Devar Torah for the First Night of Rosh Hashanah
Rabbi Manes Kogan
5764
The High Holy Days can mean different things to different people. For some Jews, the High Holy Days can have profound religious meaning and offer the possibility to come closer to God. For others, it is an opportunity to get together with family and friends.
And for others, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur represent the last, albeit strong, bastion in their Jewish identity. Jews who otherwise don’t feel connected to the Synagogue or to a traditional Jewish life, will make a point to come to services for the High Holy Days. This is not because services are shorter, since they are not, or because they are free, since that isn’t true either. Friday night services or even Shabbat morning services are oriented in a more accessible manner than the somewhat intimidating High Holy Days services, where the melody, the prayer books, and even the familiar faces, change.
Perhaps it is this awe-like atmosphere of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, suffused with memories from our youth, which offers the opportunity for mediation and introspection. The length of the services, the sad-sounding melodies, and the Rabbi’s hopefully inspiring words, present to the participant an opportunity to reevaluate their priorities and to reconnect with the important things in life.
A story by Rabbi Richard Kushner, author of many books, including When Bad Things Happen to Good People and When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough, comes to my mind. A story about reshaping priorities:
"I was sitting on a beach one summer day", writes Rabbi Kushner, "watching two children, a boy and a girl, playing in the sand. Just as they had nearly finished their project, a big wave came along and knocked it down, reducing it to a heap of sand. They were hard at work building an elaborate sand castle by the water’s edge, with gates and towers and moats and internal passages. I expected the children to burst into tears, devastated by what had happened to all their hard work. But they surprised me. Instead they ran laughing hand in hand up the shore away from the water. I realized they had taught me an important lesson. All the things in our lives, all the complicated structures we spend so much time and energy creating, are built on sand. Only our relationships with other people endure. Sooner or later, the wave will come along and knock down what we have worked so hard to build up. When that happens, only the person who has somebody’s hand to hold will be able to laugh.
Somewhere inside us all, there is a deep knowledge of what really matters and this knowledge allows us to readily relate to Rabbi Kushner’s story. However, during the year we are too busy "extinguishing fires" and taking care of the "urgent", so we end up neglecting the "important".
When we buy High Holy Days tickets, we buy an invitation to stop and think about what really matters. The decorum of the services, the melodious voice of the Cantor, and the beauty of our Synagogue, are merely an aid, to help us do our homework, a homework nobody can do for us.
The days ahead have the power to help us to give new meaning to our lives. With God’s help we’ll take advantage of them!
May the Almighty bless you with a good and sweet year!