Focus! Engaging Head and Heart for the High Holidays
Erev Yom Kippur. "Open the Door!"
Rav Amital's Reframing of Yom Kippur
Day 12. Who Purifies Us?
When Rabbi Akiva Transformed Yom Kippur Forever!
Yom Kippur: Who Purifies Us? Ashreichem Yisrael! How fortunate you are, oh Jewish people. So begins the Mishnah, the statement of Rabbi Akiva at the end of the Mishnah which deals with Yom Kippur. And why does Rabbi Akiva think we're so lucky, we're so fortunate, we're so blessed? He says: לפני מי אתם מטהרין, ומי מטהר אתכם? אביכם שבשמים, - God himself is purifying you! And he quotes a pasuk from Jeremiah, “Mikveh Yisrael Hashem - Hashem is the hope of Israel”. And he says, don't read it “hope”, read it “mikveh”. מה מקוה מטהר את הטמאים, אף הקדוש ברוך הוא מטהר את ישראל. Just like a ritual bath purifies the impure, so God purifies Israel. Beautiful statement, that on Yom Kippur God is going to purify us all. Rabbi Soloveitchik asks a question: He says, already in the Mishnah before this, we are told, “L'fnei Hashem ti'tharu”, that we are purified before God. What is the chidush of Rabbi Akiva? It's a beautiful poetic end to tractate Yoma, but what's the chidush? And he gives an amazing historical explanation. He says, when did Rabbi Akiva live? Rabbi Akiva was the ideologue of the Bar Kochba revolt. The Temple had been destroyed in the year 70 CE and about 60 years later, Jews tried to restore their national enterprise and to regain Independence. They gained Independence for three years, but then the rebellion was ferociously put down by the Romans, by Hadrian, the emperor. And Jews were so depressed. Jews said, now we are never going to have a Temple anymore. We're never going to have a high priest. We're never going to have sacrifices. How are we ever going to get forgiveness? How are we going to be forgiven? We all know the parasha in Vayikra, in Vayikra it says that you have to bring all of these sacrifices and the high priest has to go into the Holy of Holies. That's how you get Atonement! How are we going to be in the darkness of history with no means of gaining purity? And along comes Rabbi Akiva and says, you don't need a Temple. You don't need a High Priest. All you need is your relationship with God. I'm Israel. You are so fortunate! Who purifies you? It is God himself. God is like a mikvah. Just like mikvah purifies the impure. So HaKadosh Baruch Hu purifies us all! May we all go into Yom Kippur, the day on which we can be purified directly by God. And may it be a day in which we experience the opportunity to renew ourselves. Shabbat Shalom.
Day 11. Yom Kippur. The Shining Face of the High Priest
Day 10. Yom Kippur. Sorry Seems to be The Hardest Word
Day 9: Viduy - Mechanics of Confession
Day 8. Tzom Gedaliah. Can we Get Along?
Shalom! Shana Tova! Today is Tzom Gedalia!! I'm fasting. We're fasting. And the question is why? It's because Gedalia was assassinated 2,500 years ago. But why should that affect us today? So let me tell the story a little bit. Let's go back to 2,500 years ago after the destruction of the first Temple. The Temple is destroyed. The king is dead. The previous king has been carted off to Babylon. And there are still many Jews in the land of Israel. Not all of them have gone “by the rivers of Babylon”. And now the Babylonians appoint a Jew, Gedalia, to rule the country. He's ruling on behalf of the Babylonian government, but he's a Jew. There are royalists, people from the royal family, who say that Gedalia is a traitor. Why are you collaborating with our destroyers? You are a collaborator. And they are the opposition. I'm sure Gedalia had his reasons. He knew there were tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Jews in the land. And if he could rule with Jewish priorities, who knows? We could rebuild and rehabilitate the Jewish community, and maybe one day reestablish ourselves. However, as I say, the loyalists, the royalists, they felt that this was a sellout. And this is a classic political dispute between right and left wing, between Jewish nationalists, purists, and between Jews who are prepared to make compromises and to work in the reality of our situation. Well, on Rosh Hashanah that year, a man called Yishmael ben Netanya ben Elishama came to Gedalia in his residence in Mitzpeh and assassinated him and many other people. And the result of this action was that the Jews who remained in the land were scared of Babylonian reprisals. If you kill the Babylonian governor, even if he's a Jew, that's not an internal issue. They assumed the Babylonians would have a ferocious response. And therefore, they started leaving the country, going into exile. We have a great example of this in the book of Jeremiah, Yirmeyahu, ch.40-44 which tells the story. And there we see a whole group who go down to Egypt. And so many, many groups went into exile. And in fact, this was the final nail in the coffin of the Hurban after the Temple was destroyed and the monarchy deceased. Suddenly now, Jews left the country. And that is why we fast on this day, because it's a day of great destruction. And of course, it was created by a Jew, Jew fighting Jew. And this is where I wonder what lessons we can learn from this particular episode. You know, I think we can learn many lessons. Sometimes we are our worst enemy. Sometimes it is our bitter infighting that is worse than our adversaries. And the question for me on this day is how we can increase cohesion, how we can work on our unity. And I have to say that in an election year, there's been a lot of acrimony in Israel over the last few years. How exactly do we heal? I have to say that one way is to take a break from social media. Often social media specialises in creating discord and generating anger instead of being a situation in which we can create harmony and see the other side of things. The question is, of course, can we get beyond stereotypes? Some years ago, I was on a plane and on my way to America, I was sitting next to a secular family. And as we started taxiing on the runway, I began watching my first movie. And the woman next to me, who looks totally secular, started saying Tehillim, it's a much longer story. But I have to say that I've had so many incidents on aeroplanes, where I've sat next to somebody who totally broke the stereotype that I had. After all, here the rabbi is watching a movie. And the so to speak secular person is reading Psalms. Another time I sat next to a professor from Haifa University with expertise in Chinese culture. She taught me about Confucius. I taught her about Nazirim, “monks” in the Jewish tradition, because I was learning Dafyomi of Masechet Nazir. So often there are meetings because when we meet each other as people, but not as stereotypes, we find a way to see what we have in common, and not the things that make us different. And I have to say that we often you know, judge a community by their politicians. But often when you meet one-on-one, when you meet as real people, you see people very differently. And you realise we have so much in common. I think it would be good today, whether you're fasting or whether you're not, to spend a few minutes, spend a few minutes thinking about our assumptions about others, whether we can move beyond slogans and stereotypes. How can we give somebody else the benefit of the doubt? Maybe think about somebody who's very different than you, and understand how you can maybe reach into their world a little bit to build some bridges. And maybe I'll say one last thing. We all live in sub communities. They might be religious Zionists, they might be Kharedi, they might be more secular, they might be more liberal, they might be more right-wing. But often we don't realise that people from the outside see us as very insular. We have an in-speak, we have a certain way of dressing, we have a certain way of expressing ourselves. We don't realise how off-putting our community is, how insular it is, how much we actually look often very arrogant to people outside ourselves and exceedingly unwelcoming. So maybe today we should put a bit of our mind into thinking how we can heal those things, how we can look beyond our narrow communities and that would be a good Cheshbon Hefesh to do during this Tzom Gedalia. Thank you.
Day 7. Crowning God. Tzedek U'mishpat
Day 6: Listen to your heart!
Shalom friends, it is great to be back with you. You know, in a day or two we're going to be in Rosh Hashanah and hopefully be written in the Book of Life. But what is the Book of Life and how do we find our way there? There is a beautiful teaching of the Baal Shem Tov that the Book of Life isn't written by some angel or by God but in fact it's written by us. It's what we do. We write ourselves in the Book of Life because it is our actions, it is our lifestyle, it is our personal conduct that will decide whether we have a year of life, of flourishing, of ascent. That is what will determine whether we have a year of life. And I want to share a story which is very meaningful to me about this notion of how we write our book. It's a story I heard from Rabbi Tzvihosh Weinreb from the OU. He was very close with the Lubavitcher Rebbe when he was a student in yeshiva and he often would consult with the Lubavitcher Rebbe but later he moved to Maryland, he became a psychologist and went on his way to become a communal rabbi. But at some point in his life he was having a very hard time and he needed some advice and he needed some inspiration and he called up the office of the Lubavitcher Rebbe for some advice. And he could hear the assistant of the Rebbe in the room together with the Lubavitcher Rebbe who passed on the message and said “Here we have a rabbi from Maryland,” - Rabbi Weinreb didn't identify himself – “and he needs some help, he needs some assistance!” And the Rebbe said to him, “You know, if you need some help and you're in Maryland there's a guy called Weinreb in Maryland. He's a rabbi, he's a psychologist, go talk to him!” At which point Rabbi Weinreb said, “I’m Weinreb! I'm the one who needs some help!” And the Rebbe passed on to his assistant and said: “Tell Weinreb that sometimes a person needs to talk to themselves. Sometimes Weinreb needs to talk to Weinreb!” This is a profound thought because often when we talk about Teshuvah we often model it on somebody else. We have a model of a person who's not like me. We try and be something else. In fact even in the laws of Teshuvah the Rambam says that when a person does Shuvah they should change all their actions. They should even change their name as if to say I'm a different person. We should try to put on a different persona. But I don't know if that works well enough. And I think that one of the ways, I love the word Cheshbon Nefesh for a person to do an accounting of their soul. There's a beautiful verse that we say throughout Elul. It's in L'David HaShem Uri V'Yishi (Ps.27). And we say this: To you - says my heart – “Seek my face”, I seek Your face God!” And of course there's a problem in that verse because if “Amar Libi Bakshu Panai”, if my heart is saying “Seek me!” then how does that “seek God”? And Rashi tells us that's exactly it. Our soul is an internal piece of machinery which is a small piece of God within us. And if we listen to our soul - you know we have a guilty conscience. When we do things wrong we feel bad - That's our soul talking to us. How often do we actually know what is right and what is wrong? We hear a voice in our head but do we listen to it? Lecha Amar Libi Bakshu Panai When we seek our authentic self, when we seek the good person within us. Then at Panecha HaShem Avakesh We actually know what is healthy for us. We know what is good for us. And in fact, Rav Kook says:The primary Tshuva is that a person needs to dig into who they really need to be. They know their priorities. So often we need to be there for our partners in life, for our children, for our parents. We need to live up to our own personal and religious responsibilities. We know what we need to do. And now we have to find a way to get there. Rav Kook says that the first sin, the first sin was when Adam didn't know the answers to the question Ayeka. We didn't know where we were. We didn't know who we were. But if we think a little bit, we do Cheshbon Nefesh. If we look into ourselves and say What is my best self? Then I will establish a game plan. I will establish a route in order to be able to write myself, please God our families and Am Yisrael in the Book of Life.
Day 5: Change is the Hardest Thing
Shalom dear friends! Teshuva is in the air. We are approaching the Ten Days of Repentance of Asseret Yemei Teshuva and we are in the season of introspection and I'd like to share a story which happened to me and use it in order to think a little bit about how we can work on ourselves. Every year I sit before Yom Kippur and do a sort of cheshbon nefesh. I think about my life and I think about what I need to work on, what I need to improve, what are my major flaws. In fact, I even usually write it on a small piece of paper. I insert it into my machzor for Yom Kippur and when I say the vidui, I think about those things which I have to, which I've been doing wrong and I think about how I can make amends. One year I sat down, it was just before Yom Kippur, I found a quiet moment. I even went to the shul to do this and I sat down with my piece of paper to write out my list of flaws and misdemeanours and I finished the list, inserted it in my machzor and made my way out of the shul. As I walked, my machzor got caught on the edge of one of the pews and it fell on the floor and out fell a note. The thing is, it wasn't the note that I had written just now, it was the note from last year and when I took it out and I read it, the problem was that it was identical to the note that I had just penned! I hadn't changed! It was a year and all the things I'd said I needed to work on, I'd made no progress. I sat down, obviously a little dejected and upset and I said, what can I do? And that year, I decided that I wouldn't work on any of the things on that list. I said, if I'm doing so badly and I haven't managed to change, then it's not going to help me now and I decided to take on a whole new list. I decided actually to work on things that I was good at, not things that I was bad at. And the funny thing was that after a year, I realised that I'd actually made progress and progress is so important. Rav Shteinsaltz famously said that if we succeed in changing just one thing this year – one! -then that's already a huge thing because we are so hardwired, it's so difficult for us to change. You know the word, we're going to say “shanna tova” but it's interesting that the word shanna on the one hand means a new year, “l'hishtanot” – “to change”; but also the word shanna means to repeat, the word mishnah means to recite things. We find with the dreams of Pharaoh, “va'al hishanut hachalom”, it means to do something over and over and over, a shanna goes round and round and round, the year goes round and round, it's a cycle of time. So on the one hand, we expect a new year to bring change and on the other hand, we say we don't change. So how exactly are we going to deal with it? So the first thing I advise you to do is to make a plan. There are some wonderful books out there which help us to think about how to change: atomic habits, tiny habits, there are great books but I would like to make a suggestion possibly to do exactly what R. Steinsaltz suggested and many of the Sifrei Mussar suggest to try and take ONE thing, one thing this year, maybe even something you're good at, play to your strengths. If you like entertaining guests, then maybe make a point to invite lonely people in the community. If you are a person who has funds, think about how you're going to give your charitable giving. Whatever it might be, if you're an intellectual person, maybe you will think of how you can add to your Torah learning this year. Give yourself an opportunity to really feel that you're making progress this year and make a plan of something that you think is feasible, doable, that you can look back in several months and in a year's time and say, wow, this year I really made progress. That's it for today. Lehitra’ot!
Day 4: Sounds of the Shofar.
- The Breath of God
Shalom friends! Its great to be back with you. Today we're going to talk about the sounds of the shofar. What do we think about when we are listening to the shofar? What do we make of this evocative sound? And I learned a very important lesson about this from my daughter when she was about three or four years old. She once told me that God is see-through. You can't see God! And I asked her, how do you know? And she said, we learnt in Gan that when Adam was born, when humankind was born, God breathed his breath into us. And she said, when we breathe, we can't see our breath. If God breathed himself into us, then God must be see-through, God must be transparent. And I thought this was remarkable because the words in Hebrew for “neshima” - the word for breath - and the word for “neshama – the soul” are really the same word. Sort of astounding thought to think that our breath is the breath of God. And this is maybe the first thought that I'd like to share about the shofar. There are many conceptions of the shofar. The Rambam talks about the shofar as an alarm clock, sounding the alarm for us to do teshuvah. In other sources, the shofar is a fanfare proclaiming the king. Bechatzorot v'kol shofar hariu lifnei ha-melech ha-shem. But we might think of the shofar simply as this. In the essential conception, the shofar is created through human breath. We blow the shofar with our breath and we are acknowledging that our breath is the breath that we have been given a year of life. I think first, maybe we will say gratitude. Thank you for giving us another year. Thank you for all the blessings that we have. But also, zochreinu l'chaim, melech hafetz b'chaim. We remember that moment where God va'itzer et ha'adam afar min ha'adama. God created humankind from the earth. Va'ipach ba'apav nishma chaim. He breathed into our nostrils. Life, the breath of life. And we do say, adam yosodo mi'afar v'sofo li'afar. We are all mortal. We will all die. But in the meantime, kol asher n'shama b'yapo. Anybody who has breath, we have so much to be thankful for. But we also ask God for a year of life. So that is thought number one for the shofar. Thought number two. We don't just blow the shofar. We blow specific notes. Tekia sh'farim, Tekia or Tekia Teruah, Tekia . A smooth note, a broken note, and then another smooth note. What is that notion? And Rav Shimshon Raphael Hirsch very beautifully explains. He says, the smooth note is always a summons. It's always a calming note. In the wilderness, there was a public address system. And when they wanted to gather the people, they used a Tekia . When they wanted to break camp, they used a Teruah. Or as some people will say, in the world of alarms, in the world of sirens, a siren is a jolting note. It is always an up and down note. It is a Teruah. Whereas the all clear is a plain note. The all clear is a Tekia . Says Rav Hirsch, when we hear the shofar, the first note that Tekia summons us, summons us to understand we are standing before God and we have to examine our lives. Then we hear a Teruah or a shevarim. And what is that? That's a note which breaks us up. It's a note which asks ourselves, what's wrong? How are we going to move? How are we going to shift this year in the world of the Jewish people in the wilderness? How are we going to travel? How are we going to transform our lives this year? But then we don't want to leave ourselves en route. We don't want to leave ourselves unstable. We end off blowing another Tekia . How do we put our life in order? How do we take the changes we want to make and incorporate them within our lives? So I hope this gives you some cover notes, something to think about, something to put into your mind as you're hearing the shofar and as you're preparing to hear the shofar. And may we all be blessed with a wonderful year ahead a year of life and a year in which we are able to change the things that we really want to change. Have a great day.
Day 3: Parents and Children; Tears and Prayers
Shalom friends! Today I want to talk about parents and children, about prayers and tears. You know over Rosh Hashanah we're going to spend a long time in shul, but some of the most dramatic moments are in the stories of Kriyat HaTorah and the Haftarot. What I'm referring to is the story of the birth of Isaac and the sending away of Ishmael. I'm talking about Chanah praying desperately for a child. I'm talking about the story, the awesome story of the Akedah and the Haftarot of the second day which talks about Rachel crying for her children. These are unbelievable stories. In the first one Avraham and Sarah desperately want a child and they are given one, but then we have the story of Ishmael who's sent away, almost dies. Hagar cries. God hears the voice of the child - Ishmael, suddenly an angel comes and shows Hagar the well, the spring. Ishmael is revived! Chanah so badly wants children and she has given the child Ishmael. She also cries and prays. Then we have the story of the Akedah of course and the Akedah is a story from death to life. Here by interestingly enough there are no prayers and there are no tears, but the Midrash doesn't accept that and the Midrash says that Avraham was crying, that the angels were crying, there were tears, there were prayers. Our prayers say that Avraham did pray. He prayed that Yitzchak should remain alive מי שענה אברהם אבינו בהר המוריה הוא יעננו. And of course we have Rachel crying for her children as they go into exile. It's almost as if to tell us that on this special day, what is termed by Chazal as Yom Hazikaron, the day of Zikaron. Zikaron always means God changing our fate from life, from death to life. God changing our fate from destruction to rebuilding. For example, when we talk about, we said Rachel, we talk about Rachel so badly wants a child. God listens to her and changes her fate from infertility to being able to have a child. ויזכר אלהים את רחל וישמע אליה אלהים ויפתח את רחמה. This is the common themeף but I want to finish with one beautiful idea from Rav Soloveitchik. Rav Soloveitchik talks about the amazing story about Chana. Chana is unable to have children. Her co-wife Penina has lots of children and every year they go up to the Temple, to the Mishkan and it says they have a feast, they bring sacrifices and Chana doesn't eat and she just gets upset. But one year, the year that we're talking about, she decides not to cry but she in fact goes to pray and she prays so intensely that the high priest thinks she's drunk. Can you imagine? Can you imagine somebody praying in a way that is so intoxicated? She is, this is a moment where she pours all of her bitterness and all of her intensity. Rav Soloveitchik asks the question, why this year? What happened this year that made Chana pray with such intensity? And the answer he says is in what her husband Elkanah says to her. Elkanah says to her, Chana, why are you crying? Why don't you eat this year? Why are you so upset? I love you. I'm better for you than even 10 sons. And Rav Soloveitchik explains that what Elkanah is trying to do is to console his wife, to get her to accept her fate. He says to her: "We've been to all the fertility specialists, we've changed everything we can do, we've been to every doctor, we've gone to every clinic. Chana, it's time not to be so upset. I love you!. Our love is so great. Even if we had 10 children, it couldn't be so great. Just stop crying and accept this is what we have. This is reality." Thiat is what he said. And at this point, Chana feels this roar, this surge of indignation: "No! No! I'm not willing to accept it!" And she takes all her bitterness and all her anguish, all her pain and all her hope, and throws it to God. And it's at that point she goes into the Temple and she prays with such sincerity. And God answers her prayer! She gets pregnant! All of our readings are about the notion of parents crying for children, crying for life, using their prayers in order to turn death to life. And indeed, in each of these four stories, we have Ishmael who is revived and given a blessing. We have Yitzhak, who instead of being killed, gives life and the future of the Jewish people. We have Shmuel who is born and serves the Jewish people and is a pivotal figure in Jewish history. And Rachel is promised the children will return back to their borders, something that we see nowadays as the Jewish people have returned to Israel. Indeed, may all of our prayers on this day, our prayers for our children, for our parents, for our families, for Am Yisrael, may they turn death to life. And may we only experience B'racha, Chayim v'Shalom this year. Amen.
Day 2: Is Rosh Hashannah the Jewish New Year?
Is Rosh Hashanah indeed the New Year? I ask because when the Torah records the calendrical date of Rosh Hashanah, it is “The first of the seventh month” (Lev 23:24). The “seventh month” hardly sounds like a “New Year”! It sounds very much like the middle of the year! And yet, in our western culture, the advent of autumn is the the start of the “school year” or the “academic year”. And so, how might we conceive of Rosh Hashanah as a new year, a fresh start? We shall transcribe two conceptions of this period of the year and explain the contrast between them. The first is based upon the agricultural cycle, because in that perspective, this period is indeed a nexus point, a period of transition between one year and the next. To illustrate this, I will note that over the past few weeks, my social media feed has been filled with joyous notifications from a variety of Israeli wineries of the batzir, the wine harvest, as the grapes are harvested and the process of pressing the grapes means that the wine is now being made. This is a celebrated moment as the hard work of an entire winter and summer comes to fruition – the planting, irrigation, fertilization and what have you – this has all culminated in the bountiful harvest, and now the grapes are on their way to becoming wine! This happens in August, the wine fermenting in September. We have the palpable sense that a year is coming to a close. And so this period IS the ending of a year. In the agricultural cycle there is no single day that is the close or opening of the year, but the entire month of Tishrei is the period of the “ingathering”, hence Sukkot is named Hag Ha’Asif – the ingathering festival, because by Sukkot, your barn is filled with all the produce of the year. The farmer ploughs and plants in October and November and then waits for the winter rains. The grain ripens and is harvested in the spring – April to June – and during the summer, the fruits ripen – the grapes, figs, dates, pomegranates and olives – and it is at this point in the year – August and September – that they will be picked, processed – pressed or dried - and stored. By Sukkot, if it has been a good year, you have a store filled with enough food to carry you through the winter! The Torah doesn’t need to designate Sukkot as zman simhateinu (The Time of Our Joy); every successful farmer felt the joy and the security of knowing that he was secure and could provide for his family over the winter! And obviously, if the annual agricultural cycle begins and ends here, then we might, quite naturally understand why our liturgy sees the opening day of this month as “Hayom Harat Olam” – as the anniversary of the creation of the world. (Though the Talmud does debate whether the world was created in the Spring or the Fall – Nissan or Tishrei?) And I think that is why the month of Tishrei is a natural season of accounting and a season of prayer. A person makes an inventory, a heshbon of his successes and failures of the past year, and will then make adjustments and improvements for the year to come. In addition, seeing that financial success is not completely in our hands, and that in the farming context it depended heavily on rainfall, this became a time to pray for the success of the year ahead. So, in short, Tishrei becomes a time of thanks, assessment, concern for the future, realignment, and prayer – it is our “annual review”. If we do this in the financial sphere, we find it natural to also reflect that in the personal and national dimension – a heshbon nefesh. But we would be remiss if we didn’t give a second dimension to Rosh Hashanah. And that is deeply tied to the cycles of seven that are part of our tradition. Because as we have said, this is the seventh month. And all sevens are holy. The seventh day is Shabbat, the seventh year is Shemittah. Both of these periods are moments in which we put our human endeavour aside, and allow God’s mastery and control to take centre stage. If that is the case, then would it not be appropriate to dedicate the seventh month to God? And thus at the advent of this month we are commanded to sound a Teruah, a fanfare – our tradition draws the logical conclusion: that we are somehow saluting God as our ruler, that we are accepting his authority and renewing our vows, as so often happened in the ancient world. (Vassal kings were commanded to appear before their rulers annually, to offer tribute and “see the face” of the ruler. Likewise, the seventh month invites us to step up, and appreciate that we are preparing for encounter with God, for a rendezvous with the divine.) And I like these two framings because the of the contrast between them. The first – the agricultural – is universal, whereas the second – the seventh month – is particularly Jewish. One is economical, worldly – and there, admittedly, life and death lie in the balance; whereas the “seven” model is more spiritual and “other worldly”. One primarily looks back in assessment of the year that has past, and the second looks forward to Rosh Hashanah as a divine encounter, a holy, spiritual day. The first is essentially about ourselves and our lives, whereas the second is first and foremost the encounter with “HaMelekh” – the King – as we allow our focus to rise above the mundane, as we dedicate a month to matters beyond - to holiness. In this second regard, Sukkot is not merely the celebratory ingathering of our annual produce but is the week in which we are invited into God’s tent so to speak, as we say in Psalm 27:5: “He will shelter me in His Sukkah on the day of distress,” the Sukkah that is evidently “God’s House”; we achieve an intimacy with the divine presence. Possibly these two frames will enable each of us to think in a more multilayered way about Rosh Hashanah and the upcoming month of Tishrei. As we mentioned last week, these are Days of Awe, but also Days of Love. Shanna Tova!
Day 1: Nitzavim Vayelech - "Hayom"!
Shalom, friends. In this period of renewal and teshuva, I'm going to try a new project. For many years I've been publishing my Torah in print and in podcasts, and I'm going to try and embark on a new video project, recording a video every day between now and Yom Kippur, to try and help infuse us and enthuse us with inspiration. So let's talk about our Parsha this week, Parsha Nitzavim Vayelech. You know there's one word which comes up over and over in the Parsha, 12 times in the Parsha, 60 times in Sefer Devarim. What is it? It's the word “Hayom! – Today! Atem Nitzavim Vayom Kulchem Lifnei Hashem Elokeichem. You stand here TODAY before God to embark on a covenant. And again at the end of the Parsha, TODAY you have a choice to make between life and death, “Today!” What's happening "today"? What is the today? Rashi tells us that it's a very auspicious day. It's the day that Moshe is about to die and Joshua is about to continue. And this is a very fraught moment. It's a nervous moment. When you've had a leader for so long and now you start anew. You have to think things through again. You have to renew your vows. You have to think about what your priorities are. And therefore, we renew the covenant when we are changing leader. That's Rashi, a very reasonable explanation, which I think fits the Pshat. But the Hasidic masters, the Sefat Emet and Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, have a different reading. And they say “Hayom” doesn't mean THAT day, that specific day. It means EVERY day. Every day we have to renew the covenant! Every day we have to renew our commitments! You know, the rabbis said that when we say Shema in the morning, we are Meqabel Ol Malchut Shemaim. We renew our commitment to Judaism every day. And Rabbi Nachman says that in fact, in this period that we're trying to do Tshuva, the secret of Tshuva is “Hayom!” So often tomorrow is the enemy of Tshuva because we say, I'm not going to be able to continue tomorrow. I'll do it tomorrow. R. Nachman says: Do it! Do it today! Today, pick up the phone to a friend. Today, Daven Mincha. Today, do that action that you've been waiting for. You've been waiting to start eating healthy. Do it today! Hayom! The secret of Teshuva is making the change here and now. So therefore, if we imbibe this idea of Hayom, this idea that if we want to make a change, let's do it now. Let's do it today. Then maybe we will understand that we all have a renewal of the covenant to make in this period of the year. And the best thing to do is to start today. Hayom. There we go. Have a good one.