Amidst The Angst: Pulling For The High Holy Days To Bring Us Closer
As life around us grows ever more chaotic, solace can be found in our tradition.
During this month of Elul, the daily sounding of the shofar is an attempt to pierce our complacency.
There’s an old truism that the High Holidays come either too early or too late each year. Never on time. But the fact that Rosh Hashanah falls out in the first days of September this year is a relief; the season of reflection and repentance could not come soon enough to help counter our growing sense of angst and disorientation.
At this moment, when the world we know seems to unravel more each day, we recall countless generations of Jews who found comfort in dark times through many of the very prayers we soon will recite. We, too, appreciate the eternal message of traditions and rituals that renew hope in, and resilience for, the future.
This month of Elul, leading up to the Days of Awe, prepares us for an encounter with our Creator, and ourselves. The morning service in Elul ends with the sounding of the shofar, a piercing effort to stir us out of complacency. Throughout the month we are encouraged to engage in self-reflection as we anticipate the age-old High Holiday image of a Heavenly tribunal calling every soul to account.
What is asked of us is a timeless commitment, one that links our forefather Jacob pledging his fealty to God when he awakes from his dream of angels and ladders, to the current imperative to be “woke” to injustice in general, and racism in particular.
In both cases … a charge to be aware, engaged.
Ever since Abraham answered God’s initial call to him by responding, “Hineni,” here I am, we have been called on to be present, and take action, to better ourselves and the world around us.
And surely the world around us is in need of repair.
Global warming is out of control. July was the hottest month ever recorded, and the heat will intensify for decades. If we don’t accelerate efforts to reverse the trend, the very survival of the planet is in question. But do we have the fortitude to act boldly?
The Covid virus, seemingly on the ropes only a few weeks ago, has come roaring back via the Delta variant, forcing us to tamp down our optimism about an imminent return to normalcy. Despite the dramatic and remarkable success of the new vaccines, there is increasing recognition that we’re in for an extended, hazy period of uncertainty until we can achieve herd immunity as a nation. But with an estimated 30 percent of Americans expected to resist vaccination, that’s unlikely to happen. As a result, “compassion fatigue” is setting in among those who are vaccinated. Tolerance for fellow Americans rejecting the vaccine -- prolonging the health crisis and endangering lives -- is waning rapidly, the impetus for another dispiriting round of red state/blue state political bloodletting.
As Jews, we must confront the reality of increasing American anti-Semitism — the only common cause of the extreme right and left — and a dangerous Iran moving closer, with an eye toward Israel, to producing a nuclear bomb.
In Washington, bipartisanship is a rarity and Republican loyalty to a defeated president continues unabated, trumping efforts to effectively tackle national crises.
Add to that mix the tragic mess in Afghanistan, the scene of our country’s longest war. The lightning-swift takeover by the Taliban in recent days underscores America’s 20-year failure to recognize its hubris in seeking to establish a democratic government in this Muslim society dominated by rival tribes.
More than 2,400 American soldiers have lost their lives in this war, as have more than 45,000 Afghan civilians. Twenty percent of the population has been displaced, at home or abroad, and the fate of the country of 36 million people is in the hands of a band of Islamic fundamentalists known to impose a brutal form of Sharia law. The loss of respect around the globe for an America that once saw itself as a beacon of freedom and protector of democracies is yet to be measured. But it is deep and will not easily be restored.
In part, that’s because we are a nation of citizens who do not see ourselves as a union. The distrust and anger among us -- one for the other -- has been stirred and accelerated by misinformation, conspiracy theories and a belief that those who oppose our views are a danger to society.
Closer to home, we each are trying to recalibrate our level of insecurity as the Delta variant has roared ahead, dragging us back to worries about vaccinations and boosters, when and where to mask, who we can be with indoors, under what circumstances, and how best to assess the risk factor of even the most mundane daily actions.
On the cusp of the Days Of Awe, synagogues are struggling to come up with policies that are both spiritually inclusive and medically cautious.
Many are requiring masks, some are going farther.
The rabbi of Lincoln Square Synagogue, a prominent Modern Orthodox congregation on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, has noted that, based on medical advice and an halachic interpretation, congregants who are eligible for vaccination but remain unvaccinated will not be permitted to attend services.
The rabbi reasoned that “we have to live with the consequences of our decisions” and that “some will be excluded” so that “many, many more people … will be able to come to shul if they feel safe in doing so.”
The compelling attraction of services, especially this year after synagogues were closed for much of 2020, is the heightened yearning for communal prayer. Together, our individual voices (masked and muffled though they may be) can blend to form a more powerful petition on high.
The High Holidays remind us of our personal and communal obligations -- to ourselves, our loved ones, our people and humankind. Most heartening, though, is that in Judaism there are second chances. The primary theme of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur liturgy is that atonement brings forgiveness and the promise of a clean slate.
At the end of the powerful “U’ntaneh Tokef” prayer on those days, we read of a Creator “hard to anger and readily appeased … To the very day a person dies, You wait for him. And if he comes back, You welcome him at once.”
In our personal lives and as a nation, we recognize that we are guilty of neglect, insensitive behavior, bad choices. But there is a hope and path for a brighter future. Our actions make a difference and we cannot save ourselves, alone. If we are to avert the future as nightmare -- a planet in meltdown and a virus that never ends -- we must strive to turn our personal dreams into a collective reality, to do our bit to repair a broken world.