rabbis pivoted from awaiting a day doom towards working for a season of hope.  We need to do the same.

And there’s no better time than right now.  Our High Holy Day season, centered around the possibility of turning towards our better selves, makes clear that the choice we should make in these troubled times is to do everything within our power to restore hope and promise to our world.  In fact, the premise of the High Holy Days could never be more clearly stated than the very words of Malachi: Turn back to Me, and I will turn back to you, declares Adonai.  Our entire season of turning helps us focus first our intentions and then our deeds so that we can reorient our lives towards the better people we know we can be.

There’s no doubt there were troubles the in Malachi’s time, or in the age of our Rabbis.  And I would be the last to say there isn’t a lot broken with our world today, both here in America and overseas in Israel.  But especially in difficult days, Judaism reminds us we must make a powerful choice: we can see things as the end of days and turn inward, or we can work towards a messianic era and reach out our hands to fix our broken world.  In today’s times of trouble, in our Holy Day season of turning towards the purest paths, may we all move away from talking about the apocalypse and instead dedicate ourselves even more deeply to the work of tikkun olam, of bringing hope and healing to all.

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Rabbi Seth M. Limmer, serves Chicago Sinai Congregation.  He is also the immediate past Chair of the Justice and Peace Committee of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and also Vice-Chair of the policy-setting body of the Union for Reform Judaism, its Commission on Social Action, and currently serves on the board of the Central Conference of American Rabbis.  He is also the co-editor of the forthcoming Moral Resistance and Spiritual Authority: Our Jewish Obligation to Social Justice from CCAR Press., now available for pre-order.