Two Minute Torah Podcast

Yom Kippur 5771 by Rabbi Elyse Winick

Kol dodi hineh zeh bah, dodi, hineh zeh bah

M'daleg al he-harim, m'kapetz al ha-gva'ot

Welcome to KOACH's Two Minute Torah, a project of the Department of Youth and Young Adult Services of The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. This is Rabbi Elyse Winick.

The voice of my beloved, here it comes

Leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills

Some of the most beautiful love poetry I have ever read comes, of all places, from the Tanakh, the Bible. Shir HaShirim, the Song of Songs, is traditionally read on hol hamo'ed Pesah, the intermediate days of Passover, but in many communities it is read, chapter by chapter, on Friday night, as part of Kabbalat Shabbat. But not this Friday night. This Friday night there will be no Kabbalat Shabbat and the haunting melody of Kol Nidrei will take the place of those words of love.

Our tradition just doesn't talk that much about love and yet, it is one of the central elements of our lives. It's not exactly surprising. Judaism mandates our actions down to the finest detail, but it frees us to think and feel as we please. The presence of Shir HaShirim in the Bible recognizes the value of love in our lives and is symbolic of the many different ways in which we love. It is an acknowledgment only. And where the tradition seems to quietly take for granted that we love, it returns to its typical detail on how we love.

And that, for me, is one of the critical issues of Yom Kippur. How do we treat the people and the things we love. So often, that which is closest to us is the most taken for granted, an extension of our own lives which we somehow manage not to think about. Yet those are the relationships we ought to take and treat with the greatest seriousness.

The parent child relationship, relationships with siblings, our relationship with God and with our planet and with the land of Israel, these are loves which come to us by birthright. The key is to experience them with the same joy and fascination as we do the loves we choose, or at least, ahavat klulotayikh as God acknowledges, the newly minted love of bride and groom. The loves we choose are more challenging in many ways. Our investment in them may be just as deep, but they are often subject to greater risk.

It takes work. Sometimes our efforts succeed and sometimes they don't. But we should never take for granted any of those relationships and their quality. None are independently self sustaining. All require nurture and care, just as the partners in the relationship require nurture and care. All must be attended to, or else divine intent is irreversibly foiled. Each day, each moment, we must value and validate that love.

In the book Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, the key to the adventure lies in the mirror of erased. It's an unusual thing, this mirror of erased. When you look into it you see not your own reflection, but the reflection of the things your heart most desires, what you truly love. Our mission on this Yom Kippur is to look into that mirror, to apprehend those things we truly love and then go about figuring out what it means to love them with all our hearts, with all our souls and with all our might.

Gmar Hatimah Tovah - may you be sealed for a year of goodness and peace.