It was Rosh Hashanah morning, almost thirty years ago. The tent where we held services was full, and the atmosphere was electric. And then the rabbi stood up on the “bimah” and the choir started singing. There was a hush in the room, and then slowly, people joined in. The holiness, the sense of God’s presence set in.
The niggun ended, and then another, and the rabbi said to the congregation, “Take a second and savor the moment. Turn around and say hello to someone you haven’t seen for a while.”
Suddenly, the room was filled with conversation. A minute went by, five minutes, ten. “You’ve lost them,” I told the rabbi. “You’re never going to get them back again. They could talk like this forever.” And then we both realized what I had said, and we broke out in smiles. “I know,” said the rabbi. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful?”
What is it about the High Holidays that creates such excitement, such community? The liturgy talks about death, but there is rarely so much joy.
Rabbi Art Green talks about a lecture he once went to – a great Orthodox sage speaking to a group of aging, secular Jews who had grown up in a schtetl. The sage spoke about the prayer that, for him, captured the essence of the High Holidays: the “amen” that we all call out after the Shehecheyanu on Kol Nidre.
“That prayer,” Rabbi Green writes, “thanking God for having ‘kept us alive and allowed us to reach this season’ tells us where the heart of Yom Kippur lies. Those elderly, self-proclaimed nonbelievers, now facing their old age and impending death, understood perfectly what the prayer was saying.”
The High Holidays tell us that tomorrow is not promised to anyone. Life is not always easy. It can be full of hardships – as those Jews from the schtetl well knew. But we can make life a blessing while we are here. We can find joy and love, and we can create a better world for those who follow us.
And perhaps, that’s what happened in my congregation all those years ago. For ten long minutes, each of them was saying l’chaim. Each of them was saying, in their own way, “Life is precious. It’s good to be alive.”
We were a small congregation back then. Everything we owned fit in the back of the rabbi’s car. We had one treasured possession – an old Torah scroll that was nearing the end of its life.
The rabbis’s parents joined us for services that year, and the day after Rosh Hashanah, they made us a generous offer. “We will donate half of the cost of a Torah scroll,” they told us, “if you can raise the rest by the end of Yom Kippur.”
Yom Kippur came, and our soloist – a fourteen-year-old with an incredible voice – sang his heart out. His Kol Nidre was wonderful, and when he finished, the rabbi announced the donation. The rabbi spoke about his love of his Torah, and his dream that someday, the teens in our congregation would be able to read from an undamaged scroll, and then he stepped off the bemah and handed me his pledge. “There will be people at the back,” he told us, “who will be accepting pledges until Yom Kippur is over.”
There’s a tradition that the gates of teshuvah never fully close until Chanukah. But that year, we knew something different. At the end of N’ilah, the gates – and the possibility of getting a new Torah – would close. How intense our prayers were that day, watching each other get up and walk to the pledge table with our envelopes. There was something that all of us wanted – a gift for the next generation. None of us could do it alone. But perhaps, with each other, with God’s help, our dream could come true.
The day wore on, and a few of us, the elders and the lay leaders, kept an eye on the donations. By the afternoon service, it was obvious that we were close, but donations were slowing down. And then, during N’ilah, someone ran up to the bemah and whispered in the rabbi’s ear. In the last minutes of N’ilah, as the gates were closing, we made our goal. Our kids – and our community – would have a new scroll.
The High Holidays remind us that tomorrow is promised to no one. But they also remind us of what we can accomplish if we come a little bit closer to our best possible selves. With love, with community, with teshuvah, we can accomplish anything.
That new Torah scroll came with a hundred-year guarantee. It will outlast all of us. And our children and our children’s children will go on. Each generation will build a better world. That is the hope of the High Holidays. With t’filah, with tzedkah, and with teshuvah, with prayer, with justice, and with growth, the world will go on.
On-line Learning Event September 20, 6:00 – 7:00 Pacific
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