Hashiveynu H’ Eylecha v’nashuva…hadesh yamenu k’keddem…Turn us unto You O God and we shall return. Renew our lives with every single day. – BIJ High Holiday Prayer book
By the time this Bulletin reaches you we will have entered the Hebrew month of Elul and begun our preparations for the upcoming High Holidays. Labor Day is just around the corner and there is a bittersweet feeling as summer slips into autumn in the inevitable change of seasons. The Jewish New Year with all of its promise and awe is just a few weeks away. Shana Tova!
The above text from the High Holiday liturgy reminds us of Rosh Hashanah’s odd juxtaposition between the ‘old and familiar’ and the ‘new and exciting.’ At once we are beckoned to return, to come back, to reconnect—and also—to begin anew, start over, remake our lives.
Every Rosh Hashanah we dust off our High Holiday mahzor (prayerbook) and return to temple to hear and to sing haunting melodies and to recite inspirational words of prayer. We sit in our familiar seats in the sanctuary and rejoice in an annual reunion with friends and family. For ourselves and our community this annual pilgrimage celebrates our place in the world. It is a reminder that this synagogue is our home and that this congregation is where we belong.
And yet, this is also the time for sloughing off old worn personal habits and committing to new, growthful endeavors. This is the time when we identify those things that have caused us and our community to ‘miss the mark,’ keeping us from actualizing our highest potential. This is the time when we resolve to do better. We welcome visitors and new members to our congregation and we consider our contribution toward improving and strengthening our beloved community.
This Rosh Hashanah there are many personnel changes afoot in our congregation.
I am delighted serve as your new rabbi and can say without a doubt that we have a terrific team of professionals, lay leaders and volunteers. Over these past weeks I have enjoyed meeting and working with many wonderful folks at our synagogue. I know that many more will be returning at the beginning of the religious school year and on the holidays. I look forward to meeting all of you and hope you will seize the opportunity, whenever possible, to introduce yourselves to me and to visit me in my office!
Change, even when necessary, is stressful. The Days of Awe arrive each year whether we are prepared for them or not, and shuls like ours will be packed with all kinds of people; those who attend out of a sense of obligation, and those who come to assuage guilt and clean their slate; those frustrated by a lack of Hebrew knowledge and those who sit silently through the service hoping for some inspiring tidbit; those who eschew the image of God as a king or judge and those who are angry at God for the troubles of the past year; those for whom Judaism feels irrelevant and those for whom Judaism has been more a source of pain than of joy. The consolation is that wherever find ourselves, by joining together, none of us are alone!
In this New Year it is my hope that under my spiritual leadership, Congregation Beth Israel Judea will be a place where all who enter will feel welcome to question, search, study, struggle, rejoice and celebrate. May it be so! Keyn Yehi Ratzon.