Most of us know the story from The Tanach where Elijah strives to “understand” God’s presence and effect in the world. Elijah looks carefully at what happens around him to see where God is and what God is trying to say to him. Elijah looks at a fire consuming a bush but can’t find God in the fire. He listens to a great noise but can’t find God in the noise, and he feels a powerful wind but he can’t find God in the wind.

He finally finds God speaking to him in a “still small voice!” — just like the author of Unetaneh Tokef (one of the most powerful and beautiful prayers in our High Holy Day liturgy) wants us to visualize God’s power. Not in the midst of a great show of force, rather in the silence and the stillness of a small voice! Kol D’mama Daka!

As we quickly approach the end of a year and the beginning of a new one, we have to ask ourselves a very important question: How do we listen to the voice of God in our own life? If we haven’t heard God’s voice lately, is it possible that we have been looking in the wrong place?

Most of us look for great miracles! We look for signs, and when we can’t find them we are completely paralyzed by fear and anger. We often ignore one of the most beautiful messages our tradition teaches us. More often than not, God is found in the mundane and the human — not in the grandiose and the supernatural. More often than not, God is found in the small details, in the silence rather than in the loud noise of deafening confusion.

In just a few days, we will find ourselves immersed in prayer, we will seek to see through our own soul to understand the stillness of the small voice through which God speaks to us. What is it exactly that we have to be listening for? Beyond praying for health and life for us and our families, we need to see ourselves as part of our People. Before we can listen to God’s voice, we need to ask ourselves another question: What does it mean to be a Jew? Why am I really here? It is impossible to decipher God’s message if we become consumed by the myopic vision that our own self-centeredness provides us with.

Our life, our tradition, our mission — it is not about ourselves alone! It is about the ones that came before us and the generations that are still to come. It is not about pretending that our lives as Jews will forever be the same if we don’t dramatically try to change what we see happening around us. For years, the message has been in the still small voice — it has always been there but every year it is harder to listen to.

These High Holy Days, I would like to challenge you! Think about what your presence in The Synagogue means. It is not about prayer alone, it is a statement! That you are here and you want to be counted, that what happens to us as a people matters. It is a statement that what happens to Israel matters. It is understanding what God is trying to tell us; it is not only about us but about our people! We don’t only pray for ourselves, we pray for all of us!

Each and every single one of us has the ability to change our future. We love history, and we often use it to inspire us to live better lives. Past generations faced multiple challenges and many of those carried with them mortal danger to our People. Our generation faces a whole new challenge — THE CHALLENGE OF INDIFFERENCE AND ENTITLEMENT. If we don’t do something today to become better, to show that our heritage matters, tomorrow may be too late.

I am always puzzled by the hundreds of e-mails that are forwarded to me from week to week. People write about how great Israel is! People write about why The Jewish People are so important to the history of the world! People write about how proud they are of their heritage and how much it means to them!

Yet, every year I see less and less people involved in Jewish life, every year our numbers decrease and every year more Synagogues around the world close their doors! Can it be that we have become a people who loves the abstract world of the “ideal” but refuses or is too lazy to step into the real? The answer is in our hands. Let us listen to the Kol D’mama Daka and realize that if we can’t hear it today, tomorrow may already be too late.

May this New Year 5769 be a year of health, joy and personal growth. May this be the year when we finally visit Israel, when we set our feet in our Synagogue to experience the joy of Shabbat. May this be the year when the pride we feel as Jews, jumps out of the e-mails we all forward and onto real life.

Rabbi Felipe Goodman

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Israel, Torah, religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.