On the Eve of a New Year...

By Rabbi Elyse Winick
KOACH Associate Director

The holidays come early this year. I know that’s not true, since Rosh HaShanah is always at the beginning of Tishrei, but I look outside and the trees are still green and it feels early. I stop for breath and look into my soul and I think, no, not yet, too soon.

Rambam teaches us that Yom Kippur exists not to exculpate us from our sins, but to train us to live in a constant mindset of teshuvah, of turning, of yearning, of repentance. Like the plant which grows toward the sunlight, no matter how you position the pot. We are to be ever leaning in the direction of the Divine. This constant retooling, pointing us in the right direction, is a state to be desired. Three days a year simply cannot define who and what we are. Like the moment after the glass is broken beneath the huppah, the wedding canopy, our lives only begin after these days of repentance conclude.

Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote that at age seven he was devastated to read the story of the Akeidah, of Abraham poised over the bound Isaac, knife at the ready, to take his son’s life at God’s behest. His rabbi asked him why he was crying and he answered, "What if the angel had come a second too late?" It is a terrifying question. What would have happened to Isaac, to all of Jewish tradition, had the angel been too late. Small comfort that the rabbi’s response was, "An angel can never come too late." Small comfort because we are already scarred by the horrors of what if. Small comfort because, as Heschel reflected, we who are of flesh and blood are not as perfect as the angels. We can indeed be too late.

And yet, if we take the Rambam’s teaching to heart and use this time to learn, really learn, what our world and our God need from us, then our teshuvah will always turn us in the right direction and we will always be at the ready.

May the sweetness of the new year inspire you to good and may all your prayers be answered.

[Posted 09/12/07]