D'var Torah

Shana Tova! It was really wonderful to see so many of you on Rosh Hashanah (and to feel the presence of all those who joined us virtually!), and we are so looking forward to being with you again on Yom Kippur. I also want to add that for me personally, my first Rosh Hashanah at TRS was a really special experience — thank you so much, to everyone in the TRS family, for welcoming me so warmly, in this season and generally. It has been great to meet so many of you, and if we haven’t met yet, I look forward to meeting soon. 

We are now in the period called “the ten days of teshuvah (turning or returning).” In the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Jewish tradition teaches, we are to be especially mindful of our relationships with other people, with ourselves, and with God. This Shabbat, many of our regular Shabbat prayers will have special, once-a-year insertions (labeled as the insertions for “Shabbat Shuva,” or “Shabbat of Return”), and our Haftarah (Shabbat morning reading from Prophets) is also specially selected for the season. 

What will teshuvah, turning or returning, mean to each of us this year? This is one of the major questions of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but it is a question that affixes itself to each of the days in between, as well. This year, I am thinking a lot about a recent definition by Rabbi Jill Perlman, who suggested: “turning to me means recognizing the incredible potential for transformation within and beyond … doing teshuvah means we get to tinker and imagine and dream big in order to create the world as it should be, the world we all deserve.”¹

In many ways, we are so far from the world as it should be – but we are also, individually and collectively, so powerfully imaginative, and so able to dream. May this be a week in which we open ourselves up (as much as we can) to possibility, to connection with ourselves and with each other, and to dreams.

Shana Tova,

Rabbi Alexandra Stein

¹ Rabbi Jill Perlman, "Rosh HaShanah 2017/5778: A Letter to My Children".