A most meaningful and memorable night of celebration and reflection

By Rabbi Yael Splansky.

Rabbinic Reflections
Elul, 5774

I am so looking forward to being with the congregation for what will be a most meaningful and memorable night of celebration and reflection.  I hope you will come on September 20, 2014 to create an occasion, to witness a moment in the life of Holy Blossom Temple.  Come for champagne and candlelight; come for study and prayer; come for reunion with Holy Blossom friends old and new; come to usher in the season of teshuvah, turning and returning, when everyone and everything is open to the possibility of change.

“At the New Year” by John Hollander

Every single instant begins another new year;
Sunlight flashing on water, or plunging into a clearing
In quiet woods announces; the hovering gull proclaims
Even in wide midsummer a point of turning: and fading
Late winter daylight close behind the huddled backs
Of houses close to the edge of town flares up and shatters
As well as any screeching ram’s horn can, wheel
Unbroken, uncomprehended continuity,
Making a starting point of a moment along the way,
Spinning the year about one day’s pivot of change.
But if there is to be a high moment of turning
When a great, autumnal page, say, takes up its curved
Flight in memory’s spaces, and with a final sigh,
As of every door in the world shutting at once, subsides
Into the bed of its fellows; if there is to be
A time of tallying, recounting and rereading
Illuminated annals, crowded with black and white
And here and there a capital flaring with silver and bright
Blue, then let it come at a time like this, not at winter’s
Night, when a few dead leaves crusted with frost lie shivering
On our doorsteps to be counted, or when our moments of coldness

Rise up to chill us again. But let us say at a golden
Moment just on the edge of harvesting, “Yes. Now.”

L’Shanah Tovah!
May the coming year of 5775 be for us all a year of health and blessing, potential and peace.