Germantown Jewish Centre

In the counting of the Omer, the numbering of each day between Pesah and Shavuot, we are now in the second week, the week that the mystics associate with the divine and human quality of G'vurah, which carries meanings of law, limits, and discipline. Although the freedom we celebrated on Pesah is important, the quality of G'vurah comes to teach us that our freedom only leads to meaning if it is accompanied by laws that guide our actions, limits that help us honor our boundaries, and discipline that helps us stay on our path. Finding the balance between the strictures of G'vurah and the freedom and love of Hesed is our constant task as we seek to lead lives of integrity, service, and meaning. (Drawing by Jocelyn Kraut)

One of the key points of the Passover story is that the moment of liberation, the instant when everything changed and the Israelites went from slaves to free people, happened at midnight. Unlike our clock-based world, the ancient rabbis understood midnight to be the mid-point between sunset and sunrise, the furthest point from dawn and dusk, the part of the night when there is the least light. We can imagine that this was a time of deepest despair for the Israelites, who ha...d already seen nine plagues fall upon Egypt without bringing freedom any closer. And it can be a time of despair and spiritual emptiness for us, as we dream of being freed from the burdens we carry but still feel their weight on our backs. The song Karev Yom - "Bring the day!" - that we traditionally sing at the seder expresses our longing for physical and spiritual redemption, and it holds out the hope that freedom can come to us at the very moment when it seems furthest away. Even in the midst of difficult times, may our celebration of Passover lighten our burdens and bring hope to our hearts this year. See more

While we make light explicit on Hanukah, putting our candles in the window for all to see, on Shabbat eve we speak in Psalm 97 of an or zaru'a - a hidden light, not easily visible, planted in the world for the righteous to find. Where is that light hidden? One way to think of it is that light is hidden inside our own hearts. Although we may feel engulfed in darkness, there is always light available to us, but sometimes finding it means closing our eyes to the world around us and looking deep inside. As we leave Hanukah and enter the darkest time of winter, the hidden light can help us not despair, no matter what.

When God wants Moses to be closer to the divine, God says, "Come up to Me on the mountain and be there" (Exodus 24:12). It is not enough for Moses to ascend the mountain; he also needs to expend the mental effort to actually be there, not distracted by what has come before or what will come after, wholly present in that moment. In trying to get closer to God, we have the same challenge, perhaps compounded this year by the different media we may be using to gather together f...or services: "be there now." Of course, it is not so easy to shed our concerns for past and future as we stand at this very tumultuous moment. But if we can do our best to be present this Yom Kippur, to experience it all in a way that enters deeply into our souls, then we have the chance to renew ourselves and to give ourselves the strength we need to go on. May we all do our best to be there, together. See more

Hashiveinu: Return us to you The words that we sing whenever we replace the Torah to the Ark are the driving theme of our High Holiday services. We long to return to the best of ourselves, to recapture our highest values, to grasp again our sense of meaning and purpose. We gather together to sing and to pray, to meditate and to consider, because we need to channel this longing into a determination to change and a plan for action in this new year. As the wind blows through the trees, the spirit of renewal blows in our faces at this time of year. May it bring us hope and blessing.