by Ken Sehested
My lectionary imagination jumped the rails, enamored by this month’s confluence of Jewish and Islamic holy days.
For Jews the ten “Days of Awe” began with Rosh Hashanah this past Sunday at dusk, stretching through next Wednesday’s Yom Kippur observance. For Muslims the annual pilgrimage to Mecca—“Hajj,” one of the five “pillars” of Islam, taking place this year from 21-26 September (calculated, as with Jewish holidays, by distinctive lunar calendars)—is expected to draw well over 2 million people from 188 countries.
The second day of Dhul-Hijjah (the Month of Hajj), the annual pilgrimage to Islam’s holiest site, is called the Day of Arafat, when pilgrims travel out of Mecca to the nearby Mount Arafat to celebrate Mohammed’s “Farwell Sermon.”
There are variations in the Hadith (authorized narratives of Muhammed’s teachings) of the Farewell Sermon, much like the Gospels in the Christian Testament have different accounts of Jesus’ life and words. Here are a few especially noteworthy statements from the Prophet’s final testament:
•Blood-vengeance killings are forbidden, as is usury, the practice of charging interest on loans.
• “[T]here is no superiority of an Arab over a non-Arab, nor of a non-Arab over an Arab, nor of a white over a black, nor a black over a white. . . .” (Musnad Ahmad ibn Hanbal)
•Similar to the “new year” theme of Rosh Hashanah in Judaism, the Farewell Sermon speaks of the celebration of creation, anticipating its present-but-still-coming fulfillment. “Time has completed its cycle [and is] as it was on the day that God created the heavens and the earth.” (Ibn Hisham's Sirah an-Nabawiyah and at-Tabari’s Tarikh)
In Judaic observance, Rosh Hashanah is commonly referred to as the Jewish New Year—Yom Teruah, literally “head of the year” and a day of “shouting/raising a noise.” It lacks the party hats, champagne and late-night carousing in Times Square, though the shofar’s trumpet-like blasts provides plenty of noise. Shared apples dipped in honey express the desire for a sweet new year. Shared blessings— “Leshanah tovah tikateiv veteichateim,” “May you be inscribed and sealed for a good year”—are reminders that life is consequential, as does the Tashlich, prayers said near a body of water recalling the verse “And You [G-d] shall cast their sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19). Rosh Hashanah is not just a calendar reload—it is cosmic, celebrating the creation of humankind. The theme of turning, repentance, is a recognition that God’s purpose has been thwarted, that human hubris is now the norm—but that this norm is not “natural,” is not the nature of God’s making. And God is not yet finished.
The “Days of Awe” involve an inscribing of the names of the righteous in the Book of Life on Rosh Hashanah and the sealing of that Book on Yom Kippur, the “Day of Atonement,” when the soul is afflicted to atone for the sins of the past year. Yom Kippur’s atonement is specifically between individuals and God—the work of reconciliation with neighbors is to be done beforehand. This instruction is echoed in Jesus’ command (Matthew 5:23-24) to reconcile with aggrieved neighbors prior to offering a gift at the temple altar, as well as his linkage (Matthew 6:12) of the capacity to be forgiven with the willingness to forgive.
Two things about the “Days of Awe” stand out in my mind.
First, the names of the righteous are inscribed in God’s muster-roll, the Book of Life, on Rosh Hashanah but are not sealed until Yom Kippur. In other words, life is not fated, and there is time for turning.
Second, every year on Yom Kippur afternoon the book of Jonah is read in synagogues around the world. Jonah’s is the tale of God’s unremitting mercy, a mercy so severe that it scandalizes the prophet himself, who is still stuck with the customary human assumption that you get what you earn, you reap only what you sow, your sum always equals your parts.
Life is not fated. Our past does not fully determine our future. The wounds we have suffered—or inflicted—need not define and confine the future. Because we made a mistake does not mean we are a mistake. If karma is all there is, none of us have a prayer.
The Days of Awe’s invitation to review one’s past year, indeed one’s entire life, involves a reading of history. But such readings are not primarily about the past. (As Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”) Reading history is the arguments we have with each other about the past. And whenever we argue about the past we are, in fact, making claims about the present and, thereby, about the future. Our remembrances shape our intentions. Memory—and it distortion, amnesia—shapes our politics, our vision of the commonwealth, and drives our debates over current policies and budgets.
How, for instance, can we rightly remember our slavering past? Or, more recently, the elaborate legal justification for torture?
Being reoriented toward the Commonwealth of God almost always entails something akin to having the rug pulled out from under our feet. Rabbi Abraham Heschel, when told by a student that it must be gratifying to spend his life amid “the comforts of religion” replied, “God is not nice. God is not an uncle. God is an earthquake.”
Such earthquakes may take place in a host of ways. But it always involves some sort of dislocation: from a comfort zone byway to a danger zone highway. “We should all be wearing crash helmets,” Annie Dillard wrote about fitting worship. “Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”
For Jonah, Sign of God, it meant three days in the belly of a maritime beast. Pity that poor whale. Three days of nausea, caused by that gastritic Prophet who was foolish enough to flee from the sea’s own Cartographer.
©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org
Sunday” confrontation at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., shocked the nation, died 26 August at a hospital in Montgomery, Ala. She was 104. This past March she again crossed the Pettus Bridge, in a wheelchair and holding hands with President Obama, on the 50th anniversary of that historic event. —See Andrea Germanos, “
¶ Along with many of you I’ve been haunted of late by a single photograph, of 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi, from Syria, lying in the surf of a Turkish beach, lifeless, having drowned along with his brother and mother while attempting to reach Greece on a rickety boat that capsized. His body looks serene, very much like those of my own babies and grandbabies when fast asleep. Only Aylan is drenched, face down in the surf, a wave lapping at his head, breathless.
said the number of people forcibly displaced at the end of 2014 had risen to a staggering 59.5 million compared to 51.2 million a year earlier and 37.5 million a decade ago.
¶ Some additional notes about the current refugee crisis:
¶ Call to confession. “
•Sweden was the first EU country to take in Syrian refugees, back in 2012, and ranks highest in the number admitted as a proportion of population.
¶ Serious yogurt. Hamdi Ulukaya, founder of Chobani, the popular Greek-style Yogurt, has pledged 
¶ “For years, the European Union kept refugees out of sight and out of mind by paying Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi's government to intercept and turn back migrants that were heading for Europe. Gadhafi was something like Europe's bouncer, helping to bar refugees and other migrants from across Africa. His methods were terrible: Libya imprisoned migrants in camps where rape and torture were widespread. But Europe was happy to have someone else worrying about the problem. When Libya's uprising and Western airstrikes ousted Gadhafi in 2011, Libya collapsed into chaos.” —Max Fisher and Amanda Taub, “
minister so frequently references . . . is crystal clear about the absolute priority of our obligation to refugees. For the moral imagination of the Hebrew scriptures was determined by a battered refugee people, fleeing political oppression in north Africa, and seeking a new life for themselves safe from violence and poverty.” —Giles Fraser, "
¶ For the savvy investor, conflict can be profitable. “Let’s paint a picture of the world right now,” Epstein says. “You’ve got the Europeans worried about what the Russians are doing in their backyard; we’ve got our hands full right now in Iraq; you’ve got the Israelis with their hands full in their region; and then you have the Chinese and Japanese in the South China Sea. As an investor [in the defense industry], with this much regional conflict in the world . . . that can’t be bad.” —Bank of America analyst Ronald Epstein in Tory Newmyer, “
¶ Pictured at right: “Rice fields in Manali,” Himachal Pradesh, India, photo by Ahmed Labib. Other stunning photos of sculpted fields in Asia can be found 
¶ Intercession. Prayers for students and teachers, school board members, PTAs, and the day when public appreciation for educators is matched by every legislature's budgetary resolve—even if it means the Pentagon has to supplement its appropriation with bake sales.
(“The Great One”) from "McKinley" reverses what started out as a political joke. The pork-barrel name (McKinley never had any connection to Alaska) stuck even after Alaska’s legislature returned to the original name in 1980. —For more background, see “
When the country’s revolutionary government declared its independence, McKinley, with congressional approval, launched the Philippine-American war. Over the next 41 months as many as 300,000 Filipinos were killed. In Balangiga, after some 48 soldiers were ambushed by Filipino guerrillas, US General Jacob Smith order the execution of every male over 10 on Simar Island.
Dream, the state where they have painted themselves white, is the deathbed of us all. The Dream is the same habit that endangers the planet. . . .” —Ta-Nehisi Coates, "Between the World and Me"
¶ Hopeful news. “The solar industry added jobs at a rate nearly 20 times faster than the national average last year,” according to a 
¶ Fear mongering. Since 9/11, foreign-inspired terrorism has claimed about two dozen lives in the United States. Meanwhile, more than 100,000 have been killed in gun homicides and more than 400,000 in motor-vehicle accidents. Moreover:
“Question: As a young girl, your grandmother saw the Klan dragging her neighbor out of a house. What did she think of you scaling that pole?