High Holy Days 5786

You are reading my words during the period of time that is the runway for the High Holidays. By that, I don’t only mean a time of logistical preparations such as we do at Touro to receive the thousands of Jewish souls who come home during these days, nor such as we do in our homes to prepare to host and feed and welcome loved ones and friends. I also mean a runway for spiritual wrestling, worthy of our name Yisrael, those who wrestle with God.

During these weeks before Rosh Hashanah, we descend onto this runway by remembering the saddest days in our people’s history, the destruction of our Temple in Jerusalem in both 586 BCE and 70CE and our subsequent expulsions from so many other lands after that first exile. We spend these late summer days in a state of collective mourning for the ways we thought our lives would be and aren’t. But we also ascend from this runway toward a spiritual rebuilding, a mindset that embraces life’s uncertainties and commits to seek out meaning and joy anyway. This intellectual, emotional, and soulful wrestling match between reeling from destruction and rising to rebuild plays out both collectively and individually, and we enter 5786 both exhausted from it and hopefully exhilarated by it, ready to marshal new forces to meet the challenges before us, whatever they may be. At least, that is the process prescribed by our tradition.

The Talmud, Taanit 7a, tells the story of the daughter of the Roman emperor who said with disdain to one of our greatest teachers, Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Hananya, “Woe to glorious wisdom such as yours, which is contained in an ugly vessel.” She’s complaining, “How pathetic that your rich Jewish tradition is brought into the world by such an imperfect messenger as you.” She wants purity. She wants the instagram-worthy picture of a person or community whose IRL image matches the inspirational messages contained within. She’s disappointed in Rabbi Yehoshua’s humanness and the incoherence of his presentation of himself.

Rabbi Yehoshua responds to her and even ultimately to the emperor by reminding them that just as wine cannot be aged in a pristine silver cask but rather needs an earthen one, so too are wisdom brought to life only through someone who is humble, someone who feels that they have much learn, someone who is striving, someone who is wrestling. The person who approaches deeply sought-after truths is someone who has worked for them and who has been weathered by them, and that process is inherently messy. Seeking meaning, joy, and righteousness through uncertainty and pain requires authentically assessing what we thought our lives would be and why they aren’t, and then taking a step forward. That wrestling is not pristine silver but rather messy earth and maybe even a bit ugly, but it is the only vessel through which sacred wisdom, compassion, and goodness can be born.

This kind of wrestling has never before been glamorous, and this moment in our Jewish lives is no different. Like we have always done, we ask big questions but take small actions because that is all a single person can do. We cohabitate with vulnerability and hope, trauma and joy. We reject the easiest answers because we know they are inept, even as we long for the certainty that lets us rest. Committing to an aspirational and authentic Jewish existence means wearing that weariness on our faces and bodies as we wrestle every day to live with integrity and dignity. Despite what the emperors’ children of the world say about us, despite the pervasive narrative that people ought to be completely coherent in their beliefs and values all the time, our tradition reminds us that we are imperfect messengers battling mightily for wisdom, so if we’re weary, it means we’re doing it right. Is it glamorous to live this way? No, it is not. Not for Rabbi Yehoshua, and not for us. But is it honorable? It is. 

I do not enter these High Holidays certain of much. I weep for our people and all people. I yearn for a sense of safety and civility among us that seems farther away than ever. I cannot see or even imagine the Promised Land in the thick fog of war and polarization. But however uncertain of the destination I am, I do still trust the process, and I hope you will join me in doing so. The pathway for a return to our highest selves and the deepest parts of our souls has long ago been discovered, the runway built. So let us continue to journey together, descending into memory and ascending into hope, accompanying each other through the turbulence, and never forgetting that we are not alone. 

May the final weeks of this year be a time of blessed wrestling and renewed hope for all of us in 5786.

L’shanah Tovah, 

Rabbi Katie Bauman