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September 10, 2004
The holidays are a time for change
RABBI EMANUEL FELDMAN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
The overarching theme of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is "change":
to change from what we were before and to become new individuals.
Tishrei, the month of Rosh Hashanah, is the first month of the universe
and, just as when God completed His Creation He contemplated and
evaluated it, so does He do every Rosh Hashanah which means
that Rosh Hashanah is actually the Day of Judgment for the universe
and for humankind, collectively and individually. This explains
why, more than any other Jewish holiday, Rosh Hashanah's liturgy
is not limited to Jewish themes exclusively, but contains many universal
themes as well. On no other occasion, for example, is God referred
to as "King over all the earth" and at no other time is
God's Holy Temple called a "house of prayer for all the nations."
This is all a reflection of the universal judgment of this day.
God evaluates us collectively, just as a shepherd looks over his
flock with one glance. And individually, He also judges us like
a shepherd who looks at each sheep as it files through a narrow
opening in the gate. So Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are more than
just a Jewish version of New Year's Day. It's a time of great introspection,
of teshuvah/repentance, of stock-taking. According to an
ancient Jewish tradition, it marks the creation of Adam and Eve
who were created, who sinned and who were judged all on the
same day.
All of these traditions underscore the idea that Rosh Hashanah is
the time of beginnings. For example, the Talmud states that a number
of other events took place on Rosh Hashanah: Abraham and Jacob were
born on Rosh Hashanah; the three barren women Sarah, Rachel
and Hannah (the mother of the prophet Samuel) were all remembered
by God on Rosh Hashanah, when He decreed that they will give birth.
On Rosh Hashanah, Joseph was freed from the Egyptian prison and
became viceroy of Egypt. And, on Rosh Hashanah, slavery ended for
the Jews in Egypt and they waited for the 10 plagues to be completed
so that they could go out to freedom.
Thus, Rosh Hashanah is a time for significant initiatives. As such,
it is an opportunity for us to recreate ourselves, to return to
a relationship with God, to strengthen our ties to our faith.
On the one hand, Rosh Hashanah is
an extremely solemn day, the most solemn of the year after Yom Kippur.
Because Rosh Hashanah begins the Ten Days of Repentance, we stand
at the bar of judgment on those days. It's as if we were in a courtroom
pleading for our very lives.
Our tradition gives us a vivid image: "The Books of the Living
and the Books of the Dead are open before Him," which means
many things, but one of the things it means is that we pray that
our names be inscribed by our loving and understanding God in the
one book and not in the other.
Our tradition also tells us that, beginning with Rosh Hashanah,
a Jew has the opportunity to return to God, to perform teshuvah
which literally means to turn around, to return, to start
all over again. Rosh Hashanah and its companion, Yom Kippur, are
Divine gifts in which we are given the opportunity to reopen our
relationship with God, when we have the chance to wipe away the
past as if it did not exist and to start over again with a clean
slate.
The slate is not wiped clean automatically. The process has to begin
with us, with a sense of true regret, with contrition for past misdeeds
and with a serious resolution not to repeat them. The opportunity
is given to sincere returners, not to those who are just going through
the motions. But once the process is properly done, once the catharsis
of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur make their impact on us, what could
be more joyous than that? So, yes, it is solemnity filled with awe
and spiritual joy.
Remember that in the religious context joy is deeply inward and
is not necessarily manifested by laughter and smiles. As such, religious
joy and religious awe are not contradictions. In fact, they go hand
in hand. In the second Psalm, King David says, "Serve the Lord
with fear and rejoice with trembling."
The liturgy of Rosh Hashanah, especially
the additional musaf service, is the most magnificent prayer the
world has ever seen. It's like a symphony, perfectly balanced, divided
into three separate movements, devoted to the themes of making God
our sovereign and acknowledging Him as our King; remembering His
intervention in our history and underscoring our belief in Divine
Providence the idea that He listens and cares for us; and
recalling the numerous biblical events where the shofar heralds
God's presence and protection, and longing for the time when the
shofar will herald the redemption of all humankind and the coming
of the Messiah.
The overarching theme of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is "change."
The motif behind it all is accountability. We are responsible for
our actions. We do not live in a vacuum. What we do or say has an
impact and a resonance in the world. Yom Kippur represents the potential
for a human being to change and return: we are not eternally condemned
to follow a certain habitual path; we do have the ability, if we
so choose, to change our ways.
It is amazing: in the Talmud (Nedarim 39b), the sages tell us that
teshuvah was created before the world was created. That is to say,
the idea of repentance, of a person changing themself and changing
their course, is an integral part of Creation and the world
could not exist without it.
Rabbi Emanuel Feldman, a resident of Jerusalem, was rabbi
of Atlanta's Congregation Beth Jacob for almost 40 years. He also
holds a PhD from Emory University and has just retired as editor-in-chief
of Tradition Magazine. He is the author of seven books, including
the best-selling Tales Out of Shul and On Judaism,
from which this article is excerpted. He has most recently published
The Shul Without a Clock and serves as editor-in-chief of
the Ariel Chumash project, which translates Rashi and other commentaries
on the Bible into English. This article is from Aish Hatorah resources
(www.aish.com)
and is distributed by the Kaddish Connection Network (kcnnet1@
hotmail.com).
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