Autumn: A season of color and death

By LESLIE Y. GUTTERMAN

PROVIDENCE JOURNAL

I was struck by the final sentence in the program notes of last summer’s Kingston Chamber Music Festival describing the culmination of Mozart’s Quintet in A Major for Clarinet and Strings: “After a short clarinet cadenza, this moves to the perky return of the theme in its final variation — now Allegro — to drive away autumnal thoughts.”

Truth to tell, I had not a single autumnal thought on that peaceful July night, which was so filled with gorgeous music. However, now that autumn is a few days away, I am filled with those thoughts.

It is a privilege to live in New England when Mother Nature shows off all her colorful finery. But despite the splendor of autumn, the season has not fared well in literature. Poets generally have thought of it as the season of death. “Bare ruined choirs,” Shakespeare called it, “where yellow leaves or none or few to hang.” Rilke begins his poem on autumn: “Who now has no house will not build one anymore.”

It seems bad timing that the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana, began Thursday. How ironic to celebrate beginnings when leaves fall, songbirds disappear and animals think about hibernating.

Actually in ancient times, there were four Jewish “New Years,” which commemorate different events. One marked the coronation of kings and was used to calculate the numbers of years they reigned. One marked the time that cattle were tithed and offered as a sacrifice to God when the Temple stood in Jerusalem. There is a New Year still observed called Tu Bishevat, which began as an agricultural festival but was transformed by associations with the land of Israel.

Rosh Hashana, which literally means “head of the year,” is the birthday of the world. By a kind of rabbinic fuzzy math, it was determined that creation began 5,768 years ago. That is the year now inaugurated in synagogues around the world with prayer and meditation. Thursday begins a period of introspection that culminates with the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, on Sept. 22.

Introspection

It turns out that thoughts of death — autumnal thoughts, if you will — inspire introspection. Consider these words from our prayer book: “The eye is never satisfied with seeing; endless are the desires of the heart. We devise new schemes on the graves of a thousand disappointed hopes. Like Moses on Mount Nebo, we behold the promised land from afar but may not enter it. Our life, at its best, is an endless effort for a goal we never attain. Death finally terminates the struggle and joy and grief, success and failure, all are ended. Like children falling asleep over their toys, we relinquish our grasp on earthly possessions only when death overtakes us. Master and servant, rich and poor, strong and feeble, wise and simple, all are equal in death. The grave levels all distinctions, and makes the whole world kin.” Autumnal thoughts, indeed!

The Psalmist put it in different words: “Cause me to number the days of my life so that I might acquire a heart of wisdom.”

Such sentiments, of course, are not unique to the Jewish tradition. Phillips Brooks was the most celebrated preacher in Boston. He served as the Episcopal bishop of Massachusetts and was the author of “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”

His most famous sermon, “Candle of the Lord,” was preached in Westminster Abbey on July 4, 1879. Brooks exhorted the congregation: “Forgive. Forget. Bear with the faults of others as you would have them bear with yours. Be patient and understanding. Life is too short to be vengeful or malicious. Life is too short to be petty or unkind ... Don’t wait to patch up that quarrel. Don’t wait to say that kind word, to do that kind deed. The time is short, and tomorrow may be too late!”

The great Hassidic Rabbi Nahum of Bratslav said this to his disciples, “If you’re not going to be kinder tomorrow than you were today, what good is tomorrow?”

It turns out that there is a deeper wisdom in marking a New Year when we will be surrounded by beautiful leaves that die before our very eyes, and fly away as though they had never been. It makes us think of the autumn of our own lives when the story of our own lives will be rehearsed for others to hear. It will hopefully motivate us to spend the year to come liberated from anger and envy and living in a way that makes a difference for good in the lives of others.

X Leslie Y. Gutterman is senior rabbi of Temple Beth-el in Providence, R.I. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.