Gates of Repentance -- 5775

The High Holy Days are about change.  We strive to become better people than we were, and we work to heal our relationships through tshuvah, the act of introspection and repair.  The date on the calendar changes automatically; transforming our souls takes work.

Change is complex, and we each relate to it in our own ways.  Some people thrill to change; others dread it.  Some plan and organize; others jump in.  What’s your approach?

This year, synagogues across North America will be changing their machzorim.  We say goodbye to the familiar crimson Gates of Repentance, the words of which we know so well even though we only said them once a year.

Here are some of my favorite passages:

With the setting of this evening’s sun, united with Jews of every place and time, we proclaim a new year of hope.  May the light of the divine shine forth to lead us, to show us the good we must do, the harmony we must create. Let the fire we kindle be for us a warming flame, whose brightness shows us the path of life.  (p. 49)

What can we say before You, who dwell on high?  What shall we plead before You, enthroned beyond the stars?  Are not all things known to You, both the mysteries of eternity and the dark secrets of all that live?  You search the inmost chambers of the heart, and probe the deep recesses of the soul.  Nothing is concealed from Your sight. (p. 270)

Time, like a river, rolls on, flowing year after year into the sea of eternity.  (p. 294)

I didn’t grow up with Gates of Repentance, but I’ve gotten so comfortable with it.  I’ve never lead High Holy Day services from any other book, and I remember as if it were yesterday working through it my first time, making notes, deciding how to annotate it.  (I still use that system.)  Gates of Repentance has become part of who I am.

Gates of Repentance was published in 1978 and revised in 1996.  I loved it when the congregation says different words even as we read in unison, because some people are using one edition and some the other.  I loved the meditations and array of small study texts before each service.

Our use of Mishkan HaNefesh will feel like a loss for some people.  I understand that, and appreciate it.  I will feel it, too.  Although it’s not the same, we’ll be using Gates of Repentance on the Second Day of Rosh Hashanah so that anyone who wants to pray from it will be able to.  Plus, we’ll have copies of Gates of Repentance on hand at the Stake Center, so that you can thumb through it and use it if you’d like.  And Mishkan HaNefesh includes many of the texts and translations we know from Gates of Repentance.  It will be new, but hopefully not foreign.

These High Holy Days, there is change in the air for us all.