Rosh HaShanah this week, thinking all the time.

27 Elul

Daily we should take account and ask: what have I done today to alleviate the anguish, to mitigate the evil, to prevent humiliation? Let there be a grain of profit in every human being! Our concern must be expressed not symbolically, but literally; not only publicly, but privately; not only occasionally, but regularly. What we need is the involvement of every one of us as individuals. What we need is restlessness, a constant awareness of the monstrosity of injustice.

Written by Abraham Joshua Heschel,
included in Rosh Hashanah Readings edited by Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins
Posted today by Rabbi Karyn Kedar

Yom Kippur is Coming

From Michael Strassfeld's A Book of Life (pp. 269-270):

The Likutim Yekarim (an eighteenth-century Hasidic work) asks, if there are sparks of holiness in all things as the mystics teach, then what are the sparks of holiness in sin? It answers that the sparks are in teshuvah  ["repentance"]. In the moment we realize that we have done wrong, we gain the opportunity to redeem ourselves by returning to the holy.