Rabbi Heller's Blog

The Selichot Service is the first service of the High Holiday season. This year, Rabbi Ayal Robkin of Hadar Atlanta will be leading into it with a unique study/spiritual development experience. The night starts at 9:00pm with refreshments and Havdalah. See here for details and registration. Below are my thoughts about Selichot, modified to reflect the events of the last 24 hours:

24 years ago today, 9/11, Americans woke up to the horrific vision of the destruction of the World Trade Center, and the murder of thousands of people. It caught us totally unawares, but it should not have. It had been attempted already in 1993 and there were those who still threatened. There were members of the intelligence community who had warned about this very possibility, and reports of suspicious activity were making their way from desk to desk. We just weren’t ready to contemplate it. I spent the next years of my personal and professional life trying to unravel its impact on a neighborhood and its Jewish community.

Last night, we witnessed the murder of Charlie Kirk, a prominent conservative activist and podcaster. Many Jews and Israeli leaders considered him a loyal friend and clear thinker, others saw danger in his views and allegiances. All should be united in condemning his murder. The murder of one cannot be compared to the murder of thousands, but this will have an impact beyond Kirk's loved ones. The impact on American society will be immediate and long lasting.

More to the point, the assassination caught many unawares, but it should not have. In the last year, ideologically motivated violence has been a rising wave. A healthcare CEO was shot in the street, an arsonist tried to kill the Jewish governor of Pennsylvania, and an extremist shot two Minnesota legislators and members of their households, murdering two. It is not an isolated trend. Its victims are diverse, and its perpetrators come from extremes of the ideological spectrum, united only in hate.

9/11 had a high death toll and was driven by malevolent forces beyond our shores. In trying to prevent its recurrence, we took massive steps, some more effective than others. We put scanners in airports and we fought multiple wars. The tsunami of violence we face now is driven to a great extent by earthquakes within our own borders, and has surely not yet crested. There is no ocean between us and the perpetrators. There are no obvious policy strategies that our society is willing to undertake that would prevent its continued sweep.

Of course, for Jews, all of this takes place against the background of the last two years. We somehow, inconceivably, take for granted the lethal threats against our own community, but the fact that our larger society is also under threat adds a new dimension.

What wisdom does our Jewish tradition have at this moment?  It is not by accident that Ki Tavo, the portion we read this week, is always read in the two weeks before Rosh Hashanah. Famously, it speaks of blessings and curses which will be the consequences brought upon the Jewish nation, as a society, depending on whether they follow God’s will or not. That makes sense. This is a time when, as individuals, we are contemplating the consequences of our actions, positive and negative, and how they will bear fruit in the year to come. Three times, the portion uses a striking turn of phrase to describe how we will encounter both the blessings and the curses: “hisigucha”- “they will overtake you.” As a nation, if we ignore warning signs, the consequences will catch up with us.

The fact that the portion says that blessings and curses will overtake us corresponds not just to our national life, but our personal lives as well. The High Holidays remind us that we cannot outrun the consequences of our individual actions. We can sidle away assuming no one noticed or that those whom we harmed will not respond, but how will that play out? There is a good chance that our misdeeds will eventually come back to roost. Fortunately, our good deeds also bear fruit, for ourselves and for others, in ways that we can rarely fully anticipate.

Often, things in life creep up on us. Over the past few weeks, our B’nai Torah community studied “This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared.” One of its key lessons is that seasons of the year, and the seasons of our lives, often surprise us unawares. The High Holidays, falling at a different point in the calendar each fall, often in the midst of a return from the quiet of summer, have a particular propensity to sneak up on us even though they are right there on the calendar. 

However, the same is true for the milestones of our lives, and of the world. We may be anticipating a celebration, wedding or Bar Mitzvah, and even though the planning takes months, the last week is often a frenzy of unreadiness. Conversely, we are also frequently unprepared for the greatest challenges of life. How can we be truly ready for the breaking of a relationship, a life-threatening illness, let alone our mortality?

Our sages recognized the need for attentiveness to warning signs when they instituted the Selichot liturgy. On a Saturday night about a week before Rosh Hashanah, Ashkenazi Jews begin reciting these penitential prayers (Sephardic Jews start even earlier). We gather to be reminded of the texts and melodies of the season. This first service is striking, because it is often held in the middle of the night. It is a warning, if you will, that the holidays, with their potential for blessings and curses, will overtake us and we do not wish to be caught unawares.

Especially in challenging moments, our liturgy, our texts, and our community give us strength. This Saturday night, at B’nai Torah, we will enter the high holidays with Selichot. Our gathering starts at 9:00pm with Havdalah. At 9:30pm, our special guest teacher will be Rabbi Ayal Robkin, of Hadar Atlanta. He’ll be guiding us through Hasidic teachings on the High Holidays: “When Words Fail: Finding God through a Broken Heart.”

Hadar is an international effort to create vibrant communities of Jewish life, learning and practice. I'm excited that Hadar has come to Atlanta. It is different from other similar efforts in our community, significantly in that it encourages deep and authentic engagement with Judaism, while recognizing the legitimacy of egalitarian and non-Orthodox expressions of our faith.

As we approach the new year, we pray that we will be overtaken by God’s blessings. Having an introduction to the High Holidays gives us the opportunity to ensure that we are not caught unawares.