These holy days begin tonight and with them this post summons us all.
Like Passover and Commandments, Rosh Hashana is the Bible, Memory It is the foundation of hope and obedience. Now, not later. “Remember this day that came out of Egypt” (Exodus 13:3). “I am the Lord of your God who brought you out of Egypt” (Exodus 20:2). “The day that you blow away Shofa will be a monument for you” (Leviticus 23:24).
Each summon is on memory and turns it into responsibility. Forgetting breeds despair, and obedience bends in fear.
Roche Hashana It starts at sunset and ends on Wednesday night. It is the Jewish New Year and the beginning of a holy day of holy days that honors creation. Shofar aims to shock repent, encouragement and resolution. The sound calls the Jews the highest and truth, and they call them living in the midst of people and traditions. That dedication has long been a source of strength.
Yom Kippurthe most sacred day, come 10th. Known as the day of sin, it is observed by fasting, praying, forgiveness and reconciliation. It closes the 10 days of repentance that begins with Rosh Hashana.
High holy days are related not only to individuals before God, but also to relationships with others. What is wrong with others cannot be cleared by prayer. The work begins face to face. Tone’s crime is linked to reconciliation. Due to all that gravity, Yom Kipper remains a celebration. This is a day of repentance that will rejoice in the chance to start again.
These holy days are needed more than decades. Israeli soldiers are in Gaza tunnels where civilians are suffering. The story of the nation continues, but violence breaks down on both sides.
In Europe, ideologues and Muslims have once targeted Jews in cities of awareness centres. In America, conspiracyists twist events and blame Jews and Palestinians for anything. History shows that when society opposes Jews, it reverts to its originality. If it withholds dignity from the Arabs, it diminishes itself.
Rabbi Moshe Weinberger of Aish Kodesh, a congregation in New York, teaches that Shoffer Tears open up everyday life. The sound is not music, it is a distracting cry. Repentance is not a feeling of guilt, but a spinning of the heart that opens up space for change. Yom Kippur takes into account what you have to face.
Our sharpest disparity is certainty, not politics. It is our refusal to hear anyone other than ourselves. High holy days answer with humility: confession, forgiveness, and courage to begin again. True confession means not only acknowledging what we have done wrong, but also acknowledging how confident we are to be ourselves.
Jewish life and politics writer and commentator Peter Beinart says that high holy days show the limits of survival and the need for humility by power. “We are in your hands” is not a resignation, but the recognition that power cannot create dignity. These days, Jews are pushing for seeing their futures irreparably tied to their neighbors.
The days of adoration framed: whom did I unfairly treat, whom would I seek forgiveness, whose dignity did I ignore? Asking these questions is to resist responsibility. To seek reconciliation is to refuse vengeance. Fasting is to remove it. To hear Shofar is to wake up and shake up. One burst, the other is empty. Together, they force the beginning. Shofar’s Ram’s Horn thrusts things that can’t be anything else.
Midrash says that when God created mankind, the angels insisted. Some people said people would act with justice. Others, with violence. The truth was that they would lie. Kindness, they will show mercy. God cast the truth on the ground and created humanity anyway.
The High Holy Day brings us back to the ground. Whether the truth rises or is buried is left to us, not to angels.
“If you live, you live freely, or die like a tree, and rise and die. We suffer from unfavourable illness: hope.” – Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinian national poet.
“The truth must come from the earth, and justice must look down from the heaven” (Ps. sal 85:11).
Shana Tova!
Notes and reading
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Rabbi Moshe Weinberger – brings educators, authors, translators, speakers, Hasidic Spirituality to the present.
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Former editor of Peter Beinart- The new republic. Also written by Beinart time, Atlantic Oceanand New York Book Reviewsamong other periodicals. He is known for his pressing harsh questions about Jewish politics and identity.
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Mahmoud Darwish – Quote Songs for the RiverPhilip Connors (2018), a book tracking water and fire, tragedy and renewal, providing a model of life shaped by loss and return when both rivers and life are vulnerable and exposed.
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Midrash Rubber – Bereishit Rabba 8:5. With the truth being cast, Mercy can start mankind and start again.
The truth is strangely true
Beauty makes everything easier
Approx. 2 + 2 = 5
Source: 2 + 2 = 5 – williamgreen.substack.com
