'Tis The Season

This Rosh Hashanah was probably the most inspirational, meaningful, sweet new year I have experienced. It's been three long and trying years in my path to observance, but I went to shul and spoke to Gd on an intimate level I have never previously reached. The bulk of my short twenty years on this earth, I have been hassled into a skirt or dress and forced to synagogue for a long grueling day in services. Time was measured by how much was left in the prayer book. This year there were no "services", no "time checking", or moments where my mind wandered too far off of my dreams and goals for the new year. Instead, I really spoke to Gd. I knew what was going on during this time of self-introspection. I was not in a prayer service, I was in court on this Yom HaDin (Day of Judgement).

I told Gd He is inscribing me in the Book of Life. That's because we tell Gd on Rosh Hashanah if we want to connect ourselves to Him. If we do, we are spiritually alive. If we don't, we are spiritually disconnected from the source, e.g. Dead. Gd may be "inscribing us in the Book of Life or the Book of Death" but he is just the scribe- we are the judge and jury for our own trial. I think I did a pretty good job. 

But now, in the Ten Days of Repentance (from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur) we ask Gd to look on us favorably and give us a good (physical) life. To have wealth (to serve and connect to Him), to have health (to serve and connect to Him), to get into the right school (to serve and connect to Him), to please, please, please give me a puppy/kitten/ferret (... to... Uhm... serve and connect to Him). Essentially, we ask for the physical to elevate it and us to the spiritual (a uniquely Jewish concept). But during this time we don't only ask for things. We also ask for forgiveness for any wrong doing we have done to ourselves, others, and Gd. We are on our best behavior during these ten days and we finish off with Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement). 

The Day of Atonement is a not to tell us how bad we are and show us the bad we have done. The day of potential, Rosh Hashanah, is the day of repainting our target; Yom Kippur is the day we measure the missed arrows and correct our aim. Essentially, on Yom Kippur, we asses the potential we have and see where we need to apply it to become our ideal (or as Maslow puts it "self-actualized"). 

I wish everyone an easy fast on Yom Kippur and I also wish that people take a moment to look within themselves and ask are they who they really want to be? If not, what are they willing to change to get there?

On a last note, I'll share something a teacher said recently:

There was a man on the train who ask someone one next to him if the train was going to a particular station. 

The person exclaimed, "Oh no, your headed in the wrong direction!"  

So the man decides to do the smart thing: he says thank you and then changes his seat to face the opposite direction. 

May anyone and everyone who looks and realizes they are not headed to their destination, get off the train and get on the right one despite the difficulties. 

It's worth it.