BETH TORAH TIMES - HIGH HOLY DAYS EDITION 2019/5780

BERESHIT-
RETURN TO THE GENESIS
A Message from Our Cantor
Gastón Bogomolni
I ask you and I would like you to answer yourself with
your own thoughts, with your own heart:
If you had the opportunity to be that special soul in
the celestial chamber of souls and have the possibility
of being reborn, choose your parents, your brothers,
your environment, the country in which you were
born, what would you choose? What would you
change?
Suppose that instead of going back so far you have an
opportunity to return to a point in your life and once
there, start all over again from that same place. What
would that episode be? That moment?
What makes you feel the idea of going back? What
makes you feel the idea of the those opportunities to
remake, be reborn, to choose, to change, to remove,
to redirect, to modify?
There is something in this idea of being able to go back
to the past and change things and to be able to return
to a point in our lives and reset and start over again
that gives us some pleasure. Apple computers provide
a backup system called a “time capsule” that allows
you to go to any of the points where the machine
made a copy of the system and the files. Countless
were the times I was able to use the time capsule
which allowed me to go back to that specific point I
needed. The relief is indescribable!
What is it about having the chance to start over
that makes us feel good? It reminds me of all these
films based on the idea of Deja Vu, where the main
character has the chance to start again the same day
as if nothing had happened. The only way to stop with
that day is to repeat yourself by realizing what is that
you have to learn about that day, about some person,
about humanity, about yourself, learn to be better
every time that day presents to you until the lesson is
really learned. But again, what a relief when you can
realize what that specific mission is, that Tikun that you
have to repair, to solve.
Da capo is the term that musicians use to say: “back
to the beginning” literally means “from the head
(above).” I love this expression because it gives you the
opportunity to play the musical piece again and again
and clean up any mistakes that you could have made
during the first time. Sometimes it just gives you a new
angle to the texture, dynamics, or the sound of the
song. Maybe the piece was played perfectly the first
time and back to the beginning doesn’t add any new
perspective to the game and that is fine too, however,
there is something about going back to the beginning
that makes us feel good, we get some pleasure and it
feels like a second chance.
Back in Argentina I loved listening to a quartet called
Les Luthier and it was not until the second time
through that I understood the joke, or that it was by
the fourth time through that I got yet another very
subtle joke. Listening to things for a second or more
times also gives you the opportunity to pay attention
to details and bits that we probably didn’t hear the
first time. I have the habit of recording my singing and
rabbinical studies classes so that I can hear during the
week what my ear lost the first time. How many times
8 BETH TORAH TIMES