Battling Amalek

Somehow it must have escaped me that this is the most important time of the year to make t'shuvah (repentance). Sure I was painfully aware of the added blessings and word tags in my prayers during these aseret yamei t'shuvah, but I wasn't personally, spiritually aware of all of my shortcomings until receiving some terrible news this evening. A young lady, whom I barely knew but was an extended family friend, took her own life by jumping off of a building. She sang a song at our American wedding and we even had dinner with her about three weeks ago for my wife's birthday. Ostensibly at least, she had everything-- looks, a killer voice, youth, a new family as her mother just remarried-- but now she has nothing. Now she is nothing, but whatever we are in the first place--maybe only that primordial stuff, or dark matter.

Let's hope she has become whatever it is she was looking for when she decided to take her own life. And I only hope that there is a plan in this topsy-turvy world that I may trust more than is healthy for my own good. I often hear people say that life is nothing but chaos, amorphous and with no apparent order. Tonight, on the eve of the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, Yom HaKippurim, I am the closest that I've ever been to buying in to such nihilism.