By Rabbi Martin Applebaum, Beth Jacob Congregation
Dear friends, I hope all is well. Rosalie and I truly enjoyed spending the Yamim Noraim (the Days of Awe) with you. We appreciate your warm welcome and look forward to getting to know all of you better.

The High Holiday season has long passed and we have all returned to our everyday schedules, hopefully, inspired with new energy and resolve. The month of Tishri with all its opportunities for spiritual enrichment and blessings from Above is followed by a seemingly routine existence.

Although Cheshvan has no “holiday,” as such, and Kislev has Chanukah, a rabbinically ordained holiday, we Jews are never without our channels of communication to our Creator…hourly, daily and weekly. The blessings received at the start of the year may be reinforced as we continue to serve our Creator as He wishes or, God forbid, diminished if we do not actively maintain our relationship with Him.

Our Torah tells us that we must consciously acknowledge every good we receive and, although we may have been written in the Book of Life, Health and Abundance, it behooves us to follow through on the commitments we made to God at the start of the new year. Moreover, God is the Source of All and He waits for us to ask of Him whatever we wish. Our daily prayers are precious to Him and He attends to our needs on an ongoing basis. And, so, we beseech Him on a daily basis. This is prayer.

The first thing we say every morning is “Modeh ani,” ”Thank you God for returning my soul to me.” Then, at the morning prayers we have an entire list of basic “givens” which we tend to accept as natural except if they are missing.  Every single blessing listed in the morning prayers takes on urgent relevance if we are lacking.

We request perfectly functioning bodies, sight, freedom from slavery, clothing, the freedom to do as we wish and not be confined to a jail-like existence, the ability to straighten bent bones, strength when we are tired…to name just a few.

This list of blessings is said daily and, instead of breezing through them by rote, we might do well to concentrate on how they can affect us if, God forbid, we don’t have them. The rabbis of the Talmud have given us a formula for presenting our requests to the Almighty and they are embodied in the prayer book, starting with our daily prayers.

Acknowledging The Source of All Good and then putting our request into words puts us in line to receive His blessings and to have our requests fulfilled. We pride ourselves in being civil, well mannered and thoughtful to one another.

Should we not approach God with the same reverence…The One who has given everything to us? If a fellow human being presents us with a gift, do we not feel obligated to say thank you? If we need something, do we not carefully word our request?

How much moreso when we approach the Giver of Life! The rabbis tell us “Ki mimcha ha-kol, u-miyadcha nasanu lach.”  The translation is, “You are the Source of all and from Your Hand we give back to you.” We are endowed with gifts: our brains, talents, good health, funds, etc. If we have the means to accomplish, then it becomes our obligation to act.

So, at the start of the New Year and after we have settled into our routines, and throughout the entire year, we still have the obligation to appreciate what we have and to keep the channels of communication through prayer so that God is with us at all times. May we as a people, a congregation, a family and as individuals always be a source of nachas to our Creator.

May God grant you and your families all the good you desire, materially and spiritually.