It is almost Rosh Hashanah and we all approach the High Holidays with different feelings and perspectives.  Some are worried about the coming year and hope that prayer will secure a healthy and prosperous year for them.  Others want to fulfill their chivuvim – obligations and mitzvot – by praying, hearing the shofar and fasting.  Still others are searching for some meaning within all the words and rituals, some piece of inspiration which will tweak their mood and their experience in the world and in their life for the better.   All of these have upsides and downsides, merits and deficiencies.

The Eefat Emet, Rabbi Yehudah Leib Alter of Ger, writes that we have a Divine soul, a point within that is transcendent and metaphysical.   Throughout the year it gets covered by the transient, the mundane, and the selfish.  The high holidays are an opportunity to uncover this point within us, to become more in touch with who we are, over and above the physical.   But, it’s not easy.   Sometimes we are afraid of that part of us, that we might be limited if we value the spirit too much, or that we might be frustrated to discover we are not very “spiritual”.

But Yom kippur, the most intense day of this work, the most non-physical, is also, according to the Mishnah, the most jouys.   We often forget this.   We confuse Tisha B’av and Yom Kippur, but they are worlds apart.   Tisha b’av is the day of our greatest sadness, Yom Kippur of our great joy.

The key is to see Yom Kippur as a spiritual opportunity.   If you received a letter from the Dalai Lama inviting you to come to Dharamsala for the week to engage in spiritual reflection and you were told you would be fasting for a whole day as part of it, would you go?   Would you jump at the opportunity?   This is your invitation.    Let us see the Hgh Holidays not as a burden to be borne, but an exotic spiritual experience to be had.