Unitarian Universalist Meeting of
“Marking the Time with Rituals: Jewish High Holy Days”
Grace Note: The
Holiest Days of the Year
Rev. Kathy Duhon
The Holiest Days of the Year
This past week began the holiest
days of the year for two major religions.
Although today in this congregation we are primarily celebrating the
High Holy Days of Judaism, let us notice that on the same day on which they began this past week, with Rosh
Hashanah, at sundown on the twelfth, Islam began the month of Ramadan, its
holiest month of the year.
This is the new
year for Judaism, and the ninth month of the year for Islam. Because these two religious holy times are
calculated in differing ways, they rarely come together like this, or even
overlap. Let us hope that the special
attention being paid to spirituality at this time within these two great world
religions will bring more peace for everyone.
In Islam, this is the time of
fasting, which happens in daylight hours all month long. Yom Kippur, at the end of the High Holy Days,
is also a day of fasting. Although
Unitarian Universalists are not known for religious fasting, the Unitarian
Universalist Association has joined with many religious groups in sponsoring an
Interfaith fast on October 8th toward ending
the war in
In both Islam and Judaism, the
emphasis during these days is on the study of holy scriptures,
prayer, contemplation, forgiveness, and religious observation. Muslims revere this as the month when the Quran was revealed.
Jews center their reflections on the ways they have “missed the mark”,
and make an effort to seek and offer forgiveness. In both religions, the strength of community
and family is renewed.
Rabbi Michael Lerner advises that we
pray for healing of the fear and trauma in our country, believing it
appropriate for both Ramadan and the High Holy Days, days which he says are
“when we search our deeds and contemplate how far we have strayed from our
highest God place within.”
Mohammed Iqbal
calls us with these words of wisdom, “The journey of love is a very long
journey, but sometimes with a sigh you can cross that vast desert. Search and search again without losing hope;
you may find sometime a treasure on your way.
My heart and my eyes are all devoted to the vision.”
Happy New Year, Blessed Ramadan, and
may your journey in these holy days be one of peace.
Marking the Time with Rituals:
Jewish High Holy Days
Welcome, all, to Unitarian Universalism and to an honorary status as the Children of Israel – today, we are all Jewish. You know, some folks come to our congregations to escape religions from their past, like Judaism and Christianity, religions that have not been good fits for them. They have differed from their religions of origin, sometimes theologically, sometimes ethically, sometimes ritually. And then they walk into our services and find out that on any given week, some kind of theology is likely present, though different each week, and always reaching out inclusively. And our ethics and values are breathtakingly beautiful and strong, although we don’t always live up to them; we try. And on any Sunday, you may be surprised to find that we are engaged in ritual. Just not the same ritual every week, and ritual that is often generated by ourselves, creatively, ever expanding. Every week we light the chalice with words of meaning, a simple ritual shared in nearly every UU congregation. Last week we had a water communion, a Unitarian Universalist ritual, and this week we celebrate Rosh Hashanah and the High Holy Days of Judaism with a ritual using apple, honey, and challah bread.
Religious ritual has left a bad taste for many people, but what we try to embody is ritual that is marvelous and life-affirming. I read somewhere that all mammals are ritualists, that we need and like to have the security and predictability of rituals. Rituals are very useful for hygiene, for example – without our daily practices, we’d smell pretty bad and our teeth would likely fall out.
Rituals bring us closer to each other, making sure we connect in meaningful ways in our otherwise distracted and busy lives. They are simple, like eating supper together regularly, celebrating birthdays or holidays in special ways, and doing anything to mark the time the same way, for the same reason, over and over. Ritual is a way of forging and renewing connections in deep, unspoken ways, ways that don't require thought or intention or work.
With ritual, we anchor ourselves in the feeling of belonging, which is as important for sustaining our emotional lives as water or oxygen is for our physical lives – we need to belong. Meg Cox wrote in the UU World magazine a few years ago about rituals for and with children. She said, “The special power of ritual is that it can slow time and heighten our senses, and by doing so, we can intensify and deepen our family ties.” Rituals bring us together.
Religious rituals connect us together but also can do something more – they powerfully deepen our experience in the larger faith and hope and love. Joan Chittister says, “Rituals carry us through death and show us how to celebrate life. Without them we might get swept away by grief or forget to hallow those moments in life that are our rites of passage or milestones along the way.” Rituals ground us in the Holy through the ordinary.
Our Unitarian Universalist religious educator, Betsy Hill Williams, wrote, “This is what religious ritual is all about – purposeful, symbolic action that helps sustain us and deepen our connection to the spiritual dimension of life. It increases our potential for experiencing spirituality in everyday life, helps us to heal, to cope, to celebrate.” With religious ritual, we lift up what is happening to us and notice it, in a mindful experience; a transformative one at times.
In Judaism, the High Holy Days involve rituals that are very meaningful, that connect us to each other and to our spirituality. You may not engage in many of them, of course, because most of you are only “honorary Jews”, so fasting and prayer and reading scripture and seeking forgiveness may not be the way that you will pass these days. Although I do think that the entire world would be tremendously improved if we all tried the Jewish annual ritual of asking and seeking forgiveness during these few days – what a revolution of hope that would bring.
Today, though, we will partake of a ritual that was developed out of the traditions of Rosh Hashanah. And I hope that it does connect us to each other, to this great tradition of Judaism, to the Earth, to the Interdependent Web of All Existence, and to the Light of the Holy.
I’d like to close with these words of one of our ministers, Max Coots, about ritual. “When love is felt or fear is known, when holidays and holy days and such times come, when anniversaries arrive by calendar or consciousness, when seasons come, as seasons do, old and known, but somehow new, when lives are born or people die, when something sacred’s sensed in soil or sky, mark the time. Respond with thought or prayer or smile or grief, let nothing living slip between the fingers of the mind, for all of these are holy things we will not, cannot, find again.” Amen.