The Three T's

Dear Family and Friends, 

As we recover from Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, I am thinking of you all, and hope that you had a meaningful and joyful chag (holiday). After a summer full of teaching and learning back home in Canada, and after re-acclimatizing to the rigour of yeshiva life, I’m excited to return to the practice of posting about the texts that I’m studying and the experiences I am having that are enriching my studies with context. 

On Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, I have a feeling that many of us struggle to really pray. Instead, we sit in shul (Synagogue) for hours on end. Sometimes we chat with our neighbors (also an important part of community and of connection to religious tradition) and sometimes we zone out or people-watch to pass the time. I’m willing to bet that many of us might even feel overwhelmed by the amount and the content of the liturgy on the pages of our siddur (prayer book), and might feel that we lack the ability to understand and engage with the words on the page. That’s ok, and you are not alone! I hope to offer a small insight into one of the prayers, or tefillot, that we read last week on Rosh Hashana and will revisit again this week on Yom Kippur for you to have something to grab onto this time around. 

Unatana Tokef is often read as one of the most theologically challenging prayers in the whole of Jewish liturgy. We are familiar with the foreboding words that open the prayer: “On Rosh Hashana it [i.e. our fate] is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed”. With an enchanting melody, the chazzan/chazzanit (cantor) continues the prayer with a list of possible fates. “Who will live and who will die, who in their due time and who before?”. The prayer ends with a statement of capital T Truth: “return, prayer, and charity (teshuva, tefillah, and tzedakah) avert the evil decree”. 

Anyone who has lost a loved one, though, knows this Truth not to be true. How could it be that, despite the goodness that they were, their loved one was not written in the book of life? Is there even a God who decides on such a fate, anyway? If so, how can we love or be in relationship with such a force? These are big, scary, and challenging theological questions that this time of year- the Yamim Noraim, or days of awe- want us to ask. It is precisely during this time that we are supposed to turn inward, to consider what we believe in and what our place in the world is, and to be humble before our utter lack of certainty.

What does it mean to do teshuva, tefillah, and tzedakah? For me, it means pausing to return to myself, working to be in relationship with the divine (perhaps through prayer but not always), and putting goodness and kindness out into the world. 

This past week, I was home in Calgary for just a couple of days and, as I usually do when I’m home, I was running between appointments trying to fit it all in. Just before leaving for a check-up at the doctor’s office, I got a flat tire. It doesn’t sound like the end of the world, but these small moments of frustration are just as much a part of our lives as our biggest and most heart wrenching losses. This is the Torah of our lives. 

Anyone who knows me knows I wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to be on two wheels, so I decided to try to make it to the appointment on my bike. And on the way, as my lungs fought the cold October air and my tires skidded across the icy pathway of the Glenmore Reservoir, I couldn’t help but feel grateful that the car tire went flat at this “inopportune” time. I felt an overwhelming sense of appreciation for my two strong legs that can get me anywhere I want to go, for the gorgeous city that I was lucky enough to grow up in with a view of the mountains in the distance, for the sun shining on my back, and for the cars that carefully rode around me- the woman who must be insane for navigating the icy roads of Calgary any time after early September. 

My gratitude didn’t fix the problem. I was still late for the appointment, inconvenienced after a long day of travel from Jerusalem, and cold. But in turning inward and in finding a moment of stillness and gratitude, I noticed that 2/3 of Unatana Tokef’s charges- teshuva and tefillah- helped to alleviate the burden of that moment by adding just a little love and patience.  

I’m not sure why the world works the way it does. I don’t know why tires go flat when they do, or more significantly why sweet and good people (or any people, for that matter) leave this world before their time, or why people can feel so much unresolvable pain. I do know that my own experience with trying my best to pause and turn inward, with cultivating a practice of being grateful to the divine and to those around me, and with giving of myself as best I can in order to help better my community and the world makes the evil that I see and experience more bearable. 

There is pain and suffering in this world that cannot be fixed or made better by teshuva, tefillah, or tzedakah. I don’t think that these activities prevent evil from manifesting in the world, but I do believe that they can mitigate our experience of that evil. They can give us distraction and purpose at minimum, and even comfort at best, by bringing us into relationship with ourselves, with God, and/or with the people around us. 

I don’t believe that doing teshuva, tefillah, or tzedakah guarantees us a place in the book of life. I do believe, though, that it has the power to sustain and strengthen us through the challenges that we face, and can make our experience of those hard things just a little more tolerable.

I am wishing you all a Shana Tova Umetukah. May 5780 be a sweet new year full of the best that the universe has to offer, and may you find the strength to make the hard stuff more palatable by adding more love to the world. 

Gmar Chatimah Tova- may you be written and sealed in the book of life, 

Lara