A Letter to G-d: Rosh Hashanah 5787 Day 2

Dear G-d, 

Here we are again. Encountering one another פנים אל פנים כאשר ידבר איש אל רעהו. Face to face, as one does an old, beloved friend. It’s good to see you. It’s so good to be seen. I love the second day of Rosh Hashanah. It’s different from the first– pared down, a little lighter, simpler. Sweet, in a different kind of way. If yesterday was all about the intensity and majesty and awe of the Yamim Noraim; About new beginnings and Divine providence; today is about the magic of putting all that to work, to manifesting the very best of ourselves and our tradition, and bringing holiness down into the world. To making good on our promises; or rather, embracing the commitment we make to try our very best. 

I wrote this letter to you in the only place that made sense this year. I came outside. Wrote in the garden. Wrote in a place where I knew it would be easy to find you. I know you exist in all places across time. That you had us build a Mishkan, the Tabernacle, all those years ago so you could dwell among us, walk and stumble in the wilderness with us. So we could learn who we were all becoming, together. But still, there are some places where you are just easier to find. You may be everywhere, and you may not change from place to place. But I do. And how can we look up at treecover that is backlit by shadow and sunlight and not feel close to you? How can we sit among birds and bugs and the ridges on the trees, and not feel completely enamored by creation– how could I sit in this place that is overflowing with life and not feel inspired and grateful for this gift?

Wendell Berry wrote: “We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of the time: How much is enough?”

It feels like the whole world is hurtling toward some kind of recalibration. That soon, something is going to reach its breaking point. Something’s got to give. And before I go any further, I need you, G-d, to know, how terrifying it is for us to sit in this place.

I look around at the culture we’ve built for ourselves– we’re spending less time outside. We’re spending less time connecting with people in-person, face to face. We’re spending more time online. We live in a culture that prioritizes speed- it’s so easy now to just push a great big button on our phones, and buy things that we probably don’t need. It all arrives in record time– and that’s usually still not fast enough. 

We are still at war. Our planet is still smoldering. We’ve perfected the art of maximization and optimization. So much of our lives are automated, mechanized, digital. We have outsourced so much of the labor of living, that it sometimes feels like we’ve forgotten what life is all about. 

Help me understand: Why does it feel so radical, and so countercultural to go slow? Why does it feel so hard to just live? To be content, and spacious. 

Throughout the High Holiday liturgy, we refer to you as our parent:

כְּרַחֵם אָב עַל־בָּנִים רִחַם ה׳ עַל־יְרֵאָיו׃

As a father, a parent, has compassion for their children, so GOD has compassion for those who show reverence.

This is one of the central metaphors we use to describe you, to relate to you. And in this image, you are compassionate, patient. Doing your very best to keep us steady and give us the space to grow, to make our own mistakes. To hopefully come around and return to the truth of who we are. To the very best, elemental, human-divine versions of ourselves. And I’m looking to you, have been looking to you for a center, and some guidance about how to walk through this funhouse world. This place where so few things feel real anymore, where there are trick mirrors around every corner. So much feels distorted and intangible. And I can’t help but laugh at the irony of this all– I am so desperately looking and clinging to you– the most ineffable, unknowable entity that we have– for truth and solidity. 

You have an impossible job.

And then I remember that parents aren’t perfect, and parents are often mysteries unto themselves and not always as steady as we imagine or need them to be. That parents are learning how to be parents as they are in the thick of raising us. And hopefully you’re doing the best you can. But I bet you’re exhausted, and scared, and heartbroken knowing that you can’t keep us safe, not really. And I think about all those Midrashim that describe you arguing with the angels about us. Standing up for our existence, insisting that the world needs us imperfect people. That the world as you intended could not exist without us– I am but dust and ashes, and for me the whole world was created. That the Torah was written for us exactly as we are. Because the Torah isn’t a document about perfection, it is a text and a story and a tradition about persistence and resilience. About seeing the possibility and potential in ourselves and our world. It’s about acknowledging and sitting in what Parker Palmer calls the Tragic Gap. That great distance between what the world can be and what it is. That great distance between who we can be and who we are. Isn’t that what today is all about? Not necessarily collapsing the gap, but seeing it, internalizing it, and taking one small step toward shrinking it. For us, but also for you. 

And the Torah in so many different ways, teaches us to keep walking. To walk through that chasm, through that treacherous valley of heartache and tragedy and disappointment. Walking so we might arrive at that promised place of simcha, and joy,  and chesed, and self-actualization. Plucking those tiny, but life-saving fruits that the Midrash teaches sprouted up through the walls of water that stood on either side of us as we walked through the sea. Those fruits of joy, and connection, of mitzvot, of being-known. Those are what sustain us. 

The genius, the innovation, the power of our tradition comes from the sublime that is created in routine, and in ritual. Keeping up with halacha, living an observant life, however you imagine it, is hard. And it’s not always particularly transcendent. But every so often, if we are lucky, and if we are paying attention, that monotony and routine give way to something so much bigger. Mitzvah Goreret Mitzvah– one mitzvah, one good, thoughtful deed, leads to another and another. These are the breadcrumbs that keep us on the path, the tiny, incandescent sparks that pave the way home. 

I recently returned to a Talmudic text, from tractate Avodah Zarah, that explores how you spend your time. Rav Yehudah says that Rav Says: There are twelve hours in the day. During the first set of three hours the Holy One sits and engages in Torah study. 

What an incredible image. The very first thing you do is learn Torah. You make Kavuah, fixed time, and before you do anything else, before you sit on your throne of judgement, then move over to your throne of mercy, before you make sport with the leviathan, you learn. What are you learning? What holy book do you have open on your table? Do you have a favorite text, a favorite commentary? Who is your teacher, who is your chevrutah?

One of my favorite phrases from Shabbat morning davening is said just before we remove the Torah from the Ark:

דְּתִפְתַּח לִבָּאִי בְּאוֹרַיְתָך

May it be Your will

to open our hearts to the Torah's wisdom

וְתַשְׁלִים מִשְׁאֲלִין דְּלִבָּאִי

to address our deepest inner questions

וְלִבָּא דְכָל עַמָּךְ יִשְׂרָאֵל

and the hearts of Your people Israel

Open my heart to the Torah’s wisdom. And in the words of the Kotzker Rebbe, may the Torah’s wisdom soften my heart . Maybe that’s what you’re hoping for every morning when you learn Torah– for that great internal shift to take root. You need the Torah, as much as we do, so that your heart can be opened, too. 

I’m thinking about this idea differently now. Yes, it would be incredible for each of us to have a practice of studying Torah at the start of each day. But what if we started each day intentionally opening our hearts? Instead of rolling out of bed, checking our phones, wondering and worrying about how we were all going to get it done– what if we started the day with that simple but most important question: How can I be open and soft today? How can I shed the rigidity of the world? How will I choose to reject what the world is forcing me to be?

Will I be able to see that we already have enough. That we already have everything I need. Today, and every day after, can I believe that I am enough?

Perhaps the fundamental difference between us is that you can see the long game. From your perch, way up high and all around, you can see how the story unfolds. You have a belief that things will get better, that we will do what we need to do to right this topsy-turvy, storm tossed ship. You have this incredible faith in us that doesn’t always feel deserved. Especially because you’ve seen us at our best, and at our worst. You’ve seen us at our most vulnerable and our most cruel. And I know that if you can choose love, and insist on seeing the very best in each of us– we can do that too. If you can hold mercy and patience and compassion and joy alongside the anger and the judgment and the heartache, we can too. 

But we humble, brilliant humans have a unique challenge. We live down here, in the Yeshivah Shel Matah, the school of the lower, earthly realm. We live in the physical world. And so our hearts and our minds and our souls are bound up in and distracted by the clutter and the noise of it all. And I realize now that when you study Torah, sure, you may be learning the parsha, or studying the latest rabbinic innovation. But it’s more than that. What you’re doing is starting your day not just with a reminder, but with a practice and ritual that forces you to slow down, to pull back the layers, and to turn down the noise. When you study Torah, and hopefully when we do too, we pare back, and internalize what is actually important. 

Torah study, and connecting with and engaging in our tradition, leads us to what the Mussar masters called Histapkut, simplicity. I realize now that Torah, that Jewish life instructs, and maybe even commands us, to live simply. To shed the burdens of materialism and money. To push back against that instinct and that pressure to be faster, to be more efficient, to produce more, to outperform. Torah, which I understand as expansively as possible, helps us to live in the moment. It’s all there to show us how to live more centered, deliberate lives. 

And so when we call out:

וּתְשׁוּבָה וּתְפִלָּה וּצְדָקָה מַעֲבִירִין אֶת רֽוֹעַ הַגְּזֵרָה:

But repentance, and prayer and charity annul the evil decree.

Perhaps we are shouting what the answer to this question has always been– slow, deliberate living, self-reflection, prayer and song, communication with each other and the Divine, generosity, humility, contentedness– being Sameach B’chelko, happy and satisfied with what we have– these are the things that overturn the evil decree, that tip the scales. And I don’t mean in an overturning of the natural world kind of way, or hoping for theological magic– that evil decree that needs to be transformed is internal, it’s about a mindset, it’s about how we approach the world and our lives. And maybe, if we can let go of those things that we don’t need, if we can see and appreciate that there is actually a lot we can do without, we can weather this wild tempest of a world. We can live in our lives, rooted and centered and deliberate. We can make the most of this truly unearned gift. 

There is so much beauty and meaning hiding in plain sight. תִפְתַּח לִבָּאִי בְּאוֹרַיְתָך. Open my heart and open my eyes to your Torah. Open my soul to the most important things. I think I’m finally ready to see it all fully. 

Thank you for listening. Shanah Tovah!