Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, begins tonight at sundown. I’ve always enjoyed this time as it provides a great time for reflection and renewal as well as a sense of hope for a sweet and healthy new year. These themes are especially poignant to me as I battle cancer a second time.
I’ve read several inspiring books on Kabbalah and Jewish Healing as I seek to integrate my faith, art and life. I recently came across this excerpt in Estelle Frankel’s book Sacred Therapy. I find it very beautiful and uplifting.
“In Jewish teachings, the pathway home to our true nature is called teshuvah. Though typically translated as repentance, teshuvah actually comes from the Hebrew root shav, to return. The implication is that we all have within us a reference point for wholeness to which we can return—a spiritual essence encoded within our souls that enables us to remember who we really are. Teshuvah is not something one does once and for all; rather, it is a lifelong journey, a journey of spiritual homecoming.
Jewish legend teaches that before God created this universe of multiplicity, God created teshuvah, as a healing force embedded in all creation that draws all things back to their source in infinite oneness. Without teshuvah, the rabbis taught, the world could not have endured. It is through teshuvah that we each, in our uniqueness and separateness, come to remember ourselves as part of the great unity from which all of life emerged. And it is through teshuvah that all levels of existence, down to the most basic of cellular processes, are continually being healed and restored to their original, perfect form. Having been created before all things, teshuvah exists in a realm that reaches beyond.”
Off to bed to meditate on removing masks and returning to my original self. Shalom.