Sedra of the Week: Yom Kippur
Rabbi Mendel Kalmenson reflects on the forthcoming week's portion of the Torah
The Talmud (Taanis 26b) interprets the verse from Song of Songs, — “on the day of His wedding” — as the day the Jewish people received the Torah. Rashi comments this refers to the day God gave us the second tablets, rather than the first.
Remarkably then, the Talmud sees Yom Kippur as the wedding anniversary between God and the Jewish people!
Here’s why this is relevant. The problem with many relationships is that we tend to hold onto the mistakes made by the people we love, and often hold their present self up to their former self. In other words, when we interact with our husband, wife, parent, sibling or child, we tend to see them not in the present, but through the prism of their accumulated past.
Just imagine how different relationships would be if during each encounter we looked at the people in front of us with a new set of eyes, deleting, at least for this moment, any negative history between us.
Long before Eckhart Tolle wrote his bestseller The Power of Now, the mystics taught that the universe is created every single moment anew, so that the universe of this moment is not a continuation of the universe of a moment ago, but is an entirely new universe with its own infinite potential!
Approach God, your devoted partner in life, with an open mind and heart, and let go of the distance, the disappointment that may have built up inside you as a result of the times you felt let down by God, and begin this moment, and the new year by extension, anew and afresh, in love and with joy.
Rabbi Mendel Kalmenson is rabbi of Beit Baruch and executive director of Chabad of Belgravia, London
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