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Rosh Hashanah: A Coordinate in Time

When a person comes to Shul on a holiday, be it Shabbat, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur or Succoth, the time makes all the difference. I hope it doesn't feel the same. I hope that we don't drag out Shabbat services so long that you feel it is Yom Kippur, and I hope that Yom Kippur is not so hum drum as to feel like a regular Shabbat.

The great astrophysicists of this world have explained that the three dimensions of height, width, and depth are not sufficient to describe a location. We need to know when. That's the fourth coordinate. As we all can appreciate, since the earth rotates and revolves, your own living room is not the same place each night or day. It moves. But once a year, I suppose we are back in the same place again (I flunked astrophysics, by the way).

The Great Hasidic and Mystic, the author of the Sefas Emes writes that every Yom Tov has a "heh-oh-rah" of its own, it gives off its own light, has its own flavor or aura. He writes that just as the very first day of creation was a "pregnant moment" in that it had within it the potential to bring freshness and creativity, so every Rosh Hashanah has that potential, because you have come back to that place that is full of potential. Similarly, Yom Kippur has in it echoes of the receiving of the ten commandments (the second ones after Moshe broke the first), and Succoth has the feel of the loving shadow of G-d hovering over us as in the desert.

But we don't always feel that way. Sometimes we feel that we are in a rut, that Rosh Hashanah's come and go and that there is no growth, no recreation of the self. Sometimes Yom Kippur doesn't feel like Yom Kippur, and we are not moved sufficiently. Some years we don't merit to feel the Divine protection in the Succah or the Divine hug of G-d while holding a lulav.

What's wrong with us that sometimes we are in the exact "bat channel" at the exact "bat time" and yet, we are so thick skinned that it just slides off us, that we are immune to the "enlightenment" or the aura of the day? This is our job in the month prior to the High Holidays, to figure out why we don't get it. This is the month of Elul, the time to unpeel our thick skins, and to let the light in.

If we don't want to change, to grow in Judaism, to be moved not only to tears but to action, we don't have to be. It is a free country, and a world in which we are granted free will. But the shofar asks us to wake up, the Yom Kippur fast tries to get us out of our routine, and the Succah tries to evoke the most sublime relationships available between man and G-d.

Will we feel the "coming together of the stars" this Yom Tov, or will we be impervious to the cacophony of universal time? It's up to us. The experience is there to be had. We need only to seize the moment. My prayer is that this year we all will.

On behalf of my wife, Bluma, and our children Asher, Natan, Akiva, and (at the time of publication ________), allow us to wish you all a year of health and happiness, for us and for all of Israel. We'll see you in Shul, G-d willing.