I can easily imagine the collective groan of disappointment and frustration going up in every Beth Shalom household as you read that we will be holding our High Holy Services online.
Nevertheless, I hope we all take pride in Beth Shalom and how we’ve responded to COVID-19’s challenges so nimbly and effectively. Thanks to videoconferencing and livestreaming technology, we’ve been able to continue just about everything we had been doing as of Sunday March 8, our not-so-long-ago Purim party and our last in-person event. But even greater thanks are due for your patience, understanding, and willingness to try out a different way of being. You did it more rapidly and radically than anyone would have believed. When emergency funds became available, a specific few of you did hard work in an incredibly short amount of time to swept up our share rather than leaving it on the table.
So even though COVID-19 poses unique challenges (groan) I’m optimistic that our Days of Awe this year will still be spiritually refreshing and inspiring as we strive to fulfill the commandments of the Torah to hold a holy convocation with trumpeting and to hold, nine days later, a holy convocation to afflict our souls, a day of atonement before the LORD our God.
Much of what we’ve learned since our first virtual only service on Friday, March 13 will still apply. Just as some of our Shabbat worship, Talmud Torah Religious School, Adult Education, Sisterhood, Brotherhood, and Social Action activities have had to change, so will our Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur worship. For one thing no one can bear a Zoom meeting or webinar that lasts much more than an hour. For another, there just isn’t a satisfactory way to hold responsive readings or group singing in a live video conference. Some things will simply have to change.
As we mourn the loss of our annual gatherings of our entire community together, I pray that we will all embrace the opportunity that lies hidden within the loss. We might not get another chance quite like this to try observing the High Holy Days a little differently. We just mind find something we like better.
Juliette and I are planning a series we’re calling “Elul Encounters,” 4 meetings led by Juliette on Thursday nights and 3 meetings led by me on Saturday mornings, beginning on the 15th of August, even before the month of Elul begins, with the final session on the morning of Saturday, Sept. 12 plus an online Selichot experience that evening, at 8:00 P.M. Selichot are pentitential prayers recited late at night the week before Erev Rosh Hashanah in Ashkenazi communities (and the whole month before in Sepharadi ones). I hope that every single one of us will take part in at least one session; everyone is welcome to participate in them all. Everything we would want on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kipuur just won’t fit into a Zoom meeting but here is our opportunity to delve in to the experience that the prayerbook is supposed to evoke. Here, too, is our chance to prepare ourselves for the approaching festival season as never before.
Rabbi Justin
!בַּקֵּשׁ שָׁלוֹם וְרָדְפֵהוּ
Bakesh shalom v’rod’fei’hu!
Seek peace and pursue it! — Psalms 34:15