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Dear TBD Family,

L’Shana Tovah!  What a joy it was to celebrate Rosh Hashanah together.  May the coming year be one of gladness and growth, as we continue to search out the prayers, the melodies, the spirit and the new directions we need most.

As a famous proverb is fond of reminding us, it’s never too late.  It’s never too late to change, to start something new, to do good in the world, or in the words of George Elliot: “to become what we might have been.”  By the same token, it’s never too early either.  One of our favorite High Holiday pastimes is to comment, assess, or some years lament the “early” or “late” placement of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur on the secular calendar.  They have been known to begin the week of Labor Day, and we feel that is frightfully early!  But last year when Rosh Hashanah fell in early October, that seemed late.  The irony of course, is that the Hebrew dates are the same each year.  In the best sense, no matter when these days find us, they are right on time.

During the Aseret Y’mei Teshuvah, the ten days of return, we have the perfect opportunity to approach Yom Kippur with (as Joe Fried put it in his “My TBD” reflection Rosh Hashanah morning), kavanah, or creative intention.  I’d like to offer you a few ways to focus your minds and hearts, as we prepare:

• When you enter the sanctuary, bring your receptivity to change along with your attachment to tradition.  Both are so important, and I am grateful every day for this congregation’s enthusiasm when it comes to stretching our spirits and trying different things.  At the same time, we understand that no time of year calls us into our relationship with sensory and liturgical memories of the past quite like this time does.  Through familiar melodies and new ones, readings in the prayerbook and supplemental ones, it is our sacred mission to honor the blend of what has been and what is yet to be.
• Give some thought to your High Holiday contribution before Yom Kippur. Our Temple president Elyse Krantz put it beautifully in her message to the congregation: while the need for financial sustenance is an ongoing one, our wish to bring forward new leaders and volunteers is equally powerful.  She even provided a list of ways to get started.  Each contribution matters, and sometimes it is just a matter of taking that first step.
• Remember when you were a brand-new congregant?  As always, we will be a combination of longtime members, new ones, family members and guests when we come together again.  Be ready with a “Shana Tovah” and a welcoming smile when you see faces in the congregation you don’t recognize.  You can’t imagine how significant such a seemingly small gesture is to the person who receives it.  Or how it will be remembered for years to come.  

For all of us – may 5786 be a year of sweetness, of good health, of dreams realized, and of peace. 

G’mar Chatima Tovah and Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Gutterman