Therefore, tonight, I ask for Selicha, I ask for forgiveness from those assembled here who I may have hurt over the past year. Perhaps it might have been a phone call that was not timely returned, or a moment when I was too busy and did not give full attention to you, or did not hear what you were saying, or hard words I uttered that should not have been said.

As we go forward into a new year, I will do my best to be there for you.

Tonight, on this evening of Kol Nidre, we ask God to inscribe us in the Sefer HaChayim, the Book of Life. For the next 24 hours, we seek to repent for our sins. As sundown approaches tomorrow with the Neilah service, we will ask God to seal us in the Book of Life.

The metaphor is so powerful, the gravity of the moment is so profound, that we find it all but impossible to break free of the Godly image painted for us: a white haired sage, with flowing white robes, sitting on a throne, inscribing, with quill pen and ink, in a very large book, the names of those who will live to see the new year. And tomorrow night, when the final hour approaches and the Shofar is sounded, God will put a divine seal on the Book, and it will be closed until next year.

This concept of our names being entered into the book of life goes back as far as the Biblical period.

In the book of Exodus 32:32-33, Moses petitions God to forgive the sins of the Israelites, and says, "Now, if you will forgive their sin, well and good, --but if not, erase me from the record you have written. But God says to Moses: "Whoever has sinned against me, that person only will be erased from my book."

From the third part of our Bible, in Psalm 69:29, it is written, "Let them be erased from the book of the living, and let them not be written with the righteous."

Finally, in the Prophet section of the Bible, Ezekiel one of our three major prophets, speaks the words of God to the Jewish people, stating, "My hand will be against the prophets who prophesy falsehood and utter lying divinations. They shall not remain in the assembly of my people, they shall not be inscribed in the lists of the Jewish people, and they shall not come back to the land of Israel, that you may know that I am the Lord God."

For the modern, sophisticated people that we are (or think we are), is this metaphor still useful for us? Are these ancient biblical texts still relevant? Perhaps our updated vision would be God at a Dell Computer, (special ordered, with an infinite amount of gigabyte storage capacity). During the ten days of repentance from the beginning of Rosh Hashanah to the end of Yom Kippur, the angels are imputing all the names and data on sins and good deeds on an Excel spreadsheet, calculating the results. God reviews the list, makes the appropriate edits, and, just as we are about to blow the shofar at the end of Neilah, God hits the save button?

We are told during these High Holy Days that all our good deeds and all our sins will be accounted for in the final reckoning of who shall live and who shall die. According to Maimonides, the great medieval scholar known as the Rambam, "all depends on whether a human being's merits outweigh the demerits put to that person's account", so it is therefore desirable to multiply good deeds before the final account is taken on Yom Kippur. In other words, we need to rack up as many points as we can before Yom Kippur arrives.

We are left to ponder whether this reckoning is a simple exercise of addition and subtraction. One point for each good deed and one deduction for each bad deed. Is there a cut-off point, where a grade below a certain number means that our name is erased from the Book? Or is the point system similar to the SAT, with bad acts, like wrong answers, only causing the loss of a quarter point. One would think at the very least that the scoring must be weighted, because not all good deeds should receive the same credit, and not all bad deeds should result in the same deduction.

What we are told is that even if we fall short, we are given another chance. The prayer Unetaneh Tokef speaks of this opportunity that we have as we recite the words tomorrow morning: Teshuvah, Tefilah, U'Tzedakah Maavirin Et Roa HaGezeirah. Repentance, prayer and charity can avert the severity of the decree. Because God is merciful, sincere repentance may make the difference. God can and will change God's mind. The message to us is that there is always hope. We are held accountable for our actions and our deeds for the prior year, but on Yom Kippur we have a last chance to play a part in controlling our own destiny.

Whether the Book of Life is written and sealed with God's pen or hard drive, does the ancient vision make sense, given what we know of life and death today?

We all have great difficulty reconciling these heavenly calculations with what we all observe. Truly, our common experience is that who lives and who dies appears not to depend upon living a life based upon Torah. Rather, genetics, happenstance, money and other factors often seem to and do control our lives and determine our fate.

Doesn't everyone have a story of the 105 year old man who took a drink every morning and smoked every day? And the long distance runner who dies of a heart attack at the age of 25. How many pass away through happenstance: a careless or drunk driver, a stray bullet, a slip and fall, a bolt of lightning. How many lives are saved because better medical care is affordable to some, how many die because there is a lack of medical care and a lack of money? How many live because of peace, how many die because of war?

There is a dissonance between what God requires of us to be deemed worthy of life, and what we require of ourselves and others.

In fact, while God is maintaining the heavenly ledger on us, each year we are busy writing our own books of life, in which we are making entries on who among us lives and who dies. We make those decisions as individuals, groups, societies and nations. All of us are familiar with the expression "playing God", used when someone makes a decision that affects the life of another Whether or not we want to admit it, we all play God.

Sometimes the decisions affect specific individuals. Medical organizations compile lists of organ recipients, and decisions are made all the time as to who will receive a life-saving organ and who will not. Consider the death penalty. At present some 67 countries maintain the death penalty, 97 have abolished it, and 10 reserve it for exceptional circumstances. Now, I'm not here tonight preaching a position one way or the other. I am only making the point that on this issue, each society has made a decision as to life and death- and whether we have any right to make the decision at all.

Other decisions we make do not affect any one person but a certain number of unknown persons. For a very long time, automobiles did not have seat belts. The knowledge and technology obviously were available, but decisions were made that the added cost of installing a seat belt was not worth the number of lives that could be saved. The same thinking preceded the use of air bags. In war, non-combatants die, but in every war the decision is made that the cause for which the war is being fought outweighs the loss of innocent life. Israel, probably more than any other country, agonizes over these issues, in each war and each military operation. Israel is put in a fragile position because her leadership is always weighing the potential death or injury of Israeli soldiers against the possible death or injury of innocent bystanders. The moral objections to stem cell research have a direct effect upon an unknown many who might be saved by the results of that research.

These decisions on life and death that we make often are based upon how we - as individuals, societies and countries - value a life.

A list of various factors was assembled to determine the amount to be paid to the survivors of those who died on 9/11. Now, I suppose the issue could be approached in one of two ways. On the one hand, one could determine the payout based upon each person's actual and projected earning power. On the other hand, it could be decided that every human life is precious, is one of God's creations, and therefore the same amount should be allotted for each person who perished. There is not necessarily a "right answer" but the fact is that a determination on the value of a life is being made.

What is the life of an African child worth? Based upon the world's reaction to the killings in Darfur, the massacres in Rwanda in the mid-1990s, the starvation in Ethiopia now and elsewhere on the African continent- not much. Because if an African child's life was deemed to be worth more, the world would make sure that the child had enough to eat, clothing to wear, shelter, and did not have to live in fear of death every day.

Can we reconcile the liturgy and images of these High Holy Days, and the standards by which God measures us, with the standards and realities that confront us every day? I believe we can.

Our mission as Jews is and has always been the same - to fashion our earthly standard of how we value life to the heavenly standard by which God measures us, so that they are one and the same.

We are a people chosen by God to obey God's Mitzvot, God's laws, and by doing so, we are the Or LaGolah, the light to the other nations of the world as we set an example for others to follow. Therefore, just as we ask forgiveness of God for our sins, so should we be willing to forgive others who sincerely repent. Just as we ask God to fairly weight our good deeds and sins, so should we do the same, when we make decisions on others.

We all have heard the expression that a person "has gotten a new lease on life." Originally, the phrase referred to someone recovering from a serious illness, but now it is used to refer to any situation where a person has been given another chance to move forward, to succeed, to live a fulfilling life.

We should consider that we are renting space on earth, and each year we make it through gives us a lease for living another year. Yom Kippur is the time of year when we ask God for a new lease on life for one more year. Yom Kippur is the time we are given to say that we are sorry and to reconcile our differences with God. Yom Kippur is the moment when we look at ourselves in the mirror and ask if we are we happy with our "computer files" that God has received from us during the past year. Yom Kippur is the time when we ask God to save us, forgive us and seal us for a new year enabling us to fulfill our role in making the world a place where life is sanctified and appreciated, where when we play God, we do so in a way that makes us truly God-like.

Gemar Chatimah Tovah. May all of us be sealed for a year of blessing and peace.