This year, our post-Oct. 6th reality seems omnipresent as we approach the Yamim Nora’im, the High Holy Days. The impact of the horrific actions taken by Hamas on Oct. 7, and the resulting loss of life and ongoing war, have cast a shadow on the joyfulness and enchantment of a New Year.
A full year has passed and we are still longing for hostages to be returned to their families. A full year has passed and we are still waiting for signs that this war will end and no more innocent lives will be taken. A full year has passed and there is still incessant infighting within the American Jewish community, and specifically within the St. Louis Jewish community, pitting one Jewish soul against another because of their views of this war.
When these tragedies are piled one on top of the other it feels suffocating and defeating; how can we begin a New Year, how can we really do teshuvah, when we are so fractured and broken?
There’s a text from the Talmud that I keep coming back to over and over again in my life; it’s one that I find myself turning toward almost every year as the High Holy Days approach.
The rabbis of the Talmud, living 1,400 years ago, are sharing an even-then ancient tradition that not only does God pray, but that in fact God wraps tefillin! What, they imagine, could God’s prayer possibly be?
Rav Zutra shared a teaching from the great Rav: “May it be My will that My aspect of rachamim (mercy) overcome My anger.
It’s a radical notion that these ancient rabbis imagined: that even God has to work on this intention daily, for the natural state of our universe isn’t one that defaults toward rachamim.
If even God needs to work on this each and every day, as the rabbis seem to be suggesting, then how much more so for us as humans do we need to adopt this prayer, this spiritual practice, as our own. How much more so do we need to work every day on leading not with anger, but with mercy; not with judgment, but with compassion; not with fear, but with rachamim.
In my role as the current president of the St. Louis Rabbinical and Cantorial Association, I can see the friction, and the heartache, and the ways that we are letting this war divide us. Rosh Hashanah is just around the corner, and with a New Year comes the opportunity to do an accounting of our souls and let our aspect of mercy and compassion and empathy win out in the coming year.
This is my hope, my wish, my prayer for all of us in 5785: May the hostages return home safe and sound to their loved ones; may no more innocent lives be taken needlessly; and may we do the work of every day cultivating a rachamim-centered approach to the people in our family, our community and our world.