“An Opening No Bigger Than an Eye of a Needle”

I find it so difficult each year to emerge from the slow days of summer to face the intensity of the Days of Awe.  Having relaxed a bit at the beach and in the mountains, willingly “in denial” of the harsh reality that I will confront come the month of Tishrei, I admit to a certain reluctance when it comes to entering this season.  It is not just the preparation for leading services for hundreds in our congregation that bring me – along  with every other rabbi, trepidation.  It is also the message and meaning of the Yamim Nora’im: that life is a “special limited time-sensitive opportunity”; that is to say, our time on earth is precious.  So that we do not waste a single moment of it, that we must consider how to spend our time in life.  This is the key message of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and these days ask us to reflect and re-orient our souls for the sake of the rest of the year.

How can we possibly attempt to confront the enormity of the task before us?  How can we move from the summer’s state of denial to the challenge of considering our shortcomings, and eventually arrive at a sense of oneness and closeness with God? 

According to a Midrash, God says: “My children, give me an opening of repentance no bigger than the eye of a needle, and I will widen it into an opening through which wagons and carriages could pass” (Song of Songs Rabbah 5:2, 6th century).  With great compassion, according to Jewish tradition, God helps transform even the tiniest effort on our part to be close to God into a major campaign.  But we have to take the first step toward repentance and atonement.  Then all will follow.

Rabbi Irving (“Yitz”) Greenberg, in his wonderful book, The Jewish Way, writes that “just as the month before the summer is the time when Americans go on crash diets, fearing how their bodies will look on the beach, so Elul, the month before Rosh Hashanah, became the time when Jews went on crash regimens, fearing how their souls would look when they stood naked before God” (p. 188). 

In these weeks before Rosh Hashanah (which begins this year on Friday evening, September 22), we should make opportunities for ourselves to prepare for the Days of Awe.  A whole year has passed, and we have grown so distant from where we wanted to be today.  Introspection and reflection are hard tasks to take up, and our tradition acknowledges this.  A favorite midrash of mine (Ecclesiastes Rabbah 8:16) teaches that “Repentance appears to be far from you, but it can be near to you” – which I interpret as a recognition of how hard it is to start this process, but how easy it can be once we get going.  But the midrash continues to say that repentance also “appears to be near you, but it can be far away from you”; in other words, if we don’t take this task seriously, or do not truly engage our souls in the introspection that teshuvah demands, we will never reach it.  Without taking the first step, however, through the eye of that needle, that first tiny opening we create in our own willingness to be different and better than who we presently are, we can’t get anywhere.

Remarkably, we have reached another year together.  We have (almost) arrived at Rosh Hashanah, and when we actually get there, we will recite the Shehechiyanu blessing, thanking God for having arrived, for having “made it.”  Then, as a community, we will pray that we might use our precious time in the year ahead for goodness and sweetness, in ways that will make us proud one year hence.

My wife, Martha, joins me in wishing you and your dear ones a sweet, happy, healthy and good New Year. 

Rabbi Andy Vogel