Category Archives: Holidays

Reflections during these 10 Days of Repentance

02 Sunday Oct 2011

Posted by in Holidays, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life

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No matter how much we fear it, try to escape it or ignore it, death comes to everyone. Death is a fundamental theme during these 10 Days of Repentance as we confront ultimate reality and truth. It is a mistake, however, to think in morbid terms. Rather, we Jews are called upon to think positively and to live our lives moving forward on the one hand, but with the consciousness of living backwards on the other all the while being aware that life is short, time should not be wasted, and that now is our moment to take responsibility for ourselves, acknowledge frailty, make amends, and commit ourselves to change our behavior and way of being in the world. In doing all this (i.e. t’shuvah – repentance) we realize that wealth, fame and even wisdom and virtue provide no sanctuary for any of us.

Somewhere I read the following:

“It won’t matter in the end what we owned or what we were owed. At the end our grudges, resentments, frustrations, and jealousies will disappear. So too will our hopes, ambitions, plans, and to-do lists expire. The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away. It won’t matter from where we came, or on what side of the tracks we lived. It won’t matter whether we were beautiful, brilliant, or talented. What will matter isn’t the number of our days, but how we numbered our days.”

The ethicist Michael Josephson said it this way:

“What will matter is not what we bought but what we built; not what we got but what we gave; not our success but our significance; and not what we learned but what we taught.

What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage, and sacrifice that enriched, empowered, or encouraged others to emulate our example.

What will matter is not our competence but our character; not how many people we knew but how many will feel a lasting loss when we’re gone.

What will matter are not our memories but the memories that live in those who loved us;

And what will matter is how long we’ll be remembered, by whom and for what.

Living a life that matters doesn’t happen by accident. It’s not a matter of circumstance — but of choice.”

The Un’taneh Tokef (the signature prayer of Rosh Hashanah) reminds us that we are here for a short span of years, and what is important is not how much time we have but what we do with our time and whether we make a difference that really counts.

When we enter the synagogue on Kol Nidre and stare into an Ark empty of its sifrei Torah and then say throughout the day confession upon confession ending with Shma at Neilah, we are reminded that our task is to wipe the slate clean, reinvent ourselves and restore ourselves to Torah, God, community, and the people we love.

Chazak v’eimatz – be strong and of good courage. Gmar chatimah tovah u-l’shanah tovah u-m’tukah!

Forgiveness – S’lichot is This Saturday Night

23 Friday Sep 2011

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Holidays, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Quote of the Day

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A better description of forgiveness follows that I have not seen anywhere else. I am grateful to my friend, Rabbi Sharon Brous, for passing it along to me.

As we formally begin the High Holiday season this Motzei Shabbat (Saturday night) with the service of S’lichot (meaning – “forgiveness”), Jonathan Sacks offers us a way to think and be as we enter this season.

For those of you in Los Angeles, our synagogue’s “Sl’ichot in White” commences at 9 PM with a pre-service Oneg followed by Havdalah, and offerings of poetry, song, brief divrei Torah, reflections, and a service in which we formally change the regular Torah mantles to the gorgeous and stunning white mantles created for us 20 years ago by artist Laurie Gross for the High Holidays. We will conclude with the blast (t’kiyah g’dolah) of the shofar. My colleagues, Rabbi Michelle Missaghieh, Rabbi Jocee Hudson, Chazzan Danny Maseng, our Executive Director, Bill Shpall, our staff and leadership at TIOH welcome you.

“Forgiveness is more than a technique of conflict resolution. It is a stunningly original strategy. In a world without forgiveness, evil begets evil, harm generates harm, and there is no way short of exhaustion or forgetfulness of breaking the sequence. Forgiveness breaks the chain. It introduces into the logic of interpersonal encounter the unpredictability of grace. It represents a decision not to do what instinct and passion urge us to do. It answers hate with a refusal to hate, animosity with generosity. Few more daring ideas have ever entered the human situation. Forgiveness means that we are not destined endlessly to replay the grievances of yesterday. It is the ability to live with the past without being held captive by the past. It would not be an exaggeration to say that forgiveness is the most compelling testimony to human freedom. It is about the action that is not reaction. It is the refusal to be defined by circumstance. It represents our ability to change course, reframe the narrative of the past and create an unexpected set of possibilities for the future… Indeed there is none so self-righteous as one who carries the burden of self-perceived victimhood. But it is ultimately dehumanizing. More than hate destroys the hated, it destroys the hater.”

-Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Dignity of Difference, pps. 178-9

 

On Good and Evil – an Elul Reflection

19 Monday Sep 2011

Posted by in Holidays, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Quote of the Day

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If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

-Alexander Solzhenitsyn, novelist, Nobel laureate (1918-2008)

Despair and Hope: The Challenges of Tisha B’Av

07 Sunday Aug 2011

Posted by in Divrei Torah, Holidays, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life

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One of the least commemorated holydays in the Jewish calendar cycle comes this Monday evening and Tuesday, Tisha B’Av, the day marking the destruction of the two Temples in Jerusalem (586 BCE and 70 CE). Each was a horrendous and traumatic event in the ancient Jewish world. Historical documents record that blood flowed like a river through the streets of Jerusalem, that all was destroyed, that the survivors, such as there were, became slaves to the Babylonian and Roman conquerors respectively, and that God was driven into exile with the people.

Beyond the geo-politics of those events, sages of later generations linked the two destructions to the people’s behavior. Following the first destruction they explained mip’nei chataeinu gilinu m’artzeinu (“because of our sins we were exiled from our land”). The sins included the perversion of justice, disregard for the needs of the widow, orphan and stranger, and worship of the false gods of profit and materialism. Following the second destruction, our sages said mipnei sinat chinam gilinu m’artzeinu (“Because of gratuitous hatred [of one Jew for another] we were exiled from our land”).

Over the centuries Tisha B’Av became a day of national mourning. For modern Jews focusing on the sins of the people as the first cause of the destruction raises difficult theological and moral problems especially after the Holocaust. Yet, even if we believe we are individually and collectively innocent of the oppressive and hard-hearted conditions that characterize our era, Rabbi Heschel reminds us that “some are [indeed] guilty, but all are responsible.”

Towards the end of the day, during Minchah, the mood of Tisha B’Av abruptly changes. At that hour, tradition teaches, the Messiah will be born. Thus, our mourning is transformed suddenly into celebration and our dejection is converted into anticipation of reunification with God.

Though national in character, Tisha B’Av has personal parallels. This past Friday evening during Shabbat services I witnessed the  devastation that death brings in its wake and that Tisha B’Av commemorates for us as a people.

A dear long-time member of our community who had raised both her daughter and son at Temple Israel had just returned from New York where she buried her 60 year-old daughter. Her younger son had died at the age of 51 five years ago. She had come to say Kaddish.

A parent’s absolute worst nightmare had been visited upon her twice. As I prepared to say Kaddish with her I recalled Rose Kennedy’s loss of four children in her life-time and the words she taught her children when they were young as recalled by Ted Kennedy in his memoir True Compass:

“The birds will sing when the storm is over;  The rose must know the thorn;  The valley makes the mountain tall.”

May Tisha B’Av be a day when as we recall our national and personal traumas we also remember that as long as we have life there will come a new day if we are patient enough.