Dear TBZ Community,
This is the last Shabbat of the year! And the last week of the year 5783! Here we are on the cusp of a New Year – an opportunity to start anew, to lift our hopes and wishes, and to reset. Our tradition invites us to dig deep into our own actions and choices, so we can make the best of what will come.
One understanding of Rosh Hashanah is that Adam Harishon, the first human being, was created, which means that the world was created on the twenty-fifth day of Elul. Based on this understanding, the celebration of the New Year is the celebration of humanity; in the days leading up to it, the world is created for humanity to inhabit. From this perspective, next week is not just the last week of the year, and something that we will leave behind, but it is the week of the creation of the world, the moments before our creation.
There is a practice to light five candles on the eve of the 25th of Elul (this year, Sunday night, September 10th). My spouse, Rabbi Ebn Leader, who lights these five candles every year, wrote about this practice, quoting the Ben Ish Chai, the highly regarded 19th Century mystic and legalist, Rabbi Yosef Hayyim of Baghdad.
The Ben Ish Chai teaches about the 25th of Elul:
“Do not fast on that day. On the contrary, have meals with bread and meat both at night and during the day, say the blessings over food with great intention, and eat sweet things. Give a great deal of charity on that day. You or your spouse should light five candles that night, corresponding to the five lights of [Divine] hesed (love), as it says, in Genesis 1:4, “God saw that the light was good.”
Ebn explains:
“The image of five lights is derived from the fact that the word “light” (or) is mentioned five times in the biblical story of the first day of creation, in Genesis. Creation is often understood in our tradition as God’s primordial act of love, as is often taught in relation to the verse, “The world is established upon love” (Psalm 89:3). In Jewish mystical teachings, hesed is associated with the first day of creation, symbolized by light (which is “good”). We recall God’s great love and enact this divine virtue by showing our concern for others by giving tzedakah (charity).
The Ben Ish Chai then proceeds to offer two other rituals for the day. The first is actually a ritual for the whole week. He proposes reading the verses from the Torah about the first day of creation on the 25th of Elul, the second on the 26th, and so on. He also offers many prayers to be said around the recitation of the biblical verses, most referring to mystical notions of the spiritual infrastructure of the world. The second ritual (also surrounded by several prayers) involves chanting the letters of the Hebrew alphabet 27 times (corresponding to the Hebrew alphabet’s 22 letters, of which five have different forms when used at the end of a word). This practice derives from the widespread notion in classical Jewish sources that God used language to create the world (see the nine references to “Let there be” in the Genesis story), and even more directly from Jewish mystical sources that describe the Hebrew letters as the building blocks of the universe.”
Parashat Nitzavim, the Torah portion we read this week, is always relevant to this time of the year, prior to the High Holiday. It teaches about the possibility to choose, choosing good over evil, choosing life over death.
רְאֵה נָתַתִּי לְפָנֶיךָ הַיּוֹם אֶת־הַחַיִּים וְאֶת־הַטּוֹב וְאֶת־הַמָּוֶת וְאֶת־הָרָע
See, I set before you this day life and good, death and evil.
In a way, we can hear the call even before the New Year, even before the world is created for the possibility of choice. And we can translate it to the questions for this New Year: which choices will we make? In what kind of world we will live? Will we be able to see the opportunities and the choices that God puts before us? And perhaps at the center of this ritual, would we be able to receive and be open for God’s loving-kindness, God’s hesed?
As you can imagine, our TBZ staff, including our davening team and office team, are in full preparation for Rosh Hashanah. Rehearsals, tickets being mailed, sermons being written. Many of our lay-leaders are preparing, their Torah reading, their personal prayers, and more. And I assume many of you are preparing too, making plans for meals and services (if you have not taken care of your membership/tickets, please do so ASAP!), and more. I want to encourage you to take a moment, either on Sunday night, lighting five candles, or another time this week, to pause, to reflect, and to ask yourself how you can prepare for the New Year and how you can open your heart to receive God’s hesed.
May this Shabbat bring renewal and blessings to all of you and your loved ones.
May we find strength, courage, and patience, and open our hearts with generosity.
May all those who are ill find healing. And may we have a joyful, sweet, and peaceful Shabbat.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rav Claudia