This week we come together to celebrate Rosh HaShannah and bless each other with a year of sweetness and aliveness.  As a community, we take on our holy mission for 5772 to continue to grow into a vital network of support, comfort and inspiration.  We inspire each other to be rededicated to tikkun olam – repairing the universe, and tikkun ha-nefesh – furthering our essential soul-work. Together, our prayer, meditation, song and dance open the channels for the flow of Divine Bounty to bring blessing and abundance to us and into the world.  We each have an essential role in this holy intention.

During this season, we are enjoined by our Tradition to immerse in the practice of Teshuvah – a process of turning and returning, of self-examination and re-connecting with our Divine center. 

And… inevitably there may be moments when we feel separate from the communal celebration, overwhelmed by our own pain and inadequate to this task of Teshuvah. At such moments, when we might feel tempted to retreat and give up, Rebbe Nahman of Breslov reminds us to connect with our nekudah tovah, the point of divinity and essential goodness that resides deep in each of us.  He insists that we must dig deeply to recognize at least one good thing we have done this year – a smile, a song, a helping hand, a good choice.  Although the first point is always the hardest to find, he promises that the next will flow more easily. For Rebbe Nahman, this acknowledgement cannot help but to bring us to the beginning of joy and, thus, to teshuvah, to a reconnection with our soul’s essence.

In community, we are able to help each other to find and see these places of wholeness. We can be mirrors for each other, reflecting back to one another the truths of our lives and, most importantly, the certainty that our vital soul-essence is worthy of love and honor.

Together we raise up these points of goodness to create the niggun of our collective soul, a communal song of healing, transformation and love. 

I so look forward to sharing these Days of Awe with you all.

With soul-blessing and heart-wisdom,
Rabbi SaraLeya  
28 Elul 5771
September 27, 2011