Days of Awe

Busy season, the High Holy Days — are coming soon. Special foods, special prayers and rituals, cooler weather, please? (That’s included in my special prayers!) The Rabbis called the High Holy Days “Yamim Nora’im,” (ימים נוראים) the Days of Awe. As I get older, I feel like I’m being slowly clued in to what these words evoke. One prayer in particular (some folks love it, others – not so much, not many people feeling neutral) brings our frailty and mortality into sharp focus. I’m referring to the medieval composition called “Untane Tokef (ונתנה תוקף); you know it — “…who shall live and who shall die?” — somber melody, heavy content. When we’re younger, we are really not interested in pondering these questions at length. And for many of us, as we age, this topic feels too close for comfort. We brush up against mortality more often.

Growing up in a rabbinic household, I have warm memories of those melodies, of my dad typing sermons on his Olivetti typewriter, of stirring choral arrangements. But there’s an awareness connected to the seasonal changes, something I certainly didn’t articulate in my years immediately after college and grad school and seminary — maybe it’s something like humility in the face of the bigger picture, a belief (and hope) that the fate of everyone and everything is “bidei shamayim “ (בידי שמים), in God’s hands. When I was younger, the expression “Let go and let God” simply did not speak to me. And now I hear and feel those words loud and clear. I appreciate the genius in the design of our calendar — a month overstuffed with sacred days which remind
us of fragility. (Life is a shaky sukkah! Might as well share amazing food and drink with friends in your fragile hut under the stars!) and nurture our sense of gratitude for each and every day.

So — people — grab it all if you can. Come learn uplifting Torah from a master weaver (Selichot September 13), come soak in some prayer amidst your tribe, visit with friends in the sukkah, catch Sh’mini Atzeret (Ask Melvin Kruger!), dance with Torahs on Simchat Torah. Open yourselves to the awe and gratitude of this sacred season. To everyone — Shanna Tova Umetuka, שנה טובה
ומתוקה, a good, sweet, blessed new year!