My Dear Friends, As we approach Yom Kippur, the Day of Judgement, I am thinking a lot about the enormous power and potential of this day. Our rabbis teach that during these days there are two books open before God, the sefer ha-chaim and the sefer ha-meisim. Usually this is interpreted as the Book of Life and the Book of Death, to which God places our names and seals our fates in the coming year. A second approach offered by our revered teacher of blessed memory, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, is that our life choices not only dictate our own life story but also the stories of those who came before us. We are a continuation of our parents, grandparents, and previous generations. And our actions are seen as a continuation of their story. As such, we are not just authoring our own life story with our life decisions but also the story of those who come before us. In this sense, the books that are open before God on these days are not the Book of Life and the Book of Death but the Book of the Living and the Book of the Dead.
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