Every Time I Begin Again

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur Offerings

Hi,

My goodness, it’s been a while! This summer was full and intense and restful and a whirlwind all at the same time. I feel like I am just finding my feet again and it’s almost fall - my favourite season. A time of new beginnings.

My daughter has started grade one and Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are only 2 weeks away! Rosh Hashanah literally translates from Hebrew as Head of the Year. But it’s also the beginning of a new cycle or more accurately in my view, a new turn around the spiral because our years are not closed loops. They build on each other. We feel the reverberations of our experiences on each anniversary but we don’t repeat them.

In my version of the Angel Song, I translate va’al roshi Shechinat-El (literally on my head is the immanent aspect of the Divine) to “every time I begin again, I feel you close at last.” In Jewish tradition, rosh means head and also beginning. With attention and intention, each beginning brings us closer to ourselves, which, since I believe we are each and all of us God/dess, closer to the Divine.

I love the fall because it’s beautiful. The trees put on their party clothes (h/t Casey Baruch Yurow) and those brilliant, fiery leaves show us how to let go gently. And sometimes, when those leaves hold on too tightly and for too long, the wind and rain help them to loosen their grip. Because no one can do it all alone.

I love the fall because the sticky, stagnant heat of summer finally gives way to fresh, crisp, cool wind and I feel like I can move and breathe again with ease.

I love the fall because it brings me a burst of energy.

I love the fall because it brings these holy days:

Rosh Hashanah - about fresh starts and sovereignty

Yom Kippur - about ultimate holiness and returning to our human and Divine selves;

and Sukkot - about home, earthy abundance, gratitude, impermanence and hope.

I love to steep myself in the teachings and offerings of these holy days every year and I love to take what comes through my years of learning and my quiet meditations with the texts and traditions and weave them with prayer and song and divination in community.

This year, I found myself preparing for Rosh Hashanah with prayers for seeing and being seen, holding and being held. These past few years have been tumultuous for me and many of us both personally and communally. I find that what I want most is to feel held through it all and to be able to see the good in me and others when all else feels like it’s failing. I want to begin again and again and “feel [Her] close at last.”

I recently found myself singing, Open the Eyes of My Heart, Feel You, and Oh Mama and weaving them together in a sort of mash-up of chanting/yearning/prayer. And when I was complete for the moment, I was vibrating with longing to sing and weave together in unison and harmony. In person. In a room with my community.

So I have prepared Unservice offerings for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and I hope those who are local will join me. There are 15 spots for each, at Beit Matanot in Toronto.

I plan to share the chants and some of the prayer offerings in a podcast episode right here on The Priestess is IN so if you cannot make it in person, you can prepare for your own experience of this turn of the spiral with these offerings, too. And this isn’t just for Jews. I offer this work through the lens of my tradition and learning, which is Jewish. I offer it to anyone who feels called to receive and participate with me.

“Come, come whoever you are,
wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving
this isn’t a caravan of despair
and even if you’ve broken your vow
a thousand times before
yet again come
come again come…”
-Rumi  

Click the button below to learn more, register and join me on September 26 at 10:30 AM for the Rosh Hashanah Unservice.

Click the button below to learn more, register and join me on October 5 at 10:30 AM for the Yom Kippur Unservice.

And if you know someone who you think would love to come to these Unservices or connect to my offerings in other ways, please share this email with them.