Being Jewish - Fall 2001 - High Holiday Reflections

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High Holiday Reflections

A Yizkor Kavanah
by Marcia Cohn Spiegel

A kavanah is a meditation to help direct our intentions as we pray. Kavanah comes from the Hebrew word kivun, which means both direction and intention.
    As we prepare for the Yizkor, the Memorial Service, we must acknowledge that for some of us this is a particularly difficult time. Some of us mourn for loved ones whose memories are a blessing; others have troublesome memories, unnished business with those who have died.
    Those of us who have not reconciled ourselves with family members cannot extol their lives or exalt their memories. Neither can we live forever with bitterness, anger, or rage in our lives.
   While Judaism does not require that we forgive those who have perpetrated evil against us, in order to move toward shlemut, wholeness and personal integrity, in our lives, we can use this time of memory for our own personal healing and growth.
   The Kaddish is not a prayer that praises the dead; it is a prayer that praises God, and the power of God in the world.
   As we recite Kaddish together with Jews all over the world, we remember that death is an inevitable part of life, we mourn those who died before their time, those who died in suffering and pain, those whose lives enriched the world, and we remember the living, asking for healing for all who suffer so that they can move on.

Marcia Cohn Spiegel, M.A. Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, is working to create change in the attitudes of the Jewish community towards addiction, violence, and sexual abuse. She is the co-author of The Jewish Women’s Awareness Guide and Women Speak to God: The Poems and Prayers of Jewish Women as well as the founder of the Creative Jewish Women’s Alliance and the Alcohol/Drug Action Program of Jewish Family Service, Los Angeles.

The Power of Holding Hands
by Rabbi Harold Kushner

I was sitting on a beach one summer day, watching two children, a boy and a girl, playing in the sand.
   Just as they had nearly finished their project, a big wave came along and knocked it down, reducing it to a heap of sand. They were hard at work building an elaborate sand castle by the water’s edge, with gates and towers and moats and internal passages.
     I expected the children to burst into tears, devastated by what had happened to all their hard work. But they surprised me. Instead they ran laughing hand in hand up the shore away from the water. I realized they had taught me an important lesson.
     All the things in our lives, all the complicated structures we spend so much time and energy creating, are built on sand. Only our relationships with other people endure.
     Sooner or later, the wave will come along and knock down what we have worked so hard to build up. When that happens, only the person who has somebody’s hand to hold will be able to laugh.
    Rabbi Kushner is the author of many books, including When Bad Things Happen to Good People and When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough. The Power of Holding Hands is reprinted by permission of Rabbi Harold Kushner, c1986.

Mezuzah
god in my palm
my palm in god
message from
an ancient door post
Elaine Starkman is the co-editor of HERE I AM: Contemporary Jewish Stories from Around the World, which won the PEN/Oakland Award in 1999. She lives in Northern California in Walnut Creek. She may be contacted at estarkma@dvc.edu.

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