In the study group in preparation for the High Holy Days, many meaningful thoughts were expressed and read. Below are two of these contributions.

　

Sometimes by Sheenagh Pugh

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. 　Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss, sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: 　may it happen for you.

​

 

A Quote from Mordecai Kaplan

The sacramental efficacy of the ritual of atonement is nil, and its symbolic power of no value, unless the sense of sin leads us to seek the reconstruction of our personalities in accordance with the highest ethical possibilities of human nature; only then can we experience teshuvah, the sense of returning to God.