Route to Repentance
Sermon Parashat Nitzavim 2017 Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz Route to Repentance “If you don’t stand for anything, you will fall for everything.” It’s a pithy little saying that I read somewhere this past week. Don’t ask me where or in what context. All that I remember is that it really stuck with me. For those of us in Ashkenazi-majority communities, this is the Shabbat of Selichot. Tonight, we will reconvene to study, sing, reflect and pray together as we welcome the Yamim Nora’im. Rosh haShanah is only five days away and it speaks to the ingenious calendar planning of ‘chaz”al’ – our sages of blessed memory – that parashat Nitzavim and Rosh haShanah line up the way they do. The Rabbis put incredible thought into calibrating our liturgical calendar and superimposed the weekly Torah readings on top of it. I believe that their choices were intentional; the calendar is a wheel that takes you through the year; which in turn takes us through life. There is a sacred cadence...