Friday Shabbat Shalom

Even if you know what is good, right and desirable, it isn't so simple just to act that way. No sooner does an inclination to do something good come into your mind or heart than up pops an objection. It might be a contrary thought, or a feeling, or a desire pulling you in the opposite direction. The Jewish sages give a name to this negative impulse. They call it the yetzer hara, the inclination to evil. We all have that inclination and it challenges us, which is the purpose for which it exists.

The contours and texture of Jewish sacred time foster new ways of being so that we might have greater access to them during the mundane course of daily living… The arc of hallowed moments that carries us from Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur and on to Sukkot is no different.

I was about 16 years’ old when my father walked into my room one Shabbat afternoon holding his stomach. He groaned, “Do we have Kaopectate?” Before I could answer he told me that the regular Torah reader at his synagogue was on vacation so he had been chanting the Torah at services. But he had a terrible stomach ache and wasn’t up to it for Mincha, the afternoon service. I would have to do it. So I learned the Torah portion in the few hours I had to prepare and chanted it.

There’s a Hassidic story that beautifully illustrates the way a Jew should be in relation to the world. And I’m going to ask you in the middle of my story to see if you can guess the answer to a question, so be ready… As you may know, in the Hassidic tradition, the rabbi of the community is called a rebbe and is seen as someone with such wisdom that the rebbe’s followers ask him questions, not only about Judaism, but about all aspects of life.

Now is a good time to do Teshuvah/Repentance/[Return or Redo] on all our sins of the past year, so that we will merit a good judgment for the coming year. One of the main components of the Teshuvah process is Azivat HaCheit/ Forsaking Sin.

We only just inhaled deeply and welcomed the month of Elul. That Hebrew month that can stir both anticipation and utter dread, knowing that the intensity of the High Holidays are really much closer than we had imagined, that the spiritual ferocity and elevation of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are only a few weeks on.

So much of how we live our lives is based upon what we see. And here, I’m not speaking about physical seeing, so much as how we understand what our optic nerves are transmitting to us.This week’s Parashat Re’eh from Devarim/Deuteronomy explores various ways in which what we see must be addressed.

This week in Parashat Eikev, Moshe continues to recount the people's collective journey through the wilderness with a particular take on what happened after he smashed the first two tablets of the 10 Commandments (literally, 10 Statements)...