A Grand Entrance
“When you enter” – just as we enter the beginning of the High Holy Days. These days are special, drenched with meaning, importance, eternal consequence. Yesterday the Selichot period began, when we utter penitential prayers and poems, when we enter a period of seeking forgiveness and preparing ourselves to convene with G!d as the angels do for a brief moment on the Day of Atonement. We have entered a rich time in the Jewish calendar.
When we enter into a new experience or season, it is important to remember our history, the stories that have brought us as a community (or individual) to our current setting and situation. “My father was a wandering Aramean” begins the story in our parsha, as it does in our Passover Seder each year. These words open a recounting of the Israelites’ story – their enslavement in Egypt and flight from the Pharaoh after many generations. Most of all, this story told here (and remembered each Pesach) encapsulates the impossibility of its occurrence without G!d’s mighty hand and direct involvement. We should enter a period of retrospection, seeking forgiveness and atonement, and being in awe of what G!d has done for us and how he has saved us – then and continually, each day.
“This day the L!rd your G!d commands you to do these statutes and ordinances. You shall therefore be careful to do them with all your heart and with all your soul. You have today declared the L!rd to be your G!d, and that you would walk in his ways and keep his statutes, his commandments and his ordinances, and listen to his voice. The L!rd has today declared you to be his people, a treasured possession, as he promised you, and that you should keep all his commandments; and that he will set you high above all nations which he has made, for praise, fame, and honor; and that you shall be a consecrated people to the L!rd your G!d, as he has spoken.”
These verses provide a promise for the Israelites, but are dependent upon their obedience. Each year as we enter the High Holy Days and begin to remember, ask, forgive, seek (atonement), dwell (with G!d) – these verses echo in our head from the parsha. We are a people dedicated to G!d, treasured by him, an example, an inheritance. How can we make these words matter each year as we renew our remembrance of G!d’s salvation?
As we read the words of scripture over and over, they become more ingrained – we may know them with all our heart and soul, which allows us to follow them. We may talk about them with our friends, our community members, our family, our neighbors, our guests, seekers. G!d asks for our love – his words teach us how to love and obey him. Let us enter again into the ongoing covenant he made with his people, the covenant which provides us with forgiveness and salvation each day.
Plum Street Temple