Sinai Update – Week of September 13-19, 2009

Shabbat Rosh Hashanah
Reflections on the Jewish Calendar – Rabbi Andy Vogel

This Friday evening, we celebrate the arrival of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.  We are asked to seriously engage in the process of teshuvah, repentance or returning to God, which grants us the blessing of personal renewal in the year to come.  Over the next ten days, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, our inner accounting, our reconciliations with family members and friends, our sincere prayers and heartfelt vows to find the right path for ourselves bring us closer to God and to our true selves.  We have to change, because we know we can do better.
      

Rabbi Kalonymous Kalmish Shapira, the Rabbi of the Warsaw Ghetto known as the “Esh Kodesh,” wrote that “the time for teshuvah is Rosh Hashanah, the time of the creation of the world, because teshuvah is also a form of creating.”  Our task from Rosh Hashanah on is to perform the creative act of teshuvah, imagining who we can truly be and reaching for it.  We strive to return to who we have always been, and are meant to be, but have not yet become.
     

May this Rosh Hashanah bring you and your dear ones the blessing of renewal.  My wife Martha and our family and I all wish you a sweet, happy and healthy New Year. 
- Rabbi Andy Vogel

Sinai Update – Week of September 6-12, 2009
Parashiyot N’tzavim-Vayelech (Deuteronomy 29:9 – 31:30)
Reflections on the Jewish Calendar – Rabbi Andy Vogel

The moon is getting smaller as the month of Elul progresses, and our preparations for the High Holy Days intensify.  Rosh Hashanah begins a week from Friday evening, and our teshvuah process, which involves serious introspection, reflection on how we may have wronged others, and how we want to “re-align” ourselves onto a better path, deepens. 
   

Maimonides, the great 12th century rabbi, taught that teshuvah is not only needed “for sinful deeds such as sexual impropriety, robbery or theft.  Just as a person needs to turn away from these, so, too, does one need to consider and repent for his or her bad moral characteristics [de’ot], such as anger, hatred, jealousy, competitiveness, scoffing, or eager pursuit of money and honor; gluttony, and so on” (Hilchot De’ot, 7:3).  Jewish tradition is not only concerned with legal transgressions, but is also concerned with our personal characteristics and the way we act in the world.  In these next days of Elul, we consider what traits we have acquired through repeating bad habits in our daily actions, and focus ourselves on improving our moral characteristics as the New Year approaches.
- Rabbi Andy Vogel

Sinai Update – Week of August 30-September 5
Parashat Ki Tavo (Deuteronomy 26:1 – 29:8)
Reflections on the Jewish Calendar – Rabbi Andy Vogel

This month of Elul, which precedes the High Holy Days, is a time for reflecting on the year and upon ourselves, a month of preparing ourselves for teshuvah, repentance.  The word teshuvah has a number of layers of meaning.  While some translate it as “turning,” implying that we must change our direction from the road we’ve taken, regretful that we ever took that path in our lives, another possibility is that teshuvah is a “return,” a centering of the self, performing a corrective so and centering back to home.  Performing teshuvah can be like a homecoming, returning back to where we belong, after a long and tiring journey has depleted us and taken us far afield, granting us a new start.  If we engage in serious reflection and introspection, this period of Elul allows us to re-center ourselves at the start of the year.
    

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935), the first chief rabbi of the Land of Israel in the modern period, wrote that “teshuvah is in essence an effort to return to one’s original status, to the source of life and higher being in their fullness…  Through teshuvah all things are reunited with God.”  To “translate” this, we could say that reflecting on our achievements and our faults over the year, over the way we want to be in the world – as opposed to the ways we have been – just “feels right,” it brings us back into alignment with ourselves and with God.  This is the challenge of Elul.
- Rabbi Andy Vogel