We become aware of the passing of the seasons
as we take note of those signs which denote periods of time - in the [cycle] of
nature, in the [cycle] of the Torah. Moving from one place to the next across
the borders of time, as we do from year to year, we sense within ourselves a
feeling of renewal. A part of our life is gone; it has become our past. Now we
prepare ourselves to receive a new allotment of time, destined to become our
future. The moral aspect of our being profits from this perception of distinct
borders of time, by means of which our soul can draw up its accounts with the
past. We can purge and purify the past, remove the dross that has adhered to us
through our errors and sins, our spiritual and physical weaknesses, so that
their evil influence will not affect our future life. Conversely, following
this cleansing, we have made ourselves fit to receive the worthy perceptions of
the healthy - pure and spotless - aspect of our being, that was our lot in that
period of our life that we now know as the past.
This is the quality of teshuvah that awakens within us, in
the community and in the individual, at the time of the renewal of the yearly
cycle. It is with this clear consciousness that Israel begins the new year in
the Asereth Yemei Teshuvah (Ten Days of Repentance), after closing the
previous year in the month of Elul and the Days of Selihoth.
Just as we speak of our relationship to time in terms of years, so
too ought we relate to our perceptions in terms of seasons. That is, not those
small passages of times into which we divide the year but rather those periods
of time pregnant with meaning [for our lives], in which events renew themselves
to such an extent, that we feel we have passed a border, crossing over from the
fading season of our past, into the newfledged season that will be our future.
These are transitions, even though their passage is not marked by nature or by
Torah, to be likened in their character to the yearly rebirth heralded by the
completion of the cycle of nature and the cycle of the Torah. For in these
seasons of perception too, there is a past and a future. There are lines of
demarcation, brought about by a renewal in our affairs, which have their
impression upon the spiritual viewpoint of the community and all its sections,
that is, upon the entire nation and upon its people as individuals.
The renewal of a season in the life of the people must be welcomed
with the same heedfulness to the perceptions of teshuvah.These
perceptions are a result of the purification and removal of the dross from our
lives that we have undergone so that we remain with those qualities in our past
which are pure and illuminating. These are the qualities - within which are to
be find the inmost essence of life, tremendous, mighty and pure - that we will
deposit in the freshly replenished treasury of this new season which is coming
into existence.
This epoch in time - when significant portions of the people of
Israel are hastening to transform their mode of life, from the Golah to
the Land, changing their nature from a people who wanders to a people who is at
rest - is a new season in the life of the community. We must not be remiss in
greeting this new era in Israel's time-accustomed manner, that is, with the
opening of wide, illuminating portals of teshuvah. For these will serve
us in removing all the dross that has adhered within ourselves, during the past
of the bitter Galuth, from the pollutions of the eretz ha'amim
(the lands of the Gentiles) (V. Ohaloth II:43;
Eruvin 30: ) in the sombre gloom of the dark land (V. Pesahim 34: Oroth-Hakodesh I; Hakhmath-Hakodesh
117; HaAkhduth-Hakolleleth 19; Oroth; Oroth HaTekhiya 55;
Oroth-Yisrael 9:9.) Thus will we be left with those grand
assets that we took with us from our holy land at the beginning of the
Galuth, and have since held on to so fervently, for they are the
apportionments of life that have sustained us and keep our community alive now,
so that we can stand enduring and whole in our own character and in all the
glory of our [national] rebirth. By virtue of these assets we enter, filled
with a tremendous spiritual property, into the new season, the epoch of the
geulah, touched by the first rays of the light of redemption that the
Rock of Israel has begun to beam upon us.
And the light will grow greater and become stronger,
(V. Yerushalmi: Berakhoth I:halakha 1; Yerushalmi:
Yomah III:halakha 2). "Until the day breathe,
and the shadows flee away...", (Song of Songs 2:17,4:6), and
"a new light will shine upon Zion" ( BirkhathYotzer), swiftly and in our days, amen.
---HaRav A.Y. Kook, ME'OROT HARE'IYAH ON
YAMIM NORAIM
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