Rosh Hashana, 5768

Rosh Hashana – innocently mistranslated as “the new year”, more accurately rendered as “the head of the year”, but most deeply understood as “the head makes the difference”.

The word shana שנה shares the same root as לשנות meaning to change. Yes, it marks the new year, and more Jewishly sets the tone for the entire coming year as the head leads the body, but most superbly teaches that our calibration of thought – the power of the mind – most defiantly impacts the system, affecting the greatest change. As the root of a tree supplies the nutrients and all life-giving elements to its branches, leaves and fruit, so too the שכל sechel (Hebrew for mind) touches every output of the human condition. Like trickle-down ethics. The word for thought is הרהור hirhur, the word for pregnant is הרה harah, and the word for mountain is הר har. All thoughts are actions in gestation, on the precipice of making their mountainous debut – a salient visage on the landscape of one’s life.

“I think, therefore I am” is not necessarily the Jewish approach to one’s existence. But “I think, and what I think is what I am”, now that’s more like it. Case in point, one who thinks of one other than one’s spouse at that moment when one most shouldn’t, is reckoned as positively adulterous. Our mind is what separates us from the rest of creation. It is the very place where Divine image is anchored.

The Talmud records the debate as to when the world was created, in Tishrei (the first of which is our Rosh Hashana) or in Nissan (the fifteenth of which is Passover). Nissan is counted as the first month in the Torah, but our tradition renders Tishrei as the first of creation. The great family of Tosefos reconcile the two opinions as complimentary – their tradition had always taught (well before the Talmud) that one reflected the physical creation while the other marked God’s thoughts of creation (anthropomorphisms allowed in this business) – His plan. In the end is the deed, but in thought it exists first. We celebrate the thought as the beginning. We recognize the essential and revel in our spiritual likeness. We plan our year, rather – as God did – create ourselves in thought, and to the extent with which we find conviction, inspiration, humility and devotion, we may stand the chance to see the fruits of such purity of mind and clarity of purpose in the coming year.

To drive the point home, we’ll mention numerous times how Rosh Hashana is the beginning of the creation of man. Those biblical mathematicians have already worked out, then, that creation itself started six days earlier. Correct, but the purpose of creation, its goal and manifestation, is in you. The whole world serves as your canvas and tool belt. In you lies the spark of the Divine, the Infinite. You are where it all begins.

On Rosh Hashana, we create ourselves anew. Using our faculties of hope, ambition, desire, emotion, critique and intellect, we can override the system and change ourselves with atomic proportion. Think. Think hard. Think powerfully. Think humbly. Think Jewishly. Be the head and not the tail, and you’ll wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world.

כתיבה וחתימה טובה ksiva v’chasima tova – may you be written and sealed for good.

Rabbi Lynn