Shabbat Shuvah 2024

“I recognize that language of sovereignty and King and kingship for God doesn’t resonate with everyone; I myself struggle with it sometimes, but the mystics of our tradition have another understanding of this word Melech (King). In the series, A Guide to Jewish Practice, Rabbi Miriam Klotz offers this Kabbalistic teaching: that Melech, the word for King, can be understood as an acronym… so there are three letters in the word Melech, mem, lamed, chaf. In this teaching, the mem stands for moach, or brain. The lamed is lev for heart, and the chaf is clyot for kidneys…

It is a shimmer of the divine sovereignty that is in each of us, and that shimmer has come to meet us to engage in this holy one… How might we approach Teshuva (repentance) differently if we believed in the embodied divine sovereignty, not just of each other, but particularly of ourselves. How might we experience ourselves differently during this season of awe and repentance?”

Cooperberg-Rittmaster Rabbinical Intern Marques Hollie spoke on Shabbat Shuvah about return, about the proximity of the Divine during the High Holy Days – starting in a far off place, but coming to join us “in the field,” and moving even into ourselves, redefining how we can see the acts of amends and forgiveness when that divinity lives within us. 

Cooperberg-Rittmaster Rabbinical Intern Marques Hollie delivered this drashah at Kabbalat Shabbat services on Friday, October 4, 2024 / 3 Tishrei 5785.

Be in community with CBST at Kabbalat Shabbat services, Fridays at 6:30pm EST, either in person or streaming live on CBST’s website at cbst.org/livestream. 

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