Kol Nidre 5777
September 20, 2026
HINENI continued
Each day we have the opportunity to pray. We can open our prayerbooks and find words that have spoken to our people from generation to generation. We prepare for the worship with psalms, words attributed to King David that encompass every emotion. Besides the traditional psalms and prayers that we may regularly (or not) examine, our prayer books have quite a number of commentaries and notes within them, allowing us to be on the same page, even if we are not reflecting on the same words.
One such note I regularly reflect upon is from Daniel Matt, a professor of Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism. He writes on The Wonders of Creation: Why Is the Sky Blue?: “Among the wavelengths of light in the sun's spectrum, blue oscillates at the highest frequency and is therefore scattered effectively by molecules of air in our atmosphere. This turns the sky blue. To me, this seems more amazing than ancient Mesopotamian and biblical beliefs that the sky is blue because of all the water up there. What science shows us about the evolution of our universe and ourselves is as awesome to me as Genesis or the Kabbalah.”
What is fascinating for me is that it flips on its head the assumptions I often see among “modern” people. For so many the more we learn from science, the smaller the place they leave for God. As we learn more about the universe, some push God into a smaller and smaller corner of existence or snuff out their image of God entirely. Prof. Matt argues the opposite--that the more we know, the more miracles we can see.
Your existence as you is a miracle. Your existence as a Jew is a miracle. If we go back into the lives of our parents and grandparents, or even further, the chance of our existence is infinitesimal. Any change in any of those lives would have changed everything about ours. It is not only a butterfly flapping its wings that changes the world, but all of the choices that they made and that we make. Both days of Rosh Hashanah, the Torah reading references the challenge of childbirth, of fertility. Like many, Rebecca and I had that experience in our lives. In between the birth of our children, Rebecca had a pregnancy that ended in miscarriage. In order to have a successful birth, she needed surgery, an abortion to allow her uterus to successfully grow an embryo. That potential life was a great loss for our family, and yet without it, our family would not look as it does today. Our rainbow baby, our gift, our answer from God, would not likely have been part of our life. I cannot even begin to imagine what our family might have looked like without that miscarriage. Our existence is a miracle. Every moment has the potential for a miracle if only we open our eyes.
Rebbe Nachman of Breslov speaks of the practice of a hitbodedut, of finding a quiet space and sharing our thoughts word by word in our native language with our Creator. Once I was at a retreat with the Institute for Jewish Spirituality and was given such an opportunity. Now, if you lived in the 20th century, you may remember summer nights filled with fireflies. In recent decades, there has been a dramatic decline in firefly population. But that night, suddenly it felt like they all returned, as we stood there, offering our own prayers outside at dusk. Suddenly, the world was filled with fireflies. It was a return to childhood. It was a moment that felt like no other. How often do such moments pass us by, and we are not aware of them?
Yom Kippur is such a moment. We come together, acknowledge our mistakes, acknowledge where we have fallen short, acknowledge we are imperfect, and we see that we are not alone. We have community. Again and again and again, we say, "We're here, Hineni. We're here for God, we're here for one another, we're here for ourselves, Hineni."
Over the course of the day, we have a multi-sensory experience that strives to touch every aspect of our emotional, spiritual, and physical selves. We offer prayer in Hebrew and English. We think about the choices that we have made. We deny ourselves some of life's pleasures so as to focus our minds and our souls. We see the people we don't see every day, bringing together community and creating new possibilities of connection. Powerfully, we open up our ancient texts, books that have something to say about nearly every moment of one's existence, and we talk about them together. Two of those texts come from our prophets. Tomorrow morning and tomorrow afternoon, we find words that can truly change our existence if only we open our eyes and our hearts to them.
In the morning, we read from Isaiah, bringing us close to our Creator, acknowledging that our imperfections do not keep us from God but allow us to draw closer. The Haftarah in the morning opens
וְאָמַ֥ר סֹֽלּוּ־סֹ֖לּוּ פַּנּוּ־דָ֑רֶךְ הָרִ֥ימוּ מִכְשׁ֖וֹל מִדֶּ֥רֶךְ עַמִּֽי׃
with: "We are to clear a path to our Creator Pave, pave clear the way, remove the obstacles from the ways of my people that God dwells with us, with the Holy Ones, with the crushed and the humble in spirit, and revives the spirit of the humble, revives out of the crust of the crushed. But there will be justice, all violence will be eradicated, and that hatred will be gone. Shofar sounded."
Finally we get to verse 9, to Hineni--this time from GOD--
Verse 9 says: "You shall call and God will answer. You shall cry and God will say, 'Hineni, here I am.” God says Hineni when our actions match our words and our words match our actions.
Our haftarah tomorrow morning has God showing up for us. What does God ask of us in that moment on this day? It is not merely that we show up for God and then God will show up for us, but that God asks us to show up for those around us. God asks us not only to fast, not only to afflict ourselves, but to ensure that we remember why we are fasting: that we connect with a world where not everyone has what they need, and that we say that that is wrong AND, NOW, build a world where no one goes hungry.
That's haftarah number one. On a day of fasting, we remember the pain and the loss and not just cause ourselves to suffer, but help others out of their suffering. Then we hear from another prophet to change our ways.
Strangely, the prophet we hear from is not asking Jews to repent, but instead our enemies! Jonah is asked to go get the bad guys to change their ways. We see not only the power of repentance and truly changed behavior, but also that no one is beyond the reach of God. Jonah could not escape God's mission or requirements. If even the evil folks of Nineveh could learn and change their way, we can see that no one is truly beyond redemption. Jonah and Nineveh’s extreme example shows that we have far more control over our lives than we sometimes like to acknowledge.
Jonah is ultimately a successful prophet. The people repent, end of story. Or not! Once everything is as it should be, Jonah gets a little bit whiny. He's upset that God made him go all this way and people actually did what they were supposed to. They're jerks. God makes a little example for Jonah with that plant that grows and appears and disappears so quickly and reminds Jonah that you took pity on this small plant that you didn't toil, you didn't make it grow. One night it was there, and one night it was gone. God says to Jonah, shouldn't I take pity on Nineveh, this great city in which there are all these people?
Then we get a reminder of Micah that God does not maintain God's anger forever. We have three beautiful verses that reconnect to US and the people Israel’s covenant with God. We have a little reminder of Tashlich, that our sins will be tossed into the water and forgotten, that God will keep faith with us (and we will keep faith with God).
As we continue this sacred evening, as we go into the next hours of our fast, our prayer and our meditation, may we learn from the lessons of these Prophets. May we see the blessings of our tradition. May we see the blessings of our lives. May we strive to make a difference. May we strive to show up. Hineni. May we be greater and better than we could ever imagine that we could be. May we all be written and sealed in the book of good life.
 |
| Beautiful sunset from my mother-in-law |
Comments
Post a Comment