{"id":439,"date":"2019-10-11T12:47:43","date_gmt":"2019-10-11T16:47:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mishkanhaam.org\/beresheit\/?p=439"},"modified":"2019-10-11T12:47:45","modified_gmt":"2019-10-11T16:47:45","slug":"teshuvah-and-resilience-rosh-hashanah-5780","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mishkanhaam.org\/beresheit\/teshuvah-and-resilience-rosh-hashanah-5780\/","title":{"rendered":"Teshuvah and Resilience: Rosh Hashanah 5780"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>By Joyce Bressler<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When Solomon\nasked me to write a reflection for the High Holy days I thought I was too busy\nand not up to the challenge. But after awhile I realized what an honor it is.&nbsp; I have been connected to Mishkan &nbsp;Ha\u2019am for the past few years.&nbsp; Although I live in Stony Point, NY, which\nsometimes feels like a million miles away I keep coming back.&nbsp; It is one path in my Jewish journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My parents\nwere from a mixed marriage, Orthodox and Conservative.&nbsp; The synagogue in our neighborhood in Brooklyn\nwas Orthodox. &nbsp;The women sat in the\nbalcony, far from the action. I would sneak out and sit in the men\u2019s section\nwith my dad as a child. I liked holding the fringes on his talis and hearing\nhim sing the prayers. The first time I fasted on Yom Kippur I was 12. I\nremember standing outside of the synagogue waiting for them to blow the shofar\nso I could eat the crackers in my pocket. But I was still an outsider. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;We moved to Long Island when I was 14 and\njoined a Conservative shul. Everyone sat together. But women could not come to\nthe bimah.&nbsp; It took decades for that to\nbegin to change.&nbsp; Although I loved the\nholidays and being Jewish I resented the inequality. As a young adult I still\nmaintained some traditions with a progressive twist, and held freedom Seders\namong my revolutionary friends; weaving the secular, spiritual and political,\nidentifying with all oppressed people, finding my way to a Feminist Judaism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because of\nthat history I am truly honored to be speaking here today. &nbsp;How does this all fit with the topic at hand?\nWell\u2026 &nbsp;&nbsp;As we enter the Days of Awe we take\nnote of our lives from the past year and reflect on where we missed the mark.\nOur tradition is to pray together asking for forgiveness from G-d for how we\nmissed the mark as a community. We confess for everyone, no one is singled out.\n&nbsp;But for those we may have harmed or hurt\nwe must ask for forgiveness directly and also to be able to forgive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;I asked myself could I forgive the systems that\nharmed me and other girls and women and continues to do so. &nbsp;Where is the collective teshuvah? I am not\nsure. Perhaps it is the collective strength, resilience and courage\ndemonstrated by these movements that made it possible for me to forgive. Holding\non to grudges and rage doesn\u2019t help us heal. To forgive ourselves and others could\nbe a step toward transformation and true Teshuvah. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In my\nexperience the resilience of my generation of women and activists helped make\nthe changes we benefit from today. Judaism taught me to ask questions and to\nthink critically, but we can\u2019t question if we are not allowed in the conversation.\n&nbsp;So we rose up and started talking to\neach other in small consciousness raising groups. Struggle and change also comes\nwith a price. These were painful times for many as marriages and relationships broke\nup and some I had known committed suicide under these social pressures.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Other casualties were those of us who had\nsuffered mental illnesses because of the difficulty to fit into the society\naround us and the burn out in trying to make those changes happen.&nbsp; &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;We, I survived because of an internal will to\nheal and the resiliency in community and the &nbsp;&nbsp;strength we shared. We were going to make a\nrevolution and we needed each other. Hard lessons were learned how to stay\nstrong in the long term. One woman I knew printed a t- shirt saying \u201cDare the\nUnknown, We are not Alone.\u201d &nbsp;It was an\nexample of spiritual unity not connected to any one religion. &nbsp;I wore that shirt for years until it fell\napart. I also needed to come back to Judaism in a more liberated way.&nbsp; So yes I learned that we can only survive\nwith the love and support of each other and the strength of community. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;The leadership for the challenges we are\nfacing in the current time is coming from young people especially girls and\nwomen, like Autumn Peltier a 15 year old from Wiikwemkoong First Nation on\nManitoulin Island in Ontario Canada. She came to speak at the UN Global\nLandscape Forum and was welcomed at a ceremony I attended at the Split Rock Sweet\nWater Prayer camp of the Ramapough Lenape Nation, appealing across the\ngenerations to save our waters. And my heart was breaking when I saw Greta\nThunberg\u2019s plea to the UN that if the adult leaders don\u2019t act on the climate\ncrisis and ruin their future they would never forgive them. That was a moral\nand spiritual challenge. I pray that we do not fail them, and the world will\nearn their forgiveness, but it is people who will build the resilience needed\nnow for all of us to make that happen. . I believe we can. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Joyce Bressler When Solomon asked me to write a reflection for the High Holy days I thought I was too busy and not up to the challenge. But after awhile I realized what an honor it is.&nbsp; I have &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mishkanhaam.org\/beresheit\/teshuvah-and-resilience-rosh-hashanah-5780\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Teshuvah and Resilience: Rosh Hashanah 5780 - Mishkan Ha&#039;am<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.mishkanhaam.org\/beresheit\/teshuvah-and-resilience-rosh-hashanah-5780\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Teshuvah and Resilience: Rosh Hashanah 5780 - Mishkan Ha&#039;am\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Joyce Bressler When Solomon asked me to write a reflection for the High Holy days I thought I was too busy and not up to the challenge. 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