Page 17 - HaMizrachi Australia Rosh HaShana Yom Kippur 5781
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otherwise law-governed universe, the work of creation, but we repeat- you brought healing to a place of
we are able to break the law – a edly disappointed Him. Yet He never human pain or hope where you
power that we too often exercise gives up. He forgives us time and found despair? You may have been
with relish. again. The real religious mystery of a success, but have you also been a
Judaism is not our faith in G-d but blessing? Have you written other
This raises an acute theological G-d’s faith in us. people in the Book of Life?
dilemma. How are we to recon-
cile G-d’s high hopes for humanity This is not, as atheists and skeptics To ask these questions once a year
with our shabby and threadbare sometimes claim, a comforting fic- in the company of others publicly
moral record? The short answer is tion but quite the opposite. Juda- willing to confess their faults, lifted
forgiveness. ism is G-d’s call to human respon- by the words and music of ancient
sibility, to create a world that is a prayers, knowing that G-d forgives
G-d wrote forgiveness into the worthy home for His presence. That every failure we acknowledge as a
script. He always gives us a second is why Jews are so often to be found failure and that He has faith in us
chance, and more. All we have to do as doctors fighting disease, econ- even when we lose faith in ourselves,
is to acknowledge our wrongs, apol- omists fighting poverty, lawyers can be a life-changing experience.
ogize, make amends and resolve to fighting injustice, teachers fighting That is when we discover that, even
behave better. And G-d forgives. It ignorance and therapists fighting in a secular age, G-d is still there,
allows us to hold simultaneously to depression and despair. open to us whenever we are willing
the highest moral aspirations while to open ourselves to Him.
admitting honestly our deepest Judaism is a supremely activist faith
moral failings. That is the drama of for which the greatest religious Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks is Emeritus
the Jewish High Holy Days. challenge is to heal some Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Con-
of the wounds of our gregations of the Commonwealth.
At the heart of this vision is deeply fractured world.
what the post-Holocaust writer As Frankl put it: the
Viktor Frankl called our “search real question is not
for meaning.” The great institu- what do we want
tions of modernity were not con- from life but
structed to provide meaning. Sci- what does
ence tells us how the world came life want
to be but not why. Technology gives from us.
us power but cannot tell us how to
use it. The market gives us choices
but no guidance as to which choices
to make. Modern democracies give
us a maximum of personal freedom
but a minimum of shared morality. That is
You can acknowledge the beauty of the ques-
all these institutions, yet most of us tion we are
seek something more. asked on Rosh Hasha-
nah and Yom Kippur. As we ask
Meaning comes not from systems G-d to write us in the Book of Life,
of thought but from stories, and He asks us, what have you done
the Jewish story is among the most with your life thus far? Have
unusual of all. It tells us that G-d you thought about others or
sought to make us His partners in only about yourself? Have
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