Rabbi Messge - October 23, 2008
A word about cycles.
This week marks the formal end of the High Holiday season which began, it seems, six months ago! Seriously, for the past month since Slichot (the Saturday before the week of Rosh HaShana – exactly one month ago, on September 20) we have been readying ourselves for the New Year.
We’ve prayed, we’ve done some internal work, we’ve apologized to those whom we love and our friends (and others) for what we did or may have done to them during the past year. We’re trying to make a NEW START.
That process has been very long. Change IS difficult. It takes time. And we need to change (not borrowing a campaign slogan). We began to seek forgiveness when we joined together for Slichot at the temple. There, we heard the holiday music and really began to prepare for the High Holidays.
Through Rosh HaShana (head of the year, with our heads pointed towards God), and Yom Kippur (our at-one-ment day – at one with ourselves, our spiritual community, and our God), and we traveled through Sukkot. And now experience (this Friday night) continuing the joy brought by the sukkah and its holiday another renewal – the renewal of Torah – as we read the end of Deuteronomy and the beginning of Genesis. And we rejoice! At this Book of Guidance and Memory, of morals and stories, of becoming…a nation.
We conclude the High Holiday season with a rich and deep celebration of the spirit for that which touches our spirits and enlivens our souls: the text of our history, struggles and triumph. And most important – the text which informs our lives, our choices, our beliefs and our practices.
Hold it close. Dance with it – as a partner. Kiss it. Pass it to a friend or child or spouse. “Turn it over and over again,” the saying goes, “For everything in it is yours.”
It is!
Hag Sameach! See you with my dancing partner Friday night, our Torah!
MARK