Yesterday was “Turn over day” at Congregation Kneseth Israel. Volunteers arrived to change the linens in the sanctuary to white, to open up the doors wide, to change the books from regular Shabbat prayerbooks to High Holiday machzorim and to polish the silver. By the end of the morning, the place gleamed. It is ready for the high holy days. It was a hub of activity. And it was good.
The night before, Saturday night after Shabbat was over, we gathered for Slichot. This is my favorite service of the year. It is the chance that I get to take to really daven, to pray and to say that I am sorry. To those I may have hurt during the year or even that evening, to myself and to God. It is a chance to go deep. The words of the slichot service and the music of the high holidays that get reintroduced that evening never fail to move me. It is its own “turn over day.” Saturday night was no exception.
Turn over. Turn back. Turn. Return. That is what Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is about. Whether it is a physical turn over or a spiritual one it is about turning over a new leaf and beginning again. It is part of how we prepare and how we do teshuvah. There is a lovely song for the High Holidays that seems particularly apt sung by Neshama Carlebach: http://www.neshamah.net/2009/08/return-again-neshama-carlebach.html

“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”

How do you return? How do