What is holiness? That is a question worth considering as we approach the High Holy Days. Leviticus, in the Torah portion that we read each year on Yom Kippur afternoon, teaches that God is the standard for holiness and that we pursue holiness in our lives through ethical actions. Just consider that thought: To be ethical is to be holy, to draw near to God. This simple, yet profound biblical truth seems to go unnoticed in a world where stories of corruption, greed and scandal are the norm. People in religious garb who cheat make a mockery of religion. The Bible illustrates this clearly when it describes how King David was not allowed to build the temple because there was "blood on his hands."

We should not take pursuit of the moral life for granted. On the contrary, it requires enormous assistance. If it were easy, Jewish literature would be a fraction of what it is. In fact, the hardest religious challenge may be living the moral life in a world of temptation and competition. This simple fact inspires one of my basic loves of Judaism. It awes me. Ours is a religion of the marketplace, not the monastery. Our greatest teachers, the ancient rabbis, all had to earn a living in the real world. They were tanners, merchants, shepherds, traders and weavers. In it all, they knew their highest challenge was to draw near to God's presence through the daily trials of the workplace--"through the risk of one's soul, one earns one's bread," says the Unetaneh Tokef prayer from the High Holy Day liturgy.

These are the same challenges we consider as the Holy Days approach. These are the questions that we hope you engage with this year's Elul Project, "Reaching for Holiness."

The Reform Movement has adopted a new prayer book entitled Mishkan T'filah, or "Tabernacle for Prayer." In the Torah, the "mishkan" was the portable dwelling that the Israelites built, depending on your theology, to house God's presence--or perhaps, in a metaphor more palatable for us moderns, to symbolize God's presence. The "mishkan" was where Israel met God.

The search for God is endemic to every age and temperament. One of the distinguishing qualities of Reform Judaism is the seriousness with which we have taken prayer as a path to holiness. The aesthetics of prayer concern us. The music of prayer concerns us. The meaningfulness of our worship concerns us--all in ways that I believe distinguish us from other Jewish movements. These concerns are reflected in our prayer books--which have changed over time--with each new prayer book attempting to reflect the temperament and needs of the generation that is seeking to pray with it. Mishkan T'filah is the prayer book for our age, and in the months and years ahead we will be challenged as a community to learn how to use it and to seek the holy with it. We will begin using the book as soon as it arrives this fall.

I believe the prayer book will be judged a success if it speaks to us in the way we live in the many marketplaces of our lives--if it supports us in the pursuit of holiness outside the walls of the synagogue. Our sanctuaries should not only be places of refuge from and support for the daily battles of life, our sanctuaries should direct us in the very way that we live. My prayer is that Mishkan T'filah will not only lift up our prayer, but inspire us to strive for holiness as we set out into the world.