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Entering the New Year 5777
By Rabbi Elaine Zecher
Transformation does not have a beginning, a middle, or an end. We never reach the end of Teshuvah. It is always going on…Teshuvah seems to proceed in a circular motion. Every step away is also a step toward home. (Rabbi Alan Lew, This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared, page 154) Over the summer, a number of Temple Israel members spent a Shabbat on a bike trip, stopping along the way for Torah study and then later for lunch. We call it ShaBike Shalom. On one Shabbat, a wise fellow rider told me that we should place a sign on the Riverway similar to the one at the end of Storrow Drive, but ours would say, “If you belonged here, you would be home by now!” Temple Israel is our home. It is where we belong, as members and as a place to live and experience Judaism together. Any synagogue is described with the word for home, bayit. It is a house of prayer, a house of study, and a Meeting House as well, as the words carved into the front façade on the Riverway remind us. The idea of home signifies a place of warmth and welcome. This is our shared home. It is also the place where we can return to again and again through the cycle of the year and through the high, low and everything in between moments of our lives. We continue in a cyclical, circular motion toward this home. “Every step away is a step toward home.” The idea of home is also about Teshuvah.
Teshuvah comes from the Hebrew word, shuv. It appears more than 1,000 times in the Bible. It means to return, to come back and revisit a place, an idea, or a person. It also refers to behavior toward God and sometimes even away from God. The plentiful usage of the word and all its noun and verb forms tell us of its significance. The ancient rabbis understood that each human being starts pure and that one’s behavior could move him or her further from this state of being. They focused its meaning on the human ability to return to rediscover our purest, best selves. They composed the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur prayers that remind us we have no single trajectory in our lives but a constant turning and returning. We revolve and evolve back toward ourselves.
Teshuvah is also a place of warmth and welcome, even when it challenges us. It is where we find our best selves. Our synagogue is our home where we engage in Teshuvah, in the act of turning and returning in the sacred work of this holiday season. It is here where we can turn to one another and turn out to face the world around us. As we enter into this season of great opportunities for our congregation and ourselves, my clergy colleagues join me in wishing you and your families much goodness in the New Year 5777.
