The most traditional wish for the holiday of Rosh Hashanah is: "Leshanah Tovah Tikatevu" - "May you be inscribed for a good year". This wish is based on a famous Mishnah that states that on Rosh Hashanah every creature passes before God as a sheep in front of the shepherd, and the Almighty decides if the coming year will be a good one, or God forbid- a bad one. The anthropomorphic vision (in the prayer Unetane Tokef, for example) describes God as sitting in judgment, and the books of life and death, sustenance and poverty, health and sickness and peace and war are opened before him. This is the idea behind the wish: "May you be inscribed for a good year"

Another famous wish for Rosh Hashanah is "Shanah Tova Umetuka" – "Have a good and sweet year". In the message I wrote for the last bulletin, I explained that we (I) believe that "everything that the Merciful One does, is for good", and this belief should accompany us in moments of tribulation: God is in charge and He is good, even though we can not –sometimes- understand His ways, since "His ways are not ours, and His thoughts are not ours" (Isaiah 55:8). However we don’t want to experience God’s goodness through bitterness, suffering or anxiety, but through sweetness and pleasantness (this is the Jewish Chutzpah). Therefore we wish each other "Shanah Tovah Umetukah" – A Good and Sweet Year". We know that God knows what is good for us since He is a compassionate father (Av Harachaman), but we want His goodness to be blessed also with sweetness.

There is another special wish for Rosh Hashanha. This one is famous among Chabbad Hassidim. The wish is (in Yiddish): "Zolztu Hobn a Gut Gebentsh Yohr" – "May you have a good blessed year!"

How is this wish different from the previous ones? I would like to suggest that "good" and "sweet" are relative categories. What is good for me may not be good for you and what is "sweet" for you may not make a big difference to me.

However, when we use the word "Gebentsh" – "Blessed", the first association is God’s blessings. A year which is blessed, is blessed by God, and His blessings are absolute. God is the source of all the blessings. Therefore, if someone is granted a blessed year, what else may he need, since the words "blessed" encompasses all.

In this regard, I would like to share with you a deep insight I learned from my daughter Daniela –may God bless her. Each night, before we go to sleep, Daniela and I pray to God and ask Him to grant us a restful night. We take advantage of this special time, to ask blessings for our relatives and friends who may be sick, for the wellbeing of the Jewish people and for the prompt coming of the Mashiach (as you can see, when we ask for something, we mean business). One night, about six months ago, after we finished our list of requests, Daniela added the following words: "And if I forgot to ask for something that is good for us, please God, do it anyway!" I was very impressed by my daughter’s words. First of all because I found them ingenious, but moreover, because I saw in them a deep truth: our language, mind and memory are limited and we don’t have the ability to put together even the list of things we really need. We may feel we need money to solve all our problems, and maybe instead we need joy to enjoy our multiple gifts. We may feel we need courage, but maybe what we need is prudence. However, God knows exactly what we need and therefore, when we wish each other a "Gebentsh Yohr" – "A Blessed Year", we insinuate that God will give us everything we need, even if we don’t know how to use the right words to ask for it.

Every month on the Shabbat before Rosh Chodesh, we "Bentsh" – we "bless" the new month, announcing when the coming Jewish month will start. There is –however- one exception: We don’t bless the month of Tishrei. One explanation for that exception is that we don’t want ‘Satan’ to know when Rosh Hashanah will be (Satan is an emissary of God, whose mission is to accuse Israel and to make us sin).

However lately I came across an alternative explanation to why we don’t bless the month of Tishrei. According to this explanation, we don’t bless the month of Tishrei because the month of Tishrei is blessed by God Himself.

God is not an idea, He not energy, He is not the collective memories of the Jewish people. God is a real living presence, more real than you and I, and therefore, since God Himself is ready to bless this coming month and this coming year, should not this be enough reason to rejoice and to feel already blessed?

Ashreinu! Mah Tove Chelkeinu, Mah Naim Goraleinu, Mah Yafah Yerushateinu!

"How fortunate we are! – How good is our portion, how pleasant our lot, and how beautiful our heritage!" (from the morning prayers)

May the Holy One bless us with a good, sweet and blessed year!