Rosh Hashana -- Arthur Szyk

At the end of the year, Jews deliver an annual report to their Majority Shareholder and pray and hope to have their respective contracts extended — and even for an increase in compensation for a job well done. That is Rosh Hashana, which means the Head of the New Year, and which begins tonight.

The surprising, and very not-American, thing we learn about Rosh Hashana is that it is at its heart an expression of our own acknowledgment of God’s status as the Boss. At other times of year we focus on other aspects of our relationship with God, but at Rosh Hashana it is Kingship that rules.

Independence is so highly valued in our society that some people think that independence is the only virtue, which is really a sort of arrested adolescence, but one much celebrated in our time and place. Thus it’s not surprising that religions based on hierarchies of spiritual authority — scriptural, ethical, behavioral, pastoral — must fight uphill to survive. Maintaining a feisty, free-enterprising, yeoman spirit in the profane stations of life while acknowledging spiritual, and essentially governing, principles that appear to be inconsistent with Yankee virtues is one of the challenges to all religious people in America. I don’t claim to know how to do it, but identifying the challenge, at least, is a step in the direction of addressing it.

If we could ever actually acknowledge that God is the Ruler of our lives — really, as really as we acknowledge the existence of the computer you’re reading this on, of the sky above us, of your left hand — we would never do anything wrong (i.e., sin), and never feel any fear (also a kind of transgression). That’s a tall order, and ironic for how, in its apparent simplicity, achieving would be a giant feat for anyone. Its apotheosis is the answer of great people of faith to what many people believe is an unanswerable query to God: How can tragedy (such as of the scope that has happened in our lives or the lives of our parents) be allowed to persist? The answer: “For the unbeliever there is no answer. For the believer” — believing, as I said, in the very reality of God’s rule over everything, not merely the ideological adoption of it — “there is no question.”

I didn’t say it was easy. But hopefully one’s progress report will report, at least… some progress.

If you’re curious, you can learn the fundamentals of Rosh Hashana here. You may want to look at this excerpt from Rabbi Shimon Apisdorf’s Rosh Hashana Survival Kit, a classic in its own right.

And remember, Rosh Hashana is, as the liturgy teaches, the “birthday of the whole world,” not just a special date for the Jews. So happy birthday, world, and may we all be blessed for a year far better than the one that just ended.

Originally posted on Dean’s World, Rosh Hashana 2006.

Monday night begins Rosh Hashana. It must be mentioned, it must be addressed, it must be reckoned
with, no matter how ecumenical a blog I want to have.

Recipient

It has been an extraordinarily eventful year for me on many, many planes, overwhelmingly in ways for which I am very grateful to God.  Gratitude is the alpha of service of God, and of self-fulfillment, too — two endeavors that, to the thoughtless, appear to be opposite, but which are in fact one.  From my point of view, neither is achieved fully without the other.

I say “from my point of view” even though my cousin Debbie, the writer, taught me many years ago that when you write something you need not say such a thing, because of course it is your point of view.  You wrote it.  But I say it so as not to offend my many friends who read here and who disagree and are, by habit, less offended if a proposition is put forth in a manner that sounds less absolute.  It is a form of apology, and of course we know just how apologetic your blogger is at any time!

More of my point of view is my reiteration that when speaking of “gratitude,” God is the Whom to which gratitude must be directed, which is not to say that gratitude toward other individuals for their specific kindnesses is not also appropriate.  But “I’m grateful” without an object — this makes no sense. (I once blogged about this somewhere and, well… I can’t find it. A lot of that going around lately. — here it is!)  I have never understood people expressing free-floating generic “gratitude” directed at … nothing. I do not consider it to be any more logical to say, “It is directed at the Universe,” which is essentially the same exact thing.  I believe that people who express “gratitude” without acknowledging the source of the benefit to which they claim to be grateful, are saying words, but not, really, expressing gratitude.  Gratitude must have an object because it is an acknowledgment of need, or lack, fulfilled by another.

But I am not here to fight, not today.  Forgive the digression — there, apologies again!  Well, regret is part of Rosh Hashana, too.

Round and round

And I for one am grateful, grateful to God, for a year that has been very good to me, and to many of the people I care about the most.  Much progress, some of it incremental, but progress all the same.

I am grateful to have reached a point where I can perceive and appreciate incremental progress, too.

I am grateful to be able to interact with so many fine, deep, multifaceted people whose intentions are good.

I am grateful for middle age.  I was born to be middle aged and now I am home.  I hope I get to stay here for a long time!

I am grateful for life, for perspective, for wisdom, judgment, the ability to give, the powers that I have, for the judges who are starting to listen and the clients who do their best to pay.

I am grateful for the things that ought not be written, but should be said.

Grateful… step one.  It is the first step, and while we must go beyond it, gratitude is the step that is never completed.

Thank you.