Dear Ann,

We could just do episodes of the On Being podcast every week for Knit to This, and that would be fine by me. Krista Tippett’s conversations have a way of disarming me and leading me to explore thoughts I usually bar at the doorstep of my well-guarded heart.

The Jewish High Holidays are coming up very soon, with Rosh Hashanah beginning next Friday evening, and Yom Kippur following on September 28. The theme every year is the same, and every year is new: forgiveness. We need to give it, we need to get it. Without giving and receiving forgiveness, we get all twisted up inside. It’s less about repentance, more about returning to ourselves.

In preparation for the holidays, I received an excerpt from Krista Tippett’s 2006 interview with Elie Wiesel, author of the Holocaust memoir Night. Wiesel died in 2016.

It’s a few minutes that stopped me in my tracks. In fact I did not knit to it. But it made me want to re-read, or re-listen, to Night. Elie Wiesel’s reflections on faith and forgiveness are so resonant in these troubled, polarized times. We do not want to talk to each other, yet we need to talk to each other. We need a way to return to the longing for justice and peace deep in our hearts.  A longer version of the interview is available here.

L’shana tova to all who celebrate the Jewish new year.

Love,

Kay

Note: The public reading of Night starts at the 11:30 mark of the video up top.