Marcia Falk - The Days Between: Blessings, Poems, and Directions of the Heart for the Jewish High Holiday Season

Lighting the Candles for Rosh Hashanah Rise up, shine, for your light is here. Isaiah 60:1 May our hearts be lightened, our spirits born anew as we light the holiday candles and greet the newborn year. Blessing of Renewal Springs and rivers gush forth, flowing between the hills. Psalms 104:10 We enter the gates, grateful for the blessing of renewal. Let us bless the flow of life that revives us, sustains us, and brings us to this time. Blessing the Children The squares of the city will be filled with boys and girls playing.

Zechariah 8:5 [The childs name] Be who you are, and may you be blessed in all that you are. Fruit of the Vine Wine makes the heart joyful. Psalms 104:15 On this Day of Remembering we recall the generations. On this Day of the Shofars sounding we listen for the voices within. On this Birthday of the World we start anew. Fruit of the Tree: Apples and Honey The trees of the field will give forth their fruit. Fruit of the Tree: Apples and Honey The trees of the field will give forth their fruit.

Leviticus 26:4 Go, eat choice foods and drink sweet drinks and send portions to those who have not provided for themselves, for the day is holy. Nehemiah 8:10 Let us bless the source of life that swells the trees fruit with sweetness. May the year be sweet as apples dipped in honey and full as the ripe pomegranate with blessings. It is customary to eat various specific foods at the Rosh Hashanah evening meal. Apples dipped in honey symbolize a sweet new year; the many-seeded pomegranate is a symbol of abundance. Certain vegetables that grow directly from the ground, such as pumpkins, beets, and leeksfruits of the earthare also customarily eaten.

Fruit of the Tree: Apples and Honey and the blessing that follows it, Fruits of the Earth, are provided for these customs, which have their origin in the Talmud (b. Keritot 6a). Fruits of the Earth The land will yield its bounty. Leviticus 26:4 Let us bless the wellspring that nurtures to fullness the fruits of the earth. Washing the Hands I will wash my palms in innocence. Blessing before the Meal Bread is the sustenance of the heart. Blessing before the Meal Bread is the sustenance of the heart.

Psalms 104:15 Let us bless the source of life that brings forth bread from the earth. Blessing after the Meal You will eat your fill of bread and dwell securely on the land. Leviticus 26:5 If there is a needy person among you open your hand and give. Deuteronomy 15:78 We are grateful for the riches of the good, giving earth. We will tend the earths gifts, that they may flourish, and seek sustenance for all who dwell here with us. Opening the Heart At the years turn in the days between we step away from what we know wall and windowroof and road into the spaces we cannot yet name cloud and skycloud and wings Slowly the edges begin to yield the hard places soften wind and cloverreed and river The gate to forgiveness opens Introduction to Untaneh Tkef Kdushat Hayom:
We Declare the Utter Sanctity of This Day Untaneh Tkef Kdushat Hayom: We Declare the Utter Sanctity of This Daya core passage of the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services in the Ashkenazic ritehas captured the Jewish imagination for centuries, despite being difficult to penetrate, structurally complex, and theologically challenging.

One turningone more way to draw meaning from this ancient textwould be to set aside its frame and focus on the picture inside: the image of death. Who will live and who will die, who now and who later, when and by what means will each of us come to our end? For the one certainty in life is that we will come to our end: all is ephemeral, all is fading, nothing that lives is unchanging. All religions grapple with the ultimate fact of our mortality and the mortality of everyone and everything we love. In Jewish liturgy, no other passage is as forthright as Untaneh Tkef in laying this truth before us. Its unique combination of poignancy and bluntness accounts in good measure, I believe, for its power. And it is this power that makes Untaneh Tkef so fitting to the turning of the year, the period in which we confront death and dying most pointedly.

With the changing of the seasons and (in the Northern Hemisphere) the waning of daylight, we become especially aware of the passage of time in the natural world. So too, as we start a new year, with its promise of renewal and fresh beginnings, we become more alert to the workings of time in our personal lives. Untaneh Tkef brings death and loss into the forefront of our awareness, giving voice to our fears while placing our deaths in the larger context of all that lives. The re-creation offered here highlights those aspects of Untaneh Tkef that I believe are most useful for confronting our mortality. A fuller discussion of Untaneh Tkef may be found in part 5, which begins on page 205. Here and throughout, references to God as personified or gendered reflect the language and theology of the texts being quoted or paraphrased, not the perspective of this book.

The talmudic dictum Turn it and turn it (Pirkey Avot 5:22) refers to the study of Torah, which the rabbis encourage one to do over and over again, in order to fully grasp its meaning.