Starting in mid-August, I can tell when my colleagues across the country are starting to write their High Holy Day sermons. Usually, I see some Facebook posts asking things like: “What do you want to hear on the High Holy Days?” or, “What is something you love about being Jewish?” Recently, a colleague posted in a rabbinic group. Rather than a general question, it was clear that they had honed in on a theme; they posted a question about finding tensions—or perhaps opposites—in the High Holy Day liturgy.
If you have ever studied Talmud with me (and you can, every Wednesday at 12 p.m.), you know that I love these “tensions.” Our texts are full of them: permitted/forbidden; clean/unclean; pure/impure. If you want to dive into the High Holy Day images, you have sin/forgiveness, justice/mercy (more on that in a few weeks)—even Avinu/Malkeinu. All of these ideas are set as if they are opposites, but the reality of Jewish life and living is that most of us live in the in-between. Our tradition tries to set strict categories of black and white, but most of the conversation—like most of life—is lived in the gray. We pray not to only Avinu (our parent), not only to Malkeinu (our sovereign), but to a God who is both. We live life not only with strict justice, but also with mercy and kindness. We know that some things that are forbidden are sometimes permitted, and vice versa; the categories and tensions are set to give us limits … and maybe help us find a middle ground.
And so, I was taken by a recent piece by Michael Crowley, the President and CEO of Boys and Girls Clubs of Chicago. Writing for Craig Taubman’s Jewels of Elul, he wrote on the idea of balance. And he writes: “Finding balance sounds hard. Like an equation. I’ve had a bit more luck finding presence.”
In these days, leading up to the High Holy Days, these days of new beginnings and new rhythms and new relationships—I wish all of us, if not balance, than presence. May we learn to love the gray, and find beauty in between.
—Rabbi Sari Laufer