During this very busy and beautiful Autumn season, when schedules become increasingly frenzied, when we’re all attempting to be superman or superwoman, Rabbis are busily crafting sermons and deciding what we’re going to speak about this year.
Atonement has to do with trying to re-establish balance in life, in a relationship, in recognizing how things have gone wrong, and how we might make an offering in order to dem-onstrate that we are sincere. We wish to admit that we have been wrong or obstinate, that we have hurt someone intentionally or unintentionally. We offer our fasting as a sign, and through tzedakah demonstrate our sincerity that we wish to be forgiven for past wrongs so we can begin a truly New Year. We can begin again, start over.
Will we be forgiven? What does our list of sins look like? Don’t go there Rabbi – you’re not going to speak about that? The sin of ________ (fill in the blank).
My son Michael and I occasionally go out for breakfast or lunch, its our ritual. Most recently when we did this I ex-pressed gratitude that we could have something to eat together and not be busy with a list of thing we needs to do. Rather, just to be together.
Our social contract with family and friends has to do with obligations and demands, however, sometimes we have to let go of this, suspending the normal tensions, and just be happy with presence. The gift of being with someone, appreciating them, without turning their brain upside down, is essential on occasion in order to remove the idea that life is just about what things need to be taken care of.
Doing this can send the message that what you have to-gether is built upon affection, love and respect, an unspoken vow that we are connected yet separate, that we can find the unfettered moment when we see each other, recognize one another, and appreciate the confidence and strength that helps us to build our world, and which helps us to go forward building new worlds.
This is the same kind of moment Yom Kippur represents in our personal relationship with God and community. Each of us is here in life to recognize each other, even with our flaws, and in order to strive for a better understanding, a way of elevating life.
Yet, the sin of not seeing each other in the ordinary and extra-ordinary of daily living is what makes us turn each other into invisible people (Unter-menchen) the living substructure of society which struggles from day to day without being no-ticed. Is this what we wish to be to each other? Invisible?
At some point in time we all have to say “Let’s go!” Let’s get going!” “Hurry up!” Yet when we look back we have to ask if that might be a sin – trying to do too much rushing around, hurrying those we love until what? Until we’re no longer here? Yes it is necessary, but there has to be an island in time when this pressure is suspended.
In the New Year and on Yom Kippur as we ask God to accept our petition for forgiveness, as we repent our acts and words against each other, will we make a vow to create a space where we just see each other, and where we can just ‘be’ together? Can we find a way to listen to one another even as we pray Sh’ma Yisrael – Listen, O People Israel? Can we find a sacred time and space for God in our lives, for tzedakah in our lives, for family, for community?
Will there be room in that space for raising the level of our hurly-burly busyness in order to discover something Jewish you did not know which might improve your life? Is there time to notice that you can make a difference in someone’s life – better together than either would be apart?
This past year a woman said to me said to me that Ju-daism would make a difference in her life. She studied, she went through a process, but mostly she had the strength to make a choice, to choose Judaism. Can we join her by appre-ciating her choice and offering our own choice as well?
I received a call from another woman who adopted a baby girl. She was a single mother, but she had not found a partner in life. Her parents were getting older and so she decided to become a single mother who now has a two year old daughter. This took her five years to accomplish.
Yet, another woman, suffering from cancer and ironically in her work she helps to be an advocate for women with can-cer, chose to revert to Judaism. Her family in another genera-tion had converted to Catholicism in order to escape the Holo-caust, and now she freely chose to be Jewish.
So what does this all have to do with Teshuvah? Repen-tance and return? The examples may have more to do with returning than with any particular sin. There was no sin here, only a yearning for returning to principles of living and belief.
We have to examine what we take as a given, so we do not say ‘Dayeinu’ to everything! ‘It is enough.’ We need to see through the eyes of those who choose being Jewish, through the single mother’s eyes in order to connect her child, herself and her parents. We need to see through the eyes of the one who reverts to Judaism through study and the understanding that it is safe, and alright to do so. We need to see through the eyes of one who chooses Judaism as an affirmation of principles and beliefs.
We must find ways of creating community and even when we’re not hurrying up we need to make time in order to be welcoming, to see each other, and in order to recognize the image of God in the presence of human beings who surround us, love us and care for us and whom we care for and love as well. Forgive us God for the sin of our making people invisible to each other, by not recognizing each other’s presence.
By recognizing the presence of those who surround us we will find a way to open the gate of repentance, the way to a rebirth of faith and renewed commitment to practice, helping us to live our beliefs, and our faith, while appreciating the goodness which surrounds us. G’mar Chatima Tova