I have a friend who makes the most delicious challah. Every week she creates beautiful sweet challah that is the edible definition of “hiddur mitzvah’, enhancing a mitzvah. Every week she made challah for her family and our Torah study group.

One week the challah tasted just a bit different, it was almost the same but not quite the same.  She told me that she hadn’t done anything differently and she wasn’t sure what I was noticing. However after giving it more thought, she remembered that this time she had not been as focused on making challah as a act of love as she usually is. So now I understood why it tasted different. It was missing a spiritual ingredient, kavanah, intentionality and mindfulness.

I was reminded of the challah as I thought about this week’s Torah portion, Nitzanim. In it Moses tells all the Israelites that they will be blessed in the land if they love Y-H-V-H, walk in god’s ways, and keep the mitzvot. At first I interpreted this as an implied question and answer,  “What does it mean to love Y-H-V-H?” – To walk in god’s ways and perform the commandments. And then my friend’s delicious challah came to mind and I saw a different way to understand this. In all you do, love Y-H-V-H, do it with intention, do it mindfully, do it with kavanah. When you walk in god’s way, do it with intention and love. When you perform the commandments do them mindfully, with love.

The time from now through Yom Kippur is a gift to look at what we are doing and how we are doing it. If we open ourselves, the time in prayer can give us the inspiration to know where to begin. The high holiday liturgy tells us “Teshuvah, Tefillah, and Tsedakah will lessen the decree”. Our self-reflection and self-judgement should guide us.

Is there a mitzvah you’ve been thinking about taking on but have not yet done so? Perhaps it is kashrut, or observing Shabbat, or studying Jewish text, or not participating in “Lashon haRa” (gossiping). Often we get blocked by the feeling it is too much. In this week’s parsha, Moses tells the Children of Israel that it is not too much for them – it is neither in the heavens nor across the sea, but rather it is in their mouths and heart. Begin with a piece of it and when you do that piece, do it with intention and love.

One might begin giving Tsedakah that connects a theme to each holiday throughout the year giving both the holiday and the mitzvah of Tsedakah that much more kavanah. Supporting organizations addressing homelessness could be the focus of Sukkot tzedakah, Shemini Atzeret could focus on water, Chanukah could be about education, Tu b’Shevat could be on the environment. As partners with God in creation, our Tsedakah can help make the world God created whole again, truly an act of love.

The new year is a time to renew and begin again, or even begin. Shanah tovah

JoHanna Potts

I recall in the 1960s when fringes were all the fashion.  In their essence, fringes are threads that move loosely.  Whether an adornment for beaded moccasins or brocade draperies, the imperfect fringes were understood to enhance beauty. Fringes are a contrast to the smoothness of the adorned material. It seems that imperfection can be used to enhance beauty.

Fringes are also an ancient design. In parashat Ki Teitzei we get this instruction: “You shall make tassels on the four corners of the garment with which you cover yourself.” Why adorn a garment with tassels? The tassels are a reminder that the seeming perfection of a garment can best be appreciated with adornment of something that appears as if frayed. Previously in Torah we learn that tzittzit [fringes] are for you, and when you see it, you will remember all the commandments of G‑d to perform them (adapted from Numbers 15:38–40). How interesting that something that is seemingly imperfect gives us the impetus to strive for holiness.

The same theory applies in another later instruction. We are told to leave something unfinished when constructing a home. The custom is called zeicher l’churban and it comes from the Talmud (Baba Batra 60b) directing that we leave a cubit without stucco or without paint. The reason is so that we remember that the beit hamikdash, the holy temple, was destroyed. With the pride of constructing a beautiful home, we stop to notice what remains imperfect in our lives – be it fringes or a cubit of a wall without stucco. In noticing imperfection we are reminded of something holy.

As we approach the High Holidays, we are directed to notice what is imperfect in our lives. What are the fringes you have added to the fabric of your life? Perhaps you’ve made an error regarding how you treated your family, or a failure to take care of your health. These imperfect fringes can serve to enhance beauty by the contrast of their imperfection. For example, did the distance created with a family member make you appreciate the relationship all the more?  Or have you come to value good health more because of an episode of self-neglect?

Even as they are imperfect, you can notice the fringes of your life so that they serve a purpose.  In noticing them, you may be moved toward enhancing holiness. The role of the High Holidays is not merely to take stock of imperfections. The High Holidays help us to improve our lives by engaging with imperfections as if they are a talisman of holiness. See them and remember to make improvements in yourself and the world.

Rabbi Evan J. Krame

This week’s Torah portion (Re’eh, “See!”) recaps key aspects of Jewish tradition – monotheism, freedom, holidays and dietary laws. Perhaps its most important line, however, is a deceptively simple call: “After YHVH your God you will walk” (Deut. 13:5). What might it mean in our day to “walk in God’s ways”?

It seems straightforward to follow something physical: the Book of Exodus ends with the image of desert literally following God’s “cloud by day and fire by night” (Ex. 40:38). God, however, isn’t to be seen (Ex. 33:20). And if “God’s ways” were only Torah’s laws and traditions, then Torah might simply tell us to follow them: Torah wouldn’t need to add “walk in God’s ways.”

This question has called and confounded people for centuries. Talmud asked, “How can a human being walk after God?” Talmud’s answer was to walk after God’s attributes (B.T. Sotah 14a):

As God clothes the naked [like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden], so we also should clothe the naked. As God visited the sick [like Abraham after his circumcision], so we also should visit the sick. As God comforted mourners [like Isaac after Abraham’s death], so we also should comfort mourners. As God buried the dead [like Moses in the desert], so we also should bury the dead.

In this understanding, behaviors – clothing the naked, visiting the sick, comforting the mourner, burying the dead – evoke God’s attributes. But God is more than behaviors and attributes: God is holy. “Be holy,” Torah records God to say, “for I, YHVH your God, am holy” (Lev. 19:2). To be holy, our ancestors imagined, is to be merciful and gracious – qualities more expansive and dynamic than any fixed set of behaviors or laws. After all, we can’t codify God any more than we can squeeze or freeze God into any one idea however glorious and grand. Maybe that’s why tradition calls us into both particulars practices and overarching qualities – verbs and also adjectives, specific acts of our hands and also loftiness of our souls. Like a tree needs both deep roots and tall branches, we humans need both the rooting of specific behaviors and the high and holy aspirations of spirit.

In a recent lesson, I asked a child how we earth-bound humans can be holy and “walk in God’s ways”? At first she offered a list of behaviors – follow laws, obey parents, do homework, etc. – but quickly she switched into listing attributes. To be holy, she concluded, was to love… have compassion… be forgiving… be generous… be kind…. be patient. To be holy, she decided, is to see the world as God sees the world, and try to see as we imagine God might see.

“And a little child will lead them” (Isaiah 11:6).

R’ David Evan Markus

Is the key to a good life found in following the rules? For example, consider the rules of suburbia: study hard in good schools, work hard at our professions, care for our bodies and obey the laws. We assure ourselves that if we live by these rules, we are likely to succeed. Some of us have suffered the consequence of not paying careful attention or forgetting the rules, stumbling over the laws, or erring badly in our practices – even if unintentionally. The discovery of such errors may bring adverse consequences to our livelihood, personal lives or health. How do we find comfort when our own fallibility trips up our preconceived notions of how life should proceed?

A primary resource on the topic begins this week’s Torah reading.  An angry and frustrated Moses has pleaded with God to allow his passage into the Promised Land. Moses failed to follow God’s instructions earlier by hitting a rock to draw water when all he needed to do was call out. Moses is not only denied entry but is then told by God not to raise the issue again. Further, Moses is instructed to ascend to where he can see the land he may not enter. God may be telling Moses to fully experience disappointment; to acknowledge and accept is the key to moving on.

Despite his outrage or perhaps to channel his misery, Moses employs his oratory skills and turns to the multitudes that will cross into the land. Moses gives them instruction and warning. They are advised to use their senses of sight and hearing and obey the rules so that they may successfully acquire their new homeland. To make the point he employs two of the most well-known textual readings of Judaism, the Shema Yisrael (Listen up Israel) and the Aseret Dibrot (Ten Commandments). Simply put, the two lessons are pay careful attention and obey the laws.

Moses takes his own disappointment and frustration and channels it into a methodology and teaching for the next generation to use. The advice still works as a coping mechanism for those who have a sense that their life plan was derailed by their own failures. If we can’t obtain a second chance for ourselves, we might find some satisfaction in teaching the next generation to use their senses and carefully obey the rules. The Torah teaches that comfort and consolation begin with the internal mechanisms of acknowledgement and acceptance.  Recovery from disappointment may be found in teaching from experience.

In the seven weeks approaching the High Holidays, a time of repentance, we must first acknowledge and accept the errors of our past before we can consider improvements in our lives.

Words have power. Reputations can be created or destroyed by a 144 character tweet. Words connecting us to God had power for our biblical ancestors, as reflected in the third commandment to not swear falsely by Y-H-V-H’s name. And by Balaam’s inability to undo his unintentional blessing of the Israelites – “how goodly are your tents”. Yet, we read in this week’s parshiyot that men’s words have more staying power than women’s. The vows that men make to God are absolute. The vows that women make depend on the male in her life permitting the vow to stand as long as she has a male in her life. There are reasons for this: one is that the vow constrains her future behavior; a second is that she was not an independent person; and the third is to protect her from the guilt of not fulfilling her vow.

Women’s independent status then was due to her responsibilities to her husband and household, the source of her economic security. In fact, a widow was able to make a vow and have it stand. The Rabbis of the Talmud had a problem with vows in general and there is an 11 chapter tractate, Nedarim (Vows) in Nashim (Women), an order of the Mishnah, addressing this. The rabbis saw most vows as impulsive and extreme and therefore in conflict with their general approach of “moderate and elevate”.

What should we think about the holding power of vows today? It was thinking about this that gave me new insight into the Kol Nidre (All Vows) prayer. Each year on Erev Yom Kippur we ask God to release us from all vows made from now until the next Yom Kippur. Historically, there were Jews who had no more independence to make or fulfill vows than did the women in ancient Israel. Some pretended to convert away from Judaism in order to survive knowing that the vow would not be fulfilled.  Rather than live with the guilt (or sin) of this, the Yom Kippur prayer allows them to keep the power of words, of vows to God, intact and released the proclaimer of guilt.

None of us have real control of our future, therefore, vows controlling our future behavior may not be able to be fulfilled. Kol Nidre may subtly warn us to not make vows we can’t keep while it asks God to release up from vows that we will be unable to keep. Let’s keep playing Words with Friends, and also spend time focusing on words with God.

JoHanna Potts