We are half way through our journey to Rosh Hashanah. What does it mean to stand before the Heavenly Court? Our next guest blogger, Paul Glaser, has extensive experience standing in court and defending those accused of crimes. Paul has worked as an appellate attorney for more than 36 years. He is also my “bimah partner” as ritual chairperson at Congregation Kneseth Israel. His job there is to make me stay sharp and focused. It is nice because I know he has my back. He teaches:

“It is common practice in the legal world for attorneys appearing before a court to refer to the judge (or judges in the case of reviewing courts) as “Your Honor,” or “This Honorable Court.”  In petitions filed with the Illinois Supreme Court asking to have a case accepted for review, the pleading begins with the following:  “May It Please This Honorable Court.”  Capitalization is expected.

While it is historic and expected practice, referring to courts as “Honorable” is, to be frank, sometimes not easy.  Not every judge is truly “honorable.”  Judges are human and prone to the same frailties as anyone else.  Some are inherently dishonest.  Some fool around on their spouses.  Some have substance addictions.  Some are prejudiced against certain kinds of people.  Some are unfair and bear grudges.  Some are not particularly bright.  Some are just collecting a paycheck until retirement kicks in.  But still, we attorneys continue to call judges “Honorable” because we don’t want to get ourselves on the judge’s bad side, because if we do, we’ll at worst be held in contempt and fined or jailed and, at best, never get anything from that judge in terms of relief for our clients.

I bring up the above because I see parallels between the professional “dance” lawyers engage in with judges and the Thirteen Attributes.  Do we Jews accept God’s Attributes because we truly believe them, or because we either fear something bad will happen and/or we hope that if we say it enough, we might get something good in exchange?  As Jews we are supposed to wrestle with God.  And sometimes we need to wrestle with ourselves.”

As Paul points out, the wrestling is important. The word Israel means G-dwrestler. Is it always easy to believe the Thirteen Attributes? No. We have already seen examples of when it appears that G-d is not kind or compassionate. We know that G-d gets angry. Some days it is easier than others to believe. Perhaps Paul is right. Some days it feels like going through the motions. Or that It is a wrestling match. And that is OK—even encouraged. It is a dance. But then the Psalm 30 teaches, echoing yesterday’s blog, G-d’s anger is for a moment; G-d’s favor is for a life-time. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning…You did turn my mourning into dancing.” May the wrestling become a dance.