A Message from Friends of Sia’h Shalom Cofounder Rabbi Meir Feldman
Dear Friends of Sia’h Shalom,
We hope and pray that you are well. As we enter into the final days of this year before the Yam’im Nora’im, the Days of Awe, we’re looking back and also looking ahead. There’s a Hasidic teaching that the last week of the month of Elul (like December 25 to 31) has the power to change the meaning of all the events of the past year. That final Sunday has the power to repair all of the prior Sundays of the year. That final Monday has the power to heal all the prior Mondays…and, of course, that mystical, divine energy to transform and heal can be found, can be unleashed, within the final Shabbat of the year as well.
But how is this remotely possible? Everyone knows: You can’t change the past. The past is over, gone! But, it just ain’t so. That’s not the Jewish way of thinking. The whole point of our High Holidays is to believe that we can change the past.
Teshuvah means “return.” As Professor Moshe Halbertal would say, “Teshuvah means that the past isn’t over. It’s not over until and unless we decide that it is over.” In other words, “past is prologue.” The past continues to influence our decisions and inspires us to create a future that repairs our harmful choices. This is teshuvah. A “repentance” that does not transform our future is simply not teshuvah, “repentance,” at all.
As we review the events of the year gone by, we witness an explosion of anti-Semitism. Yet, at this present moment, we are also aware of the power and influence that we, the Jewish people, can have in the world. Never before, at such a time of hatred against Jews, has a State of Israel existed. These are truly different times.
Sia’h Shalom is standing squarely in two places: with eyes and hearts looking back in time and with eyes and hearts looking ahead. The question is—Which gets priority? Which view drives our thinking? More and more Israelis are seeking to adopt the insight of Rav Soloveitchik. In his book, על התשובה—On Repentance, he challenges us to stop looking at time in the “normal” way—”past, present, future.” According to Soloveitchik, that is not the way to experience the month of Elul or the process of teshuvah. Rather, says Soloveitchik, begin with a vision of the future—a future that must shape our thinking about the past and the immediate tasks of the present moment.
Looking ahead, we are called to ask: What do I want for myself, for my family and for my community? What do I want for humanity and for the Jewish people? Only when we have a vision of a future, only then, can we—and should we—reexamine our past, the past that brought us to this moment of turmoil. “Past is prologue.” The past isn’t over. The last Shabbat can repair all of the prior Shabbatot of the prior year. It’s all one beautiful teaching and insight.
We hope that you find the messages from the Sia’h Shalom team uplifting. Each one, in its own way, offers a window into the idea that the past is still very much alive, open and being shaped by our present choices—which rely upon our vision for the future.
Meir