Rabbi's Messages

Taking It With Us

on Thursday, 01 October 2015.

OK, you can breathe again.

Now that the High Holy Days are over, the Jewish world breathes a collective sigh of relief. This is a challenging time of year. It’s spiritually challenging, as we go through the hard work of teshuvah – of self-reflection, and self-evaluation, and goal-setting for the coming year. And it’s physically challenging – we spend a lot of time in shul; we cook and prepare for family meals. We fast, and stand up for long periods of time, and generally come out exhausted.

We couldn’t really handle the intensity of Yom Kippur more than once a year. From both a physical and spiritual standpoint, a single DAY of Atonement is about all we are capable of. And yet, we still have work to do.

The closing service of Yom Kippur is called Ne’ilah, which means “locking.” It is called that because at its conclusion, the Gates of Repentance are said to be locked, and the Book of Life sealed. But we know that’s not true. Our opportunities for growth and learning never cease, and our responsibility to be our best selves never ends.

In fact, as the holidays end, the real work begins. We’ve spent time thinking, praying, and reflecting; building a road map for the coming year. That’s the easy part. The harder part is to actually follow that map – to challenge ourselves to live in the real world by the standards that we set from the comfort (or relative discomfort) of our sanctuary seats.

The month following the High Holy Days is called Cheshvan. This year, it begins on October 15. It is often referred to as MAR-Cheshvan (“Bitter Cheshvan) because it is the only month on our calendar with no holidays at all. But that’s OK. Once Simchat Torah is over, we’ll be all
holiday-ed out. We don’t need any more holidays right now. What we need is daily life, the opportunity to walk out the plans we made through our ongoing choices, and to work toward being what we pictured on Yom Kippur.

Yom Kippur is done. Now the new year begins. Let’s make 5776 a sweet and successful one.

Rabbi Micah Streiffer