Elul 9 5781

 Elul 9, 5781/August 17, 2021

Rabbi Simone Schicker

“God called the light Day, and the darkness God called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, a first day.”

Our tradition chose to follow these words, and therefore each time the sun sets a new day is born.  It is one of the more confusing things for those who are not part of the Jewish community to understand, but I find it beautiful to trace the tradition of welcoming a new day from darkness to light to the very beginning.

Transitions, from day to day, month to month, year to year are all marked through our tradition. Every significant moment, from the birth of a baby, to Shabbat, Rosh Hodesh (New Moon) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), to a Yahrzeit is marked. Each one a transition of some kind – some personal, some communal.

Each transition comes with guidelines for how to mark it. And each one gives us the opportunity to change how we envision transition. How we take the rituals and guidelines given to us by our ancestors and make them new again for us and for those in our communities.

As our communities transition into a new reality, having experienced so many transitions over the past eighteen months, let us each take this opportunity to bring a little of what we have learned and loved into our new realities. Let each of us contemplate what we would like to bring with us into the New Year and what we would like to leave behind.