10Q 2011 Day 1

By Susan Esther Barnes

10Q is a website that sends you a question once a day for 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. You answer the questions online, and can choose whether or not to share your answers.

The site stores your answers each year, so you can look back at your responses from each year, to see how you have grown and changed over time.

Below is the question for the first day this year, and my response.

Describe a significant experience that has happened in the past year. How did it affect you? Are you grateful? Relieved? Resentful? Inspired?

In the past year, I performed taharah for the first time. This is the ritual in which we wash and dress a dead person, and place her in her coffin.

The biggest affect it has had on me is that it has made it easier for me to see life all around me. When I look at a tree now, I don't just see a trunk and branches and leaves. I see life. Life is everywhere, all around us, all the time. The earth is teeming with it.

I am both grateful for, and inspired by this experience, and plan to continue to do this mitzvah in the future.