Yom Kippur: Clean us and the whole world
So, how long ago was last Rosh Hashanah? How long ago we were together for twenty-four hours and at the end heard the trumpet of the Messiah? How long ago did we kindle the lights of Chanukah? How many minutes ago were we drunk on Purim and ate matzo on Pesach? The truth is it was a second ago and the truth of the truth is all the holidays are with us all year long. A Jew always blows a shofar, a Jew fasts all year, a Jew sits in the Succah all his life, a Jew dances with the Torah into all eternities.
So we are inviting each other again for an even deeper Rosh Hashanah / Yom Kippur, a more heavenly Succos, and a more beyond heaven Simchas Torah.
When I was a little boy, I always asked my father, “Where are the songs of the Holy Temple?” And I never got a good answer because I could not believe that Jews can live without at least one song from the Holy Temple, a song of King David, a song of beyond time and space, a song that reminds us that we are part of G-d.
A few years ago, late at night, I saw a frail Jew by the Holy Wall who drew my attention. He really prayed. I waited until he finished and he began telling me he had arrived that day from Russia after ten years in Siberia. I asked him, “How did you survive Siberia?” He said, “I was singing all the time.” Suddenly I had this flash and I asked, “Did you sing the songs of the Holy Temple?” And he was quiet for a long time tears of ten years of Siberia and maybe two thousand years of exile came out from his holy eyes. And he said, “My whole family are Chassidim from the time of the Baal Shem Tov, and my holy grandfather told me in the name of the holy Baal Shem Toy, that the way we chant prayers on the High Holidays is the way they were singing them in the Holy Temple - the way King David composed them.”
That evening changed my life. Whenever I give a concert, I always include the prayers of the High Holidays. The melodies reach, like the Shofar, to the deepest chambers of our souls.
Just imagine Baron Rothschild, suffering from amnesia, standing on it street corner, dirty and filthy, begging for dimes. The first thing he needs is to remember is that he is Rothschild and then to wash up and change his clothes, and then to go back to his home. All year long everyone in his own way is suffering from amnesia. We forgot what a Jew is, we forgot what a human being is, and we forgot who G-d is. Rosh Hashanah when we blow the Shofar, we remember everything. On Yom Kippur, we wash up and on Succoth we move back into our heavenly abode –to the palace we are meant to live in.
There is war in the world and hatred because the world has amnesia and his forgotten what it is to be human. There is so much trouble in Israel because the whole world refuses to remember that G-d gave us the land.
Let this Rosh Hashanah wake up the world.
Let this Yom Kippur clean us and the whole world.
Let this Succos, when we bring sacrifices for all the seventy nations in the Holy Temple, restore dignity all the nations of the world.
There were never so many homeless people in New York as today and this phenomenon is actually all over the world. It is as if G-d is reminding us that if true humanity, true belief in G-d has no home in the world yet. Succos we are building a new home for G-d, for all of Israel and, via Israel, for the whole world.
Let the New Year be the year we have been waiting for.
Love,
Shlomo
New York, Elul 5748
Reprinted from Cong Kehilath Jacob News
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