How can such a beautiful and awe-inspiring holiday come now when so many of us are feeling at our lowest? We are caught up in a cycle of fear, violence, and hatred. How can we pull out of the muck and prepare ourselves to receive the Jewish New Year without knowing what’s on the other side?
Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, a writer and great spiritual teacher, offers beautiful Torah on this question. Rabbi Tirzah writes,
This year, perhaps more than ever, our world is ailing—and especially our most vulnerable. [...] But blaming others will get us nowhere. Instead, we must simply face the reality of this great unraveling we are living through, and do the best we can to tend to the most vulnerable around us—and within us. These are the ones Torah admonishes us to care for, calling them the widow, the orphan, and the undefended (הגר) who live in our midst.
We must face this reality by moving through it. We cannot avoid it and pretend it is not there. But we also can’t let our pain and fear immobilize us from helping those in need. We must move through the pain with a broken heart- a heart broken wide open to allow others in. Rabbi Tirzah teaches that our pain is the Shechinah’s/Gd’s, pain, and Her roar is growing louder.
Please join me for Shabbat services tonight when I will speak more on the topic of breaking our hearts open in preparation of the New Year. I encourage you to also read more of Rabbi Tirzah’s brilliant Torah. You can subscribe to her newsletter here :
There is a practice to do some last minute mitzvot in honor of Shabbat. Some people would bring coins to the synagoguge and drop them in the pushke/tzedakah box before Shabbat officially begins. If you would would like a mitzvah or good deed suggestion on ways to help those in need, here are two of mine:
Finally, here is a prayer by Rabbi Maurice Harris,
A Prayer in this Time of Crisis
As Rosh Hashanah approaches and news alerts flash, We pray, we worry, we watch, and we hope.
We pray that these flames will not erupt into a bonfire. We pray for the return of hostages. We pray for all in the region to be spared the terror of bombs and bullets and for just and lasting peace.
We worry about leaders who may bend the arc of history toward chaos. We worry for loved ones – of all religions and all nationalities – That they could lose their lives, That they could lose their humanity.
We watch with concern for our tribe in The Land and our tribe in this land, For the safety of our own kin and the safety of all God's children: The sages teach that no one's blood is redder.
We hope for calm during the Days of Awe. We hope for quiet phones and a loud shofar's call. We hope because the hour calls for it. We hope because we must.
May we write ourselves and all of creation into the Book of Life.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Janine Jankovitz she/her
Kehilat HaNahar 85 West Mechanic St. New Hope, PA 18938
