We are still playing catch up. But here is Elul 22:

Tonight is Selichot. It is my favorite service of the year. It is held on Saturday night just before Rosh Hashanah and sets the tone. It is when we begin saying the “selichot” prayers—those very prayers that G-d taught Moses to say to ask for forgiveness. Those prayers include the repetition of the 13 Attributes of the Divine.

The Lord! The Lord! A God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, yet He does not remit all punishment, but visits the iniquity of the fathers upon children and children’s children upon the third and fourth generation.

Yet in the liturgy it is truncated, exactly as G-d taught us to say it. We end at G-d forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin. Period.

In Numbers 14:11-20, after the incident with the spies returning from Canaan, Moses pleads again for mercy on behalf of the Israelites. He invokes the divine attributes and concludes, “Pardon, I pray, the iniquity of this people according to Your great kindness, as You have forgiven this people ever since Egypt.” (Numbers 14:19). The Lord answers, “I have pardoned according to your plea.” (Numbers 14:20) This verse becomes the central reassuring answer to Kol Nidre and is repeated during Ne’ilah. God has pardoned and will pardon according to our plea.

In the Talmud, in Rosh Hashanah 17b, is where we learn that G-d taught Moses these very words to be said on Selichot:

And ‘the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed [etc.]. (Ex. 34:6) R. Johanan said: Were it not written in the text, it would be impossible for us to say such a thing; this verse teaches us that the Holy One, blessed be He, drew his robe round Him like the reader8 of congregation and showed Moses the order of prayer. He said to him: Whenever Israel sins, let them carry out this service before Me, and I will forgive them.

‘The Lord, the Lord’: I am the Eternal before a man sins and the same10 after a man sins and repents. ‘A God merciful and gracious:’ Rab Judah said: A covenant has been made with the thirteen attributes that they will not be turned away empty-handed, as it says, Behold I make a covenant. (Ex. 34)

What a wonderful image. That G-d taught Moses to pray. And that those words are “I’m sorry.” And the 13 Attributes.

Saturday night, we began with Havdalah to separate Shabbat from the rest of the week. On the Saturday of Selichot it always seems especially bittersweet. But I love the dimmed light, the bright braided candle, the sweet wine and the spices. Maybe we will be ready for the new week, for the new year. Maybe we are never fully ready. Come on. It is coming fast now. We asked two questions that were part of the beginning of my Guatemala trip. What do you need to leave behind this year to be fully present? What do you bring to the group?

We heard the haunting strains of Kol Nidre on the cello, so ably and beautifully played by Kerena Moeller of the Elgin Symphony Orchestra. The piece is divided into several sections. We are all pretty familiar with the opening measures, but then it morphs. It sounds like angels (or what I imagine angels might sound like, perhaps because it reminds me of the year Sarah was an angel in the Nutcracker Suite. That piece sounds like this too). It is a bridge between heaven and earth, between what we did and what we hoped we would do, and in that instant I feel like it is all good, that heaven is attainable and that even if I am not perfect, I can be forgiven. That’s what I hear.

Then we had two workshops. One on visual arts where we took a blank puzzle, wrote Hashivenu on one side, “Turn to us O Lord and we will return to You. Renew our days as of old.” We sang two different versions of it. I remembered back to when my mother was dying and I was in Grand Rapids for Kol Nidre. I “snuck out” of the hospital to go to Kol Nidre with her blessing and I cried when I heard this song. What does it mean in that case to “renew our days as of old”. What does it mean any year?

People were then supposed to draw, color, paint, what makes them whole on the other side. What pieces of the puzzle need to be put back together to make them whole. How do we renew our days as of old?

Part of that is by turning around. Turning back. Admitting your mistakes and saying I’m sorry. But Moses did that. And G-d did that. It is hard work. It can be painful. It takes courage. It can be scary. But we have good role models. No one is perfect. Maybe not even G-d.

Then we had a poetry writing workshop. List 5 verbs ending in ing. List 5 nouns. 5 adjectives. All to do with the upcoming holidays. My verbs were chanting, praying, cleaning, singing, ascending, dancing, turning. The nouns were apples, prayer books, Torah, bimah, prayers, moon. My adjectives were white, whole, peace, joy, renewed. Someday I may even write that poem. But others did. Some will even be read over the next 10 days in the community.

Then we ended with the words of Selichot and an exercise relearned in Guatemala. We stood in a circle and knitted ourselves together with balls of yarn we tossed to one another. It created a spider web effect connecting us powerfully as community. as we sang the Shlomo Carlebach song, “Return again, return again, return to the land of your soul. Return to who you are. Return to what you are. Return to where you are. Born and reborn again.”

Return. Come journey with me.