A Message from Our Rabbi

An invitation that rattles us

Dear Friends, old and new,

We like to frolick in our comfort zones.

Rationalizations, excuses, subconscious patterns that enable us, basically, to continue being the same. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, these Days of Awe, are a tunnel: Rosh Hashanah is the entrance, Yom Kippur the exit. The tunnel is to challenge our comfort zones, to defy all that has been fixed in dishonesty, detachment from our core being, falsehoods that linger on and make us less honest, genuine, caring, sharing individuals.

And yet, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and the Days of Awe in between them, are not simply a spiritual retreat. They are a date with the Divine. Not an encounter with a petty, ancient, punishing god, but a true encounter with the transcendent dimension of our lives, forever postponed by us with our very personal ways of focusing on the non-transcendent.

Far more than attending religious services, we are summoned to declare to ourselves who we are, and live up to the best version of ourselves. That best version is precisely when we allow the comfort zones to be shattered. That is an exercise that isn't done exclusively sitting in synagogue, expecting to be sprinkled by some external validation implicit in attending. It is done walking, sitting in the shadow of a tree, or writing on a notebook. It is done both meditating alone as well as inviting our loved ones to a conversation that is as deep as the mystery of being healthy enough to feel, think, ponder, reflect say and listen. That conversation that isn't about pending errants, that doesn't have the passing and flat quality of WhatsApp texting.

And also, if we are brave - and we ought to - we are summoned to open up the wounds we caused and we were harmed with in the most difficult terrain: to forgive and be forgiven. Sometimes it's people we hate. Sometimes it's people we love. It's rarely people we feel grey about. To dare to repair, and do so before we die, is the message of this tunnel. We enter to be transformed, (inscribed in the Book of Life), and exit to commit to live our life in integrity (sealed in the Book of Life).

So inviting you to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is not exactly a light thing, and yet, it is better than just a cheerful invitation. It is one to open our hearts individually and collectively, as a community. We recite possible sins, the ones we committed mixed with the ones we didn't commit, so as for nobody to be ashamed in a state of loneliness. We recite it all, we immerse ourselves together and emerge from the exploration together, and each one has had the insights nobody can have in somebody else's place.

This Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, it will be exactly 30 years after a young student rabbi from Chile at HUC officiated these High Holidays at Temple Beth El. Thirty years of friendship later, I have the privilege of returning to the congregation where I began my path as a rabbi, and share the maturity and spirituality life has taught me over the span of three decades, with y'all.

Looking forward is an understatement. I am happy and humble at the subtle, invisible curve of what we see as a straight line.

Leshanah Tovah Tikatevu Vetechatemu,

Rabbi Roberto Feldmann.