麻豆约拍

A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg

Good Morning,

Yesterday was the first day of the Hebrew month of Elul. It鈥檚 a month of reflection, when we examine our lives in preparation for the Jewish High Holydays.

Each morning during Elul we blow the shofar, a hollowed out, unadorned ram鈥檚 horn. The sound can scarcely be described as musical; it鈥檚 a raw, piercing call from the core of nature, as if life itself were crying from its heart.

The twelfth century Jewish philosopher Maimonides described its impact, 鈥淎wake, you sleepers, from your sleep and you slumberers from your slumber. Search your deeds and turn in repentance. Remember your creator, you who forget the truth in the vanities of time鈥�.

The shofar summons us to come awake to our best self. It doesn鈥檛 ask us to become someone else, some ideal perfect person. It asks us to be mindful of our own true nature.

In the Bible鈥檚 Song of Songs, the beloved is disturbed in the middle of the night by her lover knocking at her door: 鈥業 sleep, but my heart is awake,鈥� she says.

For us it鈥檚 often the other way round. Life can be so full of pressures and distractions that we struggle to find a moment鈥檚 rest and almost forget that we have a heart and soul.

Yet deep within us that heart may be waiting for the knock on the door, the shofar鈥檚 cry which calls us to come fully awake.

If we lived from our heart and followed what it told us, the world would surely be a place of far greater integrity and deeper compassion.

God, may your call reach our hearts.

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