One of the best books ever written on the High Holiday period is
This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared by Rabbi Alan Lew
z"l. Apart from the very profound and accessible content, the title is fantastic. So many people ask me at this time of year a perfectly reasonable question, "are you ready for the Holidays rabbi?" How can we ever really be fully ready to let go of the past year and enter a new one with our best intentions to be the best versions of ourselves that we can be? Especially after a year like this one, which has been brutally hard in so many ways, and many of us carry the pain of the last few months into this year with grief, anger, broken hearts and the awareness of how divided and shattered the world feels. And yet, we show up in community bringing it all in presence, alone together, as we hear the familiar melodies, the harsh and challenging metaphors, the piercing sound of the shofar.
One of the names of Rosh HaShanah is Yom HaZikkaron, the day of memory, which is reflected in one of the sections of mussaf, zichronot, remembrances. This section after Malchuyot (kingship) and before Shofarot, is seen as the hope that God remembers us, as God remembered those before us, but really it is an internal, reflective invitation to remember who we are at our deepest essence, reconnecting to our core identity, which we may have lost sight of after such a hard year. The judgement of this Day of Judgement is more about introspection and self-evaluation than an outside force judging us.
Rabbi Alan Lew's book begins with Tisha b'Av, the 9th day of Av when we commemorate the destruction of the first and second temples. Rosh HaShanah falls exactly 49 days, 7 weeks after Tisha b'Av and is parallel to the 49 days between Passover and Shavuot. In gematria (Hebrew numerology) 49 = lev tov, a good heart. The hope is that through all the pain, destruction and loss, we enter this powerful season of the Days of Awe with good hearts, as ready and present as we can be, knowing that we are really completely unprepared!
We hope that all our spiritual and educational offerings over these days will be meaningful and help us connect to the memory of who we are meant to be. I am so deeply grateful for the professional and volunteer team that has worked so hard to create the services and programming, traditional and alternative and for all ages and stages. Our amazing staff team with our new exectutive director Nate Shapiro, April, Mags, Rav Jacob and Shauna Sadow, who stepped in to lead the High Holiday planning, have been so wonderful in every way! I am also profoundly grateful to Karli Sherwinter and Allison Schwartz who were our interim co-executive directors and who will be honored as Kallat Torah and Kallat Bereshit on Simchat Torah! I am constantly inspired by the ways in which our lay leaders, board members, committee chairs, volunteers, all show up and give us so much! Thank you! Our High Holiday clergy leadership team includes Rav Jacob Chatinover, Rabbi Sarah Bracha Gershuny, Rabbi Charna Rosenholtz and Janice Rubin. None of us could do this alone and we have an incredible team across our beloved community.
We had a blast creating the
The Daily Blast on our whatsapp chat group at Bonai Shalom, with daily intentions and blowing of the shofar, including a "shofar flash mob" with multiple shofarot yesterday at the back of Bonai Shalom. Thank youu to Rachel Lazar for being the videographer for most of them.
They are all linked
here!
May the sounds of the shofar, our prayers and reflections in community and our own inner work help us find peace, solace and meaning in this very challenging world.
Shanah tovah!
May we all be written in the Book of Life with renewed hope!
Rabbi Marc
