Shana Tovah U'Metukah to you and your loved ones. I was sent the following short piece about the power of these days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and the role of the shofar. I love it and I wanted to share it with you.
Written by Meredith Fein Lichtenberg,
Community Catalyst @ the 14th Street Y of NYC.
Like any parent, I have values and ideals I aspire to with my kids, yet in the crush of every day life, it’s so challenging to attend to those. Like everyone, I get swept away by the minutiae of work and activities, and packing lunches and schlepping everyone everywhere. I’m not talking about the culture of American Parenting Guilt, which I think is a waste of time. I’m talking about something more subtle: the real, humble realization that life gets in the way of being who you want to be. Often. And that’s not bad or a reason to feel guilty, but just something real that happens. I always look forward to Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur as a chance to clean house, emotionally, and reestablish the baseline of what I’m aiming for all the time.
It’s meant to be that way. The idea of the shofar blast, “Tekia!” is meant to call you to attention, to remind you that, at least once a year, you have to pick your head up out of the fields you’re working in (or, nowadays, your phone), and remind yourself of your ideals. Shabbat, for those who observe, is a mini-reminder of this each week, but the Tekia on Rosh HaShana is a big blast saying, “stop everything.” The blast gives us the chance to start again being who we. mean to be. All people need that reminder, but perhaps parents, most of all, since we are even more likely to get lost in the details of our little ones.
It’s especially relevant to parents for another reason, too. The word “Tekia” comes from the root ת*ק*ע, which essentially means, to be stuck or thrust into something. In the sense of the shofar, it has the sense of “the call that you must respond to” but in a larger sense it means “to be stuck with,” as in “I got stuck with taking out the garbage.”
Now, (I say this in the nicest way possible), you have your kids and now you’re stuck with all that that entails. Each time they called out to you in the middle of the night, that was the shofar blasting “Tekia” — you have to stop what you’re doing (sleeping!) and you’re compelled into action. Each time you get a call from their school saying they have a fever and need to be picked up immediately: TEKIA, just as you were about to walk into a very important meeting. You’re about to go out for date night and your kid is all of a sudden vomiting? Tekia.
There’s no way around that, it’s just part of parenting.
But also: you come home from a long day frustrated and exhausted with a million things on your mind and your child shows you the beautiful artwork she made in school: Tekia. It calls you out of your moment and into the joy of your child sharing something with you.
You are demoralized and sad about things you’ve read in the news, and you get an email from your child’s teacher describing the way he spontaneously included the new kid in class? Tekia.
Your child is dawdling and whining and just as you’re about to engage in the least positive way, she grins at you and you see her missing tooth and the way the her eyes are like your own grandmother’s and her amazing sincerity and pureness. Tekia.
The Tekia is the essential of parenthood — every day we hear blasts from them that force us out of our thoughts, into another paradigm. There are things not to like about it, for sure. But it’s also a gift, this constant reminder that there’s more than the busy-ness, and more than the minutiae.
This year, let’s hear the shofar blast and let it wake us up and interrupt us. This year, lets take the chance to see all these moments, the good ones and the bad ones, as wake up calls that remind us of who and what we want to be.
Happy New Year!
May we all be written for a year of happiness and growth and joy!
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On this Shabbat Shuvah, as we prepare for Yom Kippur, I share a prayer we will sing during Yom Kippur morning services. I hope, that as we take the time and focus to examine our deeds and words, this prayer may inspire us.
May The Life I Lead
May this Shabbat help us prepare to lead the life that would make us and our loved ones most proud,
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Marcia Plumb
