Rosh Hashanah: Real life
Here in Israel, the talk
revolves around gas masks- ‘did you get one’ or ‘where did you get yours’? Of course, we are well past the ‘boy who cried
wolf stage’ as threats like these are routine and nothing usually happens. So
the attitude is as one Rabbi quipped, ‘these gas masks will only be used on
Purim’. Either way, these threats are
timely as they are excellent preparation for the high holidays. If the daily
blast of the shofar hasn’t woken us up, then maybe Assad can- nothing like some
threats on our life to help us think about life, after all, isn’t that what
Rosh Hashanah is all about?
The Talmud says, ‘there are three books opened
on Rosh Hashanah: one for completely evil people, one for completely righteous
people and one for the in between people. The completely righteous are written
for life immediately, and the evil people are written for death immediately.
The in between hang in the balance between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur…’[1]. Why are they books? And in general, what does this mean? A simple understanding is that on Rosh
Hashanah our physical life hangs in the balance. In a few days, it will be decided whether
missiles will be landing somewhere in Israel. But that can’t really be what Rosh
Hashanah is all about- how could a righteous person ever pass away? Do we say
he had a bad 80th year all of a sudden? So the Talmud can’t be taken at face value.
To understand what the Talmud is
talking about, we need to know what life and death are really all about. It
says elsewhere in the Talmud (Berachos 18a) that a righteous person is called alive
even when physically dead, and an evil person is called dead even when physically
alive. What is that referring to? It means that they are cut off from the spiritual
source of connection. In other words,
they are alive physically but they lack a spiritual vibrancy. With that we can understand what Rosh Hashanah
is all about. It is decided how spiritually vibrant our year will be, how full
of inspiration and connection. Will we
be going through the motions for another year, or will we be spiritually
sensitive this year and connect to deeper moments. That is the idea of a book. A book is a mode of expression. Will our mode of expression this year be
vital or will it be impotent?
Ultimately, Assad can’t really
help us- he has no control over our real life.
On Rosh Hashanah we decide that we want to recognize a spiritual reality
in the world. If we do, we will be
blessed to draw energy from it, and feel alive. And if we don’t, we will continue
to live in an endless cycle of vagaries that will constantly whisper in our
year, is this what life is all about?
