Lamentations Rabbah

But tonight it's Shabbat Shuvah, and there are only a few days left until the Day of Atonement.

And at the end of Yom Kippur, we will join together in the Neilah service and proclaim the words, "The gates are closing." Is it even tenable to truly engage in the process of teshuvah now, to deeply invest in the work that is required to turn ourselves around? Is it already too late? The commentary Eichah Rabbah states, "Prayer is likened to a mikvah and teshuvah is likened to the sea.

Just like a mikvah is sometimes open and other times closed, so too the gates of prayer are sometimes open and other times closed.

But the sea, the sea is always open.

And so the Jews were following what God wanted, and yet God did not protect them.

Uh, and, uh, the, uh, book of, uh, Eichah Rabbah, which is a midrash on lament- on the Book of Lamentations by Jeremiah, uh, makes this point very clearly that, you know, "God, what did you do to-- why did you do this to us?" And I think that, uh, uh, as a result, the notion of the covenant between God and Israel is absent in Pirkei Avot altogether.

I was very surprised by that.

And then I said to myself, "You know what? It's absent in the Kiddush.