Today is Tu B’av, the 15th of the month of Av on the Hebrew calendar. The moon will be full tonight. In ancient Israel this was the day that young women would go out and try to find a husband. It is a day of great optimism and hope coming after Tisha B’av. It also means that in just two weeks it will Rosh Hodesh Elul, 30 days before Rosh Hashanah. Preparations are well underway at Congregation Kneseth Israel. We have an outline of the services with times, honors to be assigned, music to be sung, sermons to be written. The silver will be polished and the bimah transformed to white. The wall will be open. Chairs will be set up. We know how to do all this. None of this comes without work, hard work.
And yet, there is interior work that needs to be done. One year I spent the 40 days between Rosh Hodesh Elul and Yom Kippur blogging about forgiveness since that is a big part of the season. I had guest bloggers talk about when or how they have seen forgiveness in their professional lives. There were some haunting responses. One in particular, on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 talked about losing a high school classmate on 9/11 and not going to her funeral. Could she forgive herself?

This year I want to try something a little different. After Moses smashed the 10 Commandments, G-d told him to go back up the mountain a second time. Moses did not want to go. Why should he lead this stubborn, stiff-necked people? Who was going to help him? G-d answered that G-d would go with him and lighten his burden and give him rest. Wow! That would have been good enough for me I think. But Moses wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to more deeply understand G-d. He demanded to see G-d face to face. G-d replied that no person can see G-d face to face and live but that G-d would hide Moses in the cleft of the rock and pass before him. In Exodus 34:6-7 we learn about the 13 Attributes of the Divine as G-d passed before Moses and whispered them.

“The Lord, The Lord, God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abundant in goodness and truth, showing compassion to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin”

This is the central part of the slichot service. It is how we Jews ask for forgiveness. But what does it mean? What does it mean that God abounds in lovingkindness or is compassionate, merciful, full of grace. How is that G-d is slow to anger, patient or long-suffering? What does any of this mean to us today? Or was it only for Moses?

I believe it was for all of us. That we need to understand that G-d is a G-d full of love and compassion and that G-d forgives our mistakes. While we can’t really limit G-d, having this list helps our understanding. This was my Bat Mitzvah Torah portion. The reason I became a rabbi. I wrote my rabbinic thesis on these very words. It is a verse that has sustained me for almost (egads!) 40 years!

The midrash teaches us that Moses was on Mount Sinai for 40 days. From Rosh Hodesh Elul to Yom Kippur. For those 40 days we are going to study, discuss, wrestle with maybe even argue about these 13 Attributes. I will be studying mussar with my chevruta partner, Rabbi Steve Peskind. More about this later. Each day, I will post something about one of the 13 Attributes, either something I have written or something you have written. I am hoping we will get as many of you as possible to write something, to wrestle with the text and derive meaning as I have done from it. Send me your writings by August 1st to be included. Pick one attribute, or all of them. Tell us why they are important to you. Include a personal story of how you understand them or what they mean to you. Make it 250-500 words. In this way you will help enrich all our understanding and the celebration of Rosh Hashanah.

Rabbi Margaret Frisch Klein
Congregation Kneseth Israel
330 Division Street
Elgin, IL 60120

www.theengerizerrabbi.org