Rabbi Phil's Almost Weekly Message

The high holy days are nearly upon us, and I’d like to speak about an aspect of these days that has lately been on my mind.

I begin with a legend told to so many of us back in our religious school days at the time of the school year when Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur lay just around the corner.

When the high holy days come, Mrs. Levine told us kids, the Lord God sits on His throne with a huge ledger set out before Him. In the ledger are the names of every Jew in the world. God looks down upon us and judges our deeds to determine our fate for the next year, and God marks this in this ledger. Who shall live, and who shall die, who by fire and who by water. Should our fate be determined for the worst, we have the chance to alter that harsh decree through our repentant actions during the Ten Days that separate Rosh Hashanah from Yom
Kippur. If the Judge of All Mankind determines that our actions during those days has been sufficient, He will alter our fate for the better and erase the big X He’d placed next to our names. We get to live another year. We need not fear either fire or water or falling objects or errant busses run amok.

Now as kids we were likely made more than a bit nervous as to the Divine repercussions because of that time we smacked our little sister or the like sometime in the last year.

But as adults I expect we find ourselves in need of something rather more adult to
believe in, not only during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but all year round.

And yet when we open our mahzor (the high holy day prayer book), we find theological claims not terribly different from the one about that old guy with the book. This is typified by the Yom Kippur reading Una’taneh Tokef, which asks those very questions I enumerated above: 
Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die? But many, many others fill the mahzor, Avinu Malkeinu for one. “Our Father Our King, be gracious to us, answer us, for we are without merit. Be just and kind toward us, and save us.” Or words to that effect.

Now speaking for myself, I have long ago discarded the notion of a God who is
intimately involved with the world and who, by logical extension, rewards the good and punishes the wicked, or, for that matter, Who is the Divine guarantor of the ultimate victory of good. As I find myself frequently saying, unpacking this to a fuller measure would be a much longer conversation, one that I’d love to have with you another time.

But for now, I will assert, as I did from the TBE bima not that long ago, that the God idea I find the most compelling comes to us from Martin Buber. Buber teaches us that we meet God through the variety of relationships we enter into with each other. According to Buber, God assures the metaphysical importance of these relationships. As such, according to Buber, the rare and powerfully meaningful relationships we develop across the span of our lives allow for
at least two things. First, in this mutuality of you and me, I am assured a strong measure of meaning in my life and in the purpose of human existence on this planet. Second, the power of relationship teaches me the necessity of, as one reading I’m fond of from our Kabbalat Shabbat service says, we achieve a bit of wholeness when we join hands and march together through this beleaguered world of ours.

It’s no small thing, this claim. It doesn’t bring us to the heavily immanent God of some of the high holy day liturgy. But it can help us resonate with the many ideas and moods of these Days of Awe.

When we seek to fulfill the ultimacy of human (and other) relationships we can
approach those three key themes of the High Holy Days-teshuvah, selicha, and kappara, turning, forgiving, and atoning. Understanding the deeper meaning of relationship compels us to want to keep our relationships whole. Keeping them whole involves sustaining them as open, honest, loving, trusting, and, I’d say, continually renewing our relationships, and, further, entering into others.

For this task Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and its beautiful yet formidable (and occasionally difficuutl) liturgy and music, strike wonderful key notes that can have, if we allow them, a meaningful impact upon us, even if that Old Guy with His Book has fallen into our childish past.

Betsy and I wish you all a happy, healthy, sweet, and meaningful holiday season and New Year.

Shalom u’v’racha
Phil
Rabbi Phil Cohen Ph.D.