A Note From The Cantor

The season has arrived once again.  During this month of September, Jewish clergy all over the world are working to prepare themselves and their congregations for the Yamim Noraim (Days of Awe:  Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and the ten days in between).  Why do we need ten days?  Doesn’t the majestic and awesome tone of Rosh Hashanah, our Jewish New Year, do enough to set the mood for our atoning on Yom Kippur?  After all, how hard is it to say, “I’ve missed the mark, and I’m sorry!”?

Just what “mark” have we missed?  In the book of Leviticus, we find a description of the observance of Yom Kippur in biblical times.  There we also find the laws of holiness.  God instructs Moses to speak to the whole Israelite community and Moses shares many of the precepts with the people including:

• You are to be holy because God is holy
• You are to honor your mother and father
• You shall keep the Sabbath
• You shall not make or worship idols
  • You shall not harvest the edges of the fields nor pick up any fallen fruit so that the poor and the stranger may gather food for themselves
• You are not to steal, deal deceitfully or falsely with one another
• You are not to swear falsely using God's name
• You shall not commit robbery
• You shall not insult the deaf or place a stumbling block before the blind
• You shall be fair in judgment
• You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge
• You are to love your fellow as yourself
  • You are to respect the elderly
  • You will maintain honest weights and scales
  • You shall treat the stranger who resides among you fairly, like one of your own citizens; you are to love the stranger as yourself for you were strangers in the land of Egypt

The opening section of our Yom Kippur evening service shows just how difficult it is to say “I’m sorry.”  In the Kol Nidre prayer, we ask God to absolve us of all the vows, oaths and promises that we make to God between this Yom Kippur and next Yom Kippur “should we, after honest effort, find ourselves unable to fulfill them.”  We begin Yom Kippur with admitting that even our best intentions can fall short of the mark.  It is said that for sins against God, the day of Yom Kippur atones, but for sins against others, we must ask their forgiveness.

My family and I wish each of you will be inscribed for blessing in the Book of Life, the Book of Forgiveness, and in the Book of Deliverance and Redemption.

L’Shanah Tovah Tikateivu,

Barbara Margulis

Cantor