Category: High Holy Days

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High Holy Days

Elul and the Red Planet

This July Mars was closer than it’s been to Earth in fifteen years.  With giddiness and wonder many of us took a glance at the night sky to see a hazy orange glow that indeed felt far more visible than usual.

In truth, Mars is always roughly the same distance from the earth, 38 million miles give or take a few.  Sometimes, however, as happened this summer, our vantage point changes and we see our neighboring planet anew, as if now immediately by our side.  Rather than have our heads buried in phones and screens of every ilk, we saw in a new light what otherwise seemed so taken-for-granted.  The scientific community used the opportunity to present new findings on the epic volcano, Olympus Mons, the largest in our solar system, which rests atop Mars, as well as a winding lake, long dry, stretching twelve miles across a portion of the red planet.

All of it becomes a reminder that we need to look up sometimes too.  We need to be reminded to turn our gaze elsewhere, away from Facebook and meeting agendas, lengthy emails and service outlines.  Elul pulls us back, and turns our gaze to what matters, even as we feel the stifling pull of planning for our holy day season.  Rather than get drawn to the stark glare of logistics and minutiae, let alone a news cycle that can be so unnerving, Elul brings our attention to those places we often neglect.  During this sacred month, we turn to the full breadth of our faith, community, our Homeland and our God.  As the tangible world competes for attention and commercials blare of sales and upcoming TV premiers, it is Elul that pulls our heart back to what is most fundamental.

As one of the harrowing Haftarah readings of this time of year urges: ‘Look up all around you and see; they are all assembled, are come to you’ (Isaiah 49:18).

As we turn ourselves now to our most central and sacred texts and prepare for the upcoming hagim, we see it all as if anew, against the backdrop of our scary world and the multiple generations within our communities that are in search of perspective and guidance for today.  Like a planet that has always been there, but somehow feels brand new, we stand now to come back to the familiar hues and tones of Slichot, the Binding of Isaac, Tashlich, and of course Jonah.  Like Mars, these narratives feel both mysterious and familiar.  They are both right beside us and as distant as ever.  We squint to see them with clarity and marvel at how many have looked at them over the centuries.

Our task becomes turning them round and round so that our collective vantage point has us see them for what they are: inspiring, beautiful, and offering us the wisdom we so very much need.

—

Rabbi Benjamin David serves Adath Emanu-El in Mt Laurel, New Jersey and is a co-founder of the Running Rabbis.  Rabbi David is also the Editor of CCAR Press’s  Seven Days, Many Voices: Insights into the Biblical Story of Creation.

 

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High Holy Days

A Lifelong Process of Becoming

The High Holy Days are that special time in the Jewish calendar for us to take a step back and reflect on who we are as people. We are given the opportunity to look back on the previous spin around the sun to ponder where we were in our lives and where we are going in the coming year. One of the most effective means by which to consider our holistic growth as fully-rounded human beings is to engaging in t’shuvah, the act of returning to our core state of authentic righteousness. And as we approach these most auspicious of days, the question that should be on our lips and inscribed in our heart is: what does t’shuvah mean for me?

On a spiritual level, the process of t’shuvah is akin to finding our innermost point, a phrase we call nekuda ha’penimit. Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter—known as the Sefat Emet—taught, “For everything there is a point of essence (nekudah chayut)… and the world is pulled by this single point.” Once we find this constantly evolving place of inner Godliness, we can nurture it and expand it from smallness to its inherent, infinite potential. This is, perhaps, the most important task of our lives. T’shuvah, the literal translation usually rendered as returning, is a process where constantly returning to a deep inner point of being is the objective; allowing these encounters to transform all that we do and all that we are.

On that same thought, Maimonides taught that: “The Jewish People will only be redeemed through teshuvah (Hilchot Teshuvah 7:5). None of us can hold off a moment of growth as no one has reached perfection. “There is no righteous individual on earth who does [only] good and never does wrong” (Ecclesiastes 7:20).

In the trenches of Kabbalistic thought, coming to know one’s inner deepest self—one’s id and one’s angelic self—means coming to know something much deeper. Shem Tov Ibn Falaquera explains it in this way:

They said that whoever knows his soul knows his Creator, and whoever is ignorant of knowing his soul is ignorant of the knowledge of his Creator. How can one believe that a person is wise concerning something else when he is ignorant concerning himself? … Therefore, they said that the knowledge of the soul is prior to the knowledge of God (Sefer ha-Nefesh, translation by R. Jospe).

Similarly, Yosef Ibn Tzadik taught:

By man knowing his own soul, he will know the spiritual world from which he can attain some knowledge of the Creator, as it is written, “From my flesh I shall perceive God” [Job 19:26] (Ha-Olam ha-Katan, translation by S. Horovitz).

While religions across the world maintain their own systems of ritual and symbolism, each with their differing perspectives of human-divine interaction, it is our goal nonetheless that we keep our eyes focused on the main role of organized spirituality: to transform and elevate our core being to actualize our mission in this world. To do so, we must be engaged in a daily process of t’shuvah.

There are no set instructions for performing t’shuvah; it’s not an endeavor that one does carelessly. For example, there is the t’shuvat of refraining from doing the same action we repented for in the past (t’shuvat ha’ba’ah); removing pleasure in one’s life equal to the pleasure gained from the wrong done (T’shuvat Ha’mishkol); realizing the need to correct missed spiritual opportunities; and realizing that we need to t’shuvah for the self and t’shuvah for a collective purpose as that of family, community, or the world.

And these are only the beginning!

As in any major pursuit, too many people focus on the macro effect of their efforts rather than the incremental steps. We need game plans. We need dedication. We need the foresight to wake up every morning and ask: How are we going to make every day count? Each of us has the opportunity develop our plan of reflection and action so that we can actualize our greatest potentials. That is what this time of the year reinforces most strongly.

In this life, we are charged with a seemingly unconquerable moral task: to balance striving (hishtadlut) with trusting (bitachon). These two qualities bifurcate our ethical and empirical selves. How far do we go to cultivate radical empathy for the vulnerable and downtrodden, but at the same time, develop a sense to know that our efforts may not be enough to help everyone? Indeed, these challenges of understanding the limits of our potential require intentional effort; they require us to release a deeply imperfect human need for total control. In that way, t’shuvat reflects our desire for holiness. It’s about ensuring that humanity becomes a force for healing rather than a force for hurting; for building rather than destroying; for contributing rather than diminishing. And when we return (shuv) to our Divine essence (tzelem Elokim), our souls reflect their heavenly origin and reveal the beauty of our human aspirations.

—

Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz is the President and Dean of Valley Beit Midrash and the author of Pirkei Avot: A Social Justice Commentary (CCAR, 2018).

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chaplains Death High Holy Days

Love and Washing: Preparing for the Days of Awe

The time of death was 6:55 pm, last night.  The patient was 2 weeks old.  Her name means “journey,” her mother explained. As the doctor and nurses prepared to detach the tubes and wires from her tiny body, her tearful family gathered around.  In a soft voice, the head nurse told the family that after the extubation, they would bathe the baby’s body, so the mother could hold her.  Suddenly, one of the aunties looked up and said, “And you said I could help bathe her.”  The nurse agreed firmly.

I looked at the tiny body, oozing and bloody, yet inconceivably pure and innocent. I thought of Psalm 51.7: “Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean, wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.”

As we work through this month of Elul, preparing each in our own way for those trembling Days of Awe in which we confront our mortality and lead others in confronting their own, I pondered the relationship between love and washing.  The well-known drash on the name of this month, “Ani l’ Dodi, v’Dodi li,” underscores the sentiment that we approach God with love, not fear, as we search ourselves and inventory our transgressions.  Coming up with this list of smudges and soot what are we to do now?

Not until last night, could I fully conceive of what the relationship between forgiveness and love might feel like, what might it look like?  Love bathes. Love washes away- like a warm basin, like a soapy washcloth, like a gentle waterfall.

Showering with a lover, drawing a bath for a child, performing taharah – love cleans.

As we prepare for these Yamim Noraim only weeks away, let us go about the gut wrenching and the mundane, the trivial and the sacred, the parts we like and those we don’t, knowing that God’s gentle hands are already gathering perfumed soaps and oils, warm towels and holy loofahs, in anticipation of washing us clean.

—

Rabbi Leah Cohen Tenenbaum, D.Min, C’2000 serves as a chaplain at Yale-New Haven Hospital.

Categories
High Holy Days Prayer

On the Same Page

How to get 6000+ people on the same page for a service? When we started Rosh Hashanah Under the Stars more than a decade ago, we didn’t even know this was an important question to address.

Laura Black, a decades-long member of the congregation, mentioned her idea to Cantor Judi Rowland while both were working out at the gym. She told Judi that while her adult children had no interest in joining her for our ‘regular’ services, she thought that she could persuade them if we would hold a service outside somewhere, maybe in a park. We were taken with the idea as Cantor Rowland, Rabbi Rex Perlmeter and I thought about the possibilities for engagement and outreach.  We began plans to take our ‘Alternative/Family’ service out of the social hall and into Oregon Ridge Park where the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra regularly holds their summer concert series.

As we concocted that first RHUS, we had a couple of principles in mind that still hold 11 years later. We wanted the service to be free, open to the public, accessible and warm. We wanted people to know that even though they would be welcome wearing shorts, eating picnics, not shushing their kids, that this would be a service and not an “event.” For that first year, our clergy team put together a small service booklet and ambitiously printed double the number of attendees we expected. “If 500 people show up,” we thought, “that will be incredible!”  When that first Erev Rosh Hashanah arrived, we found that we had over 1500 in our remarkable congregation.

During the second and third year’s planning meetings, I fretted that many of those booklets had not returned to us. I was concerned about the potential chilul of where those booklets might have ended up and about the environmental waste of resources that would not be re-used and possibly not recycled. I wanted to revise some of the language we had chosen, but didn’t want to get rid of all the books we still had on hand. Some time between the third and fifth year I encountered Visual T’filah at a convention. At first I was wary – prayers projected on a huge screen felt too ‘megachurchy,’ too ‘non-Jewish’ for all the obvious reasons. But I also found the pictures accompanying prayers engaging and the images added intriguing layers of meaning.

I reached out to Rabbi Dan Medwin, Visual T’filah’s creator, and gathered a small group of smart and creative congregants. We studied the Erev Rosh Hashanah service and decided on imagery. One offered his own photography, another her own artwork. We went through revisions with Dan and finalized a beautiful prayer book that would be displayed on a jumbo screen flanking the band shell transformed into a bima.  In 2011 Visual T’filah became the prayer book of RHUS. In the years that followed, we were able to change translations, swap songs and add or remove images without any of the attendant waste. After a year or two, as ipads and smart phones became ubiquitous, we wanted people to have the option of downloading the service in advance. This felt especially important for the attendees toward the back of the ever-growing crowd. Dan devised and revised the download process so that attendees could have it in hand or watch it on the big screen.

Who knows what alchemy has allowed RHUS to grow to over 6000 attendees in the decade+ of its existence? We now have two jumbo screens as well as banks of enormous speakers. There are families whose children have never known an Erev Rosh Hashana without Visual T’filah, lawn chairs, and fantastically vibrant community. BHC members come together with unaffiliated Jews, folks who belong to other Reform, Conservative and even Orthodox congregations in Baltimore, Washington DC, Virginia, and Pennsylvania and a handful of non-Jews who just want to share in the celebration of a New Year with us. It is truly a blessing to have 6000+ people together on the same jumbo page, if only for one service a year.

—

Rabbi Elissa Sachs-Kohen is one of the rabbis at Baltimore Hebrew Congregation where she has served for 14 years.

Categories
High Holy Days Holiday

Walking the Elul Journey: My T’shuvah Trail Revolves around Relationship

apple icon , sketched side and honey side. illustration. "Happy New Year" (Hebrew)

As I walk this journey this month of Elul, my t’shuvah trail focuses on relationship:

I remember the rabbinic thoughts of the medieval Spanish Jewish sage, Isaac Abravanel. He believed that in preparing our neshamah for the specialness of the High Holidays, we need to sift through our emotional baggage, our life story pieces, and “prepare provisions for the journey.”  

I remember the thoughts of the 19th Century Musar teacher, the Cheshvan HaNefesh, who focuses on the middot of seder (order): “Set all your actions and possessions in order. Assure that everything is in its place and time, and your thoughts are free to engage with what is before you.” He wants us to clear out distractions from the work of the moment. This connective tissue is a journey of self-discovery, reflection and reframing.

The most important gift that I give to my home hospice dementia patients and their families is the gift of presence.  Like our foreparents in the Wilderness of Sinai, I accompany them on their journey through their wilderness. It requires me to be open to him or her as my teacher. His or her teaching goes beyond words and into nonverbal psychospiritual conversation. The journey may arise as moments of agitation or mumbled words or be a hand held or a simple smile. In this and other ways that we accompany this individual, we reflect, reframe, and validate the individual and the holy space around him or her. All of us learn to value the essence of being. the life story pieces, and “prepare provisions for the journey.”

By the time I was his student, one man, who taught me how, was 89.  He was a sweet, menschy, scholarly man.  He never let me forget that his Talmud teachers had been my great, great grandfather and my great grandfather. In the early 20th Century, they sent the two Chaims, him and his best friend, my grandfather, to start an American branch of the family Musar yeshiva. At my Bar Mitzvah, my weekly study sessions with him, and at my rabbinic orals, he kidded me about answering his questions with some of their words rather than my own. He retired only when his battle with Dementia took over.

Each morning and early evening he went to his own synagogue. But on Friday nights he came to my first congregation. His wife hoped that being in shul would slow the progression of the disease. At the end of each service, she waited outside for him. But this man could not find his way to the door. One of his other students brought him to her in his own synagogue, and I brought him out to her on Friday nights.

For the first three years of my rabbinate, this wonderful man continued to be my teacher. Dementia peels away the protective mask layers of personality we put up, revealing the inner spark. His smile warmed each person’s heart.

There is a wise teaching that one learns the most from watching how our teachers tie their shoelaces:

My teacher taught each of us patience. He taught us how to deal with things out of our control with joy. He taught us the sincerity of prayer, and how God answers us. But his greatest life lesson to us was what his disease left of his true priorities-

What makes us angry and frustrated?

How do we behave when stripped of our masks?

How do we set our practical life priorities?  

He was 98 when he passed. His spark piece remains close to my heart and my own piece of light. This is one journey to Elul…the T’shuvah trail to relationship.

—

Rabbi Charles P. Rabinowitz, BCC is a member of the CCAR Rapid Response Team as a Rabbinic Bereavement and Pastoral Counselor.  Rabbi Rabinowitz also works for Caring Hospice of New York where he provides home hospice and palliative care services to patients and families.

Categories
High Holy Days Holiday

Bnei Belial—The Children of No Avail

Hannah, heroine of our Haftarah for Rosh HaShanah, has continuously challenged communal assumptions.  For me, her plea not to be considered a child of no avail resonates with the outcry of recent weeks from 800,000 children who likewise want their human value recognized in the face of an Attorney General and President who only deem them wothy of deportation.  And so I offer this intention, this Kavvanah, as a potential frame for our reading of the Haftarah this High Holy Day season.

 

 

 

בני בליעל—Bnei Belial—The Children of no Avail

a poem for the Haftarah of Rosh HaShanah

there she stands
silently
praying for a better future
any future
bitter spirit notwithstanding
crying praying crying
keeping to herself
the taunts and trampled hopes
the privileged provoke

there he stands
positioned authority
abusing the power he was born into
watching the signs
misreading as he spoke
unknowingly asking
how long?
how long will your worthless lot
intrude upon my sacred land

so it has been for handmaids
immemorial from time
misread by priests and potentates and presidents
mistaking women of valor
for the children of no avail

men stand on the steps
of Shiloh the Statehouse of Congress
and pay no attention
to the prayer on a hopeful mother’s lips
mistaking piety for insobriety
drunkenness for dreaming

how long?
how long will your worthless lot plague us with your petty problems
they rebuke the crying women
who want but a better future,
or only just a future

Abraham stood atop Moriah
risked his son’s very life for the very life of his son
the paradox of a dream denied a dream deferred
becoming dream fulfilled

we break the law
out of ultimate respect for the law

Hannah stood on her steps
prayed for her child’s very life for the life of a son
who might listen where others’ ears turn deaf
a human being
who would look at prayerful lips
and seek to heal and not to harm
to bless and not to curse
the paradox of a dreamer denied a dreamer deferred
becoming dream fulfilled

how long?
how long will our worthless lot
remain indifferent to all who cry to all who whisper wanting
but a better future,
how long will we remain silent
our lips pursed not in prayer but in resigned indifference
as dreams are deferred, denied, deported
how long will we remain children of no avail

—

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.

 

Categories
High Holy Days Holiday

What an AA meeting Taught Me about Creating Sacred Space

Last week, a good friend of mine invited me to join them when they received their 2-year coin at Alcoholics Anonymous. This is not a world that I typically inhabit, and I discovered during the meeting that that world had a lot to teach me about building community, making meaning, and doing teshuva.

In the synagogue world, and especially in small-congregations, it often feels like we are one step behind in the latest trends, one marketing campaign or social media strategy or new melody away from transforming our congregations.

It was fascinating to watch people engage with a community that takes the exact opposite approach. AA meetings use no technology. There is no social media hashtag, no membership database or targeted emails. Nothing is projected on a screen or set to music. Each meeting is grounded in the same 12 steps and 12 traditions, and therefore is probably very similar to how meetings were when the group was founded in 1935.

And yet, people show up every day, because they know that they need what is offered in this sacred space. They come for the no-frills experience of sharing their stories, offering support to those who are struggling, and being seen and heard by their partners in recovery.

They come to do teshuva in the full sense of the word. Turning away from what made their lives unmanageable, and returning to the right path, even after a painful detour, even after walking a path that may have irrevocably changed their lives and their relationships.

Each person who spoke, regardless of where they were in their personal journey of recovery, essentially told the same story: I hurt myself and others with my behavior, I regretted my actions, and I resolved to make a change. Each day, I have to make the decision to live a better life, and that is not easy. But with the support of my community, I feel like it is possible.

This could have been lifted word for word from Maimonides: “I committed iniquity before You by doing the following. Behold, I regret and am embarrassed for my deeds. I promise never to repeat this act again” (Hilchot Teshuva 1:1).

As rabbis, we spend a lot of time coordinating the logistics of High Holy Day worship. But when we strip away the songs and slides and service orders, the essence of our High Holy Day experience bears a strong resemblance to that of an AA meeting. No matter what techniques we employ, our goal is to create a sacred space for our people to do cheshbon hanefesh, a “fierce moral inventory,” to acknowledge that our actions have hurt ourselves and others, and to resolve to make a change. Teshuva, like sobriety, requires an ongoing daily commitment to do better, and we are here to remind our community that none of us engages in this hard work alone. Because it is knowing that we are not alone that makes real transformation seem possible.

Shana Tovah.

— 

Rabbi Leah R. Berkowitz serves Vassar Temple in Poughkeepsie, NY.

Categories
High Holy Days Holiday

A Rosh HaShanah Reflection on Birth and Possibility

I love asking my kids, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” because I am always so enamored and tickled with their answers.  One wants to be a policeman, a fireman, a goalie for the Rangers and a professional soccer player—and maybe a basketball player—all at the same time.  Another wants to be a thunderstorm (really!) or maybe one of the Beatles.  And the earnestness, with which they answer me, always cuts right to the core.  My kids, like most children, dream in Technicolor, believing they can do most anything and be most anyone.  There are no limits they cannot overcome, no voices casting doubt on their glorious reveries; they just dream big and wide and free.

What would it take for us to dream those dreams?  What would inspire us to set our sights higher than the sky?  How might we learn to open ourselves up rather than close ourselves off? Emily Dickinson once wrote, “I dwell in possibility;” and while I am certain our children dwell there too, do we?

On Rosh Hashanah, we do.  On Rosh Hashanah, we are beckoned to that Dwelling Place, urged to step in and experience the wonder of limitless possibility.  We call this day Hayom Harat Olam– the day the world “burst into being.” [1] This is the day of the world’s beginning, but it marks our beginning as well.  On this day there is no telling what we can do or who we can become; our potential is endless, limited only by the stretch of our own imagination.

Indeed, this is our day– to create, to renew, to repair. Yes, this is our day to pave new paths, to chart new courses, to begin again. It is Rosh Hashanah, (after all,) Hayom Harat Olam, a consecration of birth itself.

Our Tradition claims that Adam was born this day,[2] along with Isaac and Samuel.[3]  Some even add Sarah and Joseph to the list as well.  This also is said to be the day when our ancestors were freed from Egypt, the day a new nation was born.

Creation is not an end, we learn, but a beginning.[4] This day is not only about cataloguing the birth stories of our history; it is about catalyzing these beginnings in our own lives. Against this incredible tapestry of birth, we stand poised to write our own stories of renewal.

In our highly rational world, the cycle of life still remains a pristine miracle.  How does a tiny seed become a mighty tree?  And how does the lowly caterpillar turn into the majestic butterfly?  It’s a delicious mystery that we are privy to, each and every day.

In birth, we bear witness to a marvel far beyond our comprehension. In birth we are granted a taste of the Divine.  For with every new life, another element of God’s blueprint is revealed.  And with every new life, the order of the world shifts and a new equilibrium is formed.  In a single moment, everything can change, and everything does.

Creation, we learn, is ongoing. As the Hasidic teacher Simhah Bunam of Poland, describes it: “God created the world in a permanent state of reishit, beginning.

The world is always incomplete. Continuous creative effort is needed to renew the world, to keep it from sinking again into primeval chaos.”[5]

Thus we understand why birth is so present during these days of Awe.  We are the agents of God’s handiwork on this earth, constantly implementing pieces of God’s design with every creative act we perform. We are participants in the act of Creation.

We are responsible for executing God’s master plan.

Birth is no longer a privilege; it is a mandate.  We are empowered to create life, to generate ideas, to revitalize ourselves.   We are given the opportunity to forge new paths and rebuild broken friendships.  This is our time to contribute to the world around us, and renew the life that God implanted within and among us, so very long ago.

We learn that the [Holy blessed One] said to Israel:  “Remake yourselves by repentance during the ten days between New Year’s Day and the Day of Atonement.  And on the Day of Atonement, I will hold you guiltless, regarding you as a newly made creature.”[6]

My friend once called birth “the sound of a gun at the beginning of a marathon….”[7] The gun has just fired.  As we commence the Ten Days of Awe, our journey begins. How will we renew ourselves during this time?   What will we contribute to the cycle of creation?   How will we emerge when these days of Repentance are through?

Let us feel encouraged by the limitless potential the High Holidays bring.  If there ever were a time to stretch ourselves, it is now.  If there ever were a time to grow, it is now. God is most accessible to us right now, during these Days of Awe.

We are shareholders in this world that God has created. God is our partner in the work we do.  HaYom Harat Olam- Now is the time to continue God’s sacred vision of creation.

L’Shana Tova U’Metukah!

—

Rabbi Sara Sapadin serves Temple Emanu-El in New York City as Adjunct Rabbi.

 

[1] Rabbi Alan Lew. This Is Real and You are Completely Unprepared, p. 116

[2] Vayikra Rabbah, 29:1

[3] http://telshemesh.org/tishrei/, August 12

[4] Rabbi Malka Drucker, http://www.malkadrucker.com/create.html

[5] quoted in Kol Haneshamah: Prayerbook for the Days of Awe, p. 492

[6] Pesikta Rabbati 40:5

[7] Edi Nelson

 

Categories
High Holy Days Holiday

Everything Is Waiting For You

I watch the moon closely during the month of Elul.  Two weeks of expansion and then the moon contracts.  Such is the moon’s pattern during every month of the year.  But in Elul, I am paying attention. Perhaps you are too. In this month, the moon’s movement tells us that the new year is on the way.  Along with the night sky’s growing darkness, Rosh Hashanah soon will arrive. More than absence, the new moon represents possibility. As poet David Whyte reminds each one of us, “everything is waiting for you.”

This is my first High Holy Day season as Director of Rabbinic Placement for the CCAR.  I recently wrote in the CCAR newsletter that I have been thinking a lot about the spirituality of placement and the possibilities for holiness and wholeness that flow through every aspect of this work.  When I think of the spirituality of placement, the word that most resonates with me is “pilgrim.” Placement is a pilgrimage, and one who enters the process of placement – whether a rabbi or a congregation – embarks on a pilgrimage.

To be a pilgrim, to be on a pilgrimage, is to participate in a journey of return. Though the pilgrim never may have been on that particular path before, the process calls forth a remembering, a return to questions that are elemental, foundational, essential: Who am I?  To whom and what am I committed? For what do I exist?

These are the same questions that we ask ourselves during the Yamim Noraim (Days of Awe) season.  As Elul wans and Tishrei approaches, our annual journey of return calls us to engage in courageous remembrance.  To remember is courageous because it requires that we acknowledge both what is no longer as well as the truth of what now is.

One of the names for Rosh Hashanah is Yom HaZikaron, the Day of Remembrance.  We ask that God remember us for life and blessing.  We ask that God remember the merit of our ancestors and credit their blessedness to us.  Yet we are actors in the endeavor of remembrance, too.  Each year at this season, we embark on a journey of return to re-member ourselves – that is, to further integrate the various parts of our life experiences, to bring together the pieces, to reconnect in our relationships with one another, the divine presence, the natural worlds, and our most authentic, best selves.  

To integrate, to bring together the pieces, to reconnect. That is what remembrance is. Remembrance engages the fullness of our beings – our minds and our bodies, our hearts, emotions, spirits and souls. Over the course of the year, we forget our deepest truths and yearnings, we abandon our callings and commitments, we ignore and lose sight of the mission for which we exist.

To engage in the sacred acts, which result in our remembering — repentance, prayer and righteous deeds — we must learn to loosen our grip. We cannot return to a state of wholeness if our hearts are hardened and our jaws and fists are clenched.  This past year has brought with it more than its share of pain and disappointment, loss and lament.  Death and so many other endings call upon us, the ones who go on living, to let go, which is to accept the reality of loss and also to accept what is.  To let go is to surrender to reality, but it is not the same as resignation.  We struggle against letting go – out of fear of not being in control, out of fear that we might forget, out of fear of what will no longer be, out of fear of what now is.  

Fear can take us to the most constricted of places, places where we forget how to live. There is plenty to be frightened about at this moment in this country and throughout the planet. But we can acknowledge our fears and still recognize that we have choice and options. We can be with what is. We can be with the truth of our experience – all of it.  And we can loosen our grip. We can begin again.

We do this holy work together. In our relationships and in our communities, we gather to remember – to integrate, to bring together the pieces, to reconnect. May this season be a pilgrimage of renewal, revealing new possibilities for healing and connection. Like the moon, we turn and return. With each breath, expanding and contracting, blessed to begin again.

—

Rabbi Cindy Enger is the Director of Placement at the Central Conference of American Rabbis.

Categories
High Holy Days Holiday

Preparing Ourselves

In these times of turmoil we rabbis bring a sense of comfort and steadiness to the communities we serve.  In the storm tossed waters that seem to shake the world these days, our congregants, students, and communities look to us to help them make sense of it all.  They look to our tradition, our prophets, our Torah for soothing, healing, and that most important quality, hope.

These coming High Holy Days will challenge us to bring that spiritual nourishment to the Jewish people like never before. In the aftermath of Charlottesville our people will need a true message of consolation.  How to forgive in the face of such vile bigotry?

We, too, are not immune to these same feelings as those we serve.  Our own outrage and concern as we have to respond to the hatemongers among us affects our well-being too.  I have heard from many friends and colleagues about their own worries and concerns for the U.S. as the racists and white supremacists, Nazis and Klan have come out from their hoods into the light of day and the light of their tiki torches.  I have heard about the fatigue that grips us as we are constantly called upon to march and comfort, speak up and show up.

So how can we in these days and weeks of preparation for the Yamim Noraim prepare ourselves to lead? How can we bring a sense of shalom to our own souls so that we in turn my guide and uplift our communities in prayer and reflection? How can we prepare to lead the Jewish people toward t’shuvah in the weeks ahead?

If we turn to Yoma 2ab we find the discussion of the sequestration of the High Priest. Seven days prior to the start of Yom Kippur the High Priest was removed from his home.  This was done according to tradition to ensure the High Priest’s spiritual purity for the sacred day and sacred service.  The High Priest lived in a special chamber at the Temple during this time and his team went to great lengths to ensure that his spiritual purity could be guarded and protected. During the Avodah service on Yom Kippur the atonement of the people depended upon his spiritual purity.  But our tradition also teaches that the High Priest was sequestered to also search his own soul. This time allowed him to pray and reflect and meditate on the awe-some task that would soon come.

While we are not priests like in the days of the Temple, I believe we have to find the time even as Religious school starts up again, and there are sermons to be written, music to be chosen and our people return from their summer vacations, to prepare ourselves spiritually for the Days of Awe.  Rabbis may not be able to take seven days prior to Yom Kippur to sequester ourselves  but this text does provide us with a reminder that even the High Priest needed to prepare  for his task.  We too have to prepare our spiritual selves for our task. Our spiritual purity and sensibilities do need some time and attention.  Self-care in these times of political disruption and assault will help each of us steer our people’s prayers toward heaven.

I am inspired by the High Priest’s preparation and I am inspired to ensure that my own soul is ready to do the heavy lifting of t’shuvah.

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Rabbi Denise L. Eger is the founding rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami in West Hollywood, CA and is the immediate Past President of the CCAR.