HHD 2025
YK 5786
In 2008, an organization called Reboot started the 10q - a series of questions asked every day
between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Answers to the questions are kept private (unless
you choose to make public) and re-sent just before every new year as a reminder of your
thoughts 365 days ago. Here are a few of mine from last year:
Day 1: Describe a significant experience that has happened in the past year. How did it
affect you? Are you grateful? Relieved? Resentful? Inspired?
Your Answer: Oct 7 changed all of us for worse and better- the awful part is obvious.
The better part is the community that grew from pain - I’m so grateful to know who my
people are and feel their support.
Day 7: How would you like to improve yourself and your life next year? Is there a piece
of advice or counsel you received in the past year that could guide you?
Your Answer: Patience patience patience. It’s the lesson I’m forced to learn over and
over. Take a breath. Think. Take another breath. It’s the unlock to any potential power or
control over my own life
Day 11: If you had just six words to make a prediction for the upcoming year what would
they be?
Your Answer: Fraught. Painful. Busy. Challenging. Exciting. Israeli!
Its the eve of the High Holy Days and I’m struggling as I read back what I wrote the
year before. Yes the year has been fraught, and challenging, busy, etc. But what do I
have to offer this year, what in my journey around the sun can I share that might be of
use? In years past, I’ve explored a particular piece of Yom Kippur from the Kol Nidre to the
Unetanneh Tokef and the Viduii. This year is different. This year, I’m exploring a little piece of
me because the word “patience” struck me as I read my answer to the question about advice.
But before I do, I want to share a teaching that many of you may know, but was new to me. It
comes from Rachel Goldberg-Polin, mother of Hersh, z’l. Rachel Goldberg-Polin has become
an extraordinary de facto lay leader to a broad community of Jews who follow the war and the
families of the hostages. It’s not a role she sought. She may not even know the impact of her words. But in her grief, she has found her voice as a teacher. In conversation with Dan Senor a few weeks ago, she spoke about the origin of the High Holy Days and why we celebrate a “new year” on the first day of the seventh month of the calendar, sort of the equivalent of saying “Happy New Year” on July 1st of the Gregorian calendar. In the Torah, it is in the 3rd book - Leviticus 23: 23-32 - wherein we are told this is a day of rest and memorial blowing of trumpets - we are commanded to blow the shofar. But it is Talmud which explains why THIS day is a “new year” - because on this day, the first day of the seventh month, Adam and Eve came to be - this is the birth of humanity - the new year for man - the opening of the book intowhich are inscribed. The shofar is blown to wake us up - to tell us to pay attention - we are
alive.
Ten days later, comes Yom Kippur - the day on which we are to afflict our souls.
But how much more afflicted can our souls be? Two years of war and violence and
skyrocketing antisemitism. Some of us are worn down, others confused, all of us steeped in
what feels like an endless cycle of bad news from Israel, from within the diaspora, from all
corners of the world. It feels daunting to enter this New Year with so much hanging in the
balance. Seeped in world events as some of us are, it is hard to remain hopeful, to go into this
most precious holiday of the year with positivity and a full heart. But here we are - at the
threshold of a new year, a new opportunity to do better and be better. And our tradition
demands that regardless of circumstance, we observe. The Jews are like the U.S. Postal
Service of religions - through rain, snow, sleet and hail, we show up, we fast, we atone.
So here’s where it gets personal. Because each of us have our own journey of atonement. In
years past, mine has focused on acknowledging a lack of patience that is pervasive in my life -
lack patience with others, with the world, with myself. Rinse and repeat. Year after year of a
fist to the chest to remind myself to be more patient. But patience can be passive, patience is
not what will help me through challenges both personal and professional. I need something
else. I need something stronger. What I need is restraint. Torah, it turns out, is filled with
nothing but restraint. Thou shalt not… Thou shalt not kill, lie, cheat or steal. And then comes
this:
You shall afflict your souls—Leviticus 16:29.
The greatest restraint we show is as we fulfill this commandment from Torah. We afflict our
souls by abstaining from work, sex, bathing, drinking and of course eating.
As a Jonny-come-lately Jew, my first Yom Kippur fasts felt like torture - surely this was some
terrible punishment for the sins I may or may have not committed. As I grew closer to liturgy, I
faced my fast with patience - a kind of waiting it out until that first delicious bite of challah at
sundown. Don’t get me wrong - I love Yom Kippur and engage in the entire service, from Kol
Nidre through Neilah. But only recently have I realized that just being patient, just waiting out
my fast, isn’t the point. Being patient made me feel powerless. Restraining myself,
understanding that I am in full control of my reactions, feels powerful. By actively NOT acting, I take back control.
So this is how I face my fast this year. I remind myself that:
- Patience is passive. Restraint is active.
- Patience is temporal - this too shall pass. Restraint is behavioral - I choose my path
regardless of the challenge facing me.
- Patience is a focus on time. Restraint flips the focus to one’s own impulses.
- Patience is the virtue of endurance. Restraint, the virtue of self-governance.
- Patience respects others by enduring them. Restraint respects oneself by remaining rational.
- Patience is how we wait in the world. Restraint is how we rule ourselves.
This year, I will not fast with patience. I will not just wait it out. I won’t stop eating at sundown
on Erev Yom Kippur, set a clock for 25 hours and sit idling as it ticks down.
We afflict our bodies so that we may access our souls - we deprive our bodies of food, water,
sex, ointments so that they become secondary, allowing our souls to fly free of corporeal
boundary. There is nothing passive about it. As Jews we are to engage in active awareness of
our fast, in active restraint from earthly pleasures in order to make our bodies secondary,
allowing our souls to fly free of corporeal boundary.
So what does this have to do with going into my new year - how am I atoning and
acknowledging those sins I may commit in the year to come? Too often, every day, several
times a day, be it in my work life or my personal life, I am faced with the potential to fail. A
colleague disrespects me, a friend cites a news source that I know is false, my news feed
reminds me that righteous indignation fans the flame of hatred and dissent. And what am I to
do?
I cannot be patient and hope that hearts and minds may change. I will not be patient and sit
idly as lies are told. But the exercise of restraint may allow me to take a beat and respond with
reason and not emotion when confronted with disrespect at work. Restraint may force me to
take a breath and respond with intellect and not frustration when faced with political naiveté,
those spouting misinformation or disinformation. Restraint dictates that I really hear what is
being said and then consider my words wisely.
Restraint demands that I take account.
It is with restraint that I respond to unbridled egos in the workplace, restraint I exercise when
judgment may lead me to say the wrong thing, restraint I must employ when outrage in the
form of bile rises up when faced with mouths that say ‘genocide’ carelessly and take their
news from a headline or TikTok posts. Patience won’t do - I can’t be patient and hope the
blind will someday see. But I can exercise restraint and control my fury in an attempt to
educate, or control my urge to educate when education will clearly fall on deaf ears. Restraint
is good exercise. Patience is too passive for times like these.
But then my wise husband reminded me of this:
Proverbs 16:32
”ט֣וֹב אֶ֭רֶ = אַפַּ֣י ִם מִגִּבּ֑וֹר, וּמֹשֵׁ֥ל בְּ֝רוּח֗וֹ מִלֹּכֵ֥ד ﬠִֽיר“
“Better to be slow to anger (אֶ֭רֶ = אַפַּ֣י ִם, erekh appayim) than mighty; and one who rules
his spirit (מֹשֵׁ֥ל בְּרוּח֗וֹ, moshel beruach) than one who captures a city.”
Solomon pairs patience and restraint side by side. Erekh appayim (patience, long of
anger) is endurance; moshel beruach (restraint, ruling the spirit) is mastery. To have one
without the other is like balancing on one foot—you may stand for a time, but not long.
So the lesson for me this year is to exercise restraint without discarding patience, to marry the twin disciplines of waiting so that one does not frustrate me nor the other exhaust me. I pray
for the strength to both exercise the muscle of restraint and practice the discipline of patience
in order that together they are strong enough to hold my frame through the most turbulent of
times. I know that praying will not be enough and that there is vigilance and work ahead. I
look forward to it with gratitude and the knowledge that I am not alone.
To my community - old friends and new - those of us bound together by blood, friendship and
thousands of years of tradition…
Shana tova, u’metukah.
And,
G’mar hatimah tova.
XO
L.
