Dear Friends, 

With the new year just around the corner, most of us still have a long list of things to get done. I don’t mean the pre–Yom Tov haircuts, the cooking, or even choosing the right gift for our hosts. Our tradition teaches that during these final days of Elul, the real preparation is inward: looking honestly at ourselves and asking, What can I change? Where can I grow?

Near the very beginning of the Talmud, the rabbis ask a daring question: When God prays, what does God say? The answer, from Rabbi Zutra bar Tuviah in the name of Rav may surprise you:“May it be My will that My compassion overcome My anger, and that My compassion prevail over all My other qualities.”

Even God, the rabbis suggest, “prays” to lead with compassion. If God needs to cultivate compassion—how much more so do we?

The Hebrew word for compassion, rachamim, comes from rechem—womb. Our tradition imagines compassion as womb-like: holding others with safety and tenderness. Before you read on, take a moment and sit with that image. To practice compassion is to cradle another person’s humanity.

Earlier this week, I taught about this very idea with the Jewish Advisory Group of the University Health Network. One participant reflected on the many times she witnessed people walk past someone in need without stopping to help. Too often, we fail to see the humanity in front of us. Compassion asks us to notice—and to act.

Our High Holy Day prayers invite us to return again and again to compassion. When we take out the Torah, we sing the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy:ה׳ ה׳ אֵל רַחוּם וְחַנּוּן, אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם וְרַב חֶסֶד וֶאֱמֶת…“Adonai, Adonai, God of compassion and grace, slow to anger, abundant in kindness and truth…”

This is the spiritual soundtrack of these next few weeks. The new year begins not with judgment, but with compassion as God’s first response. And when we repeat these words often enough, they can begin to reshape us too.

As we step into 5786, I invite us all to practice compassion in widening circles:

• Compassion for yourself.

• Compassion for family members who push your buttons.

• Compassion for the people sitting beside you in shul.

• Compassion for the vulnerable and the marginalized.

• Compassion for strangers whose struggles we do not yet see.

Let’s be bold enough to make compassion the trend of the upcoming new year.

Shabbat Shalom, and may it be a Shanah Yoter Tovah,

Rabbi Fryer Bodzin