Dear TOO members and guests,
Over our next year, I will be sending out meditations and journaling ideas for our Books of Life, 5772. Consider these books one of many ways to deepen and explore your Jewish lives, and choose whatever suggestions appeal to heart and soul.
I’ve been asked to post copies of the poetry that we read during High Holy Days this year. I include texts below for pasting (and journaling) in your books. If anyone wants a copy of the Rumi poem that became our Yom Kippur haftorah, please let me know via Rabbi.Thiede@or-olam.org.
I thank you all for the incredible sweetness you brought to our services this year. Many people have told me that these were the most peaceful, joyous, thoughtful services we ever had.
When an entire congregation is open, trusting, and caring, we receive such gifts in great abundance. I thank you for so generously giving such gifts to me and to each other.
With great gratitude,
Rabbi Barbara
P.S. Many thanks to the huge crowd of folk who so wonderfully and cheerfully helped us set up the sanctuary for our friends at McGill!
Temple Or Olam’s Unetanah Tokef for 5772:
When the signs of age begin to mark my body
(and still more when they touch my mind);
when the ill that is to diminish me or carry me
off strikes from without
or is born within me;
when the painful moment comes in which I
suddenly waken
to the fact that I am ill or growing old;
and above all at the last moment when I feel I am losing hold of myself
and am absolutely passive in the hands
of the great unknown forces that have formed me;
in all those dark moments, O God,
grant that I may understand that it is you
(provided only my faith is strong enough)
who are painfully parting the fibers of my being
in order to penetrate to the very marrow of my
substance
and bear me away within yourself.
– Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Each person has a Torah
unique to that person
his or her innermost teaching
Some seem to know their Torahs very early in life
and speak and sing them in a myriad of ways
Others spend their whole lives stammering, shaping,
and rehearsing them
Some are long
Some are short
Some are intricate and poetic
Others are only a few words
and still others can be spoken
through gesture and example
But every soul has a Torah
To hear another say Torah is a precious gift
Rabbi Lawrence Kushner
Yom Kippur
By Philip Schultz
You are asked to stand and bow your head,
consider the harm you’ve caused,
the respect you’ve withheld,
the anger misspent, the fear spread,
the earnestness displayed
in the service of prestige and sensibility,
all the callous, cruel, stubborn, joyless sins
in your alphabet of woe
so that you might be forgiven.
You are asked to believe in the spark
of your divinity, in the purity
of the words of your mouth
and the memories of your heart.
You are asked for this one day and one night
to starve your body so your soul can feast
on faith and adoration.
You are asked to forgive the past
and remember the dead, to gaze
across the desert in your heart
toward Jerusalem. To separate
the sacred from the profane
and be as numerous as the sands
and the stars of heaven.
To believe that no matter what
you have done to yourself and others
morning will come and the mountain
of night will fade. To believe,
for these few precious moments,
in the utter sweetness of your life.
You are asked to bow your head
and remain standing,
and say Amen.
