“May This Be a Year of Sweetness and Blessing,” Rabbi Elaine Zecher’s Shabbat Awakenings

September 19, 2025 | 26 Elul 5785

Welcome to Shabbat Awakenings, a weekly reflection, as we make our way toward Shabbat. You can also listen to it as a podcast.

May This Be a Year of Sweetness and Blessing

But first:

The world is churning around us and there may be many feelings of anger, fear, despair, embarrassment and unmoored. We can’t go around them though. Yet, we don’t do it alone.

At the same, there can also be joy, resilience, celebration, pride, and love. One set of feelings does not discount the others. We can’t go around these either and still, we don’t have to do it alone.

Enter this week’s Torah portion, Nitzavim, which we will also recite on Yom Kippur day. Moses spoke to the Israelites as they were about to enter the land. “You all stand here.” He said. No one is left out. From the leaders to the one who cuts the wood to the one who draws the water could enter into the promise of the covenantal relationship as part of the greater whole of community and with the Divine power of the universe. Moses knew that much would happen, blessing but also hardship, the good and the bad, the challenges and the triumphs.

His language would be mirrored and reflected centuries later by the great thinker, Victor Frankl, who recognized even in the darkest moment of captivity during the Holocaust that no one can take away from us the human ability to decide how to respond:

“Everything can be taken from a person but one thing: the last of the human freedoms-to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

The Torah understood these choices as part of our existence.

“I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life—so that you and your descendants may live.” (Deuteronomy 30:19)

Life necessitates our choices. It is a precious human freedom.

As we gather for Rosh Hashanah and ten days later for Yom Kippur, Jewish tradition holds us as we face our actions and those of others. Through self-reflection and contemplation, we get to decide.

May our choices bring us meaning and deeper understanding of the lives we lead. May the new year be sweet and full of many blessings.

From all the community of Temple Israel of Boston:

Shabbat Shalom and Shanah Tovah! ושנה טובהשבת שלום 

I look forward to hearing your thoughts and impressions. Share with me what you think. Your email goes directly to me!

Rabbi Elaine Zecher