For Everything there is a Season

October 3-4, 2014 / 10 Tishrei 5775

Shabbat v’Yom Kippur

“For Everything there is a Season”

Dear Friends,

This Friday evening we will gather to begin our Yom Kippur worship.  Even though we might feel some safety in numbers, our tradition teaches that each one of us is standing alone before God.  This has led some to interpret that Yom Kippur is both the Day of Atonement and the Day of At-One-ment.

Rabbi Chaim Stern offers the following meditation to help us look deep within ourselves to make good choices in the coming year.

FOR EVERYTHING THERE IS A SEASON

For everything there is a season, a time for every matter under the heavens.

A time to be born and a time to die.
We cannot choose our time of birth, but we can choose our way of life. We cannot hope to live forever, but we can choose to live with courage.

For everything there is a season. A time for every matter under the heavens.
A time to plant, and a time to harvest what has been planted.

Nothing grows without planting; our gift of life is the gift of responsibility which work makes real. Plant and nurture, the harvest will yet come.

Now is the time to remake ourselves, a time to destroy ignorance and evil within us and around us, a time to begin the work of healing and making whole again.

For everything there is a season, A time for every matter under the heavens. A time to break down, and a time to build up.

Break down old habits of thought, in which people are despised who differ from others. Time now to build a new society of mankind.
For everything there is a season, A time for every matter under the heavens. A time to weep, and a time to laugh.

Weep to see talent wasted, gifts misused, to see men, women and children thwarted by poverty and oppression. Men will one day laugh to think that such things were done in the childhood of our race.

A time to mourn and a time to dance.
Mourn with all who suffer loss, ease their burden with your care; then dance and draw them into your circle of joy; That human circle which will one day be unbroken.

A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing.
Hold your friends within your arms, and closer still, as spirit touches soul and you are one. But listen also to the call for help; when there is work to do, turn to the task which cannot wait.

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together.
Cast away rubble, rocks, wasted years. Remove stones from the land; make it live again, fertile and green. Take stones and build schools for children, playgrounds, hospitals, and sanctuaries.

There is a time to seek, and a time to lose.
Seek one another, and find yourselves; lose that which blocks the path from person to person.

There is a time to keep, and a time to cast away.
Keep faith with yourself, with the promise of your potential; cast away bitterness and self-seeking which makes you less than you can be.

For there is a time to keep silent, and a time to speak.
Keep silent, when speaking would hurt a neighbor and bring him shame; speak out, when silence would be betrayal, when the weak need strength, and victims of injustice, a champion.

For everything there is a season... A time to love, and a time to hate.
What should we love, if not the good, the true, the beautiful in man and nature? What should we hate but hate itself, all that works with malice against the human race.

And a time for every matter under the heavens. A time for war, and a time for peace.

Wage war for man, and not against him. Wage war on war itself. That is our task, so that we shall yet witness Shalom for all men.

Chaim Stern

G’mar Hatimah Tovah - May you be sealed in the Book of Life for a good year

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Eitan Weiner-Kaplow