Finding Your Way
Along The Ancient Paths.
(written 10/25/22, revised 10/25/24)
AND
שמחת תורה ... Happy Simchat Torah, joy of the Torah, when we re-wind the Torah and start over. Lots of dancing around with the Torah, dancing in general. A super festive day.
Both observances are now forever scarred as the anniversary of the Oct 7 massacre. The holidays themselves need a re-set, a refresh, a new depth of meaning, don't you agree?
Simchat Torah (“The Joy of the Torah”) was this week, so the next reading for Shabbat’s Parasha is/was Beresheet, Genesis 1. Kind of feels like a re-set, right? Start fresh. It’s the holiday where the last reading of the Torah Scroll and the first are both read. Roll back the Torah scroll to the beginning. This is your year! In the beginning, GOD CREATED…
(the photo above is from a synagogue in Chicago where they have a new tradition of re-rolling the scroll back to Genesis by spooling it out, held by all the members of the congregation. I like it! Others just do so on long tables)
If you are like me, you read a bible in a year schedule of readings. I also blend in the tradditional parashah reading schedule, (if you’d like to see the yearly schedule, click on the calendar on the 1st page of our Havurah website, scroll down, click on any Shabbat, and there is the Parasha for the week)
My personal readings today were from Jeremiah 6. It is one of those very unpleasant prophetic warnings of impending destruction. It’s one of those chapters you want to just skim through. Lots of awful “death and destruction if you don’t repent” kind of business, and you hope it’s just “for those folks way back then” and not for you.
But what caught my attention is that it says
בתקוע תקו שופר
b’tekoa teku shofar -
Sound the shofar in Tekoa!
It’s kind of a play on words too, because TEKOA is a small city south of Jerusalem where the Jerusalemites would flee from the predicted northern invasion, and TEKU is the command to SOUND the shofar. Catches one’s attention though, on the heels of Rosh HaShanna, right? And that is repeated in Jer 6.17
And it reflects our times, where we keep hearing about “peace deals” but they are only forestalling more violence. Peace with Hamas is only scheduling future terrorism.
14 “They have healed the brokenness of My people superficially,
Saying, ‘Peace, peace,’
But there is no peace. Jeremiah 6:14
People often say “I prayed and I don’t have a “peace” about it. Here “peace” is not enough. God has a deeper answer:
16 Thus says the LORD,
“Stand by the ways and see and
ask for the ancient paths,
Where the good way is, and walk in it;
And you will find rest for your souls.
But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’ Jeremiah 6:16
The Ancient Paths
Yeshua quoted this “and you will find rest for your souls” in Matthew 11:29, the famous “my burden is easy, my yoke is light” scripture (though I only thought of it because I was meditating on Jer 6.16, then found that yes, it’s in the footnotes). Yeshua liked tradition.
For me the “ancient paths” are not hard to know but worth spelling out so we can find them. In our bible study last time together, I made an offhand comment that everyone really took of on with all of your (smart!) commentary, which was “when you lose your way, go back to the last place you knew where you were” (also true spiritually - do the things you did then!)
Some basics about:
Read the Word
Be filled with the Ruach HaKodsh
Spend time in prayer,
Coming out to services (in person…yes to the extent you feel comfortable post-covid)
Be giving: towards others and the congregation as a whole. Reach out to the lost, new people, the less fortunate. With finances.
Integrate the traditions of Judaism invigorated with the fullness of the Ruach HaKodesh. “The ancient ways…” Jer 6.16
The holiday observances spelled out in the scriptures.
The Jewish practices Yeshua did.
What would you add ? _________
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