Rosh Hashanah Readings Quotes

“So listening carefully is what I was taught all my life. When people don’t listen, it’s not that they don’t learn, they just deny themselves tremendous opportunities and glorious choices.” Steven Spielberg”
― Dov Peretz Elkins, Rosh Hashanah Readings: Inspiration, Information and Contemplation

“May the world enjoy a year that is free of hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, drought, and political speeches, which produce the most wind of all.”
― Dov Peretz Elkins, Rosh Hashanah Readings: Inspiration, Information and Contemplation

“Live each day fully, one day at a time, live time fully, for each moment could be our last.”
― Dov Peretz Elkins, Rosh Hashanah Readings: Inspiration, Information and Contemplation

“May we keep rage off of the freeways, and out of the workplace, and out of our homes, and direct it instead at racism, at poverty and at all the evils that we politely tolerate. May we learn in this new year that what really counts the most is not the years but the days, not the machines we have in our lives, but the people we have in our lives, not how much we can accumulate but how much we can share, and with whom.”
― Dov Peretz Elkins, Rosh Hashanah Readings: Inspiration, Information and Contemplation

“The Promise of This Day Look to this day,
For it is life,
The very life of life.
In its brief course lie all
The realities and verities of existence,
The bliss of growth,
The splendor of action,
The glory of power—
For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision.
But today, well lived,
Makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day. Sanskrit Proverb”
― Dov Peretz Elkins, Rosh Hashanah Readings: Inspiration, Information and Contemplation

“The Binding of Isaac and the Binding of You and Me With Rosh Hashanah coming in a few weeks, it is a good time to think about some of its important lessons. The High Holy Days are a time to evaluate our relationship with important people in our lives. We ask their forgiveness, they ask ours, and if there is regret for past faults and insensitive acts (Tradition calls them “sins”), we lend forgiveness to others, and they to us. Rosh Hashanah is also a time to think about our relation with our Tradition, with Judaism. It is the Jewish New Year, and a time to reexamine where we stand with regard to the faith/culture/civilization we call Judaism. Those hearing these words have already taken significant steps toward solidifying their Jewish connections by joining a synagogue, coming to religious worship, and doing many other Jewish things in our lives. Take a few moments—even a few hours—to think about and discuss your Jewish values and priorities with your loved ones and intellectual sparring partners. How can you deepen and strengthen your Jewish ties and commitments in the coming year? Perhaps that is why we are bidden to hear the sound of the Shofar each morning for thirty days during the month of Elul, before Rosh Hashanah, as well as on the New Year itself. The Talmud, in tractate “Rosh Hashanah” (16a), tells us: “Rabbi Abahu said: Why do we use the horn of a ram on Rosh Hashanah? Because the Blessed Holy One is saying to us: If you blow a horn from a ram before Me on Rosh Hashanah, I will be reminded of the act of ultimate faith performed by Avraham when he was ready to carry out my demand, even though a ram was eventually sacrificed in place of Yitzhak. The merit of Avraham will reflect merit on you, his descendants. In fact, when you blow the Shofar, and I remember the Binding (Hebrew: Akedah) of Yitzhak I will attribute to you the merit of having bound (Hebrew: akad-tem) yourselves to me. As we begin to blow the Shofar each morning, from the first day of the Hebrew month of Elul, let’s begin to think about how we bind ourselves to God. About our Jewish boundaries, the ties that bind us to our Jewish past. Let’s think of how our ritual lives can be enriched and enhanced with more song, custom, prayer and ceremony. Let’s think of how we can give ourselves to more Jewish causes (Israel, Jewish education, the synagogue), and how being Jewish can help bind and tie us to the needs of humanity (the environment, the needs of our community, the eradication of poverty and injustice). Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins”
― Dov Peretz Elkins, Rosh Hashanah Readings: Inspiration, Information and Contemplation

“Getting Rid of the Mud We have a custom at weddings. Before you go to the wedding canopy, there is the veiling of the bride. At the veiling of the bride, I usually gather together all the blood relatives into a room, to ask them each to forgive each other, because it’s impossible to grow up in a family, with siblings and parents, without having some secret anger. And you don’t want people to have to go into the next phase of life with all this karmic load. So that is why bringing in those people is so important. That way they can forgive each other and really bless each other. It is a very powerful thing. On one occasion, a young girl was present while we were doing this forgiveness, and she wanted to know how to do it. I tell you, it was a wonderful thing that she asked this question. She really wanted to know how to do it. It was as if nobody had ever shown her how to do forgiving. So I said to her, “Could you imagine that you have a beautiful shiny white dress on, and here comes this big clump of mud and dirties it? You would want to clean it off, wouldn’t you?” “Oh, yes,” she said. “Could you imagine then, instead of the mud being on the outside on your dress, the mud is on your heart?” “Uh huh.” “And being angry with people and not forgiving them is like mud on your heart.” “I sure want to get rid of that,” she said. “OK, how are you going to go about doing that?” I suggested that she close her eyes, raise up her hands in her imagination, and draw down some golden light and let it flow over that mud on her heart until it was all washed away. In this way she really understood forgiving. Do you understand how important it is, just as with this child, to respond decently when somebody says, “You ought to …,” and starts giving you advice and you want to say, “I’ve been trying to do it myself. You don’t have to scold me—show me how to do it”? This is the issue in all spiritual direction work. Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi”
― Dov Peretz Elkins, Rosh Hashanah Readings: Inspiration, Information and Contemplation

“We read in Bereshit (Genesis 1:2), in the Story of Creation, ruah elohim mirahefet al p’nei ha-mayim. This is typically translated as: “a wind from God hovered (or swept) over the face of the water.” The word that is translated as hovered or swept is mirahefet. Mirahefet is a word of ancient Hebrew poetry. It is rarely found in Torah, but we do read it in Deuteronomy (32:11) where mirahefet refers to a mother eagle beating her wings in place, over the nest of her young, in order to feed them. And so I translate mirahefet as “fluttering.”
― Dov Peretz Elkins, Rosh Hashanah Readings: Inspiration, Information and Contemplation