A time to look inward
Rabbi Dr Aviva Kipen reflects on Rosh Hashanah 2021
There is an enduring disappointment that we can’t gather on the greatest corporate days of communal solidarity. Still, without the buzz of others around us, voices from the bimah, and joyous affirmation of new generations provided by babies’ cries and children’s footsteps, we have an enforced opportunity to go deep. The silence of profound engagement has its intensity because we are free to time our meditations, our prayers, our memories, to move around our homes and walk beyond them (unless in strict home isolation) in our own time.
The opportunity to be limited and solitary mimics Judaism’s profound idea about ‘taking up space’. Wondering about the all-encompassing presence that is God, the Kabbalists wondered how it was possible for space to have been made for the establishment of everything else.
Their solution to the conundrum was that God, ever present and everywhere, chose to contract to make room for the everything else that is creation. It was a self-imposed tzimtzum contraction, to be sure, but it reminds us that drawing inwards and compressing ourselves adds intensity that can be experienced with practice and intention.
Kavanah (kaf vav nun), recognisable as mindfulness, provides the derivation of concepts for readiness, preparedness and clarity. Self-review follows from attentiveness to our inner world, what we have done, thought about, attempted, failed in and resolved to try again. Nakhon! That’s right!
The question of “Who will live and who will die” has new urgency.
Protecting our entire community returns us to the reality of our ancestors. Before routine vaccination of babies, mass death was near, common and extensive, as it still is for the extremely poor. COVID reminds us that we are still vulnerable. So, we must embrace the imperative to make good choices.
“Uvacharta b’chayim”: we are commanded to choose healthy and spiritually vibrant lives – to create compliant, outdoor options for minyanim to enable mourners’ kaddish to be said, to prevent the spread of COVID and to enrich the isolation we must endure. Eating without guests reminds us that lonely people experience meals of great intention but little interaction every day.
Enforced contemplation is still a rich opportunity, even for those fatigued by months of lockdown. Yom Tovs this year invite new constructs. Our methods need to be different for 5782. Actual sounds of shofar blasts will be missing. But “Zichron teruah”, memory of Yom Tovs past, anchor our future.
Chazak ve’ematz, be strong and courageous.
Rabbi Dr Aviva Kipen was part of the rabbinic team at Temple Beth Israel from 1996, and was the rabbi at Bentleigh Progressive Synagogue from 2001 to 2008. Today, she serves Progressive Judaism Victoria.
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