Rabbi's message- October
Rabbi’s Message:
MOMENTS OF ENLIGHTENMENT
That which has been, is what shall be; and that which has been done is what shall be done; and there is nothing new under the sun. Kohelet 1:9 For most of us these words of our ancient sage ring remarkably true. Life goes on, day to day existence spins itself out in a cascade of hours, minutes and seconds, working, worrying, arranging, schlepping – the details vary, the themes remain the same.
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur come and go. The crowd descends, the cantor’s voice soars, we travel inward as our prayers ascend, we move from the profane to the sacred, closer to the divine realm, making the transcendent more imminent, for a few moments . And then its back to the working and worrying, arranging and schlepping, and that sacred moment fades away. And “That which has been, is what shall be; and that which has been done is what shall be done; and there is nothing new under the sun!”
Too often, year after year, the transcendent moments that we experience during the High Holy Days are soon lost in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Our hopes, our resolve to change, our determination to make things different somehow seem to wither away in the face of life’s everyday onslaught. And yet, if we could hold onto some of that magic, absorb some of that divine energy, it would power that desire for change and enable us to make real some of those dreams.
Genesis tells us that the very first action of creation was God’s decree, “Let there be light” and yet the sun and moon and stars were only created on the fourth day. What then was that light of that first day? Although it fits rather nicely into the Big Bang scenario, the Rabbis of the Midrash, thousands of years before the formulation of that theory, saw that first light as divine light, stored up for the righteous to enjoy in the world to come. By doing a bit of interpretation on the Midrash, perhaps that “world to come” is the world of potential, the world which we can bring into being if we could hold onto those photons of enlightenment we soak up in the instants of transcendence which we experience during moments of closeness to the divine.
Martin Buber distinguishes between I It and I Thou relationships. The former are utilitarian, everyday ways that we relate to persons and things about us. But every once in a while, if we are fortunate, we undergo an I Thou moment. A moment when there is a dramatic shift in the way we experience the other, a moment suffused with divine light, a moment which completely alters the way we interact with that person. A difficult concept to describe, as those who have read Buber’s Ich und Du ( I and Thou ) will attest, but one that has real bearing on enlightenment. These moments are not necessarily of our own making. We can prepare ourselves; we can fast and pray and most importantly allow ourselves to be open to the experience. If or as the moment occurs, try to capture it as a feeling, not a thought, absorb it, as you would the picture of your favorite landscape, and later, it will be there when you need it to make something new under the sun.
From Denise and I to each and everyone of you: L’Shanah Tova Tikatayvu!
