The silver clad Persian Torah
glowed from within the open ark
in the waning light of Yom Kippur,
a vessel for all the pain
still and already spilling
into the new year of 5786.
We prayed,
we pleaded.
The gates would soon be closing.
How many times that day
did we chant shalom?
A hundred?
Where do the words go when
the earth is still scorched
and the dying never stops?
Chesed: love.
Tsedakah: justice.
Rachamim: mercy.
Over and over.
Martin Luther King said
love and justice
demand and protect one another.
Abraham Joshua Heschel said
despair is the biggest sin.
So much work to do.
The gates of hope must never close.
Let us keep starting
and never stop.