Rabbi Linda's blog

These holidays invite in a wide range of human emotions. We began on Tisha B’Av, sitting on the floor in tears over historic and contemporary tragedies - encountering the destruction of the Temple through Lamentations and the calamity of injustice to migrants through empathy and protest. The High Holidays, the days of awe, are just that - awesome days to engage existential questions, hopes, fears and to continue to right our wrongs. We pray, we confess, we aspire, we mourn. By Sukkot, after working hard on teshuvah, we are invited to celebrate. These are happy days where we engage nature, hospitality and gratitude. We conclude with Simhat Torah where we dance joyfully with a Torah in our arms and get ready to begin again - to move into a new year, refreshed by prayer, catharsis, thoughtful engagement, caring community and provocative Torah. Psalm 30 teaches that God turns our weeping into dancing. This season is a model for how to do just that.