Excerpt from
60 DAYS: A Spiritual Guide to the High Holidays

As we stand at the conclusion of the rich holiday season, approaching Shabbat Bereishit, we bring you two final excerpts from Simon Jacobson's new book, 60 DAYS: A Spiritual Guide to the High Holidays, which deciphers and personalizes these potentially life altering days.

Each of the 60 Days -- which covers the two months of Elul and Tishrei -- comes with a calendar, inspirational quote, facts and historical events, laws and customs, a relevant insight and a daily exercise. A special prayer section in the book explains the elegant structure and powerful relevance of the holiday prayers.

Tishrei 25
TURNING INSPIRATION INTO ACTION

If you want the inspiration of the High Holiday season not to dissipate but to be turned into eternal moments that you can draw on for the rest of the year and for the rest of your life, you have to do something about it.

While meditation can be very beneficial, action is more powerful than any meditation can be.  Indeed, meditation only lays the groundwork for action.  Action changes human beings, moves mountains, and ultimately changes the world.

How can action change the world?  It melts the tension between matter and spirit, fusing them into one.

Matter (our material, earthly realm) is temporary but tangible.  Spirit (our soul) is eternal but intangible.  Hence the tension between them. The Jewish solution is to fuse the two—to spiritualize the material.

To do so, you must take your material life, which is the antithesis of anything eternal, and you must connect it to something eternal. That’s the key.

Many people interpret this to mean that they should free up more moments in their life for eternal and spiritual activity—that, for example, instead of working fourteen hours a day, they should come home earlier and spend more time with the family.

That is very good but there is another way.

When you go to work you should transform your workplace into eternity.  One suggestion, especially if your work is about making money, is to put a charity box on your desk. While it might seem like a token gesture, it becomes a constant reminder in the midst of financial deal-making that other things are more important.

Another suggestion—since so much attention is paid to food consumption—is to take the time to always make a blessing before and after eating. While it might seem like another token gesture, a blessing is a powerful reminder that the material world is not here for us to indulge in, but to be refined and transformed.

Ask yourself: How do you plan to capture the inspiration of the High Holidays?  How can you turn it into action?

Exercise for the day:

~ Commit to one action that will fuse the material with the spiritual in your life.
~ Do it.        

Quote:

”[The verse in the Haftorah of Shemini Atzeret] ‘On the eighth day he (King Solomon) sent the people away, and they…went to their tents joyful and glad of heart for all the goodness that God had done’ is referring to the people returning home after the holiday season. Why ‘tents’ and not ‘homes’? Because the spiritually rich Tishrei season has imbued us with the feeling that the material world is not our permanent abode; it is only like a ‘tent,’ temporal and impermanent in nature, and our true homes is in our soul.” (The Rebbe Yosef Yitzchak[1].)

Events:     

Yahrzeits: Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev (1740-1810). Rabbi Aaron Strasheler (?-1833). Rabbi Moshe Sofer of Pressburg (1762-1839), the "Chatam Sofer.”

Chassidic leader and advocate for the Jewish people, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak was a close disciple of the second leader of the Chassidic movement, Rabbi DovBer, the Maggid of Mezritch. He is best known for his unconditional love for every Jew and his impassioned words on their behalf before the Almighty.

Rabbi Moshe was an outstanding Halachic authority and community leader, and was at the forefront of the battle to preserve the integrity of traditional Judaism in face of the challenges of his time.

Rabbi Aaron was one of the greatest disciples of Rabbi Schenur Zalman of Liadi. He is the author of many profound Chassidic works.

Tishrei 27
LEADING A HOLY LIFE

All this week the Torah portion being read is Bereishit—the opening of the Book of Genesis—which begins with the famous words: “In the beginning, G-d created the heavens and the earth.”

In other words, this sentence states that G-d created both spirit and matter, which clearly means that G-d is neither spirit nor matter.  This also means that the assumption most people make that they have a choice of leading either a materialistic life or a spiritual life is false.  There is a third choice: a G-dly life—a holy life—which is another thing altogether.

G-dliness—or holiness—is not the same as spirituality. Spirituality can lead to holiness, but in itself it is not holiness.

Unless spirituality is a path to holiness, it can be as ego-centric as materialism. There are spiritual people who are quite arrogant—they see themselves as superior to everyone who’s not as spiritual as they. Holiness, on the other hand, demands humility.

Another distinction between spirituality and holiness is action. Spirituality can take the shape of being a completely meditative experience, apart from the material world. Holiness means that you take on yourself the task of living in the material world in order to transform it.

A story that aptly illustrates this point is told about two Chassidim: a father and son who were absorbed in studying Torah.  Suddenly, a baby (the son’s child who was sleeping in the next room) fell out of its crib and started crying. The son was concentrating so hard, he didn’t hear it.  The father heard and went to tend to the baby.  When he returned, he said, “If you don’t hear the desperate crying of a child, what value is there to your Torah study?  Torah study is meant to refine you, to teach you how to help another person, to hear the cry of one in need!”

Ask yourself:  What kind of life are you leading: a materialistic life, a spiritual life, or a G-dly life?

Exercise for the day:

~ Describe how you need to change your life to make it G-dly.
~ Identify one G-dly act you can do today and do it.

Quotes:

“As one establishes oneself on Shabbat Bereishit, so goes the rest of the year.” (Chassidic masters)

“The edicts that are written on Rosh Hashana, sealed on Yom Kippur, finalized on Hoshana Rabba and sent out on Shemini Atzeret, don’t leave the King’s palace until after Shabbat Bereishit.” (The Rebbe Yosef Yitzchak[2])

Laws and Customs:

The Shabbat following Simchat Torah is called Shabbat Bereshit, named after the Torah reading of this day: Bereishit (Genesis 1:1-6:8) This is the first Shabbat of the annual Torah reading cycle.

The Haftorah for Shabbat Bereishit is from Isaiah (42:5-22; some continue till 43:10), which discusses the creation of heaven and earth—the theme of the Torah portion read earlier.

When Shabbat Bereishit falls on Tishrei 29, the day directly preceding Rosh Chodesh, we read a special Haftorah (reading from the Prophets), which begins with the words Machar Chodesh meaning "Tomorrow is the new month" (Samuel I chapter 20)

The story of our life’s struggles and achievements reflects the manner in which G-d chose to create the world: ‘In the beginning…the earth was without form and empty, with darkness on the face of the depths… G-d said, “There shall be light”, and light came into existence.” 

We all enter life ‘in the dark’: confronting a ‘closed’ world, overcoming the ignorance of infancy to uncover the hidden and illuminate the obscure.

The weekly Torah reading is what defines the Jewish week, serving as the guide and point of reference for the week's events, deeds and decisions. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi called this "living with the times." Hence the theme and tone of this week is one of beginning and renewal, as we launch into yet another cycle of Torah life.

The Hebrew calendar is so arranged that the last Shabbat of the month of Tishrei is always Shabbat Bereishit.[3] Thus, at the end of all the festivals of Tishrei we come back to Bereishit, to the beginning. Here is an indication that the beginning of all wisdom is to know that G-d is the Creator and Master of the world. Coming back to the beginning further indicates that we never "finish," nor "graduate," as far as the Torah is concerned. Truly endless is the Torah, "longer than the earth, wider than the ocean," for it is the wisdom of G-d, the Infinite.

It is on this note that Jews leave the month of Tishrei and begin their daily life in the new year. Inspired and enriched by the spiritual experiences of every variety—with which the month of Tishrei is so rich—they can face every challenge in their daily life with courage and fortitude, in the knowledge that they are a link in the eternal chain which unites Israel with G-d, through the Torah.