Yom Kippur Afternoon

            This afternoon we read The Holiness Code – select verses from Leviticus chapter 19 which gives us some of the most important commandments for how to lead upstanding Jewish lives. Among these key mitzvot, we find within the same verse that we shall not hate another in our hearts, but we should rebuke someone who has done wrong, that we do not bear the guilt of their sin. These two commandments intertwined as one teaches us that we don’t want to harbor resentment and anger, and neither do we want to cause harm to others. If we address issues as they arise, tell others when they are being hurtful, and seek to build bridges before simply cutting off those who offend, we may find we are more successful in sincere teshuvah and in building trusting relationships. In this way, we might build a stronger community of love. However, if we let bad behavior slide, hurts compound on themselves, and grudges form. This is bad for everyone involved, including the wider community who has to share space with those fostering a hostile and toxic relationship.

            Someday, we all meet our maker, and we all lose people we have loved. Let us not come to those moments still seething. Resentments are rarely buried along with those they were held against, but live on and continue to fester. We must have the uncomfortable conversations now, so that when the inevitable day comes, our mourning is uncomplicated by negative feelings. We must do our own teshuvah now, so that when the inevitable day comes, we are not left weeping with regret on our deathbeds. Let us learn to truly love our neighbors as ourselves, and learn to love ourselves too while we’re at it, so that we may each one day embrace death as the peaceful reunion with God.

Yom Kippur Morning

            Good Yontif and good morning. This morning we read the words of Nitzavim, from chapters 29 and 30 of Deuteronomy. In it, Moses tells the people of Israel that the Torah belongs to each of them, and they are all equally responsible for upholding it. There is no hierarchy or intercessor when it comes to Torah. All have an equal share in it, and all are responsible for it, and it is a living document that dwells among them. It is not in the heavens, it is not far away, and no one needs someone else to bring it to them. It is for each and every one of them, and for all of their descendants.

            As their descendants, we may continue to adapt with a changing world and reinterpret this living document in every generation, but we do not turn away from it completely. As Jews who self-identify as such, who come to shul on Yom Kippur, even if only on Yom Kippur, there is still a clinging to the holy Torah that our soul instinctively does. We do not turn our noses up at it because someone else wrote it or handed it down to ancestors that came before us. We don’t defer responsibility and feign ignorance. We know that if we did, not only would we deprive ourselves of the spiritual benefits of embracing it, but we would cut off our own descendants from being a part of the long, unbroken chain of the Jewish people.

            And yet, we do essentially all these things to our Mother Earth, our bodily realm, where Shekhinah dwells. We abdicate responsibility, we deny the imminent crisis of our climate, we pretend it is far away and is for others to concern themselves with. We damage our ability for future enjoyment of Earth’s blessings, and risk the viability of future generations surviving on this planet at all.

            On the High Holy Days, we read the words of Rabbi Amnon of Mayence, Unetanah Tokef: “who shall live and who shall die? Who shall perish by water and who by fire, Who by sword and who by wild beast, Who by famine and who by thirst, Who by earthquake and who by plague, Who by strangulation and who by stoning, Who shall have rest and who shall wander, Who shall be at peace and who shall be pursued, Who shall be at rest and who shall be tormented, Who shall be exalted and who shall be brought low, Who shall become rich and who shall be impoverished.” These words are meant to signal to the great mysteries of life, that God knows what will become of each of us, while we cannot imagine our fates. Yet as the Amazon burns and the ocean levels rise, it becomes more certain for many on this Earth who will burn and who will drown. As the global climate change affects regular weather patterns, we will see greater death tolls from natural disasters and the diseases that follow flooding and displacement. As big corporations continue to exploit natural resources to drive profits while common consumers are pressured into buying reusable straws and bags, we know who becomes rich and whose purse suffers. As resources become scarce and disparate groups fight over what remains, we may soon see clearly who will die by violent deaths resulting from these skirmishes.

            But, just our liturgy tells us: repentance, prayer, and righteousness can avert the severe decree. What would teshuvah to our Mother Earth look like? Planting more trees, like we do on Tu Bishevat? A river clean-up? As with all teshuvah, it will not be easy and require more than simple acts of apologies. It will require introspection and a true desire and plan to change our lifestyles. To sustainably halt the damage we’re doing and hopefully undo some of it will need more than some saplings and a local trash pick-up. We will need to drastically reduce our collective carbon emissions. This may be where righteousness will overlap with repentance. It could cost money at the start of such changes, even if in the long run it could boost the economy. How we power our country would need to change at nearly every level – from our transportation choices to how we heat or cool our homes, how we shop, how we power our whole electrical grid. Those with means may need to foot that bill. That would be tzedakah, a great service to the whole Earth and all of humanity. Another option for righteous repentance is that as a whole, people in the developed world need to eat less meat. Where once we killed animals in sacrificial offerings to God, now we must sacrifice our desire for meat as an offering the Shekhinah, the Divine presence that dwells among us on Earth. It’s not that the killing of the animal is destructive to the environment, and this is not to say everyone needs to be a vegetarian. However, the industrialized meat industry has contributed to 90% of the deforestation of the Amazon. While oxygen-producing trees are cut down, they are replaced by methane-producing cows in abundance, creating disaster for our atmosphere, and that’s just in the cattle raising itself. Slaughterhouses also require a lot of energy, produce a lot of hazardous waste, and then plastics are used and gas is burned to package the meat and ship it to our grocery stores. If people ate less meat, contented themselves with that which could be sustainably raised on local grassy lands without displacing other necessary ecodiversity, we would see dramatic change in our greenhouse gas emissions.

These are just a few examples that would yield the biggest results. We need change at every level if we want to fix the environmental crisis we are finding ourselves in now. That does include, of course, reducing our own plastic usage, planting new life where we can, and cleaning up pollution and litter in our own communities. I use reusable shopping bags and a metal straw without resentment and had no concerns that buying such things would break my bank. I love Tu BiShevat and local clean-up efforts, and do think these acts can contribute to a greater whole. However, I know that this alone will not save. We will need great acts of teshuvah and tzedakah, and likely a fair amount of praying to redeem our world.

In an interview about his new book (We Are the Weather), Jewish author Jonathan Safran Foer said that his research while writing the book showed that the vast majority of Americans are concerned about climate change and claim to be ready for a change. But our collective actions don’t seem to be moving us toward solutions to the problem. The main reason for this, he posits, is that it feels far away. Even though this is a global problem that will eventually affect us all, the complexity of the science and the intersections of environmental realities with social dynamics and systemic oppression can make the issue feel very much like it’s out of our hands. Similarly, he expressed feeling the responses to Greta Thunberg have missed the mark and put unfair pressure on her and other youth leaders of the recent climate strike. He worries that putting her or others like her up on a pedestal allows older adults to abdicate responsibility. As Greta herself said in response to international leaders fawning over her inspirational power, “I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic … and act as if your house is on fire. Because it is.”  As we learn in today’s Torah reading, that which sustains us is not far away, in the heavens, or across the ocean, and we cannot defer our obligation to it and ask that someone else take care of it and bring to us the yields. Our earthly and spiritual necessities are both near at hand when we need them and both require attention and protection in order to sustain their benefits for us. We each deserve an equal share in the Torah and in the great bounty of natural resources this Earth has to share, but in order for that to continue to be true for everyone and our descendants, we know that we are each equally responsible for preserving these treasures. We cannot hold out hope for one person or even one generation to uphold our values for us. This work requires each of us, all of us, together.

            This Yom Kippur, I implore you to look within yourself and around at your home and community, and determine what you can do now to start the hard and necessary work of teshuvah, tefillah, and tzedakah for our Earth. May we all find ways to address the harm done, and may we live to see a healthier environment in the not-too-distant future. Amen and G’mar Chatimah Tova.

Erev Yom Kippur

                How good and how pleasant it is for us to come together on this holiest of nights. In these next 25 hours, we will kibbitz and kvetch, pray and learn, confess and forgive, fast and self-afflict, together as a community. Recently, I found myself in the position of defending the age-old tradition of praying certain prayers exclusively with a minyan. Judaism is a communal religion. The peoplehood of Jews is integral to our religious identity far beyond any specific theology or liturgy. As such, our liturgies and spiritual rituals reflect this importance of community involvement. Personal connection to the Divine and self-introspection is also valued highly in Judaism, of course. But personal prayer can be done anytime, anyplace, with any set of words. When we pray the proscribed liturgy meant for communal prayer, we are expected to be saying them with a community.

            The new Reform machzor, Mishkan HaNefesh for Yom Kippur, points out that if this need for community gathering and communal prayer is true for any regular Shabbat throughout the year, how much more so is this so for our High Holy Days. Throughout the year, we are sure to make space in our community for all sincere worshippers and those looking to learn more about Judaism. On our High Holy Days, we are extra sure to make space in our community for all such seekers as well as those who aren’t sure what they are looking for, those who have been estranged from Judaism or Jewish community, those who have been offended or offensive. Teshuvah must be open to anyone, or true teshuvah will be closed for everyone.

            This is at least one of the reasons I believe that throughout these Days of Awe, we do several iterations of confessional prayers, most of them out loud as a whole community. These prayers are written in the first-person plural. In the Al Chet segments we say: “We have sinned again You by.…” In the Ashamnu prayers, the sins themselves are written as such: “We betray, we steal, we lie,” etc. It does not matter which one of us has personally committed which of these sins. We take accountability as a community and we confess together each other’s sins as well. Although there are many ways to do teshuvah as a personal act, and some of the hardest work of truly returning to one’s best self is definitely a solo effort, this High Holy Day liturgy are prayers that cannot be said alone.

            We take this concept beyond the typical sins we name in the proscribed liturgy, the sins that are largely personal sins that we confess as a community, and consider also the societal sins we may be complicit in even if we are not aware of how our actions our improper. Sins of racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, and so on are most often perpetuate out of pure ignorance rather than malice. They may be small acts, the effects of which are lost on the person committing them, but they compound greater oppressions the person experiencing the action is already dealing with. We can say to ourselves, “Well I know *I* am not racist/sexist/ableist/homophobic,” but we also know if we haven’t committed adultery and yet people don’t seem to balk at having to include that in our public confessional prayers the way to do if they are asked to consider the feelings of minorities.

            As Jews we know how these microaggressions can feel. Hook-nosed banking goblins are just a fanciful invention of JK Rowling’s imagination! But they reflect a dark history of centuries of antisemitic stereotyping and violence across Europe. Model minority myths are a compliment! But they set us apart and mark us as different in our own home communities, paving the way for future alienation and potential violence. Jokes about the Jewish American Princess can be funny! But they contribute to the particular ostracization of Jewish women who are already dealing with the combined effects of antisemitism and sexism (as well as whatever other intersections of oppression they might also fall within) from countless sources throughout their lives.  

            As with so many other issues of justice, we should take our often-difficult experiences as Jews to learn compassion and empathy for others who might find themselves in similar positions. If we know how these slights can grate against us, if we know how they can add up and pave the way for greater offenses, we should be willing to recognize when another minority expresses concern over a language choice or other societal norm that does them harm. Even if we are not yet ready to accept any personal guilt for the -isms in society, we should at least be as comfortable acknowledging that they are societal sins as we are for all the other offences, we have not committed that we admit to throughout the Vidui.

            In 5780, let us pledge to return to the open-heartedness of youth, while also embracing a mature sense of responsibility for the wider concerns of our world. As a community, we can come together to take our prayers and stated values to the next level, living said values through action and commitment. Repentance and forgiveness between wide gaps in society can be possible, and will be our road map to greater peace in our future, but it will take buy-in from every member of any given community. While we are seeking greater communal accountability, we also recognize the limitations of our influence and ability to save the whole world, so let us focus on the Ner Shalom and Prince William County for this coming year. Maybe next year we can fix everyone else too. May we embrace every member of our community, and hold space for them in our sanctuary, social halls, and hearts, building up toward a world of love. Amen and g’mar chatimah tova.

Parashat Vayeilech

            Shabbat Shalom! This week’s Torah portion, Parashat Vayeilech, tells us of Moses’s final preparations for the Israelites to cross into the Holy Land and for his own death. The parasha ends with God telling him to compose his ethical will in the form of an epic poem This poem is next week’s Torah portion, the final reading of the yearly cycle before we reroll the scroll on Simchat Torah. Moses formally hands over leadership to Joshua, having already ordained him back in the Book of Numbers. He declares that even the children of this generation about to cross into the Holy Land, those who did not experience the hardships of Egypt or of the years wandering in the desert, shall hear the story and receive the Torah, shall be expected to follow the commandments, and be a part of this chain of the Jewish People. 

            This Shabbat Shuvah, as we are in the midst of our season of introspection, looking at our past, present, and future, this is a good time to think about what legacy we pass down. What histories have we absorbed, and what are the stories we will want to be sure our descendants know? What are the laws and precepts we will wish we had taught better, what are the values we wish we had learned more clearly and earlier on in our own lives? We learn from our histories - personal, communal, and global - so that we can do better in the future. We teach these lessons and hope that our students or children will learn to rise above even what we could imagine, that they will take what we have taught them and integrate that information with their own disparate experiences and continue to address life’s problems as the arise and their subject matter changes. 

            The Torah is our Tree of Life. It is the baseline for all these lessons and stories we as Jews inherit and pass down. It gives us our roots and we extend our branches. We are the next link in this great chain stretching from Moses to our own unimagineable descendants. May we accept this Torah, planting our roots in Judaism, and may we pass on this Torah, extending our branches out to others in need of a limb to hang on to. May we learn from our histories, and may we teach our hard-earned lessons. Amen and Shabbat Shalom. 

Parashat Nitzavim

Shabbat Shalom! This week’s Torah portion is Parashat Nitzavim, which we will read again in just over a week for Yom Kippur as well. The parasha contains some of Moses’s final address to the people, including words of teshuvah. The passage (Deuteronomy 30:1-3) makes clear that God expects us to miss the mark, to transgress the Torah, and to need to make teshuvah, to need to make active efforts to return to God. God does also, of course, assure us that God will take us back, but there will be hard roads ahead as the People of Israel sin and repent and need to be punished before their apologies are fully accepted again. 

We will soon talk about forgiveness and teshuvah so much the words may run the risk of losing all meaning. However, here’s one more offering in preamble to the high holy days; I will keep this brief:

 If you haven’t already, the time is nigh to start making your apologies to those you’ve hurt in 5779, and start offering your forgiveness to those who’ve hurt you in 5779. These conversations are rarely easy. If they do feel easy, they are probably happening on too superficial a level. They should be at best awkward, and at worst they can be heart-wrenching and inconclusive as you seek resolution for the open wounds in your life. 

And yet, if we learn from this parasha that sins and misteps are inevitable, perhaps it can allow us so more comfort in accepting the uncomfortable reality of accepting responsibility for our mistakes and understanding the reasons why others have made mistakes we think should have been obvious no-nos. Most human relationships do not come with such explicit instructions and agreements as that which is given to us in the Torah, and yet if we can break those specified laws and still be accepted as God’s holy people, then I think we can each find it within ourselves to accept the teshuvah of others in our lives. 

May we build a strong and trusting community with forgiveness and love. Amen and Shabbat Shalom. 

Rosh HaShana Morning

            Good Yontif. At the beginning of this summer, I was watching the latest season of Queer Eye. If you aren’t familiar with the show, each of the Fab Five has their own roles as they makeover the lives of others: one, Karamo Brown, being a life coach. In episode two of season four, their client is a man who was paralyzed from the waist down due to a gunshot wound. The injury helped him to rethink a lot of aspects of his life, and really turn himself around for the better, but he still needed the help to make some aesthetic changes that would help him get around in style, within his home and outside it, in his wheelchair. As a part of their makeover, Karamo facilitates a conversation between their client and the person who shot him. On their drive to meet the shooter, they talk about forgiveness. Karamo tells his client, “People assume forgiveness is a destination and not realizing it’s a journey you take throughout your life.”

            The meeting goes well, and afterward the client tells Karamo he better understands now what happened the day he was shot and feels like a weight has been lifted off of him. The resonance of Karamo’s statement in the car earlier remains. Sometimes after trauma or other terrible offence, forgiveness comes in stages. There may be moments of feeling at peace with the reality of what happened, feeling like we’ve let go, forgiven the other person to their faces or in our hearts, and thinking we’ve moved on. And then there often continue to be moments where we are triggered by something and we realize we are still angry or sad or hurt by something we thought we’d let go of, and we have to go through a process of forgiving and forgetting all over again. It can be a frustrating process, but it is a normal and healthy way of dealing with something that was not normal or healthy in your life. It does not mean you did the forgiving wrong the first time or that you were lying to yourself or anything of the sort. It likely means the thing that happened was actually fairly unforgiveable, but learning to move on from it is necessary for your own well-being so the forgiveness takes a long, long time, in fits and starts. It’s a journey, not a destination.

            In the traditional Torah portions of Rosh HaShana, we see some terrible interactions that could be read as unforgiveable behavior. In the portion we read here, Abraham tries to kill his own son! In the portion just preceding this, which some other synagogues read on this day, Sarah demands Hagar and young Ishmael be cast out into the desert. Abraham complies and the child nearly dies. After these events, the immediate next section of Torah tells us that Sarah dies, which the ancient rabbis understand as being a direct result from learning what happened (or almost happened) on Mount Moriah. The Torah never again depicts Isaac and Abraham interacting, and we can easily draw conclusions about why that might be. We never see Hagar again, at least not by name, and Ishmael never returns to his father or brother until his father dies.

            In the newest Reform machzor, there are some reflections on the Torah readings included in the book before the readings themselves are written. Rabbi Alan Henkin writes about Abraham’s m’sirat hanefesh, his willingness to surrender himself. The akeidah teaches us how to respond to Rosh HaShanah because of the moral to transcend one’s own desires and relinquish that which is important to yourself in the name of better serving God. I like the moral, but think it would be better suited if Isaac was in on the sacrifice. Abraham loves his son, but he doesn’t own him and he isn’t giving up a cherished possession. He’s making decisions over someone else’s life and expecting the ultimate sacrifice from someone who isn’t given a choice. Isaac is the one who surrenders himself, who transcends his own body. He takes note of the firewood and butcher knife and the lack of sacrificial animal, and the Torah hints to us that he knows what’s coming. And yet he walks on. The Torah does not tell us he cries out or resists when Abraham binds him. It is not an unreasonable reading of the text to think that Isaac indeed resigns himself to what’s happening. And perhaps he understands why; perhaps he is truly willing to be a sacrifice to God. But even so, it is reasonable for him to be upset with his father for not discussing the matter with him first. Isaac can be both ok with the idea of self-sacrifice and the unknowable nature of God’s demands, and still be not ok with how the situation was handled by Abraham. This conflict of emotion could easily create the kind of situation in which forgiveness is given slowly, coldly, within strict boundaries to their relationship following this event.

            Rabbi Amy Scheinerman writes that the akeidah is a model for our season of teshuvah because it depicts the difficulties of establishing moral relationships with God and our fellow humans. She says, “Avraham’s all-consuming desire to do God’s will at the expense of those he loves most (Sarah, Hagar, Yishmael, Yitzchak) points to areas for moral growth and development for all of us. When we see God as wholly other and divorced from the immediate world of our relationships with human beings, we fail to recognize the God within us and the divine spark within others. God becomes splintered and deformed, and our moral lives do as well.” In other words, we best serve God when we take care of each other. A seeming directive to serve God by hurting others, whether physically or emotionally, through legislation or exclusion, neglect or violence, xenophobia or passive chauvinism, is a directive misunderstood, a test failed. Yet it opens up the opportunity for teshuvah, repentance and forgiveness, returning and becoming a more holistic community.

When Abraham does die, Ishmael and Isaac both come to bury their father together. The Torah tells us that Abraham’s second wife, Ketura, is there as well, and the traditional midrash suggests Ketura is actually Hagar returned. We don’t see what Abraham does for teshuvah, if he does any at all. We don’t hear the sons’ eulogies. We don’t know what their feelings of residual anger and hurt were, or what they felt about the lasting trauma his actions inflicted on their lives. But we do know that they at least forgave him enough to come home and give him a proper burial. They bury him in the Cave of Machpelah next to Sarah, the woman who coldly cast one of them out to die in the wilderness, the mother killed by grief from the actions done to other of them. They are enough at peace with their family dynamics to agree to this, to perform the one final mitzvah that cannot be returned. And then they go their separate ways again.

This year, I invite you all to tune into your own forgiveness journeys. What are the events in your life you are still struggling to forgive? How are you working to move on from them in healthy ways anyway? How do you view those who have hurt you, what is your ongoing relationship like after you have tried to forgive them? What are the ways in which you think you might still be affecting others who are trying to forgive actions of yours? What can you be doing to move forward in those relationships with teshuvah and new foundations of trust? While these gates of prayer, repentance, and judgement are flung wide open these ten days, let us reflect on this and resolve to step into 5780 with greater awareness, more forgiveness, and quicker acts of teshuvah. Amen and Shana Tova.

Erev Rosh HaShana

Behold, the gates are opening! Many of us have been waiting in front of these gates for some time now. Some of us may have begun lining up since Tisha B’Av to get the latest teshuva update. Some prefer to wait until Elul, or even up until Selichot. Some of you in the back maybe just walked up this evening. The more time you’ve spent in preparation, waiting in this line, the quicker you might be able to find what you’re looking for beyond these gates, or the more time you might find you have to leisurely look at multiple options for this year’s teshuva. But even if you don’t like to think too far ahead about these Days of Awe, these gates are opening for you, too, and soon you will have your own opportunity to seek out what you hope for and need beyond them.

As Rosh HaShanah begins, the Gates of Repentance and Judgement begin to swing open, and at the conclusion of Yom Kippur, they will again close for the year. We peek inside, glimpse beyond the veil of Divine mystery, and see our own past, present and future. We face the mistakes we have made and take stock of that which we must atone for. We look inward at our own spiritual life and pray in earnest to better connect with God and each other. And we look ahead at all the ways we will aim higher, try harder, be stronger in the year to come, if only we will be inscribed for blessing in the Book of Life, that large and lofty book that awaits just on the other side of these gates.

We are told each year in our High Holy Day liturgy about these gates, but Rabbi Eleazer, one of our earliest rabbis who helped to write the Mishnah, is recorded as having claimed that the Gates of Prayer closed and were locked permanently when the ancient Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. To support this dramatic claim, he cites the Book of Lamentations, “Also when I cry out, He shuts out my prayer.” However, before we let that information discourage us too much from continuing to pray, he does continue by saying, “Yet, though the gates for prayer are locked, the gates for tears are not, for it is written [in Psalms], ‘Hear my prayer, God, and listen to my cry; do not be silent in the face of my tears’.”

We are faced with so many gates, each with their own patterns of opening and closing. We stand now before the Gates of Repentance and Judgement, hopeful for a good deal on the latest teshuva, looking ahead at the line and wondering how long this is going to take, eager and anxious, excited and a little bored, all at the same time. We know this is a limited time offer, and we need to be here now to take advantage of these gates opening now.

We pray all year, not just for repentance and compassionate judgement, so what does it mean that those gates are closed? For one possibility of historical explanation, Rabbi Eleazar himself lived through the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. How many of us, in moments of our own deepest heartbreaks and hardships, have felt like prayer was simply no longer an option, that there was no one listening anymore, that a new way had to be forged forward to readjust to some new, terrible reality? The early rabbis who wrote the Mishnah did just that. Rabbi Eleazar might have said that the Gates of Prayer closed on that fateful day, but he and his colleagues then proceeded to recreate a new Judaism, one where heartfelt prayer replaced physical sacrifices, where sages replaced priests, where study and knowledge replaced purity, where tribal affiliations fell away and all the remnants of the Israelites were as one community and family, a community that could maintain its ties to each other and the holy land no matter how far any one Jew traveled away from Mount Zion. They forged a new path forward in order to create and maintain a strong foundation of Judaism that the rest of us to always return to, no matter how closed off we feel at any given moment from God and prayer.

And in those moments where the Gates of Prayer feel the most closed off, when we are in the narrow places of oppression, or in the dark belly of a giant sea monster, or by the waters of Babylon, or carried off to the hedonistic city of ancient Rome, or in the Warsaw ghetto, or any other moment that feels like it may be the end of the Jewish people, the Gates of Tears are always open. The Gates of Wailing will always receive our cries of anguish, our earnest pleas to return to a normal life, our demands that Am Yisrael Chai.

So yes, tonight we stand in anticipation for the Grand Re-Opening of the Gates of Repentance and Judgement. Hopefully the only tears any of us will shed over the next ten days will be the cathartic tears of a truly moving spiritual experience. But after Yom Kippur, when these gates close and we fully turn toward our new year, with all the promises we make to ourselves, God, and our loved ones during our time of atonement and resolutions, there will need to continue to be moments of the same fervent spirit with which we pray on the High Holy Days. There will need to continue to be introspection and dedication to our goals if we want this coming year to be at all different, better, than the one we are leaving behind. And there will continue to be fresh tears, fresh difficulties and hurts, failures to achieve perfection, new incidents for which to atone next year. As long as we remember to cry out to the Gates that are always open, perhaps the Gates of Prayer will open up for us again as well, and along with them, maybe new gates: Gates of Compassion, Gates of Justice, Gates of Comfort, Gates of Love, Gates of Welcome. May these gates never close.

As we enter through the gates of a new year, may we remember to always open the gates of our own hearts to the Divine spirit that moves through each of us, open toward others, and open for allowing ourselves to grow. Amen and Shana Tova.