In a few short weeks, as our summer wanes, Jews throughout the world will begin to hum the familiar folk melody that has lulled and led us into the High Holidays for generations: Avinu Malkeinu, chaneinu va’aneinu, ki ein banu ma’asim…. Avinu Malkeinu have mercy on us and answer us, for our deeds are insufficient, deal with us charitably and lovingly, and redeem us.
From the North End of Boston to the beautiful Berkshire Mountains, the collective musical memory is the same. Inwardly it taps against a hardened shell protecting our interior life – the season reawakens us to reclaim our spiritual north star, softening us to one another and the potential for deepened meaning in our lives.
Every holiday season we point ourselves in the same direction, and the ensuing year wears itself on us with pain as well as joy, unexpected disaster as well as unbelievably good fortune. The work of being a human walking through the world is exhilarating and filled with challenges, and each holiday that offers the opportunity to spiritually course correct is a welcome one.
Many of us are reluctantly getting back to our “real lives” – we are closing up summer cabins and unpacking suitcases, bidding farewell to visitors, taking sweaters out of storage. All of these activities lead us to and prepare us for t’shuvah, t’filah, and tzedakah: to return, to reflect, to come home.
Getting back to our real lives is exactly what the chagim do for us and to us. In Hebrew, the concept of t’shuvah laces our liturgical arc through the weeks of introspection and reckoning, apologies and forgiveness, a belief that the inner light of our soul is pure and good – and that we have the ability to recognize it as such, and to turn back toward that goodness. We bathe in hope and potential for sweetness, kindness, community, and generosity. It is the essence of optimism.
And yet, the mentioning of these familiar phrases dust off memories of sermons and of parents and grandparents who no longer sit beside us as we sing these words. The musical phrases and lessons that attach themselves to them usher in lifetimes of holidays and relationships: singing b’rosh hashanah yikatevun u’vyom tzom kippur yichateivun – the plaintiff and reflective refrain that on Rosh Hashanah the fate of the coming year is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed…