Rosh Hashanah

All kings and queens throughout history have had a responsibility toward their subjects; to appear with regularity and declare the affairs of state.  It is a regal event with all the pageantry and majesty that would accompany such an event, as if it were lifted out of story book.  Gilt covered carriages pulled by massive horses and glinting swords strung from the waist color the day.  Then the coup de grace; a glimpse at the magnificent jewels adorning the monarch.

Rosh Hashanah is the coronation day of the Holy One, blessed be He.  As the Lord sits with the crown on His head, he casts His gaze over the universe.  It is the moment of judgment.  This is the new beginning with all the accompanying majesty and awe.

According to Rabbi Elazar and Rabbi Shimon, Rosh Hashanah is the time for the reckoning of years.  A jubilee or date of a festival could not officially start until judgment had been rendered.  Only then would the calendar advance another digit.  And the harvesting of the first fruits of the three-year-old trees would be decided and commence on Rosh Hashanah.

In the starry heavens late at night on the way home from shul, a new moon the companies us toward quiet homes. A new dress, recently shine shoes, candles ablaze on the table, all of these things give a sense of calm and joy. The date portends new possibilities, new choices, and new decisions to old conundrums. One cycle is finished. We begin again.

It is said that the Gates of Heaven are open wide. Is it to give us a glimpse of the King of Kings and adorned in regal splendor? Or is it to give the One-Who-Rules a more perfect view of humanity? Everyone is judged according to some unknown, impenetrable scale of justice. It will be decided who will be granted another year of life and who will be assigned death.

If we are deemed worthy of life, is this a new beginning. If it is the end of life, it is also a new beginning….for the living, survivors, as well as the dead.

I look forward to a full, good year with you, if it is God’s will. No doubt we will cry together, dance at the same weddings, share the same magnificent joys and pains that life affords.  It is a new beginning for us all.  We join together in drinking from the cup of life

An anonymous figure in history once penned, “This is the beginning of a new day. God is giving me this day to use as I will. I can waste it or use it for good. What I do today is important because I'm exchanging a day in my life for it. When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever, leaving in its place something I’ve traded for it. I want it to be gain, not loss; good, not evil; success, not failure; in order that I shall not regret the price I paid for it.”

Is the wisdom, vision and inner strength to grow and have no regrets about tomorrow. However you may choose to say it, Gute Yontif, Shanah Tovah, May God be good to us.

Reach Out Across the Aisle and Then Up

Back in 1984 in the small community of Eastvale Texas, things went awry.  Big time.  Potholes were so numerous that the police stopped giving tickets for drunken driving (everybody swerved).  Water was in extremely short supply to the extent that the fire department had to “borrow” water.  Even automobiles threw fenders, mufflers and tires randomly, indiscriminately. Car parts littered the streets.  They just fell apart all over the place.  To misuse biblical terminology, ‘the septic tanks runneth over.’

Leaders from the community got together and decided the best way to get some coveted financial relief from the government was to call themselves ‘blighted’.  Said then Mayor Bert Eubank, “All I need is just a couple of million.”

These modern-day Jobs figured they could attract a lot of attention by drawing the national media to view their open wounds (anticipating sympathy in the form of dollars).

The story reminds me of the beggar in Fiddler on the Roof.  With his hand extended, he begs for money from the usual characters.  Offered one kopec, the beggar complains, “Because you had a bad week I should suffer?”

As life progresses, good and bad come unexpectedly.  How we react to these occurrences defines us.  A large segment of the deepest meaning of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is coming to terms with how we have responded to the ordinary events of life, the day-to-day stuff.

A prayer we recite on the Holy Days reads that we should be blessed by “never having to be dependent upon the charity of others.”  At the same time, we pray that God should be charitable to us in judging our lives. In other words, we ought to feel dependent upon God, not upon humanity. 

Who would disagree?  Of course we ought to be independent of people!  Closer to the truth is that we invert the Judaic notion: we form intricate webs of dependency and inter-dependency with people while distancing ourselves from God. 

One of the realizations of the global warming phenomenon is that we are swiftly understanding how much we are need of one another for survival.  We are dependent on people.   We cannot get along without them.  We need to galvanize one another and work on tandem to assure that the world will sustain us in the near future.  We need people in other ways too.  They are our employers; we wait for words of encouragement, paychecks and raises.  They are our customers; without them we are out of business.  We are connected to humanity at all levels.  Our lives are spent depending on people.

And yet.  It is not supposed to be this way.

At times of searing personal pain, our attention goes elsewhere.  Wisdom from the battlefield: “There are no atheists in a foxhole.”  Our tradition says the same thing using the metaphor of life.  Long ago, Eliezer ben Durdaya was a man who reached the height of personal achievement.  He was rich, successful… and hungry.  Eliezer had an insatiable desire for more and more.  His life slowly became twisted and his contorted by his want and the intolerable emptiness inside.

Nearing the end of his days Eliezer ben Durdaya screamed to the mountains, ”You are great  --Plead for me!” They remained silent.  Eliezer then turned to the sun and moon asking their help and intervention.  They too, remained unmoved.  Finally, Eliezer understood the blanket truth: he had to do the final reckoning.  No one, no thing would come to his defense.

Judaism does not believe in finger pointing, unless the finger is directed at the self.  Even if events or people have contributed to our present condition only we can make the ultimate difference; change.  The Talmud sums it up this way: When a person dies, nothing accompanies him before the Almighty, except his deeds.  

Coming Home

In times of deepest angst we wonder if we are alone.  That would be the final, unbearable indignity.  To be alone in moments of anguish is to feel abandoned.  Perhaps no other sensation is quite so insidious as it gnaws on the bones of insecurity, worthlessness and helplessness.  Who has not cured by the proverbial chicken soup?  Chicken soup is someone’s attempt to cook hearty warm food filled with taam (flavor) for you.  Just for you.  Any gift given so freely contains the seeds of healing.  No wonder chicken soup mends all wounds.  Its delivery says “I care about you.”  You are not alone.

Since we do not know the minute of another person’s anguish we call them often which further indicates our love toward them.  More times than I can count, congregants have told me during the week of their shiva that the most difficult part of mourning was at six pm.  That was the time when they spoke every day.  The utter pain of not hearing their mother’s voice over the telephone at six was terrible.

Reading back over thousands of years the prophet Jeremiah states, "And Zion said Hashem has forsaken and forgotten Me." Jeremiah has taken the “chicken soup” axiom and has found a novel approach to life.  

I have often wondered why God created us at all.  It makes no sense to me that perfection (God) requires anything else.  The only answer to this conundrum is that creation was an act of absolute love.  That God created the world and everything on it must have been an ultimate act of giving.  What happens when we reave ourselves from God?  Perhaps this is what Jeremiah meant.  “We are not alone,” wrote Abraham Joshua Heschel.  But more, tells the prophet, we are not alone in our feelings.

The Rabbis of the Talmud (Brachot 6B) share with us a remarkable insight in a no-less-remarkable tale.  Just as we go to Shul in order to daven, celebrate a simha, or milestone so too, God goes to shul.  God is a part of His people and is present with us in all places and throughout time.  We have services often and publicly announce that they are taking place.  The Rabbis are telling us is that God reads the same announcement.  He comes in anticipation of services.

Question: What happens when the giver finds herself abandoned?  You take the time to make the dinner, prepare the soup, make the call and there is no response?  This is what the Rabbis are indicating to us in this strange passage.  What does God feel?

In the same passage cited above, Jeremiah quotes Hashem as saying, "Can a mother ever forget her child?  Even if she could, I will never forget you!"(49:15).  As if this is not enough he adds, " I have engraved you on My palm." 


So once again the summer closes with cooler breezes and a return to old sensibilities.  Minds turn to less ephemeral things and the beginning of this return is marked by the New Year.  There we will greet old friends, companions and somewhere in the rear of the Sanctuary waits another for the child’s arrival home.

Upon Reflection

“Upon reflection.”

I have always liked those words because they mean something.  Instead of blurting out the first thing that comes to to mind, “upon reflection” indicates depth.  That is precisely what is supposed to be happening now.

“Repent one day before your death,” advises Pirkay Avot.  But the Talmud wisely asks, “Who knows when they are going to die?” 

Precisely.  Therefore, they counsel, repent every day.  Easier written than done.

Expressing sorrow, regret, is complex.  It means defying the voice of the ego, which loudly proclaims, “You were right!  They were wrong!  How can you apologize to someone who is so callous?  A brute?  An idiot?”  If you say you are sorry you will become diminished.  

Of course this is a lie told by our ego but if it said loud enough who has the strength to go against it?

The Holy Days are the time for repair work.  Fixing stuff.  Hurt feelings. Broken relationships.  Hearing and responding to the soft but insistent voice of our conscience demanding that wrongs be made rights.  

Human nature does not change.  We have been at war with our self for eons.  Two thousand years ago scholars wondered, “What if they reject my apology?  Must I go back and humble ourselves again? (Yes, up to three times, they counsel).  What if the person is dead? (We visit the grave and speak to their spirit).

Judaism does not let us off the hook easily.  It insists that we find mechanisms to quell the voice of pride and the seemingly all-powerful defense mechanisms and become simple and whole once again.

It is easy, too easy, to see the flaws in others.  It far more daunting to see them in us and then ask, as Rabbi Jonah of Gerona taught, “One must ask oneself: ‘What have I done? What have I become?’”

The answer begins with these words, “upon reflection….”

Coming to the Holy Days

In the beginning, G-d created. . . teshuva (repentance or return).  Ancient sources speak of teshuva preceding the world’s creation. Pirkei D’Rabbi Eliezer goes so far to state that teshuva was part of the blueprint for the world.  In other words, the world could not exist without it.

Rashi adds that justice and mercy are two sides of the same coin.  Remove one of them and you no longer have a whole coin.  The universe requires both. This is such a critical idea is because this is the season of “letting go.”  Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are workbenches for us; they are opportunities to reshape our lives.  

How do we do this? 

1.    Confession.  Come to G-d with a mind full of breaches of faith, failures of action, and harsh criticisms of others.  Know them. State them.  Bring them the Sanctuary of G-d.

If, when preparing to daven, you own and acknowledge personal flaws by specifically naming them (speaking them aloud to G-d) there can be personal forgiveness.  This is part of the liturgy “(For the sin we have committed by….”) except we are supposed to pronounce  our personal warts, not other’s.

2.    Rav Huna, son of Rav Yehoshua became ill. Rav Pappa went up to inquire about him, and saw that Rav Huna was on the brink of death. Rav Pappa told people around him, “Supply him with provisions for his journey (i.e. prepare burial shrouds).”  Ultimately, however, Rav Huna recovered.

“What did you see?” they asked Rav Huna.  He said, “I was about to die, but at the last moment, the Holy One, Blessed is He, said to the Heavenly Tribunal, ‘Since he does not stand on his principle, we cannot be strict against him.’ As it is stated, He pardons transgression and overlooks sin. Whose transgression does He pardon? One who overlooks sins committed against himself.” –Talmud

Forgive others. Let go of past hurts.  As the story indicates holding past grudges affects us, not them.

L’Shana Tova Tikateyvu, May you be inscribed for a good year.

Rivke and Rabbi Jonathan Case